Is it possible that Premier Doug Ford got lost on his way to the Stratford Festival this week?
He’s a gifted performer. And he certainly served up plenty of drama in downtown Kitchener on Tuesday, as he ostentatiously poured a bottle of perfectly good Crown Royal Canadian whisky on the ground.
But we don’t need cheap theatrics from our premier. We don’t need a Prohibition-style, Keystone Kop character actor. We need action that will save jobs. We need someone who thinks ahead on our behalf.
Ford was expressing his unhappiness Tuesday with Crown Royal’s global parent company, which announced it will close its bottling plant in Amherstburg, Ont., by February. It is moving that part of its operation to the United States. About 160 jobs will be lost in Amherstburg.
Ford expressed his anger and concern at the lost jobs, which is perfectly reasonable.
“I always say smart people aren’t too smart and you guys are about as dumb as a bag of hammers for doing this,” he said, directing his remarks to the leaders of the company, who were not present.
“You’re going to make these people struggle that they can’t pay rent, they aren’t going to pay a mortgage and barely put food on the table when there’s not too many companies in that small town. What, have you lost your mind?”
In politics, channeling and validating the feelings of the people you represent is an important part of the job. But it’s not the whole job.
Instead of talking about how he was going to supply help to people in Amherstburg so they could transition to other work, Ford served up empty rhetoric and threatened retribution that most likely will not come.
“You hurt my people, I’m going to hurt you,” he said menacingly to the Crown Royal parent company, Diageo.
His comments were nothing more than hot air, though. There are no plans to really “hurt” Crown Royal, which — it must be said — is still very much made in Canada, even after accounting for the loss of the bottling plant in Ontario. It’s distilled in Manitoba from mostly Canadian rye, corn and barley, and has another bottling facility in Quebec. That won’t change, nor will its warehouse and head office move from the Toronto area.
The company has also said that all the whisky consumed in Canada will still be bottled in Canada.
It appears that the company is reacting in a very rational way to the threat of tariffs coming from the United States. It seems to be separating its Canadian and U.S. operations, as much as possible, so it can avoid punishing tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump. You can’t blame a company for defending itself against economic threat.
But even if you did blame them, Ford’s theatrical gesture is just so much cognitive dissonance. It holds no more menace than the roar of the Cowardly Lion at the beginning of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Ford himself commented on the fact that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) is the biggest customer for Crown Royal. In fact, it’s one of the largest purchasers of alcoholic beverages in the world.
If the LCBO stopped selling Crown Royal, that would be a huge punishment for the whisky manufacturer.
But there are no plans to pull the bottles off the shelves, the premier’s staff said this week.
Ford may not be a drinker, but he knows there would be an uproar if he did that. In our minds, Crown Royal is as Canadian as it gets, along with poutine and beer, hockey and Timbits.
His outburst was, with apologies to William Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And we’re running out of time and patience for that.
Luisa D’Amato is a Waterloo Region Record columnist. Reach her by email at [email protected].
