After several small businesses in the Interlake were made winners of the 2025 Canadian Choice Award (CCA) and had their names posted on CCA’s Manitoba winners’ webpage, questions arose about the nature of CCA and who’s behind it.
After CCA told businesses they were 2025 winners, it invited them to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on items and services which include a trophy, key chain, custom social media post, window decals and a gala awards banquet in Toronto in June.
The Express is referring to Canadian Choice Award as an entity because the paper was unable to get answers from CCA as to its identity and legitimacy to present small businesses across Canada with its award. CCA’s website doesn’t identify whether CCA is a registered business, doesn’t identify who owns it and operates it nor does it provide a location and telephone number. There are 2025 award winners in every Canadian province and territory except Nunavut.
CCA’s website states it celebrates “the small businesses that enrich the lives of Canadians.” Its process entails the nomination of a business (it also allows a business to nominate itself), an unidentified panel that “carefully” analyzes each business and chooses finalists, and the selection of a winner based on a business owner questionnaire, nominator feedback and independent analysis.
There are about 16 small business winners from communities in the Interlake, over one hundred from Winnipeg and hundreds more from communities across the province. Three businesses told the Express they don’t know who’s behind CCA.
Manitoba Animal Alliance founder and director Debra Vandekerkhove said she doesn’t know who nominated her registered charitable organization, which rescues and re-homes animals and works in collaboration with municipalities and First Nations communities to provide spay and neuter clinics. A number of alliance followers and fans saw on social media that Vandekerkhove was in the running for the award and they voted for her.
Vandekerkhove reached out to CCA to ask who nominated her and was told it’s confidential, she said. She also asked for information about CCA’s criteria for the award and where CCA is located.
CCA had emailed her in December 2024 to let her know she was a finalist for the award and told her in January she was a winner, she said. There was no money involved up front to be a winner.
“When you look at this, you think, ‘Oh, I got an award.’ But if you want a trophy, you have to buy it. So I think it’s kind of like a marketing scheme,” said Vandekerkhove. “Once they say you’ve won, they send you a link to your winner’s page and this price list where you can buy a trophy package for $750, an amplified recognition package for $1,749 and if you want to come to the awards gala in Toronto, it’s $4,500.”
Vandekerkhove said she noticed a discrepancy between CCA’s website through which people can buy a gala ticket for $750 (using a credit card), and the information CCA emailed her whereby it invited her to pay $4,500 for the gala.
After looking at the photos on CCA’s website of ostensible winners at the 2024 gala event, Vandekerkhove said she wonders why there are no captions on the photos to identify CCA representatives and the winners. She also wonders how a non-profit or small business owner could afford to attend a $4,500 gala, pay for airfare and accommodation if they live outside Ontario and also purchase what look like “thousand-dollar ballgowns.”
Vandekerkhove said she didn’t purchase any merchandise or services from CCA.
In the online and social media world, the public is often invited to vote in various competitions such as a favourite baby photo, favourite credit cards or favourite arenas. Allowing the public to vote online could result in voters not following any judging criteria (even if presented with them), a chance that there may be no oversight from the sponsor regarding the number of times an individual can vote, or a chance that the sponsor may use third-party websites or social media sites to garner votes. It’s unclear in CCA’s case as to how public voting is weighted in its criteria.
As stated on its website, CCA’s process entails nominees having to fill out a questionnaire about their business.
That doesn’t appear to have been followed in the case of Teulon-based Forest Mama, a small business that specializes in making herbal products that are sold online and in select stores in the Interlake and Winnipeg.
Owner Lisa Barnes said she didn’t submit any information about her business to CCA after it told her she was a nominee – and she still won. She also doesn’t know who nominated her.
“I had just got an email saying I was nominated, and it gave me a link I could post on my social media for anybody to go on and vote for me throughout the whole process,” said Barnes. “Then I got an email in either January or February saying I was the winner of the Health & Wellness Category.”
She said she thinks the award has boosted her online profile and credibility as it went on her social media and people saw it and voted for her.
After she was told she was a winner, she received a price list from CCA: $750 for a trophy package and $4,500 for the gala in Toronto.
“It’s hard to know what to feel about that because I get it that these things cost money, and I know the gala would be an amazing networking event, but for a small business that’s a really big cost,” said Barnes. “There’s definitely no way I could do the Toronto gala … and I didn’t buy a trophy or anything else.”
Barnes said she knew about a business in Winnipeg that had previously won the CCA award and figured it was a “legit” award.
“But if they’re charging over $700 for a trophy and $4,500 for a gala, and there’s no way to get hold of an actual person [at CCA], it does seem a little bit concerning,” said Barnes. “Where is that money actually going?”
Stonewall-based photographic artist Chantelle Dione said she nominated her own business, Chantelle Dione Photography, for a 2025 Canadian Choice Award not for a chance at glory, but to find out what CCA is all about.
She said she had almost fallen for a similar setup offered by a U.K. entity and wanted to know whether CCA is legitimate. Inviting the winners of any award to pay for merchandise and/or services after they’ve won raises troubling questions.
“I’ve come into contact with other companies that do this sort of thing. There was one in the U.K. that managed to almost get me,” said Dione, who specializes in creating empowering photographs – branding, boudoir, as you are and portrait photographs – of people from all age groups and walks of life. “I wanted to know if CCA was legit as this was something I had not seen until now. And I was also very curious as to how long they’d been around and what their process is.”
Dione said she had a feeling CCA would eventually invite her to pay money for merchandise or services – quoting her the exact same prices as the two above businesses – because a lot of these types of entities “prey on our desire to be recognized.” The need for recognition makes business owners vulnerable to schemes that suck them in through flattery.
“We as businesses want to be seen and we want recognition because we work so friggin’ hard to make our businesses successful. If you’re being nominated by your followers, it feels amazing and it’s amazing when people really think you should have this, quote unquote, award. It also feels really cool when you’re at a gala and they announce your name and you’ve got your name on a plaque,” said Dione. “But the moment they bring money into it is the moment they’re trying to exploit you.”
Dione said authentic business awards such as those bestowed by chambers of commerce and other recognizable business organizations don’t come with an invitation to the winners to pay for things like their trophies.
The Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award (WEYA) from the Women Business Owners of Manitoba, a non-profit organization with a publicly stated board of directors, is an example of a business award from a known organization. Dione was a 2025 nominee. She went to the gala and was presented with a plaque.
“I didn’t have to pay for that plaque and that recognition. And I have that beautiful plaque in my office because I was a nominee,” she said.
Because CCA provides no information about its authority to bestow a business award and no information about who it is, Dione questions its legitimacy.
“In this day and age, I feel we put a lot of trust in businesses online and on social media. If you get a blue check next to your name [i.e., X], I feel that people think you’ve been legitimized,” said Dione. “When CCA was initially promoting the awards, there was one particular woman you could see who was doing a lot of their social media stuff in reels (on Instagram) and posts. What I got from that was they’ve been around for a while and there are pictures of a previous gala, which they said was in Toronto. But this still feels predatory to me, and on a bigger scale than other companies that do similar things.”
Dione’s advice to business owners when they receive something saying they’ve been nominated for an award is to try to determine the legitimacy of the entity even if the award is “exciting” and they want to be recognized. And when money comes into the equation, red flags should go up and our “Spidey-senses” should start tingling.
Dione said she has not posted any information about her Canadian Choice Award on her website.
The Express examined photos on CCA’s website to identify previous award winners and reviewed testimonials. It called Vancouver-based EuroNails, a 2024 winner that has a testimonial on CCA’s website, and left a message for business owners Dmitry and Elena. They did not call back.
The Express also found a 2025 Manitoba winner (outside the Interlake) that had been disciplined for misconduct – fined and temporarily suspended from practice for a number of months – by their industry oversight body in 2024. That calls into question CCA’s website statement that its judging panel “carefully” analyzes each business.
The Express’ reporter reached out to Canadian Choice Award via its website contact form and also sent it an email using one of its multiple email addresses. The reporter asked CCA questions including whether it’s a registered business, when it was established, who owns it, where it’s located, why it doesn’t identify the names of its owners and/or staff on its website and why it requires award winners to pay several hundred dollars if they want a trophy. CCA did not respond.
The Express verified with Liberty Grand, a venue owned by the City of Toronto and operated by Liberty Entertainment Group, that the Canadian Choice Award gala is booked for June 20.
