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But a law practice is a retail business. Most of your victories are small. “What I really wanted was to work on larger social issues,” she says.

Well, here she goes. Saxe is the first new environment commissioner in 15 years, after her three-term predecessor Gord Miller left to run for the Greens in the last federal election.

She says she wants to look forward and warn the province about how its policies get in the way of its supposed goals, rather that reporting on what the government did a year ago.

‘Fossil-fuel subsidies do not reduce inequality, they increase inequality. Because most of the money goes to the better-off’

She’s in the early days yet, and spent her first couple of weeks at international climate talks in Paris (Canada’s equally new environment minister, Ottawa’s Catherine McKenna, is very impressive, Saxe says). So she’s still studying up. But one sacred cow she’s prepared to harpoon is coloured diesel. That’s fuel that’s been sold without the taxes that make up a big part of the pump price. It’s meant to be used industrially, like in farm equipment, and it’s dyed red so that if it’s found in a truck on the road, it’s easy to identify.

“We in Ontario, according to the provincial budget, subsidize diesel consumption by $190 million a year,” Saxe says. “That’s not providing better outcomes, it’s not providing income support. It’s not targeted. … Fossil-fuel subsidies do not reduce inequality, they increase inequality. Because most of the money goes to the better-off.”

Although small farmers are the most visible beneficiaries of tax-free fuel, plenty of it just helps large companies that Ontario should be looking to for innovation, Saxe says. Cheap fuel sabotages that goal. “It just makes it cheaper for them to use more diesel,” she says.