It’s impossible for me to overstate how privileged I feel to have been able to work closely with Elise Maiolino during her time at the Prime Minister’s Office.

There’s two outcomes for most people who enter political staffing - either politics changes you or you change politics - and Elise has been the latter from the moment she walked into the door at PMO. Elise took a leap of faith leaving academia to become the first ever Senior Gender and Diversity Advisor at the PMO and was a key architect of the government’s feminist agenda without ever losing sight of her exceptionally positive and optimistic approach to politics.

Whenever I proposed projects to survey staffers and advocate for changes in workplace culture she was the always my first and most enthusiastic collaborator, and I will forever be grateful to her for that. It’s rare to find voices in politics so steadfast in bringing compassion and kindness to both policy and the offices that make those policy decisions.

More recently she has been running the Ontario Liberal leadership campaign of her partner, Dylan Marando.

I managed to steal some time from her busy schedule to sit down and talk about her new book “On The Inside,” which is easily one of the best accounts I’ve seen about what it was like to practice politics in the Trudeau era and gives an excellent account of the behind-the-scenes processes that led to some of the key policy accomplishments of that government.

You can (and should!) buy her book here.

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AK: For those who don’t know you, who are you and what has been your political journey so far?

EM: Well, I am a sociologist by training, so I did a PhD in sociology at the University of Toronto. That is also where I did some teaching in the sociology program and in the public policy program. I spent four years in the Prime Minister’s Office as a senior gender and diversity advisor and following that I went on to be the global head of women’s safety policy at Uber, which took me to San Francisco and Washington DC. And then I decided to write this book.

So that’s a bit about my background, but I would say what’s not on my LinkedIn or what you don’t really know about me is that I’m also a granddaughter and a daughter and a partner and a sister and that informs who I am and was formative to the work that I did in politics and do in politics just as much as my education and as much as my titles. I wanted this book to convey that too. I think politics is very personal and the personal is very political and so for me separating those two things just doesn’t make sense.

AK: I was really struck by this excerpt from the prologue that I felt was a beautiful thesis statement for your book and an apt description of the way you approached politics in all of our interactions:

“[…] my way became the way of soft power. A subtle, resilient, often underestimated form of service that I practiced and witnessed in the rooms where decisions were made. The kind of power that isn’t celebrated in performance reviews or typically written about in business-y books but comes from listening, being kind, loving trial and error as much as trial and triumph, and refusing to become hardened by environments that can reward cynicism over care”

It’s unfortunate that kindness can sometimes be treated like a radical tactic in a political world that has become so cynical, and I love that you are challenging that perspective. Can you explain why you feel so strongly that kindness and empathy can be a tool that helps accomplish change in politics?

EM: I wish I could say that my approach to soft power or kindness is something that I cultivated, but I do think it was taught to me from a very young age by teachers and parents and family. I think that those are values that were instilled in me by the people that raised me.

That being said, we all have these two voices inside of us - we have the voice that is telling us to do good things and to be kind and then the other voice that’s telling us to be angry, and I think you really do need to choose which voice you are going to listen to. It’s a choice, and in my experience, choosing to listen and choosing to be kind just always led to better outcomes.

I think there are these narratives around being tough and combative, which suggest you need to be those things to get stuff done, especially in powerful spaces such as politics or in tech, but in my experience that’s not the case.

In my experience when I was nicer to people not only did I enjoy my job more and I enjoyed the people that I engaged with and interacted with, but we were all more likely to do good work together and to try to be the best versions of ourselves.

So for me I really hope that this book challenges that dominant belief and gives some oxygen to this idea that politics doesn’t have to be a tough mean aggressive space - there’s some really amazing people who are doing great work like you who are really kind and wonderful and those are the stories that I think need to be told.

AK: Do you have any examples off the top of your head of things where that approach kind of made something a little bit easier to do?

EM: Child care is a good example. Our national child care program doesn’t happen if people don’t trust you. If advocates don’t trust you, stakeholders don’t trust you, if you don’t take the time to build relationships that are built on kindness.

So I think in order for us to have gotten stuff done like child care in government, you had to have invested the time and the energy into relationships both within and outside of government so that you could work together to get the job done.

AK: The story of how you reached out and created an opportunity for yourself at the Prime Minister’s Office is quite inspiring, especially as it resulted in a role that had never existed before. What is your advice for other subject matter experts who want to bring their knowledge to make a difference in politics but don’t know where to begin?

EM: To experts, I would say don’t wait for governments to come to you. In my view, we need people who are experts, who have a skill set that is useful to our democracy. We need them to come forward and to knock on doors and by that I really mean reaching out, putting up your hand and saying I’m here to help. For me there’s a lot of doors I knocked on that didn’t open. I didn’t get into law school, I applied for other jobs in academia or other jobs on parliament hill that I didn’t get and I just kept knocking.

I could have said well I didn’t get the job in the senator’s office so I should lower my expectations. Instead of that, I said no I’m going to try the prime minister’s office and I think you just have to keep at it and keep going because we really, really need people who have expertise to come forward and help us get this work done for the sake of the country, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of society. And so I would say keep raising your hand keep knocking on the door and keep saying you’re willing to do the work.

AK: It was illuminating to see you demystify binder review meetings in your book. Can you explain to readers what those meetings are and how information gets filtered up to the Prime Minister for decisions?

EM: Binder review was something that I knew nothing about before coming into government. Every government probably has a system that plays a distillation function but might look a little bit different depending on what government you’re working for.

In my time, binder review was exactly what it sounded like: we literally reviewed binders. The chief of staff Katie Telford and the principal secretary, Gerald Butts would go home with binders that were nearly identical to the binders that the prime minister would eventually take home. Inside those binders were the decisions that the PM needed to sign off on. Many of which were written by the public service, but those notes did not go to the prime minister without some kind of cover note, an executive summary of sorts with advice from political staff.

Binder review gives us some insight into what political staff actually do and how important their job is. We needed to decide if the PM had all the information he needed to make a final decision. It was the last check. People in that meeting often represented different teams from the Prime Minister’s Office. They helped to make sure that we weren’t missing anything and that we had included the best quality advice or the PM.

Often the work of a political staffer is bringing together different inputs and pieces of information. It’s really important work.

I’m not sure people on the hill even knew their work was going through that process, so in my book I wanted to convey a little bit about what it’s like behind the scenes. It was a a really fun meeting to be a part of but also extremely intense because the stakes were so high, and I tried to capture that mood in the book. Sweaty armpits, pages quickly exchanging hands, a quick bite of a burrito covered in hot sauce between sentences.

AK: People should buy your book to read your full account of the behind the scenes process that led to the $10/day childcare program, but I want to dig into what lessons we can learn from that experience. In your mind, what does the story of the early learning and childcare policy tell us for how staffers and advocates can advance bold progressive ideas in Canada?

EM: For me I think the experience of working on $10 a day child care was a really powerful lesson about how leaders can evolve and leaders can change their minds. If you haven’t yet read the book and you don’t know the story behind early learning and child care, I will just say that the government I was a part of did not have early learning and child care as a top priority when they came into government, but when we left government early learning and child care was one of our biggest legacies. Early learning and child care is provincial jurisdiction and, therefore, it’s not an issue that federal governments have led on, historically. But there was an opportunity, as a result of COVID, to explore what a federal government could do for early learning and child care. The the Prime Minister, who had previously not taken major action on that policy, decided to make a decision that would impact the lives of women and children in Canada for generations.

So I would just say that for me, childcare is an example of how good leaders can evolve and change their mind, and I just give the PM so much credit for doing that; I was so impressed. I think I would also say that work could not have been done without advocates and without stakeholders who actually knew what needed to be done in Canada in order to get to ten dollar childcare, in order to cut fees in half for parents across the country. That only happened because they were patient with us, because we developed relationships with them over many years, and they stayed with us.

If you’re a political staffer wondering what to take from this, I think it’s to keep being patient, keep pushing our leaders to evolve. I’m really really hopeful that the legacy that we have in childcare keeps getting talked about because I think that we need continued investment from the feds and from provinces and if we don’t talk about it we’re not going to get those investments.

AK: We had a unique experience that I’m planning to talk more about on my Substack soon where we got to survey Liberal staffers across Parliament Hill and investigate questions of training, workplace culture and inclusivity. When you reflect on the project and its findings, what stands out to you?

EM: I think one of my biggest takeaways from our experience interviewing political staffers was that we were part of a really talented really important community.

I think we take political staff for granted and we put a lot of expectations on them. They make a lot of sacrifices, they work long hours. I think we underpay them, which is a really sad thing because money often indicates that you matter to someone.

And so for me, I feel strongly that we need to invest more in our political staff. The cruel irony of that treatment is that it’s often other political staffers who hold staff back. That kills me because we really shouldn’t do that to each other.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been helping to run a leadership campaign for someone who was a political staffer, for someone who worked for two premiers and a prime minister. And sometimes this candidate still gets questioned about whether he has enough experience to actually be the leader of a political party. And, occasionally, it’s political staff themselves who are asking the question. I think it’s a strange sentiment because it suggests that political staffers think of themselves as second-class citizens. But we’re not!

I’m not trying to say that we’re more important than other members of the political system, but we certainly aren’t less important. We have to start saying that more.

AK: I feel like every government runs into this problem over time - you get 10 years into a mandate and then suddenly the original group of staffers that are so talented and have learned so many things are all out the window at that point because it’s just not sustainable to be there.

EM: Yes. People don’t value the human capital that leads to these successful governments.

AK: In your opinion, what is the most important thing that should be done to improve the workplace culture on Parliament Hill?

EM: I’ve been off of Parliament Hill for about five years now, so I can’t speak to what is happening on the Hill these days, but two things come to mind that I hope apply to any government. The first is to pay political staffers well.

I believe strongly that paying staffers well tells them that you value their work. Political staffers sacrifice a lot personally to do the jobs they do, they work long hours, and do work that isn’t always celebrated but has immense impact. . We need to make sure they know their worth, that they are motivated, and stay in the job. so It seems like such a clear win-win. The second would be to invest in the careers of staffers coming out of politics. Most staffers won’t be in the role long term.

One of the reasons I wrote about my time at Uber was to provide an example of what life looks like after politics. - I went on to work for a global technology company, working on corporate safety policy. Not something I assumed would have followed my time on the Hill. Folks might think they’re going to end up in a government relations role and that’s great, I’m not suggesting it’s not. But there are a lot of jobs that you can do coming out of politics. You’re building a skill set that we need to be selling to other people. I was able to do that in the corporate setting that I moved to and they appreciated that. It was a great fit and I want other people to feel like they have the support they need to enter a rewarding job after politics.

AK: Do you have any other advice for staffers?

EM: Take your shot, and don’t worry about failing. If you’re failing, it might actually be a sign of success, so keep at it. No one else can take it for you.

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The more I’ve looked into these races with their dramatic storylines and idiosyncrasies, the more I’ve wondered about who chooses to enter a leadership race and what barriers might be stopping quality candidates from running for these positions.

After all, almost anyone can put up their hand and run for the leadership of their political party, but not many of the prominent politicians we associate with each federal party actually run for the top job at any point in their careers.

Most leadership races in the modern era feature two or three highly credible candidates, a second tier of politicians building a resume for the future and a surprising number of virtual unknowns who often don’t even make it on a ballot, but who prove the leadership process is more accessible than people often assume.

I recently created a database of every person who has declared themself a candidate for the leadership of a federal party in a membership vote contest since 2000.1 This includes 129 total candidates over 13 contests, although only 73 of those candidates (57%) were listed on the final ballot in their races. The other 56 candidates either withdrew during the campaign or failed to meet ballot criteria, including at least 10 who were denied access to the ballot due to vetting concerns.

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Men Dominate the Entry Lists More than the Results

The undeniable first stat that jumps off the page when the candidates are listed together is the stark disparity in the identified gender of leadership candidates. Almost 3-in-4 leadership candidates (74%) have been men, and this rises to 84% of all candidates for the Conservative Party’s leadership in recent years.2

While more men run for these positions, the average result of men and women who launch campaigns is virtually equal, with men and women candidates each averaging 10% popular support on the first ballot of these races.3

While this seems promising and suggests more women leaders will result if more can be encouraged to run for the top jobs, the results are less equitable among the major parties, and the Green Party membership is far ahead of the other federal parties when it comes to actually voting for female leadership candidates (including Elizabeth May and Annamie Paul).

Men (17.7%) also perform slightly better than women (14.0%) among the candidates who actually make it to the final ballot, which leads us into the second major gender difference in the data: Men are far more likely to run campaigns that don’t reach the finish line.

Among the 73 candidates on the final ballot, only two-thirds (67%) are men, while more than 4-in-5 (82%) of the candidates who drop out identify as men. While women are less likely to enter these races, they are far more committed to seeing them out once they have joined and/or far less likely to launch a campaign if they aren’t confident they can reach qualification requirements.

This follows a larger pattern in politics where women aren’t always forgiven for public losses the way men can be. The vast majority of the losing women candidates on this list left electoral politics shortly after their failed leadership campaigns (i.e. Chrystia Freeland, Lisa Raitt, Deborah Coyne, Kellie Leitch). Meanwhile, male candidates like Erin O’Toole, Maxime Bernier, Bob Rae and Charlie Angus were elevated to larger roles in their respective parties after their losses, with two of them becoming future party leaders.

If we want more women to succeed in politics, we have to allow more women to fail in politics too.

Other Interesting Findings

• The average age of leadership candidates is 50.4 years, with men who run doing so at a slightly older average age (51.3) than women (49.8)4

• The average age of candidates for the three largest parties is over 50, while Green Party candidates are much younger at only 44.3 years.

• Younger candidates perform worse in leadership races, with candidates aged 45 and under averaging only 7.6% of the vote in their contests (15.6% among those who make the final ballot).

• Among candidates who make the final ballot, those over the age of 55 tend to perform the best (20.1% on average), although older candidates are also significantly more likely to drop out before the voting occurs.

But all of this is is a relatively small sample size - let me know in the comments if you would like me to expand this analysis to provinces and see how the trends hold over a larger database of contests in different contexts!

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The results tell one story of dramatic messaging changes, and one story of a party that has failed to adapt to the moment.

Note: for all of the word clouds below, I have excluded common non-meaningful words like “the” and “and”, as well as the phrase “Mr. Speaker” that begins all remarks.

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A Different Type of Prime Minister

Mark Carney’s first year in office has ushered in a significant shift in the language coming from the Prime Minister’s Office. The following word cloud summarizes everything the current Prime Minister has said in the House of Commons since elected just over one year ago:

As the word cloud illustrates, the former banker has been very focused on economic issues, reflecting the priorities of Canadians in recent public opinion polls. Carney talks a lot about his promise to build a stronger Canada and uses most of his speaking time to talk about the government’s economic plans.

By contrast, here’s a word cloud summarizing the language used by Justin Trudeau during his last term in office (2021-2025):

There are some similarities: both Prime Ministers use the word “Canadian(s)” more than any other in their interventions and both emphasized investments with their speaking time.

However, Justin Trudeau’s language in his final years in office was far more confrontational. The former PM was far more likely to mention the Conservatives in his remarks and contrast government policy against the rhetoric of the opposition.

Trudeau was also more likely to use emotive language like “fighting” for priorities and “standing up” for values, and he discussed a much broader range of issues in the House than Carney has, with particular emphasis on climate change, health care and dental care.

Finally, Trudeau’s final years in office saw a heavy use of the word “continue” both from the PM and his key Ministers. This tends to be a crutch word leaned on by long-in-the tooth governments who find themselves constantly defending their past record, but it is hard to improve public opinion of your leadership when constantly emphasizing continuity in a government agenda that is no longer popular.

Poilievre Hasn’t Adapted to his New Competition

While the messaging from the Prime Minister has shifted, Poilievre and the Conservatives have remained consistent in their messaging.

Below is a summary of the language used by Poilievre in the House from the beginning of his leadership in September 2022 up to Trudeau’s resignation in January 2025:

During that time period, Poilievre was laser focused on three things: the carbon tax, the cost of living and criticizing the Prime Minister himself. His party’s message discipline was effective and helped hasten Trudeau’s resignation among poor poll numbers, but his inability to shift messaging to counter the appeal of Mark Carney has hurt his party ever since.

The word cloud below shows Poilievre’s language in the House of Commons since the 2025 election, and looks quite similar to the one above:

Poilievre’s top priority continues to be attacking the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, although he has shifted a bit more towards referencing the “Liberal” record as a way to tie Carney to actions from the Trudeau era.

He continues to use his speaking time to hammer the government on the cost of living, affordability, and even the carbon tax from time to time despite Carney’s cancellation of the policy.

However, Carney isn’t blamed for those issues the way Trudeau was, leaving Poilievre arguing with the ghosts of Liberals past instead of building a case against his current opponent.

If Poilievre wants to recover in the polls and pose a genuine threat to Mark Carney in the next election, he needs to stop campaigning against Justin Trudeau and find new language that draws a contrast against the current government.

Other Tidbits Found In the Hansard Database

• Kevin Lamoureux (Lib - Winnipeg North) is not only the MP who has spoken the most since the 2025 election with 1988 interventions, but he has now surpassed former speakers Peter Milliken and Andrew Scheer to become the MP with the most interventions in the entire 21st century. The long-time Liberal has risen to speak in the House of Commons an astonishing 16,951 times since first elected in 2015.

• On the other end of the spectrum, there are two MPs re-elected in 2025 who have only spoken once in the House of Commons since the last election: Jonathan Wilkinson (who is leaving his seat soon to become EU ambassador) and Shaun Chen (Lib - Scarborough North).

• Braedon Clark (Lib - Sackville-Bedford-Preston) is the only MP who has mentioned “Heated Rivalry” in the House of Commons.

Expect a busier June for this newsletter as I try some new types of content and get back to my interview series with former staffers!

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The CPC leader has clearly had strong backing from the grassroots voters of his party until recently, collecting a strong 87% vote of confidence in his leadership rev…

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Marilyn Gladu has crossed the floor, giving Mark Carney and the Liberals an effective majority in the House of Commons.

Is it worth it for the Liberal Party?

I doubt it.

Gladu has never been consi…

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Let’s talk about what makes for a good or a bad advertisement with some of the notable ads of the …

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Yes there are some organizational issues with the International Olympic Committee, which need to be improved on. However, i…

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They won’t…

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Recently, a lot of the AI videos going viral in political spaces on social media have a similar theme: fake videos depicting ci…

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Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro was a brazen and reprehensible violation of international law and sovereignty that has very little historical precedent.1

Maduro is a bad guy, and not many tears will be shed for his predicament…

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I envisioned this newsletter as a place to go beyond the horserace to report on the type of in-depth polling that political campaigns …

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I recently wrote a long post about the missed opportunity that political lawn signs are in most local campaigns in Canada. Today, I’m providing the results of a detailed test to see if lawn signs can be persuasive political advertising, and what designs work the best.

For this experiment, I created seven potential lawn sign designs for a fictional mayor…

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It’s been seven months since Mark Carney was elected to a minority government. How do Canadians feel he’s done in the role so far?

For the most part, Canadians give Mark Carney a passing grade, with 47% approving of his performance compared to 34% disapproving. Carney only won 44% of the vote in April, so he’s getting positive reviews from more than just his own voters. In fact, Carney receives positive evaluations from almost 1-in-2 voters who chose the NDP in April (48%), a third of Bloc voters (34%) and almost 1-in-5 CPC voters (17%).

The One that Got Away: Carney vs. Trudeau

The positive evaluations of Carney’s performance highlight a remarkable turnaround for the Liberal Party since Mark Carney became its leader. Justin Trudeau was viewed negatively in his final months as PM and impressions of him have not recovered since his exit from office, but it hasn’t mattered electorally for Mark Carney, who is viewed favorably by almost twice as Many Canadians (53%) as Justin Trudeau (28%).

Left Shark?

In April, I had an interesting finding in my election survey that Canadians were perceiving Mark Carney as more progressive than Justin Trudeau. At the time, 59% of Canadians thought this, including 64% of Liberal voters.

This impression has been sliding recently to the point where Canadians are almost evenly split on which Liberal PM has been more progressive. Liberals are only slightly more likely to see Carney as the more progressive option (58%), and non-Liberal voters are less confident.

This is borne out in the related question of whether Carney has governed more conservatively than expected. A third (34%) of those who voted Liberal in April now say Carney is governing more conservatively than they expected, and this survey was conducted before the recent Canada-Alberta pipeline deal.

This shift in attitudes is not necessarily damaging for Carney politically, but it provides a major opening for the NDP as they look to rebuild. The one-third of Liberal voters with this impression will likely be key targets for the new NDP leader as they look to regain support.

If the Liberals are vulnerable to lose support on their left flank for being perceived as less progressive, they may be able to balance that out by gaining support among soft Conservative supporters - 21% of those who voted CPC in April say Carney has been more conservative than expected and that might be a source of votes for the Liberals.

Your Man: The Carney Record

Looking more broadly at other ways to evaluate Carney’s time in office, there is a strong consensus that the former banker is capable of handling the job of Prime Minister (51% agree), despite being relatively new to politics.

Other metrics are less clear-cut:

• Only 34% of voters feel Carney has brought real change to government, including just 59% of his own voters from 2025. If Carney can’t show Canadians that he’s doing things differently, he may be vulnerable against opposition parties promising a real change from more than a decade of Liberal leadership in the next election.

• 39% of Canadians already feel that Mark Carney is breaking the promises he made in his election platform, with only 27% disagreeing. He shouldn’t be too worried about the CPC voters who are saying this, but the fact that 18% of Canadians who voted for the Liberals agree is a bit of an emerging concern.

• 38% of Canadians agree Mark Carney has proven to be out of touch with Canadians, while 37% disagree. This has always been the biggest potential vulnerability in the Carney brand, but it has not been effectively exploited by opposition leaders to date. It’s crucial for the Prime Minister that this number doesn’t rise much higher than it is now.

Down with Webster Poilievre

Governance doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and there’s always an opponent for Canadians to contrast their leaders against. I’ve written about some of Poilievre’s recent troubles, but he seems poised to remain leader for at least a while so it’s worth evaluating where Carney stands in contrast to his main opponent on key issues:

Some thoughts:

• Climate change may not be the top voting issue for Canadians, but it was the issue where Carney had the biggest advantage over Poilievre at the time of this survey. He is giving up some of his progressive credibility on the issue with his recently decisions around budget funding and pipelines.

• Despite the column inches devoted to combatting woke ideology, Canadians are generally not that excited about Conservatives making decisions on gender identity issues. The polling on these topics has many nuances, but progressives don’t need to be afraid of pushing back when Conservatives take extreme measures like invoking the notwithstanding clause to penalize vulnerable youth.

• Canada-US remains a strong issue for Carney in relation to Poilievre, but the ‘Elbows Up’ excitement around Carney on the topic in April has waned somewhat. A win on this file would be helpful to cement Carney’s strength with older voters.

  

• 57% of Canadians preferring Carney over Poilievre on the economy is a major coup for the Liberals. Conservatives have historically had brand strength on economic issues, but Carney’s unique resume has given him access to voters who would not normally consider the Liberals.

• Making life more affordable (53% Carney) and housing more affordable (52%) are also key vote drivers at the moment, and the gap between Carney and Poilievre is narrower there. Prime Ministers tend to own this issue after they’ve been in office for a while, so it’s important for Carney that Canadians feel things have become more affordable the next time they go to the polls.

For paid subscribers, demographic and geographical data on how Canadians rate Carney’s performance as Prime Minister are below.

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