It is an understatement to say that Doug Ford should press the reset button on his frazzled government when Ontario's legislature resumes sitting today.

Less than a year and a half into what's turning into a truly disastrous regime, the premier needs much more than a simple reboot for his Big-Blue Conservative machine. He needs to take it apart, throw out what's broken and build something new. Something that works for "the people" he constantly claims to be fighting for.

And if he's looking for a place to start, Ford could do no better than ending his unreasonable, unpopular, money-wasting opposition to the federal government's carbon tax.

Having long ago squandered the goodwill that brought him to power with a majority at Queen's Park, Ford's stumbling, flailing government is lurching from one crisis to another. Cuts to public health, cuts to child care, cuts to therapy for autistic children and opening up the Greenbelt: these are just some of the policy tiger pits Ford has fallen into and escaped only after performing embarrassing reversals.

With his own personal approval rating stuck in the cellar — it was just 26 per cent last month — Ford was cited as a reason his federal Conservative cousins fared so miserably in Ontario in last week's general election. Ironically, the Justin Trudeau Liberals who won that election could throw Ford a political lifeline.

Last week, Ford insisted he wants to work with the next federal government. Acknowledging the nationwide divisions exacerbated by the election, Ford says he wants to promote Canadian unity.

We'll take the premier at his word. He could accomplish both goals — greater co-operation with Ottawa and bringing Canadians together — by supporting the carbon tax Ottawa introduced in Ontario.

That's the tax that came in after Ford scrapped the cap-and-trade initiative brought in by the provincial Liberals who preceded him. That's the tax on which he's willing to spend $30 million to fight in court and with an ad campaign.

But that's also the tax the vast majority of voters in Ontario and across Canada backed at the ballot-box last week. Everyone who voted Liberal, New Democrat, Green or even Bloc Québécois supported a party willing to introduce a carbon tax of one sort or another. In Ontario, 64.5 per cent of voters cast ballots for parties that favour the levy. Indeed, you could say the winner of this general election was the carbon tax.

Premier Ford should respect what the people have just said. In August, he appeared willing to do just this when he suggested he would drop his court challenge of the carbon tax if the federal Liberals were re-elected. "Once the people decide, I believe in democracy," he said.

How is it, then, that last week Ford stubbornly recommitted himself to fighting the carbon tax? He's simply wrong when he says the tax, which marginally increased fuel prices in April, makes life harder for ordinary Ontarians. Thanks to the federal rebates implemented to offset the higher fuel prices, most Ontario families will be financially better off than they were before the carbon tax.

Even more important, in other jurisdictions, this kind of tax has been proven to reduce the carbon emissions that are causing the climate change disrupting the planet.

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Unlike Ford, New Brunswick's Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs is citing the general election results as a reason his government might now support the carbon tax.

Ford would perform a service to Ontario, Canada and his own political future if he executed one more reversal. It's time he became a carbon-tax convert.

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