The meetings are being held ahead of the expected announcement of Poilievre’s “shadow cabinet” in mid-October, multiple sources tell Global News, which comes around a week-long break in Commons action.

		Read more: Trudeau, Poilievre square off in first QP after Conservative leadership race 		
		read more 		


			Trudeau, Poilievre face off in first QP after Conservative leadership race

While the Poilievre era began on a relatively calm note — Thursday’s spat between the new Conservative leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau notwithstanding — sources familiar with the transition suggest significant, if slow, behind-the-scenes moves within the party that Poilievre’s team believes they are needed to prepare the Conservatives for the next general election. And there is a significant amount of work to be done. The Office of the Leader of the Opposition (OLO) saw turnover following Erin O’Toole’s election defeat in 2021 and ouster in 2022 – and attrition continued under the interim leadership of Candice Bergen. Story continues below ad “I think part of it is, look, you don’t want to hitch your wagon without knowing what’s going to happen (with the party),” a Conservative source said of staff departures ahead of Poilievre’s leadership win. 12:06 Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s way forward Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s way forward The source, and four others familiar with the transition project, agreed to speak to Global on condition of anonymity. “Just because something was organized a certain way under a leader doesn’t mean it’s meaningful. So I think there’s kind of a full-scale review (of party operations), so you see people putting in the time.”

		Read more: Poll shows Poilievre second only to Trudeau as preferred prime minister

In a statement, Poilievre’s press secretary, Anthony Koch, said the transition team does not comment on staffing and does not conduct interviews. Story continues below ad

			MPs back to work

The source noted that while much of the media attention will focus on the plum frontbench seats, there is plenty of work for MPs to do behind the scenes as the party gears up. “Whether it’s shadow critic roles or, you know, projects or we’re running with something else that we’re planning, but just getting people back to work not just after a leadership (contest) but these two and a half years of weird virtual parliament. “, the source said. “(Poilievre is) a guy who chews on a subject or … gets very deep into a subject.” Trending Stories

			Johnny Depp is reportedly dating a lawyer from his UK trial 	   				Canada to drop COVID-19 vaccine mandate at border, makes ArriveCAN optional: source

“And I think it’s (about) instead of trying to do 40 things really well, focusing on one or two that (will) move the team forward.”

		Read more: This is Pierre Pouliev’s Conservative party.  What will it do?

Story continues below ad One of the main priorities of the new leadership team is an overhaul of the party’s data operations – a critical aspect of the modern election campaign and an area where there is broad consensus that the Conservatives are not trailing the governing Liberals badly. Data functions include things like voter identification and guide party decisions about things like ridings to target, what messages are most effective in a given area and where the leader should spend most of his time touring. They also involve mining vast amounts of information to gather information that is not readily apparent to those abroad – including their political opponents. After Poilievre’s decisive first-ballot victory, Hamish Marshall – who ran Andrew Scheer’s leadership campaign and the party’s 2019 national campaign – wrote on LinkedIn that his company developed a custom data platform to translate “my likes’ on social media to Poilievre voters. “It was our job to take offers of support from all social media and turn it into a meaningful process to sell memberships, raise money and get data on volunteers to make sure everyone voted,” Marshall wrote. “It was a big challenge, especially as there was no time to prepare. We had to assemble the machine while it was already working.”

		Read more: Texting campaign targets Quebec MP Alain Rayes, who quit Conservative party

Story continues below ad One source cautioned that the data requirements for a national campaign are far more complex than Poilievre needed to secure the leadership. But a second source acknowledged that translating Poilievre’s considerable social media reach into actionable voter data is likely to play a role in the new system. 1:15 Poilievre confronts Trudeau: “Gound the jet, park the hypocrisy, and ax the tax hikes” Poilievre confronts Trudeau: “Gound the jet, park the hypocrisy, and ax the tax hikes” “(Poilievre) is casting the net with what he says and how he says it (on social media),” the source said. “And we need (people) who can understand what we’re getting back. For a long time, we were getting a lot of stuff back, but no one was mining it in a way that was useful in any form to the good people who would be… targeting positions in the future.” Mike Crase, Poilievre’s pick for the party’s new executive director, will oversee the review of data operations. Story continues below ad Crase, the current executive director of Ontario Computers, was involved in the provincial party’s transition from CIMS – the old “information management system” used by the federal party – to their own more modern system.

		Read more: ‘His own man’: What does Poilievre’s leadership mean for social conservatives?

However, multiple sources told Global News that the party does not intend to rush some of the biggest changes to its election machine. When O’Toole won the leadership in 2020, his team believed Trudeau could call an election at any time — leading them to outsource some of their election activities such as data and strategic communications planning, instead to create the internal infrastructure of the party. “We’re back to the way we campaign,” a source said. “And so you have a new guy coming in and effectively using social media to mine data, in an operation that doesn’t have the tools to use (it). So we’re going to build the tools to use it on a much larger scale.”

		Read more: Poilievre moves to shake up Conservative Fund’s powerful board

Global News has requested an interview with Crase and confirmation that Poilievre has hired longtime conservative David Murray as his policy director. Murray worked on policy for Poilievre’s leadership campaign and previously worked with former leader Andrew Scheer. Murray’s hiring was first reported by Politico. Story continues below ad Poilievre’s team declined an interview request and declined to comment for this article. © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.