Poilievre set to lose communications director seen as an agent of change

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is about to lose his director of communications, Katy Merrifield.

Merrifield, along with Conservative campaign manager Steve Outhouse, have been widely seen within the Conservative caucus as the two most significant agents of change in the way Poilievre has been approaching politics since the Conservatives lost the 2025 election.

She said the decision to depart was her own.

“I put a few projects on hold when I made a decision to join the leader’s office last summer and it’s time for me to return to them,” Merrifield said.

“I’m proud of my contributions to the movement over the past year, and I will continue to support the leader, team and conservative movement long after I depart this role.”

Merrifield, 42, joined Poilievre’s office last fall and quickly set about changing Poilievre’s media strategy and communications approach. Poilievre, for example, began doing more interviews and appearances on so-called “legacy media” including Global News, CBC, and CTV — media that he had largely shunned from the time he won his party’s leadership in 2022 to the 2025 election.

She was widely credited with convincing Poilievre to do one thing he had never done before: attend and participate in a Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner.

Merrifield’s last day in the Opposition Leader’s Office will be Friday.

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Merrifield came to Ottawa from Vancouver, where she had served as director of communications to former B.C. premier Christy Clark. She was also the executive director of communications to former Alberta premier Jason Kenney.

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“I’ve known her for years and watched her career grow as she held several senior political communications roles, through which she established a reputation for working hard and getting positive results,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner.

“She proved that again over the last year in her work with the party. She was a huge asset to the team in the war room during the campaign and was an incredible help to me in my role as immigration shadow minister.”

Merrifield succeeded Ben Woodfinden, who was Poilievre’s communication director from 2022 until Woodfinden resigned after the 2025 election.

Typically, directors of communication in a leader’s office will co-ordinate not just a leader’s strategy with the media, but also supervise speech writers and, increasingly in this day and age, manage a digital communications strategy.

For most of Woodfinden’s tenure as manager of Poilievre’s communications strategy, Poilievre and the Conservatives were ahead in the polls versus Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

And after losing to Mark Carney’s Liberals in 2025, Poilievre’s communication approach came under fire from many within the Conservative Party. For the first time in modern history, for example, the Conservatives did not permit the media to travel with the leader during the election campaign.

Media that travelled with previous Conservative leaders and with other party leaders paid between $10,000 and $15,000 per week for a seat on a leader’s election tour and were prepared to do so again with Poilievre’s tour but no such opportunity existed.

The sloganeering — “Axe the tax,” and “Boots Not Suits,” etc. — and some of Poilievre’s brash and occasionally aggressive approaches to the media and his opponents drew comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Woodfinden has defended the approach Poilievre took during the campaign, noting that his “message would resonate with people not typically expected to be Conservative voters, namely, younger Canadians and new Canadians.”

And Poilievre did get more votes than any other Conservative leader ever.

Merrifield, by contrast, only worked for Poilievre while he and the Conservatives were, for the most part, behind in the polls to Carney’s Liberals.

And while the “issue set” — housing, food inflation and affordability, for example —  that Poilievre emphasized did not change, his approach to talking about those issues did.

The slogans disappeared and were replaced in many cases by policy speeches. The tight T-shirts of the Woodfinden era were replaced by business suits and dress shirts.

Poilievre appeared on high-profile podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience but also, notably, the podcast of former CBC journalist Peter Mansbridge.

“Katy is incredibly talented and I sincerely appreciate all she did for our team,” said Conservative MP Scott Aitchison. “I am sad to see her go, but I wish her all the best and look forward to the next great things she will accomplish.”