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Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, has warned rye drinkers they will need to “stock up” if they want to keep consuming Crown Royal, as he promised to make good on plans to banish the iconic Canadian whisky brand from his province.
Ford has since September been locked in a simmering feud over tariffs and economic nationalism with the multinational spirits maker Diageo plc. This week, he renewed his threats to wield the power of the province’s liquor control board – one of the largest buyers of alcohol in the world – to banish Crown Royal.
“You’d better stock up there, buddy,” Ford told reporters, adding he was “100%” committed to removing the spirits from liquor store shelves.
In September, Ford ceremoniously dumped a bottle of Crown Royal when Diageo announced plans to shutter its plant in Ontario and move its operations to the US, with the loss of roughly 200 jobs.
“This is what I think of Crown Royal,” he said, telling reporters the company’s owners were “a few fries short of a Happy Meal” and “dumb as a bag of hammers”.
Diageo, like other companies, has shifted its global strategy in response to threats and incentives from the White House intended to lure production back to the United States. Meanwhile, consumer boycotts in response to Donald Trump’s provocations have cratered sales of US brands crater in Canada.
For political leaders, the loss of a Crown Royal facility reflects an erosion of a product long seen as uniquely Canadian.
The whisky, first introduced 86 years ago to mark a visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, has long stressed its Canadian roots in both domestic and international advertising. Sold in a distinct purple cloth bag with gold stitching, the drink is made with Canadian grains and water from Manitoba’s Lake Winnipeg. While it was initially only available in Canada, a decision to sell it south of the border in the 1960s has made it the top-selling Canadian whisky in the US.
Once part of the Seagram empire, the brand was acquired in 2001 by Diageo, the London-based multinational company, when the Canadian beverage and entertainment conglomerate collapsed.
Its Northern Harvest Rye was named the 2016 World Whisky of the Year, the first time a Canadian whisky had ever received the honour.
Diageo said that Crown Royal “will be mashed, distilled and aged in Canada, just as it has been since 1939”, and that Crown Royal products both “sold in Canada and destined for the rest of the world (outside the US) will continue to be bottled in Canada”.
But Ford told reporters the company has bigger plans to move all its Crown Royal production to a new plant in Alabama.
“It’s all a bunch of BS. It’s all going to Alabama. Mark my words, it’s going to Alabama. They said they were going to invest in [Ontario] … They pulled the carpet out from underneath us,” Ford said in a nod to plans the company had for a new C$245m carbon-neutral Crown Royal distillery that would employ up to 100 people.
The company then shifted its plans, saying the project would be a warehouse with the possibility of a distillery in the future, before pausing the project.
Ford said while the current action will only target Crown Royal, he has his eyes on other brands sold by Diageo, including Guinness and Smirnoff. “The message to everyone else; don’t try to hurt Ontario, especially if we’re your No 1 customer – you’ll be held accountable.”
