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We manage marketing for spirits brands in Alberta, so this category is home turf. Three things changed this year inside four months: Alberta's whisky designation came into force in May, the interprovincial direct-to-consumer agreement was signed on July 21, and on August 22 the United States put an additional 50% duty on Canadian spirits, then announced an import ban. Before deciding what any of that means for a campaign, the baseline had to come first. So we pulled the sales data.

National figures are Statistics Canada's for the fiscal year April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, published March 5, 2026, plus the underlying table that splits every category into Canadian and imported product. Where we use a liquor board's or a trade association's numbers we say so, because they measure different things. The methodology section lists all of it.

Canadian-made whisky lost its value lead at home in 2021/2022

Growing or shrinking? By dollars, Canadian-made whisky at home is flat: $975.3 million in 2024/2025, up 1.4% since 2019/2020, while imports rose 20.6%. By litres it is shrinking, down 8.6% since 2020/2021, its high point of the last decade. Its share of whisky dollars fell from 53.7% to 49.3% over those five years.

This is the number that surprised us. The Statistics Canada table splits whisky sales into Canadian products and imported products. In 2014/2015 Canadian-made whisky was 57.9% of whisky sales value in Canada. It has slipped in eight of the ten years since. In 2021/2022 imports edged ahead for the first time in the series, $993.4 million to $987.6 million, and they have stayed ahead.

In 2024/2025 the split was $975.3 million of Canadian product against $1,001.8 million of imports, on a total whisky market of $1,977.1 million. By volume the picture is the reverse. Canadian-made whisky is still 62.0% of the litres, 28.9 million against 17.8 million. Put those two facts together and you get the price gap.

Those are our calculations from the table, value divided by litres, so they are liquor-authority revenue per litre before sales tax, averaged across every bottle sold. They are not shelf prices, and in Alberta they are wholesale figures. The trend is the part to sit with. Since 2019/2020, imported whisky sales value is up 20.6% in nominal dollars while Canadian-made is up 1.4%, and Canadian-made volume has fallen 8.6% since 2020/2021, its high point of the last decade. The growth in the category went to imports, which average 67% more per litre: Scotch, Irish, American and Japanese whiskies all sit in that import line. One caution on the wording: Statistics Canada classifies by where the product was made, not who owns the brand, so "Canadian products" includes the big Canadian whisky labels owned by multinationals.

Whisky was $296.2 million of Alberta's $928.4 million in spirits sales in 2024/2025, and Canadian-made whisky was 44.1% of that value, below the national 49.3%, on 59.7% of the volume. Alberta is a harder room for domestic whisky than the country as a whole, by five points of value share.

Whisky is 29.6% of a spirits market that fell 3.2%

Total spirits sales through liquor authorities and other retail outlets were $6.7 billion in 2024/2025, down 3.2%, on 177 million litres, down 4.4%. Whisky took 29.6% of that value. Vodka was next at 22.9%, then liqueurs at 15.4%. Whisky itself was $1,977.1 million, down 2.6% on the year by value and 3.7% by volume; its sales peaked at $2,033.3 million in 2022/2023 and have fallen two years running, with litres down 6.8% over those two years. The whole alcohol market fell too: $25.8 billion in sales, down 1.6%, and volume down 3.0%, the fourth annual decline in a row. Canadians of legal drinking age bought the equivalent of 8.0 standard drinks a week, down from 8.7 the year before and 9.7 a decade earlier.

So the category is big, and the tide is going out slowly. That is the backdrop for everything else. A brand that plans for a growing pool will be planning against the data.

The boycott year moved the numbers, board by board

In March 2025 most provincial liquor boards stopped buying American products in response to US tariffs. We keep a dated timeline of that dispute in the Canada-US alcohol trade dispute post. The Statistics Canada year above ends on March 31, 2025, four weeks after the first boards pulled American product, so it is a pre-boycott year. Domestic products did rise to 60.6% of total alcohol sales from 59.0%, and to 46.7% of spirits, but imported wine fell for the first time since 1992/1993 in the same release, and that alone moves the share. We do not read the boycott into that year.

The fuller picture comes from the boards themselves, which is where the caveats start. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) published its year-end trends on December 4, 2025, covering November 9, 2024 to November 8, 2025. It reported more than 20% growth in demand for Ontario products, said spirits customers "increasingly chose Canadian and Ontario alternatives", and said Canadian whisky "led overall growth by value". It also reported Asian whiskies up 23%, which fits the premium-import pattern in the national data rather than contradicting it. For the LCBO's fiscal year, April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026, the board's June 30, 2026 release put Canadian product sales up 18% and Ontario product sales up 20%, more than half a billion dollars. Ontario-made spirits were up 9% and Ontario VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) wine up 44%. Its third- and fourth-quarter updates had three Canadian whiskies, Crown Royal, J.P. Wiser's and Canadian Club, in the top ten spirits by net sales, with Forty Creek joining them in the final quarter.

Earlier, on April 29, 2026, VinePair quoted an LCBO statement that sales of "deluxe" Canadian whisky had risen 94%, alongside a 52% rise for wines made from Ontario-grown grapes. The 94% has no published base and no defined period, so treat it as a direction, not a size. VinePair also reported that the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation had Nova Scotia spirits up 14.5%. Quebec moved the same way. The Spirits Business reported in October 2025 that sales of Canadian spirits at the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) rose 15% between March 2 and August 16, 2025 against the same period a year earlier, with Canadian whisky up 35% over the six months before the report. The same report noted an LCBO figure that Alberta distillers will want: Alberta-made spirits were up 13% in Ontario.

Now the other side of the ledger. When Ontario pulled American product on March 4, 2025, the LCBO described itself as the importer of record for US alcohol "with annual sales of up to $965 million" and more than 3,600 listed products. The board's annual report for the year ending that month put spirits at $2.54 billion, down 6.1% or $164.4 million, and listed "the removal of U.S. products" among the causes alongside a strike, less store traffic, deteriorating economic conditions and moderation. Both things are true, in different years: spirits shrank in the year to March 2025, and Canadian product grew in the year to March 2026. Whether the second happened inside a shrinking category is the question the next release answers, because the LCBO has not published a spirits total for the year to March 2026. And they are one board's figures, reported through releases and trade press, so nobody should write a plan that assumes the Ontario numbers hold nationally.

93% of spirits exports go to the US, and that door is closing

Canadian spirits, whisky above all, have leaned on the United States for a long time. Spirits Canada's statement of July 21, 2026, puts it in three numbers: Canada exported $948.6 million in spirits to the US in 2025, "approximately 93% of Canada's total spirits export value", and "48% of spirits production in Canada is tied to U.S. demand". The US industry's numbers show the other flow collapsing at the same time. The Distilled Spirits Council's 2025 export report puts American spirits exports to Canada at US$89 million in 2025. From the start of the provincial bans in March through December, the fall was 70% against the same months of 2024, from US$203 million to US$60 million, and Canada dropped from the second-largest US export market in 2024 to the fifth in 2025. The Council's 2025 supplier tables show the Canadian whisky category itself softening in the US, 16.8 million nine-litre cases in 2025, down 2.9%, on supplier revenue of US$2.2 billion, down 5.1%. Statistics Canada's own trade note for the fiscal year, which closed in March 2025 and so predates the duty, has alcohol exports to the US at $1.4 billion, up 4.1%, and imports from the US at $1.0 billion, down 5.4%.

Then the border began closing by degrees. On August 22, 2026, an additional 50% US duty took effect on Canadian beer, wine, cider and spirits. On September 8, two proclamations followed. One took whisky and liqueurs shipped in containers over four litres out of the duty from September 15, which in practice spares bulk whisky shipped for bottling in the US. The other is written to exclude the Canadian alcoholic beverages listed in its annex, reported by The Spirits Business as spirits, wine and malt beer, from importation from 12:01 a.m. Eastern on September 29, 2026, citing the provincial bans on American product. That is the position as written on September 21, 2026; the duty itself was suspended once before it took effect, so watch the date. An industry with one export customer, facing exclusion from that customer's retail shelves, has to make the home market work harder, province by province. We cover what the July direct-to-consumer agreement does and does not open in the direct-to-consumer post; the trade dispute post carries the dated timeline. For distillers the agreement now matters more than a shipping rule normally would, because the home market has to carry what the US shelf used to.

Two rule changes that decide what a label can say

The federal standard moved, not the rules

What counts as Canadian whisky used to live in section B.02.020 of the Food and Drug Regulations. In December 2024, an amending regulation repealed the compositional part of that section and moved the standard into the Canadian Food Compositional Standards, a Canadian Food Inspection Agency document that the regulations incorporate by reference. Section 2.1.3 of its alcoholic beverages volume now carries the definition.

Two pieces are still in the Food and Drug Regulations. The age rule: an age claim can only count time in small wood, plus up to six months in other containers once the three years are done. And the flavouring rule in B.02.023: any flavouring other than wine must itself have spent two years in small wood. The often-quoted "9.09% rule" is not in the compositional standard at all. The figure lives in the federal Certificates of Age and Origin Order: a whisky for export that blends in more than 9.09% imported spirits cannot be certified as Canadian whisky, and flavouring whose absolute alcohol stays under that share does not reset the age.

If your copy says "rye", "aged" or "Canadian whisky", those are the words it has to earn.

"Alberta Whisky" is now a designated term

Alberta went further. Bill 24, the Alberta Whisky Act (PDF), was introduced on March 31, 2026 and proclaimed in force on May 21, 2026. Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) applies it to products labelled on or after May 22, 2026. The province's own explanation is that without a provincial definition, Alberta producers "have struggled to gain recognition of their products from broader Canadian whisky, which operates under more flexible federal standards". The standard in section 2 of the Act is short.

The three exceptions are flavouring aged two years or more, Alberta water added to adjust strength, and plain caramel. Participation is voluntary. A manufacturer declares a spirit and AGLC designates it. What is not voluntary is the term: section 11 says a manufacturer must not use "Alberta Whisky" to sell, display, advertise or market a spirit unless it has been designated. As of AGLC's list updated September 11, 2026, 11 manufacturers hold designations across 41 product listings. The Spirits Business, reporting on the bill in April 2026, cited an AGLC count of 45 whisky distillers, 43 of them small craft operations; AGLC's annual report (PDF) and its liquor quick facts count 256 licensed liquor manufacturers of all kinds as at March 31, 2025, 64 of them distilleries.

For anyone writing ads or labels for an Alberta distillery, that is a compliance line, not a style choice. The words "Alberta Whisky" are now a designated term in this province, and section 11 puts the liability on the manufacturer that uses them without a designation.

What we take from this for a whisky brand

Price is the story, not volume. Domestic whisky holds the litres and loses share of the dollars. Within whisky, the growth in the national table went to imports, which average 67% more per litre, and on Ontario's shelves the whisky lines that grew fastest were "deluxe" Canadian and Asian whiskies. The question for a Canadian brand is whether it has a tier that competes with imports on price per bottle, and whether the marketing supports that tier instead of discounting the base.

The Ontario window is real and it will close. A boycott-driven shift in buying put Canadian whisky at the top of the LCBO's growth table in the largest market in the country. Nobody knows how much of that survives if US product returns to shelves. Build the customer list while the window is open, and build it on express consent from adults: under Canada's anti-spam law, implied consent from a purchase runs out two years later, and express consent does not. A list built that way outlives a trade dispute.

Provenance claims now need paperwork. "Canadian whisky" has a federal definition and an age rule. "Alberta Whisky" needs an AGLC designation before it goes on a bottle, a website or an ad. Check the designation before the creative is built, not after.

The new channel is small and worth doing anyway. Nine provinces signed the July 21 operating agreement. For a spirit shipped from Alberta, seven of them will take a parcel today or are taking applications, British Columbia opens to spirits in February 2027, and Quebec and Yukon have not signed. Fees vary by destination. It will not replace a liquor board listing. It does give a distillery a way to sell to the customer it met on a tour or on Instagram, at a margin that is not set by a retailer, in provinces where it has no distribution. That is the part of the market a small brand can actually control.

Methodology and limitations

National figures are from Statistics Canada's release "Control and sale of alcoholic beverages and cannabis, April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025" (The Daily, March 5, 2026) and from table 10-10-0011-01, "Value of sales of alcoholic beverages of liquor authorities and other retail outlets, by beverage type", which carries value, volume and origin of product. The dollar figures are revenues received by liquor authorities and their agents, excluding sales taxes and container deposits, and include sales to bars and restaurants, so they are not consumer spending and not consumption. "Canadian products" means made in Canada, regardless of ownership. Shares, changes and per-litre averages are our calculations from the published values. Fiscal years run April to March. On the current cadence the next release, covering the year to March 2026, should land around March 2027.

Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia board figures come from the LCBO's December 4, 2025 and June 30, 2026 releases, its March 4, 2025 notice, its annual report for 2024/2025 and its third- and fourth-quarter updates, and from board statements as reported by VinePair (April 29, 2026) and The Spirits Business (October 6, 2025). They are single-board results with their own periods, "deluxe" is not defined in the source, and the 94% figure carries no base. Trade figures mix sources and currencies: Spirits Canada's export figures are for calendar 2025 in what the statement implies are Canadian dollars, the Distilled Spirits Council's figures are in US dollars, and the Statistics Canada trade note is for the April to March fiscal year. Export values do not equal consumer sales. The September 8 proclamations are described from the Federal Register text and trade-press reporting; the product annex to the import exclusion is published as an image, so the exact tariff lines rest on press accounts, and the exclusion had not yet taken effect when this was written. Legal standards are quoted from the Canadian Food Compositional Standards, the Food and Drug Regulations, the Certificates of Age and Origin Order, the Alberta Whisky Act as introduced and AGLC's Alberta Whisky page; regulations under the Act may add standards, and labelling guidance is still to come. We are marketers, not lawyers; check the instruments before a label relies on them.

Frequently asked questions

Is whisky the biggest spirits category in Canada?

Yes, whisky was 29.6% of spirits sales value in Canada in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, ahead of vodka at 22.9% and liqueurs at 15.4%, according to Statistics Canada. Total spirits sales were $6.7 billion, down 3.2%, and whisky sales were $1,977.1 million, down 2.6%.

Is Canadian-made whisky losing share to imports?

By value, Canadian-made whisky has been below imported whisky in the domestic market since 2021/2022. It was 57.9% of whisky sales value in 2014/2015 and 49.3% in 2024/2025. By volume it still holds 62.0%; the value share is lower because imported whisky sells for about 67% more per litre.

Is Canadian whisky growing or shrinking in Canada?

By value it is flat and by volume it is shrinking. Canadian-made whisky sales in Canada were $975.3 million in 2024/2025, up 1.4% since 2019/2020, while imported whisky rose 20.6% to $1,001.8 million. Canadian-made volume has fallen 8.6% since 2020/2021, its high point of the last decade, and its share of whisky sales value fell from 53.7% to 49.3% over five years (Statistics Canada table 10-10-0011-01).

Did the 2025 boycott of US alcohol help Canadian whisky?

In Ontario and Quebec, yes, the 2025 boycott year lifted Canadian whisky. Ontario's LCBO reported that Canadian whisky led spirits growth by value in its 2025 trends release and that Canadian product sales rose 18% in the year to March 2026. In a statement quoted by VinePair it also cited a 94% rise for "deluxe" Canadian whisky, a figure with no published base or period. Quebec's SAQ had Canadian whisky sales up 35% over the six months to autumn 2025. The last full-year totals, for the year to March 2025, already showed spirits shrinking, and no board has published a spirits total for the boycott year, so read these as share gains, not proof the category grew.

What is the US tariff on Canadian whisky?

An additional 50% US duty on Canadian beer, wine, cider and spirits took effect on August 22, 2026. From September 15, whisky and liqueurs shipped in containers over four litres were taken out of the duty, which in practice spares bulk whisky shipped for bottling in the US. A separate proclamation excludes Canadian spirits, wine and beer from importation altogether from September 29, 2026. We keep the dated timeline in the Canada-US alcohol trade dispute post.

What is the Alberta Whisky Act?

The Alberta Whisky Act (Bill 24) is an Alberta law in force since May 21, 2026. It defines "Alberta Whisky" as whisky that meets the federal Canadian whisky standard, is made entirely in Alberta with Alberta water and a mash that is at least two-thirds Alberta-grown grain by weight, and is not blended or modified after distillation except with flavouring aged at least two years, Alberta water to adjust strength, or plain caramel. The term cannot be used in sales or advertising without a designation from Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC).

What legally counts as Canadian whisky?

Canadian whisky must be distilled from a mash of cereal grain, aged in small wood for at least three years, mashed, distilled and aged in Canada, possess "the aroma, taste and character generally attributed to Canadian whisky", and contain not less than 40% alcohol by volume; it may contain flavouring. The standard is section 2.1.3 of the Canadian Food Compositional Standards, incorporated into the Food and Drug Regulations, and any age claim can only count time in small wood.

Related reading

• Direct-to-consumer alcohol in Canada: what an Alberta distillery can actually do now, the July 2026 agreement province by province.
• The Canada-US alcohol trade dispute: timeline and current status, the sourced history behind the 50% duty and the September import exclusion.
• Liquor brand marketing in 2026, the playbook we run for beverage clients.