Stephen Harper

The Hon. Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 20, 1959) is a Canadian politician and current leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

He was born and raised in Toronto before finding employment in the oil and gas industry and moving to Alberta. He attended the University of Calgary, ultimately lecturing there and receiving a Masters degree in economics. Harper became involved in politics in the mid-80s but became disillusioned with the government of Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada; he was especially critical on issues of fiscal policy.

Harper was recommended to Preston Manning, the founder of the Reform Party by one of Harper's professors. Manning was impressed by the young man and Harper was invited to participate in the founding of the party. At age 28 he gave an important speech at Reform's founding convention in Winnipeg, and is credited with creating the Party's 1993 election platform.

Harper has been described as a "policy wonk" and an "ideological conservative"; he also claims some identification with the libertarian intellectual tradition.

In the 1988 Canadian election Harper ran for a House of Commons seat in Calgary, but lost by a wide margin to the Tory candidate. He fared better in the 1993 election where he won the riding of Calgary West. Harper arrived in Parliament with a large group of new MP's. Harper quickly became one of the core members of the parliamentary delegation.

Harper disagreed with party leader Preston Manning's approach that would give the Reform Party an increasingly populist, as opposed to conservative, bent. Harper also held that Reform could serve as a right-wing force along the model of the left-wing New Democratic Party, having a major effect on policy even if it won relatively few seats.

Harper left his seat before the 1997 election to take over leadership first as vice-president, then as president of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), a right-wing lobbying group, before vacating the post in 2002. With the NCC, Harper launched an initially successful, though ultimately unsuccessful, legal battle against Canada's third-party election spending limits.

On the heels of the poor showing in the 2000 election of the Canadian Alliance, Reform's successor, a disappointed Harper joined with other western figures to endorse a policy of strict adherence to constitutionally mandated separation of powers - what was termed a "firewall around Alberta" - in order to limit intrusion by the federal government into areas of strictly provincial jurisdiction.

With the collapse of Stockwell Day's leadership of the Canadian Alliance in the summer of 2001, Harper stood as a candidate in the subsequent Canadian Alliance leadership election. In the vote on March 20, 2002, Harper handily defeated Day on the first ballot to become leader of the Alliance. He became Leader of the Opposition after returning to Parliament in a by-election that fall.

On January 12, 2004, Harper announced his resignation as Leader of the Opposition to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, the result of a merger of the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives. He won the 2004 Conservative Party of Canada leadership race with a first ballot majority against Belinda Stronach and Tony Clement on March 20, 2004. Shortly thereafter he returned to the position of Leader of the Opposition, a post he will continue in based on the results of the Canadian federal election, 2004.