A few days into the 2004 federal election campaign, the most high-profile Liberal in Saskatchewan made his pitch to Westerners.

"We have traditionally occupied the roles of official critics in the opposition ... but that does not have to be the only role that is aspired to by Western Canadians," Ralph Goodale told a CanWest reporter. "We can do that and we can also be major players in the government too, setting the agenda and making the decisions, rather than critiquing after the fact. I think we have a terrific opportunity to move to the centre of the stage."

It was a familiar refrain. From the Trudeau era through Jean Chretien's reign and into Paul Martin's, Liberals had been trying to convince Westerners that the way to have a strong say in Ottawa was to elect more of their candidates.

The argument tended not to go over so well - as Goodale found out. Following reports that the Finance Minister had told Westerners "they will be shut out of the corridors of power if they fail to vote for the Liberal party," he was chastised from both left and right.

Conservative MP Jason Kenney pronounced that the Liberals were running a "campaign of fear and intimidation." The NDP agreed. "Isn't that sickening," Winnipeg MP Pat Martin complained. "They have fallen back to that tired old line of blackmailing people: 'You'd better vote for the ruling party or you won't enjoy any of Ottawa's great largesse.'"

The Liberals' critics were fundamentally right, if a bit hysterical: Implying that a region's interests wouldn't be given their due unless it voted for your party's candidates was an offensive argument. And it was partly because of this message that Western alienation from Ottawa has grown so much.

You'd think that, having taken such umbrage to it, Conservatives and their supporters would be loathe to adopt the same tactic. But there appears to be a double standard: Implying to Western voters that electing only opposition MPs will hurt local interests is an egregious offence, but bullying Torontonians the same way is A-OK.

When he told voters at a local rally this week that they should vote Conservative because "Toronto's voice must be heard in the government that is in the making," star candidate Peter Kent might not have been consciously threatening them. But the line is becoming familiar to Torontonians: Refuse to ride the blue wave sweeping the country, and the city will only be hurting itself.

An editorial appearing today in these pages epitomizes that argument: "If voting patterns from recent federal elections hold, the Toronto caucus will be overwhelmingly Liberal, with a few NDPers thrown in. Such a result would leave the largest city in the country shut out of the government caucus and Cabinet, and place it outside the political mainstream of the country. This would be an unfortunate result given the importance of federal policy in a host of areas of particular concern to Toronto, not least of them stemming gun violence."

Were the Liberals on the verge of victory and making a similar case out West, Tories would be apoplectic - and rightly so.

There are legitimate reasons most Torontonians remain uncomfortable with the Tories. Smaller government doesn't play well in a city whose social services are stretched to the max by migration here from both within and outside Canada's borders. Opposition to same-sex marriage is a stumbling block in urban areas with large and influential gay populations. And there's a perception that Conservative policies are geared more toward voters in the rest of the country. $100/month for child care, for instance, might play well elsewhere - but it's pretty useless in a city where living costs are astronomical.

The answer for Conservatives is to convince Torontonians that they're wrong - that their policies really are for them. To his credit, Harper has spent a lot of time this campaign trying to do that. But the underlying subtext that the city will be left out in the cold if it doesn't abandon its principles is off-putting. And the prospect of a Tory government snubbing Toronto because it favours the Liberals and NDP is frightening.

We've already seen the Liberals damage national unity by treating our richest province as a hostile force. One hopes the Tories won't be dumb enough to do the same to our biggest city - regardless of whether it elected any of their candidates.