Harper was invited to form the 28th Canadian Ministry and become Prime Minister of Canada following the 2006 federal election, where Harper led his Conservative Party to win a plurality of seats in the House of Commons of Canada, defeating the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin.

In the 2015 federal election, Harper's Conservatives lost power to a Liberal majority government led by Justin Trudeau.

Harper went on to lead the Conservatives to win a plurality of seats in the 2006 election[4] and formed the smallest minority government in Canadian history.

Conventional wisdom before the 2011 election previously held that winning a federal majority without significant support in the province of Quebec would be near impossible.

Media speculation was the Conservatives would need to win in excess of 40% of the popular vote to form a majority government, the stated goal of Harper in the 2011 election.

For most of Harper's tenure as prime minister, he led a minority government meaning he relied on the support (or abstention) of other parties in order to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons.

The Harper government often relied on the official opposition Liberal caucus abstaining in whole[12] or in part[13] in order to allow confidence measures to pass.

The government lost its first confidence vote on a Liberal sponsored censure motion on March 25, 2011, prompting Harper to seek dissolution and the calling of the 2011 general election.

Harper precipitated a national controversy, which threatened to overturn his government, by fielding a spending bill in the fall of 2008 which would have stripped taxpayer funding from political parties and taken away[14] the right to strike from Canadian public service workers as purported solutions to the effects in Canada of the global economic crisis.

Following the resumption of parliament, Harper introduced a new budget which was allowed to pass when members of the Liberal caucus abstained from the vote.

Three (Michael Fortier, Fabian Manning, and Larry Smith) subsequently resigned from the Senate to seek election to the House of Commons.

[17] Those articles questioned Harper's alleged involvement in financial offers made to Cadman to sway his vote in a crucial 2005 Commons showdown.

The suit filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice did not name Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion or MPs Ralph Goodale and Michael Ignatieff—whom Harper had also threatened to sue.

[22] As with any Canadian government, the principal foreign relations issue is the relationship with the United States, Canada's closest neighbour and largest trading partner.

[26] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Elections Canada investigated the calls[27] but ultimately did not refer the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Several pundits in the media described Harper's Cabinet as moderate, and a tempering of the Conservative Party's roots in the Canadian Alliance and Reform.[who?]

Unlike his recent predecessors, Harper did not name one of his colleagues to the largely honorific post of Deputy Prime Minister.

[31] It was reported that the Prime Minister's Office also "often [informed] the media about Harper's trips at such short notice that [it was] impossible for Ottawa journalists to attend the events.

"[citation needed] In 2011 Stephen Harper violated copyright when he sang the song "Imagine" without permission of the owner in a video that was later uploaded to YouTube.

The former was the subject of ridicule by other parties and some media commentators,[36] while the latter was criticized by some academics and former civil servants as a partisan misuse of government resources.

[38] The federal governments of Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper fulfilled the majority of their campaign promises and scored highest on fulfilling their campaign promises compared to any other "Canadian government over the last 35 years", according to an August 30, 2019 publication based on research at Laval University.

Rothstein had already been short-listed, with two other candidates, by a committee convened by Paul Martin's previous Liberal government, and he was Harper's choice.

First, Harper bypassed Parliament's Supreme Court selection panel, which was supposed to produce a list of three candidates for him to choose from.