Until further notice, Ontario has a new premier.

The old Doug Ford, who rose to power on a wave of anti-government sloganeering, has temporarily stepped aside.

The new Doug Ford, who brings an unfamiliar style of government intervention, stepped in last month to helm the province in a pandemic,

Unlike his predecessor, our replacement premier is a steady friend of the federal Liberals and an ardent defender of provincial civil servants. He seems as unknowable as he is unpredictable.

A pandemic is no time for partisanship or psychoanalysis. But it’s hard not to notice the transformation and seek an explanation.

We can all learn from his learning curve as he walks the tightrope of governing — deciding, cajoling, reassuring. Who is the real Doug Ford?

Few dispute we are seeing a different premier, and that leadership — for better or for worse — matters in a crisis. The bigger question is whether he is here to stay, or was he here all along?

The fiction from Ford’s defenders is that he was always much misunderstood by the media, that beneath his bellicosity was a politician with a common touch. The premier’s opponents have always cast him as an unqualified college dropout who coasted into his late father’s printing company, leveraged his late brother’s fame, and had the good luck to land at Queen’s Park when the last Liberal government was in its death throes.

More than an accidental premier, he was an accident waiting to happen. If Ford is enjoying a second honeymoon in mid-pandemic, perhaps it’s because he is undoing so much of the disruption he unleashed upon taking power.

On Wednesday, his government deployed waves of labour inspectors who will fan out to workplaces looking for safety violations. Last month, he barred employers from seeking sick notes. Every day, he explains the importance of government action and regulation — such as inspecting medical masks to protect front line workers from fakes, and boosting health-care spending. This week, his government hinted pharmacy fees may be waived for patients.

All this from the new premier who upon taking power (the old premier) rushed to cut workplace inspectors, ripped up a law banning sick notes, belittled regulatory red tape, cut funding for public health and cancelled a pharmacare program that offered free medicines for young and old. Should Ford get credit for doing the right thing, even if only undoing past wrongs?

It’s a fair point, but beside the point for now. In a pandemic, the past matters but the present matters even more.

Ford avoided news conferences for more than a month until the pandemic hit Ontario hard. Now, he holds daily media briefings with civility and positivity — lauding the prime minister he once vilified, hailing the labour leaders he denounced, defending the medical experts he might have mocked as pointy heads, and thanking reporters for pointed questions.

Ford has found his filter. What accounts for the seeming personality transplant?

At 55, Ford is at an age and stage of life when change is rare, but a pandemic is surely a life-changing event. It is not just that he changed, but that Ontario has changed in a time of life-and-death decisions.

The premier gave us an important clue to his inner thinking Wednesday when he reminded reporters, “You know something, I believe in Dale Carnegie.”

As a young man, Ford was a disciple of the world-famous self-help guru, devouring his bestselling book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The book teaches readers how to “increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done…make you a better speaker … show respect for the other person’s opinions.”

Ford followed that advice early in his career, but forgot it when he became premier. Now, in a pandemic, he is going back to his roots and his readings, because a politician must also read his audience.

Imagine how the new Ford would react to the old Ford. Today’s premier would reproach his predecessor for the inflammatory rhetoric, would disavow the old vulgarisms, would resist the partisan put-downs.

The new Ford wouldn’t like the sound of the old Ford. He would take him aside and admonish him to do better and be better — or get out of the way, which he did.

The old Ford was never as dumb as he looked, but it took a pandemic to make him smarten up and grow up.

Even Ford knows that second honeymoons, like first honeymoons never last. The daily briefings are getting harder to sustain because the questions are getting tougher.

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With the death toll rising, testing is lagging compared to the pace of other provinces and countries. The premier’s earlier explanations about a lack of raw materials (reagents) now ring hollow even in his ear, which is why he admitted to reporters that “it’s unacceptable, there’s really no more excuses.”

The new Ford understands that “there’s accountability at the end of the day, the buck stops here.” Unlike the old Ford, who always blamed his Liberal predecessors (and there will be plenty of blame to go around).

Give him credit for trying to be inspirational. He will soon be held accountable.

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