Kinsella is the founder of the Daisy Consulting Group, a Toronto-based firm that engages in paid political campaign strategy work, lobbying and communications crisis management.
[1] In 2006, he left to found his own agency, Daisy Consulting Group, a Toronto-based firm that engages in paid political advertising, lobbying and communications crisis management.
[9] 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".
[11] 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] 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.
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.
"[17] Later that month Kinsella apologized for a post in his video blog that jokingly mentioned that his regular Chinese restaurant sold "cat meat.
[26] 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.
[34] 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.
[41] In November 2021, the court dismissed the lawsuit, based on Ontario's Anti-SLAPP legislation, determining that it was not proven that the defamation concerns outweighed the importance of protecting free speech.
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".
[46] 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.
[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.
[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.
[57] 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.