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At a massive Conservative rally in Edmonton, Harper dismissed Carney鈥檚 role as governor of the Bank of Canada in helping the country avoid a recession in the global financial crisis of 2008-09, saying he was speaking as 鈥渢he guy who actually did lead Canada through the global financial crisis.鈥�

鈥淚 hear there’s someone else claiming it was him,鈥� Harper said, prompting boos though he hadn鈥檛 mentioned Carney鈥檚 name. 鈥淚t was, of course, our government.鈥�

Harper continued, 鈥渢he late, great Jim Flaherty and our Conservative team were responsible for the day to day macroeconomic and economic management during that challenging time,” downplaying Carney’s role as he did earlier in a party fundraising letter.聽

Poilievre followed up Tuesday with a blistering attack, calling Carney a 鈥減olitical grifter鈥� who gave the British government policy advice on 鈥済reen fuels,鈥� and claiming Carney then acted on inside knowledge to drive profits to the giant investment firm Brookfield Asset Management.

鈥淢r. Carney is not a businessman. He is a political grifter who has used his political influence to turn decisions that profit his company at the expense of workers and seniors 鈥� and that is exactly how he would govern the country,鈥� said Poilievre in Edmonton, once again linking Carney to a “lost Liberal decade” under Justin Trudeau.

At a campaign stop in Vancouver, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh also attacked Carney over his association with Brookfield Asset Management, saying his loyalties lie with 鈥渞ich investors with deep pockets from other countries鈥� who profit from buying up rental housing stock and “renovicting” people. He claimed Carney would protect billionaires and would not protect health care.

鈥淚n this election, the choice is really important. We’ve got all this uncertainty from Donald Trump and his attacks on workers, attacks on people,鈥� said Singh. 鈥淲ho’s going to stand up and defend your values?鈥�

Carney later smiled when asked about Harper鈥檚 backing of Poilievre. “Stephen Harper appointed me governor of the Bank Canada,” he said. “We 鈥� I 鈥� worked closely with the late and great Jim Flaherty during the financial crisis. We resolved a number of situations. Many people are familiar with that experience.

“I note that Pierre Poilievre was not at any of those tables, was not given any of that responsibility and note further that in subsequent years he has not gained any responsibility in managing crises or difficult situations.”

Carney, who had previously worked as an investment banker and at the Department of Finance, said he declined Harper’s offer to be finance minister because it wasn鈥檛 “appropriate” to move into a partisan role from the independent bank鈥檚 top job, and drew a clear contrast between him and his opponent.

鈥淯nlike Pierre Poilievre, I’ve actually worked in the private sector,鈥� said Carney. 鈥淚 know how the world works, and I know how it can be made to work better for everyone.”

Pollster Andre Turcotte of Pollara Insights said the Conservatives鈥� sharpening attacks on Carney may stem from the fact that polls are not turning to favour Poilievre, despite what Turcotte described as 鈥渒ind of a reboot鈥� of the Conservative campaign last week when Poilievre shifted its focus onto Trump.

鈥淥ur numbers show that Carney is gaining momentum,鈥� Turcotte said, while Poilievre鈥檚 鈥渘umbers are continuing to decline.鈥� The NDP, he said, is “underwater.”

Conservative campaign organizers may have expected “changes too quickly,” said Turcotte, and brought out Harper to fire things up. But, he asked, “how much more can you mobilize Albertans to be conservative?” Turcotte speculated that it might have been better to maximize the value of “an important moment” like the former prime minister’s emergence on the campaign trail 鈥� which didn’t happen in the last two campaigns 鈥� in a major battleground like southwestern Ontario.

Still, it’s not clear if that would make a difference. Pollara’s ongoing tracking numbers show voters prefer Carney over Poilievre as the leader best able to handle Trump by a 20-point margin. Poilievre “really has to carve out this space that he’s prime ministerial,” said Turcotte, and the ideal situation on the campaign trail would be to have other people “doing the attacking for you while you take the high road.”

So far this week, it’s been the opposite.

Poilievre charged Carney is a “high tax hypocrite,” and pledged to create an 鈥渆conomic and tax task force鈥� to 鈥渃lose overseas tax havens鈥� and 鈥渓oopholes.” Poilievre also promised a 鈥渘ame-and-shame website鈥� to expose tax dodgers, and incentives for whistleblowers offering up to 20 per cent of recovered funds to expose 鈥渋llegal tax schemes.鈥�

Poilievre boasted of his crowd size at the Edmonton rally Monday night, which some reports pegged at 12,000, and suggested it was the biggest in Canadian politics.

Several observers noted on social media Tuesday that Pierre Trudeau spoke to an estimated 20,000 at Maple Leaf Gardens in May 1979 during the campaign in which he went on to lose to Joe Clark.

Harper teed up Poilievre’s Monday night stump speech saying that while Trump presents another “historically challenging” time, most problems that 鈥渁fflict鈥� Canada 鈥� falling living standards, declining employment and housing opportunities, rising crime, and “the growing divisions between our regions and our people鈥� 鈥� are the result of three Liberal terms in government, and policies that Carney supports.

Harper played up Poilievre’s career as politician, saying he has the advantage of elected experience and being accountable to voters, and he saw how Poilievre 鈥済rew鈥� through his life in politics.

Don Drummond, a former associate deputy minister of finance before Carney held that job, and who recently retired from his post as senior-vice president and chief economist for the TD Bank, said in an interview it does not befit Harper to suggest that Carney is overselling his role.

“Harper 鈥� I don’t know wilfully or not 鈥� is miscasting the relationship between a prime minister and the governor of the Bank of Canada,” said Drummond.

“The whole notion is just silly beyond belief. There was a role to be played by monetary policy and there was a role to play by fiscal policy and Mark Carney and the Bank of Canada played the Bank of Canada role, and Flaherty, supported by his prime minister, played the fiscal role,” he said.

“They both had a role to play and they both fulfilled that role. End of story. It’s not a competition.”

Timothy Lane, who served as deputy governor at the Bank of Canada under Carney during the financial crisis in 2008-09, said he saw Carney operate “around the table with other central bankers and finance ministers” at that time, and “he had a unique ability to kind of hone in on what’s at stake here, what’s the important issue, what needs to be done, what could we do about it.”

He said Carney had “public policy objectives in mind 鈥� and after the crisis, it was all about making the world safe” and avoiding an approach where “pursuit of profit at the expense of risk” might lead the world “down the road to a financial collapse that then taxpayers were basically on the hook to to clean up after.”

Lane said he believed that’s why the British Conservative government recruited Carney to be governor of the Bank of England. “It was really quite impressive, just the way that he commanded respect. And I mean, generally people, you could just sort of see how people would listen to what he was saying.”

With files from Alex Ballingall