Federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair says Toronto is Canada’s most important city.

Not only that, he says other Canadian cities can only “thrive” when Toronto “thrives.”

Good lord.

In Mulcair’s world, the entire country revolves around Toronto. Without the Ontario capital, the rest of us are little more than hewers of wood and haulers of water. We derive the nutrients of life from our benevolent host in eastern Canada. And when the host is weak, we’re all weak, at least according to the guy who wants to be Canada’s next prime minister.

Mulcair made the statement Tuesday in, of course, Toronto while announcing former NDP MP Olivia Chow — still smarting from last year’s crushing defeat in T.O’s mayoral race — is pursuing her next political gig by seeking the federal NDP nomination in Spadina-Fort York.

“Toronto is Canada’s most important city,” Mulcair declared. “Only when Toronto is strong, is Canada strong. Canada thrives when Toronto thrives, and Olivia has always been an outstanding advocate for Toronto.”

I get that Mulcair likes Toronto. Apparently it’s his favourite city. But to suggest the rest of the country revolves around the home of the Maple Leafs is inaccurate and ludicrous.

It’s one thing to walk into a town and remind the locals what a lovely and unique community they have, and how much better it could be if they elected the right candidate. That’s standard, retail politics. But to declare to Canadians that Toronto is the most important city in Canada (Mulcair made the same claim in Toronto last month, albeit more succinctly, during a speech to the Economic Club of Canada) and that the rest of Canadians are essentially the flees that buzz around the elephant is politically elitist.

Toronto is the biggest city in Canada with a population of over five million people. It producess almost one-fifth of Canada’s GDP and it’s the centre of the country’s financial community. We all get that.

But to suggest the rest of Canada can’t do well economically unless Toronto is thriving — as if every economic event on every shop floor, in every boardroom and behind every computer screen across Canada is ultimately and inextricably linked to Toronto — is utter nonsense. Even if that were true, to conclude further that it would make Toronto “more important” than the rest of Canada is just plain arrogant.

Most of Canada’s industry and its economic fortunes are tied to exports, particularly to our biggest trading partner, the United States. By and large, when the U.S. does well economically, Canada does well. Beyond that, wealth is defined more by regional characteristics than anything that occurs in Toronto.

In resource-rich Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, the price of oil determines the relative wealth of its people, regardless of how many head offices poke through the smoggy skyline of the Big Smoke. In Manitoba, farmers don’t really care about Toronto’s per capita GDP when they’re selling a bushel of wheat to a stateside broker. What happens in Toronto has very little to do with their transactions.

If anything, Toronto has been losing economic ground to the rest of Canada in recent years. Statistics Canada released new data on the subject last year. It showed economic growth has been shifting away from Toronto towards Calgary and Edmonton and that Toronto’s per capita GDP from 2001 to 2009 dropped from third to seventh place among Canadian cities.

Either way, and regardless of the economic statistics, Toronto is not Canada’s “most important city.” No Canadian city is.

St. John’s, Halifax, Quebec City, Guelph, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Kamloops are just as important to Canada as Toronto is. Charlottetown, where the Fathers of Confederation first met to agree on the broad strokes of Confederation, is a very important part of Canada. So is Winnipeg, home of the Red River settlement and Louis Riel, who negotiated Manitoba’s terms of entry into Canada. Where would Canada be without Parry Sound, home of Bobby Orr, or Regina, the birthplace of universal health care in Canada?

Whatever. Toronto is Toronto. Vancouver is Vancouver. And Montreal is Montreal. Neither of them is more “important” than the other.

Toronto is not the centre of the universe. And Tom Mulcair may want to tune into that if he ever wants to move into 24 Sussex Drive.