Premier Doug Ford is pulling the plug on the “three men in a hot tub” Ontario trillium that has been the government’s logo for 13 years, the Star has learned.

As part of a Progressive Conservative rebranding that includes scrapping the 37-year-old “Yours to Discover” licence plate slogan, the province is launching an $89,000 revamp of the trademark logo.

But Ford will not be reviving the classic, T-shaped trillium logo that was controversially replaced by former premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in 2006.

The newly redesigned emblem, which the Tories hope to reveal in Finance Minister Vic Fedeli’s budget next Thursday, is being kept under wraps.

“The new logo will be a trillium,” a senior government official confided, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal policy matters.

“A new Ontario logo will be included on Ontario’s licence plates as part of a wider refresh of how Ontario licence plates are produced,” the insider said.

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“Through a new commercial agreement, the province plans to enhance the quality (with) high-definition plates that won’t peel and will last longer... at no cost taxpayers,” said the source.

“In fact, by modernizing Ontario’s license plate and how it is made, Ontario taxpayers will save millions of dollars each year,” the official added, pointing to the expense of replacing peeling plates.

“The work associated with the logo redesign amounted to $89,000, which is less than half of what the Liberals spent on the previous logo, and a mere fraction of the savings taxpayers will receive from our wider plate modernization process.”

A new licence plate slogan will also be unveiled in the budget. “Open For Business” is being considered for commercial plates, but passenger vehicles will have a different motto.

McGuinty triggered a furor when his Liberals replaced the previous Ontario trillium logo, which dated back to 1964 when John Robarts was the province’s Progressive Conservative premier.

Bensimon Byrne, a Liberal-friendly advertising firm that had done the party’s campaign ads, redesigned the logo in 2006 at a cost of $219,000. That work was panned by art critics and lampooned as looking like an aerial view of three men lounging in a hot tub, or poison ivy.

At the time, McGuinty said it was “just a refreshing of the logo” that had been used for more than three decades.

“We’re not the same province we were 30 years ago,” he said in 2006, referring to the fact the 1964 design was slightly modified in 1972, 1994, and 2002.

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In 2006, Keith Rushton, a design professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design, described the McGuinty-era trillium as “awful” and “a very aggressive, hostile logo.”

John Tory, who was then leader of the Progressive Conservatives, promised to bring back the original logo if he won the 2007 Ontario election and even launched a “save the trillium” website.

Some 2,800 people complained to McGuinty via Tory’s website and another 300 angry letters and emails were logged by the premier’s correspondence unit.

The white trillium has been Ontario’s official flower since 1937. While it is not illegal to pick one in Ontario, as some believe, doing so can injure the plant.

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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