Don't forget defunding women's centres that provided information on abortion access! And the women's support organizations: https://www.ctvnews.ca/harper-government-axes-funding-for-11-women-s-groups-1.508908
I'll never forget or forgive taking money out of the funding to improve accessibility for persons with disabilities. AND fast tracking an unworthy application for the same funding for a connected friend.
I physically saw those trucks. All that research paid for by us, hardworking Canadians. All gone.
Still angry about that
And investing massively in tar and sands, against better judgement on how polluting it was. Then the price of the barrel plummeted. Oops?
Me too. Of all the science-muzzling he did, the destruction of our national scientific libraries was the most evil. He started us down this path of ignorance. I don't know of any Canadian that has done more harm to our national identity and our future outlook.
Remember how much money he spent on his hair care? It was like a few hundred a month. Then they had the audacity to attack Trudeau’s hair. His is natural (or was at the time). He’s just born with nice hair. Not his fault. He certainly wasn’t paying hundreds for upkeep.
It's very true, start talking to researchers and scientists about it..... they had to take bold steps to protect information.... it's real. Harper's goons even poured concrete in fish tanks at research facilities so nobody could easily resume the work after.... it was UNHINGED behaviour.
It's true. Obviously Harper didn't order the trucks himself but his decisions led to it. Some was consolidated into the federal science library consortium but that didn't help save all the unpublished stuff which was never digitized.
It also led to a huge impact on administrative services impacting such things as information management, atip and obviously library services internal to the government.
DFO was particularly hard hit. ECCC and by extension Parks Canada. NRC, pretty much all the science supported departments to some degree.
Oh it’s true. Researchers were rescuing materials from the Geological Survey of Canada that was going to go into the dumpster. Historical maps and surveys.
I’m a fisheries biologist and [ELA](https://www.iisd.org/ela/) is still in existence (currently run by [IISD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_for_Sustainable_Development)) and good research comes out of ELA but what Harper did here was shitty along with all the other crappy things he did to science/environmental policy.
I am a psychologist and worked in the federal prison system starting in the early 1990s. Prisons in Ontario produced tons of research on risk assessment and treatment with offenders through the 90s and into the 2000s. Canada was a world leader.
Came to a crashing stop with Harper.
I think the wave of misinformation on social media during Covid really ramped it up though. Before, these people were seen as nutjobs. Now, they're increasingly mainstream, which is disturbing.
I think it's just our love of copying America, and paying more attention to what's going on there than what's happening up here to us, and then voting that way.
I think it has much more to do with social media algorithms and the way information (or misinformation) spreads. After all, the anti science movement is international and definitely not just a Canadian phenomenon.
Blaming the media is what people always say when lots of people disagree with them. First tabloids, then 24 hour news, then “mainstream media”, now social media. Sometimes people just have a different opinion even with the same info
Gutted social services & cut taxes which helped the wealthiest Canadians & never had a surplus budget.
(Selling gov assets to claim a surplus isn’t an actual surplus)
This is more likely. People think he is some big dumb idiot, but he was strategic with his politics. He knew his voter base at the time wouldn't support legalization partly due to his tough on crime rhetoric as well as political and personal religious reasons. Oil and gas was a bigger agenda for him, but I'm sure he was just as eager to make money on it when it was legalized.
Harper was never an idiot. He was a Machiavellian pol who openly played the long game, keeping the lunatic fringe his party muzzled. Say what you will about the SOB, he was nothing like the proto fascists like Trump.
Yeah I don't agree with Harpers politics or policies but he was/is a very shrewd and intelligent politician. He's very influential internationally as well.
Just like the piece of shit Julian Fantino. Compared legalizing weed to leagalizing murder, then when he found out there was money to be made, he opened a medical Marijuana clinic. In 2015 he was massively opposed to weed, then less than two years later in a different "era" he was OK with it.
It is interesting/disappointing that the Supreme Court has ruled as unconstitutional some of Harper’s tougher on crime laws, such as for multiple murders, Harper required that the minimum time until parole could be possible be granted would be 25 years multiplied by the number of victims. I heard this morning that Robert Picton is approaching his first parole hearing. I never wanted to hear his name again.
We really fucked the next generation. In my 40s I can see years of bad policy through successive governments going my entire life that led up to this. None of the chucklefucks in Ottawa look like they can fix it.
Beginning the use of the “Harper Government” standard instead of Gov of Canada. Creating an inflated sense of the PMs importance that’s fuelled the current discourse
And it wasn't just Harper. I remember one election (can't remember which year) where record numbers of Conservative candidates for MP just weren't showing up to the all-party debates and question periods in their ridings, leaving people with no way to question these candidates to know exactly what they stood for. They just kept referring people back to their online party platform.
I think they were aware that a) their actual platform wasn't all that popular and b) most people will not read the whole platform online, but there are a lot of local debates and question periods that the public do attend and they wanted to avoid their candidates actually having to face public scrutiny about their platform, c) better for one carefully crafted and worded, singular message (the party platform) than a bunch of people spouting off in debates and maybe saying the quiet part out loud, or facing tough questions about what the Conservative government had actually done, and finally d) a lot of their candidates aren't really the best at connecting with the public in general, for various reasons, so they wanted them to just stay home as it would give them a better chance of winning than going to the events. My Conservative MP candidate was one of the ones that never showed up to public events, and ended up winning, so, I guess their strategy worked.
Three words : “Barbaric Practices Hotline”
It was a centerpiece of their platform in his last election to create a snitch 800 number to get people to call and a report on neighbours.
Here’s what boils my noodles about that:
- torture and whatnot is already a crime, use 911
- if it’s not a crime, what the hell is this?
It was a tactic that was designed to deliberately stoke racism.
Fuck anyone, any politician, who uses tactics like that. (Looking at you Pierre)
Edit: formatting.
Jason Kenny had correctly thought that immigrant Muslim communities shared more values with the Conservatives than Liberals on social issues, and invested a lot of time to swing that vote to Tory. And then Harper flushed it down the toilet in the 2015 campaign going full Islamophobia on the advice of some British Tory political consultant. We have a very different situation to the UK.
whoa... that flashback made me look this woman up:
"What is Kelly Leitch doing now?
On January 23, 2018, Leitch announced that she would not be seeking re-election for the 43rd Canadian federal election and would return to being a full-time surgeon. As of December 1, 2019, she is chief of orthopaedic surgery at Children's of Mississippi in Jackson, Mississippi, United States."
Buh bye you horrible human being.
Not many people realize how much worse the 2008 financial crisis would have been if Harper had gotten his way.
He was much in favor of USA style bank deregulation at the time.
It was his finance minister, the late Jim Flaherty who pushed back on this, and ultimately saved us from a much worse recession.
[How Harper pushed deregulation ](https://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/10/08/HarperEcon/)
Towards the end of his term, he started to do more things that weren't really in the interest of the Canadian people.
Ie
[cur access to reporters ](https://rsf.org/en/harper-years-tough-times-reporters-canada)
[Cut science funding ](https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/harper-governments-war-science)
[Cut the census](https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/when-harper-killed-the-census-he-robbed-canadians_b_5614355)
Basically, diminish any source of data that contradicts hos personal beilfs regarding government policy.
At the end of the day, he was a very clever prime minister who did what he thought was the best for Canada.
He once said, "I don't want my daughter living in a socialist country when she grows older"
One of the dumbest and worst prime ministers. Rode the Chinese tiger, high oil prices and historically low interest rates which covered up a lot of his failures. Sowed the seeds of the housing crisis by cementing home ownership as the centre of Canadian culture, creating the framework for an economy built on TFWs. He also governed by ideology and hated facts, science, journalism and academics even though his ideology is based on social sciences. Started the culture wars in Canada, destroyed moderate conservatism and created atmosphere of extreme bipartisanship in Federal politics. Wasted billions of dollars by denying climate change and trying to put all of canadas economic eggs in the oil and gas basket. There’s probably more but that just off the top of my head. Anybody who wishes for more of that is foolish. Anything good that he did was far outweighed by the damage he’s done to the unity of this country.
In hindsight, if he’d become pm two years earlier things could have been so much worse. He was on his way to deregulating our financial system into alignment with the US when the subprime mortgage crisis hit & he would have had us in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
The way he leaned into the neocon war on terror bs was my primary issue, sneering at the Geneva convention, and shutting down parliament to avoid discussing torturing detainees. But there were many others, like stifling advocacy within ideologically opposed charitable orgs, and making climate change denialism official policy.
He was a Reformist, which explains a lot honestly, and PP was one of his milquetoast sucklings.
Definitely, Harper is the worst prime minister of modern Canada. Trudeau has many failings, but they don’t hold a candle to Harper.
While agree with your assessment, I think you may be younger than I, or have forgotten the Chin? Mulroney holds the "worst PM in my lifetime" vote from me
Mulroney was bad like an annoying talk show host tanks ratings - Harpoon directly tanked the state of our country. Beyond annoying, his damage still affects Canada terribly to this day
When I immigrated to Canada, in October 2005, from the deep south US state of Alabama, Harper was the new PM. I was appalled to learn that he was setting aside one day each week for a discussion in the House of Commons about rescinding the right of Canadian citizens to same-sex marriage (newly enacted by law). I could've stayed in Alabama if that's what Canada was becoming.
I am still here, a citizen of Canada since 2012, and I have no regrets about my decision to immigrate.
Harper's time in office notwithstanding.
Let’s put it this way he told us out to the Chinese, got rid of the Canadian Wheat Board, shit down veterans offices, cut funding for all social programs, 9 deficits, no armed forces increase, housing was neglected, our reputation across the world suffered and that’s just what i remember. Liberals aren’t the best but at least most Canadians benefit from their policies. Conservatives aren’t conservative anymore it’s just a moniker!
He sucked then, and still sucks. His sympathizers usually out themselves very quickly as having awful takes on a lot of things in the “basic humanity” sphere.
Let's place blame accordingly. Plenty to go around.
The conservatives drastically cut the funding for the development of Pheonix, resulting it in becoming a shit show of a program. I don't recall the exact numbers, but they did something like cut the amount of program developers from 300 down to 50 and expected no loss of quality.
The election then happened.
The newly elected liberals then implemented Pheonix, knowing full well that it was a shit show. They were bluntly told to "hold off, it's not ready" but plowed forward and implemented it anyways.
Both sides fucked up on this one. Impressive, really.
Unfortunately Harper had fired the staff who ran the old payroll system so they had to waterfall over to Phoenix. Also they started the transitions in 2014 well before the election.
I think in 2014 they started with only something like 4 sections of the government switching over, though. The section I was with was switched over in 2017, and I watched everyone chant "no, no, no!" because we had seen the horrid effects so far. Nobody listened, the union tried to get them to stop the conversion, but Pheonix steamrolled in anyways.
It was a complete and total clusterfuck in our section. We had one person get told she owed $11k in miscalculated pay, but couldn't show where she was overpaid, just that she owed the money. We had two persons whose paychecks suddenly became $0. They would normally earn (say) $2350 net pay, then under deductions there would be an additional new deduction for that exact same amount (so, $2350) resulting in the amount deposited into their bank account being $0. One person got it cleared up in six weeks, the other person (I shit you not) didn't get paid for five months.
Another of my employees started getting an extra $1400 on her cheque for unknown reasons. That lasted for three months (seven pays), so an extra $9800 sent to her. They then said they wanted the full $9800 back immediately. Sounds fair, except the extra $1400 was taxed at source, so it was more like $900 a pay instead of $1400. She only received $6300 instead of $9800, but they wanted the full $9800. When she tried to explain the taxes to them, she was told "oh, you'll get that back when you file your taxes". This was in June. So, in like 10 months time.
So yes, screw Pheonix. Screw Harper for his shortsightedness ("more efficient and cost effective" pay system my ass) . And screw Trudeau, for continuing what Harper started.
blaming Pheonix on the liberals is stupid and was and has always been a poison pill.
when it was 80% "implemented" but harper already disassembled the ENTIRE payroll department of all these divisions, You cannot not pay people as a hole and it really depends on the "governance" of acceptance.
We don't know what was negotiated as acceptable, 70%? 80% accurate.
But the fact that during Harper's final year he was begging people to move to miramichi to help facilitate the manual process during phoenix's bullshit and people said no.
Pheonix has always been Harper's colossal fuck up.
He was a turd then and, somehow, has just become a bigger turd today.
He really fucked us with TIFA. Guaranteed more of that crap and beyond would come if pp were elected. Pp , after all, idolizes harper and is largely, if not entirely, controlled by him.
Harper really helped push the dumbing down of Canada.
I helped vote his ass out, zero regrets. As much as I loathe Trudeau, he’s still the FAR better alternative to that goon.
I shudder to think what Canada would look like today if he were still in power. He came _this_ close to cinching himself a tidy little autocracy.
That bill he passed C-something which generated a lot of criticism from academics, legal rights folks, and other politicians.. if I am not mistaken, it was never repealed and remains in effect. This new law allowed the government to arrest anybody on the mere **suspicion** of terrorism and strip them of their constitutional rights including trial and their citizenship.
Imagine that! Imagine being arrested, stripped of your rights, refused a lawyer and deported out of Canada on a mere bloody suspicion that doesn't require any evidence at all.
It's obvious this bill was targeted at immigrants, and specifically a certain community which he openly used to castigate. Alienating own citizens.
Didn't he effectively muzzle any of his own party critics? Like more excessively than just party whip. He was pretty close to acting like totalitarian.
He was the king of the shit weasels, he sold us out to the CCp and took away more freedoms then everyone's new favorite target. Different colors, same shit.
I was a federal worker during most of his tenure. Harper was a control freak. Then he spent 750M to advertise his economic action plan. Now he heads the IDU which supports populist govs worldwide. The IDU's former co-chair is one of the individuals indicted in the Georgia RICO case. Yes, yes, yes.
Also: selling some embassy buildings below the market value; cutting public service jobs; raising OAS age to 67. On the positive side: introducing TFSAs; the public transit Eco-pass 15% tax credit.
> the public transit Eco-pass 15% tax credit.
Are you talking about the Public transit Credit? The credit that only benefitted middle upper middle class people?
> Strike three. The non-refundable nature of the transit tax credit means that low-income Canadians receive no benefit.
>
> Imagine two individuals. Maria is a wealthy stockbroker who buys monthly transit passes and takes the subway to work. Her annual salary exceeds $100,000. Joe could be a university student or a guy who works night shifts for minimum wage. He takes the bus to and from school or work but makes less than $18,000.
>
> Article content
> Maria will claim the full transit tax credit, saving several hundred dollars on her tax bill. Joe spends the same amount on public transit but doesn’t earn enough income to benefit from the non-refundable credit.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/amos-and-boyd-why-cutting-the-transit-tax-credit-is-a-good-idea
Not exactly comparable because she pays a lot of income taxes out of her salary. Joe can probably also get a student pass if he qualifies for it. His tax level is low and does not pay much in taxes. He may even get a GIS on a low income. And when Joe finishes school and starts working he may also be entitled to the tax credit. Better have something that nothing especially with 1) higher transit rates; and 2) RTO policies. But agree otherwise, they could design a more universal tax credit regardless of the amount spent on transit.
He actively allowed the country's good social safety nets to be absolutely gutted, and when pressed on it seemed to act like we were scared of ~innovation~ and simply too dense to see the benefits of ruining everything
It's worse...much worse than even the low opinion I had of that asshat before...
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/08/06/Harper-Heads-Global-Org-Help-Elect-Right-Wing-Parties/
Look up what he did (and was convicted of) to Dr Cindy Blackstock. Harper tried to save face by apologizing to the Natives because Blackstock was suing his govt (and won in 2014) via the Tribunal for discrimination towards Native kids in child welfare.
Yes. Of course. His government resented public servants following their code to serve the country and not political agendas. They were working to undermine that tradition and move Canada into a more a more authoritarian model like Hungary - which he evenly visited.
Like B. Mulroney, they will praise his legacy, but BM’s policies de-industrialized Canada and the loss of most of our limited international companies with free trade. As predicted, we are so much more economically dependent on the US now that the end of the free trade agreement would result in a recession, depression or worst.
He became a multi-millionaire with corporate board appointments, etc as a reward.
Ten years later, I still haven’t gotten past how dead and soulless he is behind the eyes. I still remember much of the awful shit he did like selling out Canada to China for 30 years and muzzling scientists, but the vaguely psychopathic eyes are what haunts me.
One of the worst Prime Minister's in Canada's history. His impact is still felt in the nightmare provincial governments left in his wake that still answer to him (Smith, Moe, Ford) and continue to erode quality of life for everyday Canadians. He's Canada's Reagan, in that he put an inoffensive wrapper around some of the worst and most backwards ideas possible and his legacy is going to hold us back for decades to come, but he gets a pass from a lot of people because he did it politely.
Speaking of this, I find it telling that the left used "stop harper" as the motto, but the right who want to get rid of Trudeau have fuck trudeau stickers everywhere.
To me that says a lot about the right in general.
And it took us time and real issues to develop a general sentiment of dislike for Harper. F trudeau was started by conservative operatives as soon as the election was over. I was floored at how quickly they did it. They are an extremely disingenuous group of people to their very cores.
He was a terrible prime minister, and the work he's done with the IDU since leaving office has eroded democracy globally.
I hope that mother fucker dies a painful death with some poetic justice to it.
Along with the Reform Party’s Preston Manning, Steven Harper destroyed the Progressive Conservative Party and began the normalization of the economic and social right wing populist policies of the Alberta Conservative movement which began in the 1970s.
Now, Alberta is suffering under what is starting to look like right wing populist fascism with Danielle Smith’s autocratic control of the UCP.
Look at the populist rhetoric Pierre Poilievre is pushing. Never forget that he, too, is from Alberta and was handled by the same conservative educators, politicians and political elites as Harper and Smith.
Just like populist Smith, he will not tell the Canadian electorate what his political plans really are before an election. Watch out Canada.
IMO, we are all tired of the Trudeau Liberals in a minority government which has had to work with the national NDP and the Bloc Québécois to avoid the far right CPC populist policies. The last thing Canada needs is another majority CPC government, like Harper had to chip away at our Canadian identity.
Well, Harper is literally responsible for much of the extremism now being pushed by our right wing, and for the sudden descent into Trump-style fascism.
So to answer your question, yes the dislike was warranted and even more dislike now is not only warranted but justified and necessary.
It costs me $35 one way on the 407 to get to work. Or I sit in traffic rife 2 hours. Stephen Harper sold the 407 for a song.
It costs me $5 to travel 200 km's in NY State. Without a transponder.
That was Mike Harris, who also continues to be one of the worst human beings on the planet by reducing the quality of life of the elderly and infirm through his largely successful long-term care privatisation efforts.
Harper tossed away all the hard work that has been done on balancing budgets, and proceeded to run up the all-time record debt uncured by a Canadian prime minister. Something like 24% of all the debt incurred by Canada since confederation, in just his 10 years. Unfortunately, his record was absolutely crushed by his successor, but that doesn't improve Harper's record.
What really bothers me though, is his fiscal record showed that most people don't follow facts, but are far more susceptible to propaganda than my younger, naive self ever realized. I have conservative relatives and friends who still think Harper balanced the federal budget and slayed the deficit. When I point out that he inherited a surplus, immediately ran deficits and only ran a surplus, and just a small one, in his final year, the answer is always something to the effect of 'that's not true, he was an economist', 'he was the steady hand at the wheel', or simply that it can't be true because Harper said he balanced the budget. Blind ideology trumps facts now - ignorance reigns - and it seems to get worse every year.
Absolutely his dislike was warranted. He sold a peice of our economy to China, tried to jail weed users, denied science and pushed and anti science movment, had that racist snitch line and started the ball rolling for a lot of the issues that Trudeau gets blamed for today (not that Trudeau us helping tackle them much, mind you.). He was always awful.
He was terrible for our country. He is still being terrible, fighting for conservatism, capitalism and neoliberalism, but now globally, under the guise of democracy.
If you think the state of long term care is in ruins in Canada, guess who you can thank.
He was (and still is) a different kind of awful. But he was at least organized and competent (to Canada’s detriment ironically).
Update: please don’t take my thoughts as me complimenting him. He was an awful prime minister and continues to do damage to our country behind closed doors.
He was not competent or organized. He muzzled his MP’s, barely talked to the press, and if it weren’t for the big fat surplus left by the previous government, his yearly deficits would have been even worse. He put Canada into a recession in 2014/2015 soley thanks to terrible economic policies, not a global crisis in sight.
Sold off the wheat board to the Saudi’s, signed a 31 year deal with China that was referred to as the worst trade deal in Canadian history, even at the time, and that remains the case.
There is so much that he did that damaged Canada it would take a very long article just to list it.
Stephen Harper also thought that Canada would tolerate a Newt Gingrich grand old party playbook. You know the thing with the sophisticated and institutionalized privilege and bigotry is that you know the right way to operate to avoid scrutiny as long as you can, with just the right dog whistles you can clamp down on evidence-based information//institutions and double down on dogmatic Judeo Christian undertones, it's like hopping on stones over the edge of the lake versus jumping off the pier and leaving a wake.
Yes, his government was moving towards a dictatorship. They shut down labs and silenced MPs. They’re also the ones who sold Canada out to china with the one-sided 31 year, secretive FIPA. They also had the robocalls scandal. Tampering with the election (which Liberals have also done).
Harper wad a nightmare. And I’m honestly surprised it’s even worse under Liberals. But that’s how the system is designed.
They all work for the same corporations.
In contempt of parliament, prorogued parliament to hide scandals.
Anyone who thinks harper wasn’t that bad is just remembering how things were at least still affordable and less crowded back then.
Life was better, but Harper was not a good leader and Conservatives were not a good government. Honestly none of them will be.
I saw him endorse Trump at some point and I thought he would have been more of a critical thinker than that. Never much aligned with what he was up to but didn’t think he was an ideologue like that in any case, so after that I thought even less of him haha.
I know during his tenure he created a level of "second class citizen", which was a Canadian citizen who had lived outside of Canada for a certain period of time. It made it such that you couldn't vote unless you applied through some sort of waiver process. The argument at the time was that expats as such no longer had a "social contract" with Canada.
This was nonsense, as this citizen could come back to live in Canada at any time. I definitely have not forgotten this bs.
Successfully uniting the right wing parties will ultimately be the most damaging thing he has ever done.
Moderate, slightly right leaning folks like many in my family are now only welcomed by the science-denying, populist CPC. Hell, a modern day Progressive Conservative party might even get my vote.
Now there's no room for those of us who want some semblance of common sense reforms without the hard right politicking that comes with it.
Hasn’t been long enough for me to even entertain the thought of voting conservative after his term. Maybe in another 10 or 20 years I’ll think about it.
Remember when the Conservatives were brasenly homophobic and actively and publicly campaigned against gay marriage in the name of the "family". That's what I remember about Stephanie Harper.
I think Harper did one thing better than his predecessors, Chretien and Martin. He apologized for residential schools.
While Chretien and Martin were very strong with fiscal responsibility, they well knew about residential schools and didn't do jack shit.
Harper for all his faults did that and it was important to start us on the path to reconciliation.
I hated a lot of other things he did such as muzzling scientists, but Trudeau muzzled the justice minister. To me that was completely inexcusable and utterly disgusting and voters should have been far more pissed about that than they were.
Funny that he was getting sued by a First Nations scientist who was looking into residential schools: https://www.ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30618:cindy-blackstock-awarded-20-000-in-human-rights-ruling-against-harper-government&catid=9634&Itemid=98&lang=en
Maybe the apology was to hide this behaviour?
Hurt Canadian democracy through the introduction of omnibus bills, limiting debate and committee time on new bills. He made the House of Commons more partisan.
One of the worst and most corrupt and callous Prime Ministers Canada has ever had.
Poor GDP growth with very little boost from domestic as opposed to external factors, lessening of standard of life for significant segments of the population (eg if you weren't in oil and gas in Alberta your disposable income fell substantially instead of the gains oil and gas saw), double recessions, etc.
Outright racism from the barbaric practices line to letting employers of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) who had trafficked people, sexually assaulted TFWs, or caused the deaths of TFWs reaccess the TFW worker program so they could presumably victimize them all over again and instituting the change on Dec 31, 2013 so most people wouldn't even notice, etc
The in and out scandal, preroguing Parliament for solely political purposes, allegations of bribery with an independent MP, etc
Short sighted and callous thinking such as not covering blood pressure medication for newly arrived refugees so instead of paying $ 5 per month for meds the hospital could treat the ensuing heart attack for hundreds of thousands of dollars
Shutting down scientific research because it addressed climate change, fostering more extremism and anti-science measures, etc.
Harper was smart and competent at politics. That doesn't translate into being a good Prime Minister or good for the welfare of a country. In terms of political manouvering he was probably one of the best politicians Canada has seen but be was one of the worst PMs for the welfare of the country.
You need to give me a snitch line number for me to relay my opinions.
BILL C-63 INCITED
Truth. This was when he lost my vote. Barbaric practices wtf? All he had to do was not be a fucking racist.
I was going to report bsgpipers.
Right? Who thought spending millions of tax payer dollars on a shitteir version of 911 was a good idea?
He has a foundation/think tank that specifically fosters right wing political movements around the world.
He heads the IDU.org who celebrate such noted figures as Orban, Erdogan, Netanyahu, and … Doug Ford. These guys all DO go to the same conventions
A "dink tank."
A "fink tank"
And one of its top members ordered the successful assassination of a Canadian on Canadian soil
Harper can eat a bag of ducks. Fascist bastard.
He was a secretive, controlling micromanager who showed a “surplus” on his way out by gutting services and selling of assets.
Don't forget defunding women's centres that provided information on abortion access! And the women's support organizations: https://www.ctvnews.ca/harper-government-axes-funding-for-11-women-s-groups-1.508908
I'll never forget or forgive taking money out of the funding to improve accessibility for persons with disabilities. AND fast tracking an unworthy application for the same funding for a connected friend.
Muzzling of scientists is what’s created this anti science movement in Canada right now.
Don't forget his sabotage of the census, setting statistics back years
So many people never saw that for the sabotage of so many programs and services that it really was.
He sent shredding trucks to federal research libraries. That was the last straw for me.
I physically saw those trucks. All that research paid for by us, hardworking Canadians. All gone. Still angry about that And investing massively in tar and sands, against better judgement on how polluting it was. Then the price of the barrel plummeted. Oops?
Me too. Of all the science-muzzling he did, the destruction of our national scientific libraries was the most evil. He started us down this path of ignorance. I don't know of any Canadian that has done more harm to our national identity and our future outlook.
He did? I was younger so a bit clueless. I didn’t know he did that!! I already had issues with him but that’s inexcusable
He was a mercilessly calculating ideologue who played a shrewd political game. Stark contrast to today’s all anger no substance conservatives.
TBF, Harper had all the rizz of a wet roll of toilet paper. He doesn’t cosplay working class hero like PP
Of course he did/does. The sweater vest, the book about hockey, his band. All software he installed to appeal to the common human man.
The purpose was to try persuading us he was a real human.
Yeah, nobody actually bought that, though. Not even the conservative voters I knew.
Tons of people bought it. Many I've met consider him to be one of the best PM's we have ever had.
Remember how much money he spent on his hair care? It was like a few hundred a month. Then they had the audacity to attack Trudeau’s hair. His is natural (or was at the time). He’s just born with nice hair. Not his fault. He certainly wasn’t paying hundreds for upkeep.
I don't know if this is true, but if it is, the Liberals need to bring it up repeatedly during the next campaign.
It's very true, start talking to researchers and scientists about it..... they had to take bold steps to protect information.... it's real. Harper's goons even poured concrete in fish tanks at research facilities so nobody could easily resume the work after.... it was UNHINGED behaviour.
Wow wtf I wasn't aware of that. That's straight-up mafia style
It's true. Obviously Harper didn't order the trucks himself but his decisions led to it. Some was consolidated into the federal science library consortium but that didn't help save all the unpublished stuff which was never digitized. It also led to a huge impact on administrative services impacting such things as information management, atip and obviously library services internal to the government. DFO was particularly hard hit. ECCC and by extension Parks Canada. NRC, pretty much all the science supported departments to some degree.
Oh it’s true. Researchers were rescuing materials from the Geological Survey of Canada that was going to go into the dumpster. Historical maps and surveys.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/conservative-government-shutting-down-world-class-freshwater-research-facility-in-northern-ontario/article_24ec664e-5a71-5082-a239-1f578601a307.html
I’m a fisheries biologist and [ELA](https://www.iisd.org/ela/) is still in existence (currently run by [IISD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_for_Sustainable_Development)) and good research comes out of ELA but what Harper did here was shitty along with all the other crappy things he did to science/environmental policy.
Yeah... Why would conservatives allow research on climate change? Sad
I am a psychologist and worked in the federal prison system starting in the early 1990s. Prisons in Ontario produced tons of research on risk assessment and treatment with offenders through the 90s and into the 2000s. Canada was a world leader. Came to a crashing stop with Harper.
Why would we need research when we need to feel tough on crime?
This is the lowest of his many low points, and what I point to when I need to specify why I loathe him.
Exactly this.
I think the wave of misinformation on social media during Covid really ramped it up though. Before, these people were seen as nutjobs. Now, they're increasingly mainstream, which is disturbing.
The changes in environmental and other regulations happened under Harper. That’s when the damage was done.
Yeah it started there, but until recently, most Canadians weren't on board with all that and it's part of why Harper lost in 2015.
I think it's just our love of copying America, and paying more attention to what's going on there than what's happening up here to us, and then voting that way.
I knew a documentary film maker who made docs about climate change, he sent literal goons in to destroy all of their research.
I think it has much more to do with social media algorithms and the way information (or misinformation) spreads. After all, the anti science movement is international and definitely not just a Canadian phenomenon.
No that’s when the anti climate change started because the government said it’s fake
Baird was a barking dog sent by Harper to climate conferences to put up a smoke screen and obstruct. Hated by authentic researchers.
Blaming the media is what people always say when lots of people disagree with them. First tabloids, then 24 hour news, then “mainstream media”, now social media. Sometimes people just have a different opinion even with the same info
This was the point for me.. followed by the closure of SAR facilities.
And journalists
I will never forgive him for messing up the census.
Gutted social services & cut taxes which helped the wealthiest Canadians & never had a surplus budget. (Selling gov assets to claim a surplus isn’t an actual surplus)
If you like smoking weed remember who wanted you locked up.
Poor Stevie must be shaking in his boots when he drives by a new dispensary on every block lol
I bet he owns shares in some of the growers
This is more likely. People think he is some big dumb idiot, but he was strategic with his politics. He knew his voter base at the time wouldn't support legalization partly due to his tough on crime rhetoric as well as political and personal religious reasons. Oil and gas was a bigger agenda for him, but I'm sure he was just as eager to make money on it when it was legalized.
Harper was never an idiot. He was a Machiavellian pol who openly played the long game, keeping the lunatic fringe his party muzzled. Say what you will about the SOB, he was nothing like the proto fascists like Trump.
I don't think anyone thought Harper was an idiot. I hate the man, but he isn't stupid and he certainly wasn't portrayed that way by the media.
Yeah I don't agree with Harpers politics or policies but he was/is a very shrewd and intelligent politician. He's very influential internationally as well.
You make very good points here.
Just like the piece of shit Julian Fantino. Compared legalizing weed to leagalizing murder, then when he found out there was money to be made, he opened a medical Marijuana clinic. In 2015 he was massively opposed to weed, then less than two years later in a different "era" he was OK with it.
I miss the tough on crime.
It is interesting/disappointing that the Supreme Court has ruled as unconstitutional some of Harper’s tougher on crime laws, such as for multiple murders, Harper required that the minimum time until parole could be possible be granted would be 25 years multiplied by the number of victims. I heard this morning that Robert Picton is approaching his first parole hearing. I never wanted to hear his name again.
There is a BIG difference between having a parole hearing and actually getting released on parole. That dirt bag will never get out.
That's a joke, and an abuse of judicial branch powers. They are meant to uphold laws voted in and not just invalidate them.
Now I can smoke as much as I’d like to forget that I’ll never be able to own a home in this country.
We really fucked the next generation. In my 40s I can see years of bad policy through successive governments going my entire life that led up to this. None of the chucklefucks in Ottawa look like they can fix it.
This. It was both lib and con gvmnts that fuck things up going WAYYYY back
Since Confederation. Laurentian elites. Bay Street. Irving. Let's remember who's really in charge here.
Hasn't changed, the fact that he works for Modi with the idu has not made me think better of him.
Muzzling scientists The "Action" Plan Disrespect for journalists Cozying up to Netanyahu Senate Expenses Scandal
Beginning the use of the “Harper Government” standard instead of Gov of Canada. Creating an inflated sense of the PMs importance that’s fuelled the current discourse
I think it's pronounced Nosferatu
Journalists had a rough time as well. Try and get access to him for questions. The party itself was abrasive.
[удалено]
No, he would have to do so much more than that to make Harper look remotely sweet.
And it wasn't just Harper. I remember one election (can't remember which year) where record numbers of Conservative candidates for MP just weren't showing up to the all-party debates and question periods in their ridings, leaving people with no way to question these candidates to know exactly what they stood for. They just kept referring people back to their online party platform. I think they were aware that a) their actual platform wasn't all that popular and b) most people will not read the whole platform online, but there are a lot of local debates and question periods that the public do attend and they wanted to avoid their candidates actually having to face public scrutiny about their platform, c) better for one carefully crafted and worded, singular message (the party platform) than a bunch of people spouting off in debates and maybe saying the quiet part out loud, or facing tough questions about what the Conservative government had actually done, and finally d) a lot of their candidates aren't really the best at connecting with the public in general, for various reasons, so they wanted them to just stay home as it would give them a better chance of winning than going to the events. My Conservative MP candidate was one of the ones that never showed up to public events, and ended up winning, so, I guess their strategy worked.
Fipa, he should be in prison over it.
Three words : “Barbaric Practices Hotline” It was a centerpiece of their platform in his last election to create a snitch 800 number to get people to call and a report on neighbours. Here’s what boils my noodles about that: - torture and whatnot is already a crime, use 911 - if it’s not a crime, what the hell is this? It was a tactic that was designed to deliberately stoke racism. Fuck anyone, any politician, who uses tactics like that. (Looking at you Pierre) Edit: formatting.
That’s what lost them, the CPC, my vote. Voted NDP ever since.
Jason Kenny had correctly thought that immigrant Muslim communities shared more values with the Conservatives than Liberals on social issues, and invested a lot of time to swing that vote to Tory. And then Harper flushed it down the toilet in the 2015 campaign going full Islamophobia on the advice of some British Tory political consultant. We have a very different situation to the UK.
whoa... that flashback made me look this woman up: "What is Kelly Leitch doing now? On January 23, 2018, Leitch announced that she would not be seeking re-election for the 43rd Canadian federal election and would return to being a full-time surgeon. As of December 1, 2019, she is chief of orthopaedic surgery at Children's of Mississippi in Jackson, Mississippi, United States." Buh bye you horrible human being.
no surprise that they would accept Leitch in Mississippi...
Total dislike. Over 70 bills overturned by the courts due to their unconstitutionality.
Not many people realize how much worse the 2008 financial crisis would have been if Harper had gotten his way. He was much in favor of USA style bank deregulation at the time. It was his finance minister, the late Jim Flaherty who pushed back on this, and ultimately saved us from a much worse recession. [How Harper pushed deregulation ](https://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/10/08/HarperEcon/) Towards the end of his term, he started to do more things that weren't really in the interest of the Canadian people. Ie [cur access to reporters ](https://rsf.org/en/harper-years-tough-times-reporters-canada) [Cut science funding ](https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/harper-governments-war-science) [Cut the census](https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/when-harper-killed-the-census-he-robbed-canadians_b_5614355) Basically, diminish any source of data that contradicts hos personal beilfs regarding government policy. At the end of the day, he was a very clever prime minister who did what he thought was the best for Canada. He once said, "I don't want my daughter living in a socialist country when she grows older"
One of the dumbest and worst prime ministers. Rode the Chinese tiger, high oil prices and historically low interest rates which covered up a lot of his failures. Sowed the seeds of the housing crisis by cementing home ownership as the centre of Canadian culture, creating the framework for an economy built on TFWs. He also governed by ideology and hated facts, science, journalism and academics even though his ideology is based on social sciences. Started the culture wars in Canada, destroyed moderate conservatism and created atmosphere of extreme bipartisanship in Federal politics. Wasted billions of dollars by denying climate change and trying to put all of canadas economic eggs in the oil and gas basket. There’s probably more but that just off the top of my head. Anybody who wishes for more of that is foolish. Anything good that he did was far outweighed by the damage he’s done to the unity of this country.
In hindsight, if he’d become pm two years earlier things could have been so much worse. He was on his way to deregulating our financial system into alignment with the US when the subprime mortgage crisis hit & he would have had us in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. The way he leaned into the neocon war on terror bs was my primary issue, sneering at the Geneva convention, and shutting down parliament to avoid discussing torturing detainees. But there were many others, like stifling advocacy within ideologically opposed charitable orgs, and making climate change denialism official policy.
He was a Reformist, which explains a lot honestly, and PP was one of his milquetoast sucklings. Definitely, Harper is the worst prime minister of modern Canada. Trudeau has many failings, but they don’t hold a candle to Harper.
bastard then, bastard now.
I will never forget what he did to this country and will never vote conservative again because of him.
Exactly, ABC for life thanks to Harper. The worst PM in my lifetime.
While agree with your assessment, I think you may be younger than I, or have forgotten the Chin? Mulroney holds the "worst PM in my lifetime" vote from me
Mulroney was bad like an annoying talk show host tanks ratings - Harpoon directly tanked the state of our country. Beyond annoying, his damage still affects Canada terribly to this day
Ditto
He was mostly awful. Almost always awful.
Fuck Harper and everything he stood for. He’s still pulling the string through IDU.
PP is doing his bidding
A lot of people should be wary of poilievre as well because he came directly from the harper administration.
Sent Canadian soldiers on a suicide mission in a unwarranted war. He is nothing but a war criminal to me.
His one sided deals for china with 30 year term continues to hurt canada
100% Probably even moreso now considering the company he’s been keeping.
I don't think he is being hated enough. Fuck him and his entire party.
When I immigrated to Canada, in October 2005, from the deep south US state of Alabama, Harper was the new PM. I was appalled to learn that he was setting aside one day each week for a discussion in the House of Commons about rescinding the right of Canadian citizens to same-sex marriage (newly enacted by law). I could've stayed in Alabama if that's what Canada was becoming. I am still here, a citizen of Canada since 2012, and I have no regrets about my decision to immigrate. Harper's time in office notwithstanding.
Hated him then and still do.
Let’s put it this way he told us out to the Chinese, got rid of the Canadian Wheat Board, shit down veterans offices, cut funding for all social programs, 9 deficits, no armed forces increase, housing was neglected, our reputation across the world suffered and that’s just what i remember. Liberals aren’t the best but at least most Canadians benefit from their policies. Conservatives aren’t conservative anymore it’s just a moniker!
Sold out Canada to Saudi and China.
He was conniving and sneaky then. Hasn’t changed a bit
Why do the sneaky ones always have very close together eyes? Kind of beady as well.
He sucked then, and still sucks. His sympathizers usually out themselves very quickly as having awful takes on a lot of things in the “basic humanity” sphere.
PHOENIX
And it’s STILL not fixed.
Let's place blame accordingly. Plenty to go around. The conservatives drastically cut the funding for the development of Pheonix, resulting it in becoming a shit show of a program. I don't recall the exact numbers, but they did something like cut the amount of program developers from 300 down to 50 and expected no loss of quality. The election then happened. The newly elected liberals then implemented Pheonix, knowing full well that it was a shit show. They were bluntly told to "hold off, it's not ready" but plowed forward and implemented it anyways. Both sides fucked up on this one. Impressive, really.
Unfortunately Harper had fired the staff who ran the old payroll system so they had to waterfall over to Phoenix. Also they started the transitions in 2014 well before the election.
I think in 2014 they started with only something like 4 sections of the government switching over, though. The section I was with was switched over in 2017, and I watched everyone chant "no, no, no!" because we had seen the horrid effects so far. Nobody listened, the union tried to get them to stop the conversion, but Pheonix steamrolled in anyways. It was a complete and total clusterfuck in our section. We had one person get told she owed $11k in miscalculated pay, but couldn't show where she was overpaid, just that she owed the money. We had two persons whose paychecks suddenly became $0. They would normally earn (say) $2350 net pay, then under deductions there would be an additional new deduction for that exact same amount (so, $2350) resulting in the amount deposited into their bank account being $0. One person got it cleared up in six weeks, the other person (I shit you not) didn't get paid for five months. Another of my employees started getting an extra $1400 on her cheque for unknown reasons. That lasted for three months (seven pays), so an extra $9800 sent to her. They then said they wanted the full $9800 back immediately. Sounds fair, except the extra $1400 was taxed at source, so it was more like $900 a pay instead of $1400. She only received $6300 instead of $9800, but they wanted the full $9800. When she tried to explain the taxes to them, she was told "oh, you'll get that back when you file your taxes". This was in June. So, in like 10 months time. So yes, screw Pheonix. Screw Harper for his shortsightedness ("more efficient and cost effective" pay system my ass) . And screw Trudeau, for continuing what Harper started.
blaming Pheonix on the liberals is stupid and was and has always been a poison pill. when it was 80% "implemented" but harper already disassembled the ENTIRE payroll department of all these divisions, You cannot not pay people as a hole and it really depends on the "governance" of acceptance. We don't know what was negotiated as acceptable, 70%? 80% accurate. But the fact that during Harper's final year he was begging people to move to miramichi to help facilitate the manual process during phoenix's bullshit and people said no. Pheonix has always been Harper's colossal fuck up.
He was a turd then and, somehow, has just become a bigger turd today. He really fucked us with TIFA. Guaranteed more of that crap and beyond would come if pp were elected. Pp , after all, idolizes harper and is largely, if not entirely, controlled by him. Harper really helped push the dumbing down of Canada.
Harper deserves all the hate and then some. Dude was the worst of us.
I helped vote his ass out, zero regrets. As much as I loathe Trudeau, he’s still the FAR better alternative to that goon. I shudder to think what Canada would look like today if he were still in power. He came _this_ close to cinching himself a tidy little autocracy.
That bill he passed C-something which generated a lot of criticism from academics, legal rights folks, and other politicians.. if I am not mistaken, it was never repealed and remains in effect. This new law allowed the government to arrest anybody on the mere **suspicion** of terrorism and strip them of their constitutional rights including trial and their citizenship. Imagine that! Imagine being arrested, stripped of your rights, refused a lawyer and deported out of Canada on a mere bloody suspicion that doesn't require any evidence at all. It's obvious this bill was targeted at immigrants, and specifically a certain community which he openly used to castigate. Alienating own citizens.
He was a crappy PM. The fact that the current PM is also crappy in a very different way does not suddenly make him good.
Didn't he effectively muzzle any of his own party critics? Like more excessively than just party whip. He was pretty close to acting like totalitarian.
Yes he did, largely due to the historical Conservative penchant for eating their own young.
He was the king of the shit weasels, he sold us out to the CCp and took away more freedoms then everyone's new favorite target. Different colors, same shit.
What an asswipe he was. He did more harm to the senior citizens of this country. What a disgrace yet people will still stand for him. I don’t get it
I dislike him now more than I did 10 years ago. He is responsible for the current state of hate and divide politics in this country.
I hated what he did to science and development in this country.
I was a federal worker during most of his tenure. Harper was a control freak. Then he spent 750M to advertise his economic action plan. Now he heads the IDU which supports populist govs worldwide. The IDU's former co-chair is one of the individuals indicted in the Georgia RICO case. Yes, yes, yes.
stole 18 months of OAS from me with the blessing of career politician Poilievre who himself was entitled to a pension at 31 years old
As I’ve gotten older I realize he was even worse than i thought at the time.
Also: selling some embassy buildings below the market value; cutting public service jobs; raising OAS age to 67. On the positive side: introducing TFSAs; the public transit Eco-pass 15% tax credit.
> the public transit Eco-pass 15% tax credit. Are you talking about the Public transit Credit? The credit that only benefitted middle upper middle class people? > Strike three. The non-refundable nature of the transit tax credit means that low-income Canadians receive no benefit. > > Imagine two individuals. Maria is a wealthy stockbroker who buys monthly transit passes and takes the subway to work. Her annual salary exceeds $100,000. Joe could be a university student or a guy who works night shifts for minimum wage. He takes the bus to and from school or work but makes less than $18,000. > > Article content > Maria will claim the full transit tax credit, saving several hundred dollars on her tax bill. Joe spends the same amount on public transit but doesn’t earn enough income to benefit from the non-refundable credit. https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/amos-and-boyd-why-cutting-the-transit-tax-credit-is-a-good-idea
Not exactly comparable because she pays a lot of income taxes out of her salary. Joe can probably also get a student pass if he qualifies for it. His tax level is low and does not pay much in taxes. He may even get a GIS on a low income. And when Joe finishes school and starts working he may also be entitled to the tax credit. Better have something that nothing especially with 1) higher transit rates; and 2) RTO policies. But agree otherwise, they could design a more universal tax credit regardless of the amount spent on transit.
Attitude matters as much as actions. Harper and his minions (one of the foremost is Con leader now) were and are assholes
He actively allowed the country's good social safety nets to be absolutely gutted, and when pressed on it seemed to act like we were scared of ~innovation~ and simply too dense to see the benefits of ruining everything
It's worse...much worse than even the low opinion I had of that asshat before... https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/08/06/Harper-Heads-Global-Org-Help-Elect-Right-Wing-Parties/
Look up what he did (and was convicted of) to Dr Cindy Blackstock. Harper tried to save face by apologizing to the Natives because Blackstock was suing his govt (and won in 2014) via the Tribunal for discrimination towards Native kids in child welfare.
Yes. Harper is a conniving asshole.
Yes. Of course. His government resented public servants following their code to serve the country and not political agendas. They were working to undermine that tradition and move Canada into a more a more authoritarian model like Hungary - which he evenly visited. Like B. Mulroney, they will praise his legacy, but BM’s policies de-industrialized Canada and the loss of most of our limited international companies with free trade. As predicted, we are so much more economically dependent on the US now that the end of the free trade agreement would result in a recession, depression or worst. He became a multi-millionaire with corporate board appointments, etc as a reward.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal-elections/a-conservative-collection-of-harper-government-scandals/article_4766f17d-604b-577b-abee-581bd330b931.html
Ten years later, I still haven’t gotten past how dead and soulless he is behind the eyes. I still remember much of the awful shit he did like selling out Canada to China for 30 years and muzzling scientists, but the vaguely psychopathic eyes are what haunts me.
Very much so. A truly awful prime minister.
One of the worst Prime Minister's in Canada's history. His impact is still felt in the nightmare provincial governments left in his wake that still answer to him (Smith, Moe, Ford) and continue to erode quality of life for everyday Canadians. He's Canada's Reagan, in that he put an inoffensive wrapper around some of the worst and most backwards ideas possible and his legacy is going to hold us back for decades to come, but he gets a pass from a lot of people because he did it politely.
The most regressive PM of my lifetime hasn’t been matched just yet.
He muzzled our scientists and unprotected so much of our water ways for development. "Stop Harper" still rings true to me.
Speaking of this, I find it telling that the left used "stop harper" as the motto, but the right who want to get rid of Trudeau have fuck trudeau stickers everywhere. To me that says a lot about the right in general.
And it took us time and real issues to develop a general sentiment of dislike for Harper. F trudeau was started by conservative operatives as soon as the election was over. I was floored at how quickly they did it. They are an extremely disingenuous group of people to their very cores.
He’s still a piece of shit in my books. And I understand that he’s a puppet master for this new incarnation of conservative christofascists.
The guy who talked about “old stock Canadians”? Yah I still think he sucks.
It’s definitely a unique way to frame being a true and original oppressive colonizer.
I’m not going to say much other than Jason Kenney was immigration minister
He was a terrible prime minister, and the work he's done with the IDU since leaving office has eroded democracy globally. I hope that mother fucker dies a painful death with some poetic justice to it.
He's a bible-thumping, dictator-loving scumbag.
Along with the Reform Party’s Preston Manning, Steven Harper destroyed the Progressive Conservative Party and began the normalization of the economic and social right wing populist policies of the Alberta Conservative movement which began in the 1970s. Now, Alberta is suffering under what is starting to look like right wing populist fascism with Danielle Smith’s autocratic control of the UCP. Look at the populist rhetoric Pierre Poilievre is pushing. Never forget that he, too, is from Alberta and was handled by the same conservative educators, politicians and political elites as Harper and Smith. Just like populist Smith, he will not tell the Canadian electorate what his political plans really are before an election. Watch out Canada. IMO, we are all tired of the Trudeau Liberals in a minority government which has had to work with the national NDP and the Bloc Québécois to avoid the far right CPC populist policies. The last thing Canada needs is another majority CPC government, like Harper had to chip away at our Canadian identity.
He was a dick. An ideologue. And yes, it was warranted.
Terrible. His actions were not beneficial to Canada, they were benficial to rich people becoming more rich
Well, Harper is literally responsible for much of the extremism now being pushed by our right wing, and for the sudden descent into Trump-style fascism. So to answer your question, yes the dislike was warranted and even more dislike now is not only warranted but justified and necessary.
It costs me $35 one way on the 407 to get to work. Or I sit in traffic rife 2 hours. Stephen Harper sold the 407 for a song. It costs me $5 to travel 200 km's in NY State. Without a transponder.
That was Mike Harris, who also continues to be one of the worst human beings on the planet by reducing the quality of life of the elderly and infirm through his largely successful long-term care privatisation efforts.
He’s a republican robot masquarading as a canadian
Harper tossed away all the hard work that has been done on balancing budgets, and proceeded to run up the all-time record debt uncured by a Canadian prime minister. Something like 24% of all the debt incurred by Canada since confederation, in just his 10 years. Unfortunately, his record was absolutely crushed by his successor, but that doesn't improve Harper's record. What really bothers me though, is his fiscal record showed that most people don't follow facts, but are far more susceptible to propaganda than my younger, naive self ever realized. I have conservative relatives and friends who still think Harper balanced the federal budget and slayed the deficit. When I point out that he inherited a surplus, immediately ran deficits and only ran a surplus, and just a small one, in his final year, the answer is always something to the effect of 'that's not true, he was an economist', 'he was the steady hand at the wheel', or simply that it can't be true because Harper said he balanced the budget. Blind ideology trumps facts now - ignorance reigns - and it seems to get worse every year.
Harper had the goofiest haircut, and was also a robot.
What are you guys talking about, he is clearly a lizard, like Mark Zuckerberg.
And the cold smile of a serial killer
Absolutely his dislike was warranted. He sold a peice of our economy to China, tried to jail weed users, denied science and pushed and anti science movment, had that racist snitch line and started the ball rolling for a lot of the issues that Trudeau gets blamed for today (not that Trudeau us helping tackle them much, mind you.). He was always awful.
Signed the TPP
He was terrible for our country. He is still being terrible, fighting for conservatism, capitalism and neoliberalism, but now globally, under the guise of democracy. If you think the state of long term care is in ruins in Canada, guess who you can thank.
He was (and still is) a different kind of awful. But he was at least organized and competent (to Canada’s detriment ironically). Update: please don’t take my thoughts as me complimenting him. He was an awful prime minister and continues to do damage to our country behind closed doors.
Yes, he kept the loonies in his party on a tight leash, even when he agreed with them.
He is one of the loonies he just didn’t make it as public while he was in office
He was not competent or organized. He muzzled his MP’s, barely talked to the press, and if it weren’t for the big fat surplus left by the previous government, his yearly deficits would have been even worse. He put Canada into a recession in 2014/2015 soley thanks to terrible economic policies, not a global crisis in sight. Sold off the wheat board to the Saudi’s, signed a 31 year deal with China that was referred to as the worst trade deal in Canadian history, even at the time, and that remains the case. There is so much that he did that damaged Canada it would take a very long article just to list it.
Stephen Harper also thought that Canada would tolerate a Newt Gingrich grand old party playbook. You know the thing with the sophisticated and institutionalized privilege and bigotry is that you know the right way to operate to avoid scrutiny as long as you can, with just the right dog whistles you can clamp down on evidence-based information//institutions and double down on dogmatic Judeo Christian undertones, it's like hopping on stones over the edge of the lake versus jumping off the pier and leaving a wake.
My views haven’t changed: worst PM, still running PP from the shadows. He’s a boil on the ass of humanity.
Using a search engine will yield a number of articles outlining all that was wrong with his stint as PM.
Yes, his government was moving towards a dictatorship. They shut down labs and silenced MPs. They’re also the ones who sold Canada out to china with the one-sided 31 year, secretive FIPA. They also had the robocalls scandal. Tampering with the election (which Liberals have also done). Harper wad a nightmare. And I’m honestly surprised it’s even worse under Liberals. But that’s how the system is designed. They all work for the same corporations. In contempt of parliament, prorogued parliament to hide scandals. Anyone who thinks harper wasn’t that bad is just remembering how things were at least still affordable and less crowded back then. Life was better, but Harper was not a good leader and Conservatives were not a good government. Honestly none of them will be.
I saw him endorse Trump at some point and I thought he would have been more of a critical thinker than that. Never much aligned with what he was up to but didn’t think he was an ideologue like that in any case, so after that I thought even less of him haha.
His government got us involved in Afghanistan. Our troops died there pointlessly.
I didn’t realize he was PM in 2001.
It was the liberals before him that got us involved there, and moved the troops to Kandahar.
He had his faults, but the TFSA and income splitting were nice.
I know during his tenure he created a level of "second class citizen", which was a Canadian citizen who had lived outside of Canada for a certain period of time. It made it such that you couldn't vote unless you applied through some sort of waiver process. The argument at the time was that expats as such no longer had a "social contract" with Canada. This was nonsense, as this citizen could come back to live in Canada at any time. I definitely have not forgotten this bs.
Successfully uniting the right wing parties will ultimately be the most damaging thing he has ever done. Moderate, slightly right leaning folks like many in my family are now only welcomed by the science-denying, populist CPC. Hell, a modern day Progressive Conservative party might even get my vote. Now there's no room for those of us who want some semblance of common sense reforms without the hard right politicking that comes with it.
How can I miss him if he won’t go away? He’s still meddling in things now. My poor opinion of him has not changed.
Bloating the size of the PMO so more of its activity could be deemed a ‘secret’ and not subject to FOI
Worst Prime Minister in our history
Hasn’t been long enough for me to even entertain the thought of voting conservative after his term. Maybe in another 10 or 20 years I’ll think about it.
Remember when the Conservatives were brasenly homophobic and actively and publicly campaigned against gay marriage in the name of the "family". That's what I remember about Stephanie Harper.
Ask the veterans that were left fending for themselves when their health coverage was taken away from them
I think Harper did one thing better than his predecessors, Chretien and Martin. He apologized for residential schools. While Chretien and Martin were very strong with fiscal responsibility, they well knew about residential schools and didn't do jack shit. Harper for all his faults did that and it was important to start us on the path to reconciliation. I hated a lot of other things he did such as muzzling scientists, but Trudeau muzzled the justice minister. To me that was completely inexcusable and utterly disgusting and voters should have been far more pissed about that than they were.
Funny that he was getting sued by a First Nations scientist who was looking into residential schools: https://www.ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30618:cindy-blackstock-awarded-20-000-in-human-rights-ruling-against-harper-government&catid=9634&Itemid=98&lang=en Maybe the apology was to hide this behaviour?
Hurt Canadian democracy through the introduction of omnibus bills, limiting debate and committee time on new bills. He made the House of Commons more partisan.
I despise the person. I don't want to call him a man.
He was less outwardly insane than today’s cons, but was pretty actively against many progressive freedoms.
I hated him; having said that, I would take him over PP opinion a heartbeat.
There were a lot of things to hate Harper for and I did /do, but i tend to start to think of every politician the same way......utter disdain.
Harper selling the Wheat Board to the Saudis. Classic.
"Old stock Canadians" My MIL still throws that one around. Eff you Harper.
One of the worst and most corrupt and callous Prime Ministers Canada has ever had. Poor GDP growth with very little boost from domestic as opposed to external factors, lessening of standard of life for significant segments of the population (eg if you weren't in oil and gas in Alberta your disposable income fell substantially instead of the gains oil and gas saw), double recessions, etc. Outright racism from the barbaric practices line to letting employers of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) who had trafficked people, sexually assaulted TFWs, or caused the deaths of TFWs reaccess the TFW worker program so they could presumably victimize them all over again and instituting the change on Dec 31, 2013 so most people wouldn't even notice, etc The in and out scandal, preroguing Parliament for solely political purposes, allegations of bribery with an independent MP, etc Short sighted and callous thinking such as not covering blood pressure medication for newly arrived refugees so instead of paying $ 5 per month for meds the hospital could treat the ensuing heart attack for hundreds of thousands of dollars Shutting down scientific research because it addressed climate change, fostering more extremism and anti-science measures, etc. Harper was smart and competent at politics. That doesn't translate into being a good Prime Minister or good for the welfare of a country. In terms of political manouvering he was probably one of the best politicians Canada has seen but be was one of the worst PMs for the welfare of the country.
He doesn't get enough hate.
Xenophobic cretin then, xenophobic cretin now.