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Stephen Harper is currently the Prime Minister of [[Canada]].
He is also the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
=History=
Stephen Harper was born on April 30, 1959.
He was first elected to Parliament in 1993 to represent the riding of Calgary West.
Subsequently, he became the head of the [[National Citizens Coalition]] (NCC), a conservative advocacy group in Canada.
In 2002, he became the leader of the [[Canadian Alliance]] (CA), a conservative party in Canada.
He was instrumental in the merger between the CA and the [[Progressive Conservative Party]] of Canada, the previously dominant conservative party in Canada.
In an election in 2006, the Conservative Party of Canada [http://www.conservative.ca/] elected enough members of parliament to form a minority government and Stephen Harper became the Prime Minister.
In 2007 Harper promised Canadian farmers over $1 billion Canadian dollars in farm subsidies but at the same time is pushing to remove the [[Wheat Board of Canada]], a government group that controls the prices of wheat and barley, a move which farmers believe would cost the Canadian farming industry billions of dollars in lost revenues. The [[United States]] also wants the Wheat Board of Canada removed from power because it claims price fixing is unfair to free-trade. Wheat exports to the United States account for only 10% of Canada's wheat production.