Stephen Joseph Harper is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. He is to date the only prime minister to have been a member of the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, being the party's co-founder and serving as its first leader from 2004 to 2015. Since 2018, he has been the chairman of the International Democracy Union.
Born in Leaside, now a neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Harper studied economics, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1985 and 1991, respectively, from the University of Calgary. He was a founder of the Reform Party of Canada and was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1993 federal election in the riding of Calgary West. He did not seek re-election in 1997 and instead joined and later led the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative lobbyist group. In 2002, Harper defeated Stockwell Day to become leader of the Canadian Alliance, the successor to the Reform Party, and returned to Parliament as the leader of the Opposition.