Here we see Tim Hortons sourcing its tomatoes from California for sale in Ontario, and presumably across Canada.
These palettes of tomatoes, recently delivered to a local food bank, have been through the TDL warehouse in Kingston - one of seven TDL warehouses serving Tim Hortons restaurants and drive-thrus across Canada (Langley, Calgary, Edmonton, Guelph, Kingston, Montreal, Debert outside Truro).
In a reversal of Stompin Tom's famous song "Bud the Spud," the trucks filled with California tomatoes are rippin the tar off the 401 as they head northeast past the sprawling tomato fields and industrial greenhouses of Essex County.
PEI potatoes lathered in Heinz ketchup? Even Heinz infamously pulled up stakes from Leamington several years ago, although operations are under way in the century-old plant under Highbury Canco ownership with 100 fewer employees.
Meanwhile, food banks across eastern Canada, including this same food bank getting California tomatoes, received record shipments of PEI potatoes this year because US corporate bulk buyers wouldn't accept them due to the blight of potato wart. For the first time in decades, potatoes mainly headed west instead of south.
As for tomatoes, Latin American and Caribbean farm workers with no union rights in Ontario now compete with Latin American farm workers with few union rights in California, while sprawling multinationals dictate poverty wages up and down the food supply chain, from the farm fields to non-union long haul truckers, to non-union TDL warehouse, to non-union "independent contractor" short haul truckers, to non-union Tim Hortons restaurants. Wealth floods upward with middlemen - trucking companies, "farmers", and Tim Hortons franchisees taking a generous cut - before the lion's share is captured by wealthy shareholders.
Across three countries, jobs dwindle as production is rationalized through new rounds of capital investments greased by jurisdictional bidding wars as governments of every tier fight for a few jobs with ever-greater subsidies and handouts to an obscenely wealthy capitalist class.
These days, Bud the Spud isn't driving anywhere. Chilled to the bone in the inescapable shadow of corporate free trade, he's lined up at the food bank getting California tomatoes and PEI potatoes. One day you might see him sitting on a downtown sidewalk with a dirty Tim's cup in front of him.