Bless you, Oakville Mayor Rob Burton. Wisdom does filter in from the burbs.

Yours are such essential, uncluttered words on transit in the Toronto region — an obvious issue of grave concern, but an issue that’s been deliberately buried in half-truths and clever political manipulation.

You, sir, waded into the swamp and emerged with the unvarnished truth.

It’ll cost each household in the region about $1,000 a year in tolls, taxes and user fees to finance the $2 billion Big Move transportation plan, Burton told the Star’s Tess Kalinowski.

Is the City of Toronto in or out? Is the core of the Toronto region willing to pay its share?

And, going straight to the key question: How do we get there with the mayor of Toronto throwing up roadblocks at every turn?

Burton was at a meeting of mayors and regional politicians near the airport, where Toronto Mayor Rob Ford made it clear he would not support taxes or tolls for transit. And, to Burton’s astonishment, neither the politicians nor the meeting convenor, CivicAction, challenged Ford.

CivicAction is an alliance of business, labour, citizens, social activists and civic do-gooders. They tend to reflect what our city region needs much better than our politicians, whose words reflect what’s needed to get re-elected.

But if CivicAction are not relentless, fearless and virulent on the transit file, we will miss this unprecedented opportunity to make a generational u-turn.

Metrolinx, the provincial agency established to fix our transit mess, is staging public meetings before it releases (in June) a list of funding tools to finance the $50 billion Big Move transit plan.

“Before we marry this thing, I really would like somebody to prove to me that’s really the very best we can do, and it costs $50 billion,” Burton told Kalinowski. “Somebody’s got to pay something, or it’s all gum flap.”

Burton called out the board of trade and CivicAction for failure to get Ford onside. Other GTA mayors should join him.

In essence, at precisely the critical moment when the province needs a strong voice from Toronto, the advocates are playing footsies with Ford, who is marshalling election forces to crush the transit proposal.

If you speak to the civic leaders and city lovers and advocates for the Big Move, they roll their eyes and slump their shoulders and shake their heads when Rob Ford’s name comes up. But instead of challenging and isolating Ford, they cower away in a corner, hoping city council will do an end run around the mayor.

Been there, seen the confusion, living the results of that political cockfight.

That’s a recipe to deliver more of the same: truncated transit, an embarrassment of a subway network for a world-scale emerging city region, talk and studies instead of action, improvements at a snail’s pace, and a resolution timeline that lands us in the year 2030 watching future politicians pat themselves on the back because the daily commute is worsening at a slower rate than before.

Just last week our mayor was musing about how he might get rid of all Toronto streetcars, and cyclists, because they get in the way of his drive downtown from Etobicoke.

Meanwhile, his team figure they have a winning re-election strategy: “My opponents are tax-and-spend lefties and socialists. I cut your taxes and will give you subways, subways, subways” for free.

When will clear-thinking citizens get spitting mad at this threat to our future?

As an alternative to that transit lie, I tap someone like progressive conservative John Tory because the tax-and-spend tag won’t stick to him. But Tory must be prepared to go to war on transit with a singular, missionary zeal — bringing the people along for the expensive but unavoidable journey

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Tory doesn’t need the job; the job needs him. The city needs someone like him, with a sense of the entire region and the sensibility to act like a big city mayor.

A better choice out there? Step forward. Soon. Please.