Individual Chapters
From the economy to the environment, social programs to foreign policy, health care to tax cuts, the tar sands to free trade deals, and many other areas, these chapters dig through the facts and key moments for this government over the past seven years, highlighting in particular its policy response to the global financial crisis and Great Recession.
Download individual chapters below:
- Table of Contents and Preface, by Bruce Campbell
- Introduction, by Teresa Healy and Stuart Trew
- About the Authors
Democracy
- Irreconcilable differences: First Nations and the Harper government’s energy superpower agenda, by Daniel Wilson
- Dismantling democracy: Stifling debate and dissent for civil society and Indigenous people, by Pearl Eliadis
- Scapegoating Canada’s public sector: How the government used the crisis to attack unions, slash the public service and increase privatization, by Howie West
- Government for the people, not by the people: Populism and parliamentary governance under Stephen Harper, by Clark Banack
- A party for new Canadians? The rhetoric and reality of neoconservative citizenship and immigration policy, by John Carlaw
Labour and Migration
- Welcome! (But don’t get comfortabe): The permanence of Canada’s temporary migration program, by Karl Flecker
- The hidden growth of Canada’s migrant workforce, by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood
- Canada’s managed migration policy: Working for business, not people, by Harsha Walia
- The war on labour: Solutions in search of a problem, by Alison Braley-Rattai
- Hollowing out the middle: Recasting federal workforce development programs under the Harper government, by Donna Wood
Social Policy
- Tough on crime, weak on results: The Harper government’s emphasis on prison time is ineffective and expensive, by Paula Mallea
- Mad Men family policy: The Harper record on taxation and child care, by Kate Bezanson
- Whose priorities? Artwork by Rusa Jeremic
- The Harper government’s reorienting of Status of Women Canada, by Jane Stinson
- Case Study: The Harper government and the Canada Social Transfer, by Jennifer Mussell
- Truth without reconciliation: The Harper government and Aboriginal peoples after the apology, by James FitzGerald
- The need for federal leadership in public health care in Canada, by Melissa Newitt and Adrienne Silnicki
- Housing first, but affordable housing last: The Harper government and homelessness, by Carey Doberstein and Alison Smith
Economy
- Leaner and meaner: Government spending from stimulus to austerity, by Tamara Krawchenko and Christopher Stoney
- Gender and austerity in post-crisis Canada: How the government is leaving women behind, by Sophie O’Manique
- Safe, but for how long? Canada’s incomplete response to the last global financial crisis, by Ian Roberge
- A dance of partisan ideology and electoral politics: The politics of economic policy in the Great Recession, by Prosper Bernard Jr.
Food, Water, Air, Environment
- Corporate power, deregulation and the threat to public safety, by Bruce Campbell
- Burning down the house: Environmental policy dismantling by the Harper government, by Nigel Kinney
- A monopoly of knowledge: The dissolution of the libraries of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, by Andrea Zeffiro
- From food sovereignty to food insecurity: How changes to the Canadian Wheat Board and seed policy leave farmers worse off, by Ann Slater
- Case Study: Agriculture Canada to remove Health Canada from safety assessment of some GM foods, by Lucy Sharratt
Security, Foreign Policy and Trade
- More secure, but not safer: A review of national security policy from 2008 to the present, by Monia Mazigh
- Adrift at sea: Defence policy after Afghanistan, by Stewart Webb
- White hats, black hats: The Harper government’s policy toward Israel, by Dennis Gruending
- Investor versus state: Canada’s trade and investment treaties are undermining democracy and regulation at home and abroad, by Scott Sinclair
- Case Study: Canada as mining superpower, by Yves Engler
Click here to download The Harper Record 2008-2015 in its entirety.