Stephen Harper is today’s éminence grise behind the Conservative Party of Canada. Since leaving the University of Calgary in 1985, Harper has been a resolute right-wing activist. After Justin Trudeau defeated Harper in 2015, the former Prime Minister has worked internationally to further right-wing objectives and promote authoritarianism.

Stephen Harper is having a bit of a moment lately, thanks to his instantly notorious selfie last week with Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán, which both of them proudly tweeted about. 

Harper is the former Conservative prime minister who is now chair of the so-called International Democrat Union, the organization of right-wing and even-farther-right-wing national political parties that serves as the Neoliberal Internationale in this era of faltering democracy. 

It is worth remembering things that may have led Parliamentary page Brigette DePape to carry a sign during a throne speech.

While Harper and his political associates talk about liberty and personal freedoms, writer Susan Crean described a different attitude. She met Harper at a constitutional conference in the 1990s. When he learned that Crean had co-authored a book about American domination of Canadian politicians, Harper showed a preference for banning books that did not meet his approval. He told the author:

You should not have been allowed to write that book.

A less proud country

As a youth, Harper worked briefly in the oil industry, then in 1987 became a founding member of Preston Manning’s Reform Party.

Reform leader Preston Manning was born to a family that mixed fundamentalist Christianity and politics. His father had been a disciple of Bible Bill Aberhart, a preacher who served as Alberta Premier before Ernest Manning began a 25-year run as the province’s religious and political leader.

Stephen Harper’s church believes that humans should have dominion over everything on Earth and no actions are needed to protect the environment. The God of dominion theology has other plans.

In taking the Bible literally and as “inerrant” (rather than as metaphorical or symbolic truth), most dominionists also believe that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old, and that the “end times” are not only “imminent” but welcome, because the Faithful will be “raptured” to Heaven before the Battle of Armageddon takes place in the Middle East.

The Harper government and evangelical capitalism

Shortly after forming Reform, Preston Manning appointed Stephen Harper as head of policy. Harper wrote policies that established the party platform. It revealed a right-wing inclination toward white-supremacism, saying that immigration in Canada should NOT “be explicitly designed to radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada, as it increasingly seems to be.”

Conflict with Manning led Harper to resign from Parliament in 1997. He was hired that day by the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), a right-wing lobby group formed by Colin Brown to oppose public health insurance. Soon after, Harper was NCC President. He told an American think tank that his country did not have enough people too poor to survive. He called Canada a “Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term.”

Seeking to expand its western influence, the Reform Party became Canadian Alliance in 2000. It was an alliance of the right and the far-right. Soon after, Stockwell Day replaced Manning as leader. However, Day fell victim to a caucus revolt and was replaced in 2002. In 2003, Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservative Party and quickly dropped the ‘progressive’ label. Harper became leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2004.

Pretending to hold centrist positions, Harper led Conservatives to victory in 2006, defeating scandal tainted Liberals. Harper’s government lasted almost a decade. It ended, according to CBC’s Terry Milewski, because of “sheer nastiness of the Harper style.”

Artist Franke James, while planning a 2011 European tour, experienced the nastiness. The “freedom” loving Harper Government was working behind the scenes to kill support for her work and end her tour. One result was James’ book:

What would you do if you discovered you were blacklisted by your own government for speaking up on climate change and the tar sands? In Banned on the Hill, artist and author Franke James, tells how she first discovered she was being censored by the Canadian ‘Harper’ government — and how she fought back.

Banned on the Hill: A True Story about Dirty Oil and Government Censorship

Harper’s Conservatives, while professing fiscal responsibility, ran deficits for six straight years, between 2008-09 and 2013-14. National debt increased $130 billion. A report authored by economists Jim Stanford and Jordan Brennan tracked the performance of nine federal governments from 1946 through 2014. They declared Harper’s the worst of all.

Canada’s economy has never performed worse, since the end of World War II, than under the present Conservative government. The Harper government ranks last among the nine post-war governments, and by a wide margin – falling well behind the second worst government, which was the Mulroney government of 1984-93.

New report shows Harper government’s economic record to be the worst in Canada’s post-war history

Another deplorable act by Harper was his decision to muzzle federal government scientists, particularly those who spoke about climate and other politically sensitive issues.

Unable to reform the Senate to suit his purposes, Harper made inappropriate appointments to the chamber. Names like Duffy, Brazeau, Meredith, and Wallin come to mind.

Investigative journalist Michael Harris ranks Stephen Harper among the country’s worst Prime Ministers:

There is something very Stalinesque about Harper. My bottom line on this guy is, he hates democracy. He doesn’t care about truth and cares only about the perception of what benefits him. In that way he’s way worse [than his predecessors].

Bruce Livesay, National Observer: Is Harper the worst prime minister in history?

Pierre Poilievre is Harper’s proxy. Do Canadians really want a return to destructive Harperism?