Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is invoking the Team Canada spirit that Doug Ford has preached over the past year in an attempt to convince the Ontario premier to back down on his planned boycott of Crown Royal.
After finding out international drinks maker Diageo planned to close a bottling plant in southwestern Ontario, Ford slowly emptied a bottle of the Canadian whisky onto the ground at an event over the summer.
The premier said he would remove Crown Royal from the shelves of all provincial liquor stores, forcing customers and bars into a boycott. Ford said he wouldn’t change his mind if Diageo pressed ahead with its closure plans.
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Crown Royal, however, is closely linked to jobs in other provinces.
The whisky is made in Gimli, Man., with a bottling facility located in Quebec. Politicians from both provinces have said Ford’s boycott is ill-advised and will hurt other provinces.
On Thursday, Kinew posted a slick social media video appealing to Ford to change his mind.
It showed Kinew in Gimli pretending to catch the drops of Crown Royal that Ford emptied onto the ground in the summer.
“This is what I think about Crown Royal,” the video begins, showing Ford pouring out the whisky.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t waste that. That’s the good stuff,” Kinew says in the video as he attempts to catch the spilt whisky in a glass.
“That’s Canadian whisky, supporting good-paying Canadian jobs in Gimli, Manitoba. So what do you say, Premier Ford? I think it tastes better when we work together.”
Ford spent much of 2025 channelling the idea of a Team Canada approach to trade and economic co-operation — pushing to reduce internal trade barriers.
The approach has shown signs of cracking early in the new year. While Manitoba and Quebec have voiced concern about the Crown Royal ban, Saskatchewan appears to have won a separate battle with Ontario over electric vehicle tariffs.
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