Premier Kathleen Wynne’s cash-strapped minority Liberals are sticking with a revamp to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation despite mixed signals.

Amid confusion over the fledgling government’s plans for its gambling monopoly, Finance Minister Charles Sousa emphasized “the modernization of the OLG is proceeding, it is continuing.”

“It’s going to provide a substantial amount of money for education, health care and social programs so that’s not going to stop,” he told reporters Monday.

Indeed, the government needs the additional $1.3 billion or so in annual revenue from the gaming agency if the deficit is to be eliminated on schedule in 2017-18.

But Sousa was less than equivocal about the future of OLG chair Paul Godfrey, the prominent Progressive Conservative newspaper baron brought in by former Liberal treasurer Dwight Duncan to right the ship in 2009.

“I’ve made no decisions. What we have is transformational change at the OLG. They’ve done quite a lot to this point,” the finance minister said.

“Let me be clear, I haven’t made any decisions and I have made no shortlist,” he said, referring to a report in The Globe and Mail suggesting a list of potential successors was being compiled well before Godfrey’s five-year term is up.

A top Wynne official said such lists of candidates are routinely prepared for Crown agencies and do not necessarily herald imminent changes.

The premier sounded ambivalent when asked about Godfrey.

“All of the issues around the modernization are under review at this point,” she told reporters in Ottawa. “I want to make sure that we get this right.”

Wynne and Sousa sat at the cabinet table when Duncan and former premier Dalton McGuinty pushed the de facto privatization of OLG to generate billions more for the treasury.

Still, they have begun undoing some their predecessors’ work, including earmarking some $180 million over three years to subsidize a horse-racing industry that once received $345 million annually, which McGuinty maintained was not sustainable.

“We’re still going to provide for a very vibrant horseracing and horse-breeding industry,” said Sousa.

But senior Liberals warn that diluting the OLG modernization — such the concessions to the horse-racing industry as well as any possible scaling back of new casinos in and around Toronto — would have dire consequences for the treasury.

“We need that money to balance the books on schedule. OLG is an essential part of eliminating the deficit,” noted one Grit.

“The financial implications are huge,” agreed another high-ranking government source.

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Wynne, however, said that some revisions are necessary no matter what the fiscal impact.

“I don’t believe we did get the horse-racing initiative right,” she said.

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