Today is the first day of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, but you could be forgiven for thinking it was the first day of autumn with all the red maple leaves everywhere.

In response to US tariffs on Canadian goods and increasingly ominous threats of annexation from the US president, many shoppers want to avoid buying things made in the US, so stores and sales flyers are dotted with little leaves to denote items are “Made in Canada” or “Product of Canada”, regulatory distinctions few of us knew about a couple of months ago.

US fresh produce is languishing on store shelves, and Canadian grocery chains are quickly trying to find new suppliers. This means that instead of the Florida and California citrus fruit we have seen in grocery stores for decades, those products are coming to the east coast of Canada from new-to-us places like Turkey, Israel and Egypt.

I have long despaired at seeing things like fresh Peruvian asparagus and Chinese snow peas in my local store, so I can’t say I’m thrilled with this development. I wonder how much of it ultimately gets thrown out, all that effort and fossil fuel spent on transporting garbage around the world.

I hope this new patriotic consumerism will make people consider not only where their products are from but if they need them at all. The climate crisis is still barrelling forward full tilt, and the nonsense coming out of the US is distracting from the real urgency to address this existential issue, which must certainly suit the “drill baby drill” ding dongs.

Stores will continue to sell us things if we continue to purchase them but, as we’ve seen from the rapid switch away from US produce, stores also notice when we don’t buy things.