Marco Navarro-Génie

One could do a whole series of opinion and research pieces on how poorly educated Canadian politicians are about economic and trade principles. Below is my latest on the topic, focusing on Doug Ford’s latest philistine tantrum. My next piece will be on Wab Kinew. Writing on their lack of discipline and poor habits can be a cottage industry for commentators.

When a politician pours whisky on the ground, it usually means she has run out of ideas.

A few weeks ago, in September, Ontario Premier Doug Ford staged a protest worthy of a talk-show segment. Before a union crowd in Brampton, he emptied a bottle of Crown Royal onto the stage and vowed its maker, Diageo, would “pay dearly.” He threatened to pull Crown Royal (and several ither brands) from LCBO shelves, declaring Ontario would use its market power to punish the distiller for closing its Amherstburg bottling plant.

It was a vivid scene, part theatre, part tantrum, and entirely revealing.

Diageo is one of the world’s largest producers of spirits and beer, headquartered in London, England. It owns more than two hundred brands, including Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Tanqueray, and Baileys, and sells in over 180 countries. The company was formed in 1997 through the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan, and it inherited Crown Royal from the old Seagram portfolio. Diageo’s Canadian operations remain significant, with the Gimli, Manitoba distillery producing every drop of Crown Royal whisky sold worldwide. It’s a Canadian product.

Diageo’s decision was not an act of treachery but arithmetic. The company plans to close its Amherstburg facility by 2026, shifting bottling to Quebec and parts of the United States. Roughly two hundred jobs will vanish. For a town of twenty-three thousand, that is a deep cut. Yet Ford’s reaction transforms an industrial decision into a political drama. He recasts an economic adjustment as a moral betrayal, as if loyalty to Ontario were a debt every business must pay in perpetuity.

That sentiment plays well at partisan rallies. But in practice, it blurs the boundary between government and market. When politicians confuse the two, policy becomes a tool of temper rather than governance.

Once a premier signals that he will use public institutions like the LCBO as weapons, investors take note. And they should. They infer that Ontario’s business climate can change with the premier’s mood. Capital, unlike politicians, is dispassionate. It goes where rules are predictable and contracts honoured, not where leaders lecture firms for disobedience.

Markets, as Adam Smith observed, are a network of trust. Replace trust with coercion or shaming, and investment flows away as surely as whisky poured on the pavement.

Ford casts himself as the friend of “working people.” Yet his fury threatens workers far from Ontario. The whisky he attacked onstage is distilled and aged in Gimli, Manitoba, from prairie grain and Canadian labour. Eighty people work at that distillery. Thousands of farmers supply its rye and corn. If Diageo decides Canada has become a political hazard, those Manitoban jobs will be among the first casualties. A tantrum in Brampton can send a chill all the way to Lake Winnipeg.

This is the irony of populist economic nationalism: in defending a few hundred local jobs, it imperils thousands more across the whole federation. It’s thoughtless.

Ford’s rhetoric also clashes with his own record. When electric-vehicle battery ventures trimmed their job projections despite billions in subsidies, the premier offered understanding, not outrage. When Brookfield shifted parts of its business operations abroad, there was no rally, no public denunciation, no bottle hitting the floor. Evidently, corporate disloyalty is tolerable, until it involves whisky.

Such inconsistency is not a principle but an impulse. Governments that choose favourites create uncertainty for everyone. When rules bend to political sentiment, each firm wonders whether it will be next in line for punishment. And so the province that once competed for investment becomes a place investors compete to avoid.

If Ford truly wished to defend Ontario’s workers, he would ask why bottling in his province became uneconomic in the first place. The answer is not a mystery. Ontario carries high energy costs, heavy regulation, and steep land prices. Every company weighs those burdens. Threatening one firm for noticing them will not persuade others to stay.

Political anger cannot repeal common sense arithmetic.

The irony deepens because Crown Royal remains Canadian in every essential sense. Its grains, water, and labour are Canadian. Its distilling craft and heritage are Canadian. Ownership by a British firm changes the shareholder, not the spirit. Punishing that success because it offends provincial pride reduces patriotism to parochialism. The brand’s global reach is a quiet advertisement for Canadian skill, and it is an achievement to be respected, not vandalized.

The premier’s defenders will say he is merely standing up for Ontario workers. But bluster is not courage. Proper defence of working people lies in creating the conditions that let enterprise and local ingenuity flourish. When government swaps policy for theatre, it only feeds resentment and starves opportunity.

Economic freedom depends on restraint. Governments must regulate and tax modestly, but they must also know when not to act. Every unnecessary intervention signals risk. The LCBO should be a neutral marketplace, not a political cudgel. Once it becomes a stage for senseless retribution, the line between free commerce and state coercion dissolves.

Ontario’s grievance is understandable; its method is reckless. A government may lament job losses, negotiate incentives, or compete for reinvestment. It may not commandeer a marketplace to punish a decision it dislikes. In a constitutional order, power is exercised through law, not vendetta.

Amherstburg deserves sympathy. No question. Two hundred jobs lost in a small town is no abstraction. Yet the premier’s faux fury will not restore them. Instead, it risks ensuring that the next investor leaves quietly rather than risk the wrath of the premier and public humiliation. Markets remember humiliation longer than speeches.

Crown Royal will survive this episode. The whisky made in Gimli will continue to be sold worldwide, enjoyed by people who have never heard, and will likely never hear, of Ontario’s premier. But the image of a provincial leader pouring it out onstage will endure too. It is an emblem of how quickly cheap populism can trade reason for spectacle.

Ontario must decide what kind of province it wishes to be: a jurisdiction that welcomes enterprise, or one that punishes it when it moves. If every business is expected to pledge fealty to the premier’s emotions, the province will learn how swiftly loyalty evaporates.

When politics meddles in markets, both lose dignity. The government becomes a performer; the market, its prop. The result is neither freedom nor prosperity, only theatre.

Doug can pour out all whisky in Ontario, if he likes. The rest of the world will raise a glass to markets that keep their cool.

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