Every time Premier Doug Ford announces possible changes to the policies of the previous Liberal government, the reaction from his political opponents is the same. They warn that disrupting the status quo will lead to disaster.

But the status quo is no longer an option.

Over 15 years, the Liberals turned Ontario into one of the world’s most indebted non-national governments. We can’t continue doing what we’ve been doing without taking a hard look at doing things differently.

Before the Liberals were tossed from power last year, Ontario was running a $12-billion deficit according to the findings of the Legislature’s non-partisan Financial Accountability Office and Auditor General.

But those numbers held no meaning for the Liberals. They tried to buy the 2018 election by bribing the public with its own money. They were making expensive promises they knew they would have no chance to implement. Indeed, Premier Kathleen Wynne admitted weeks before the election that her government would be defeated.

The June 7 election provided Ford with a mandate to reduce spending. One area he has been contemplating is ending the hard caps on class sizes in kindergarten and the primary grades, as introduced by the Liberals.

Ending the hard caps would ostensibly reduce education costs, where 80 per cent of funding goes to salaries and benefits.

But when the teachers’ unions were asked for their view on the issue, the standard reply was to warn that any budget costs would hurt children.

Perhaps they would, perhaps they wouldn’t. But reckless financial decisions by the previous government have brought us to a place where our government is thinking about increasing class sizes.

Things might be different had the Liberals, then led by Dalton McGuinty, followed the advice of the financial expert they hired in 2012 to make recommendations on controlling government spending.

Among other initiatives, former TD Bank economist Don Drummond recommended that the Liberals cancel their all-day kindergarten program and increase class sizes.

Not only did McGuinty ignore that advise, but so did Wynne.

And leading up to the 2018 election, she promised to provide free daycare to all children from two-and-a-half years old until they entered all-day kindergarten.

Promising everything to everyone, as the Liberals were doing in the days before their historic defeat, is easy when you ignore the costs. Over their 15 years at the helm, the Liberals under McGuinty and Wynne posted so many budget deficits that Ontario’s provincial debt doubled to more than $300 billion.

It’s a financial burden every Ontarian has inherited, and it’s one the Ford government is trying to reduce by re-examining the status quo.

– Postmedia