Finally, we also identified 72 vulnerable vegetable products such as lettuce, potatoes, and cabbage, mainly sourced from the U.S. Next, there were limited supply of meat (88) and dairy (86) products, which included high value imports like pork and beef from the U.S. High value imports include live lobsters and frozen haddock and catfish fillets. There were over 90 fish and seafood products with limited supply, mostly shipped from the U.S., China, and Vietnam. More than a third of these limited supply products were in the agri-food sector, primarily concentrated in fish and seafood, meat, dairy, and vegetables. was again disproportionately present by being the largest supplier for over 1700 products, followed by China (158 products) and Germany (37 products). These limited supply products had a total import value of over C$100 billion, representing approximately one-sixth of total Canadian merchandise imports in the past year. (No more than three suppliers or HHI > 0.81) Sector Distribution of limited supply products by sector This step removed over 7600 products, filtering the final list of products down to 2315.

0.81 was selected as the cut-off because if one country accounted for 90% of the import value, that product’s HHI would be at least 0.9 2 = 0.81. Thus, the first condition was complemented by an HHI index filter of more than 0.81 to re-include these cases of extreme import supplier concentration.

and the remaining 10% from 30 other countries). Canada imported 90% of a product from the U.S. However, this condition also removes products that have one or more countries accounting for a large proportion of Canadian imports but also have many smaller suppliers (e.g. This should be intuitive as products that have fewer existing suppliers are more likely to be exposed to disruptions to supply chains.

The first condition narrows the list down to products with no more than three suppliers. In order to focus on the most vulnerable products, this report uses two main criteria, the total number of existing suppliers and the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) Footnote 1. Other major suppliers include Germany, Italy, and Mexico, where each country was the top supplier for approximately 200 products. The other dominant supplier for Canada was China, which was not only the largest supplier for nearly 2000 products, but also had over 90% import share in 120 of them. was the top supplier for over 5000 products and had import shares of more than 90% in nearly a quarter of them. Out of products with multiple suppliers, the U.S. consistently showed up as one of, if not the largest supplier for these products. However, due to Canada’s unique trading relationship with the United States and the integrated supply chains between the two countries, the U.S. In 2019, Canada imported nearly 10 thousand unique products at the 10-digit level under the Harmonized System (HS) classification. These products could be especially susceptible and may require extra attention from policy makers to ensure minimum operations and necessities. This report provides a cursory analysis of products that have limited international supply for Canada.

Pharmaceutical products and medical supplies have relatively diverse import sources, but alternative suppliers for certain essential products like defibrillators are still limited.įollowing the outbreak of COVID-19, global supply chains are at the risk of major disruptions.

Vulnerable products are mainly concentrated in the agri-food sector but are also commonly found in chemicals & fertilizers and metals & minerals.

Canada imported nearly ten thousand unique products in 2019, with over 2000 being identified as vulnerable to supply chain disruptions in this report.

Take as needed sign limited supply