To say that the recent federal election campaign was void of any substantive issue discussion would be colossal understatement. But even if a real and thorough discussion transpired on health care, or fiscal policy or on inter-provincial trade, Canada's number one industry would have still been ignored. We're not talking about high tech, life sciences or traditional resource staples; no … we're talking about Canada's cities.

While academics have written about the emergence of city-states for years, politicians on Parliament Hill and in provincial legislatures continue to ignore (willfully or in bliss) the unprecedented political and economic power our cities now wield.

Indeed, the economic output of Canada's major cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary is staggering … accounting for over 58% of our GDP. Or when one measures their budgets, take Toronto at $6 billion, they dwarf or rival some provincial budgets.

Yet, for the most part, municipal politics continues to be treated as the poor cousin to happenings in Ottawa or Queen's Park. And as taxpayers and voters, we reinforce this very mistaken dismissal of the local city hall by ignoring municipal affairs given the 30% to 40% province-wide voter turnout during this past November's elections. To counter this apathy, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) set up an informative website with a catchy URL, www.yourlocalgovernment.com.

AMO points out that local politics is not simply a matter of garbage collection, speed bumps, and snow plowing, important as these services are. But cities are also in the business of policing, ambulance services, welfare delivery, water and waste management, public housing, immigrant settlement, and public health. And increasingly they are being asked to foot the entire bill for public transportation, airport expansion not to mention ponying up funds for hospital construction or mammoth environmental initiatives.

Take infrastructure for example, cities like Toronto or the tri-city corridor of Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph and Cambridge can barely keep pace with their need for more roadways and mass transit. And recent snowstorms proved that Ottawa is about five years behind where it should be in physical infrastructure. This does not bode well for the nation's capital, Canada's fastest growing economy region with economic growth pegged at 6.6% for 2001 and its metropolitan population (800,000) expected to double in 20 years, if not sooner.

To be fair, Ontario's SuperBuild corporation is leveraging $10 billion of public money with another $10 billion in private sector and other partner contributions to help rebuild Ontario's crumbling infrastructure. But in its recently released annual report, public infrastructure ranks third in leveraged funding projects behind healthcare institutions and university and college initiatives. Indeed, of the $4.8 billion committed to date, 75% of it or $3.6 billion is earmarked for healthcare and post secondary institutions.

While some economists fear the dreaded "R" word (R for recession) and its potential to stall economic growth, political officials at all levels of government should turn their full attention to their abysmal record of funding roadway and public transportation improvements.

And taxpayers need to join their municipal leaders in demanding that the federal government turn over more than its current 4.1% share ($194 million) of the $5 billion it collects in gas taxes each year at the pumps for this infrastructure. Ditto for the province of Ontario that continues to pocket over 60% of what it collects at the pumps instead of funneling back into infrastructure.

It's time to rebalance this equation and give the cities their due … or property taxpayers will see it in the form of double digit tax increases on their local tax bills.