CALGARY—It was not so long ago, less than a year, that Canada’s Conservative leadership — in the provinces and federally — proudly cast itself as the “Resistance” to Justin Trudeau’s climate agenda

Maclean’s December 2018 issue captured the belligerent spirit of the time with a cover picture featuring Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba premiers Doug Ford, Scott Moe and Brian Pallister along with then-would-be Alberta premier Jason Kenney and federal leader Andrew Scheer.

The intention was to put Canada on notice that a Conservative juggernaut was set to crush Trudeau and his climate agenda. The various Conservative leaders were, according to the caption, “spoiling for fight”

That was then and this is now.

If the five of them were asked to pose for a similar picture this fall, chances are they would decline the invitation.

For the evidence suggests the prospect of a federal-provincial Conservative contingent dying to roll back Trudeau’s climate-change measures did not come across as alluring to a critical mass of voters.

At this juncture in the campaign, the Conservative premiers have mostly turned into as many ghosts haunting Scheer’s bid for federal power.

The more they rattle their chains, the more they risk spooking voters into the Liberal fold.

Since the election was called, Scheer spent a lot of time in Ontario but never on a stage with Ford.

A few weeks ago, Saskatchewan’s Moe declared he would not endorse any of the federal parties. The Conservative Party of Canada’s (CPC) war room had reportedly not seen that coming especially since Scheer’s seat is in the province but in the current context it could not have caused it a lot of anguish.

At around the same time, Kenney announced he was moving forward the fall reopening of the Alberta legislature to Oct. 8.

This week the premier set Oct. 24 —little more than 72 hours after the federal vote — as the date for what is expected to be a defining budget for his government.

If Kenney is to spend time out-of-province stumping for Scheer in Ontario, it is unlikely to be an extensive amount.

Like Moe, Kenney need not lift a finger to deliver his province to his federal ally.

The latest Léger poll — published by Le Devoir on Wednesday — pegged support for the CPC in Alberta and Saskatchewan at 54 per cent and 48 per cent.

With numbers like that, it would be easy for the CPC to use an Alberta setting to project momentum.

The same is not necessarily true in areas of the country where Scheer needs it most.

But a show of Prairie strength is unlikely to help. It could be counterproductive.

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Scheer’s first and only Calgary stop to date was a low-key affair, featuring no mass gathering of the kind the Conservatives have more than enough boots on the ground to organize at short notice.

At this point the campaign in Alberta and Saskatchewan feels like little more than a spectator’s sport, with the spectacle to date undoubtedly causing disquiet in more quarters than in any other region.

Outside the Prairies, the travails of the Liberal campaign have yet to decisively move the needle the way of the Conservatives. Two weeks in, there are more Trudeau doubters but not necessarily many more Scheer enthusiasts.

In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois and not the CPC is on the way up.

The Léger poll found the sovereigntist party in first place among francophone voters — three points ahead of the Liberals and five points ahead of the CPC.

Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet has so far run the most efficient Quebec campaign. Premier François Legault — by making demands on immigration and bill 21 that no national party can wholly embrace — has smoothed the Bloc’s path to gains next month.

The prospect that the Bloc could hold the balance of power in a minority Parliament is no longer an abstraction.

Nor is the possibility that a minority Conservative government would lack support to implement its signature promise to roll back Trudeau’s climate policies.

For the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens, supporting the CPC’s pro-pipeline anti-carbon tax agenda would amount to betraying their own supporters. But none of them would want to go back to the hustings quickly.

And that means that if the Liberals came a close second to the Conservatives next month, Trudeau could well find enough common ground with the other parties to remain in government.

That support would presumably be contingent on a more proactive climate-change approach, one that would certainly not include more pipeline-building and that could — hypothetically — cast new doubts as to the future of the Trans Mountain expansion.

Two weeks into the federal campaign, Scheer’s “Resistance” partners along with their many supporters in the Prairies are finding out that there may be an Oct. 21 outcome worse for their agenda than the re-election of a Liberal majority government.

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

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