He openly expressed concern about the erosion of transparency in Russia, the consolidation of political power, and the suppression of dissidents. Prime Minister Harper oversaw a dramatic deepening of relations with India, and developed a strategic and balanced relationship with successive Chinese leaders while refusing to shy away from raising issues of human rights and trade imbalances. As the host leader of the G summit in Toronto, and as an economist by training, Prime Minister Harper helped shape financial reform frameworks, implemented a sustainable approach to fiscal stimulus, and led the call for open markets and pragmatic, growth-oriented economic policy.
As he climbed the stage to give his concession speech at the International Trade Centre in suburban Regina on election night last Oct. Scheer had entered the crowded auditorium wearing a crisp navy blue suit and carrying his daughter Mary in his left arm, trailed by his wife Jill and their four other children, looking buoyant. And with an endorsement from the Canadian people that we are the government in waiting. Our award-winning journalists bring you the news that impacts you, Canada, and the world.
Don't miss out. But the knives were already being sharpened. Among those upset was Sara MacIntyre, a Toronto-based government relations consultant, former press secretary to both prime minister Stephen Harper and B. Yet the Conservatives were almost entirely shut out of those hubs. And the attacks came fast and furious. Kory Teneycke, a political consultant and former director of communications to Harper began criticizing Scheer on-air during election night while working as a CBC analyst.
Soon after the election, he and former Tory MP John Reynolds and Jeff Ballingall, the founder of Ontario Proud — a conservative advocacy group — formed Conservative Victory, a non-profit designed to remove Scheer from his post. Scheer tried to cling to his job, but the end came swiftly. Scheer resigned on Dec. For one thing, Harper was sitting on the board of the Conservative Fund. It was the same thing they did to Mike Duffy and to Pamela Wallin.
These people were largely outed by people within the party. Harper doesn't need to campaign for or against anyone in the party leadership race. He created it and was the leader for 12 of its 17 years of existence. If Harper is the most powerful force in the Tory party, is he preventing it from changing direction as many believe it must? And that is the dilemma the Conservative Party is facing today.
Right now, for the second time in three years, the party is looking for a new leader. For starters, none of the conservative movement's biggest stars threw their hats in the ring — Jason Kenney, Jean Charest, Rona Ambrose and John Baird. MP Pierre Poilievre lasted two weeks before he pulled the plug on his bid, ostensibly to spend more time with family. Ian MacDonald, a former speechwriter for Brian Mulroney and publisher of Policy Magazine says the caliber of candidates is much weaker than past eras.
Theresa Tam who was born in Hong Kong and grew up in the U. Another hopeful, Leslyn Lewis, is uncomfortable with same-sex marriage and opposes abortion.
After the ruling, the party threw Karahalios out of the race again — this time by the book. Neither man speaks French fluently. When announcing his candidacy, MacKay managed to mangle a common French verb tense. Combined with Scheer making tone-deaf gaffes during the COVID shutdown — such as questioning the wisdom of paying out-of-work Canadians federal funds — polls show the party is languishing at 25 to 28 per cent support, which would mean a loss of up to 40 seats if an election were held today.
The Liberals, by contrast, are up to 40 to 46 per cent. And they are just flummoxed on how to deal with Trudeau. In this last election the Liberal vote more than doubled in my riding than ours and our vote count went down by several thousand votes.
An Ottawa press corps source told me Wells is often used by Harper as a conduit for leaks. Charest had called Harper in December to get his blessing — but did not get it. And it explains why so few people are actually putting their hats in the ring on this one. If Stephen Harper is unconsciously torpedoing the party he created, how did this happen?
After all, he led the party to three back-to-back election victories and was prime minister for nearly a decade — and blessed with a strategic mind. The Tories knew their base got them only about 30 per cent of the vote — and therefore they needed to attract voters who were not conservatives. Brian Mulroney was the most adept leader at building a coast-to-coast conservative coalition. Mulroney ruled as a centrist, taking progressive stands on human rights, racism and the environment.
Mulroney was a leading international voice against apartheid and releasing Nelson Mandela, and passed significant environmental legislation — including the acid rain treaty with the U. His government was even alarmed about climate change. By , with the government unpopular and mired in corruption scandals, Mulroney stepped down. His successor, Kim Campbell, led the Tories into a disastrous election, winning only two seats.
The PC Party never recovered and the right would be in the wilderness for more than a decade, splintered into pieces. The person who would sew them back together was an obscure Reform Party policy wonk — Stephen Harper. The son of an Imperial Oil accountant, Harper was born in Toronto, but ended up in Calgary in the early s, studying economics at the University of Calgary. Flanagan also embraced the neoliberalism of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, who was against government social programs.
The Calgary School were the types who scorned Red Tories. Flanagan feels a conservative party does not have to move to the centre to win. You just have to avoid being demonized. After university, Harper went to work for the Reform Party, even winning a seat in Parliament in He quit four years later to run the anti-tax National Citizens Coalition.
There is really very little of the old Progressive Conservative party left. But more importantly, they would win over urban voters by wooing socially conservative new immigrants and develop tax policies that would appeal to certain voting segments of the populace — such as seniors or young families — in what is known as slicing and dicing the electorate. Harper was also lucky — the Liberal Party was in crisis. In , with Paul Martin weighed down by the sponsorship and other scandals, the Tories eked out a minority.
Harper lucked out again when the Liberals elected two milquetoast leaders back-to-back and sectarian feuding between Liberals and NDP split the progressive vote. He was the Conservative prime minister who bailed out the auto sector. After obtaining a masters degree from the University of Calgary he went on to work as a political aide. Mr Harper won a parliamentary seat for the Reform Party in , but quit four years later to work for a conservative lobby group.
He returned to parliament in as head of the Canadian Alliance and leader of the opposition. A year later his party merged with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. The new Conservative Party, with Mr Harper at the helm, reunited Canada's political right after years of disarray. But the father-of-two could not beat Liberal Party leader Paul Martin in the election, and Mr Martin was able to form a minority government.
Observers say the Conservative Party's controversial statements on abortion and same-sex marriage lost them key votes on that occasion. Next time around, Mr Harper - a keen strategist - managed to marginalise the more extreme elements of his party. Harper went on to defeat Day on the first ballot of the leadership convention in April and then set his sights on a return to Parliament. A logical place for him to run was Calgary Southwest, a staunchly conservative riding that had been recently vacated by Preston Manning and was due for a byelection.
Levant had begun campaigning long before a byelection was even called and publicly asserted his "legal and moral authority to be the candidate" in Calgary Southwest. As the byelection campaign got underway, Harper described one of his biggest challenges as his status as the overwhelming favourite. Only 23 per cent of Calgary Southwest voters ultimately turned out to the polls in May, but they elected Harper in a landslide, with 72 per cent of the vote.
Taking his seat in Parliament as leader of the Official Opposition, Harper used the opportunity to exchange jabs with Chretien over internal strife within the governing party over who would succeed him as leader.
While the Liberals were fighting over succession, the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives finally found common ground and agreed to merge into the present-day Conservative Party of Canada. As the Liberals reeled from a damning auditor-general report into the sponsorship scandal, Harper was elected leader of the new Conservative party in March , giving him his best shot yet at government in the federal election that June.
Clark refused to endorse Harper or the new Conservative party, even going as far as saying Chretien's replacement, Paul Martin, was a "marginally more acceptable" option for voters.
Less than a year after the election, he was laying the groundwork for a non-confidence vote to bring down the shaky Liberal minority. Once the writ was dropped, the Conservatives hammered the Liberals over the sponsorship scandal while setting out key planks of their platform. The message resonated with voters, who moved toward the Conservatives, not in overwhelming numbers, but enough to give the party a foothold on government that it would translate into nearly a decade of rule.
Under Harper, the party won On Aug. He joined CBC in after spending the previous decade working as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba.
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