Ontario premier vows to remove Crown Royal whisky from provincial shelves

Ontario premier Doug Ford told rye drinkers they should "stock up" if they want to keep consuming Crown Royal, saying he is "100%" committed to banishing the Canadian whisky brand from provincial liquor stores. Ford has been locked since September in a feud with the multinational spirits maker Diageo over tariffs and economic nationalism and renewed threats to use the province's liquor control board—the government's large alcohol buyer—to remove Crown Royal.

He told reporters, "You'd better stock up there, buddy," and has previously ceremonially dumped a bottle after Diageo announced plans to close a plant and move operations to the US, a decision the company said would cost roughly 200 jobs. Ford also called the company's owners "a few fries short of a Happy Meal" and "dumb as a bag of hammers." Crown Royal was introduced 86 years ago to mark a visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and has long emphasised Canadian roots in advertising.

The whisky is sold in a purple cloth bag with gold stitching, is made with Canadian grains and water from Manitoba's Lake Winnipeg, and—after being sold in the US from the 1960s—became the top-selling Canadian whisky in the United States. The brand was once part of Seagram and was acquired by Diageo in 2001; its Northern Harvest Rye was named the 2016 World Whisky of the Year, the first time a Canadian whisky received that honour.

Key Topics

Politics, Doug Ford, Diageo, Crown Royal, Ontario, Alabama