Kory Teneycke, who managed Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s three winning campaigns, recently spoke out in a podcast about Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign, accusing it of being an example of campaign malpractice.
At the Curse of Politics: The Herle Burly Political Panel podcast episode named “Do you believe in the polls?” aired on Thursday, Teneycke went off about Poilievre’s federal election campaign, blaming it for the Conservative rapid drop in the polls.
“Blowing a 25-point lead and being like 10 points down is f****** campaign malpractice at the highest f****** level. And I’m sorry to have to point that out, Conservatives, but that is the actual reality,” he said.
“This campaign is going to be studied for decades as the biggest f****** disaster in terms of having lost a massive lead in ways that were so obvious, with so much information.”
The Conservatives had been leading election polls with a two-digit advantage over Liberals since 2022, but quickly started dropping ever since former prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned earlier this year.
The most recent polls released on Friday by Liaison Strategies for the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada (NEPMCC) revealed that the Liberals are leading with 44 per cent over Conservatives’ 39 per cent, further pushing the Liberal advantage.
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At a rally for Poilievre on Wednesday in Brampton, Ont., Conservative supporters appeared wearing campaign merch and holding up signs that read “Do you believe in the polls?”
Speaking with reporters at the scene, some supporters said that they don’t believe in the results of the most recent election polls because they believe it to be inconsistent with the amount of people they see coming to Conservative rallies, according to the CBC.
Teneycke also suggested that the Conservatives have been ignoring the results of recent polls and hoping they aren’t right, instead of using results to favour their campaign.
“I see no evidence that they’ve actually polled and that they are actually following polling and research and anything that is even remotely conventional in how you manage a f****** campaign, and that’s why they are losing.”
The campaign manager said that while the polls suggest that Canadians are mostly concerned about how future leaders will deal with U.S. President Donald Trump and his recent tariffs imposed on Canadian goods and the auto industry, Poilievre has failed to focus on this issue throughout his campaign.
“I know I have a bad name with some people in the conservative party for pointing out in the beginning of the campaign that the election is pivoted towards Trump,” he added.
Kory Teneycke was the manager of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario three last winning campaigns in 2018, 2022, and 2025.
He was first known as the Communications Director for the Prime Minister’s office under Stephen Harper, who served as the first modern Conservative leader from 2004 to 2015.
Before that, Teneycke was also the Vice President of the Sun News Network, a joint venture between Quebecor’s subsidiaries like TVA Group and Sun Media that was first launched in 2011, and was shut down in 2015 after failing to find a new owner under a financial crisis.
Poilievre answered questions about Teneycke’s comments during a press conference Friday morning, saying that he won’t stop focusing on high living and housing costs and criticizing the “last Liberal decade.”
“Liberals and lobbyists…want me to stop talking about high food prices. Well, I’m not going to do that.” he said.
FORD REFUSES TO HELP POILIEVRE
This is not the first time that rumours of disagreements within the Conservatives have surged since Mark Carney called for a federal election earlier this year.
Last month, the Toronto Star reported that Poilievre reached out to Ford for “advice” on his federal election campaign, but was refused by the premier who said he is busy governing Ontario and would not get involved.
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A couple of days later, Ford shut down the rumours by saying that the conversation did not involve a request for help, and that he only wished “to see how each leader is going to protect Ontario.”
At the time, Poilievre also rejected the rumours, saying that instead he spoke with the premier about how to “reverse the lost Liberal decade.”
“We talk about bringing home jobs to Canada, supporting the Ring of Fire, cutting taxes, unleashing our production and reversing the lost Liberal decade of the last nine years,” he said.
