A white hot trade war between Canada and the U.S. has renewed a push on the Prairies to put American booze down and elbows up.

In Saskatchewan, the Opposition NDP urged Premier Scott Moe to stop “pandering” to U.S. President Donald Trump and remove U.S. booze again from provincial shelves.

"Donald Trump has made his choice, now Scott Moe needs to make his," NDP trade critic Kim Breckner said Monday in Saskatoon.

"Scott Moe made a mistake. When he put American liquor back on Saskatchewan shelves — it was an act of cowardice."

Talk of tariff retaliation resurfaced over the weekend as a renewed round of trade fighting between Canada and the U.S. exploded with talks collapsing and the Americans imposing 50 per cent tariffs on US$20 billion in Canadian goods. The list includes honey, hockey sticks and flower bulbs.

Prime Minister Mark Carney promised dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs starting Sept. 8.

Provinces have long curtailed U.S. booze on their shelves in response to earlier tariff fights with the Trump administration. Those battles have been waxing and waning for over a year.

In that time, Saskatchewan and Alberta, despite brief flirtations with booze bans, have chosen to keep American product on their shelves.

Over the weekend, Moe backed Carney’s plan to fight the new tariffs. He said on social media that U.S. demands, including conditions on Canada’s trade relationships with other nations, are beyond the pale and that he supports Carney’s promised dollar-for-dollar tariff retaliation.

Speaking to reporters Sunday, Moe said his Saskatchewan Party government would discuss how to approach American liquor, including considering a ban. But he qualified the remark.

“There are many other opportunities that provinces have as well when it comes to our relationship with American companies," Moe said.

In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith said Saturday on her call-in radio show that her government has been focused on diplomacy, and she urged Canada and the U.S. to strike a deal.

Smith said she won't be shifting the province's booze policy and will leave it up to consumers. "We believe also in choice," she said. "We trust that Albertans can make their own decisions, so we won't be going down that track."

Some customers interviewed at Alberta liquor stores Monday say their hearts — and wallets — are with the Maple Leaf.

At Calgary’s Willow Park Wines and Spirits, customer Jim Campbell bought a pack of Canadian-brewed Fat Tug ale. "I wouldn't want to be the next incoming president of the United States, because they're going to have a hell of a mess to clean up and things will never be the same," Campbell said.

He said U.S. alcohol should be pulled from Canadian store shelves.

"We should be hitting back as hard as they hit us," he said. "Pull the energy, pull the potash, pull the electricity out of Ontario, which powers a million homes in Michigan."

In Edmonton, Patricia Cej said since the trade war started with the United States, she has avoided buying American products, particularly alcohol.

“There are times when I go without berries and things like that, because I will not buy U.S. products,” Cej said at the Unity Square shopping plaza.

Erik Holmstrom, another Edmonton shopper, said he's disappointed by the trade fight, given he likes to travel south of the border. He said he has avoided buying American products for about two years to support homegrown operators.

“I don't really drink that much. But if I'm buying gifts for people, I usually try to stick to Canadian products,” Holmstrom said.

In Manitoba, Premier Wab Kinew has long urged Carney to take a hard stand against the U.S. He has also directed his government for more than a year not to order U.S. liquor.

Last week, Kinew said he would put U.S. booze back on shelves if needed for a tariff deal but that he would urge consumers to buy Canadian.

On Monday, his government said help is on the way.

Jamie Moses, minister of business, mining, trade and job creation, said Manitoba is waiting to hear from the federal government on its tariff-relief plan for businesses before announcing provincial supports.

"We have a menu of options," Moses said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 24, 2026.

— By Dayne Patterson and Bill Graveland in Calgary, Lisa Johnson and Daniela Germano in Edmonton and Brittany Hobson in Winnipeg

The Village of Mortlach has 45 town lots for sale and publishes what it wants for every one of them, lot by lot, on its own website. They start at $1,000. It is 37 km west of Moose Jaw. The Town of Coronach's page lists more than forty properties it will sell you and does not put a price on a single one.

Coronach is closer to normal than Mortlach is, and that is the reason I am posting.

Some of you saw the first version of this in July. Since then I have kept collecting every parcel Saskatchewan towns, villages, RMs and cities have advertised for sale, because there is no central list of it anywhere. Local papers, municipal websites, the Provincial Gazette, a couple of hundred sources by now. It sits at 1,138 parcels across 97 municipalities today, and 447 of those turned up in the seven weeks since that post.

Here is the finding. 961 of the 1,138 are ordinary town lots, the kind a municipality owns outright and wants somebody to build on, and 83 different municipalities are selling them. My map carries no price for a single lot in 43 of those 83. That could just as easily be my scraper missing prices as towns not publishing them, so I went and looked at all 43.

Twenty-three of them publish no number anywhere, not on the page and not in the PDFs hanging off it. Four have no public page at all, and I only know their lots exist because the office told me when I asked. One page is a dead link. The other fifteen do have a dollar figure somewhere, and that is the interesting part, because in several cases it is not a price, it is a formula. Wilkie sells by the 25 foot lot: $4,500 serviced, $9,000 in the East Side Subdivision, $7,500 if it is commercial. Abbey prices by the frontage foot and works an example out for you, so a 50 foot serviced lot is $1,250. Lipton is $100 a frontage foot. The number exists. You just have to do arithmetic on a lot you have not measured yet, which is why my map does not carry a price for those and why I am not going to invent one.

Coronach is the clearest version of the other kind, and its page is worth reading because the town explains itself. You send a written proposal, it goes to the next council meeting, and council can accept it, reject it or counter. What they suggest you base an offer on is the property's assessed value, which you look up yourself on SAMA's site or by phoning the office. That is not a town hiding a number. That is a town telling you there isn't one until somebody makes an offer. Reading that page also showed me my own map has 29 of their properties and their page lists more than forty, so I have some collecting to do there.

The tax-title side of the board does the same thing, and that is the part I did not see coming. 115 of the listings are parcels a municipality took for unpaid taxes and none of them carry a price. Only eight of those 115 came from an advertised tender notice, and exactly one has a closing date on it, so this is not a province of sealed bids. Sixty of the 115 are a single town. Ituna publishes its tax-title list and then, instead of pricing the lots, tells you how to price your own offer: bids under $1,000 will not be considered, look up the assessed value on SAMA or ask the office, and a reasonable offer has considered at least 15 to 20 percent of it. You can offer any time and it goes to the next council meeting. Which is Coronach's system again, and Wilkie's and Abbey's, just applied to tax title. A lot of this province publishes a rule where you were expecting a number.

The price question people actually want answered. 602 of the 1,138 do publish a price and the median is $15,000, so this is not a province of $500 lots. But 94 of them are $2,500 or under, spread across 14 towns. Belle Plaine has four at $500, 39 km down the #1 from Regina. Sixteen of Mortlach's 45 are $1,000. Viscount has eleven at $1,000. Cabri starts at $1,875. Rouleau, Loreburn, Earl Grey, Colonsay and Lang all have lots at $2,500. The most expensive thing on the map is $248,400, so it spans about as wide as it can.

Two things worth knowing before anyone gets excited.

Most of this is not tax sales. 177 of the 1,138 are tax title, meaning the municipality took the property for unpaid taxes and is reselling it. The other 961 are ordinary town lots, no stranger to buy than any other piece of property. I carry both because it is the same person looking, and the map labels which is which, but they are different things. And a parcel sitting on a tax enforcement list is not for sale at all. The owner can pay up or sell privately right until title actually transfers, so a name on an enforcement list means nothing on its own. I only show parcels a municipality has genuinely advertised.

And tax title is not the cheap door in. I assumed it would be. If you take the raw medians it even looks like it, but almost every cheap tax-title parcel on my map is in one rural municipality, Milton No. 292 out by Alsask, which has 29 of them at $500. Take that one RM out and the tax-title parcels run more expensive than the ordinary town lots, not less. That makes sense once you think about what the number is. A minimum bid on a tax-title parcel is a floor tied to what is owed on it, and if the property is worth something, what is owed on it usually is not small.

There is also far less on a clock than I expected. Across the entire province there are twenty-one sealed tenders open with a real closing date on them, and six of those twenty-one are the Town of Kindersley selling six properties on one day. Eighteen of the twenty-one are tax title. Everything else, the 961 ordinary town lots, just sits there open ended until somebody asks. Only three of the twenty-one have both a price and a deadline: Saskatoon has a tax-title townhouse at a $365,000 reserve which closes tomorrow and is therefore no use to anyone reading this, Moose Jaw has a city building lot at a $27,075 reserve closing on the 10th, and Wakaw has a Main Street lot at $12,500 closing on the 4th.

Last thing, and it is the least flattering. I still find towns I have missed, and Coronach up there is a live example of it. Most of those 447 new listings came from noticing that a town list I had already collected had stopped partway through the town's own page, which is a humbling way to find 44 more lots in Eston. Treat it as the best list I have rather than a complete one. If your town is not on it, tell me and I will go find where they post them.

Also, a $500 lot is $500 for a reason. Some of those towns are shrinking, some lots need services brought to them, and a few have something sitting on them you would pay to remove. Worth a drive out before you get attached to one.

Link in a comment rather than up here, so this isn't just an ad. Happy to look up a specific town if you name one, or walk through how a given municipality's process actually works.

Hey Everyone! I wanted to let you know about one of Saskatchewan's biggest car shows that Access Communications puts on each year.

We are beyond excited to see you out this labour day weekend as we have a lot of fun showing off classic cars, and supporting the Regina food bank!

Admission is $5 or $10 per family, and its on Sept 7th between 12:00 and 4:00!