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The federal government is turning a blind eye to the widespread and flagrant violation of the Food and Drugs Act. The act specifically prohibits any food importer, manufacturer, or retailer from putting information on a label that "is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, composition, merit or safety."

While legal language is often fuzzy or obscure, this provision is crystal clear. Yet many food items labelled "Product of Canada" are made primarily from foreign ingredients. Suppose you buy a can, bottle, or box of apple juice made from concentrate. The label says "Product of Canada." Seems reasonable — apples are grown all across the country, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.

But here's the catch — there's a high probability that your so-called Canadian apple juice is made from apples grown in such far-flung nations as China or Chile. Labelling apple juice made from Chinese or Chilean apples as a "Product of Canada" is about as misleading and deceptive as describing the Toronto Maple Leafs as a Stanley Cup contender.

It's not just apple juice. Frozen fish sticks, labelled "Product of Canada" could be made from fish caught in any ocean on Earth. Ice cream, labelled "Product of Canada" could be composed largely of modified milk ingredients from New Zealand. Peanut butter and coffee bear the "Product of Canada" label but neither peanuts nor coffee beans are grown commercially in Canada. From olives to canned vegetables and strawberry jam, the list of processed foods made from imported ingredients but labelled "Product of Canada" goes on and on.

How did this debacle come to pass? The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the federal agency entrusted with ensuring food safety in Canada, has issued Byzantine guidelines for labelling food products. The guidelines provide that as long as at least 51 per cent of the production costs of a food item are added in Canada and some kind of "transformation" takes place, then it can be labelled as a "Product of Canada."

Examples of transformation offered by the CFIA as sufficient to merit Product of Canada designation include repackaging Spanish olives in Canadian brine, importing foreign vegetables and canning them, and mixing foreign frozen carrots with Canadian frozen peas.

It is a basic legal principle that guidelines must be consistent with their authorizing legislation. Bureaucrats mustn't thwart the will of Parliament. Canada's food labelling guidelines contradict both the letter and the spirit of the Food and Drugs Act, and are therefore unlawful.

Canada's labelling fiasco is also out of line with practices in the United States. Despite the hullabaloo about harmonization, American authorities require more honest food labels. For example, compare a Canadian can of apple juice with exactly the same product, made by the same corporation, but for sale in the United States. There are no misleading or deceptive claims on the American label, such as "Product of the U.S." Instead, when listing the ingredients, the label explicitly states that the apple juice may contain concentrate from China, Austria, Chile, or any of nearly a dozen nations.

Welcome to the globalized food system. Corporations buy commodities from the cheapest source. In the case of apple juice concentrate, China has rapidly emerged as the world's lowest cost producer.

Of course, how China manages to produce apples so cheaply may be a concern to Canadians in light of the recent food safety scandals emanating from China. Other Canadians, concerned by the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, may be striving to eat a local diet in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Still others may buy local food in an attempt to support family farms or Canadian fishermen, keep money in the regional economy, or for other social and cultural reasons. All of these motives are foiled by the blatantly deceptive practice of labelling food made from foreign ingredients as a "Product of Canada."

When it comes to the food we eat, Canadians want to know where it comes from and whether it was grown or raised sustainably. The Product of Canada designation should be a source of pride, and ought to be reserved for food items that are genuinely Canadian.

If "Product of Canada" can mean "Grown in China," then Canada's food labelling guidelines are both misleading and unlawful. The Conservatives have been promising to rectify this problem since last year, but appear to be dragging their heels. If they fail to fix the food labelling fiasco, public confidence in the Canadian brand will erode, causing a ripple effect of economic harm to Canadian products at home and abroad.

David R. Boyd is an environmental lawyer and Trudeau Scholar at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Unnatural Law: Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law and Policy.