It possesses a more advanced labor market, more skilled and educated workers, an abundance of value-added production, higher standard of living, etc.
It features an abundance of resource extraction industries, fewer skilled and educated workers and a lower standard of living, and in many ways, it emulates the culture of the metropolis.
Under the theory, the western Canadian provinces (BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan) are a hinterland to the political and economic forces of central Canada (Ontario and Quebec).
These originally included the imperial capitals of Paris (before 1763) and London (after 1763); and finally the Canadian centres of Montreal and Toronto in the modern era.
The metropolitan school studied "the effects of the East on the West, and largely regarded businessmen and conservative urban political elements as agents of national expansion who might well be more far-sighted in their outlook than were their agrarian opponents.