During the Canadian federal election, 2005, the Campaign Manager is expected to supervise execution of the election protocol - so the Leader doesn't have to. This includes interfacing with the Elections Canada Rep and any GPC Council members whose concerns relate directly to the campaign. By no means should the Leader do this directly, and ideally should not even know much about these aspects of the party's Canadian federal election campaign?.

Accordingly it is the Campaign Manager, not the Leader nor the Chair, who is held responsible for failures of protocol during the election itself. Thus the CM has powers that aren't normally granted any elected officer? - but loses them once the campaign is over, even if Election Readiness remains a concern. If the party can't replace a poor Campaign Manager immediately after elections end, then, when can it do so ? It is quite important that no one have any "tenure" in this job.

Since the coordination with the Leader and Issue Advocates is so important, the CM should probably be appointed by a consensus of these. There must also be some means of ensuring that the CM understands and accepts the party's actual strategic priorities and is prepared to take risks to ensure that these are actually presented to the public - see press release protocol.

A lot of a CM's work is opportunistic and takes place in what is usually called a "war room" where responses are crafted to other partys' statements.