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Who needs experts when a self-serving “hunch” will do?

Populist politicians from Doug Ford to Mike Harris to Donald Trump and Victor Orbach like to pretend the world is a simple place made complicated by bureaucrats, whiny, woke leftists as well as elites, which ironically — strategically? — they are actually part of.

And as vengeful Premier Ford tears a destructive swath through this city, ripping up bike lanes, turning people with drug addictions out of safe injection sites out onto the streets to die, shuttering the Science Centre, chainsawing Ontario Place trees and so much more, this city suffers through the results of his erratic hunches and back to basic claims really designed to serve his development pals.

Ford, like Trump and the rest, claim it’s always time to just roll up sleeves and take “common sense” solutions to almost any problem; after all, experts aren’t to be trusted in a right-and-wrong world populated by good guys and bad guys. The “good guys” being anyone who will let them and their business buddies do whatever they want unfettered, and the “bad guys” are anyone who wants a “sober second thought” and any kind of contemplation that locates decisions in a larger context.

The city continues to suffer through absurdly long construction delays on the Eglinton LRT — no doubt part of why it’s taking so long is that there was a plan created by experts that Rob Ford, with Doug’s blessing, tore up, suddenly deciding to bury part of the line to meet childish calls for “Subways! Subways! Subways!” This U-turn has to have contributed to some of the ill-fated line’s delays.

Now, driving his massive Escalade around this city, sitting high above the traffic, Ford lashes out at the cyclists, each one not at the wheel of a massive machine like him but getting exercise as they move through town, no exhaust in their wake. While one can argue details on any one stretch of the routes, it is beyond debate that every major city in the world is embracing bike lanes, pedestrian zones and generally easing out of car-first mentalities.

Cities are safer with bike lanes, and throwing cyclists back out into traffic only makes it more dangerous for everyone. Even the cynical premier anticipates a death toll for his vote-seeking actions as he introduces legislation to protect the province from wrongful death lawsuits.

He’s literally sentencing people to die to create a wedge issue to chase anti-Toronto votes. And the process of tearing up the bike lanes will only create more traffic and hazards. Only to be replaced when 21^st-century politicians gain control of the legislature.

Ford doesn’t believe what the experts say it will cost to remove the bike lanes — he has no idea what it will cost since he hasn’t priced it — he just has a “hunch” it’s less than projected by those who actually built the lanes. History has shown it cost significantly more to remove the bike lanes on Jarvis — another idiotic move of him and his brother — than it does to install them in the first place. That’s just facts, Doug.

And, Doug, like you, I’m no expert, but do you think all the construction in Toronto might be contributing to the traffic problems, the lanes closed for much-needed building in this city? For example, Ford’s developer buddies can drop a dumpster blocking a lane of traffic — and it’s usually a bike lane — for a small one-time fee with no incentive to “hurry up” the process. One of these lane-blocking dumpsters helped cause the recent death in traffic of a cyclist on Bloor.

Are we really taking urban planning “hunches” from a man whose straight-faced solution to highway congestion is to build another highway under the highway? Kind of like Wile. E Coyote, burrowing under his schemes and likely to be just as ill-fated.

His plan sounds as absurd as Trump’s call for people to drink bleach to fight COVID-19.

U.S. comic John Mulaney has a bit equating Trump’s rampage through office with “a horse running through the hospital.” Ford is Ontario’s horse running through the hospital, leaving mayhem and destruction across our city as well as outside the GTA. The question is: What are we going to do about this horse? If we’re not careful, Ford is poised to sneak back in, calling an early election, handing out cheques and pitting citizens against each other to hang onto his ability to grant his pals multi-billion-dollar gifts.

We need to do more than complain; we need to be ready before the election is called, helping battle Ford’s reducing all issues to Us vs. Them and, like those somewhat annoying T-shirts  say, “Toronto versus Everybody”.