Stephen Harper
Stephen Harper
Stephen Joseph Harper PC MPis a Canadian politician and member of Parliament who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, from February 6, 2006 to November 4, 2015. He was the first prime minister to come from the modern Conservative Party of Canada, which was formed by a merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth30 April 1959
CityLeaside, Canada
CountryCanada
Stephen Harper quotes about
Make no mistake. Canada is not a bilingual country. In fact it is less bilingual today than it has ever been.
Canada remains alienated from its allies, shut out of the reconstruction process to some degree, unable to influence events. There is no upside to the position Canada took.
The world is now unipolar and contains o-nly o-ne superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower.
There is a Canadian culture that is in some ways unique to Canada, but I don't think Canadian culture coincides neatly with borders.
Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession, problems in mortgage markets, the problems in the banking sector, the problems in government finance in countries like Greece, none of those problems were in present Canada.
The job numbers are positive. We've had more jobs created now than were lost during the recession. We're seeing that the creation, we're seeing those numbers not only grow but shift toward the private sector and shift toward full-time employment and these are all signs that the recovery is taking some hold but we're not out of woods.
The Leader of the Opposition's constitutional obligation - the obligation to Parliament - it's the reason we did the merger! - is to make sure Canadians have an alternative for government.
I think the way to change it is to handle issues individually when it's essential to do so.
Canada is in budgetary deficit now only because of the recession, only because of stimulus measures, and we will come out of it. We will go back into surplus position when the economy recovers. So there is no need in Canada to raise taxes.
I forget what the relevant American rate is, but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We're on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly - by a significant margin the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7, and that's our - our government's objective.
It [the Iraq invasion] was absolutely an error. It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true and that's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq.
It was the removing of a regime that was hostile, that clearly had the intention of constructing weapons systems.
It was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win.
I don't get into that second guessing of myself publicly.