With anxiety mounting among Canadians desperate for helpful information about the COVID-19 pandemic, news about Andrew Scheer, Peter MacKay and the federal Conservative party is no longer newsworthy.

Rightly, they are being drowned out by important news of the deadly virus outbreak.

And it’s a good thing for them that they are being largely ignored by Canadians because all three have performed abysmally since the COVID-19 crisis erupted, displaying an appalling lack of judgment, leadership and simple political smarts.

Indeed, their performances during this crisis raise serious questions about whether the Conservatives will be seen by voters as a serious alternative to the Liberals in the next federal election.

For Scheer, the lame-duck Conservative leader, his performance has been so uninspiring that it reminds people of why they rejected him in last fall’s election, which led to his decision to step down as party leader once a successor was chosen.

For some odd reason, Scheer keeps popping up on television, holding frequent press conferences and chatting with hosts on all-news channels, all with the unsubtle inference that he would be doing a better job than Trudeau if he was prime minister these days.

But why is anyone paying attention to him? Why is he taking up air time?

Despite insisting he’s a willing partner in the all-party Team Canada approach to addressing the pandemic, Scheer has done little except complain that Trudeau and the Liberals aren’t doing enough.

Just last week Scheer warned the Liberals that he wants action on three demands when the House of Commons resumes sitting on April 20. Parroting calls of the right-wing Fraser Institute, he wants Trudeau to reverse the April 1 increase in the carbon tax. He also wants Ottawa to reimburse the GST that small businesses have collected over the past six months and to release all projections on the potential COVID-19 impact.

“When will Canadians be able to go back to work and see their loved ones?” Scheer tweeted last week in reference to federal projections. “Other countries are providing their citizens with this valuable information. Canadians deserve the same transparency.”

Well, actually, other countries aren’t telling their out-of-work citizens when they will be able to return to their jobs, but Team Canada partner Scheer doesn’t let that stop him from insisting it’s true.

For MacKay, the acknowledged front-runner to replace Scheer, his performance has been so bizarre and ill-conceived that it has left many Conservatives wondering if he has the political smarts to lead them to victory in the next election.

In what should have been a defining moment for him to set a positive stamp on the party, MacKay instead came across as a tone-deaf, self-centred politician.

First, he vowed to work toward forcing the Liberals to call another general election as early as this fall, although there is little evidence the public wants one that soon.

Second, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis that was forcing everything from stores to schools to close, he launched an all-out media blitz to get the Tories to push on regardless with its leadership contest. “Democracy is calling, will you answer?” his campaign team said in one post on Twitter.

In doing so, Mackay sent a clear message that his own personal priority — namely winning the leadership race — is more important than the rightful concerns of the public.

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For the Conservative party itself, the fact it took weeks after the COVID-19 outbreak erupted, as millions of Canadians started to worry about their health and jobs, for the leadership election committee to decide suspend the race showed the party bureaucrats as inflexible and uncaring.

Even Tory loyalists voiced frustration over the party’s stubborn insistence that its June 27 leadership convention should proceed as scheduled. How bad was it? Apparently the party didn’t even have enough people available to count ballots, but it was still going to forge ahead — until sanity took over.

Combined, the actions by Scheer, MacKay and the party hierarchy signal a party leadership tone deaf to the real concerns of ordinary Canadians.

Such pathetic performances may well haunt the Conservatives for years to come.

Bob Hepburn is a politics columnist and based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: is a politics columnist and based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @BobHepburn

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