Conservative leader Pierre Poulievre is in the midst of a major overhaul of the party he has now led for two months. After members gave him a strong mandate to take the party in a new direction, Poilievre fired senior figures loyal to former leader Erin O’Toole and reopened the front bench, with new “shadow cabinet ministers” more in line with his populist tendency. . He has also redefined the party’s relationship with the Parliamentary Press Room — ditching interviews and “trash” with journalists on Parliament Hill in favor of other outlets, including media that cater to specific ethnic communities. The department has hired two new communications directors — one to serve Poilievre personally and the other to work at party headquarters. “I think that part of the problem is that, you know, we’re all obsessed with Parliament Hill,” Poulievre told reporters at a rare press conference in Vancouver on Wednesday. “The press gallery thinks it should dominate the political discourse. I think we have a great country, with people who are not necessarily part of the press gallery.” The Press Gallery of the Parliament has over 300 members from dozens of domestic and international news agencies and outlets. As the party’s economic critic, Poilievre was regularly available to Hill reporters. Since his election as leader in September, he has fielded questions from Hill reporters only once. It’s a strategy similar to that pursued by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he was in office. Harper had a frosty relationship with the press gallery.
New executive director, lawyer, communications managers
Many of the new staff chosen for the party’s top posts have long-standing ties to Poilievre and his campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, a conservative operative and lobbyist who also worked for Harper. Among Poilievre’s new hires is Mike Crase, who was recently tapped as the party’s executive director after nearly four years doing the same job for Ontario PCs. Crase and Byrne worked together in provincial politics. The party’s legal adviser, Arthur Hamilton, was replaced by Michael Wilson, an ally of Poiliev. Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to the media at the Parthenon Market in Vancouver on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Marissa Tiel (Marissa Tiel/The Canadian Press) Robert Staley, a Toronto-based lawyer and vice-chairman of the law firm Bennett Jones, is now the chairman of the Conservative Fund, the party’s powerful fundraising arm. He replaced James Dodd, a chosen one of O’Toole. Staley, who was Harper’s lawyer, worked with Byrne when she served as Harper’s deputy chief of staff and later campaign manager in the 2015 federal election. Academic and diminutive conservative thinker Ben Woodfinden has been tapped as Poilievre’s new communications director – the leader’s master of messaging and a link between Poilievre and the press. Woodfinden wrote a series of pro-Poilievre posts for The Hub, an online skills news outlet, before taking the job. He praised Poilievre’s populist approach to politics and his promise to take on “gatekeepers” like bureaucrats, regulators and others who are seen by some as making Canadian life more difficult and expensive. “There really is some substance and truth to the idea that Canada, and ordinary Canadians, are being led astray by vested financial and corporate elite watchdogs that need to be challenged,” Woodfinden wrote in a July post. “A serious pro-growth, anti-gatekeeper political agenda is at odds with the liberal vision of frivolous spending and subsidized growth, where bureaucrats pick winners and losers. It would make the next election a real battle between competing economic visions for country.”
The new communications director supported the escort protests
The Conservative Party’s new communications director was appointed last week — and it’s an appointment that has raised some eyebrows. Sarah Fisher, a former Tory candidate and House of Commons official, has been a staunch supporter of the self-styled Freedom Parade – a movement Poulievre has also backed as part of his campaign against vaccine mandates linked to COVID-19. “We will work to restore hope to a nation that will one day have a prime minister who will put people above politics and make Canada the freest country on Earth,” Fisher said in a social media post. announcing her new job. WATCHES | Protest organizers speak at emergency law inquiry:
Organizers provide alternative description of escort protests during investigation
Convoy protest spokeswoman Tamara Lich denied police asked her and other organizers to leave Ottawa during testimony at the emergency law inquiry. Meanwhile, Jeremy McKenzie, founder of the online far-right movement Diagalon, suggested he is not the national security threat the RCMP and CSIS claim, while testifying about a separate convoy protest at an Alberta border crossing. Fisher, a former policy adviser to Conservative MP Rachel Thomas, is running for the Toronto-area seat of Don Valley North in the 2019 federal election. Videos on her Facebook page posted during the procession show her thanking the people who gathered in Ottawa for the protests against the order. “I just want to say you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful,” she told the crowd. “This country belongs to you, the people, and you show it,” he said from the back of a flatbed truck in front of Parliament in January. “Thank you for showing up and for standing up for this country and for freedom.” Fisher praised the protest in a separate post on Twitter, saying there was “no other place in the world” she’d rather be as she honked at a large truck in the downtown core. Loud honking was characteristic of the truckers’ protest that disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of downtown residents. Downtown Ottawa residents told the Public Order Emergency Committee (POEC) that is studying the federal government’s use of the state of emergency law that the incessant noise has made life in the city unbearable. In an interview with the Western Standard in February, Fisher downplayed Ottawa residents’ complaints, saying that while she understood the horns “could be annoying to people,” for her “the horns were music to my ears.”
