Here’s Ben Woodfinden, who had a senior role in the extraordinarily successful Conservative campaign. Wait a minute — successful? Sure, depending on how you count it. The Conservatives increased their seat count by 24, more than any other party (easy enough since only the Liberals also increased their seat count.) They won their largest share of the popular vote since Brian Mulroney’s 1988 Progressive Conservatives, the largest vote share since the founding of the current, post-2003 Conservative Party of Canada, and a larger popular-vote share than Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau ever won in three election victories each, including their majority governments.
The Conservatives also lost the election, and thus failed to keep the Liberals from forming a fourth consecutive government. Carbon Tax Carney turned out to be Just Like Justin in this much, at least: He’s the prime minister. And Poilievre lost his seat. And it will be interesting to see whether the Conservatives can keep the momentum going, given that they are currently fresh out of momentum.
Woodfinden has mixed feelings about all of this. He remains a Conservative loyalist. He was happy enough to leave the Hill. I think he’s still surprised he was ever on it. He was a doctoral student at McGill who wrote a sympathetic analysis of Pierre Poilievre’s “gatekeeper” rhetoric for The Hub in 2022, and the next thing you know he was on the payroll. This was not a particularly common pathway to influence in Poilievre’s party. I’m understating for comic effect. It was a highly unusual pathway to influence in Poilievre’s party.
The next three years went really well for Poilievre, then less so. Woodfinden is still careful in choosing his words about what worked and what didn’t, but he defends the Poilievre campaign’s decision to run on “change” rather than “Trump” even after the effort fell short. He’s less sure about elements of the party’s communication strategy and its success in appealing to a broad enough coalition. I just like the pluck of somebody who shows up for a conversation about all of this because it’ll be an interesting conversation. As indeed it was.
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I am grateful to be the Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow at McGill University, the principal patron of this podcast. Antica Productions turns these interviews into a podcast every week. Kevin Breit wrote and performed the theme music. Andy Milne plays it on piano at the end of each episode. Thanks to all of them and to you. Please tell your friends to subscribe to The Paul Wells Show on their favourite podcast app, or here on the newsletter.
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