NP View: Stephen Harper, the competent economist who outshone Carney in every way

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/np-view-stephen-harper-the-competent-economist-who-outshone-carney-in-every-way

Re-printed without permission.

By National Post View

Published Jan 31, 2026

Last updated 1 day ago

3 minute read

In the past 20 years, Canada has been governed by two economists: Stephen Harper and Mark Carney. Only one, however, managed to leverage his expertise for the good of Canada in his first eight months of government. 

After so many years of national stagnation, it’s jarring to think back to 2006 and the rapid speed at which change was delivered. Harper won the election on Jan. 23 and formed government on Feb. 6. Legislative work began immediately and by May, there was already a budget to show Canadians exactly what Harper’s plan was for the country.

Budget 2006 included a plan to lower Canadian debt by $3 billion per year; the federal government would go on to pay down a whopping $14 billion the next year. It had managed to bring in a surplus — and had the wisdom to use it to lower the country’s interest charges.

Also in the budget was a plan to provide $20 billion in tax relief to individuals over the two years that would follow. The GST, which was seven per cent at the time, was dropped to six per cent (and would drop to five per cent the next year) — just as Harper had promised in the election campaign. The untaxed basic personal amount of income was increased and the lowest tax rate was reduced to bring costs down immediately.

Beyond that, the corporate tax was cut by two percentage points, and a whole swath of tax credits to support students, apprentices and parents was put forward. Families, meanwhile, benefited from the brand-new Universal Child Care Benefit along with fresh daycare funding, which would go on to be warped in the Trudeau years.

Harper’s first major piece of legislation, the Federal Accountability Act, was passed by the House of Commons in June 2006. It introduced the Parliamentary Budget Officer to independently number-crunch questions about cost. (This was one of several new independent oversight bodies that, aside from finances, oversee accountability in lobbying, whistleblowing, procurement, and conflicts of interest).

But of all the changes brought by the Federal Accountability Act, those affecting political party finances are what stung Harper’s opponents most. Donation limits of $1,000 were slapped on political parties, leadership and parliamentary candidates, constituency associations and more. Corporate, union, and organization donations were outright banned. The previous annual limit for party donations was $5,000, which gave entities with low membership the ability to rely on fewer, richer funders for sustenance. 

Ideological programs also got the axe in the months after Harper formed government: he eliminated the court challenges program and the Law Commission of Canada — two functionally partisan lawfare entities funded by the public — and shut down most offices of the department now known as Women and Gender Equality Canada.

Best of all, it felt like Canada truly had an economically literate leader, someone who, instead of relying on feel-good talking points about undefined Canadian “values,” could explain what his plans were and why.

Harper’s initial reforms paved the way for more improvements, from family finances to state coffers. He cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) general fund in 2009. He instituted income splitting in 2014. And importantly, Harper would eventually eliminate the per-vote subsidy, which, prior to 2015, saw public funds handed out to political parties on the basis of their performance in the past election. 

All of these years were characterized by stability — there was no high-profile political interference in prosecutions, no blackface, no weeks-long protests in the nation’s capital, no countrywide rail blockades, no separatist movements bubbling to a boil. Among Harper’s worst scandals — if you can call them that, as they were dwarfed by the ethical obscenities of the Trudeau era — were pushy, overmanaged communications policies that don’t differ much from how things go in Ottawa today. Harper also got flak for … standing up to female genital mutilation and correctly referring to it as a barbaric practice. To this day, the Government of Canada website has resources for victims, proving that the former prime minister wasn’t wrong at the end of the day.

Stephen Harper gave us a great example of how to do government in 2006. We should calibrate our expectations accordingly.

National Post