Where in the world is Jason Kenney?

Jason Kenney promised Albertans the “best summer ever” — and it seems he’s having one himself. There’s just one problem: as his province’s COVID case count keeps spiking back up, along with the number of people in hospitals and ICUs, he’s clearly having it somewhere else. Nobody knows where the premier is, and even his own staffers are unwilling to talk about when he might return.

For a politician whose disdain for Justin Trudeau runs nearly as deep as his Catholic faith, this is a curiously timed disappearing act. After all, with the Liberal campaign stumbling early and Erin O’Toole suddenly looking like a real threat to win the election, you’d think Kenney would be cheering him on. He was, after all, one of O’Toole’s biggest backers in the CPC leadership race — and his highest-profile endorsement.

Kenney isn’t the only conservative premier who has gone AWOL during this campaign. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has also gotten uncharacteristically quiet of late, and reporting suggests he’s told his own cabinet to keep their heads down as well. “The edict is part of a broader effort to avoid a repeat of the 2019 federal election campaign, when it sometimes appeared that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s main opponent was Mr. Ford, rather than then-conservative leader Andrew Scheer,” the Globe and Mail reported. “Mr. Ford does not want to be at the forefront of another federal election campaign, one of the sources said.”

But if the Liberals want to get their faltering campaign back on course, they’ll need to draw Ford and Kenney out of their self-imposed silence. After all, while the O’Toole campaign has made some hay with its policy document and promises to Canadians about how the Conservative Party of Canada would govern, Ford and Kenney are proof of what that actually looks like — and it’s not a pretty sight.

In Alberta, it looks like a foolish decision to lift restrictions and reopen the economy in time for the Calgary Stampede. That decision has resulted in a fourth wave of COVID-19, one that happens to coincide with the return to school for parents and their kids, many of whom can’t get vaccinated yet. In Ontario, it looks like the premier fumbling over the issue of vaccination passports and refusing to listen to the growing number of doctors and health officials who say they’re desperately needed. In both cases, the conservative governments have failed to meet the moment time and time again. The rapidly escalating case counts in both provinces should serve as a timely reminder for the Liberals of what a conservative government actually looks like.

Reminding Canadians about this not-so-secret agenda could help them stem the tide and protect their minority government. But if they want the majority they entered the campaign looking for, they need to do more than just point out the flaws in how conservative governments have behaved lately. They need to make a far better case for what they want to do, and why it matters going forward.

On everything that millions of Canadians care about, from climate change to child care, the Conservative plan offers watered-down policies that are clearly tethered to the status quo. Its version of a carbon tax, after all, actually rewards people for using more fossil fuels, while the Conservatives’ child-care plan would pour concrete on the inequities that cropped up during COVID-19, as more women were forced to stay home or abandon their careers to care for their children than men.

This is a pivotal moment for Canada, one that will determine whether we rise to the challenge of climate change and the post-COVID economic recovery or shrink back to the old ways of doing things. And as governments in Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba have shown, those old ways aren’t working. The fact that Kenney and Ford are hiding from their own records is proof of that.

Time will tell whether they can stay in hiding for another three weeks or if the Liberals can draw them out into the light. But one thing is clear: in a campaign where O’Toole is trying to present himself to Canadians as a moderate, his biggest backer is now his biggest liability.