Premier pours out a bottle of Crown Royal to protest Diageo closing an Ontario plant | CBC News

Ontario Premier Doug Ford dumped a bottle of Crown Royal whisky on the ground around his podium during an announcement in Kitchener Tuesday, in response to parent company Diageo’s announcement last week that it will close its Amherstburg, Ont., bottling plant. 

“This is what I think about Crown Royal. That’s what they can do,” Ford said, as the amber liquid chugged out of the bottle. 

Diageo, which owns Crown Royal and also has Canadian facilities in the GTA, Gimli, Man., and Valleyfield, Que., said on Thursday it will close the Ontario facility in February 2026. 

It’s prompted calls for a boycott of the brand and the suggestion the province should pull the product from LCBO shelves.

“They’re sitting around, just absolutely as smug as they come … they’re hurting Ontario residents,” Ford said of the company, following an unrelated announcement.

“A message to the CEO in France: you hurt my people, I’m gonna hurt you. You’re gonna feel the pain in February when these people don’t have a pay cheque.”

‘A message to the CEO in France: you hurt my people, I’m gonna hurt you.’​​​​​– Premier Doug Ford

“I encourage all Canadians, all Ontarians, stand up for the people, because you don’t know if you’re next,” Ford said, adding the company was “a few fries short of a Happy Meal,” and “dumb as a bag of hammers” for the decision. 

In response to a follow-up question from CBC, a spokesperson for the premier’s office did not clarify whether it meant Ford would pull Crown Royal from LCBO. Meanwhile, workers at the plant, represented by Unifor Local 200, met with union executives Tuesday morning to air their concerns and questions.

A spokesperson on behalf of the company did not respond directly to Ford’s remarks, but said “Diageo’s focus at this time remains on their commitment to Canada.”

They also reiterated the previous statement that said “Crown Royal will continue to be mashed, distilled, and aged in Canada, just as it has been since 1939.”

“Diageo will maintain its significant footprint across Canada, including at our Canadian headquarters and warehouse operations in the Greater Toronto Area and other bottling and distillation facilities in Gimli, Man., and Valleyfield, Que.”

Excluding the Amherstburg workers, the company employs 500 people in Canada, the spokesperson said, adding that Crown Royal for the Canadian market will be bottled in the country. 

Unifor says a total of 207 unionized workers stand to be impacted by the closure, including both full- and part-time staff. There are also about 50 non-union management staff. 

Union leadership was in British Columbia at the union’s national convention last week as the news broke.

“You’re putting a whole community, all these people out of work just for profits for a company, and that’s a terrible thing to do,” said longtime worker Howard Fox. 

“With everything that’s going on in the world today, Canada needs to stand up for itself and try to keep jobs, right? So you need solidarity in order to do that.”

Union talks with province about pulling Crown Royal

Unifor says it believes the majority of work from the Amherstburg bottling plant will be moved to Diageo’s facility in Illinois.

John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200, says he’s been in touch with the province about pulling Crown Royal from the shelves at the LCBO. 

“I’ve talked to the to the Ontario government and I’ve told them you need to take the alcohol off the shelves because this can happen to anybody,” he said. “It’s Diageo right now. It could happen to any company. You gotta to make a statement here. Enough’s enough.”

As for how a boycott could impact Diageo’s other Canadian workers, D’Agnolo said if it were those facilities facing shutdown and calling for a boycott that could impact his members, he’d “do no different.”

“We gotta support one another because it could be you next and that’s what worries me most,” he said. 

Over the weekend, Windsor West NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky posed the question of pulling Crown Royal. 

“If the bottling facility closed and jobs shifted to the U.S., leaving no Ontario facility and hundreds of Windsor-Essex residents out of work — eliminating good paying jobs that support workers and our communities — do you think Crown Royal should be pulled from the shelves at the LCBO?” she said in a Facebook post.

Jocelyn Girard is a mom of four who was recently hired at the plant and moved her family to Amherstburg for the job, signing a one-year lease just weeks ago.

“It’s stressful for sure. I’m hoping that with Unifor and Diageo, they can come to some sort of agreement to keep the plant open because we just moved to Amherstburg for this job. I just switched my kids to a new school,” she said.

“Not knowing the future is a pretty scary.”

New southwestern Ontario build on pause

The mayor for St. Clair Township, near Sarnia — also in southwestern Ontario — says he’s stayed away from their products, specifically, Crown Royal since Diageo paused plans for a new factory last year in his community.

“I used to have Crown Royal and I haven’t bought a bottle of Crown Royal since this happened neither,” Jeff Agar told guest host Chris Ensing on CBC Radio’s Windsor Morning. 

Agar says the project “sounded pretty good” until the company pulled the brakes in 2024.

“They just said it was put on pause at the moment and everything was out of the blue and they said … it was nothing that the township had done, it was nothing the government had done.”

Agar says he thinks that had to do with U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I personally have my own thoughts and it’s related to a fellow across the states as you know, all the tariff and, and doom and gloom stuff over there.”

That said, he says he remains “hopeful.”

“They haven’t said that they’re not for sure coming here … so there’s still hope,” Agar said. “They still own the property and who knows what the future brings.” 

WATCH | No chance Diageo will change its mind, expert says:

No chance company will change mind on closing Amherstburg’s Crown Royal plant, says whisky expert

Janet Patton is a Kentucky-based business reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader who covers restaurants, bars and bourbon.

She says Ontario’s choice to pull U.S. booze from LCBO shelves is having a “huge” impact in the United States — whether people really understand it or not.

“I think that probably a lot of people … here probably didn’t realize how bad it was until fairly recently,” Patton told Windsor Morning. 

“Their sales to Canada are down 60 per cent.”

LISTEN | Impact Ontario’s choice to pull U.S. booze from LCBO shelves is having?:

In terms of tariffs and trade discussions, local officials in the Kentucky area that she covers are “pretty mum.”

“They are reluctant to speak critically of the president,” she said.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who’s willing to say it, probably, but nobody in Kentucky is itching for tariffs,” she said. “We’re not dying to have … a trade war here in Kentucky involving issues by any stretch of the imagination.”

Patton labels Diageo a “global spirits giant.”

“It’s huge. So when they’re talking about changes, it’s going to take a lot to move the needle for them financially.”