Monday July 7, 2025 | NATIONAL NEWS LANDSCAPE from VICTORIA, BC
Political editorial analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
There’s one woman in politics that not every Canadian hears about. But among Conservatives her perspective and directives carry weight.
Jenni Byrne is described by Wikipedia as a political advisor, political commentator, and government relations expert. She is currently advisor to federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and operates her own consulting firm Jenni Byrne + Associates with a 16-person team that is geared up to “shape public policy and influence government” and provides training for “communicating with the media”.
A member of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, she is a former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former Principal Secretary to Doug Ford.
To many Conservatives she is regarded as something of a singular force behind the workings of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Consulting for Harper and Poilievre:
Byrne is credited with helping to bring Harper to great political heights (he was premier 2006 to 2015) and for the rise of Poilievre into the realm of being a household word for most Canadians.
However, both Harper and Poilievre have had notable political crashes as well.
- The Liberals under then Leader Justin Trudeau took down Harper in 2015 by riding the instinctive wave of dislike for how Harper was hardening Canadian society.
- The Liberals riding the wave of optimism of a win for Mark Carney as their next prime minister took down Poilievre in his home riding in this spring’s ekection based on a similar sensing of worry as to where Poilievre might take things for Canada.
Keep at it until it fails:
But as with most political missions, other things fall by the wayside when the focus becomes intense, aka ‘we will keep doing this because it’s working’. It’s a sort of willful blindness that people can’t possibly not see things the way we do, so failures such as Poilievre losing his Carleton seat ‘must have just been a fluke’.
Win at any cost. Keep going. But we interject this example from nature: evidently black bears in the wilderness will continue pushing against a log in a river to get past it instead of swimming around it.
In the last election in particular, Bryne set down rules that irked or seriously frustrated members of her own party in many electoral districts. And it spilled beyond that, in many cases aggravating the media as a whole who were essentially painted as the enemy.
That seemed to ‘work’ for the Conservatives. Media complained and some civically-minded voters complained but life went on.
News reporters at any level — local, provincial or national — ran into situations during Election 2025 where interviews with Conservative candidates were simply not granted. Poilievre himself — hoping to be the leader of this country — never provided any national TV news interviews. At his campaign rallies he would answer a few questions from journalists on site.
This served to lopside any attempts at balanced national coverage during the federal election campaign period (before, during and even in some cases afterward) and allowed Poilievre to benefit by the local coverage he might get from excited local news reporters getting to interview a national party leader.
It became clear to the media, the public and even the candidates that the Conservative 2025 federal election campaign was all about Poilievre.
The leader should win:
Yes, any party wants to get their leader elected. Any party will put their leader front and centre — to the point that Canadian voters often become confused about how the Canadian electoral system works (i.e. in the Canadian parliamentary system we vote for local candidates who become the representative of the electoral area where we live, not the leader).
Yes, a leader must prove his (one day her) worth to win, but to treat the rest of the party and its system like gun fodder may need to come under review. Why? Because the population’s expectations are changing and it’s important to maintain the faith that Canadians have in what we call democracy.
But the Conservatives didn’t get their leader elected in his own riding (Carleton in the Ottawa area) where Poilievre had held the seat since 2008. The party could clearly see the ballot-attack coming (over 90 names on the ballot as a sort of blasting away at the tally that Poilievre might accumulate) was known by way of national news for weeks.
The Conservative strategy approach seems to have been to just let that slide. The party was probably working on a way to find Poilievre a safe Conservative seat even before April 28 (an opportunity that quickly emerged thereafter).
The MP for Battle River-Crowfoot in the Conservative-safe seat in Alberta was presented as stepping forward to support his leader and his party when he announced his resignation in the House of Commons on May 29.
By-election profile for Poilievre:
Poilievre will now be running in a by-election in the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot on August 18. Not even Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney made that step difficult. In fact, just the opposite — he declared shortly after the Liberal win on April 28 that he would essentially ‘shoot straight’ and not unduly delay his calling of a by-election for the Conservative leader who had lost his seat.
Not a lot of Canadians will pay attention in the middle of August, being on summer vacation and all.
What might be disappointing for Canadians about all this is that the raw mechanics of politics are so clearly obviously — imparting that big party politics in Ottawa doesn’t even care to try to hide the workings of political mechanics anymore. Maybe that’s a good thing for Canadians. We’re seeing how it works.
Candidates speaking up:
What is both surprising and encouraging about any of this is how Conservative candidates (whether they won or lost on April 28)expressed finding themselves constrained in normal dealings with media and the general public.
And some nominees (who had hoped to be candidates but discovered they were run through a process that feigned as something fair and democratic) are now disgruntled.
Negative feelings were coped with during the campaign but the residue of how all this went down has not settled well with many Conservative party insiders beyond the Byrne bubble. We hear some party members are not renewing their memberships.
Liberals and NDP:
Perhaps the Liberals are pleased to see this. It keeps Conservatives preoccupied with their own internal squabbles. Perhaps the few NDP who got re-elected in April 2028 don’t see any point in paying attention to this.
What you may want:
But if you’ve read this far — even if you’re not directly involved in politics or in the Conservative Party itself — there’s something you’re sensing. Some things have stuck in the craw of folks who normally would eventually let it slide. It feels like some red lines were crossed.
You may be wanting more from your government, your political parties or your country –but not sure what to ask for or expect.
The list of people who will carry disgruntled feelings forward without forgetting includes not only Conservative candidates and unsuccessful Conservative nominees but also teams of supporters in Conservative electoral district offices, Conservatives across broader regions, and the professional media who — despite what inner core Conservative operators and the public might believe — still have the power to influence voters and the public as well as oftentimes the broader electoral system.
The social contract:
Trying to ‘not talk to media’ is actually a recognition of the power of media, aka the fourth estate. There is a social contract between a democratic population and their media — that we let professional media speak or ask on our behalf in exchange for the insights we might gain as citizens.
The Conservative Party in their inclination to deliberately exclude reasonable and timely media contact is interfering with a social contract that is more than about a political party trying to win at any cost.
Any news is good news?
News coverage garners the attention of government decision-makers. There’s a saying that ‘all news is good news’, which in many cases is true. But this situation sees the Byrne-directed Conservatives having avoided making news. They avoided putting their product in the front window — all except their leader. It was harder on most people than they realized. It was possibly an abuse of the public trust.
Democracy through politics:
Canadians believe we have a democracy in this country.
Alright, treat your own party faithful the way you like. But to have blocked media access to do their work on behalf of Canadian citizens has very likely now gone on too long from Conservative circles. This choice goes back to the Harper era, to the approach that Byrne seems to have been allowed to bring to and foster within Conservative strategies.
Has it worked for Harper and Poilievre?
One might wonder why Poilievre and Harper before him have leaned so heavily on this one strategist who delivered them two huge losses — Harper’s big fall in 2015 and Poilievre losing his seat in a strange way in 2025.
Why have Harper and Poilievre bought the exclusionary approach to media and ‘drunk the Cool Aid’ of accepting this brusque approach to winning elections?
Yes, the Conservatives did win more seats across the country in the 45th general election. But they treated Poilievre’s ‘shoot and miss’ in Carleton as a freak event. They are single-minded about their approach even though what it means to be a Conservative in Canada may have adapted and grown.
Over many decades in Canadian politics there is a general courtesy to a leader that his or her constituency will re-elect them, as responsible voters sense that the leader is part of a bigger obligation to the Canadian parliamentary system. Even still, Poilievre was turfed out on April 28, 2025. If a leader can’t win his own seat, does the public and his own party members not take notice?
The Conservative leadership review will take place in January 2026.
Elections matter:
One loss is not game over in politics, to be sure. But apparently in a recent national media interview Poilievre implied there were no lessons to be learned from losing his own seat, that it was just political warfare by the Liberals, a bump in the road.
Well if elections don’t matter, why do them? Poilievre lost for at least one reason beyond clever constituency politics. His style and approach seem no longer suited to current political and social benchmarks.
No one sets those benchmarks anywhere, they exist through the collective mind of voters and Canadians — what we will tolerate, what our boundaries act. Good politicians instinctively adapt to those changed benchmarks; they shouldn’t need to be told.
Even Canadians who don’t vote Conservative likely expect that political party leaders will carry the role in a way that inspires, that rallies something deeper.
Carney’s similar challenge:
Liberals see a similar challenge in their leader with regard to instinct. Carney is not an experienced politician — although quick with a dry-wit quip, he sometimes doesn’t to turn on a dime to public or media mood. His formula of sticking to business at hand and the longer-term business goal is effective for him right now, and he seems to have advisors who make sure he relaxes a bit in front of the camera.
Likely a lot of Carney’s notes and oft-repeated phrases are written for him, usually aligned with his goals and values for the country as he purports them. Canadians voted for him in large number because he seems to take the job seriously, which is something Canada needs to see in real-time in this country.
Even the NDP-loyalists — who may now possibly regret they sold out their long-time NDP MPs due to the Trump fear-factor and thus paved a road for Carney to the top — will likely still give Carney a long runway into an uncertain future, because a big job needs to get done.
Canada clearly needs to stand up for sovereign borders and to quickly transform the national economy. Carney is the man of the year for that, it seems to most Canadians. Times might get harder before they get better, given the economic pivot that was forced by threats from the current US administration.
Will Poilievre shift his leadership style to be able to meet that sort of moment for this country? That’s yet to be seen as he heads toward the January 2026 leadership vote.
Winning the safe seat:
By all accounts Poilievre is expected to win in the safe Conservative seat in Alberta this summer. He will be back into a more visible saddle as Leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons come September. Canadians will see his face on the day’s TV news and in social media. The jigsaw puzzle that is the federal Canadian scene might seem normal again.
But if Poilievre wants to avoid seeing Conservative members and would-be candidates fall by the wayside, he is doing a good job by continuing to follow the hard-headed party strategy to set out a directive with blinders on, and simply follow it.
Perhaps Canadians will be maturing through this process. Perhaps they have found in themselves a desire to have a political system they can dare to believe in.
Canadians might also find themselves thankful (perhaps unwittingly) that attentive media still persists to get the story, and the story behind that.
===== RELATED:
- Making room for Poilievre to get back into Parliament (June 19, 2025)
- Alberta MP steps down to make room for Poilievre by-election (May 29, 2025)
- NEWS SECTIONS: CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF CANADA | 45th CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTION | EDITORIALS