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Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives at Xstrata Nickel's Raglan Mine in the northern Nunavik region of Quebec on Friday, August 23, 2013.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

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This is not a memorandum from Stephen Harper to his staff. But we think it could be.

MEMORANDUM

To: The new arrivals

From: The Prime Minister

Re: Your assignments

The reorganization of the Prime Minister's Office and Conservative Party headquarters is now largely complete, which is why we leaked the information to the press Tuesday. This seems like a good time to welcome everyone to their new roles and to lay out the challenge facing our party and our government, as I see it.

The Canadian election cycle is becoming more and more American. The Liberals and the NDP are already crafting their pre-election strategies, more than two years before the actual vote. We, of course, are doing the same.

But there is a difference. For the first time since we first came to power, we are behind in the polls – consistently, week after week; month after month. If an election were held tomorrow, we'd lose it.

I believe there is a reason for this. I believe we've grown soft. The changes I have approved are designed to toughen us up.

The Conservative Party is, or should be, an insurgency. We are outsiders–rooted in Western conservative values and Western alienation, sustained by Tim Horton suburbanites, and dedicated to forever dispatching to the margins those liberal elites in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal who governed this country from Confederation until we got here.

But the comforts of majority rule have dulled our edge, have made us comfortable. And we have paid the price.

We must become an insurgency again. The personnel changes I have approved are intended to return us to guerrilla form, and to put us into permanent campaign mode.

Above and beyond all else, these personnel changes are intended to put experienced, deeply loyal and fervently partisan advisors into key roles.

In 2011, Barack Obama dispatched his campaign team to Chicago, far from the fevered swamps of Washington, where they could think clearly as they planned his re-election strategy. I'm doing the opposite by bringing Jenni Byrne, who ran our 2011 campaign and who will likely do the same in 2015, into the PMO as deputy chief of staff. She will assist Ray Novak. You know that Ray started out carrying my luggage and is now my chief of staff. That is how much I value loyalty – and the ability to get the job done, no matter what the job may be.

Fred DeLorey has moved from party press secretary to head of political operations. He's that good and that driven. And Alykhan Velshi takes over issues management in the PMO. Alykhan has bounced around a bit since he worked for Jason Kenney at Citizenship and Immigration, but we all know they don't come more politically savvy than Alykhan, and no one is more skilled at wooing and winning the immigrant vote.

Your job is to put a Prime Minister's Office distracted by Senate embarrassments, rebellious backbenchers, robocalls and bungled files – yes, I do mean the F-35 contract – back on its feet.

It is axiomatic in politics that any day you spend responding to the other guy is a lost day, and we have lost many, many days this year. I want that to end.

I want you to think of us as a minority government, barely clinging to power, surrounded by socialists and liberals and people who do not drink what we drink or eat what we eat or think what we think. I want you to imagine that our government could be defeated tomorrow. If we were, how would we win the election? Your job is to answer that question.

I want an agenda that can become a platform and a communications plan that we can take to the people–or at least our people – without having to rely on the media, who are besotted with Justin Trudeau.

I want to cauterize the Senate expenses scandal. Is there anything we can do, other than kicking it to the auditor general, calling in the police and waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on our elected-Senate bill? Suggestions welcomed.

I want some trade deals signed and pipelines approved. And I want the Liberal Party under Trudeau rebranded, just as we rebranded it under Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion. I don't expect that campaign to be pretty. I do expect it to be effective.

We still have the loyalty of 30 per cent of the population. If we can bring another four per cent back to us, we win the next election. Make it 8 per cent, and we get another majority government.

We know who and where those persuadables are – aspirational middle class voters living outside Toronto and Vancouver. From this moment on, they are all we care about. Persuade them. Forget about everyone else, everywhere else.

Congratulations on your new assignments. The washrooms are down the hall. Now get to work.

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