In the 1980s, Kinsella was a reporter at the
Calgary Herald and later the
Ottawa Citizen. Later, as a lawyer, Kinsella was a partner in the law firm
McMillan Binch. He left the legal firm in 2002 and co-founded the consulting firm, Navigator.
Politics Federal politics Liberal Party Kinsella served as a media adviser to opposition leader
Jean Chrétien's office and as a strategist in the
Canadian federal
Liberal Party's
1993 election campaign "task force". After the Liberals won the election, Kinsella became
chief of staff to federal Public Works minister
David Dingwall.
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. 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. 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. Public affairs consultant
Robin Sears in
Policy Options used this incident to compare him to American political consultant
James Carville and argued that "The Carvillites and their young fans were less concerned with the substance of politics or its impact on citizens' building contempt for politics than with their personal scores." Starting in November 2008, Kinsella worked briefly for Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff. One long-time senior Liberal questioned the hiring of Kinsella, calling him a "human shrapnel machine." Later that month Kinsella apologized for a post in his video blog that jokingly mentioned that his regular Chinese restaurant sold "cat meat." Kinsella resigned from Ignatieff's campaign in May 2009, citing treatment of fired colleagues. Kinsella publicly considered seeking the Liberal nomination for the
2015 federal election in
Toronto—Danforth, but ultimately demurred in the belief that he would not be approved as a nominee. He argued that
Justin Trudeau's inner circle had played a role in the ouster of
Jean Chretien as Prime Minister. He has been a critic of Trudeau's leadership. During the
2019 election, Kinsella sent tweets accusing the Prime Minister of buying drinks for
Faith Goldy, making false accusations of a suppressed
The Globe & Mail story, and linking to a fake website that advocated
Chrystia Freeland as leader of the Liberal Party. After the election, Kinsella praised Trudeau by stating that since the election there had been "no stunts, no selfies, no over-saturation".
Gomery inquiry 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.
Green Party Kinsella worked for the
Green Party of Canada during July 2019 in the run-up to the
2019 Canadian federal election. This work was a temporary arrangement and involved "Kinsella setting up a quick-response unit for the Greens."
Conservative Party of Canada 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 had been working together. Bernier filed a complaint to the Commissioner of Canada Elections. 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." On October 22, Kinsella called on the Commissioner of Canada Elections to investigate the role that his own firm played. On 29 October 2019 Kinsella said on his podcast that he would not reveal who had hired his company, maintaining that it was protected by solicitor-client privilege, but stated the campaign should have been disclosed earlier. On November 2,
Kory Teneycke cited
Andrew Scheer's handling of the Kinsella story as one reason for questioning Scheer's future as the leader of the Conservative Party. 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 knew about the campaign and were watching. Kinsella is heard telling the staff that they need to "draw blood". After filing a $1 million lawsuit, Kinsella later settled out of court with the source; who was a former Daisy Employee, Aziza Mohammed. On December 8 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". While, Kinsella and his firm did not break the Elections Canada Act (which only governs spending),
CBC News suggested that story might not end. In February 2020, Bernier launched a
lawsuit against Kinsella alleging
defamation by branding Bernier a racist, in relation to the 2019 election. The lawsuit sought an admission of defamation and $325,000 in damages. Bernier was ordered in February 2022 to pay $132,000 in legal costs to Kinsella. 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. Kinsella supported
Sandra Pupatello in the
2013 Liberal Party of Ontario leadership convention that chose a successor to McGuinty. The leadership was won by
Kathleen Wynne. Kinsella was sharply critical of Wynne's campaign during the
2014 Ontario election, and subsequently.
Ontario Progressive Conservatives On October 31, 2019,
the Globe and Mail reported that a spokesperson for Autistics for Autistics (A4A), an Ontario Autism advocacy group, threatened litigation 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. 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
Municipal politics Kinsella advised
John Tory in the
2003 Toronto mayoral election. 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. Kinsella apologized for the incident. Daisy Consulting later announced that they had fired Chow as a client due to remarks regarding Kinsella. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Writing In 1997, Kinsella published the novel
Party Favours, a thinly veiled
roman à clef about the Chrétien government similar to the 1996 American novel
Primary Colors. The novel was initially credited to "Jean Doe", with Kinsella only later revealing himself as the real author. ''
Maclean's'' associated Kinsella with dirty politics because "His political books are thick with tales of dirty tricks and nasty business in Ottawa's corridors of power, and he is an admitted and most gleeful practitioner of both."
Works •
Unholy Alliances (Lester, 1992) • ''Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network'', (
HarperCollins, 1997) •
Party Favours (HarperCollins, 1997) •
Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics (
Random House, 2001) • ''Fury's Hour: A (sort-of) Punk-Rock Manifesto'' (Random House, 2005) •
The War Room: Political Strategies for Business, NGOs, and Anyone Who Wants to Win (Dundurn Press, 2007) •
Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse (Random House, Oct 2 2012) •
Recipe for Hate (Dundurn, 2017) (fiction) == Electoral record ==