Local politicians have known for a long time that legal cannabis was coming to town. And you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that Doug Ford, if elected at Queen’s Park, would change the plan Kathleen Wynne had concocted to sell it.

Yet Jim Watson, running to retain the mayoralty, reacted with disappointing vagueness when asked this week about how Ottawa, under his watch, would approach the privatization of pot.

First, he huffed that he preferred the defunct Wynne approach — an opinion now utterly irrelevant. Then he allowed as how “we’re going to have to make the best of” private sales. Obviously.

Not that his chief rival, former councillor Clive Doucet, did any better. Doucet, too, lamented the trashing of Wynne’s big-government plan. But that’s not exactly telling anyone what he’ll do with Ford’s plan if he leads this city.

Watson and Doucet, like all experienced politicians running in the Oct. 22 municipal election, need to make clear the path they want to follow now that the province intends to consult folks just like them on the rollout of private pot. As Ottawa’s mayoral candidates (there are 12), candidates for ward councillor and even wannabe school board trustees knock on your door, ask them for their specific ideas on how the city should deal with legal cannabis sales.

For instance, the Ford government will allow municipalities to opt out altogether from allowing any retail pot shops. It’s unlikely Ottawa will follow that path, but ask candidates at your door how they would vote if such a motion came to council.

What about cannabis storefronts near schools? Does the candidate in your neighbourhood feel there should be a mandatory bubble zone separating school and pot shop? What distance, if so? And is it even practical?

Are there neighbourhoods or wards where local would-be politicians don’t want to locate any cannabis retailers? You’ll recall the kerfuffle about too many payday loan businesses in certain areas.

Meanwhile, ask current councillors who are running again, including the mayor, how they plan to shut down the current 20 or so illegal weed dispensaries around town. Watson told Sun reporter Jon Willing that closing these illicit shops was a top priority. Really? Then how come it hasn’t happened in the time they have been operating?

We’ll grant the province hasn’t offered a lot of detail about how private sales will proceed. But if it is going to happen in our city, local candidates had better have concrete ideas to offer. And we’d like to hear them before Oct. 22, not after.