The NSLC has gone through about 90% of its American alcohol stockpile

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The NSLC says that as of about a month ago, it had only about $1.5 million of American alcohol left in its inventory, or 10 per cent of the stock compared to when it first pulled U.S. products from the shelves.

On Tuesday, Nova Scotia’s Crown-run alcohol retailer and distributor released its first-quarter financial results. It said that just over $1.8 million of American booze was sold during this quarter, which ran from April 1 to June 28.

In a followup email to CBC News, the NSLC said that as of Aug. 17, it had about $1.5 million of American stock remaining. This means about 90 per cent of the U.S. alcohol inventory has been sold — and it has no plans to buy more.

The NSLC stopped buying American alcohol in January 2025 and pulled it from the shelves in March 2025 as part of Canada’s response to the trade war with the U.S.

The retail value of the alcohol pulled from the shelves was $14,896,652, amounting to more than 600,000 units of product.

In December, the NSLC resumed selling the warehoused product, with the proceeds going to community food groups.

In April, it was announced that 315 organizations would receive grants worth $5.3 million as a result of the sales, with amounts to the different groups ranging from $1,000 to $350,000.

Two employees are shown removing wine from a liquor store shelf. — Two NSLC employees are shown removing American wine from the shelves at the Bayers Lake location in Halifax on Feb. 5, 2025, in what turned out to be a dry run for the eventual removal of all U.S. alcohol. (NSLC)

The proceeds from American product sales since then will also go to food security initiatives, a Finance Department spokesperson confirmed to CBC last month.

The availability of American alcohol varies widely across the country — from full availability in Alberta to unavailable at the LCBO, Ontario’s Crown-run liquor retailer, which is one of the largest purchasers of alcohol in the world.

Many other provinces, like Nova Scotia, are somewhere in the middle.

Major trade irritant

The decision by many Crown-run alcohol retailers to not buy American booze has hurt the U.S. alcohol industry and become a major trade irritant.

Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, told the CBC’s Power and Politics in May that the actions have been “devastating.”

“We are suffering,” he said. “We are making our case to the Trump administration strongly in hopes that some common ground can be found.”

Globally, American exports declined 3.8 per cent in 2025, primarily because of the boycott of U.S. alcohol in many Canadian provinces.

The council said that if Canada was excluded from the numbers, spirit exports would have increased 2.5 per cent for the year.

A bottle of Southern Comfort alcohol is shown on a NSLC shelf. — Southern Comfort bills itself as ‘The spirit of New Orleans,’ but it’s actually produced and bottled in Montreal, so it remains available for sale at the NSLC. (CBC)

Last year, Brown-Forman, the parent company of Jack Daniel’s whisky and Woodford Reserve bourbon, said sales to Canada dropped 62 per cent during its first fiscal quarter.

In Nova Scotia, what constitutes an American alcohol product are those made, manufactured or produced in the U.S. This means that beers like Budweiser or Coors, which are brewed at facilities in Canada, remain available for sale.

It also means that a product like Southern Comfort — billed as “The spirit of New Orleans,” according to its label — remains on NSLC shelves. That’s because it’s made in Montreal.

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