Turns out there’s a good reason municipal governments are rated the junior partners of Confederation.

As Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has made humiliatingly clear, cities — this one, anyway — are not just dysfunctional, but incompetent.

The ritual firing of TTC chief general manager Gary Webster this week was a case in point: The five Ford minions who did His Worship’s dirty work at the commission didn’t know the first thing about what they were doing. In the end, they couldn’t even appoint Webster’s 2IC, Australian Andy Byford, acting chief general manager because his work permit doesn’t allow it.

Nobody had bothered to look. Like their bosses, Rob and Doug Ford, the fulsome fivesome are as weak on detail as they are the big picture.

That’s why it’s up to Premier Dalton McGuinty to take control of the transit file to save Toronto from itself. The ball’s in his court.

That the premier has no appetite for such an exercise in leadership is both obvious and understandable. For years, the city has been whining about how nobody takes it seriously, how no one loves it or respects it.

Now we know why.

The truth is that Toronto can’t look after its own interests; as the transit file illustrates, we are chronically unable to make a decision and stick with it.

For McGuinty, making the choice that eludes Toronto will be tricky. Though he doesn’t want to ignore the mayor, there’s no option. The expert panel has yet to speak, but it’s a foregone conclusion that the numbers are against “subways” not just on Eglinton, but also Sheppard and Finch.

Cheaper and more efficient, surface light rail transit is the way to go, the experts tell us. Subways are nice, but cost three times as much. Ontario, let alone Toronto, is economically strung out, lurching from crisis to crisis, its credit rating hanging by a thread.

Given that the province is covering the $8.4 billion price tag of Toronto’s transit expansion, it will want to ensure we get the biggest bang for its buck. In Ford’s scheme, the Eglinton LRT would run underground from end to end, adding $2 billion to the cost, money that could be better spent elsewhere on Sheppard or Finch.

Ford’s rigid insistence that all new transit go below grade makes so little sense, it provoked an unprecedented council revolt led by his chosen TTC chair, Karen Stintz. She persuaded council to bury Ford’s plan in favour of hers, which would run partly above and below the street.

Ford’s response, nasty, brutish and petulant, was to brand council “irrelevant” and fire Webster “without cause.”

Perhaps to bolster their sagging popularity, the Fords have now bullied radio station Newstalk 1010 into giving them a Sunday afternoon phone-in show. This will allow them an opportunity to bump Councillor Josh Matlow’s program and provide them with a platform from which to hold forth.

Those who lament the loss of Matlow needn’t worry; putting the Fords on air will give listeners a rare chance to experience first-hand the full extent of the brothers’ banality.

In the meantime, Toronto must face the fact its clueless chief magistrate is in way over his head and lacking the wherewithal to serve as mayor. Instead, we must rely on McGuinty to snatch victory from the jaws of self-inflicted Fordian defeat.

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Not since Bill Davis cancelled the Spadina Expressway in 1971 has an Ontario premier been called on to play such a critical role in the life of the city. Then, as now, the future is at stake.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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