Conservatives expected to point fingers at Poilievre's campaign manager during election post-mortem

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is expected to hear on Tuesday from caucus members’ discontent over mistakes made over the course of the campaign, with fingers pointing to campaign manager Jenni Byrne. Conservative MPs and insiders who spoke to National Post did not lay the blame on Poilievre, whom they said was busy crisscrossing the country, but rather the operational and internal decisions spearheaded by Byrne during the campaign. They pointed to messy nominations which they said angered their base, as well as rules against speaking freely to the media and their constituents. They also brought up the campaign’s choice not to pivot after Justin Trudeau’s departure, Mark Carney’s arrival as Liberal leader, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s frequent interference in the election. One MP, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, said it was especially difficult to get anything done with Byrne having the final say on things, and that regional organizers were often left waiting for her approval. “In terms of the campaign, the game plan was followed. What we didn’t like was the lack of flexibility… Everything went through her,” said the MP. Another MP said there were issues with the level of control exerted by party headquarters during the campaign, from advising candidates against participating in local debates to requiring approvals before doing media interviews and engaging on social media. Some campaigns and candidates did eventually attend debates and speak to reporters anyway. “They had an obsession with control and power consolidation over competency and achieving results,” the MP said. Another issue they raised was how the team of candidates and incumbents the Conservatives ran was “heavily underutilized.” The first MP agreed the leader should have showcased more of his team or his potential ministers during the campaign, but said it was unclear if that was Poilievre’s decision or Byrne’s. “I think caucus and staff in general, pretty much everyone is united behind Pierre, and there is no one that thinks he doesn’t deserve to stick around, as far as I can tell,” added a Conservative source, also speaking on a not-for-attribution basis to talk more freely. The source added it was almost inevitable that Byrne would be blamed for some of the issues that arose during the campaign. “People just know that she was the top dog, and she was the one that was pulling the strings behind the scenes,” said the source. “So, I think, inevitably, when there’s some soul-searching afterwards, she is the one that people are going to talk about first.” On Monday, Poilievre broke his silence for the first time since his party was defeated in the election. In a video on X, he is seen walking with wife Anaida in the rural Alberta riding of Battle River—Crowfoot where he will be running in a soon-to-be-called by-election.

Canada is worth fighting for. pic.twitter.com/cT0r0UI2rG— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) May 5, 2025

“It didn’t go how we wanted,” he said of the results. “But when you get knocked down, you get up and get going.” Poilievre said there is “a lot to be thankful for” including the tens of thousands of supporters who packed rally halls, the 2.3 million extra votes for his party, the 25 extra seats added to his caucus, as well as breakthroughs in Ontario and British Columbia. “Now, it wasn’t enough. We didn’t get over the finish line, which means that I need to learn and grow, and our team needs to expand,” he said. “That will be my mission, and we’ve got a path … to get elected back into Parliament as soon as possible.” Former minister Peter MacKay, who held a rally with Poilievre during the campaign, was especially critical of Byrne and the campaign team whom he said “dropped the ball” in terms of getting the leader re-elected in his Ottawa-area riding of Carleton. “That’s not Pierre Poilievre’s fault. He’s trying to crisscross the country and get to as many places as he possibly can. Surely, job one of the campaign team is to win the riding of the leader,” said MacKay. Poilievre ultimately lost his seat by more than 4,000 votes to the Liberal candidate. MacKay called that unexpected outcome “an enormous, big, hairy, knuckle-dragging gorilla in the room.” MacKay also criticized the nomination process, which in some cases saw prospective candidates pushed away to the detriment of lesser-known candidates. He said “one of the very distinguishing features of conservativism is to be most respectful of the membership and grassroots” and that has been “whittled away” under the current campaign team. He also said he did not understand why the party did not have a full slate of candidates ready to go. “The Conservatives were banging away for two years calling for an election. How on God’s green earth are we left with 90 unfilled nominations when the writ drops?” A third MP told National Post they also had questions about how nominations were run, but also why the campaign waited until about midway through the race to begin talking about “change.” On Tuesday, the Conservative caucus is expected to have a packed agenda which will include appointing a new interim leader and a new caucus president, as well as choosing whether to use the Reform Act, which could allow MPs to vote on Poilievre’s leadership. All of that could depend on how the conversation goes about the changes needed to prepare themselves for the next campaign. But any criticism behind closed doors would be the reflection of the disappointment of the caucus, which was on route to form a majority government a few months ago. As one MP put it: “If we had won, everything would have been forgotten.” — With additional reporting from Stephanie Taylor National Post calevesque@postmedia.com

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