Stephen Harper

Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. He is to date the only prime minister to have come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, being the party's co-founder and serving as its first leader from 2004 to 2015. Since 2018, he has also been the chairman of the International Democracy Union.

Harper studied economics, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1985 and 1991, respectively, from the University of Calgary. He was one of the founders of the Reform Party of Canada and was first elected to Parliament in the 1993 federal election in the riding of Calgary West. He did not seek re-election in 1997, and instead joined and later led the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative lobbyist group. In 2002, he succeeded Stockwell Day as leader of the Canadian Alliance, the successor to the Reform Party, and returned to Parliament as leader of the Official Opposition. In 2003, Harper and Peter MacKay negotiated the merger of the Canadian Alliance with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to form the Conservative Party of Canada. Harper was elected as the party's first leader in 2004. In the 2004 federal election, the Conservative Party lost to the Liberal Party led by Paul Martin. Following the defeat of Martin's government in a motion of no confidence, Harper led the Conservatives to a minority government in the 2006 federal election.

During Harper's premiership, he faced the In and Out scandal, reduced the goods and services tax (GST) to 5%, and passed the ''Federal Accountability Act'', the Québécois nation motion, and the ''Veterans' Bill of Rights''. After the Conservatives won a larger minority government in the 2008 federal election, Harper prorogued Parliament to avoid defeat by a proposed coalition of opposition parties, enacted the Economic Action Plan of personal income tax cuts and infrastructure investments in response to the Great Recession, introduced the tax-free savings account, and ordered military intervention during the First Libyan Civil War. In March 2011, a no-confidence vote found Harper's government to be in contempt of Parliament, triggering a federal election in which the Conservatives won a majority government. Harper then repealed the long-gun registry, privatized the Canadian Wheat Board, and enacted the ''Anti-terrorism Act, 2015''. His government sharply reduced Canada's budget deficit from $55.6 billion in 2009 to $2.9 billion in 2015. In foreign policy, Harper's government withdrew Canada from the Kyoto Protocol, launched Canada's Global Markets Action Plan, negotiated trade agreements including the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and ordered military operations abroad against ISIL and in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea. Harper's Conservatives also faced controversies in the Robocall scandal and the Canadian Senate expenses scandal, and confronted the Idle No More movement.

In the 2015 federal election, the Conservative Party was defeated by the Liberal Party led by Justin Trudeau. Harper officially stepped down as party leader in October 2015, and resigned his seat in August 2016. Since then, he has taken on a number of international business and leadership roles, including founding a global consulting firm, appearing in U.S. and British media, and being elected as chairman of the International Democracy Union, an international alliance of centre-right to right-wing political parties. The longest-serving conservative prime minister since John A. Macdonald, Harper ranks average to above-average in rankings of prime ministers of Canada. Provided by Wikipedia