Local university student launches browser plug-in to help people shop Canadian

An Ontario university student has developed a way to find Canadian alternatives while shopping online. CTV’s Hannah Schmidt explains.

At a time when the nation is hearing a lot of sentiment about buying Canadian, a local university student is turning to tech to help provide a patriotic push.

Imagine browsing your favourite international shopping site and in seconds, a sidebar pops up recommending Canadian choices.

“[It works for] any website you want to go on,” explained the creator of Support Canadian, Aidan Haldane. “There was a lot of news going around, particularly when tariffs were announced on Canada, and I think there was a massive movement nationally to kind of try and support Canadian businesses and Canadian entrepreneurs.”

The second-year Wilfrid Laurier and University of Waterloo student said he designed the plug-in to nudge consumers toward homegrown brands and businesses.

A simple download sets up a maple leaf symbol on browsers, guiding people toward Canadian options.

“I initially started with kind of scraping [through] Reddit for lists because people have created these incredible massive lists,” Haldane explained. “So I created this massive database and then after I had this database I created, I essentially coded by myself, the full extension.”

For sites like Amazon, where locally made products can get lost in the crowds of internationally or nationally made items, Haldane says the tool can come in handy.

“For Amazon, it will also do the same thing but you will see that it will prioritize these Canadian-made products to the top of the list.”

Haldane said it came down to a desire to help people channel their choices amid the threat of U.S. tariffs.

“There was no one really addressing what’s going on when people are online and how you’re going to these online websites,” he said. “And you might forget that these are American owned, so that was kind of the approach I took when creating it.”

Some local consumers call it a win-win.

“It gives us jobs and keeps our economy going and we don’t have to worry about any other country, just worry about our own,” said one local shopper.

“I think just combining everything into one big list would be a lot easier than doing all of your own research,” added another.

Haldane believes his interface is already changing the game.

“I think some projections showed there was a little over $1 million kept within the Canadian economy, with only 500 downloads.”

For Haldane, it’s just the beginning in what will be a journey to help Canadians shop locally and hopefully, save a few bucks.

“What I was thinking of doing is creating almost like a marketplace which brings in together specific products. I hope that it can benefit Canadians at the end of the day is really what this is all about.”