The cash-strapped Ontario government is looking into the sale of all or part of its collection of Crown corporations, including the provincial lottery company and the retail monopoly on liquor sales, to raise cash to close a $24.7-billion deficit this year.

The Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty recently hired two banks with experience in privatizations, CIBC World Markets Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and charged them with writing a blueprint for possible privatization of agencies, investment banking sources said. The sale candidates include icons such as Hydro One Inc., the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and Ontario Power Generation, said the bankers, who asked to remain anonymous because the talks with the government are private.

The planned time frame for the initial study is short, just a couple of months, and then the government can decide whether to go ahead with any sales.

“The politicians have said they are willing to look at anything, that they don’t want to prejudge the outcome,” said one banker with knowledge of the government’s plans. He said one concept being discussed is creating a “super-corporation” that would hold a number of provincially controlled companies, then selling a stake in that to public investors.

Ontario, like provinces across the country, is coping with a huge drop in government revenue because of the recession that has left it with the prospect of yawning deficits for years to come. Without a dramatic and unexpected pickup in economic growth, there are few palatable options for closing the budget gaps, leaving governments weighing a combination of service cuts, tax increases and asset sales.

The New Brunswick government recently agreed to sell most of the assets of its provincial power utility to Hydro-Qu