Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford will present his new cabinet on Friday morning in what is expected to be a glorious sun outside Queen’s Park.
But after that, the stormy economic and political climate approaches Ford’s second-term government.
Ontario faces the highest inflation rate in nearly 40 years, an economic reality that will have a strong influence on everything from the amount of tax revenue provided by the government to the pressure exerted by industry unions. public to raise wages.
The new cabinet also faces a crisis of accessibility of housing that has spread to all corners of the province, a health system overloaded and weakened by more than two years of facing the pandemic of COVID- 19 and a long list of promises to keep.
Ford and his newly appointed ministers are scheduled to take the oath at 11:15 a.m. in an open-air ceremony in front of the legislature.
As previously reported by CBC News, observers expect the new cabinet to be larger and more diverse than Ford’s first in 2018.
The first Ford government cabinet, photographed with Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell, in the center of the front row, in June 2018. (Mark Blinch / The Canadian Press)
Here are the top five issues Ford and his ministers face:
1. Inflation
The rapid rise in the cost of living is a powerful economic problem that no provincial government can be expected to solve, but it is a problem that can have a profound effect on much of what the Ontario government does.
Progressive Conservative measures to make life more affordable so far have focused primarily on making driving more affordable: discarding Ontario’s $ 120 vehicle registration, ending tolls on provincial-owned roads and promise to reduce the gasoline tax by 5.7 cents a liter for six months. , from 1 July.
Inflation will help in many ways in government coffers: when consumer goods cost more, sales tax revenue increases. Inflation does not appear to be hurting corporate profits so far, so the province can also expect its corporate tax revenues to increase accordingly.
Of course, inflation also makes it more expensive for the government to buy and build things, so expect to see the prices of large government construction projects exceed their budgets.
The cost of living in Canada rose at its fastest pace in nearly 40 years during the year through May, Statistics Canada reported this week. The annual inflation rate stands at 7.7%. (Robert Krbavac / CBC)
But the biggest inflationary concern for the government will be what it does with public sector wages. Salaries account for about half of the province’s annual operating budget.
2. Public sector contract talks
Whether it’s teachers, nurses, plumbers, police officers, road maintenance teams or Service Ontario staff, they all see inflation being consumed in their paychecks. This causes public sector unions to demand higher wages every time their next round of bargaining begins, the argument being that any annual wage increase below the inflation rate equates to a wage cut.
An annual inflation rate of 7.7% sets a dramatically higher bar for wage increases than the public sector has seen for decades.
Add to that the fact that the Ford government limited annual public sector wage increases to 1 percent through its Bill 124 at a time when private sector wage increases were higher, and you have a significant accumulated demand for wage recoveries.
Everything paves the way for tough negotiations, starting with education workers. Don’t forget that Ontario was seeing schools closed across the province by teacher strikes just a few weeks before schools closed as a result of COVID-19.
Unionized public sector workers in Ontario whose salaries are paid through provincial funding have been subject to a one per cent limit on annual wage increases since the Ford government introduced Act 124. (Esteban Cuevas / CBC )
One of the pitfalls of those 2020 talks: the government offered teachers wage increases of one percent, and unions wanted increases at the rate of inflation. At the time, inflation was around two percent.
It will be especially interesting to see how contract talks with health care workers are handled, given all the praise Ford gave them during the pandemic. It is understandable that they will want the government to put their money where their mouth is.
3. Health system
Ford’s new health minister will put herself in the shoes of Christine Elliott after her decision to leave politics.
Elliott’s successor will inherit responsibility for a $ 68 billion system that is struggling to cope with staff shortages, record waiting times in emergency rooms and a major surgical delay. there is currently a calm in COVID-19 cases in hospitals in the province.
The Minister of Health will have to deal immediately with the human resources crisis in health care and ensure that the system is prepared for any new variant of COVID-19 that may arise in the autumn. The new minister will also want to make further progress on the health care reforms the government initiated before the pandemic, designed to address the root causes of the corridor medicine problem.
Sources close to the government have previously told CBC News that former Attorney General Sylvia Jones is the favorite to be health minister, with Prabmeet Sarkaria, the former head of the Treasury Board, also under consideration.
Sylvia Jones served in the cabinet as attorney general for the Ford government during the COVID-19 pandemic and was the minister responsible for overseeing the deployment of the vaccine in Ontario. She is a possible successor to Christine Elliott as health minister. (Cole Burston / The Canadian Press)
The latest iteration of Ford’s cabinet included an associate minister focused on mental health. See if this post stays in place as a sign that the problem remains a government priority.
4. Affordability of housing
The rising cost of buying a home has fallen slightly in recent months, since the Bank of Canada raised interest rates to try to curb inflation.
Still, the average selling price of a home in Ontario in May was 8.7 per cent higher than in May 2021, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.
The government is committed to paving the way for the construction of 1.5 million new homes in Ontario over the next decade, a goal set by the province’s Affordable Housing Working Group. But the government did not accept exactly much of the rest of the working group’s recommendations, such as its call for higher density in single-family neighborhoods.
A working group on housing accessibility designated by the Ford government recommended to the province to force municipalities to increase density in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes. (Ed Middleton / CBC)
The housing action plan that the Ford government unveiled this spring focuses largely on accelerating municipal approvals for development projects, and industry observers are wondering if this will go far enough to increase the supply of housing at a level that is beginning to slow down. in prices.
Housing is a candidate to get its own minister associated with Friday’s new cabinet, a move that would recognize the importance of the issue and lend a hand to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
5. Keep promises
Ford won re-election with the simple “Do It” slogan and a mantra of being the party saying “Yes”. The long list of things Ford said “Yes” provides a useful dashboard to mark the government over the next few months and years.
Some of the promises to keep an eye on: