Who is Stephen Harper, the Conservative poised to be Canada’s next prime minister?

The man who according to all opinion polls will be Canada’s prime minister after next Monday’s election is a right-wing economist and neo-conservative ideologue. Over the past 15 years—whether as a Reform Party leader and MP, president of the far-right National Citizens Coalition, or head of the Canadian Alliance and, since 2004, the new Conservative Party—Harper had made no secret of his abhorrence of universal social programs such as Medicare or his support for privatization and deregulation. A rabid opponent of the Liberals’ failure in 2003 to take Canada to war alongside the Bush administration in the US-led invasion of Iraq, Harper recently proclaimed his desire to “rebuild the Canadian military” in order to “make foreign policy decisions that are not only independent but are actually noticed by other powers around the world.”

Harper has been accused by his electoral rivals of betraying traditional “Canadian values.” The Liberals and the social-democrats of the New Democratic Party invoke such vapid abstractions to conceal the class divisions within Canadian society and their own role as parties of big business.

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