Not clear if Ontarians enjoyed Kinew’s PR cocktail, but many don’t like the taste of Ford’s whisky sour

No. Tell me it’s not so. This couldn’t possibly have worked, could it?

For most of the last month, Premier Wab Kinew has waged an all-out public-relations war to get Ontario Premier Doug Ford to change his mind about delisting Crown Royal rye whisky from Liquor Control Board of Ontario retail outlets starting next week.

It’s just one of the internal trade issues that Canada’s premiers are expected to discuss this week at a first ministers’ conference in Ottawa.

Ford claims he is only protecting Ontario jobs. Last September, the parent company of Crown Royal — U.K.-based global alcohol behemoth Diageo — announced it was closing a bottling plant and laying off 200 workers in Amherstburg, Ont.

The bombastic Ontario premier was so aggrieved, he held a news conference and poured a rather large bottle of the iconic Canadian whisky onto the ground, pledging that if the Ontario plant was closed, Crown Royal would never appear again on a LCBO shelf.

Ford’s threat seemed like a political no-brainer. Ontario, along with most other provinces, had already received applause for delisting U.S. wine, spirits and beer to protest President Donald Trump’s tariffs on all manner of Canadian exports.

Even though Diageo has its Canadian head office in Toronto, Ford figured putting the kibosh on Crown Royal — it is distilled in Gimli, where Diageo employs 76 people — was a pretty safe strategy. And initially, that’s just what it turned out to be.

An early January Abacus Data opinion poll in Ontario found that 43 per cent of the 1,006 people surveyed supported Ford’s decision to punish Crown Royal and only 27 per cent opposed the move. However, a very large portion of respondents — 27 per cent — didn’t know enough about the issue to issue an opinion.

Cue the Kinew PR assault.

In mid-January, a few days after Abacus finished polling, Kinew held a photo-op at the Crown Royal distillery in Gimli, where he wrote personal messages to Ford on whisky barrels, some of which might, at some point, have found their way to Ontario.

“We understand, Doug, that you get fired up and you say things in public, but we also understand that you do the right thing when you have a chance to reconsider — and I’m asking you to reconsider,” Kinew said.

It was never clear exactly how scrawling a political love letter on a wooden barrel would move Ford off his cranky position. On the other hand, it was an excellent PR stunt that was picked up by national television networks and newspapers.

Unfortunately, Ford was unmoved by Kinew’s playful jousting. Instead, he doubled down on his threats to Diageo (and, by extension, Manitoba) that Crown Royal would be summarily removed from LCBO shelves starting in February.

Kinew, a politician with a background as a musical performer and television personality, was not about to ease up on his campaign to change Ford’s mind.

Roughly 10 days later, Kinew brought out the big guns by producing and then posting a funny video of Ford starting to pour Crown Royal straight out of the bottle and onto an asphalt parking lot. Then, suddenly, Kinew is there with a highball glass, catching the stream of Gimli-made whisky the Ontario premier was discarding.

“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa?” Kinew says as he watches his tumbler fill up with rye. “That’s the good stuff!” With a devilish smile on his face, he reminds Ford that he’s wasting premium Canadian whisky, made by Manitobans in Gimli.

“So, what do you say, Premier Ford? I think it tastes better when we work together as part of Team Canada.”

Let’s get a few things on the record.

First, Ford dabbles in cheeky political videos. You may remember his television ad taunting Trump with a clip from an anti-tariff speech given by deified Republican president Ronald Reagan.

Trump responded by further jacking already-jacked tariffs on Canadian goods.

Second, although Ford’s “Gipper” video backfired in spectacular fashion, video stunts can be effective in a variety of ways. Even if Kinew’s playful taunting doesn’t convince Ford to stand down, it can help to educate Ontario voters about the pointlessness of punishing a company that is leaving your province but still doing businesses in other parts of the country.

Consider a Liaison Strategies poll of 1,000 Ontarians conducted over two days last week — after the barrel signing but before the video release demonstrating his whisky-saving prowess.

Two-thirds of the respondents felt strongly that while removing U.S. from LCBO shelves was fair game, threatening jobs in other provinces by removing Canadian-made whisky was not.

Could Kinew have prompted the shift in opinion — albeit in polls conducted by two different firms — with his PR stunts? The national and Ontario media love Kinew and report much more about what he says and does than previous Manitoba first ministers.

Possibly, but not likely. The more important factor here is that opinion has indeed shifted and Ford has less support on the issue now.

Will he back down? Will Kinew do another video? Stay tuned.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca