The campaign of the conservative leader Pierre Hairy is desperately needing reset, according to some veterans of militants and veterans strategists.
The question is whether the former favorite of the next Prime Minister of Canada and his inner circle will recognize and tackle that Donald Trump, not carbon taxes or crime, is the question of urns, the sources of Global News say.
The world has changed with the election of the US President Trump last year, but seven veteran conservative activists warned Hairy seems to fight yesterday’s fights.
“These are not small waves that cling to the shore. Trump stuff are as serious as tsunamis that crush through trees and buildings and bulldozer on their way. They wiped the whole number that sparked the table for most of the electorate, and that’s right,” said Kory Teneycke, the first Stephen Doug Ford. Director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Teneycke worked with Hairyvre and its campaign director, Jenni Byrne, during the Harper era. He also gave a scathing examination of the conservative campaign so far in a speech Thursday evening at the Toronto Empire Club – a rare public intervention of a supporter so early in a campaign.
“You react either to (Trump) or you drown in walnut,” Tineycke told Global News.
There was a spectacular reversal of fortunes. Only three months ago, the Conservatives had led the Liberals by two -digit percentage points in most national polls, and seemed on the right track to form a majority government.
Then Trudeau left. And then Trump threatened several times to annex the country.
Suddenly, the Hairy match plan established for the elections – reducing taxes, building houses, “repairing” the federal budget and fighting crime – was put in sky. The threat of Trump’s economic war against Canada took all oxygen.
Several conservative sources describe a Shambolic central campaign with an isolated leader. Most sources have spoken of the condition that they are not named, in order to speak frankly about the campaign and the internal policy of the parties.
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These are not people who want the conservatives to lose. These are people who have volunteered or have worked for the conservative party for years and on several campaigns, and who speak daily to the other conservatives of the state of the race.
These people know each other, worked together and fought in the trenches through difficult campaigns. And yet, they were almost uniform in their criticism of the way Hairy man managed the changing political situation.
“Everyone wants them to earn, in fact, really. (The conservatives) do not want the liberals to win, even people who do not like Pierre in different parts of the party,” said a conservative source, a long -standing party member and veteran of several federal campaigns.
“But it is as if they were in their own way. They are not willing to do the things they have to do to win … and they are always Sh-Tting on Ontario PCs, and it’s like, I’m sorry, these people won a majority a month ago. They could have something to say to you.”
The fact that they speak frankly, although anonymously, of a failing campaign at this stage is surprising.
“Excessive confidence, the arrogance and wickedness of the Hairyvre group have really started to injure them a little,” a second longtime source of celebration told Global News.
The source said that even if the Conservatives had been impeccable in the past year and the first week of the campaign, the situation presented by Trump would still be difficult.
“To be fair to them, the big orange threat … every day … it’s not as simple as (some) do,” added the source.
“I cannot think of a conservative campaign that saw the wheels detach so quickly and so hard and so early. (Thursday was) on the fourth day, and everyone is already flowing with fire hair,” said a third source, a veteran of many federal campaigns.
“They have not been prepared. The floor game is a complete and total mess,” added the source, referring to the organization of the campaign and communication with local candidates.
The conservative campaign has a strict hierarchy, with hairy at the top, Byrne as his chief advisor, then everyone. Several sources have said that leadership has decreased from help and external advice despite its signaling fortune in the national survey.
Addressing journalists in British Columbia Thursday, Hairyvre minimized concerns concerning the support of his campaign.
“We will wait for the Canadians to make the choice on the day of the ballot, and this choice will be as follows: after the lost liberal loss of the increase in costs and crime and the economy under the thumb of America, do the liberals deserve a fourth mandate in power?” Said Hairyvre.
Only a few weeks ago, the conservative candidates told Global News that despite the ballot numbers, the party had to remain focused on the same questions they had since the success of Hairyvre.
But the conservatives who spoke to Global on Thursday and Friday expressed their frustration in the face of the incapacity of the party to be pivoted for the moment, despite two years of preparation and planning. A fourth source close to the hairy camp said that the campaign needed a correction – but that it must always speak to other problems that Canadians face rather than Trump.
“I think that (campaign leadership) is very aware that they are in a difficult and extremely competitive environment,” said the source.
“I would not say that they do not know that the situation is difficult, but they seem very coherent and very tight. I therefore consider it to be fundamentally different from (the 2015 campaign), and that’s a good thing.”
According to the first source, the regular drum of negative news has created a tense situation at the party’s headquarters in Ottawa.
“There are all these people in the war hall that have never worked a campaign before, there is no senior, a person in security,” said the source.
“I literally receive messages from people from the war room, saying:” I fear being fired every day. It’s miserable.
The latest IPSOS survey for Global News had the liberals with support of 42%, followed by conservatives at 36%. The Ipsos numbers, published last week, put the NPD at 10% support.
But because conservative support is concentrated in the western Canadian provinces such as Alberta and Saskatchewan, the projections for the counting of the party seats tell a much more disastrous story for the chances of the party.
The survey aggregator 338Canada.com – which examines the survey published by publication of several companies – currently provides that the Liberals won 187 seats, just north of the number of seats necessary to guarantee a majority mandate.
The website provides that preservatives earn 127, only a slight improvement in relation to their results in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Hairy is campaigning in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Friday before making stops in Winnipeg on Saturday and North York, Ontario on Sunday.
The conservative campaign is expected to start next week in Atlantic Canada, a region that has firmly happened to the Liberals in recent public polls.