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Senior Adviser and Campaign Co-Chair Katie Telford aboard the campaign plane with Liberal Leader . Both played a major role in Trudeau’s winning campaign. Adam Scotti photo How the Liberals Did It: Building a Surprise Majority Susan Delacourt

A frequent refrain after upset electoral victories is that he heavy wooden front doors of the Langevin Building, shut the winner was “underestimated”. In Justin Trudeau’s T down for construction through- case, the word hangs like a banner over his famous- out Canada’s 42nd election, were fi- ly well-coiffed and, apparently, politically ingenious nally reopened on October 20, the day after Canadians voted for a massive head. Veteran columnist and author Susan Delacourt change in government. explains how the team Trudeau led adeptly built a his- The next day, Liberal Leader Justin toric win on October 19 from the ground up, heedless Trudeau breezed through those doors of short-term distractions and undeniably aided by the on his way to have a chat with Stephen Harper, the man he was replacing as low expectations of their opponents. prime minister.

November/December 2015 8 Their conversation was reportedly cordial and helpful. This, however, Political process stories are not big-headline makers. was a departure for Harper and many But Trudeau and his team were serious about rebuild- others, who have spent the past few ing the organization from the ground up, from the moment years failing to see Trudeau on the he entered the leadership campaign. doorstep of power. Trudeau may well have taken Harper’s job because he was so often underestimated—and no one can say they weren’t warned. gies for putting organization over around Trudeau grew, so too did “I was an opponent of his dad who policy pronouncements. “My empha- the database—a perfect marriage was a tough, able guy. The apple, sis right now…is on organization,” between celebrity and cold, hard I’m sure, doesn’t fall too far from Trudeau told a crowd at Western Uni- calculation. the tree. There’s a lot of steel in versity in February 2013. “It is on this,” former Prime Minister Brian building the capacity to be relevant Katie Telford, the extremely capa- Mulroney said in an interview with in every single riding across the coun- ble person who served as Trudeau’s CTV’s Power Play in the fall of 2012, try, folding people back, not just into campaign co-chair, talks often about before Trudeau had even become the Liberal party, but actually into her fondness for numbers. She in- Liberal leader. the political process.” sists that staff show up for meetings “People should not underestimate with a number—preferably a number him in any way. I think they’ll turn that shows progress for the Liberals, Katie Telford, the whether it’s the amount of doors out to be disappointed if they do. extremely capable He’s got a lot of the requirements knocked or volunteers recruited. for leadership and who knows if it person who served as All of this was the detail work that catches on? If he can do it, it will be Trudeau’s campaign co- Liberals were talking about in their a big success story.” chair, talks often about her famous “hope and hard work” slo- We are all familiar by now with the fondness for numbers. She gan. But it was more than a platitude. metaphor of the boxing match be- insists that staff show up for Back in the summer, when it looked tween Trudeau and Patrick Brazeau meetings with a number like the party was tumbling in the in 2012, and how the “lightweight” —preferably a number that opinion polls, Telford and Trudeau’s chief adviser, Gerald Butts, remained Liberal was underestimated as a se- shows progress for the rious fighter. What’s remarkable is confident that the New Democrats’ the way in which the metaphor sunk Liberals, whether it’s the high poll numbers were merely up into the Canadian political class, but amount of doors knocked or in the air, and not matched with never the lessons of it. volunteers recruited. the strength the Liberals had built on the ground. In September, Tel- New Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ford and Butts were quietly assuring didn’t sneak through the back door people that in the party’s close track- to power. There were many warn- ing of 200-plus ridings, “the underly- ings that he had big plans for him- ing numbers are moving in the right self and his party, which all fell into Political process stories are not direction.” place quite nicely for them on Octo- big-headline makers. But Trudeau ber 19, with a solid, Liberal-red ma- and his team were serious about re- By then, they were boasting that Lib- jority governing Canada for the next building the organization from the erals had knocked on five million four years. Now, in the immediate ground up, from the moment he doors—real, on-the-ground contact. aftermath of the victory, it’s worth entered the leadership campaign. Rather than panic, they stayed se- looking back to see where his oppo- While the leader plunged into the rene. It turns out Telford and Butts nents might have seen this coming, crowds who came out to see him, were correct; once again, and it was if they had been watching for the his people were collecting names a mistake to underestimate all the or- right things. and contact information to feed ganizational spade work that Liberals into the Liberal database. Largely had done on the ground. uring his leadership cam- under the oversight of Trudeau’s paign in late 2012 and early old friend, Tom Pitfield, the Liberals iberals were also called delu- D 2013, Trudeau’s team was got very serious about digital orga- sional, repeatedly, in their as- criticized for its “no-policy policy.” nization and the science of building L pirations for a majority. No Trudeau, however, made no apolo- a modern campaign. As the crowds party had ever pulled off a come-

Policy 9 back from third to first. Yet the this trap. We didn’t expect them to weary of the negative ads. Trudeau team had their eyes on walk into it.” that prize for more than a year be- By the time the end of the election fore the Oct. 19 vote. The same could well be said in the af- loomed in mid-October, Trudeau termath of the 2015 victory for the and his team staged a massive rally At a summer caucus meeting in Ed- Trudeau Liberals. Had the Conserva- in Brampton, with more than 7,000 monton in 2014, people laughed tives or New Democrats looked more people crowded into a stadium, to when Trudeau and his advisers pro- closely at the lessons from Ontario, hear a powerful “better is always pos- duced a strategy called the “path they might have seen how it made sible” speech from the Liberal leader. through 170”—a detailed plan to sense for Trudeau and Wynne to ap- build a majority victory in all re- pear as allies in the election. Wynne, That was the moment in which the gions of the country, including Al- like Trudeau, was underestimated Liberals truly captured that precious berta. Critics scoffed that the Liber- too. And the repeat of the Ontario electoral commodity of momentum, strategy worked again. als would have trouble winning any with vivid visuals. Clips from the seats west of the Ontario-Manitoba rally were quickly turned into an ad, border. When the results were finally which had the feel of the famous in on Oct. 19, 2015, Liberals held 30 Had the Molson “I Am Canadian” ad of the seats in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Sas- Conservatives or 1990s, or, going farther back, Ronald katchewan and Yukon. New Democrats looked more Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad. As for a big bulk of those 154 seats closely at the lessons from Liberals had nailed the hard-work east of Manitoba, Conservatives were Ontario, they might have part of their slogan by this point in also sure that Trudeau was making seen how it made sense for the campaign—this was the picture a big strategic mistake by relying of hope. on so much help from Ontario Pre- Trudeau and Wynne to mier Kathleen Wynne. Not only was appear as allies in the Still, despite the scent of victory Trudeau borrowing some of her staff election. Wynne, like around the Liberals on Election Day, for the campaign, but he was also Trudeau, was pre-vote polls were being cautious. A following the blueprint that deliv- underestimated too. And the majority seemed a slight possibility— ered her surprise victory in 2014— which quickly turned into a definite campaigning to the left of the New repeat of the Ontario probability as the polls closed and Democrats. strategy worked again. early results started to pour in from Quebec, Ontario and the Prairies. It was no accident that David Herle, architect of that Wynne victory, was In the end, it was probably fitting also a key adviser in Trudeau’s camp. that the majority took so many peo- And sure enough, much of the nar- ny examination of the Lib- ple by surprise the night of October rative of the federal campaign was eral election victory has to 19. Trudeau had been underestimat- an echo of the story in Ontario—the take notice of the advertising A ed—again. And as Mulroney long- Conservatives pushed to the hard war. Many smart people were predict- ago predicted, it was a “big success right, NDP to the mushy, confusing ing that Trudeau would be done in by middle. Harper’s decision to cam- the Conservatives’ “Just Not Ready” story.” paign with the Ford brothers in the ads, especially as the campaign be- Susan Delacourt, author of the final week, and Thomas Mulcair’s gan and the phrase began emerging bestselling Shopping For Votes, writes over-cautious avoidance of deficits robotically from voters’ lips. Once a column for the and in his platform put the Liberals’ ri- again, it looked like another Liberal vals exactly where the Trudeau team leader had been felled by the Conser- iPolitics. She also teaches a graduate wanted them. vatives’ advertising colossus. course in journalism at Carleton University. [email protected] It’s worth a look at this quote from But a funny thing happened along Herle in a 2014 post-election analysis the election trail. First, the Liber- of Wynne’s campaign victory: “You als took the risk of repeating the al- can design a strategy… but you can legation in a rebuttal ad, featuring never really hope your opponents Trudeau saying, “I’m ready.” The ex- will play their parts as well as they tra-long election campaign not only did,” Herle told . gave Trudeau a chance to learn and “We spent a lot of time thinking improve his game, notably on the about how to suck these people into TV debates; it also made voters more

November/December 2015