LIBIN: THE KETCHUP CANADIANS ARE HERE.

Ketchup connoisseurs face a very different Canada today. There’s more danger that topping your fries with a splatter of Heinz could earn a dirty look from a fellow diner. Perhaps even a lecture from an Ontario busybody ready to tell you that you’re insufficiently patriotic. After this week’s social media hounding of Loblaw supermarkets into restocking French’s ketchup, which managers had initially judged inadequately profitable, any Heinz fan could be a target. Your ketchup preferences matter little to the greater cause of the Leamington, Ont. farmer, where French’s buys its tomatoes but Heinz does not. “Remember,” wrote John Romanelli, leader of the French’s Revolution, declaring victory on Facebook yesterday, “all of this actually had nothing to do with anything except Canadian jobs and creating Canadian jobs. Something we should all fight for.”

As with every patriotic frenzy, it’s the symbolism that matters most. American-owned Heinz, as it happens, employs far more Canadians than does Reckitt Benckiser, the European owner of French’s. And both companies combined don’t employ anything close to the number of people who work for Canadian- owned Loblaw, a company that was just made a tiny bit less profitable by Romanelli and his fellow revolutionaries. The grocer, after all, is highly attuned to what consumers want to pay for. “Customer preference was the single reason the product was removed from our shelves,” said Loblaw spokesman Kevin Groh, Wednesday, “and the single reason it is back.”

But it seems customers actually had little to do with it. Their votes were counted when Loblaw ran the numbers on French’s profitability in the first place, and the verdict was clear: Not worth the shelf space. But local boosters like Romanelli got wind of Loblaw’s decision and took to social media with demands that the store re-stock French’s ketchup for nationalistic reasons. He was joined by hundreds more Facebookers and tweeters. A member of Ontario’s Liberal government, Mike Colle, quickly jumped on Romanelli’s bandwagon and threatened to lead a boycott against Loblaw if it didn’t restock French’s ketchup. Thoroughly maumaued, the retailer had little choice but to offer its surrender in a fight it had never even signed up for.

Romanelli appears to have been born to raise a bit of hell. He’s known as a labour activist, but he also goes by the name “John Tard,” as a member of the former hardcore punk band the 3Tards. It was a band known not just for its vulgar lyrics, but evidently had a knack for creating a spectacle, too, staging mock live births and circumcisions on stage. Maybe promoting local tomato growers is considered punk these days, but Loblaw’s house brand, President’s Choice ketchup, buys plenty of Canadian tomatoes, too. They also reportedly buy American tomatoes. Does PC, given its sales volume, buy more Canadian tomatoes from Canadian farmers in total than the purely Canadian- tomatoed, but not particularly popular French’s ketchup? Such bewildering questions are best left to those in the scientific-technical intelligentsia class, not the punks and populist politicians on the on the frontline of the cause.

Their objective is not to contemplate, after all, but to aggressively advance the ideal that Canadians should be met with grocery products that are seen to promote Canadian workers. Stack high the cracker shelves with Dare Bretons. Stuff the freezers with only McCain pizzas. Let Habitant pea soup wash over the canned goods aisles. For dessert, let them eat Deep n’ Delicious cakes, Jos Louis and Eat Mores. Yes, that will mean fewer jobs for Canadians working in the processing plants, factories and logistics businesses that handle the more popular imported products. And grocers, facing displeased customers, will surely have to downsize their workforce. But those layoffs are the price we must pay for protecting Canadian jobs.

Perhaps the difference between ketchups is not so different, and so one might not see any harm in forcing Loblaw to promote French’s over other ketchups. One taster interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek last year, as French’s was hitting the U. S. market, reported “It’s very very similar to Heinz… a little bit more liquidy and less creamy... I’d totally fail a Coke versus Pepsi challenge of them.” But if the two are equally indistinguishable in Canada, it does raise the question of whether our tomatoes are worth growing at all. They generally cost more than American tomatoes, which explains why Heinz pulled out of the Leamington tomato game in 2014. They’re not seen as more flavourful. Ontario farmers growing tomatoes that are pricier but offer no taste benefit over countries that have a stronger specialized advantage (in the U. S., that would be Mexican labourers) could be a lessthan- optimal use of our labour and land. Normally, buyers would be the ones to tell us that. But Romanelli, Colle and the social media mob have decided to commandeer the message.

Until this week’s turmoil, many Canadians were probably unaware that there has been a condiment war going on — one so intense that it’s hard to know whether these grassroots campaigns are legitimate, or if French’s has had some hand in all this. French’s was last year lured into the ketchup market, which is significantly larger than the mustard space where it’s dominant, and where there is less competition from dijons, grain mustards, honey mustards and, now, Heinz, which also recently launched its own mustard. Ketchup sales in Canada alone are worth double those of mustard — whose seed, it so happens, Canada is the largest producer and exporter of in the world. So, if we really want to support Canadian farmers, why are we even eating ketchup, let alone allowing stores to promote it? Perhaps it’s time the people’s cause found a new enemy. Let us now find those betrayers who eat fries without mustard.

STUFF THE FREEZERS WITH ONLY MCCAIN PIZZAS!