Mr. Harris will have plenty more such advice, not least from within his own party. So it is pleasing, and instructive, to see what he actually chose to do first: abolish photo radar. There is something more than a little symbolic about the government of a free society surreptitiously photographing its citizens as they go about their business. And if there is one thing the new government may legitimately claim as a mandate from the people of Ontario, it is to get out of their face: not just in an economic sense, but in every sense.

For decades, governments of every party have spent their time in office figuring out new ways to interfere in people's lives, badgering and pestering them at every turn in that worst of causes, their own good. Sales of liquor are allowed only through sterile government-run dispensaries, to save them from drunkenness. Closing-hour laws are in force to make sure they are in bed by 1 a.m. Before they can go out to play, the government insists they put on their seatbelt, or their motorcycle helmet, or, God save us, their bicycle helmet.

In recent years these have multiplied, to the point that Ontario is now one of the most intensively regulated places this side of Singapore. Across the province, thousands of companies are engaged in the vastly important work of calculating and comparing, using various complex formulas provided by armies of helpful consultants, the relative worth of every job in the province, in order to meet the regulations laid out in the "pay equity" law. They were about to embark on the same calculations in long division with regard to their work force, via "employment equity," when the election intervened.

The extraordinary thing is that had either of the other two parties been elected, this meddlesome trend could only have accelerated. Read the small print in the Ontario Liberal Plan, and there isn't much the NDP couldn't have cheerfully signed on to. The document is perfumed throughout in the premise that what was really bugging Ontarians, the thing that was really on their minds, was that government just wasn't intruding into enough areas of their lives. It is a farrago of meddlesomeness.

Apartment-dwellers in Ontario may be relieved to know, for example, that they have been spared from participating in regular state-run fire drills. It's right there in the red book. It's highlighted: "We will introduce fire-safety training for tenants in high-rise apartments." Another top Liberal priority: "Within 30 days of taking office, we will restrict the distribution of slasher films and video games and serial killer cards." Then there's the strategic lettuce initiative: "We will create marketing programs that highlight the quality of Ontario produce, including introducing an 'Ontario Choice' designation that is given only to products that meet the highest quality standards." It goes on like this for 82 pages.

If it seems hard to believe the Liberals could have persuaded themselves that a program to pin rosettes on cucumbers was the kind of change the voters were demanding, remember that not more than 10 people in Ontario were ever supposed to actually read the thing. They were just supposed to see the cover, and obey. What alerted voters to its contents was Liberal Leader Lyn McLeod's spousal-abuse policy, or "shout at your spouse, lose your house," as it was reported in The Toronto Sun. This one particularly riles the Grits, who insist she was misrepresented. All she meant, they say wearily, all she meant was that "verbal abuse" would be included in the definition of spousal abuse.

Oh, well then.

At that suggestion, that taunts were to be equated with beatings, the game was up. The voters' silent alarms went off: Nothing has changed. This is the same hectoring, lecturing bunch we thought we were getting rid of. The commissars have just switched colours.

It is this whole bossyboots, nanny-knows-best approach to society that the voters have asked Mr. Harris to dismantle, and photo radar is as good a place as any to start. It isn't just the economy that suffers from the burdensome presence of government. Part of Mr. Harris's mandate is the deregulation of daily life.