{"id":55200,"date":"2025-08-08T19:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T19:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/55200\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T19:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T19:22:12","slug":"in-rare-interview-poilievres-campaign-chief-says-she-regrets-riding-loss-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/55200\/","title":{"rendered":"In rare interview, Poilievre\u2019s campaign chief says she regrets riding loss – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Conservative Party\u2019s 2025 federal campaign chief Jenni Byrne<\/a> says not realizing sooner that leader Pierre Poilievre<\/a> was in trouble in his riding remains one of her main regrets from the election.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI do wish that we had seen what was happening in Pierre\u2019s riding sooner than what we did,\u201d Byrne said in an interview on the \u201cBeyond a Ballot\u201d podcast<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Byrne\u2019s first since the April election, she spoke about the campaign and what\u2019s next for her following her time as one of Poilievre\u2019s top advisers.<\/p>\n

The longtime political strategist, who also served as an adviser to former prime minister Stephen Harper during his years in government, told the podcast that despite her regret about not recognizing trouble in Poilievre\u2019s riding, she isn\u2019t sure they could have done much at the time.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt would\u2019ve been late, so late that moving seats would have been strange, and there were not a lot of seats left,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In the last days of the federal campaign, there was growing speculation <\/a>that Poilievre was in danger of losing his longtime Ottawa-area riding of Carleton \u2014 a result that came to fruition<\/a> on election night when Liberal MP Bruce Fanjoy unseated the seven-term MP.<\/p>\n

Byrne said during the podcast that Poilievre previously addressed this following his loss, but said the seat had changed \u201ca lot\u201d in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

However, she added Poilievre\u2019s remarks during the campaign that cuts would be made to the federal public service may have upset voters in his riding, which is rural in some areas while also being home to a growing number of subdivisions in Ottawa\u2019s southwestern suburbs.<\/p>\n

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Poilievre is currently seeking to return to Parliament in the byelection for the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot on Aug. 18.<\/p>\n

She was also asked about the party losing its fourth straight election, despite most polls in early January showing they had a 20-point lead that rapidly narrowed after former prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned and U.S. President Donald Trump entered office.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPoilievre calls \u2018longest ballot\u2019 protest in his new riding a \u2018scam\u2019\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Pointing to the results the Conservatives got in the popular vote, 41 per cent, Byrne said they stayed about where polls predicted they\u2019d land in terms of percentage, but NDP and Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois votes shifted.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe factor was that there were a certain segment of people that looked at Carney as change, and you had NDP voters, and Bloc voters for that matter, who kind of were concerned about Trump, and they went to Carney,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Byrne defended the campaign\u2019s focus on affordability and cost of living even as Trump became a focus of the federal election.<\/p>\n

Byrne said she had spoken with voters who said the party\u2019s focus on affordability and housing appealed to them.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe didn\u2019t get distracted in terms of Trump. Did we talk about Trump, every single day \u2026 it just didn\u2019t mean that that was going to be the only thing that we talked about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Liberals wanted to talk about Trump. I think they were trying to bait us into talking about Trump, and from a practical point of view, I don\u2019t know what we would have said every day. It would have turned off or at least, not turned off, but demotivated the group of people that ended up coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked what\u2019s next, Byrne confirmed she will stay on as an adviser for the Conservatives and Poilievre, but she won\u2019t be leading the national campaign whenever the next federal election is held.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve stepped back from the day-to-day and I am not going to run the next campaign,\u201d she said. \u201cFor me, when I run campaigns, it is a full-time job.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPoilievre begins political comeback attempt on sidelines of Parliament\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

She said she wants to give her full time to her consulting business.<\/p>\n

Byrne also criticized Carney, saying there\u2019s been \u201cno change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCarney speaks a big game, but he\u2019s not accomplished anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u2019s changed on immigration, nothing has changed on crime, and also he seems to be stringing the premiers and everyone along in terms of the 20 nation-building projects. It looks like we\u2019re nowhere closer to getting those.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why, she added, she believes Poilievre remains the right leader for the Conservatives and that party members just need to be patient for him to become prime minister.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unfortunately going to be a two-step process as opposed to a one-step process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\u2014 With files from Global News\u2019 Alex Boutilier<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Conservative Party\u2019s 2025 federal campaign chief Jenni Byrne says not realizing sooner that leader Pierre Poilievre was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,36847,36848,36846,44,18277,714],"class_list":["post-55200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-election","tag-conservatives","tag-jenni-byrne","tag-news","tag-pierre-poilievre","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}