Domestic Politics

Anyone who knows me personally is aware that I am a longtime, admittedly partisan Liberal. Since I was seven years old, I have viewed the Grits as the "good guys", the happy, centrist medium in between the centre-right Conservative Party and the left-wing New Democrats.

Although I was too young to have a thorough understanding of Canadian politics, I remember my disappointment and shock upon learning of Stephen Harper's minority win in 2006. I even opened my compulsory Grade 4 speech with a line about Canada's 22nd Prime Minister, stating that it was a surprising victory.

Stunning it was, the end result of Mr. Harper's five-year fight to unite Canada's right, long defeated through vote-splitting between the Progressive Conservatives and the Harper-led Canadian Alliance. It was Stephen Harper and Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay who negotiated a merger between the two parties in the latter half of 2003. MacKay, who is still viewed as a traitor by some longtime Red Tories, won the PC leadership in part by promising not to merge with the Alliance.

After winning the leadership in 2004, Stephen Harper struggled to define himself to Canadians. Following a thin loss to the Liberals in 2004, Harper and strategist Doug Finley realized what the Conservatives needed to do to appeal to Canadian voters; milk the populist approach utilized by the defunct Canadian Alliance, and promote issues that everyone in the country could get behind.

The Conservative Party of Canada's 2006 platform played to three notions: voter fatigue, concerns about healthcare, and the continued existence of a tax which aimed to simplify the tax system when first enacted by the Mulroney government in 1991: the goods and services tax. Canadians were presented with three easy-to-understand promises: 1. A new era of accountability, which played to voters' frustration with the Liberal sponsorship scandal and 13 years of Liberal governance. 2. Reducing hospital wait-times, which were and are famously long depending on which ailment one is suffering from and the urgency of situations. 3. Cutting the GST from 7% to a reduced 5%, allowing Canadians to keep more of their tax dollars.

During the 2006 election campaign, which actually began in late 2005, the Conservative Party sent a "gift" to the mailboxes of every Canadian which read something along the lines of "Merry Christmas: GST Cut". The appeal of new, more accountable government, and lower taxes was enough to push Stephen Harper's Conservatives to victory, and on February 6, 2006, Harper was sworn in as Canada's 22nd Prime Minister.

Upon entering office, Harper began to try and enact the change he had promised Canadians: the GST was cut, a Parliamentary Budget Office was created to hold the government's fiscal choices accountable, and the Access to Information Act was broadened to cover a larger number of Crown corporations.

In critique

Harper enjoyed a honeymoon lasting about half a year, before he began to backpedal. In 2007, it was discovered the Conservative caucus had created a "playbook" to try and jam up Parliamentary procedure. The Conservative Party was involved in legal challenges over election spending discrepancies: they broke election rules again in the 2008 and 2011 elections. In 2008, the Conservative government was going to lose power to a Bloc Quebecois-endorsed Liberal-NDP coalition: Stephen Harper controversially asked the Governor General to prorogue Parliament to avoid defeat in the House of Commons. The Governor General obliged, and the Conservatives held onto power.

Over the following years, Harper missed the emissions targets he set, continued to reduce media availability and prevented some government scientists from speaking out about their discoveries. Perhaps most surprisingly, the man who initially promised to never appoint a senator when Prime Minister, appointed 59. Three of those senators were investigated by the RCMP for inappropriate use of Senate funds. Harper's refusal to call a national inquiry into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women drew ire, and the closing of nine Veterans Affairs offices reduced services for those who have fought and worked hard for Canada's peaceful livelihood.

In 2010, Stephen Harper's government eliminated the long-form census, severely crippling the ability of Statistics Canada to collect accurate data. In 2011, the Harper government was found in contempt of Parliament, the first government in the Commonwealth to be found as such.

Notably, and shamefully, Stephen Harper's re-election strategy in the 2015 election was to play to Canadians' fear of Muslims: Harper promised to ban the niqab (a headdress worn by a small number of Muslim women) at citizenship ceremonies, even though wearers of the niqab are already required by law to show their faces to security beforehand. It added to the narrative of government-knows-best negativity that Harper's opponents had painted of him.

Finally, the Harper government failed to create a long-term strategy for jobs and growth; after the stimulus was passed, which created a fair amount of new part-time and full-time jobs and carried Canada through the 2009 economic downturn, growth returned to relative stagnation. Instead of further investment in economic growth, the Conservatives held onto $15 billion in unused spending. Furthermore, the province of Alberta is currently dealing with the consequences of their dependency on oil and lack of economic diversification (this is not solely the fault of Stephen Harper, but decades of failing to address this discrepancy).

In defense

The Harper government shined during the 2008 recession. Harper, reluctant to run a stimulus, was pressured to do so by the Opposition, who threatened to bring down his government if he took no action. Ultimately, Harper and his Finance Minister, the late Jim Flaherty, decided to run a $55-billion deficit in order to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Long story short, it worked, and Canada came out of the recession in better shape than a lot of other developed nations in the world. Finance Minister Flaherty created the Tax-Free Savings Account, allowing Canadians to sock away up to $5000, free of tax, annually. Additionally, Stephen Harper's government signed numerous new free-trade agreements with developed and developing nations, opening Canada up to new, beneficial economic opportunities.

Responsibly, the deficit was eliminated by the end of Stephen Harper's mandate, and the Conservatives were even able to introduce a national childcare benefit, popular with moms and dads. Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, head of the office that Harper created to keep himself in check, was more often than not "butting heads" with the Prime Minister; Page possessed a disdain for Harper's omnibus bills (bills that contain multiple, unrelated measures, forcing the Opposition to pass the bill in order to enact the important measures), the Conservative government's failure to take action to meet their emissions targets, and their freezing of spending on services in order to balance the budget. At the very least, Page's role drew attention to fiscal anomalies of the Harper government.

Stephen Harper made the fateful decision to send Canada's jets into the air war against dictator Muammar Gaddafi in Libya: regardless of my initial reservations about the mission, Canada's contribution was effective.

Perhaps most crucially, Stephen Harper and then-Defense Minister Peter MacKay made the decision to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan; this ended a ten-year combat mission which began under Jean Chretien's Liberal government.

In conclusion, and what the Conservative Party can learn from the Harper legacy

Stephen Harper's pledge to make government more accountable was partially fulfilled: however, it was stopped in its tracks upon Harper's discovery that it is easier to control the message and decision-making from the safety of the Prime Minister's Office than it is to allow the Opposition a fair shake at policy creation. Harper also discovered just how hard it was to make real, significant change when put up against the layered bureaucracy of the Canadian political system.

To Harper's credit, the Parliamentary Budget Office that his government created continues to be a vital part of Canadian democracy. The Tax-Free Savings Account continues to help Canadians save for retirement, and the GST tax cut is allowing Canadians to save more money than they would have been able to save under a second Paul Martin government.

Solid management of the country's finances under Finance Minister Jim Flaherty allowed Canada's financial institutions to remain intact, and Harper's continued use of Alliance-style populist policies helped him secure three election victories, including one majority mandate.

However, Harper's contempt for environmental and social issues, as well as a cynical attitude toward the Opposition and a tight grip on the Prime Minister's Office contributed to voter fatigue, and ultimately led to his political demise. In fairness, any government has an expiry date; voter fatigue played a part in the political demise of Paul Martin, Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney, and many Prime Ministers before that.

As the Conservative Party gears up for a leadership election in 2017, the Conservatives can be assured that toeing the line Stephen Harper left in the sand will ultimately lead to another defeat. The party would be well advised to take a more progressive stance on social issues, and Interim Leader Rona Ambrose, to her credit, has made moves to do just that. Ambrose has expressed support for a national inquiry, ironically opposes Canada's arms deal with human rights violator Saudi Arabia, which was signed when she was in government (such is the job of Opposition I guess), and has expressed a wish to remove support for traditional marriage from the Conservative Party's official policy.

The policy of financial austerity during the latter half of Stephen Harper's mandate is not an unpopular stance; if the Conservatives continue to be cheerleaders for fiscal restraint, while avoiding toxic issues like the niqab and moving closer to the left on social issues, they can avert the risk of the Liberal Party swallowing up the centrist vote once again in 2019.

Stephen Harper served Canada for nearly ten years, and regardless of political stripe, Canadians must applaud anyone who gives that much of their life up to serve their nation. Harper himself is relieved, I'm sure, to be away from the prying eyes of the public and to be spending more time with his family. It is well deserved.

While the Conservative Party need not forget Stephen Harper, the man who led the Canadian Right back from the political wilderness, they can accept the lessons they have learned in the aftermath of the 2015 election and evolve as a party in a progressive nation. The continued survival of the Conservative Party is important to Canadian democracy, and commendable. Even though he is no longer Prime Minister, Harper himself surely believes that fact alone is something to be proud of.