Ontario Premier Doug Ford's headline-catching news conference saw him pour a bottle of Crown Royal whisky on the ground to protest the brand’s decision to move bottling to the U.S.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.
Booze, business and populism – What do they have in common? If Doug Ford, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Premier, came to mind, Cheers! Last week, Mr. Ford turned all three into a headline-catching cocktail at a news conference, where, with approval from onlooking union workers, he poured a bottle of Crown Royal whisky on the ground to protest the brand’s decision to move bottling to the U.S. from its Ontario plant in February 2026.
There is another answer too, one that points to a different Ontario premier, Howard Ferguson. Like Mr. Ford, Ferguson dreamt of a Canadian economy that was not “subject to the vagaries of American political intrigues and manoeuvres.” His dream was denied.
For those with similar dreams today, Ferguson’s failure to stick it to Uncle Sam by weakening his economic grip on Canadian fortunes is as instructive as is his political success as a premier.
Ferguson laid the foundations for Ontario’s “Big Blue Machine,” the Conservative or Progressive Conservative Party that governed Ontario for 53 of the 62 years after he was elected premier in 1923. He handily beat the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) government that year, an odd coalition of political amateurs comprising rural voters and urban labour supporters who were prohibitionists and worked to introduce progressive social policies while practising fiscal restraint.
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A lawyer by training who benefited from a lifelong association with politics through his family’s and his connections to the federal and provincial conservative parties, Ferguson executed an election strategy that labelled the UFO incompetent, corrupt and guilty of coverups.
He confessed to a confidant how to win at politics: “The public has no intelligence. No election was ever won by logic or arguments. Educated, intelligent people … are in a hopeless minority … the mob rules. The problem is to capture the attention of the mob.”
In the 2018 Ontario election campaign, Mr. Ford accused the government of Kathleen Wynne of fraud, coverup and getting rich off taxpayers. Whether consciously or not – probably not – Mr. Ford’s premiership has traced a path to political success that Ferguson first cut a century ago.
Both Ferguson and Mr. Ford dealt with the fraught issue of selling alcohol in politically deft ways that helped build wider coalitions of support. For Ferguson, the challenge was appeasing temperance advocates concentrated in rural parts, and those who liked a drink. His solution was ending prohibition in 1927, passing the Liquor Control Act and founding the LCBO.
Ontarians could drink, but the province would control when, what and how much.
Mr. Ford also used alcohol sales policies to boost his party’s fortunes, relaxing prohibitions on alcohol sales at corner and grocery stores while wielding market power to strike back at U.S. tariffs by pulling American products off LCBO shelves. Booze captures the “mob’s” attention.
Beyond the pragmatic populism, Ferguson devoted himself to boosting investment, economic growth, and both natural resource and energy development in Ontario while battling U.S. tariffs, those imposed in 1922, and even higher levies that started in 1930. He was the first “Captain Canada.” What Ferguson figured out, as has Mr. Ford, is that the “mob” worries most about jobs.
After the imposition of a new round of U.S. tariffs in 1930, Ferguson decided to take on Uncle Sam full time, after having won three elections. He resigned as premier and accepted the role as Canada’s High Commissioner to Britain. He was convinced that expanding trade with Britain, and its empire, would lift the American economic yoke off Canadian shoulders.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford reacted angrily to news that spirits maker Diageo will close its Crown Royal bottling plant in Amherstburg, Ont., early next year, pouring out a bottle at a press conference and encouraging others to dump the whisky as well.
The Canadian Press
By the summer of 1932, the British Empire Economic Conference was taking place in Ottawa, and Ferguson watched as trade agreements to lower tariffs between Canada, Britain and other Commonwealth countries were signed with expectations that future negotiations would further reduce trade barriers and increase trade.
By November that year, Ferguson’s hopes were dashed. The Ottawa agreements were performative, not substantive. After he met with several British cabinet ministers that month, he wrote to a friend saying: “I dare not put on paper what they said…, but some day there will be a bit of revelation….”
That some day is now. British officials knew Canada better than Ferguson did, than many Canadians even. Diversifying trade was Canada’s second choice. Integrating Canadian-U.S. trade would always be the priority. The British were not about to materially change their trade patterns to accommodate Canada while it waited for the Americans to return to their senses.
As soon as the U.S. hinted at reducing tariffs on Canadian exports, Canada would jump. That is precisely what happened, starting with the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement Canada signed with the U.S. that lowered tariffs between the two countries.
Ferguson was bitter in the face of failure, especially at the U.S. He told a supporter, “I doubt in the world’s history any nation was so universally disliked.”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?