The Progressive Conservatives are standing by the decision to pay a former Alberta cabinet minister $1,000 a day to advise Premier Doug Ford’s government on expanding booze sales.

As first disclosed by the Star, Ken Hughes will be paid that rate — to a maximum of $200,000 over his one-year contract, plus expenses — to usher in beer and wine sales at corner stores.

“Our government ... is committed to improving alcohol choice and convenience for Ontario consumers, something they have long asked for and something Premier Ford promised during the election that we won so overwhelmingly on the seventh of June,” Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said Thursday.

“Mr. Hughes has been appointed to provide advice on how our government can fulfil that promise while expanding business opportunities,” Fedeli told the legislature, emphasizing there is no cronyism at play “because the premier has never met Mr. Hughes.

“He brings extensive entrepreneurial and public sector experience that will give him this valuable insight,” said the treasurer.

NDP MPP Catherine Fife (Waterloo) wondered “why the people of Ontario should foot the bill for yet another high-priced Conservative consultant.

“If the province is short of money for students, seniors, hospitals, schools and mental health, how can this premier find so much money to pay his Conservative friends?” asked Fife.

Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser said it’s another example of Ford’s “gravy train” for Tory insiders.

“What the premier said today is, ‘Well, he’s not my friend.’ Now, we’re into the premier’s friends’ friends. That’s the way it looks to me,” said Fraser.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner noted “the Conservatives used to rail against the Liberals’ high-priced consultants and now they’re doing the exact same thing.

“They seem to be paying even bigger dollars,” Schreiner added.

Hughes, who has not been made available for comment by the government, is earning more than former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s privatization czar. Former TD Bank chair Ed Clark made just $1 a year when he advised Wynne on bringing beer and wine sales to 450 of Ontario’s 1,500 supermarkets.

Corporate filings show Hughes, a cabinet minister from 2012 until 2014, was once a partner in Alberta Spirits Inc. It was incorporated in 1988, five years before the Alberta’s PC government sold off the province’s publicly owned liquor stores.

That company, which had two stores in Canmore, was eventually sold to what is now known as Alcanna, which operates Liquor Depot, Alberta’s largest alcohol retailer.

Hughes, who was also a Tory MP from 1988 until 1993, wasn’t in provincial politics during the Alberta sell-off.

He no longer has any holdings in the industry.

The new adviser has his work cut out for him. Under the 10-year agreement Wynne and Clark signed in 2015 with the 450-outlet Beer Store, taxpayers could be liable for $100 million in financial penalties for breaching the contract.

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That’s because under that master framework agreement signed with the parent companies of Labatt, Molson and Sleeman, the province would be on the hook for infrastructure investments that have already been made by the Beer Store.

Fedeli has emphasized the LCBO monopoly will not be sold off as a result of any of Hughes’s recommendations.

Robert Benzie is the Star's Queen's Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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