The report found the campaign team’s inexperience and too much power held with the campaign manager were leading factors in the election loss.
The Conservative Party of Canada’s internal investigation and report into how the party lost to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in the 2019 federal election found that inexperienced staff and too much top-down control of the campaign were main factors leading to the loss, despite the CPC winning the popular vote.
The report, handled by CPC party stalwart and former Harper cabinet Minister John Baird, found that two major factors in the loss of the election were inexperienced staffers and giving too much of the campaign decision-making to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s campaign manager Hamish Marshall, according to a report released by CBC on Tuesday evening.
CBC journalists spoke to multiple party sources who said the report also included the election revelations that Scheer held dual Canadian-American citizenship (despite Scheer criticizing other politicians for holding dual citizenship) and that he falsely claimed he was once a certified insurance broker.
“I have always taken full responsibility for the campaign,” Marshall told CBC. “The buck stops with me.”
Baird was tasked by Scheer to do the election campaign’s postmortem, with him reporting the findings back to Scheer.
The party caucus next meets on January 24, but it’s unclear whether the report will be shared with the Conservative MPs.
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