OTTAWA — A deal that would reportedly see the province pay the City of Toronto more than other Ontario cities for hosting a new casino has Mayor Jim Watson threatening to pull the plug on the prospect of a new gambling hall in Ottawa — though the provincial gambling agency insists no city will get preferential treatment.

Watson made public Friday a sharply worded letter to Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. chairman Paul Godfrey after the Globe and Mail reported that, according to OLG chief executive Rod Phillips, if Toronto agrees to host a casino it will get proportionally more money than any other Ontario municipality.

“Unless the City of Ottawa receives the same revenue sharing formula as that being made available to the City of Toronto I will, in the coming months, bring forward a motion to City Council recommending that the City of Ottawa withdraw from the OLG’s RFP process,” Watson wrote, referring to the process the provincial agency is using to choose a casino operator for Ottawa.

In a City of Toronto consultation guide published in January, officials indicated that OLG had estimated the annual hosting fee “for an integrated, destination gaming and entertainment facility located in the downtown/waterfront area” of that city would be $50 million to $100 million.

For Ottawa, the exact numbers will depend on the size of any casino that ends up being built, but a formula imposed by the OLG last fall specifically says host cities will receive a share of casino slot-machine revenue. Under that deal, Ottawa’s annual take would likely be between $5 million and $10 million, city treasurer Marian Simulik said at the time.

The Globe and Mail reported Thursday that the difference between what Toronto and other potential host cities could expect to earn in casino revenue was in part because Toronto would get a different deal from everyone else.

In an interview with the Citizen Friday, however, Phillips said Toronto and all other prospective OLG casino hosts actually are getting the same deal. Toronto’s casino is projected to earn that city more money simply because it is expected to be so much larger and busier.

While the City of Toronto has not yet even agreed to host a new gambling facility — unlike Ottawa, which did so in a city council vote last fall — international casino operators are talking about spending as much as $3 billion to build a huge entertainment complex there. That’s about 10 times the investment under discussion for an Ottawa casino.

“The approach is going to be consistent. So it’s the same approach, but a different scale of opportunity because of what we’ve been hearing from the private operators that are going to be financing it,” Phillips said. Toronto will receive no special extra payment, no different revenue-sharing formula from anyone else, he insisted.

The OLG has a good relationship with Watson, Phillips said, and Godfrey would be getting in touch with the mayor to explain.

(Godfrey is also chief executive of Postmedia Network Inc., which owns the Citizen.)