Alcohol from the United States has been wiped from the shelves of the LCBO, a contract between Ontario and Elon Musk‘s Starlink internet provider has been ripped up and American companies will be banned from bidding on public contracts as the Ford government slaps back against tariffs.
At midnight Tuesday, major tariffs from went into effect, triggering a Canada-wide response.
Ontario was quick to put into action a series of retaliatory steps it almost launched a few weeks ago. Ontario Premier Doug Ford ordered the LCBO to wipe American-made alcohol from its shelves and catalogues. The provincial alcohol agency — thought to be the largest alcohol purchaser in the world — took its website offline for a period on Tuesday to remove the U.S. booze.
Ontario imports $965 million worth of booze annually and has 3,600 American products from 36 states on its shelves.
“As the exclusive wholesaler, American brands will no longer be available in the LCBO catalogue, meaning other retailers, bars and restaurants in the province will no longer be able to restock U.S. products,” Ford said on Tuesday afternoon. “This is an enormous hit to the American producers.”
Ford said the alcohol will be put into storage and sold again if and when tariffs are removed.
An LCBO employee moves products in an LCBO store at Union Station in Toronto on Tuesday, March 4, 2025.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor
Elsewhere, Ford said Ontario would cancel its $100-million contract with Musk’s SpaceX company to provide Starlink satellite internet to thousands of homes in northern Ontario.
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Ford had threatened to tear up the deal during the recent election campaign but relented when tariffs didn’t arrive. At the time, Musk — who has emerged as Trump’s right-hand man — seemed unbothered, responding “Oh well” in a social media post.
It’s unclear how much it would cost Ontario to break its already-inked deal with Musk’s company, but Ford said cancelling it was a “point of principle.”
“If they come out and sue us — so be it,” Ford said. “I want to inflict as much pain as we possibly can until we get to a deal.”
During a fiery news event, he also took aim at Musk, who spent some of his education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
“Isn’t it ironic that he got educated, part of his education, was at Queen’s? And he’s attacking the country and the province that gave him the opportunity to go to Queen’s University,” Ford said. “They should be embarrassed that he went to Queen’s — he should be embarrassed to attack the people that took care of him.”
Cancelling the Starlink deal is the first step in a major reshuffle of government procurement policy designed to punish the United States. Ford said U.S.-based companies would be banned from bidding on Ontario’s public contracts and said the civil service would go through existing contracts “with a fine-tooth comb” to see which may also be dumped.
He encouraged local governments to do the same, citing a similar move already in place in Brampton, Ont. Both Mississauga and Toronto have also weighed changing their procurement rules over tariffs.
“We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province and our country,” Ford said. “We also need to be ready to dig in for a long fight. We need to be ready to escalate using every tool in our toolkit that includes surcharges or even outright restrictions on the critical minerals and electricity we supply to the United States.”
Ontario NDP and Official Opposition Leader Marit Stiles said the tariffs called for an “all hands on deck, Team Ontario” approach and said Ford should recall the legislature as quickly as possible. Earlier Tuesday, Ford had said he didn’t think he needed legislation to take action on tariffs.
“If the premier is good to his word which is he wants a team Ontario approach, that means everybody at the table together,” Stiles said, pointing out her MPPs represent areas in western Ontario that could be especially hard hit by tariffs.
“We have ideas and there’s things that I want to see frankly from his plan that I haven’t seen so far. Some of the things he said today, I agree with but I want to make sure there’s no more bad deals, I want to make sure we get back to the same Canadian content deals we had before. No more bad procurement deals, no more contracts to U.S. companies so I am going to want to see the details of what he’s proposing.”
The premier also suggested Ontario had been too reliant on the United States in the past and that the province had been too slow in some areas, including building. He said he would use the tariff response to ramp up infrastructure projects in the province, particularly work on an all-season road to the mineral-rich Ring of Fire in northern Ontario.
Ford said he will also soon impose a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity that the province sends to 1.5 million Americans in several states, and has threatened to cut off power altogether if U.S. tariffs remain place into April.
He also threatened to surcharge or cut off critical mineral exports to the U.S. should the trade war linger.
Ford added that he wants to get rid of free trade barriers between provinces, speed up infrastructure and mineral extraction approvals and build oil and gas pipelines “east, west and north.”
Trump imposed tariffs of 25 per cent on Canadian goods, with a lower 10 per cent levy on energy on Tuesday morning.
The measure has prompted worry among several industries, including Ontario’s homebuilding sector, which said it will face during a prolonged economic spat.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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