Leaders of two of Canada’s largest provinces said they have ordered the removal of U.S. liquor from shelves, in response to President Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs on America’s northern neighbor.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada’s most populous province of over 14 million people, said in a tweet Sunday that officials will soon be “removing American products from [provincial liquor store] shelves.”
“Every year, [the Liquor Control Board of Ontario] sells nearly $1 billion worth of American, wine, beer, spirits and seltzers,” he noted. “Not anymore.”
On Saturday, the leader of Canada’s third most populous province, British Columbia Premier David Eby, said the local alcohol authority will stop buying liquor from Republican-voting states and immediately pull some bottles from shelves.
“Effective today, I have directed BC Liquor sales to immediately stop buying American liquor from red states,” he said, in a televised address. “Liquor store employees will be removing the most popular of these brands from government store shelves.”
BC Liquor is a government-owned chain of stores that sells alcohol and beer, commanding just under half of the provincial market share. The province also allows for private alcohol sales.
Eby said he has also ordered the British Columbia government and agencies to “immediately stop buying American goods and services and buy Canadian.”
His west coast province—which shares borders with Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska—was singled out in an executive order by Trump, issued Saturday, announcing the U.S. was placing 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods as of February 4.
“With respect to smuggling of illicit drugs across our northern border, Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre recently published a study on the laundering of proceeds of illicit synthetic opioids, which recognized Canada’s heightened domestic production of fentanyl, largely from B.C. and its growing footprint within international narcotics distribution,” the executive order, issued Saturday, reads.
Trump has argued the tariffs are necessary to combat the trafficking of fentanyl, which has killed tens of thousands in the United States, by forcing Canada and Mexico—which was hit with near identical tariffs—to crack down on the drug trade.
With respect to Canada, the U.S. government’s own assessments do not support his claim.
While British Columbia has borne the brunt of the opioid crisis in Canada—with over 14,000 toxic drug deaths since 2016, most of them fentanyl related—a commission established by the U.S. Congress found in 2022 that Canada is “not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that, last year, authorities seized 19.5 kilograms of fentanyl at the Canadian border, compared to 9,600 kilograms of fentanyl coming from Mexico, where the drug is manufactured at industrial scale by moneyed cartels.
Eby acknowledged the harm fentanyl has caused in his country and in the United States, and said imposing tariffs to address the issue “isn’t the way to do it.”
“When you’re talking about transnational organized crime, you have to work together,” he said.
“If the president wants to come up and wants to do that work, he can come to British Columbia, and we can talk about the work that we can do together. I’m keen to do that because we share a goal of addressing those major issues.”
At a press conference on Saturday, Eby sounded dire, likening calling Trump’s decision “a declaration of economic war against a trusted ally and friend.”
The premier, who governs a province of roughly 5.7 million people, said his orders to cease alcohol purchases and stop government purchases of U.S. goods and services was the first of potentially several retaliatory actions.
Eby also said he supported Canada’s federal government, which announced retaliatory 25 percent tariffs on tens of billions worth of American goods on Saturday.
“We didn’t ask for this but we will not back down,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, of Trump’s trade war, at a press conference announcing the measure.
Eby and Ford, meanwhile, were joined by at least one other provincial leader, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, in targeting American alcohol.
Houston, who governs the Atlantic maritime province of just under a million people, said the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation will remove all American alcohol from stores Tuesday.
In addition, he ordered a curtailing of business deals with the United States and said the toll on a key highway will be doubled for commercial vehicles coming from America.
Charlie Angus, a member of Canada’s federal parliament from the center-left New Democratic Party, said Saturday that the entire country should stop consuming American alcohol.
“Not a single bottle of American wine, beer or bourbon should be sold anywhere in Canada,” he said, in a social media post.
“From here on in I will only drink ‘freedom’ wines from Canada, France or Spain,” he added.
Angus expressed no regret whatsoever about dropping American beer from his diet: “It’s s--- anyways.”
