Pierre Poilievre, the self-styled everyman crusader against inflation, carbon taxation (now axed), and overpriced lettuce, just released a campaign video where he drove a Corvette C8 around a racetrack. Because nothing says pocketbook issues quite like an E-Ray with 655 horsepower and a base price that starts just shy of $150,000.

You read that right. The guy who’s made a political career out of telling Canadians they’re being strangled by high costs — who has made “Axe the Tax” his spiritual mantra — just white-knuckled a hybrid sports car around a track to signal… what, exactly? That if you vote for him, you too will be able to rent an experience you can’t afford? That axing the lowest federal tax bracket (worth a savings of $900 gained at an even higher cost) is going to have you in your own mid-engine Chevrolet come tax season?

Grab your copy of Own The Libs: Politics is the New Personality.

Is the metaphor here supposed to be that affordability is coming at you fast — but only if you’re behind the wheel of a six-figure car? Or is the subtext that performance vehicles are finally accessible to the middle class again, thanks to his policies, and it’s only a matter of time before single moms in Mississauga are roll racing their way to Costco?

But let’s talk speed. Or lack thereof.

He hit 74 km/h. Not on a residential street. On a racetrack. Wearing a helmet and gripping the wheel like it owed him money. “Change is coming fast,” he said — in a car that went slower than most soccer moms merging onto the 401. Elizabeth May would’ve hit 90 in that turn, stopped halfway to plant a tree, and still lapped him.

Poilievre wasn’t racing anyone. He wasn’t leading the pack. He was on a closed course, alone, coasting through the curves like someone deeply uncomfortable with the metaphor he himself was trying to stage. There was no chase. No heat. No narrative. Just a man and a part-electric Corvette, desperately trying to manufacture cool, and ending up with content that The Beaverton rightfully roasted as a result of not polling with the Corvette demographic. Because he’s not.

And don’t think we missed the fact that this was a hybrid Corvette. The C8 E-Ray — Canada’s answer to the American dream on eco-mode. So now we have a fiscal hawk, tax-cutting populist borrowing the aesthetics of climate-conscious luxury? Are we supposed to believe this is his way of showing he cares about the environment? That he’s bridging the carbon divide with a half measure of a status symbol?

Look, I’m all for political theatre. But this was campaign collateral in bad taste — the kind that would’ve sparked a frenzy if anyone else had done it. Imagine Mark Carney doing a hot lap in a Porsche Taycan. You’d have opinion pieces screaming about elitism, detachment, and bankers gone wild. But when it’s Poilievre, the man who wants to save you from grocery bills and government overreach, the Corvette becomes aspirational instead of absurd?

You can’t say you’re fighting for the working class while revving up luxury optics like it’s Fast & Fiscally Furious.

Unless, of course, your real platform isn’t affordability — it’s vibes. Mostly negative vibes.