Stephen Harper
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 [1] 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.