With former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney the odds-on favourite to win the Liberal leadership race on March 9, and the Conservative Party falling steadily in the polls to minority territory, former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper has apparently decided Pierre Poilievre needs help. In a thinly disguised attempt to throw the beleaguered leader of the Conservative Party a lifeline, Harper has suddenly emerged from obscurity twice in the past week to lend a hand.
First, Harper said what one would have expected Poilievre to say much earlier, namely, that Canadians are willing to pay any price to maintain their sovereignty in the face of U.S. president Donald Trump’s economic threats. Poilievre obviously understood the strongly worded hint from his old boss that his own response had not been patriotic enough. Within hours he repeated Harper’s comments almost verbatim, although interestingly Poilievre attributed the wording to none other than former American president John F. Kennedy.[i]
Barely two days later, Harper was at it again. Only this time his target was Carney. In a bluntly worded fundraising letter for the party, Harper described his shock and “disbelief” at the fact that Carney would “falsely take credit for the financial crisis response in 2008.”[ii] It was Harper’s finance minister, Jim Flaherty, who should get most of the credit, Harper thundered, while Carney played only a very minor role.
What is wrong with this story? Almost everything. For example, some Canadians may remember that Harper’s first reaction to the 2008 financial crisis was nonchalance. He actually argued that it was not a big deal and in fact might be a good time for people to invest in the stock market. And yet it was Jim Flaherty only a few months earlier who had told an international business audience that Ontario was the last place he would advise them to invest their money.[iii]
Many Canadians may also remember the leaders’ debates during the 2008 federal election, when Harper was attacked by all of his counterparts for his refusal to take any action in response to the growing crisis. He was then forced to retreat from his “do nothing” scenario almost immediately, when polls showed his party was in trouble.[iv] Meanwhile, as Liberal opposition leader Stephane Dion had pointed out during those debates, one thing Stephen Harper’s government had been pushing for was to remove many of the safeguards regulating Canadian banks, safeguards that luckily were still in place in 2008 and were the salvation of the Canadian economy during that crisis. Last but hardly least, there is the inconvenient fact that Mr. Harper has admitted that he once asked Mr. Carney to serve as his Finance Minister.
Of course another problem with Mr. Harper’s critique is the fact that international markets, and Carney’s counterpart’s in other G7 countries, hold the Liberal leadership candidate in high esteem. Recall that it was precisely because of the important role that Carney was perceived to have played as Governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 crisis that he was specifically recruited by the United Kingdom to take over as Governor of the Bank of England in 2013. There he served a full term, with British PM Theresa May describing him as “absolutely the right man for the job,” of guiding the country through the Brexit crisis. In addition, from 2011 to 2018 Carney was asked to head the Financial Stability Board, which coordinates financial regulation for all of the Group of 20 economies.[v]
With such a track record, it is hardly surprising that Carney is now poised to assume the leadership of the Liberal Party during yet another economic crisis, this one brought about by President Trump. Nor is it surprising that Stephen Harper believes his successor Pierre Poilievre is in need of all the help he can get. After all, Poilievre is a career politician first elected at the age of 25 who has never worked outside of the political arena. His education consists of a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Calgary. By contrast Carney holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard, as well as a Master’s degree and a Doctorate in economics from Oxford.
Ironically, Liberals historically do not do well during periods of economic uncertainty. And any government that has been in power for nine years – like the Trudeau Liberals — is almost always considered to be past its best before date. Conservatives, on the other hand, are generally considered the more competent economic managers at the best of times. But these are not normal times. And this is not a normal Liberal leadership race.
Stephen Harper is right about one thing, namely that Pierre Poilievre needs all the help he can get. But Stephen Harper, ranked one of the least effective and least popular prime ministers in three successive expert surveys since 2016, is perhaps not the best person to call upon for that aid. [vi]
At the end of the day, the question for most Canadians appears to be “Who would you rather have steering the Canadian economy for the next four years?” And the answer for many Canadians is not Pierre Poilievre.
[i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-poilievre-canada-first-analysis-1.7463042
[ii] See https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-harper-carney-conservative-attacks/ and https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/harper-carney-financial-crisis-1.7473091 for more details
[iii] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-unfazed-by-market-crisis/article1061165/
[iv] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-unfazed-by-market-crisis/article1061165/
[v] https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2025/03/07/mark-carney-crisis-fighting-central-banker-hopes-to-lead-canada-through-trade-war
[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_prime_ministers_of_Canada
