Doug Ford should slow down and govern wisely

Doug Ford was sworn in as this province’s newest premier last week facing as many challenges, trials and tribulations as any Ontario premier in living memory.

What makes his load especially burdensome, however, is the inconvenient fact that many of these challenges, trials and tribulations are of Ford’s own creation.

Consider first the storm winds barrelling down on Ontario from all directions — winds the premier cannot control.

After 15 long years out of government, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives have taken power just as a trade war with the United States is breaking out.

Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum represent a clear and present danger for Ontario manufacturers, workers and consumers.

And if they come, President Trump’s threatened tariffs on our auto sector, which employs more than 100,000 Ontarians, would plunge this province into recession.

Rising interest rates — a certainty — and the likely end of another economic cycle a decade after the last crippling downturn make Ontario’s situation even more fraught.

Meanwhile, Ontario is buried under a provincialdebt mountain that tops $310 billion and represents a dangerously large proportion of its economy.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, for most of this century the province has been unable to pay for the programs people need and expect without running deficits. This is the dog’s breakfast Ford inherited. Here’s the mess he created for himself.

Ford was elected in large part thanks to his very expensive but often impractical promises. Now he must find billions of new dollars to pay for the better health care, expanded highway system and new public transit infrastructure he campaigned on.

While he does this, he has to somehow keep his promise to find $8 billion in provincial budget savings without laying off any civil servants or cutting essential services. He has to lower income taxes, gasoline taxes and electricity costs — which will cost his treasury billions. And he will end the cap-and-trade program to fight climate change — which could leave him on the hook to reimburse companies that have bought close to $3 billion in emissions credits.

How he will simultaneously cut government spending while increasing it and still manage to eventually balance the budget is a magical feat worthy of Houdini. We can’t guess how Ford actually plans to square this fiscal circle — and we suspect he can’t.

So now, in these first days of the Ford era in Ontario, while his recent election success still tastes sweet and his honeymoon with voters — at least the 40.6 per cent who elected him — still continues, we have some suggestions.

There is real strength in Ford’s cabinet: selecting Christine Elliott as deputy premier and health minister, former interim leader Vic Fedeli as finance minister, Carolyn Mulroney as attorney general and Rod Phillips as environment minister were wise choices that could make for a capable, intelligent front bench for the Tories at Queen’s Park.

Ford should seek and heed the counsel of Progressive Conservatives such as these. In addition, he should keep his options open as he awaits the results of his promised outside audit of the province’s budgetary books. If he can say Ontario’s finances are shakier than he expected, he could revise his agenda, again with the help of Elliott, Mulroney, Fedeli and Phillips. This isn’t the time for rash, ill-thought-out change. It is the time for a reasoned, carefully planned way forward.

We wish Ford the best. And we wish him luck because Ontario is now depending on him.