Ontario Premier Doug Ford has doubled down on his threat to pull Crown Royal whisky from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)’s shelves if its maker, Diageo PLC , moves forward with the closure of an Ontario bottling plant.

It’s been over a month since Diageo announced it will be closing the nearly 100-year-old signature

Canadian alcohol brand’s plant in Amherstburg, Ont. and moving those operations to the United States.

Soon after, the premier threatened to remove the brand from the shelves of Ontario’s biggest alcohol retailer. He went further on Monday, and name-dropped one of Diageo’s best-selling brands, Smirnoff vodka.

“The LCBO is the largest purchaser of alcohol in the entire world, and I’ll use that leverage to make sure we send a signal that we are pulling Crown Royal off our shelves as soon as the last person leaves that plant and they can deal with it,” Ford said during a leader’s summit in Quebec on Oct. 6. “And then we’ll look at Smirnoff next.”

Ford also spoke about removing Crown Royal from the LCBO on Oct. 4, during a union rally in Brampton with

Unifor Canada , the private-sector union representing the workers that will be affected by the plant closure.

“A message to all the big wigs in Diageo: I swear to God, those bottles of Crown Royal are coming off the LCBO shelves when the last person walks out through that door,” he said while wearing a T-shirt with the words “Protect Canadian jobs!”

On Sept. 2, in a theatrical display of his disappointment over the company’s decision to close the plant, Ford poured out a bottle of Crown Royal in front of cameras during a press conference, calling the company a “few fries short of a Happy Meal.”

The facility in Amherstburg, Ont., which currently bottles Crown Royal Canadian whisky products, will cease operations by February 2026 and move production south of the border “to be closer to its many U.S. Crown Royal consumers,” Diageo said on Aug. 28.

The closure will affect 168 employees at the facility. In response, Unifor, whose Local 200 unit represents workers at Diageo Canada Inc. (Seagrams), said its members at the plant are “prepared to fight to save” those union jobs following the company’s “shock decision.”

Crown Royal will continue to be mashed, distilled, blended and aged in Canada , as it has been since it was first created in 1939, Diageo said.

The Canadian whisky is distilled along the western shore of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, in the small town of Gimli, where most of its operations are located.

The company said bottling of Crown Royal whisky for the Canadian and non-U.S. export markets will continue at Diageo’s Valleyfield, Que., facility.

On top of that, Diageo said it will maintain its significant footprint across Canada, including at its Canadian headquarters and warehouse operations in the Greater Toronto Area and other bottling and distillation facilities in Gimli and Valleyfield.

  • Getting to the bottom of the Crown Royal bottling plant closure as Doug Ford pours scorn on move
  • Crown Royal bottler is closing Ontario plant, moving some operations to the U.S.

The company claims the sale of Diageo products, including Crown Royal and Smirnoff, contributes more than $300 million in annual revenue to Canadian restaurants and bars, $125 million of that in Ontario.