‘Without hesitation’: Stephen Harper endorses Pierre Poilievre for PM at Edmonton rally

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held a rally in Edmonton on Monday night, where he received an endorsement from Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister from 2006 to 2015.

Harper said Poilievre’s experience, including his time in Harper’s cabinet, should outweigh the resume of Carney, a political newcomer who served as the governor of the Bank of Canada during Harper’s time in office.

“I am the only person who can say that both of the men running to be prime minister once worked for me,” Harper told the crowd. “And in that regard, my choice, without hesitation, without equivocation, without a shadow of a doubt, is Pierre Poilievre.”

This isn’t the first time Harper has taken a dig at Carney. Last month, he criticized the Liberal leader’s economic record as governor of both the Bank of Canada and later the Bank of England.

In a Conservative party fundraising email released in March, Harper accused Carney of taking unearned credit for steering the Canadian economy out of the global financial crisis more than 15 years ago.

While Harper appointed Carney to run the Bank of Canada at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, he said in the email that it was then-finance minister Jim Flaherty who made the “hard calls.”

He went on to argue that Carney does not have experience of managing the Canadian economy on a daily basis and said the man he appointed to run the central bank has been “wrong on all the big issues.”

In a statement issued to The Canadian Press, a spokesperson for Carney’s campaign claimed that Harper’s attack was an attempt to salvage Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s electoral chances in the federal election.

“In 2025, Mr. Harper is being called on to save Pierre Poilievre from a historic drop in support, but no amount of revisionist history can take away from Mr. Carney’s proven record of economic leadership,” said Carney’s campaign in an email.

Harper’s recent comments about Carney are very different from the praise he offered in 2012, when Carney was leaving the central bank to take on the top job at the Bank of England.

In a media statement issued at the time, Harper said Carney did an “admirable job” of fulfilling the Bank of Canada’s mandate through a period of economic uncertainty and was a “valued partner” in the government’s efforts to stabilize the economy after the recession.