The old Pierre Poilievre is back. After watching Mark Carney’s Liberals secure a majority government with a clean sweep in last Monday’s three byelections and with rumours of more floor crossers in the offing, the Conservative Party of Canada leader has decided to abandon his kinder and gentler personality reboot in favour of his more familiar brand of populist petulance. This time, though, he’s chosen the dumbest possible target for it: Mark Carney’s economic credentials. 

“There's one thing that's worse than being uneducated and it's being badly educated,” he told the CTF’s Kris Sims in a recent interview. “And Mr. Carney is very badly educated on economics.” You could almost see the delight spread across Carney’s face when Toronto Star reporter Tonda McCharles conveyed that comment to him. “Did he? Wow,” the PM replied, sounding like a heavyweight boxing champion being challenged to a bar fight by someone six beers deep. 

Poilievre’s attack on Carney’s economic credentials makes JD Vance’s decision to question the Pope on matters of theological interpretation seem modest by comparison. Challenging a guy with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard and a masters and PhD in economics from Oxford to a contest of who understands economics better is a new and previously uncharted form of machochism, especially from someone whose own education on the subject seems to primarily involve YouTube videos and........

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