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Ford certainly displayed moments of potential weakness, though — not least when he seemed to be running for some kind of hybrid position of premier of Ontario and mayor of the GTA. “Transit, it’s my specialty. I love transit,” he began. “You know I believe in subways. … As our city is growing up, we have to go under.”

Ford didn’t just commit to a three-stop Scarborough subway extension — twice calling it “fully funded” (it isn’t), as if a pile of cash might manifest on the lectern if he kept saying it — but to “closing the loop” between it and the Sheppard line, which is an even bigger white elephant than Scarborough is likely to be. That would be an utterly spectacular waste of money and a terrible prioritization of resources, and that should be fairly easy to explain to the majority of Ontarians who are unafflicted by Toronto Subway Madness.

Ford said he could live with surface light rail “in smaller areas of this province.” But he said “in large regions like Toronto that have six million people in the GTA, you have to build rapid underground transit — similar to the subway that was built up to Highway 7, if you build it they will come, and we’re going to do the same thing.”

He wants subways … to Oshawa? To Oakville? Even people suffering from Toronto Subway Madness would roll their eyes. And in that “if you build it they will come” rhetoric, the unaffected might well see a huckster — which he is, no matter what else he might be. He doesn’t just support subways, subways, subways in principle, either: he promises to upload them to the provincial government so everyone from Rainy River to Hawkesbury can share the bill. I can’t imagine that would play well in Rainy River or Hawkesbury.