Brunch Without Borders

How NAFTA changed the way we eat

- Corey Mintz

You can find it in North Vancouver, topped with slices of watermelon radish and a tangle of pea shoots. Or in Fort McMurray, Alberta, served with hemp seeds and tomatoes. In Ottawa, it comes layered with chickpeas, lime, and harissa.

Avocado toast has become a cliché — a kind of shorthand used to slander young people for their food- purchasing choices. But it is also a genuine reflection of the way that eating in Canada has changed. A generation ago, we did not spread avocado on our morning toast. That we do now is thanks, in no small measure, to free trade: it’s unlikely that Canadians would be consuming this now ubiquitous and Instagrammable breakfast treat were it not for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which, in 1994, struck down various economic barriers between Canada, the United States, and Mexico and gave us a plentiful, year-round supply of avocados.

In 1988, Canada imported 6.9 million kilograms of the fruit, almost all of it from the United States. Back then, you couldn’t just write avocados on your grocery list and expect to find them in a Canadian supermarket. They might have shown up wrapped in nori in a “sushi” California roll or sliced over bowls of brown rice in vegetarian restaurants, but they were uncommon. As NAFTA eliminated tariffs and other limits on trade and investment — including America’s ban on Mexican avocados — imports grew more than tenfold. By 2017, Canada was importing almost 80 million kilograms of avocados a year, nearly every one of them from Mexico.

It is dangerous to confuse correlation with causation. In the last three decades, a suite of other factors has altered food production: integrated supply chains, changing consumer tastes, and the rise of greenhouse agriculture. But none are as sweeping as NAFTA. Avocado toast may have been popularized by millennials, but it’s free trade that let it become a sensation.