Jenni Byrne, campaign manager to Pierre Poilievre, has announced she won’t be reprising her role for the next time Canada goes to the polls.Speaking to the Beyond the Ballot podcast, Byrne said she would be stepping back a bit from politics to concentrate more on her consulting business going forward, but will continue on as an advisor for the Conservative Party.Politico reports that she told host Rachel Segal that she still talks to the party’s caucus, dips into policy files, and offers advice to party fundraisers and convention organizers.“I speak to people on a daily basis, and I’m going to continue to do that, but I’ve stepped back from the day-to-day,” she said.Byrne — who has been a prominent figure in conservative circles for years and was once called “the most powerful woman in Ottawa” — played a crucial role in Poilievre’s 2022 Conservative leadership bid, helping to propel him to victory..During the 2025 federal election, she served as Poilievre’s campaign director and courted controversy early on in the campaign as she implemented a media strategy which involved excluding the traditional travelling press corps, instead opting for party-edited video feeds of Poilievre’s events on the campaign trail.According to Policy Magazine, Byrne sent out a letter to media groups saying the new policy would reflect the realities of the media and provide all the access reporters would require.Byrne defended the decision on the podcast, saying that the media bosses who were paying the bills weren’t complaining.“Privately, most of the executives that we spoke to leading into this decision, although they might not have said so to their reporters, to save face, they were quite happy with the decision,” Byrne said.She also predicted “most campaigns” will eschew media buses going forward as well..During the 2025 campaign, Poilievre let a 20-point lead in the polls evaporate, as a rejuvenated Liberal Party under a new leader surged forward, winning a minority government for the third straight term.Byrne came under fire for failing to see the shift in the sands, in particular not detecting that Poilievre was in trouble in his own riding of Carleton early enough.“I do wish that we had seen what was happening in Pierre’s riding sooner than what we did,” Byrne lamented.“I’m not sure what we could have done about it at the time, because it would have … been late, so late that moving seats would have been strange, and there were not a lot of seats left.”Byrne has acknowledged the sourness of losing that election when victory seemed almost a certainty at one stage, but told Conservatives to keep the faith and to “get through the summer,” believing Poilievre is still on track for the Prime Minister’s office.
