TheStar.com | GTA | Conservatives have written Toronto off

What is most disheartening about the Warner case – brought to public attention after Warner spilled the beans – is it confirms what many have believed since the last federal election, which gave Harper a minority government with no Toronto seats and only a few on the edges of the GTA.

Harper and the Conservatives have written off Toronto. They'll curry favour with Quebec, solidify the base in the west, and to hell with the city slickers and their immigrant-loving, poor-coddling, bleeding-heart liberals and environmentalists and social activists.

It's bad enough that a national party would so alienate the country's largest city, its calling-card urban region, and the source of so much of its budget surplus. It should be cause for alarm in every urban region where Toronto-type problems are surfacing.

That may be our saving grace in the end. For as much as Harper doesn't care about the city of his birth, he can't ignore voters in all urban regions. The vast majority of Canadians live in urban regions. Sooner or later, he will have to acknowledge the cries of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which says the infrastructure deficit (gaps in funding for bridges, roads, sewers, water systems, transit, housing etc.) is approaching $100 billion across the country.

Toronto Mayor David Miller has led the call for one cent of the federal GST to be given to cities. For that campaign to work, other cities may have to step up.

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