Heaven knows, it doesn’t seem much to ask of a government in the 21st century.

No one expected Ontario Premier Doug Ford, when he was elected in 2018, to out-theorize Stephen Hawking, or resolve things in the Middle East, or put a (wo)man on Mars.

But it was hoped that, given the Ford family expertise in the business of signs and stickers, he’d be on top of some of the more rudimentary tasks of governance.

Like licence plates.

Those rectangular bits of metal fastened to vehicles to let toll companies bill users, police locate transgressors, and citizens report suspected impaired drivers or alert authorities in cases of amber alerts.

Simplicity itself, you might think, in the age of 5G and AI and driverless cars.

But no.

Somebody had a bright idea. Instead of blue on white, let’s make Ontario’s plates Tory blue! Let’s change the slogan emblazoned thereon from “Yours to Discover” to “A Place to Grow.”

The plan must have been that Ontarians would be so bedazzled by the shiny new plates that they wouldn’t notice things like chaos in their schools or growing waiting lists for youth mental health services and such.

As always, there’s many a slip between cup and lip.

Three weeks after the new plates went into circulation, there are complaints – not least of all from a police officer on Twitter – that the plates glare under lights at night and are at times impossible to read.

Ford’s ministers were at a loss.

“We have tested in terms of readability, reflectivity and durability on a whole host of weather conditions and they passed,” said Lisa Thompson, minister of government and consumer services.

After first denying there was a problem at all, on Wednesday she shifted to blaming the manufacturer, 3M.

Let us not add to the premier’s burden.

Let us say only that these sort of screw-ups, much like lost luggage and $16 glasses of orange juice, are the type of thing that often sticks to a politician.

Worse, it’s what the sports analysts call an unforced error, with Ford having chosen to fix – for purposes of political propaganda – that which was not broken.

Governments of all political stripes have been handling the job of manufacturing numbered identifiers for automobiles since pretty much the time such traffic-jams-waiting-to-happen were invented.

It seems France was the first country to issue number plates to vehicles in 1893. In 1901, New York State mandated licence plates for vehicles, but until 1909 car owners were expected to produce their own.

In 1903, Massachusetts became the first state to issue licence plates. They were porcelain. Plates have also been made of cardboard, plastic, leather and in the great state of Wyoming – during the Second World War, when metal was needed for the war effort – soybean-based waferboard.

Vehicles in Ontario have been registered since 1903 and have borne licences since 1911.

Licence plate design has occasionally triggered controversy. A crown was added in 1937 to commemorate the coronation of King George VI. A proposal to remove it in 1948 was beaten back by outraged royalists.

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From 1973 to 1982, Ontario plates carried the ahead-of-its-time environmental message “Keep it Beautiful.” For almost 40 years, the motto has been the enticing “Yours to Discover.”

Over the years, Ontario plates have been white on blue, black on white, black on yellow, black on tan, dark blue on cream, dark blue on light green, green on white, orange on black, black on golden yellow and other combinations.

What they apparently haven’t been, until now, under the tender ministrations of Doug Ford’s government, is unreadable.

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