Warren Kinsella

Kinsella served as a strategist in the Canadian federal Liberal Party's 1993 election campaign "task force", and worked as a media adviser to opposition leader Jean Chrétien's office.[11] After the Liberals won the election, Kinsella became chief of staff to federal Public Works minister David Dingwall for a short time.[12] Lawrence Martin noted in his book Iron Man that Kinsella was accused by Peter Donolo, Chrétien's communications director, of being overtly aggressive and seeing enemies everywhere.[13] In addition, Martin noted that many Liberal MPs expressed concern about Kinsella's behaviour. However, Kinsella was a favourite of Aline Chrétien, the Prime Minister's wife, which meant that the complaints were ignored.[14]

Kinsella ran as a Liberal candidate in the 1997 federal election in the riding of North Vancouver but was defeated by Reform incumbent Ted White.

During his last stint as a national campaign headquarters worker during the 2000 Canadian federal election, he appeared on CTV's Canada AM brandishing a purple Barney dinosaur doll to mock what he claimed were Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day's creationist beliefs.[15] Public affairs consultant Robin Sears in Policy Options used this incident to compare him to American Political Consultant James Carvile and argued that "The Carvillites and their young fans were less con- cerned with the substance of pol- itics or its impact on citizens' building contempt for politics than with their personal scores." [4]

After the 2000 federal election, Kinsella was a vocal supporter of Chretien during the intra-party struggle that resulted in Chretien being replaced by Paul Martin. In Iron Man, Lawerence Martin noted that Kinsella saw Paul Martin and his followers "as almost much an enemy" as the opposition parties, and favored working against the Martin faction.[14] He would work on Liberal leadership campaigns for Allan Rock and Sheila Copps in opposition to Martin. He later admitted to quitting the Liberal Party when then-cabinet minister Herb Dhaliwal had his Vancouver South-Burnaby riding association taken over by the Martin forces in November 2002.[16]

Starting in November 2008, Kinsella worked briefly for Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff.[17] One long-time senior Liberal questioned the hiring of Kinsella, calling him a "human shrapnel machine."[18] Later that month Kinsella apologized for a post in his video blog that jokingly mentioned that his regular Chinese restaurant sold "cat meat."[19][20] Kinsella resigned from Ignatieff's campaign in May 2009, citing treatment of fired colleagues.[21]

Kinsella publicly considered seeking the Liberal nomination for the 2015 federal election in Toronto—Danforth, but ultimately demurred after believing he would not be approved as a nominee. He argued that Trudeau's inner circle' played a role in the ouster of Jean Chretien as Prime Minister.[22] He has been a critic of Justin Trudeau's leadership.[23] During the 2019 Election, Kinsella tweets drew attention as he accused Justin Trudeau for buying drinks for Faith Goldy in a deleted post,[24] tweeted false accusations of a suppressed Globe & Mail Story,[25] and noted a fake website that advocated Chystria Freeland as leader of the Liberal party.[26] After the election, Kinsella praised Trudeau by stating that he handled the right way since the election stating ""No stunts, no selfies, no over-saturation"".[27]

During the Gomery Commission's inquiry into the Sponsorship scandal, Justice John Gomery was told that Kinsella, while chief of staff to Minister of Public Works David Dingwall, wrote a letter to the department's Deputy Minister, Ran Quail in 1994 requesting Chuck Guité be appointed to review the government's advertising and communications strategy.[12] Quail said he viewed the letter as political interference into civil service affairs, while Dingwall and Kinsella characterized the letter as a request rather than a directive. No finding of any fault was found in Gomery's report relating to Kinsella's conduct.[28]

Kinsella worked for the Canadian Green Party during July of 2019 in the run-up to the 2019 Canadian federal election.[29][30] This work was a temporary arrangement and involved "Kinsella setting up a quick-response unit for the Greens."[31]

In October 2019, the Globe and Mail reported that Kinsella's consulting firm, Daisy Group, had, according to an anonymous source, been hired by the Conservative Party of Canada to create a campaign attempting to discredit Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada. Neither the Conservative Party nor Kinsella would confirm or deny that they are – or have been – working together.[32] Bernier filed a complaint to the Commissioner of Canada Elections.[33] On October 19, 2019, Kinsella deactivated his Twitter and Facebook accounts and posted a statement on his website that he is "pulling back from (social) media."[34] On October 22, 2019, Kinsella called on the Commissioner of Canada Elections to investigate the role that his own firm played.[35]

On 29 October 2019 Kinsella said on his podcast that he would not reveal the who hired his company, maintaining that it was protected by solicitor-client privilege but stated the campaign should have been disclosed earlier.[36] On November 2, Kory Teneycke cited Andrew Scheer handling of the Kinsella story to the Toronto Star as one of the example questioning Scheer future as the leader of the Conservative Party.[37] While, CBC revealed, on November 26, 2019, a recording describing Kinsella's contempt of Bernier and identified that Conservative campaign manager Hamish Marshall and co-chair, John Walsh potentially knew about the campaign.[38] After filing a $1 million lawsuit, Kinsella later settled out of court with the source; who was a former Daisy Employee, Aziza Mohammed.[39] On December, 08, the Globe and Mail, reported that it was a lack of clarity "what other activities were part of the project" and that "The Conservative Party will eventually have to report all of its spending and third-party contracts to Elections Canada".[40] While, Kinsella and his firm did not break the Elections Canada Act (which only governs spending), CBC News suggested that story might not end.[41]

In February 2020, Bernier launched a lawsuit alleging defamation against Kinsella.[42]

Kinsella was a long time supporter of Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, and was a fixture in Ontario Liberal Party election campaigns while McGuinty was leader. The Hill Times stated that Kinsella was the individual that branded Ontario Progressive Conservatives Leader John Tory's promise to publicly fund faith-based schools during the 2007 election "into a Canadian version of Nixon's racist Southern strategy".[43] He would apologize for a blog post during the campaign suggesting that Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod would rather bake cookies than be seen with farm activist Randy Hillier; MacLeod would later use the remark as the humorous title for a cookbook.[44]

Kinsella supported Sandra Pupatello in the 2013 Liberal Party of Ontario leadership convention that chose a successor to McGuinty.[45] The leadership was won by Kathleen Wynne. Kinsella was sharply critical of Wynne's campaign during the 2014 Ontario election, and subsequently.[46]

On October 31, 2019, the Globe and Mail reported that a spokesperson for Autistics for Autistics (A4A), an Ontario Autism advocacy group, threatened ligation against Kinsella after warning Kinsella's Daisy firm over a suspected connection between free media training provided by his firm and the Ontario government led by premier Doug Ford.[47] Kinsella stated that his work was unrelated with strategic advice and media training provided to Minister of Children, Community and Social Services Lisa MacLeod and her political staff in March 2018 over the restrictions to the provincial autism program. While House leader Paul Calandra, who was asked by reporters if he would release the contract, stated that Daisy' firm services was for social assistance not autism[48]

Kinsella advised John Tory in the 2003 Toronto mayoral election.[49]

In 2014 mayoral election, Kinsella assisted Olivia Chow's campaign. On August 20, 2014, Kinsella tweeted "Is John Tory's SmartTrack, you know, Segregationist Track?", and posted a photo featuring Tory and an edited speech bubble stating that Jane/Finch and Rexdale were intentionally excluded from the plan.[50] Kinsella apologized for the incident. Daisy Consulting later announced that they had fired Chow as a client due to remarks regarding Kinsella.[51] After a Twitter showdown between Tory's strategist Nick Kouvalis; Kinsella sued Kouvalis for $100,000 libel suit over tweets that Kinsella alleges were slanderous.[52][53] Kouvalis was later reported by the Toronto Star as the person responsible for bring Kinsella as an advisor to John Tory during the 2018 Toronto mayoral election.[54]

On November 16, 2018 the OPP charged Mark Grimes along with outgoing city councillor Justin Di Ciano for allegedly filing false campaign expenses for the 2014 municipal elections, contrary to the Municipal Elections Act.[55][56] In order to fight the allegations, then-councillor Di Ciano and Grimes hired the firm of strategist Kinsella to compile a "research" dossier on him and political foes such as CBC News. A few months later, Grimes faced litigation by Kinsella for allegedly failing to pay invoices for services rendered by Kinsella's Daisy Group.[57]