TORONTO — The weeks since Liam Mooney and Emma Cochrane dreamt up a viral hat meant to fend off any notion that Canada will be taken over by the U.S. has been more of a crash course in manufacturing than in politics.
The pair of Ottawa-based marketers behind the “Canada is not for sale” hats made famous by Ontario Premier Doug Ford last week say they’ve realized how difficult it is to produce a ball cap fully made in Canada. “Imagine you’re a snake and you’re trying to consume a giant bowling ball. That’s what we’ve been experiencing here,” said Mooney, co-founder of business consultancy Jackpine Dynamic Branding.
Over the last few weeks, the duo approached several players in the apparel sector to help them and mostly heard the same refrain: they don’t manufacture hats fully in Canada because the cost is so high and the demand isn’t there. Mooney and Cochrane have since found some hats completely made in the country but haven’t settled on a long-term solution, so they are mostly relying on ball caps imported from Vietnam, Bangladesh and China and toques from the U.S.
, which then get embroidered in Canada. The difficulty in making apparel or accessories completely in Canada stems from years of blows to the country’s textile industry, which lost much of the clothing manufacturing capacity it developed in the 19th century as industrialists migrated to Canada and took advantage of the introduction of the sewing machine. “They started the apparel indu.
