{"id":90486,"date":"2025-08-23T05:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T05:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/90486\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T05:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T05:36:08","slug":"down-the-drain-not-so-fast-quebec-minister-says-u-s-alcohol-to-be-donated-not-destroyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/90486\/","title":{"rendered":"Down the drain? Not so fast. Quebec minister says U.S. alcohol to be donated, not destroyed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard\u00a0says that American liquor products pulled off the shelves in March and set to expire in the fall\u00a0won’t be going down the drain after all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, the minister said\u00a0in a publication on X,\u00a0the alcohol will be donated to foundations for charitable events and used for training in Quebec hotel and catering\u00a0schools.<\/p>\n

On March 4, the provincial government\u00a0ordered Quebec’s liquor board,\u00a0the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des alcools du Qu\u00e9bec\u00a0(SAQ),\u00a0to remove\u00a0U.S. alcohol from its shelves in response to tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, $27 million worth of American products have been sitting in storage, but some, like\u00a0ros\u00e9\u00a0and boxed wines, ready-to-drink cocktails and certain beers and liqueurs, aren’t suitable for long-term storage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being unable to sell the\u00a0affected products, worth around $300,000, the SAQ was preparing to destroy them.<\/a><\/p>\n

“We knew that this decision would result in costs, particularly related to the storage and expiry of these products,” Girard wrote in French on X.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he also pointed to some benefits, notably in the sale of Quebec products, some of which have seen sales increase by\u00a030 to 60 per cent.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several other provinces including Ontario and Alberta also directed their liquor regulators to stop buying American products in March, while B.C. banned liquor from “red states” that voted for Trump in the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

However, Alberta and Saskatchewan have since reversed those decisions and are once again allowing the sale of U.S. alcohol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard\u00a0says that American liquor products pulled off the shelves in March and set to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-90486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90486","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=90486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}