Majority government of Stephen Harper

The newly emboldened Conservative government reintroduced bills that it previously had been unable to push through the House of Commons and tabled new legislation to fulfill long-standing promises. An initiative to end public subsidies for political parties was enacted in June 2011 with the passage of the Conservative budget. The plan called for per-vote subsidies to be phased out gradually before being eliminated by 2015. Also in June the Conservatives reintroduced the Senate Reform Act, which sought to expand federal power to transform the Senate into an elected (rather than appointed) chamber and to establish term limits. However, the act was declared unconstitutional in 2013 by the Quebec court of appeal and ultimately stalled following a 2014 Supreme Court decision that required majority provincial consent for such changes to be enacted. Harper responded with disappointment to the decision but said that he would “respect” it. His government also introduced an omnibus crime bill, which contained nine bills that had failed to pass in the former Parliament. Among them were acts to impose mandatory minimum sentences for a range of sexual offenses as well as for certain drug-related crimes, an act to eliminate pardons for serious crimes and replace them with “record suspensions,” and an act that would prevent judges from imposing conditional sentences for certain crimes. The bill passed in March 2012.

Harper launched a series of important trade missions in 2012, beginning with meetings in Beijing with the Chinese government in February that resulted in 21 commercial agreements. (Later in 2012 he announced plans to create a road map for foreign purchases of Canadian firms in response to domestic concern over the takeover of Calgary-based oil and gas company Nexen Inc. by a state-owned Chinese company.) During the course of the year, Harper also visited India, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, noting that cultivating such relationships would be an ongoing priority for the government as the forecast economic growth of traditional trading partners such as the U.S. lagged. In June he announced that Canada would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a series of talks designed to create a huge Asia-Pacific free-trade zone that would include Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States, among others.

Harper had appointed all but one of the senators who came under investigation in late 2012 for spending improprieties related to travel and housing allowances. The resulting scandal dominated Canadian news during much of 2013, especially after revelations in May that Prince Edward Island Sen. Mike Duffy’s voluntary repayment of his overexpenditures had actually been paid by Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, from his own funds. Harper expressed surprise at the news of Wright’s gift and suggested that his chief of staff had acted alone in his “deception”; however, journalists reported that numerous other Conservative Party members had some knowledge of the transaction. Wright was dismissed from his post and Duffy from the Conservative caucus. In November 2013 Duffy and two other senators (Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau) were suspended from the Senate for two years without pay.

In October 2013 Harper and EU President José Manuel Barroso announced a historic Canada-EU free-trade agreement, which would immediately eliminate 98 percent of tariffs, promote labour movement, and encourage foreign investment. It was set to be enacted in 2015. In March 2014 the final Canadian troops stationed in Afghanistan returned, adhering to the schedule that Harper had announced in 2012, and Harper joined other Group of 7 governments in condemning Russian incursion into the Ukrainian republic of Crimea. He visited Ukraine and met with its prime minister and president to express his support for the country’s sovereignty. He also announced sanctions against Russians and Ukrainians involved in the annexation.

Back on the homefront, in May 2014 Harper heralded the enactment of a national conservation plan intended to unify efforts to preserve natural areas across the country. In late October 2014 two separate incidents involving “lone wolves” who were apparently inspired by their radical understanding of Islam put Canada’s security services on heightened alert. On October 20 one Canadian military man was killed and another was injured in a St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, parking lot when they were deliberately rammed by a motorist. Two days later a ceremonial honour guard at Canada’s National War Memorial was shot and killed by a gunman, who then entered the Hall of Honour in Canada’s Parliament Buildings, where he injured several others before he was shot and killed. Members of Parliament, including Harper, had been holding meetings in unlocked rooms on either side of the hall at the time of the incursion. In response to the incidents, Harper’s government pushed Parliament to strengthen existing antiterrorism legislation, which it did in May 2015 with the passage of Bill C-51. The controversial legislation (opposed by many of the left as a violation of civil liberties) authorized the sharing of private information between 17 government organizations and expanded the portfolio of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to include preventive actions.