It is the one thing Justin Trudeau, Doug Ford, and Andrew Scheer seem to agree on: Ontario’s Progressive Conservative premier is considered a liability to the federal Conservative campaign here.

For Scheer, Premier Ford is a sort of Voldemort from Harry Potter — he who shall not be named.

For Trudeau, the nation’s most powerful and polarizing Conservative is a useful foil who can motivate disillusioned or complacent Liberal voters.

For Ford, still bothered by being booed at the Toronto Raptors’ June victory celebration while Trudeau and Mayor John Tory were cheered, the federal campaign is a time to seethe privately and regroup.

The premier did Scheer a favour last summer, delaying the scheduled return of the Ontario legislature from Sept. 9 until Oct. 28, one week after the federal election.

That was to give the national Conservatives a clean runway in Ontario.

Ford’s government also averted a strike this week by 55,000 school support workers, ceding to most of the demands from the Canadian Union of Public Employees to the relief of parents, students, and the federal Tory campaign.

For his trouble, Scheer has thanked the premier by refusing to utter his name in speeches, treating it as a four-letter F-bomb even while campaigning 700 metres from his Etobicoke home.

Adding insult to injury, the federal Tory leader conscripted Alberta Premier Jason Kenney last weekend to swoop into Ontario for 23 Ford-free campaign events, including in Ford’s riding of Etobicoke North.

Four Ford loyalists, speaking confidentially in order to discuss internal conversations, said the premier feels slighted by Scheer, who he invited to be the keynote speaker at the Ontario PC convention last November.

“He looks like the black sheep sitting in the corner simply because Scheer doesn’t want to make the narrative about Ford,” said one insider.

But another emphasized that if Scheer loses the Oct. 21 election, any Conservative failure to break through in Ontario should not be blamed on the provincial PC government’s record.

“After (Trudeau’s) ‘blackface’ (scandal), there’s no way Andrew Scheer can say Doug Ford cost him the election. That’s on Scheer and Scheer alone,” said the second source, pointing to the racism controversy that jolted the Liberal leader’s campaign last month.

Scheer has been criticized for concealing he is a dual American citizen and for inflating his professional credentials — snafus that have nothing to do with Ford.

A third confided the premier was galled that Kenney, who he campaigned for before the last Alberta election, was stealing his thunder in his backyard.

“We won 76 seats (in Ontario) last year. You don’t think we understand the lay of the land here?” fumed the third source.

Most of Ford’s ire, however, is reserved for the Liberal leader.

“Doug is willing to sit on his hands for another two weeks (until the election),” said a fourth provincial Tory insider.

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“But it is really bugging him to have to do so.”

At Monday’s English-language debate, Trudeau name-checked Ford three times during the national telecast and on two more occasions in the post-event scrum with reporters.

“You seem to be oddly obsessed with provincial politics,” joked Scheer, artfully avoiding a Ford mention.

“There is a vacancy for the Ontario Liberal leadership and if you’re so focused on provincial politics, go and run for the leadership of that party.”

But a Liberal strategist insists there is a method to their madness because Ford, better known than the milquetoast Scheer, gets unmotivated Grit voters off their couches and to the polls.

“Ontario voters gave Doug Ford a blank cheque last year and elected him with an uncosted platform — just like Andrew Scheer is trying to get away with. How’s that working out?”

Even as Trudeau goads Ford on a regular basis during the campaign, the premier’s vanishing act has become fodder for editorial cartoons and a sketch on CBC’s, This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

In the Oct. 1 show, Ford, played by Mark Critch, is depicted as an elusive Bigfoot lurking in the woods.

Brandishing an Andrew Scheer election sign, a startled camper is able to scare him off.

Later, Ford’s notorious gas-pump stickers affixed to a tree are presented as evidence Sasquatch was in the vicinity.

In comedy as in this campaign, the premier quietly looms large.

Robert Benzie is the Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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