Ontarians will soon be able to buy beer in some 300 supermarkets, but the more complicated expansion of wine sales in grocery stores is going to take longer to uncork, the Star has learned.

While Finance Minister Charles Sousa is unveiling the much-anticipated beer plan in his April 23 provincial budget, sources say wine drinkers will have to wait.

That’s because former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark — Premier Kathleen Wynne’s privatization czar — is taking a separate look at a wine issue clouded by international trade agreements and other challenges.

In the meantime, Clark on Thursday will table his long-awaited report recommending grocery beer sales and the sell-off of chunks of Hydro One, the transmission utility that’s worth up to $16 billion.

“Wine needs some time,” a senior Liberal official said Tuesday.

As first disclosed by the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn last month, Wynne’s Liberals will allow suds sale in hundreds of Ontario grocery stores, ending a quasi-monopoly enjoyed by the 448-outlet Beer Store, operated by the foreign parents of Labatt, Molson, and Sleeman.

“I can assure you that change is brewing in Ontario,” Sousa quipped at Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone on Tuesday as he revealed the budget date.

The treasurer said Clark’s report on the monetizing of government assets to bankroll the Liberals’ 10-year, $29-billion public transit and transportation infrastructure plan is a key part of his fiscal blueprint.

“It is such a large component of what it is that we’re going to have in our budget, I’ll release more details of that in the coming days,” said Sousa, who will be filling in his fellow ministers Wednesday at an all-day cabinet meeting at Queen’s Park.

In the budget, the Liberals are to announce that licences to sell beer in about 300 supermarkets will be auctioned off with no single grocery company allowed to buy more than 25 per cent of them.

The Beer Store will continue to operate — and can serve as a distributor to supermarkets — but will have to pay Queen’s Park an annual “franchise fee” of as much as $100 million.

With a $10.9-billion deficit in 2014-15 and plans to balance the books in 2017-18, the government is scrambling for new revenue streams.

At the same time, the Beer Store, which declined comment, will be expected to open more shelf space to Ontario’s 150 craft brewers.

Sources say other measures to help the independent brewers — who now employee more than 1,000 workers across Ontario compared to a total of 2,600 at Labatt, Molson, and Sleeman — will be in Clark’s report.

Insiders say Wynne’s government wants make it easier for Ontario craft brewers to get their beers on supermarket shelves and in bars and restaurants bypassing the Beer Store.

Currently, publicans and restaurateurs are legally bound to buy most of their brews from the Beer Store at prices higher than those charged to individual consumers.

Beer will also continue to be sold at the publicly owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which operates 650 stores and 212 agency shops in rural areas. The LCBO will retain a monopoly on spirits.

But it will eventually face some competition on wine.

Insiders confide the government is looking at “repurposing” some licences now held by the American-owned Wine Rack and the Canadian-owned Wine Shop, which have supermarket kiosks and standalone stores selling Ontario and blended foreign bulk wine.

While the existing 268 wine outlets are protected by “grandfather” clauses, there are concerns at Queen’s Park that expanding grocery sales could lead to challenges under the Canada-European Union (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

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Further complicating matters is that vintages sold at the private stores are exempted from the LCBO’s 66.5 per cent mark-up and pay just 16.1 per cent tax on the blended wines they sell.

Because they are mandated by law to charge the same prices as the LCBO that means the Wine Rack and Wine Shop make far bigger profits on the same products than the publicly owned chain.

Those are among the many complications Clark will be examining in his next review.

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