corporate and think-tank researcher

Stephen Harper

Harperism

07 Oct '14

Margaret Thatcher transformed British political life forever. So did Ronald Reagan in the United States. Now Canada has experienced a similar, dramatic shift to a new kind of politics, which author Donald Gutstein terms Harperism.

Harper’s Assault on Employment Insurance

01 Sep '12

Mae Burrows and Donald Gutstein OUR TIMES Sept./Nov. 2012 Our son works in the construction industry. Several years ago he was fired — unfairly — from his job and thus denied access to Employment Insurance benefits that he had been contributing to for several years. Not only was he out of work, but, since he …

Stephen Harper repeats U.S. Republican lines on energy

19 Apr '12

To welcome in the 2012 U.S. election year, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum gave a New Year’s Eve speech in Ottumwa, Iowa, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. By rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, Santorum warned, U.S. President Barack Obama was “pandering to radical environmentalists who don’t want energy production, who don’t want us …

Why Harper wants more poor Canadians

13 Jan '12

Is Stephen Harper’s goal for Canada the United States of today? That would mean a nation in which somewhere between a half and a third of its citizens have fallen into poverty or are hovering just above, in low income. This according to latest data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, 400 Americans are …

Surely Harper Doesn’t Want More Poor People. Or Does He?

11 Jan '12

Big Media’s Sway Will Be Tested at Ballot Box

02 May '11

(This article was first published in The Tyee on May 2, the day of the election.) Most corporate news outlets buttressed Harper’s drive for a majority. But has the game changed? Richard Nixon famously declared “I am not a crook” in his televised defence of his handling of the Watergate affair. After that everyone thought …

Harper’s Crime Floggers

24 Mar '11

Crime rates are rising, crime rates are rising, crime rates are rising… Say this often enough and it becomes official truth. That seems to be the strategy devised by the Harper government and its current think-tank squeeze, the Macdonald Laurier Institute. In February 2011, the Ottawa-based institute released a study which purported to prove that …

Canada’s Own Compassionate Conservatism

07 Mar '11

A curious full-page ad is making the rounds of Postmedia newspapers of late. Appearing in the Calgary Herald on February 10, Montreal Gazette and National Post on February 16 and Vancouver Sun on March 3, the ad is a plea for “encouraging charitable giving while reducing the deficit.” It is a letter addressed to the …

The New Deregulation Agenda

14 Feb '11

In December, 2010 Stephen Harper created the Red Tape Reduction Commission. A month later he and U.S. President Barack Obama signed a border security deal. Two initiatives in a new deregulation agenda. Canadian business—big and small—is on a deregulation tear and Harper seems more than willing to push the file on every possible front. The …

Harper’s Meeting With Murdoch — The Real Story

17 Sep '10

Why would big-time global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss how miniscule Canadian media tycoon Pierre-Karl Péladeau could set up a Quebecor Media television knock-off of Murdoch’s Fox News channel? The answer is that he wouldn’t — and didn’t. Even Kory Teneycke, who was Harper’s chief spokesperson at the …

Buy Now

Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

harperism cover

A weakened labour movement – and preferably the disappearance of unions – will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity
Cutting back government scientific research and data collection will improve public policy-making

The success of Harperism is no accident. Donald Gutstein documents the links between the politicians, think tanks, journalists, academics, and researchers who nurture and promote each other’s neo-liberal ideas.

Stephen Harper

Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

Details