page_title: Stephen Harper
section_title: Domestic policy
hierarchical_section_title: Stephen Harper / Domestic policy
caption_attribution_description: English: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper appearing at a gala to celebrate last summer's discover of the HMS Erebus, one of two ships wrecked in 1846 during Franklin's lost expedition. Hosted at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.
context_page_description: Stephen Joseph Harper PC CC is a Canadian economist and politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada for nearly a decade, from February 6, 2006, to November 4, 2015. Harper has served as the chairman of the International Democrat Union since February 2018.
  Over his career, Stephen Harper was elected to the House of Commons seven times, and served nine years as prime minister of Canada, winning three elections as party leader. Harper was the first prime minister to come from the modern Conservative Party of Canada, though older centre-right conservative parties have been active since Canada's founding.
  Harper was one of the founding members of the Reform Party of Canada and under that banner was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1993 in Calgary West. He did not seek re-election in the 1997 federal election. Harper instead joined and later led the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative lobbyist group. In 2002, he succeeded Stockwell Day as leader of the Canadian Alliance, the successor to the Reform Party and returned to parliament as Leader of the Official Opposition by winning Preston Manning's former seat.
caption: Harper appearing at a gala at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to celebrate the discovery of HMS Erebus, one of two ships wrecked during John Franklin's lost expedition.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5184", "Image ImageLength": "3456", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2015:03:05 10:35:21", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2320", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "5156", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "2500", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:03:04 20:15:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:03:04 20:15:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "6", "EXIF ApertureValue": "5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "23/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "37", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "37", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "37", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "951", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "720", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "5118", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5184000/907", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "691200/119", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}