Stephen Harper To Step Down As Conservative Leader

“It has been an unbelievable honour to serve as your prime minister”, Harper told an audience shortly before 10 p.m. local time.

The party didn’t want to hear that Harper wasn’t popular, he says.

An economist once seen as prickly, awkward and more at home ploughing through economic theory than glad-handing voters on the campaign trail, Harper had managed to smooth his image since taking office. But Dr. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, says with the victory of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, Israeli-Canadian relations are about to deteriorate – again.

But what the party wasn’t prepared for was a collapse of NDP support.

The new riding of Vancouver Granville, for example, might turn out to be the subject of an academic thesis on the risks of strategic voting.

Byrne was yanked off Harper’s plane and dispatched back to headquarters.

The irony is that a Canadian election campaign dominated by debates over the rights of immigrants is fast becoming a two-way race that will be decided by immigrants – with no accurate information suggesting which way they will swing.

On the other side of the ledger, Progressive Conservatives under John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney grew by about 100 seats or more, Diefenbaker moving to majority in 1958 and Mulroney winning power in 1984. She was not in Calgary on election night, and was out of the job Tuesday morning.

That forced them to “secure the core”, confided another insider. Nothing worked and when it was all done, it was also apparent Harper had overplayed the niqab card. We don’t need them. “We should have been talking about pocketbook issues not jihadists”, complained the Conservative operative.

“The Conservative platform was essentially the 2015 budget with no new promises”.

Second, the NDP lost control of its “change” message when it shifted into prime ministerial takeover mode and left the field open to Trudeau, and when that happened, Conservative prospects sank.

Despite the defections, the Conservative war room was confident the party could benefit from Trudeau’s supposed weaknesses, running ads saying he was “just not ready”.

Upon reflection, I think the campaign was ill-conceived.

Liberal supporters celebrate results at Liberal election headquarters in Montreal.

A former adviser to Stephen Harper says he thinks the politician is done with politics after suffering electoral defeat Monday night.

“We need a leader who can appeal to a broad base, who is accepted in all parts of Canada”, Kelly said, “an energetic, dynamic person that people can get behind”.

A conference call of the party’s governing body will take place Tuesday night to appoint a committee tasked with organizing the leadership contest. You did nothing wrong. I take sober heart in that and, whatever your politics, I hope you do as well. Winners win as a team, and lose as a team.

On the domestic front, Harper defended Canada’s Arctic claims, while appearing to show little interest in climate change.

Harper has no plans to address the media on Tuesday, an aide said.

“Until you know what the problems were, you can’t put yourself forward being the solution”. I’m a proud Canadian citizen; I hold no other passport. This senior Conservative said the antipathy towards Harper, even among Conservatives had reached a boiling point. A campaign source denies there was any campaign re-set among those there, just a chance for Harper to relax. For a more detailed look at his anti-Harper sentiments, check out the singer’s prolific Twitter profile. A few expect him to do global work.

“Our sitting prime minister has consistently tried to steer the election discourse to other important topics”, wrote Mary O’Neill, former MLA for St. Albert, in Saturday’s edition of the Gazette.

When I talk about “home”, I always mean Canada. Now he loves it, and the idea of building a new property there is one of his next long-term projects.

The Harpers have bought land at a bend in the Elbow River.

After that, it’s anyone’s guess.