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.”

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