Finance Minister Vic Fedeli insists it is “premature” to say Queen’s Park will be on the hook for $100 million in financial penalties if the government expands beer and wine sales to convenience stores.

In his first comments since the Star revealed the potential price tag of breaking a 10-year accord with the Beer Store, Fedeli said Friday that negotiations are only just beginning.

“We are going to be putting beer and wine in corner stores. For anyone to suggest a price tag is awfully premature,” he told Moore in the Morning on Newstalk 1010.

When pressed by guest host Dave Trafford about cost of breaching the master framework agreement the province signed in 2015, Fedeli bristled.

“I’m not suggesting that there is a liability. Any number that anyone has put out there is premature. We’re going to negotiate in good faith — certainly not through the media,” the treasurer said.

“The issue is Quebec has 8,000 retail stores selling beverage alcohol. In Ontario, we have the lowest density, we have less than 3,000 in place that do that. It’s a campaign commitment. People asked for it.”

In Cambridge, Premier Doug Ford downplayed concerns about taxpayers being slapped with hefty payouts to a “foreign-owned company.”

“First of all, you’re assuming — like the media always assumes — that’s going to happen. That’s not necessarily the case, because we’re in negotiations with the Beer Store,” Ford said at in a news conference at a Toyota factory.

“I’m a business guy. You put more beer in locations — we have 10,000 convenience stores and probably a couple of thousand retail stores — your sales are going to go up,” he said.

Under the deal the province inked with the Beer Store — the 450-outlet retailer mostly owned by the parent companies of Labatt, Molson and Sleeman — $100 million was invested in capital improvements.

That money had to be spent in the first four years of the pact, meaning the brewers have already made the investment.

“The Beer Store, Labatt, Molson and Sleeman would all have contract and tort claims against the government, as well as ministers and other government officials involved in breaching the master framework agreement,” said a source, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

That was a key part of the complex accord negotiated by former TD Bank chair Ed Clark, who was Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s privatization czar, to allow the sale of wine and beer in 450 of Ontario’s 1,500 supermarkets.

“The province explicitly promised and agreed that if it were found to have breached the master framework agreement, it would cure such breach even if the cure required legislative change,” said the source.

There is also the risk the government could be sued for breach of contract with potential damages worth hundreds of millions of dollars in potential lost Beer Store profits.

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Fedeli, who will table the Progressive Conservative government’s first budget next month, told 700 people at an Empire Club of Canada luncheon Thursday that Ontario is moving “into the 21st century” and wants beer and wine available in all corner shops, supermarkets, and big box stores that wish to sell it.

“It’s time for everyone in government to start acting like the competition is coming, and treat people like responsible adults,” he said.

But the treasurer stressed there are no plans to sell off the province’s Liquor Control Board of Ontario monopoly, which operates 660 outlets and about 210 rural agency stores.

With files From Rob Ferguson

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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