It's Premier Doug Ford now

It's official. Doug Ford was sworn in on Friday as the 26th premier of Ontario in a ceremony at Queen's Park that will be followed by an outdoor event open to the public.

Ford unveiled his cabinet, which consists of 14 men, seven women and one visible minority. It includes former leadership contenders Christine Elliott, as deputy premier and minister of health and long-term care, Caroline Mulroney, as attorney general and minister responsible for Francophone affairs, and Vic Fedeli, as finance minister. The 21-member cabinet is smaller than the version under the Liberals, which stood at 28, due to decisions like the one affecting the ministry of Indigenous Affairs. Instead of a person appointed only to oversee that department, Greg Rickford, who has jumped to provincial politics after a defeat at the federal level, will oversee multiple files as minister of energy, northern development and mines, and Indigenous affairs.

The brash Progressive Conservative leader is swooping in on a wave of widespread disdain towards the Liberals, who were virtually wiped off the map in the most recent provincial election after 15 years in power. It marks the first time the PCs have been in power in Ontario since 2003. Leading a caucus of 76 members, Ford has pledged to make sweeping changes, rolling back much of the work done by the previous government, and has already began making moves to that effect, although it’s still unclear how he plans to pay for any of his promises.

Ford has pledged to find $6 billion in efficiencies and to balance the province’s budget by the second half of his term, without laying off a single public service employee. His first order of business, he has said, will be to order an independent line-by-line audit of the government. He’s already put the province under a public service hiring freeze, with the exception of frontline workers like police officers, and halted discretionary spending on things like newspaper subscriptions.

He’s also vowed to make major policy changes in areas including education, climate change, policing, and the way Ontario sells alcohol. Things are sure to move quickly, so here are a few areas to watch.

Cap-and-trade

One of the pillars of his campaign, Ford has said one of the first things he’d do as premier would be to get Ontario out of the cap-and-trade system, which caps carbon emissions and allows companies that go over the limit to buy permits from those companies that burn less. The province is currently part of this agreement, which provides companies with an economic incentive to reduce emissions, with California and Quebec. Critics have pointed out that pulling out of the system could mean the province will be on the hook for $3billion that companies have already bought in emission credits.

Education

Ford has promised to roll back the province’s current sex education curriculum, that has been a point of contention among socially conservative parents when it was introduced in 2015 by the Wynne government. The curriculum, updated for the first time since 1998, addresses topics like consent and same sex relationships. “I’ll sit down with our new cabinet and with the minister of education, discuss that with them,” Ford told reporters the day after the election. “But I can tell you one thing, we’re repealing it.” Citing falling test scores, Ford has also promised to change the math curriculum to focus more on basic arithmetic and eliminate “discovery” math, which aims to equip students with more creative approaches to problem solving. He’s also promised to tie university funds to free speech, although he hasn’t offered any specifics on what the limits of free speech would be under his policy.

Weed and alcohol

Ford is taking the helm of the province just as the country prepares for the sale of recreational weed, made legal earlier this month. While the Wynne government had planned to open 150 stores, run by the province’s liquor control board, by 2020, Ford has said he’d prefer to open the market up to private companies and that he plans to talk to his caucus, as well as municipalities, on what this might look like. He’s also said he’ll allow the sale of beer and wine in any grocery or convenience store, and promised to lower the minimum price of beer that people are allowed to sell at back to $1 per bottle plus deposit, the price floor in place before the Liberals increased it in 2008.

Policing

The Progressive Conservatives plan to roll back parts of Bill 175, introduced last year to establish stricter police oversight rules, arguing that it undermine the public’s confidence in police officers, and that police morale has suffered as a result of the bill. As Toronto reeled from a series of fatal shootings this past weekend, the incoming government also floated throwing their support behind bringing back anti-violence units, like the controversial Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy, which was shut down in response to criticisms of racial profiling. Ford also expressed his support for TAVIS at a Somali community event during the campaign in April.

Transit

Notorious for his love of subways, Ford has mused about building them in the suburbs, as far out of Toronto as Pickering and Markham. “We’re going to focus on being the most modern transit system in the world. We’re going to build rapid underground transit that’s going to extend not only in Toronto …(but) so folks in Pickering will eventually be able to hop on a subway and get downtown Toronto,” he said, speaking in Pickering last week, reigniting concerns that a Ford government would mean chaos for transit in the GTA.

Cover image: Chris Young/The Canadian Press