“I am not that interesting of a person,” Jenni Byrne stated at the start of her 60-minute interview on the Beyond the Ballot podcast last week.

Speaking with co-host Rachael Segal, the Conservative Party’s now-former campaign manager gave her first post-election interview on Aug. 8.

A self-described homebody with a type-A personality who got her start on the Hill volunteering for then-Reform MP Grant McNally in her early 20s, and who prides herself on being loyal, Byrne dismissed the notion that she was once—according to The Globe and Mail in 2015—the most powerful woman in Ottawa.

“I don’t think that is true,” she told Segal. “I think that the chattering class within Ottawa love to gossip, love to talk about inside baseball. Nobody knows who campaign operatives are outside of the Beltway,” she said, using a Washington, D.C., reference. 

Byrne confirmed that while she’s still advising the Conservative Party, she will not be leading its next election campaign, and sought to debunk some of the post-campaign analysis blaming her for the party’s performance on April 28.

“If they think that I was a one-person machine who was making every decision about the campaign by myself like I was some Rasputin or Svengali, they don’t know how campaigns are run, they don’t know Pierre [Poilievre],” Byrne said, noting that, ultimately, all decisions rest with the leader, in whom she has “100 per cent” confidence.

She confirmed she still stands by most campaign decisions, including Poilievre’s interview with Jordan Peterson, the lack of tour bus for journalists—“I predict most campaigns will go that way in the next [election],” she said—and the party’s tight messaging.

“I think discipline is one of the biggest factors in winning campaigns,” said Byrne, adding there were “no gaffes to speak of” in the 2025 election compared to past campaigns. “Pierre was extremely disciplined in the campaign; I’d say disciplined, and not distracted. We stuck to our message in terms of affordability, and we didn’t get distracted in terms of [United States President Donald] Trump. Did we talk about Trump? Every single day.” 

Speaking of Trump, Byrne shared her concern with how the latest tariffs will affect Canada’s economy: “I think everyone hopes there is some form of deal or some form of reprieve on that because … if Ontario starts to teeter, then it’s going to have a domino effect across the country,” but—news flash—she isn’t hopeful that Prime Minister Mark Carney will live up to his promises. 

She’s also watching the NDP, which she concedes was one of two factors—the other being Trump—that were beyond her control during the campaign.

“It will be interesting to see where they end up in terms of moving forward,” she said of the party, musing that there may be a future “where the NDP is no factor” in Canada’s federal political scene.

Byrne told Segal she has “no idea” who will succeed her as campaign manager, but that she’ll be available to help prepare for the next election.

“I have heard there are rumours the Liberals want to go three-and-a-half, four years, and then you hear rumours they want to go earlier in terms of next year. I don’t think they know, so I think all of it is just speculation, but we’ve got to be ready.”

Is there a doctor in the House? Pollster looks at 124 years of MPs’ pre-election jobs

Pollster Alex Kohut recently dove deep into historical data on which jobs make for successful political candidates.

In an Aug. 6 Substack article titled “Does the Profession of a Political Candidate Matter at the Ballot Box?” the former Liberal staffer explained how he combed through Parliament’s elections database, which is “not entirely comprehensive on the subject of occupation,” noting the data is self-reported. 

He found that lawyers have dominated ballots from 1900 to 2024, with about 10 per cent of all candidates for the past 124 years having “declared themselves to be either a ‘lawyer’ (3,305) or a ‘barrister’ (960).”

In second place are candidates self-identifying as “parliamentarian” or “Member of Parliament.” Explains Kohut: “Parliamentarians (winning 80 per cent of the time) make the most successful candidates of any of the most common occupations because definitionally they are people who have successfully won elections in the past. But that’s not a useful finding when investigating what backgrounds lead candidates to have success when they first run for office.” He noted that while there have always been incumbents reoffering, since the 1970s, “there are more self-identified ‘Parliamentarians’ running in elections than ‘lawyers’.”

Physician is the third-most successful pre-political career. “Polling regularly shows that physicians are the most trusted profession in Canada, so it’s not shocking to see voters eager to back medical experts at the voting booth,” writes Kohut.

On the flip side, the jobs that resulted in the least success at the ballot box were “students,” with only 14 wins on 1,099 attempts; unemployed; truck driver; “very blue-collar jobs like steelworkers, factory workers and mechanics”; “political organizer”; artistic professions, and “a [zero] per cent win rate for professional wrestlers in federal politics.”

Sergio Marchi’s forthcoming book a how-to guide to public life

Former Liberal cabinet minister Sergio Marchi has a new book coming out in November. 

Published by Dundurn Press, Pursuing a Public Life: How to Succeed in the Political Arena is scheduled to be released in paperback and ebook on Nov. 4, and features a foreword by Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations.

“Do you relish the thought of serving in public life, but don’t know where to start? With the honesty of experience, distinguished politician Sergio Marchi clearly spells out all the practical steps that you need to follow,” reads the book description on the publisher’s website. 

Over 352 pages, Marchi “shares the adventures, policy decisions, and lessons learned” over his 30-year career in Canadian politics “in an effort to shed light on the inner workings of a public life, from nomination meetings, to campaigning, to governing, to make it easier for those interested in making a difference to take the plunge into an exciting, meaningful, and purposeful profession.”

A Toronto-area Liberal MP from 1984 to 1999, Marchi served as Jean Chrétien’s minister of trade and later of immigration. He was later appointed as Canada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization.

Gander deputy mayor bumps into retired senator Baker

Deputy mayor of Gander, N.L., Bettina Ford bumped into former parliamentarian George Baker last week in her town.

“It was a casual parking lot encounter that turned into a meaningful conversation,” Ford posted on Facebook on Aug. 2. Ford noted Baker has “been a mentor since I worked on [his] campaigns as a teenager,” and thanked him for his “encouragement and wise advice to always focus” as Ford herself prepares to enter provincial politics as Gander District’s Liberal candidate in the province’s upcoming Oct. 14 election.

Baker served as a Newfoundland and Labrador MP from 1974 to 2002, was Jean Chrétien’s veteran affairs minister from August 1999 to October 2000, and was appointed to the Senate in 2002 by Chrétien. He retired in 2017. Still energetic, the now 83-year-old Baker reportedly walks around Cobb’s Pond in Gander each morning—a 4.5-kilometre route.

cleadlay@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times