Everything you ever didn’t know you wanted to know about redrawing riding boundaries

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 10:18 AM - 0 Comments

Alice Funke offers a guide to riding boundary process and some interesting background on the current fuss around Saskatchewan.

Far from the earshot or awareness of Ottawa, the last highlighted sentence set off a prairie firestorm, because of what it meant. To local Conservative Party activists in Saskatchewan it meant that party headquarters had dropped the ball on the pre-submission phase, and that from that point forward they would be fighting a rear-guard action. Fingers were pointed during a behind-closed-doors meeting for over an hour, with Ottawa bearing the brunt of the blame and resentment. Party Operations Director Jenni Byrne is said to have demanded in return that she wanted to see 8,000 submissions in the public hearing phase against the ending of the rurban seat boundaries.

… The Prime Minister asserted yesterday that 75% of interventions in the public hearing phase had opposed the rurban boundaries, but CBC Saskatchewan reporter Stefani Langenegger questioned on Twitter after her interview with Justice Mills whether those numbers were a bit of a stretch. They certainly didn’t include any of the pre-submissions from the first round of public input. The Prime Minister and party robo-calls also claimed that the old rurban boundaries represented the history and traditions of Saskatchewan representation. This is a little ironic, as when the 1966 redistribution (the first conducted under the newly independent EBRA) recommended two rurban seats each in Regina and Saskatoon, then-Conservative leader John Diefenbaker complained that they did not follow the “historical” precedent until 1966 of all-urban Regina and Saskatoon seats, proving that where you stand depends so often on where you sit.

The Conservative fight against new ridings in Saskatchewan

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 9:30 PM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski says Conservative party director of operations Jenni Byrne is responsible for the “deceptive” robocalls in Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, Leslie MacKinnon goes through the boundary commission’s report to check the public backlash that the Conservatives say they’re representing.

The Saskatchewan commission, in its final report issued in December, noted that it heard 230 public submissions, far more than it had expected, and found that “a majority opposed the proposal.” However, it said, a “significant minority supported it,” without giving any figures. The commission also reported it had been sent 3,000 emails, including many identical postcards and petitions. It concluded, “Clearly, a large number of contacts were inspired by the encouragement of members of Parliament opposed to the abolition of rural-urban hybrid districts.”

The report went on to say, “The Commission has little doubt that the general public accepts the new electoral districts,” without giving any reasons why it believed this to be true. However, it said, it had ignored contacts it considered were attempting to gain political advantage for any party.

The 25 most important people in Ottawa

By John Geddes, Paul Wells, Jonathon Gatehouse, Julie Smyth, Aaron Wherry and Michael Petrou - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Ask around about the attributes of influence in the federal government during Stephen Harper’s rule. The answers will vary widely depending on who’s doing the talking, but certain elements will pop up with intriguing regularity. Just about everyone, for instance, agrees that power these days tilts westward. And, sure enough, the top three on our list—the Prime Minister himself, inevitably, followed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the governor of the Bank of Canada—all hail from Alberta.

Yet Harper had little to do with the rise of Beverley McLachlin and Mark Carney. So is this top-of-the-list cluster of Albertans mere happenstance, or a true sign of a pattern of power? One thing it isn’t, we promise, is a contrivance. Maclean’s writers and editors compiled this admittedly subjective list based on our own combined experience covering Ottawa’s most important people, tested against the sage insights of political strategists, veterans of the public service and lobbyists who make it their business to size up the city’s elite.

What makes one partisan or public servant, public figure or private power broker seem to matter more than another can be mysterious. In some cases, managerial style lifted a figure into our sights, like McLachlin’s subtle touch with the nine egos on the top court, or the way top bureaucrat Wayne Wouters boosts the morale of a public service whose pinnacle he commands. Often power flows in well-worn channels, as through the offices of the finance or foreign minister. Sometimes, though, someone cracks the institutional edifice, and influence streams in unexpectedly. Look at what Kevin Page has done as the first parliamentary budget officer. Continue…

Harper’s carbon tax smokescreen

By Paul Wells - Friday, September 21, 2012 at 11:31 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

The Conservatives could not possibly have made it more obvious that they were itching for a week’s worth of headlines about the NDP’s environmental policy. They could not be happier that the NDP has obliged them. Eventually the NDP will figure all of this out.

On Sept. 2, Ottawa newsrooms received copies of “a memo from Conservative campaign manager Jenni Byrne to the Conservative caucus.” I put that last bit in quotation marks because Byrne, like her predecessor Doug Finley, doesn’t ever “write to the caucus” unless she wants to see what she writes appear in the newspapers. Leaking a “secret memo” is cheaper than buying ad space and guarantees better play.

Byrne’s message to Canadians was that it was “important to ensure Canadian middle-class families understand the threat posed by Thomas Mulcair’s risky and dangerous economic plan.”

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‘The Conservative Party of Canada ran a clean and ethical campaign’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12:09 PM - 0 Comments

A statement from Jenni Byrne, national campaign manager for the Conservative party.

The Conservative Party of Canada ran a clean and ethical campaign and would never tolerate such activity. The Party was not involved with these calls and if anyone on a local campaign was involved they will not play a role in a future campaign.

Voter suppression is extremely serious and if anything improper occurred those responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.We spent the entire campaign identifying supporters and we worked hard to get them out to vote.

Our job is to get votes out, we do not engage in voter suppression.

The NDP have written to the Commissioner of Canada Elections to outline their concerns.

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 15 Comments

From the pages of last week’s issue, a short profile of Jenni Byrne, the Conservative campaign director.

Jenni Byrne, one of Ottawa’s highest-ranking tacticians, does not speak to reporters. But 14 years ago, she was both less powerful and less reticent. And so when an Ottawa Citizen reporter sought out young people to comment on the growing number of conservatives under the age of 30 in Canada, Byrne was willing to explain herself. Described as “a believer in debt reduction and tax cuts” who joined the Reform party at 16, she was then the 21-year-old president of the campus Reform club at the University of Ottawa. “It’s great for them to say don’t cut here or there, but they won’t be the ones affected by [the debt],” she said then of her parents. “They’re in their late 40s and they will probably still benefit from government programs. But Canada looks like a bleak place for me by the time I’m their age.”

Jenni Byrne: the (other) woman behind Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 9:36 AM - 14 Comments

Jill Propp/PMO

Jenni Byrne, one of Ottawa’s highest-ranking tacticians, does not speak to reporters. But 14 years ago, she was both less powerful and less reticent. And so when an Ottawa Citizen reporter sought out young people to comment on the growing number of conservatives under the age of 30 in Canada, Byrne was willing to explain herself. Described as “a believer in debt reduction and tax cuts” who joined the Reform party at 16, she was then the 21-year-old president of the campus Reform club at the University of Ottawa. “It’s great for them to say don’t cut here or there, but they won’t be the ones affected by [the debt],” she said then of her parents. “They’re in their late 40s and they will probably still benefit from government programs. But Canada looks like a bleak place for me by the time I’m their age.”

That sentiment sounds similar to the doom Stephen Harper presently foretells if he is defeated by one or all of his political opponents. A doom that Byrne, as director of the Conservative campaign, is now charged with ensuring never comes to pass.

“I think she’s long since established herself as Harper’s single best political organizer,” says Ian Brodie, Harper’s former chief of staff. That is no small compliment given the vaunted nature of both Harper as a political operator and the Conservative party as a partisan machine. And it is part of a reputation for both political skill and strident partisanship that precedes the low-profile Byrne.

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GiornoWatch: Afternoon of the medium-length knives

By kadyomalley - Monday, July 14, 2008 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

(To read the early edition of GiornoWatch, click here.)

The latest from Langevin Block:

Mark Cameron won’t have to worry about being lonely when he sets up shop in the shiny new Office of Plans and Priorities. He’ll soon be joined by former deputy communications director Christine Csversko, as well as Bob Klager, until recently director of planning over at the People’s Republic of Patrick Muttart. What will they be doing? Your guess is as good as ours. (Really,  “plans and priorities”? Was “stuff and things” already taken?)
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