Both Liberal Leader Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre know the stakes of this election campaign are high: On April 28, Canadians will elect a government to lead Canada through the major geopolitical and economic realignment ushered in by the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The ultimate responsibility for a party’s campaign rests with the leader. But inside the Liberal and Conservative war rooms are professionals with decades of experience in the art and science of politics, working night and day toward the ultimate goal: winning the 2025 federal election, and with it, the chance to govern.
Here’s a look at the some of the key players.
The Liberal campaign
Andrew Bevan
Mr. Bevan was appointed campaign director in the fall of 2024. His predecessor Jeremy Broadhurst had stepped down, saying he didn’t have the energy for another campaign – while polls showed then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau with a historically low level of support. At the time, Mr. Bevan was chief of staff to then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland. He joined her team in the fall of 2023.
The budget they would put together for the next year was framed around the idea of “generational fairness” and included an increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, a policy that met with swift resistance from small businesses and families. Mr. Carney has since promised to repeal those changes. Prior to joining Ms. Freeland’s office, Mr. Bevan worked in the private sector after a long career in provincial Liberal politics, including time as Ontario Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s chief of staff.
Tom Pitfield
Mr. Pitfield is the CEO of Data Sciences, an analytics company aligned with the Liberal Party since Mr. Trudeau ran for leadership in 2013 – Mr. Pitfield and Mr. Trudeau are long-time personal friends. The company has been contracted by the party for years to manage voter-relations software and membership data. Mr. Pitfield’s firm was also part of the British Labour Party’s election win last year.
In 2020, he gave an interview to the Quebec publication L’Actualité where he reflected on the role of data in campaigns. “We don’t do miracles,” he said in French, adding that parties can’t win if people don’t want them to. “But our analyses show that, even when things go wrong, our work can lessen the fall. And if there are tight races, usually we win.”
Mr. Pitfield was involved in the very early days of Mr. Carney’s leadership bid but had to step aside because of his company’s work with the party. He’s back on the campaign, however, as the executive director and strategist. Mr. Pitfield is also a founder of a progressive think tank called Canada 2020. Mr. Carney became chair of the organization’s executive advisory board in 2022.
Braeden Caley
Mr. Caley is also a campaign director. He has been involved in Liberal campaigns since 2015, and served as the party’s senior director of communications from 2016 until 2022. He then became the president and CEO of Canada 2020, starting at the organization at the same time as Mr. Carney. Events during Mr. Caley’s tenure often featured an appearance by Mr. Carney. During one in 2023, on climate policy, Mr. Carney was asked what he made of the Liberal government’s decision to pause the carbon levy on home heating fuel – a move Mr. Trudeau billed as addressing affordability. Mr. Carney praised the Liberal record on climate change, saying Canadians weren’t struggling because of the carbon price, and he would have looked for ways to provide support other than lifting the levy. Mr. Carney has since gone on to repeal the entire consumer carbon price.
Andrée-Lyne Hallé
Ms. Hallé holds the role of national campaign co-director. She worked for the Trudeau Liberal government for nearly seven years including in both the deputy prime minister’s office as well as in the prime minister’s office, where she assisted with strategy and issues management. She left government and went to work for Alstom, a major transportation company, before coming back into politics for this election.
Gerry Butts
Mr. Butts is an adviser to the campaign. He and Mr. Trudeau became friends in university. Mr. Butts would go on to be a key player in Mr. Trudeau’s decision to run for party leadership and then the Liberals’ majority win in 2015. Mr. Butts then became Mr. Trudeau’s principal secretary. Among other things, he helped craft the Liberals’ national carbon pricing program. Mr. Butts resigned in 2019 during the SNC-Lavalin scandal. He is now vice chairman and a senior adviser at Eurasia Group, a political consultancy firm. Mr. Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney, has worked as an adviser for Eurasia Group. Former CTV journalist Evan Solomon, who had been running GZERO media, a subsidiary of that firm, is now running to be a Liberal MP in a Toronto riding.
In November, Mr. Butts gave an interview to GZERO on what a second Trump presidency could mean for Canada. Among his observations: the importance of a relationship between a prime minister and president is “overblown.” He also said “I’d be tempted to use the crisis presented by the Trump administration to fix some things about the structure of the Canadian economy that badly need fixing.” A theme of Mr. Carney’s campaign is finishing the “the job of building that Canadian economy,” and he is promising major reforms to issues that include how government budgets are structured, productivity, internal trade and resource development.
The Conservative campaign
Jenni Byrne
Ms. Byrne is a dominant figure in conservative circles, rising in the ranks of political operatives since her days as a teenage member of the Reform Party. She honed her national campaign organization skills working with Doug Finley, the architect of the Conservative victories in 2006 and 2008 election campaigns, and she then helped steer the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives to a majority victory in 2011.
Along the way, she spent 10 years in a romantic relationship with Mr. Poilievre, which ended prior to that campaign. She also worked in Mr. Harper’s office during his tenure as prime minister, but was sidelined from the 2015 campaign amid conflict over candidates and policy. Ms. Byrne has oversight and influence over nearly ever element of the current campaign. She also runs a consulting firm called Jenni Byrne and Associates. Ms. Byrne is described by friends as funny and loyal. Her professional reputation is one of a demanding task master, who is both revered and feared by those she works with. Tensions over how she was running the party’s war room briefly burst into the open early in the campaign.
Matt Wolf
Mr. Wolf is a long-time conservative political operative. In the years before signing on to do strategic work with the Poilievre Conservatives, he was in charge of issues management for then-Alberta premier Jason Kenney, and he also worked with Mr. Kenney when he was a federal cabinet minister. Mr. Wolf’s work in Alberta came under scrutiny several times, including after comments he made about the COVID-19 pandemic being over just before a massive wave hit Alberta, and personal and pointed online attacks he launched against critics of the Kenney government. Wolf also played a role in starting up the conservative news outlet Sun News TV, which was on the air between 2011 and 2015. The founder of the network was Kory Teneycke, a Conservative strategist who publicly lambasted the Poilievre campaign’s strategy early on, saying it was out of sync with the tariff war.
Howard Anglin
Mr. Anglin came back to Ottawa from his studies at Oxford University to help Mr. Poilievre on the campaign, though has been advising him from afar over the past few years. Mr. Anglin worked directly for Mr. Harper in the prime minster’s office, serving as deputy chief of staff, and he was also the principal secretary to Mr. Kenney when he was premier of Alberta. Mr. Anglin was also chief of staff for Mr. Kenney when he was immigration minister in the Harper government. Mr. Anglin has written publicly on numerous subjects, including constitutional issues and politics. In 2018, he reflected on the trade tensions between Canada and the U.S. at the time and the fact interprovincial trade barriers weren’t helping Canada. “Within their provincial bailiwicks, our premiers are pint-sized Trumps and Trudeaus, simultaneously demanding fairness from their neighbours and special protections for their own industries.” Pledges to remove those barriers are now a part of the economic agendas for this campaign.
Ben Woodfinden
Mr. Woodfinden was hired as Mr. Poilievre’s communications director soon after the end of the Conservative leadership campaign. Before joining his circle officially, Mr. Woodfinden wrote for the online publication The Hub, and many of his observations about how Mr. Poilievre could build a new Conservative movement bore out through Mr. Poilievre’s successful leadership bid. Both in the Opposition Leader’s office and now, he assists with the overarching messaging of the campaign.
Brooke Pigott
Ms. Pigott runs polling and focus groups for the campaign. She is the lead researcher at Yorkville Strategies, a public opinion research firm based in Vancouver. Ms. Pigott spent eight years working in market research for the Harper government, including as the director of public opinion work in Mr. Harper’s office. She’s also a close friend of Ms. Byrne.
Other players
Mr. Poilievre has also reshaped the party’s internal operations, bringing in a new executive director – Mike Crase, the former executive director of the Ontario PC Party – and lawyer Robert Staley as chief of the party’s’ fundraising arm. Jeremy Liedtke, who managed Mr. Poilievre’s leadership bid, is the party’s director of operations. All three are part of the campaign, as are policy and media staff from the Opposition leader’s office. Paul Taillon of MASH Strategy, a marketing and creative strategy firm, is also assisting on the campaign. The company was a key part of Mr. Poilievre’s leadership bid and has also been working with him and the party in Opposition.
Election 2025: More from The Globe and Mail
The Decibel podcast
In each week of the campaign, The Decibel convenes a panel of journalists to make sense of major issues. In this instalment, Stephanie Levitz, Shannon Proudfoot and Jason Kirby look at the uncertainty around U.S. tariffs and fractures within Pierre Poilievre’s ranks. Subscribe for more episodes.
East to West
In one of Ontario’s poorest ridings, a job coach braces for a busy season as Trump’s tariffs sting
This B.C. riding broke ground for the Greens. But its mostly senior population is eyeing a change
In Manitoba’s Wheat City, uncertainty over tariffs is causing frustration