Notes

• Affiliation politique : conservateur
• Sources : Wikipedia
• Ancestral path to Christopher Harper is detailed in the 45th newsletter of the Tantramar Heritage Trust.

Biography

Stephen Joseph Harper PC MP (born April 30, 1959) is 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 Conservative Party of Canada, which was formed by a merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance.

Harper has been the Member of Parliament for the riding of Calgary Heritage in Alberta since 2002 (previously known as Calgary Southwest from 2002 to 2015). Earlier, from 1993 to 1997, he was the MP for Calgary West, representing the Reform Party of Canada. He was one of the founding members of the Reform Party, but 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 Opposition. In 2003, he reached an agreement with Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay for the merger of their two parties to form the Conservative Party of Canada. He was elected as the party's first leader in March 2004.

In the October, 2008, federal election, the Conservative Party won a stronger minority, showing a small increase in the percentage of the popular vote and increased representation in the Canadian House of Commons, with 143 of 308 seats. The 40th Canadian Parliament was dissolved in March, 2011, after a no-confidence vote that deemed the Cabinet to be in contempt of parliament. In the federal election that followed, the Conservatives won a majority government, the first since the 2000 federal election; the party won 166 seats, an increase of 23 seats from the October 2008 election.

Though Harper won his seat of Calgary-Heritage in the October 19, 2015, federal election,[4] the Conservative Party was defeated by the Liberal Party of Canada, led by Justin Trudeau, who was sworn-in as Harper's successor on November 4, 2015. Harper resigned as party leader on October 19, 2015, and the Conservative Party caucus chose an interim leader, Rona Ambrose, on November 5, 2015, to serve until a leadership election. Harper moved back to Calgary, Alberta, from 24 Sussex Drive, and will commute to Ottawa to fill his role as an opposition backbench Member of Parliament.