Stephen Harper encouraged Biden to run for president — and other revelations in his memoir - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out By Stuart Thomson November 3, 2026 at 7:00 a.m. Last Updated: November 3, 2026 at 2:15 p.m. OTTAWA — The most remarkable news from former prime minister Stephen Harper’s memoir is his contradiction of Mark Carney’s claim that Harper offered him the job of finance minister in 2012. But there are a lot more juicy details in the book.

In his book, Here for Canada, released this week, Harper takes the reader through his long and eventful political career, from his successful effort to unite the Canadian right, to his decade in government, to the 2015 campaign that saw him dumped from power.

Here are some other eye-opening revelations from the former prime minister’s memoir.

At a conference in Sweden in 2018, when both men were out of office, Harper was invited by Joe Biden, who was then the former U.S. vice president, to come to his hotel room to talk politics.

Biden told Harper that he was thinking about running for president in 2020, which would be against Donald Trump, and wanted an outsider’s perspective on his chances.

“He thought hearing from someone who was both non-American and conservative would be useful,” writes Harper.

Harper told Biden that if he contested the Democratic nomination for president, he would win it. And, in Harper’s mind, that was the race that mattered, because Trump would be vulnerable in the 2020 election.

“Given the state of the Trump presidency and the division of his country, his (Biden’s) chances at winning as the Democratic nominee in the general election would be at least fifty-fifty. I thought they might be better,” writes Harper.

Harper also stresses that he wasn’t picking sides.

“To be clear, I was not stating any personal preferences. I was just giving Joe my ‘objective’ analysis, one long-time political guy to another,” he writes.

Harper also notes that the signs of cognitive decline that would ultimately lead to Biden giving up the Democratic nomination in 2024 “were nowhere on the radar.” In 2018, he says, Biden was 75 years old, very energetic, and “could have passed for twenty years younger.”

During the 2015 election campaign, while Harper was cloistered in a Montreal hotel room preparing for a leaders debate, he recalls that a news story popped up on his TV that the Conservatives were announcing a “barbaric cultural practices hotline.”

Two federal ministers, Chris Alexander and Kellie Leitch, touted a government snitch line for suspected incidents of forced marriage, polygamy, or female genital mutilation.

The only problem? According to Harper, nobody had told him about the announcement, which was not in the party platform.

Not only was the party leader apparently not informed, but Harper writes that he would have rejected the policy outright if it had crossed his desk.

But, in the heat of the campaign, Harper says he had little choice but to back the initiative to avoid the inevitable news stories about a campaign in chaos. Harper also had some sympathy for Alexander and Leitch, who he says would have assumed that the idea came from the leader and he didn’t want to leave them holding the bag.

“I was furious, but my options were limited. While I never wanted this policy in the first place, there would be serious questions about our campaign if I disavowed it,” he writes.

He does not name whose idea it was. Jenni Byrne was the Conservatives’ campaign manager at the time, and would return to run their 2025 election campaign.

Despite the polling success of the party’s niqab ban policy, which barred face-coverings during a Canadian citizenship ceremony, Harper writes that he wanted to keep the focus on the economy and was not inclined to add any more planks on these cultural issues to the platform.

“Early in the campaign, when presented with a range of possible such announcements—I do not recall if the hotline was one of them—I rejected them all. The economy was what our Government was about, and I made it clear that I thought it unwise to introduce a major focus beyond that,” he writes.

It made sense to be cautious, Harper writes, because inflaming a culture war could be counter-productive for his party’s ultimate goal on the issue: pushing for cultural integration and women’s equality.

Another consequence of the barbaric cultural practices hotline announcement for the Conservatives was that the ensuing media firestorm overshadowed the debate Harper had been preparing for.

“It had been my best French-language one ever. Ironically, I had done particularly well on the niqab issue,” writes Harper.

One of Harper’s most famous moments as prime minister was when he told Russian President Vladimir Putin to his face to “get out of Ukraine,” after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

There was more to the exchange, according to Harper’s account of it in his memoir.

In response to the comment, Putin said, “I’m not in Ukraine,” which was reported by the media at the time.

Harper’s final response to Putin was not reported in 2014. “Well, that’s why it’s a waste of my time to talk to you,” he said.

Harper writes that by that point in his political career, he was tired of playing along “for the sake of appearances” at these diplomatic events. He attributes a quote to former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt about Russian leaders, who “will lie to you even when they know that you know they are lying.”

The unexpected outcome of the exchange detailed in the book was that Putin became a pariah at the conference, after Harper says all the other world leaders realized that they couldn’t be caught glad-handing with the Russian leader after the global headlines about the confrontation.

“So for the rest of the conference, Putin largely ate by himself and was often photographed sitting alone,” writes Harper.

And in fact, Putin left the summit early on the second day.

If there were any doubt about Harper’s credentials as a true Albertan, his post-prime ministerial trip to Las Vegas should put them to rest.

After losing the 2015 election, Harper writes that he expected to feel a “huge physical and psychological letdown,” but it never came. Instead, he felt liberated.

After he returned to his hometown of Calgary, he blew off some steam by flying to Las Vegas for a week.

“I took in some shows, did some modest gambling, and walked the Strip. I enjoyed the (close to) anonymity and solitude,” writes Harper.

Harper also bumped into some acquaintances in Las Vegas, including Devin Dreeshen, who is now the Alberta transportation minister and the son of former Conservative MP Earl Dreeshen.

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