The day before employees at the Crown Royal bottling facility in Amherstburg, Ont., were told their jobs were about to be eliminated, the company behind the Canadian-made whisky reached out to Premier Doug Ford’s office to offer the government a “heads up.”

Internal emails, obtained by Global News through freedom of information laws, reveal how the government initially planned a subtler response to the job losses, before the premier decided to intervene.

After the closure was made public, coverage intensified, culminating with Ford emptying a bottle of Crown Royal onto the ground after an event. The premier threatened to ban the whisky and eventually retreated this month when the company agreed to spend $23 million to offset the job losses and lower the temperature with the government.

But before Ford raised the stakes, emails between senior premier’s office staff and a public relations firm representing Diageo North America show a pleasant relationship going as far back as 2023, when the government was rolling out sweeping changes to the province’s alcohol retail rules

The company sent the premier a letter to show the company’s “appreciation” for the alcohol modernization plan and invite “continued dialogue between Diageo and the Premier’s Office.”

The tone changed last August, when the company emailed Ford’s principal secretary asking for an urgent meeting to update him on a “time-sensitive matter.”

“We are looking to ensure the Premier’s Office is briefed before the matter becomes public,” the Aug. 27 email from Diageo Canada’s corporate relations director read.

The email was sent at 6:47 p.m. that day. The next morning, the closure of the bottling plant was made public.

Sources told Global News that while companies will often give the province advance notice on plant closures or workforce changes, it only comes one day in advance.

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In Diageo’s case, company officials laid out the changes over a 10- to 15-minute Microsoft Teams call and suggested that the decision was made months in advance, with little the Ontario government could do to change the outcome.

The courtesy call, according to the emails seen by Global News, appeared to be taken at face value.

“Thank you for the call and the heads up. As promised, I am sharing the statement our labour minister will be issuing in response to this,” a senior staffer in the premier’s office wrote to Diageo on Aug. 28, hours after the announcement was made public.

The response shared with the company indicated the province was “disappointed” with the decision but offered no hints at the escalation to come.

When asked by Diageo whether the government’s statement was going to be issued “proactively” or “reactive to media inquiries,” the premier’s office sought to reassure the company.

“Just reactive. We have a handful of local requests at the moment,” the senior staffer wrote.

Then, the tone shifted.

The next day, a staffer in the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade wrote to Diageo’s public relations firm asking to set up a call or meeting with the premier.

“Premier Ford has asked our office to put him in touch with the President of Diageo Canada. Would you be able to assist me in getting them connected?” the email read.

Sources told Global News the request for a call came after Ford was briefed on the situation and started getting calls from stakeholders. On the Friday before the Labour Day long weekend, the premier and a Diageo representative hopped on a phone call that, sources said, “wasn’t positive.”

“[The premier] came into it saying what can we do to make this work?” the source said. “The answer was basically, you can’t make it work.”

The anger stemming from the phone call resulted in Ford’s public protest.

The premier, who was scheduled to hold a news conference in Kitchener, brought along a bottle of Crown Royal for a loosely choreographed demonstration, which critics later labelled a “stunt.”

“You guys are about as dumb as a bag of hammers for doing this,” Ford declared as he poured out the bottle.

The situation only continued to escalate from there, with threats from the premier to strip the LCBO of Crown Royal, and even other Diageo brands, when the plant in Amherstburg closed for good at the end of February.

Sources said that while “both sides” started looking for ways to de-escalate the situation, the deadline created more “willingness” from Diageo to “bring more to the table.”

“There were multiple rounds of offers,” one source said before Diageo and the Ford government agreed to $23 million in spending.

The investment includes a million-dollar investment in the Windsor and Amherstburg area, along with purchase agreements from manufacturers in eastern Ontario, Toronto and Scarborough, plus $5 million on Ontario-based marketing and advertising.

While NDP Leader Marit Stiles highlighted that the agreement “doesn’t replace the jobs that we’re going to lose in Amherstburg,” Ford defended the agreement as positive for the province.

“If I didn’t fight, that $23 million, they wouldn’t get anything at all,” Ford said. “And that was my rationale right from the get-go.”

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is backing down from his threat to remove Crown Royal from the shelves of the LCBO after the government said it reached a $23-million agreement with the company that includes new investment but won’t replace the jobs lost.

Months after Ford poured out a bottle of Crown Royal in protest of the company’s decision to shut down a bottling plant in Amherstburg, Ont., impacting roughly 200 jobs, the government said the two sides came to an agreement to avoid the upcoming escalation.

Ford said the $23 million, including everything from ingredient purchases to local economic development investments and advertising, is made up of new investments that “Ontario would not otherwise have seen” if it had not threatened the prohibition.

“By standing firm in our plan to protect Ontario workers, we’ve secured nearly $23 million in investments,” Ford said in a statement. “These investments will help keep Ontario workers on the job, strengthen provincial supply chains and support the local community in Amherstburg and the surrounding area.”

The agreement, however, made no mention of the workers at the Amherstburg facility who are set to leave the facility when it shuts its doors at the end of February. While Ford had expressed hope that Diageo would replace the positions there, neither the government nor the company offered employment-related details.

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Through the fall months, Ford’s threat against Diageo intensified. At one point, he suggested he would ban other products made by the international drinks company, like Smirnoff vodka.

But pressure from across Canada began to mount at the end of the year, as political leaders in Quebec and Manitoba worried about what a ban on Crown Royal would do to the Diageo operations still employing people in their provinces.

Quebec’s finance minister said Ford’s plan to ban the whisky was misguided, while Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew mounted a campaign to get Ontario to back down. He visited a Crown Royal facility in his province and posted a video to social media, encouraging Ford to reconsider.

Ontario’s tone gradually softened and Ford began referencing an “olive branch” he said he was offering to Diageo. He moved from talking exclusively about the plant that was set to close to suggesting the jobs could be replaced in other ways.

“If Diageo comes and says, I’m going to replace these 200 workers by manufacturing bottles, doing their cartons, doing other things, more advertising, so on, so forth, and they can show me on paper. Then, we’ll sit down, and I’ll be open,” he said in January. “I’m pretty easygoing.”

The agreement the government eventually reached with Diageo will see various spending commitments across the province. The plan includes money for a spirit maker and read-to-drink beverage makers.

Just over 20 per cent of the commitment is for “Ontario-based marketing and promotion.”

A spokesperson for Diageo would not confirm what its advertising budget was in Ontario before the agreement, but thanked the government for backing down on its proposed ban.

“We thank Premier Ford and his team for their exceptional leadership and collaboration in reaching this resolution,” they wrote in a statement.

“Diageo is pleased that Crown Royal, an iconic Canadian Whisky, will remain on the shelves of the LCBO, and we remain committed to Ontario through our significant investment in the province.”

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.