{"id":488355,"date":"2026-02-20T20:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T20:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488355\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T20:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T20:14:13","slug":"behind-the-scenes-of-diageos-attempts-to-soften-the-blow-of-an-ontario-plant-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488355\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the scenes of Diageo\u2019s attempts to soften the blow of an Ontario plant closure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day before employees at the Crown Royal<\/a> 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\u2019s office to offer the government a \u201cheads up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But before Ford raised the stakes, emails between senior premier\u2019s 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\u2019s alcohol retail rules<\/p>\n

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The company sent the premier a letter to show the company\u2019s \u201cappreciation\u201d for the alcohol modernization plan and invite \u201ccontinued dialogue between Diageo and the Premier\u2019s Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tone changed last August, when the company emailed Ford\u2019s principal secretary asking for an urgent meeting to update him on a \u201ctime-sensitive matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking to ensure the Premier\u2019s Office is briefed before the matter becomes public,\u201d the Aug. 27 email from Diageo Canada\u2019s corporate relations director read.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

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In Diageo\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The courtesy call, according to the emails seen by Global News, appeared to be taken at face value.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank 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,\u201d a senior staffer in the premier\u2019s office wrote to Diageo on Aug. 28, hours after the announcement was made public.<\/p>\n

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The response shared with the company indicated the province was \u201cdisappointed\u201d with the decision but offered no hints at the escalation to come.<\/p>\n

When asked by Diageo whether the government\u2019s statement was going to be issued \u201cproactively\u201d or \u201creactive to media inquiries,\u201d the premier\u2019s office sought to reassure the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust reactive. We have a handful of local requests at the moment,\u201d the senior staffer wrote.<\/p>\n

Then, the tone shifted.<\/p>\n

The next day, a staffer in the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade wrote to Diageo\u2019s public relations firm asking to set up a call or meeting with the premier.<\/p>\n

\u201cPremier 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?\u201d the email read.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cwasn\u2019t positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201c[The premier] came into it saying what can we do to make this work?\u201d the source said. \u201cThe answer was basically, you can\u2019t make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The anger stemming from the phone call resulted in Ford\u2019s public protest.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cstunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys are about as dumb as a bag of hammers for doing this,\u201d Ford declared as he poured out the bottle.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Sources said that while \u201cboth sides\u201d started looking for ways to de-escalate the situation, the deadline created more \u201cwillingness\u201d from Diageo to \u201cbring more to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were multiple rounds of offers,\u201d one source said before Diageo and the Ford government agreed to $23 million in spending.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While NDP Leader Marit Stiles highlighted that the agreement \u201cdoesn\u2019t replace the jobs that we\u2019re going to lose in Amherstburg,\u201d Ford defended the agreement as positive for the province.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf I didn\u2019t fight, that $23 million, they wouldn\u2019t get anything at all,\u201d Ford said. \u201cAnd that was my rationale right from the get-go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The day before employees at the Crown Royal bottling facility in Amherstburg, Ont., were told their jobs were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,29878,64621,13403,13404,714],"class_list":{"0":"post-488355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-crown-royal","12":"tag-diageo","13":"tag-ford-government","14":"tag-ontario-politics","15":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}