Steven Harper has not personally jumped on the public stage of the Conservative leadership race, but there is one Harper who has appeared to choose a side: Ben Harper, the son of the former prime minister. Mr Harper’s tweets seem to put him all-in on Pierre Poilievre – and dead against former Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest. And the tone of the tweets, or at least some of the more recent ones, matched the elbows up, the sharp tone of a campaign that was ugly from the start. Ben Harper responded to a tweet from Mr Charest – a harsh criticism of Mr Poilievre himself for backing truckers and attacking the integrity of the Bank of Canada – with a dismissal. “A lost campaign: Repeated lies by the Liberal Party and the media to attack the Conservatives and reject the issues that ordinary Canadians are interested in,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday. “A sad attempt to save a failed campaign.” Pierre Poilievre is preparing to overthrow Canadian politics It is unclear whether the younger Mr Harper expresses the same views as his father – Ben Harper has his own interest in politics and went to work in Jason Kenny’s Alberta government. “Ben has always had his own mind,” Mr Harper’s former communications director, Dimitris Soudas, said on Tuesday. But retweets from Mr Poilievre’s team show that they are happy that the Conservatives are listening to the views of a member of the Harper family in favor of Poilievre, against Charest. And there’s definitely a bit of an old Harper-Charest grudge in the fight – at least by extension. A day earlier, Poilievre’s main campaign adviser and former Harper’s campaign director, Jenni Byrne, had been arguing with Charest campaign co-chair Tasha Kheiriddin on CTV. Power Play when Mrs. Byrne showed resentment with Mr. Charest. The debate had already been highlighted. Ms Kheiriddin explained Mr Charest’s allegations that Mr Poilievre ousted himself from the political leadership because he had supported protests by truckers violating the law. Ms Byrne accused both Mr Charest and Ms Kheiriddin of being newcomers to the “modern Conservative Party” and at one point said Ms Kheiriddin was lying. Mrs. Byrne then raised the old complaint: that Mr. Charest had “campaigned” against Mr. Harper’s Conservatives. This is not exactly true. There was no real campaign – but there was an election campaign in 2008 that left bad blood. The two politicians initially got on well when Mr Harper was first elected prime minister in 2006, Mr Soudas said. But Mr Harper felt he had helped Mr Charest re-elect as prime minister in 2007, and a year later, when Mr Harper sought a majority, Mr Charest publicly criticized the prime minister. “That’s where the marriage collapsed,” Mr Soudas said. Even before Mr Harper came to power, Mr. Charest had asked Ottawa to address the “fiscal imbalance” – claiming that Ottawa had revenue, but the provinces had the cost for needs such as education and health. . In 2007, as Mr Charest faced a tough re-election struggle, Mr Harper’s government tabled a budget that provided an unexpected profit to the provinces, particularly Quebec, and said the fiscal imbalance had been resolved. Ottawa was supposed to lend money to Quebec to use for social spending, but Mr. Charest quickly announced a $ 700 million tax cut. Mr. Harper felt he had been played. Pierre Poilievre’s support for truckers’ exclusion ‘excludes’ him from political leadership, says Jean Charest The following year, when Mr Harper called early elections, his party was on the verge of a majority when cultural program cuts stumbled. The Tories portrayed the cuts as a small finish for artistic bourgeoisie, but were considered in Quebec as Anglo-Canadians cutting off Cebu’s identity. A hilarious viral video depicted Quebec singer Michel Rivard auditioning in front of a group of monolingual English-speaking bureaucrats. It was a disaster. Mr Charest has publicly spoken out against cultural cuts. “Some will say he had no choice because he was the prime minister of Quebec,” Souda said. “But others would say we helped him and all he had to do was keep quiet.” This rift never left. It was not Mr Charest who made Mr Harper fail to win the majority 14 years ago. This was an own goal of the Conservatives. But resentment is clearly still there for Mrs Byrne. Other veterans of Harper’s era remember it bitterly. Maybe this old grudge has nothing to do with Ben Harper or his Twitter account, which has more than 9,000 followers, including now Antoine Dion Sares – the son of Jean Sares. But Mr Poilievre’s campaign obviously wants the Tories to remember that. For subscribers: Receive exclusive political news and analysis by subscribing to Political information.
