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OTTAWA An apparent plan by the Ontario Liberals to turn their next budget into a month-long series of image-boosting announcements has been blown by a leak to the Progressive Conservatives of a preliminary schedule of the events.

Traditionally, budgets were kept rigidly secret until the finance minister got up to give a speech and revealed major new spending and taxes for the first time. That secrecy has lessened in recent years, with governments at all levels dripping out bits of their plans in advance to get maximum bang out of them. But even by that standard, the 39 events contained in the calendar released by the Tories, leading up to an anticlimactic presentation of the actual budget on May 1, would have been extraordinary.

Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak accused Premier Kathleen Wynne of drafting civil servants to do the Liberals campaigning for them through what he called a budget leaking team.

Until now, it had been kept secret, he said in the legislature. We did hear from whistleblowers within the civil service who are very concerned that you are now drafting Ontario public servants to do the work of the Ontario Liberal Party. Its not their job. They have a job to do but its not to be Liberal party staffers.

Wynne replied that of course the government has a communications plan to explain whats in the budget.

It is normal, when ministers make spending announcements, for civil servants to help organize their appearances and answer questions about government policy. Its just that those detailed announcements are supposed to come after the annual budget is released, not before.

The plan that fell into the Tories hands is not quite current: it includes details suggesting it was a draft prepared between March 4 and March 20. It includes the sketchiest possible entries about releasing a poverty-reduction report on Monday and an event touting consumer protection on Tuesday. Those events didnt happen; on the document, there are blanks where the details should be.

On the other hand, Finance Minister Charles Sousa is to deliver an in-depth analysis of Ontarios economic future Wednesday, right on schedule.

Where there are details, they describe some big spending. The biggest tickets are a $2-billion capital investment to support (1) school consolidations to reduce underused space and (2) repair and school maintenance, and a new $2.5B 10-year Jobs and Prosperity Fund to attract significant business investments.

The document also notes a $300-million plan to provide support to front-line public sector workers who deliver important services to most vulnerable and an investment of close to $730M over three years to address critical pressures and support long-term transformation of developmental services (and significantly reduce wait-lists).

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Reevely: Provincial Tories blow lid off Liberals budget plans

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The Ontario government is pushing ahead with a plan to put liquor kiosks in grocery stores, a bid to shake up the way alcohol is sold in the province and head off the champions of privatization ahead of a possible spring election.

The Liberals move also comes as the party casts about for any good news amid the gas-plant scandal, in which Premier Kathleen Wynne looks set for a legal showdown with Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and new revelations that the boyfriend of a Grit staffer was hired as an IT expert on the taxpayers dime.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa is expected to unveil a request for proposals Tuesday that will ask grocery stores to sign up to have an LCBO Express store placed in them, a government source said. The government will then select a handful of stores to receive the kiosks.

The tentative step toward liberalizing liquor sales does not go as far as Quebec, which has long allowed beer and wine to be sold in grocery and convenience stores.

Alberta has an entirely privatized liquor retail system and British Columbia, which has a hybrid model, is set to allow liquor in grocery stores in the near future.

The idea, first announced in 2012, follows several similar moves from the LCBO, which has in recent years put liquor stores adjacent to supermarkets. This, however, would be another step at mixing the government liquor monopoly with private retail. The kiosks will still be owned and run by the LCBO, but will occupy space in the middle of grocery stores.

Mr. Hudaks Tories have stirred the age-old privatization debate over the past year, putting out a policy paper that envisages selling off all or part of the LCBO. Proponents of privatization argue that introducing competition into the market would lead to more liquor stores, better selection and service. Alberta, for instance, has more than 1,100 liquor stores, only slightly fewer than the combined total of LCBOs and Beer Stores, in a province less than a third the size of Ontario. Unlike the LCBO, many of the prairie provinces liquor stores keep late hours.

The Liberals have repeatedly vowed not to privatize liquor sales in large part because of the money the LCBO funnels into government coffers.

With the Grits holding only a minority of seats in the legislature, they must secure the support of at least one other party to pass a budget and avoid a spring election. In the event of a vote, the promise of more accessible liquor may be a method to deflect the Tories privatization promises.

The kiosk announcement is also coming down unexpectedly after several days that saw Queens Park dominated by explosive developments in the gas-plant scandal. Last week, an unsealed police document revealed that investigators believe former premier Dalton McGuintys chief of staff brought in outside IT expert Peter Faist to wipe clean government computers.

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Liberals push forward with plan to sell liquor in grocery stores

OTTAWA Plans by the Ontario Liberals to spend billions of dollars renovating schools and partnering with new businesses that are moving to the province were revealed by the opposition Progressive Conservatives on Tuesday, revealing in advance a month of announcements leading up to a May 1 budget.

The spending plans, which also include numerous smaller programs and projects, are contained in a communications plan apparently leaked to the Tories. It describes 39 events over the next month, at various stages of planning, in which ministers and MPPs would announce details about one program after another. If the document is accurate, the actual budget presentation in the legislature by Finance Minister Charles Sousa would be just a formality at the end of the process.

The document was released on the morning of April Fools Day, but it appears genuine.

The biggest tickets are a $2-billion capital investment to support (1) school consolidations to reduce underused space and (2) repair and school maintenance (sic), and a new $2.5B 10-year Jobs and Prosperity Fund to attract significant business investments.

The document also notes a $300-million plan to provide support to front-line public sector workers who deliver important services to most vulnerable and an investment of close to $730M over three years to address critical pressures and support long-term transformation of developmental services (and significantly reduce wait-lists*). Its not clear to what the asterisk refers.

Many of the measures are clearly designed to attract New Democratic Party support for the Liberals budget, or at least to give the Liberals a way to attack New Democrats if they trigger an election by combining with the Tories to vote it down. But the communications plan also says the government wants to end an unpopular charge put on electricity customers bills to pay off the massive debt of the long-broken-up Ontario Hydro monopoly, which the Tories have demanded for years.

And, without giving details, the document says Premier Kathleen Wynne would hold a news conference April 14 to explain how she intends to fund multibillion-dollar transit and road projects without, as she has previously promised, raising either the provincial sales tax or gas taxes.

The individual policies can best be summed up as more of the same, Tory Leader Tim Hudak said in a written statement that went out along with the leaked communications plan. He derided it as a $5.7-billion spending spree (a figure derived by adding up all the numbers in the plan, though much of that would be spent over many years and its possible some of it is money the government would have spent anyway) that casts doubt on Liberal promises to shrink the provinces budget deficit.

In the legislature immediately after the release which coincided with the beginning of question period Tuesday morning Wynne said that of course the government has a communications plan to explain whats in the budget.

Whats unusual is for the opposition to know whats coming so far in advance. The leaks main value may be to give the opposition plenty of time to plan its responses to the governments plan, or to force the Liberals to scramble their plans at the last minute so they can regain the element of surprise.

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Provincial Tories blow lid off Liberals budget plans