As their leadership campaign powers up this weekend, Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are going off course again. They’ve lost the last four elections since 2003 — and on current trends they’re destined to lose the next one in 2018.

On Sunday, the last of the undeclared leadership candidates is formally launching her campaign. Like her rivals, Ottawa-area MPP Lisa MacLeod rues the dramatic decline of her party from a peak membership of 100,000 in the late 1990s to a mere 10,000 today.

Once a powerhouse in Toronto, the party is now barely visible in most urban centres. When you are hemorrhaging members — and running to be leader — you’re inclined to sign up any new supporters anywhere you can.

Which is perhaps why MacLeod and a couple of her fellow travellers in the leadership contest couldn’t resist the temptation to turn up, one fine weekend earlier this month, at a meeting of the Ontario Landowners Association. Oh no.

Oh yes. Just when the Tories must re-establish themselves as a modern, Progressive Conservative party, the leading candidates are travelling back in time to the land of the Landowners — a renowned rural rump that has become a footnote to fringe politics.

Before we take stock of this month’s incriminating campaign visits, let’s revisit the Landowners’ recent history: They are Ontario’s version of American survivalists — anti-government, anti-regulation, even anti-law. Ultra-libertarian, they worship at the altar of (perceived) property rights and rage against any governmental intrusions on the land they own.

Over the last decade, they organized tractor protests, occupied government offices, refused to let building inspectors on their land and goaded the Progressive Conservatives to pick sides. They saw red over the greenbelt, and their rallying cry still resonates: “This land is our land, back off government.”

In desperation, then-PC leader John Tory opted to pitch an open tent in 2005 — welcoming the Landowners to his turf on the grounds that “uniting the right” provincially (as federally) would win more seats and cause him less trouble. But co-opting the Landowners’ 15,000 members (larger than the current PC membership) didn’t pacify them.

Former Landowners’ president Randy Hillier won a seat in Eastern Ontario, but promptly flouted the rules of the legislature and alienated caucus. Another Landowners leader, Jack MacLaren, toppled a veteran Tory MPP, Norm Sterling, at his riding nomination meeting — prompting former PC premier Ernie Eves to lash out “at those few individuals who decided that the Tea Party version of Ontario politics would be good in that particular riding.”

The leading contenders for the PC leadership appear oblivious to that admonition. MacLeod was joined by two other serious rivals — deputy leader Christine Elliott and finance critic Vic Fedeli — at the weekend event hosted by the Landowners in Kanata, outside Ottawa.

In an earlier era the candidates might have quietly dropped in under the radar, but nowadays everyone leaves a trail of tweets. Following them on Twitter, you could read their astonishing shout-outs to the Landowners in real time:

“A packed house at the Ontario Landowners Association in Kanata. Interesting speeches!” gushed Fedeli on Oct. 4.

“Very informative day at the International Property Rights Conference in Kanata!” echoed Elliott on the same day.

MacLeod proudly tweeted a selfie of herself “at the Ontario landowners conference.”

Tweets are limited to 140 characters, but a selfie is worth 1,000 words. MacLeod’s beaming self-portrait — beamed across the ether — spoke volumes.

How many Landowners did they sign up for their campaigns? How many Twitter followers did they gain? (Hashtag: #RuralRump?)

No matter. A resurrected Progressive Conservative party can’t count on quasi-survivalists for its own survival.

If the competing tweets surprised me, they utterly shocked Hillier, the old Landowners’ leader. A lot older and a little wiser, Hillier has renounced the remnants of his old movement for losing their way — and can’t fathom why his fellow MPPs are still wooing them.

“I was astonished that they didn’t have a greater understanding of what the Landowners had become,” Hillier told me. The Landowners “are absolutely ignorant of government and law creation and the role of the legislature.”

He believes the Landowners number only a few hundred supporters today. So why would today’s Tory leadership candidates play footsie with a fringe movement?

“When people see opportunities to sell party memberships,” Hillier chuckles, “it’s like flies to honey — they’re attracted.”

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Leadership candidates love to connect with the grassroots. But cultivating the landowners is like tilling toxic soil.

With survivalists, you reap what you sow. Little wonder so much of today’s urban Ontario remains barren ground for today’s Tories.