The Spirits Business reported on Tuesday that Ontario’s Premier, Doug Ford, will indeed be moving forward with his threat to remove Crown Royal from the shelves of Ontario’s sole liquor supplier, LCBO. Ford floated the ban in September after Diageo decided to close down a Canadian bottling plant in Amherstburg, Ontario and move its operations to the United States.
The move might result in the potential loss of 200 jobs.
The Canadian politician is famous for his blustery rhetoric, and he dumped a bottle of Crown Royal out during a press conference after hearing the news that Diageo was moving its operations.
“The message to the CEO in France, ‘You hurt my people, I’m going to hurt you!'” Ford expressed. “You’re going to feel the pain in February when these people don’t have a paycheck.”
Ford additionally floated the idea of banning other products from Diageo during press conferences, according to The Spirits Business.
During his inaugural press conference for 2026, Ford seemed to soften his stance on other products in Diageo’s portfolio, but he stood firm about banning Crown Royal. A journalist asked if he would follow through on his threat and he responded with the following statement:
“Oh, 100%, I can’t wait.”
Ford warned reporters that they’d better “stock up” on the Canadian whisky before he pulled it from LCBO.
It’s no secret that American whiskey faces a bit of an image crisis in Canada, as does the country itself. This is largely due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Since the tariffs went into effect in early 2025, Canada imposed a ban on bourbon and other American whiskeys.
According to The Guardian, the closure of Crown Royal’s bottling plant symbolizes a threat to the whisky’s existential Canadian identity. The whisky debuted 86 years ago to celebrate when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the country.
The whisky was initially only available in Canada. It made its way to the United States in the 1960s and became the highest-selling Canadian whisky in America. Diageo shared that the whisky’s production process will still take place in Canada. The supplier shared that any whisky destined to go outside of the United States would still be bottled in Canada.
“It’s all a bunch of BS. It’s all going to Alabama. Mark my words, it’s going to Alabama,” Doug Ford expressed. “They said they were going to invest in [Ontario]… They pulled the carpet out from underneath us.”
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