Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Premiership of Stephen Harper


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus to delete.

Several of the deletion arguments were very weak and I've discounted them: the use of the word "Premiership" (renaming articles to use a more appropriate synonym is obviously the right fix there), potential legal issues (not our problem: Wikipedia is not subject to Canadian broadcasting laws), various takes on OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (or not as the case may be) and the nominator's increasingly irate insistence that we're all being manipulated the Canadian Conservative Party.

There are some cogent arguments regarding the supposed walled garden nature of the articles, along with several editors examining the content and finding it to be somewhat systematically skewed. Nevertheless, multiple editors have pointed out that these are long-established articles with years of editing history and that deletion of such pages due to tone / POV problems alone is rare. One recent example was Articles for deletion/Economic history of the Jews, but I think most parties can agree that was an extraordinary case. All in all it's not possible to discern an overwhelming consensus either way, although I think there is consensus that some major editing (and possibly some merging and moving of content) is required to address the alleged POV problems.

Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 13:39, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Premiership of Stephen Harper

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This article and the others about to be added to this AfD constitute spam, especially in the context of the current federal election. There is nothing in this puff piece that cannot be in the main Stephen Harper article and there is no other equivalent article for any other Canadian Prime Minister (in fact, the term "Premiership" is not used in Canada at all); there are also separate "ministry" (what we call a cabinet and also comes off long a foreign-imposed or wiki-spawned term). The "X Policy of the Harper government" articles also are clearly part of a politically-controversial effort/edict from the PMO to re-style/re-brand the Government of Canada as "the Harper government" and in that light those titles can only be seen not only as POV but also blatant spam and political rebranding. They also have nothing in them of note that cannot be in the main Harper article, and in their current state constitute gross undue weight on this one person. No other Canadian politician of any era has such intense/overbuilt coverage on Wikipedia. Skookum1 (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reasons, with extra emphasis on the re-branding term "Harper government" but also because these come off like elaborate press releases and directories of this regime's policies/legislation, with only cursory NPOV critique, and in totally UNDUE fashion. They are unredeemable, despite suggestions in WP:CANTALK from time to time they be merged into the "Premiership" article though it has no valid reason to exist. They are all "political ego confabulation" and to say much more about the political machine that lay behind their creation would get more POV than necessary; suffice to say that one wag's comment about Harper is the only thing growing faster than his waistline is his ego, and after that his press machinery. Again, no other Canadian PM (many much more notable) have any such series of articles nor over-focus on his policies and in his chosen language; some like the foreign policy article make statemetns about past policies that are clearly slanted; saying "oh, rewrite them to make them less POV" is not sufficient partly because the amount of work that is, and because of the decidedly POV nature of Canadian news sources, many of which simply replicate PMO statements; the heavy reliance on mainstream media sources vs more independent sources of information is also problematic to these articles, though not limited to them. There is no point in merging them, or de-POVizing them; they should never have been let to exist at all, and now given their effective free-advertising nature in the context of this media-manipulated election campaign, it's time for them to be gotten rid of. Not next week, but NOW (i.e. not in the 3rd week of teh campaign, but the 2nd).Skookum1 (talk) 22:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete --papageno (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note - AfD's aren't about votes or consensus. They are about providing keep/delete rationale's. Simply adding 'delete' does nothing to contribute to the process.  Rklawton (talk) 03:18, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Speedy delete Wikipedia is not a Canadian election campaign advertising site. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 05:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That is not a valid reason for speedy deletion. Outback the koala (talk) 20:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Being in contravention of the law is, and also being SPAM, UNDUE, SOAP, and violations of even more Wikipedia rules. Unless you're willing to provide balance by de-POVizing their content and creating articles for Chretien, Martin, Trudeau, Mulroney and Pearson and so many more, and also to provide proper balance of the sales pitch all of them are about, you have no valid reason to oppose their deletion....except partisan favoritism.Skookum1 (talk) 02:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * What law does this article contravene? Phil Bridger (talk) 12:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete although I'm not confident on the policy grounds to base my argument. First off, I'm Canadian and I do plan to vote in the upcoming federal election. I've never seen these articles before and have read through them now. Looking at the "X policy of the Harper goveernment" articles, I note two items. The article titles are a branding exercise, make no mistake about it, a little while ago official government publications were ordered to be rebranded in tha fashion, that of itself has received significant coverage in reliable third-party sources. That could be fixed though, but much worse is the sheer volume of apologia contained in these articles. They do not appear anywhere close to the standard of NPOV that we expect, they are basically puff-pieces that explain why everything the government hsa done is uniformly good. I'm frankly stunned at the scope of this, I don't see any way to correct the imbalance given the sheer volume of material to go through. To take just one example, GST tax rate reductions are discussed without mention that virtually every trained economist in the world would say (and many did say) that consumption taxes are the very last ones you should reduce. And these problms go on, in almost every paragraph. It's a bit of a walled garden of approval for a political party. The primary article also seems problematic, though marginally less so, as it does acknowledge at least a tiny bit of controversy and perhaps an odd mistake or two. But these articles all fail the NPOV test, and it seems rather lopsided to say "oh well, just fix all those NPOV problems in all those articles, we'll rely on the Google links while the campaign plays out". I do respect the primary authors of these articles, so I'm torn on this. And I've personally defended the Wikipedia articles of Canadian politicians whose views I strongly disagree with, because this is Wikipedia. But this is a big mess, so I think deletion is the way to go here. Franamax (talk) 08:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge with 28th Canadian Ministry - Pictureprovince (talk) 14:44, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete Skookum, that's a lot of reading for one Afd. From what I can see, these articles (very nicely formatted and composed) are basically summaries of the various press releases by the Canadian gov't. over the last six years.  These are content forks from other articles where this level of detail and lack of critical sourcing wouldn't be allowed   Perhaps weeks of editing, merging, and stripping down could arrive at one good article, perhaps located at Pictureprovince's suggestion, I can't see the benefit.  The titles alone make any argument of neutrality moot.  Perhaps we should db-hoax them as the concept of "the Harper government" is a figment of the PMO's imagination?  The Interior  (Talk) 18:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment/reply Harper's importance/notability is certainly a hoax, in a sense, though his impact on CAnadian politics - not represented at all in these articles - is certainly notable; but a highly POV topic to even begin addressing.  I had a look at the "ministry" article that PictureProvince suggested merging this to, but it has no political content and simply moving the POV/promo/spam material here there is not a solution, and those articles are really only listings of cabinet members, not policy records of any kind; the Economic policy items are properly part of the budget articles, but as noted I don't see their relevance in encyclopedic terms either.  What we're seeing here, also, I maintain is quite clearly paid editing and of course highly COI in origin; somebody in Tory or PMO staff has taken a lot of time to study Wiki format/citations etc but the spin doctoring is obvious; trying to "balance" articles by applying criticisms of existing structure in the article is just playing within the walled garden, as Franamax calls it; it's not objective in origin and can't be made so.  Surely articles such as Canadian environmental policy are conceivable, but that begins with Trudeau (and somewhat before, in fact) and runs a gamut of other politicians, many of whose policies are much more notable (and actually environmental, as opposed to anti-environmental) and of course involves non-politicians such as Suzuki and Paul Watson etc.  I've heard "merge" here before but that's not a quick process, and though formally the campaign doesn't begin until April 11 we're really in the thick of it now aren't we? So these are very clearly ad-material and I do in fact wonder what the Chief Elections Officer might have to say about them; Wikipedia may be free space but their value as advertising has a dollar value, as does the money spent on making them.  Nothing past the Stephen Harper main article deserves to exist, and no doubt it has POV problems of its own (I can't stomach reading political bios anymore, and de-listed Campbell's a while back and avoid Christy Clark's though still keeping an eye on it).  "Balance" here would be Environmental policies of the Ignatieff Liberals r Economic policies of the Layton New Democrats, but again there'd be nthing in them that couldn't/shouldn't be in the respective bios or party articles.  The problem here is how to get rid of these forthwith as they constitute S-P-A-M and a host of other wiki-violations.  Sure, it's hard to prove paid editing, but what else could they be?  Somebody did all this work on their own free time, for completely altruistic reasons??  I highly doubt it, as must you.  Overall there needs to be a policy to deal with the use of Wikipedia by politicians, their parties and their p.r. staff/consultants, and some way t deal with them expeditiously, not via a long-drawn-out AfD - where potentially "votes" could be coming from people not familiar with politics especially Canadian politics.  Recognition that such content violates election spending laws should be enough to get the Council interested, as it's something like violating libel and hatred laws and copyright etc.....more on this later, I'm packing and cleaning but wanted to push aside this notion of "merge" as I always hear that kind of thing, which t me is just a delaying tactic, and the people proposing it are never the ones who actually do it once mandated.  But what's to merge?  Repetition of Tory/GOP lines in e.g. the Foreign Policy article that speak negatively of past Canadian=US relations in a US-favourable light?  What we see here, all unreadable but well cited mass of it, is nothing more than Harperite propaganda.  Notability alone is enough reason to dump them; but they can't be allowed to stand after April 11 (the start of teh campaign) or Wikipedia might be in violation of campaign spending laws.....Skookum1 (talk) 23:06, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Reply/change of vote to keep While the information currently presented my need to be de-POVed, the fact that there are pages like the Premiership of David Cameron, Howard Government (redirected from Premiership of John Howard), Presidency of Barack Obama, etc suggests that there should be such pages for Canadian prime ministers. Whether these should be titled "Premiership of X", "X Government" or housed in the existing "Nth Canadian ministry" pages is a matter for debate, but pages of this sort belong on Wikipedia. - Pictureprovince (talk) 17:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete I agree with the other discussants who make the point that this article is really just another 'puff piece' for an individual who is well known in Canada for his extraordinary degree of control over his public persona and that of other members of his party. As already noted, the term "premiership" is extremely odd in Canada and suggests that the term was used in order to create the appearance of a new topic, zooming the public in fact. The term "premier" actually refers to the leader of a provincial government so it is doubly odd.  This overemphasis on Stephen Harper is matched on Wikipedia by an equal overemphasis on the wrongdoings of the Opposition parties in Canada. Specifically, there is an entire entry on Liberal attack ads for one election year, with no other similar entry for the Conservative party's attack ads, which have been widely censured in Canada for the 2011 election year (and other years). I have recommended that that entry be deleted. This issue is especially salient now as there is currently an election in Canada, with only 2 more weeks to go in the campaign.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MJeanHellyer (talk • contribs) 18:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge and Redirect Take what can be salvaged to the Stephen Harper article; and the rest to the various parliamentary sittings (ie 40th Canadian Parliament, etc). Redirect to Stephen Harper directly. This will save info here, not elsewhere and save us time with fixing the links. Outback the koala (talk) 20:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe some of it can be merged to the party page also. Outback the koala (talk) 20:32, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Change to Keep per my comments elsewhere. This is no valid reason for deletion at this time. Outback the koala (talk) 22:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * replies @Koala- then get busy; I'm not going to waste my time moving advertising/political-spam to another article where it doesn't belong either. I hear this "merge and redirect" stuff all the time, but those proposing it to defend a given article are never the ones who do it.  These are blatant spam and UNDUE WEIGHT on a given Prime Minister and his media packets....@ PictureProvince's proposal; not much of these can be saved, especially since so much of the content (=nearly all) is blatantly POV/SPAM and also UNDUE.  Saying that there should be a Premiership of Pierre Trudeau or Premiership of Brian Mulroney or Premiership of Arthur Meighen article is all fine and dandy except for two things: one is that "Premiership" is an unknown term in Canada, another is that those articles don't exist and for all the pretense that this one should survive because those ones might that's just defending the indefensible.  We're in an election campaign here, PictureProvince, and these constitute illegal advertising and blatant violations of more than one Wikipedia guideline; as noted they may also be of concern to the Chief Electoral Officer and Wikipedia would be seen as a sponsor of donated-ads which are nonetheless counted as advertising by Elections Canada.....and have a clear dollar value.  Why else was so much time/money spent on compiling them????  The election's at the start of May, these should not be tolerated any longer, they should be deleted as soon as possible.  If you want stuff merged/moved, do it, don't say it can be done; nobody else wants to, or sees the point.Skookum1 (talk) 22:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * SO then just move the article - if its the word Premiership just move it to a more neutral wording, Policies in Canada under Harper or something along those lines. Outback the koala (talk) 00:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep for the other 4 article. They are well cited and seem neutral to me and notable. Zero reason for deletion - My rational for the Premiership article does not change. Outback the koala (talk) 00:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Reply No they're NOT neutral, not in the slightest. Some of it's overtly partisan, they're intent is partisan, and some of it like Franamax notes is "subtle but clearly partisan"; deconstructing them for your education in Canadian politics is not what this AfD is for; if you're not Canadian and unfamiliar with our politics (your name indicates you're an Aussie but maybe that's not the case), you still have no rational basis to defend what are effectively election pamphlets with heavy POV content and overtly POV/advertising intent. THEY ARE NOT NEUTRAL'.  Carefully worded and calm-sounding maybe, but they're sell-jobs and do not give proper NPOV weight to criticisms of this regime and its policies.  They are also in contravention of election laws.  Maybe that doesn't matter to you....whether you're in this country or another, but it's not inconsequential....Skookum1 (talk) 02:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Anything that could be in an article titled "policies in Canada under Harper" should just very simply be in History of Canada or in the Stephen Harper article, and any of what that might be cannot be so much a replication of Tory press releases as repeated by CTV and CBC as these happen to be. The is ZERO reason to keep these, unless you're a pro-Harper person who doesn't care a fig for Wiki-neutrality and encyclopedism.Skookum1 (talk) 02:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Please keep in mind WP:No Legal Threats. Outback the koala (talk) 02:16, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see any legal threat against you or any other individual being advanced here.·Maunus· ƛ · 02:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Ditto. Otk, there is not even the remotest sign of a legal threat here. If there was anything close, I would be clicking on buttons that I rarely use, regardless of whether I agree with Skookum1's (sometimes over the top) arguments here. Franamax (talk) 02:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This comes closer to being a legal threat than "not even the remotest sign". Phil Bridger (talk) 12:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * delete per nom.·Maunus· ƛ · 02:51, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment I find the timing of this nomination somewhat disturbing, the article has existed since 2006, if there was really a problem with the split why wasn't it addressed during the last 4 years when there wasn't an election about to happen? Monty  845  02:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, the government of an entire country for five years is a highly significant topic and definitely one that has received enough coverage in reliable sources to qualify for our notability guidelines; it's important enough that it will surely receive dedicated coverage in political science works of the future. If you disagree with the page's contents, you can easily turn it into a stub: AFD is not cleanup.  Nyttend (talk) 03:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Those so-called reliable sources (e.g. CTV and CBC) have done nothing more than reprocess press releases; and there is no balanced reportage given, either. Other suggestions have been that these become e.g. Canadian environmental policy - but it existed long before Harper came along; any mention of for example foreign policy before harper is portrayed negatively and in distorted fashion.....yeah I could have blanked heaps of what's on this page, and I could have launched an ANI long ago; but right now there's been no effort to NPOVize or merge them from people proposing that, nor any attempt to create corresponding articles for other governments/leaders....Skookum1 (talk) 03:16, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If you go through WP:CANTALK archives you'll see I've raised this issue before, and not once. And you hear "merge" and "create other articles" as the excuse to keep them; to date nobody who's said that has gone and created corresponding articles fror other leaders/parties; in fact someone proposed splitting the Premiership article further, despite its obvious UNDUE nature and that it's something like a POV fork from Stephen Harper.  The reason I raise them now is twofold: a current election campaign (date of election May 2; I was unaware of them during the last election, or was preoccupied with other articles), and also because the "Harper government" rebranding and associated matters, such as Harper's information-management policies, reveal them in the light of what they really are.  Just because they've existed since 2006 and despite criticisms of them in the past is no reason for them to continue to exist.  They are soapboxes, and directories of tory/Harper policy, nothing more.Skookum1 (talk) 03:16, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I never look at Canadian news, but I see enough media coverage in the American press to be able to write about the Harper government. Moreover, I can give you coverage of the Harper government in academic journals; see http://www.jstor.org/stable/40184864 and http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2009.31.1.46 for a couple of articles that study the government's positions on significantly different subjects.  Do you believe that sufficient reliable sources exist to write articles about the government of Gordon Brown and the Obama administration but not for the government of Stephen Harper?  Or do you believe that insufficient sources exist for all three of them and thus that all three should be deleted?  Moreover, please think long-term: we know that political scientists and political historians write extensively about the governments of virtually every political leader in developed Western countries, so we have no good reason to assume that they won't write extensively about the Harper administration.  I've shown that independent reliable contemporary sources exist for the Harper government, and we have no reason to doubt that more will be produced in the future: as a result, why do you continue to advocate deletion?  Nyttend (talk) 03:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Because the article is (allegedly) utter junk right now, so much so that there is nothing salvageable from it. Are you willing to go clean it up? NW ( Talk ) 04:06, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, we do not delete sourced, non-neutral articles - we fix them according to WP:NPOV. WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST also doesn't justify a delete - this would preclude articles on these subjects from being created for any government. Finally, it's not up to us to speculate if an article can exist "legally" - contact the Wikimedia Foundation if you have concerns. -- Neil N    talk to me  04:16, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Redirect (blank the content but leave it accessible in the page history) to Stephen Harper. Gaming Wikipedia policies to get weeks or months of free advertising during an election campaign is not on.  Anyone who wants can neutrally merge stuff from the history into the Stephen Harper article but they don't get to keep a spammy version in mainspace while waiting for someone else to clean it up.  (I don't oppose deletion but don't understand the article content well enough to tell if anything is salvageable.  Some parts superficially look like they might be usable, other parts obviously not.  If enough knowledgeable folks say it's all crap, then delete.). 75.57.242.120 (talk) 05:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It has been pointed out above that the pages have been in existence since 2006, this is not a new development. Outback the koala (talk) 05:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The new development is the pervasiveness, which is unfortunately showing up during an election campaign. Try a Google search on "canada election economic policy harper government" - brings up 3 wikllinks right at the top for me. This is a problem. These are POV articles through and through. They are too large to diligently correct. Franamax (talk) 07:41, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. These are absolutely notable topics. The problems here are not so insurmountable as to prevent cleanup and compliance with the requirements of WP:NPOV. If the articles were new, and no NPOV version existed, I'd say delete and start fresh - but here we have more than four years of history to work with. If the entire recent history is unsuitable, fine - revert back to a good clean version and work forward. But deletion is overkill. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 12:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Obviously, the politics in the US and Canada differ wildly, but some insight might be had by talking to the folks who watch Presidency of Barack Obama, for example - surely they've dealt with biases in both directions over the past two years. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 12:35, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete or redirect (facts that are actually notable can be rescued from the history of the article) Puff pieces with lots of unnecessary detail (a political application of WP:TRIVIA?). Gossip, putting together primary sources to make blow-by-blow accounts. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:39, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Long-existing articles concerning significant topics that are, in the general case, acknowledged to be notable and noteworthy. The relevant issuers raised by the nominator and others should be addressed, here as in other cases, through ordinary editing processes. As for the supposed legal issue, the government of Canada has no more right to impose its election laws on an website hosted outside its jurisdiction than Muammar Qaddafi has to enfore his sedition law (or the equivalent) on the Toronto Sun or the Chicago Tribune. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 14:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. Per Nyttend. Afd is not cleanup, and these are all appropriate and neutral topic titles. Wikipedia is easily able to cover them all neutrally and using reliable sources. If heavily involved and partisan Canadian editors don't know how to do this, then they need to take a step back and let others who can, do. There is no deadline, and if none of you care to get involved in the articles to fix any perceived issues you have, that's really not an issue for Wikipedia, but you certainly don't get to use Afd as an alternative. This level of coverage is certainly not RECENTISM, an encyclopoedia should have this level of topic division for all prior governments. Maybe the Canadians who find this era too upseting to be able to just get on with it, can create/expand the articles on past eras if they want. A lot of it needs converting/reducing from news type coverage to an encyclopoedic overview, but that's hardly a major issue. But I'm not convinced the nominator really even understands NPOV with some of his borderline ranting in here about SPAM and what not (we should bar use of CBC as a source? seriously?), and a quick scan of the articles revealed no urgent issues, not ones that would justify the complete wanton destruction of rather large articles as is proposed here. I find all the arguments about it being free advertising or being in violation of election law to be completely bogus frankly, and if there's any issues of political bias at work here to unduly influence the world or Canada using Wikipedia, it's evident in the comments/views of quite a few of the deleters far more than in the articles themselves. MickMacNee (talk) 15:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Now that's a bit of a low blow, Mick. I'd feel the same way about these articles no matter which political party they represented.  Let's keep this about the content please.  The Interior  (Talk) 15:34, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep per Nyttend and MickMacNee. As noted above, it is standard coverage to have articles on the policies and tenures of national leaders and their administrations/ministries/governments. The SPAM and Canadian election law complaints are completely ludicrous, and the tone of many of the delete !voters is wholly inappropriate and smacks of a dislike for Harper rather than any valid editorial judgment. An election is coming up, so therefore we should have less coverage of what the officials running for office did or wanted/tried to do when they were in power? That's utter rubbish. If these articles are POV or "soapboxes," obviously that is to be cured through normal editing, though it seems like at least some of that criticism comes from the simple fact of reporting what the stated policy of the Harper government is/was rather than these articles presenting a one-sided evaluation in favor of those policies' effectiveness. When I look at Environmental policy of the Harper government, for example, I see that Harper and the Conservatives were critical of, and eventually abandoned, the Kyoto Accord; there are statements attributed to Harper re: the Accord which are not treated as correct or better policies than the Opposition's, but simply presented as what he said and what the government subsequently did, in a manner that seems fairly neutral to me, not a "puff piece." One of the worst arguments above (and one of the worst that I have ever seen in an AFD) is that these are "directories of tory/Harper policy". I don't know what a "policy directory" is supposed to be exactly (apparently a really tortured attempt to appeal to WP:NOTDIR), but why the hell wouldn't we want an article describing what a government or political party's policies are? Particularly where it's from a major developed country whose government and laws are the subject of significant coverage and commentary. Re: the "Harper government branding" complaint, that is at best an argument for retitling the articles, if it is in fact incorrect for a Canadian government to be labeled by its presiding prime minister in the same way that we would say the Obama administration, but I haven't seen any alternate proposals for what these should be called. But I don't see any challenge to what seems to me the obvious fact that policies will change from one government/administration/ministry/whatever to another, which is why it makes sense to have separate articles like this. postdlf (talk) 16:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep it's precisely these kinds of articles that make us an encyclopedia. On topic, informative, relevant, sourced information on policies and records of governments is an inherently notable topic. I hope that sentence doesnt mean I have to hand over my Deletionist club rulebook and secret decoder ring. -- ۩ M ask  16:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Re this comment from someone above - "and these are all appropriate and neutral topic titles" that's incredibly wrong, did you not read Franamax's original post? Are we going to have to trotting out the flurry of media criticisms/reactions to the "Harper government"  rebranding effort, where Harper's media machine sought to rebrand the phrase "Government of Canada", and was met with strong resistance by the Canadian media???  In fact, though it's become current as a news item again lately, that rebranding campaign dates to (wait for it) 2006, when these articles were spawned.  This and so many other claims made in the "keep" column are wildly uninformed and not a bit precocious and/or disigenuous.Skookum1 (talk) 18:08, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Media citations re rebranding - CBC, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, YahooNews, Winnipeg Free Press, MSN.com, Tribe Magazine, Rabble.ca (zine), MetroNews, - all these and many more from a google for "Harper government rebrand", 193,000 results. See also googles for Harper government rename (438,000 results), Harper government renaming (2,010,000 results), Harper government renaming (2,360,000 results)..... 'nuff said.  NB the article Canada's New Government, for which an article was written, is also ANOTHER effort to personalize Her Majesty's Government in Stephen Harper's name.Skookum1 (talk) 18:30, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Adding that there is no equivalency between an American presidency and a Canadian prime ministership; the rebranding effort has in fact been criticized exactly for that reason - Harper aiming at a more presidential style of government.Skookum1 (talk) 18:38, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * But see Premiership of Gordon Brown. Is that article (and/or its title) also inappropriate, or is a Canadian prime ministership different yet from a British one?  postdlf (talk) 18:41, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Britain is not Canada, and as noted the term "Premiership" is not even used in Canada at all. And you tell me - are there articles like Economic policy of the Gordon Brown government, Foreign policy of the Gordon Brown government, etc.  Are there articles like Economic policy of the Obama administration, Environmental policy of the Obama administration.  Rather than answer to my proof that "Harper government", all you've done is try to evade that and move to another topic; There is no need for any article on Harper and his policies other than the Stephen Harper one, as per ANY OTHER Canadian politician.Skookum1 (talk) 18:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * See thread below for OTHERSTUFF comment. postdlf (talk) 19:23, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * What, in your informed judgment, is the proper neutral title for the Government of Canada during the tenure of Harper as prime minister? postdlf (talk) 18:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The usual term in the past has been "the Conservative government" (or "the Progressive Conservative government", until they got rid of that "progressive" element), "the Liberal government", and in provincial cases "the Socred/Social Credit government", "the NDP government" etc...you do see references to things like "the Mulroney government" and "the Trudeau government", but only in passing, and not in any way connected with an effort to supplant the term "the Government of Canada" with "the Harper government" as the main usage in government releases/communications, nor with civil servants ordered to stop using "Government of Canada" in preference for the personalized rebranding.Skookum1 (talk) 19:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's already been pointed out above - the numbered "ministry", and the numbered parliament. But why don't you actually read the news coverage I just cited and educate yourself?  The informed opinion isn't only mine.....clearly these are NOT "neutral titles" as claimed.Skookum1 (talk) 18:30, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * So at best that's an argument that these should be renamed to Economic policy of the 28th Canadian Ministry, Domestic policy of the 28th Canadian Ministry, etc. That's not an AFD concern.  Have you tried to enact that change through normal editing and discussion?  postdlf (talk) 18:37, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no need, as just noted in my reply to your evasion of the rebranding-campaign media citations, for any article on Harper and his policies other than "Stephen Harper", as per any other Canadian politician; comparing any of this to the UK or Australia or the US is irrelevant; this is a media campaign. There have been proposals in the past to rename these to Canadian environmental policy, Canadian foreign policy etc and not focus on one PM whose penchant for media-conflation/bloat is every bit as media-citable as the rebranding campaign (of which it is a part).Skookum1 (talk) 18:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That's non-responsive, and your criticism of Harper's media campaigning is irrelevant to whether these articles should exist and in what form. Energy policy of the Obama administration, Domestic policy of the George W. Bush administration, Foreign policy of the Bill Clinton administration, Foreign policy of François Mitterrand, Domestic policy of Nicolas Sarkozy, Premiership of Margaret Thatcher...  What you're basically saying is, that unlike these other western nations and leaders, Canada does not merit detailed treatment of its government and the policies and tenure of its leaders, and should instead be covered purely by articles that summarize its entire history, or basic one-article biographies of its national leaders.  Obviously enough substantive information is out there to merit such coverage; Canada is hardly lacking in media outlets or media coverage by foreign nations.  That you think this period of Canadian government history should be titled as "28th Canadian Ministry" rather than "Harper government" is not an argument for deleting articles that go into that period's policies in detail, and that no other Canadian Ministry or Prime Minister yet has such detailed treatment is also not an argument for deleting these.  postdlf (talk) 19:21, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * COMMENT Saying "oh go make other Canadian government articles then" is just evasiveness; as if there were time between now and May 2nd on the one hand, and as if the policy criticisms and positions from the other parties didn't deserve/warrant equal coverage on NPOV grounds. Economic policy debates during the Harper era is maybe palatable, but not with the content rigged and organized according to the Tory agenda as these so very pointedly are; such a title could  incorporate the Liberal, NDP, Bloc and Green (and other) positions, and not be so clearly a sell-job focussed on trumping up this Prime Minister as if he were teh most important in Canadian history.  What's in Category:Pierre Trudeau, Category:Brian Mulroney, Category:Jean Chretien, Category:Paul Martin?  What's in Category:Michael Ignatieff (if there even is one), what's in Category:Jack Latyon (if there even is one), Category:Gilles Duceppe (if there even is one)??  And it's very clear to me that the other Canadian parties, more or less, have observed Wikipedia guidelines by NOT using Wiki articles for political advertorial space (with the notable exception of the BC Liberal Party and its proxies), though on most political bios COI is a major issue.  But this is about a current election campaign, not a long-term History of Canadian environmental policy write-up which won't get done in time to balance POV.  Give your collective heads a shake - you're saying "because one party/leader has abused Wikipedia means that others are welcome to, if they want to".  Good Grief.Skookum1 (talk) 19:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment As previously noted the term "premiership" is unknown in Canada, except in phrases like "so-and-so might go for the premiership" when referring to a provincial-level politician. I don't even know if it's current in the UK or Jamaica or NZ or Australia, in fact, and I doubt it.  So I went and looked at the links above and it's revealed that the very term is original research, pure wiki-fiction, at least insofar as its primacy here as an article title, whether re Harper or Gordon Brown or whomever.  A search for "premiership of Stephen Harper" as linked above turned up only one non-soccer, non-wiki-clone item from the Glasgow Sunday Herald, which if you'll please note is NOT a Canadian source and obviously not proof of any valid usage of this term re ANY Canadian politician.  All other searches turned up Wiki-clones or sites citing Wikipedia.  As for simply searching "premiership Canada" it turns out that lordy, lordy, the term "premiership" refers to soccer/footy primarily, the captaincy apparently, and has very little to do with politics/government EXCEPT in Wikipedia.  In fact the ONLY item on that search that wasn't to do with soccer was this article.  Maybe Harper is the captain of the Ottawa Bamboozlers football squad, I don't know, maybe, but the job he has is not "Ministership", it's "Prime Minister" or at best "he has the Prime Ministership" though that would usually be hyphenated if ever used (not by MOSites of course, who have a campaign to eradicate the hyphen).  Wikipedia has a VERY BAD HABIT of inventing and spreading new usages, then vociferously defending them using procedural obstinacy.  Wikipedia is supposed to reflect reality, not create it.  That the article is entirely advertorial in origin, despite efforts by some to add "anti-Harper criticism" of late, as with edits by User:MJeanHellyer, is the main problem with it; but even the concept, never mind the term itself, is unknown in Canadian politics/government, is presented here as some kind of authoritative, definitive usage - that's rank original research. That it's also been used to trump up a POV puff-piece and make it sound fancy-pants instead of fictional is the bigger problem, though.  Those of you who are claiming that the article should survive simply because it's well-cited and allegedly well-written and that it sounds neutral are succumbing to the "it's nicely laid out, looks OK, doesn't use harsh language" suckering that con-men always use.  At this point I have my doubts about the validity, maybe also the content, of articles like Premiership of Gordon Brown, given the origins of this one, and also the stonewalling that's taking place here to protect/preserve it - with none of you who making any efforts to provide balance for this man's electoral rivals, nor for any of his predecessors.  The title is original research, the content is POV (carefully-worded but POV nonetheless), and as Franamax noted the whole set, including the rebranding-agenda articles, are a "walled garden", full of fluff and bloat and undue-weight posturing.  Sure undue weight is no reason to delete an article, nor is POV; but that's not this set of articles violates a host of issues, the origins are POV/SOAP and much of the content is framed in difficult ways to fix, if ever....and despite posturing above that they are neutral in tone, they are anything but....they are "Harper spin" and many of the arguments being used to defend them here are the same as those being used publicly by Tory spin doctors and "media consultants"....I'm not (yet) saying WP:DUCK but either there's a lot of gullibility or just political innocence here, or other reasons for the digging-in-the-trenches defence to keep these have to be considered (given their origin, that's not surprising).Skookum1 (talk) 00:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you really need to tone down your rhetoric. Your comments are showing that you're not doing this in order to improve Wikipedia, but to further a personal, political opinion. I thought the term premiership was self-explanatory, but I guess not. The articles about American presidents title their articles "Presidency of...". However, this clearly doesn't apply to Prime Minister's, since they aren't presidents. Thus, for Prime Ministers (and presumably, this would work for other titles of leaders as well), the term "Premiership of" is used. Premiership applies directly to a Prime Minister status, since it means the chief or first officer of a country. Silver  seren C 00:53, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This is about a personal, political knowledge that these are part of a recognizable and rather notorious aggrandizement both of Harper himself and of the position of PM, which he has been widely observed as reinventing to resemble a presidency (though many compare it to a kingship, id.e. behaving/posturing as if he were the monarch, and is if the government was his own, and not the party's, or more pointedly Parliament's - you probably don't know but he was cited by the Speaker this last couple of weeks for "contempt of Parliament" which fits his known character and political behaviour, demonstrably, as does his denial that the Speaker's ruling actually happened).  The positions and roles of Prime Ministers and Presidents are not the same thing, and the two political contexts are very different.  Also the term "Ministership" isn't just controversial here; see Talk:Premiership of Tony Blair, for example.  If there is a Canadian term it's "Prime Ministership" though the Brits on the Tony Blair talkpage indicate "Prime Ministry" might be acceptable there.  But per WP:CANMOS, Canadian English is used on Canadian articles; imposing terms from other dialects/forms of English is "not on", nor is trying to justify talking about one country's political system looking for parallels with other unrelated systems.  These articles create and enforce a paradigm which is "un-Canadian" - pointing at articles from other countries to justify these ones' existence is apples and oranges.  They should be from the Canadian political context/culture, not jerry-rigged with titles and splits based on systems/persons in other countries; otherwise "you" are creating and imposing a foreign paradigm on us....an arbitrarily invented one no less, POV/NPOV or whatever.  Oh there was one other usage in those googles from Britannica Online, which is not in Canadian English nor is it a Canadian publication, but rather in British English as also the item rfrom the Glasgow Sunday Herald.  And to your sugestion that the policy articles are comparable to those of named US administrations, the same as I hvae just explained applies; American politics talks about administrations, named for the President; Canadian politics talks about governments, not named for their leader but for their party.  If you bother to read the cited reportage/op-eds on the "Harper government" issue you'll come to understand this.  Canada is not the United States, nor is it Great Britain....Skookum1 (talk) 01:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete, and besides, we say prime ministership. GoodDay (talk) 01:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Ditto, but even so the new title "Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper" is still not how the normative use of "the Conservative government under Stephen Harper" etc works...the use of "prime ministership" would mostly/if ever occur in phrases such as "Harper got the Prime Ministership in 2006" (or whenever), it's a reference to the JOB, not to the government.Skookum1 (talk) 06:04, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That is how the other articles in the same vein are titled. You said that Prime Ministership was the correct title for Canada, in line with the naming conventions of articles about US presidents, e.g. Presidency of George W. Bush, and with articles about English Prime Ministers, e.g. Premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Since you have stated that the correct term for Canadian Prime Ministers is Prime Ministership, then we follow the naming conventions of related article and name it Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper. These articles are about the leader's actions while they held the job, they are not meant to be about the government, per se. Then again, they are also about how the government was run while said person was leader. Either way, this is the accepted method of titling such articles. Silver  seren C 06:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with Silver. Really what is the reason for this Afd? These seem to be perfectly acceptable articles within the project, do be as extreme as to say this articles are so well referenced they must be advertizing and that the title doesn't suit you (now fixed to what you want); are not reasons for such an extreme solution as total deletion. Give me a clear reason why these should be deleted. Outback the koala (talk) 06:46, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Because they're campaign spam, and have been since they were created. Minority governments exist in a state of constant campaign (which is why there have been TV and print commercials throughout Harper's reign, which aren't covered by election spending laws, likewise his abuse of public advertising moneys to promote his agenda, but that latter bit is normal, sadly, in our country).  One rationale given above for their retention is "oh, they're about a significant period of five years re these policies", but they were created when that five years began.  All the objections to this AfD are either misinformed or disingenuous, or just expressions of political cupidity.  These are so clearly spam and soap and POV it's beyond funny, and no amount of wiki-equivocation to preserve them.  If they are retained by the chorus of "gee they're all pretty and have nice citations and seem to be NPOV, it will only serve to show how Wikipedia can be manipulated and abused by political operators.  Has it occurred to anyone (as it has to me) that the reason that the other parties have not similarly abused Wikipedia is that they have more principle and they have more respect for Wikipedia's guidelines and purpose???.Skookum1 (talk)
 * Skookum1, you're just repeating the same biased rants over and over. I've seen nothing presented here to suggest that these articles were edited by "political operators" or are otherwise the product of abuse by a political party, and to infer from the lack of articles for other parties' platforms that those parties therefore have "respect for Wikipedia's guidelines and purpose" is just complete nonsense.  That Wikipedia editors have not written equivalent articles for other Canadian parties is likely because they weren't in power and so were not able to effect policy.  That's the whole point of these articles, or the American ones for presidential administrations: to describe the policies espoused and enacted by those actually running the government, which gets far more coverage and interest than what those not in power do or say.  Which is not to say that an Opposition agenda or other party platform generally is not encyclopedic; again, find the third-party sources and those could be written too.  But as much as you are trying to claim privileged knowledge above and beyond the non-Canadian participants in this AFD, you don't seem to get at all the very concept of these articles, or the fact that, taken at best, your criticisms call for retitling and further editing, not deletion.  I seriously question your objectivity here.  It is extremely clear that you despise Harper, his party, and their policies and methods, and that is driving your participation and intemperate comments here.  I think you need to just take a break from this rather than flood this AFD with the same opinions repeated ad nauseum.  You've stated your position, and restating it does not add strength to it.  postdlf (talk) 18:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I despise all parties, actually, and think they should be done away with so that we have truly representative democracy, not just this one; but calling my complaints about the OBVIOUS POV of these articles "biased rants" to defend their biased existence justified by the biased arguments presented in their favour here is just "more of the same". I've learned in Wikipedia that calling someone's post a "rant" is just a way to dismiss the things it has to say without talking to the points presented; the only way these articles should survive is if they are, as proposed befor in WP:CANTALK (not by me) that they become History of environmental policy in Canada etc; there is nothing to justify keeping them in their overly-detailed focus and UNDUE weight on the "Harper government" that cannot be addressed in the main Stephen Harper article; Canadian environmental/foreign/economic policy does need an article, but not one focussed on the agenda/perspective of only one party leader.  "oh, they're not in power so they're not notable" and "oh, nothing's stopping anyone from writing articles on previous governments" is just evading the fact that these are campaign materials, and part of a massive rebranding campaign.  Fine, have your little Tory-ite playpen preserved and wash your hands of it, Pilate-style, if the other parties don't have their shit together to write similar partisan diatribes/manifestoes as these happen to be, very obviously and very blatantly to anyone familiar with Canadian politics (who's not a Tory supporter).  I'm disgusted by the snowballing of this by keeps and strong keeps since the initial round of strong deletes and speedy deletes.....for all the wrong reasons, with a chorus of "gee they seem neutral to me" by people who don't know or care about the contexts involved, and who don't recognize the press-release nature of the sources.....and the "we can't help it if no one else writes articles like this for the other candidates" disigenuousness.....these were written at the time that the "Harper government" rebranding campaign began, at the start of the regime, and have no validity except as Tory advertising tracts, with a smidgin of balance since added by others in the meantime; they are rigged around a Tory framework, and Tory revisionism.  Calling my explanations of this as "rants" is just dismissive derogation, and I'm sick of hearing "rant" as a reason to ignore valid arguments - and the obvious fact that anyone but Tory supporters recognize these as POV manifestoes and pro-Harper advertising.  If non-Tory people find these POV, that means they're POV; Tories and Tory apologists can say all the want that they're talking logically; that's exactly what politicians and spin doctors do all the time.  Sickening, sickening, sickening.....nausea at the way reasonable-sounding people defend unreasonable content and dump on people who point out POV-ishness adn SPAM as "rants" because they're upset (and I obviously am). .... Tory op-ed controls the Canadian mainstream media now (the so-called 'reliable sources', with no zines/blogs allowed in Wiki), and now their little game of wordsmanship controls Wikipedia.  Congratulations, you've won, it seems, with the support of all kinds of people who don't know enough about Canadian politics/policy to actually adjudge whether these are NPOV or not (and they're not).  They're political advertising, pure and simple; that's not a biased rant, it's a statement of fact.  I'm tired of Wikipedia guidelines which are used to defend the indefensible, when ignoring the much more important content guidelines as if they did not exist or did not apply.  All kinds of things were pulled here to stop me, including an abortive ANI, and now this "biased rants" accusation....give your heads a shake, if non=Tories find these POV, THEY OBVIOUSLY ARE, and no amount of wiki-equivocation is going to change that.  They['ll survive because of your collective obstinacy, but in doing so, Wikipedia has just lost a lot of credibility as an unbiased source not manipulated by partisan spinners....and it will likely lose me, and I will move onto blogspace and op-eds and news reporting and not waste my time with Wikipedia's star-chamber crap any longer, and you'll be forced to cite ME....it's allowing itself to become a slave to any media-machine efforts to paint and jig and jerry-rig it; "oh, other partisan efforts to coerrupt it are also welcome" is what you're saying, and accusing me of political bias is totally, totally just a dodge to defend obviously biased articles.  "Criticisms of politicians criticizing their articles are just biased rants" is just so much p.r. spin....it's not like these articles came out of nowhere, and obviously came from a POV/fan of Harper.  how can a minority Prime Minister have more Wikipedia coverage than any other canadian Prime Minister??  Simple - because "his people" put their pencils to work, learned the Wikipedia ropes, cited only friendly content, and bujilt their little walled garden.  Either these articles are generalized away from their focus on Harper, or Wikipedians are just fine and dandy with letting propaganda machines "play the game" to control it.  if this AfD is closed based on your derogations of me and the support of these articles by people either not familiar with Canadian politics or who are pro-Conservative, then Wikipedia is shown to be little more than a tool of Big Brother-style revisionists.  I'm done with this, and very possibly with Wikipedia too....what a crock. "Biased rants" indeed; people using reasonable language to defend the unreasonable is all I'm seeing here; any sign of emotion is called a "rant" and any sign of political principle is called "bias".  Disgusting....Skookum1 (talk) 19:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Final Comment Calling arguments pointing out that these are biased, POV articles with an advertising arguments "biased rants" when bias in favour of them is evident in your own posts is only wiki-hypocrisy; calling something a rant because it contests non sequiturs made by the uneducated/uninformed, and calling someone "biased" for pointing out the obvious bias in an article's intent/content/origin is just more hypocrisy and posturing.  Saying I'm just repeating my own arguments when the same illogical and a-contextual are being made over and over, and I'm taking them on, i.e. having to repeat points obviously made by deliberately ignored....this is a hosejob, and a snow-job; whether deliberate or not (though the articles' creations were obviously deliberate as part of the "Harper government" rebranding campaign).  Calling me biased when you yourself are is only so much more dodginess; caling my posts "rants" because I'm upset about how POV and SPAMish all this is in the middle of an election campaign is just more POV crap.  It means anybody who can game the Wikipedia guidelines and write pretty-looking overly-cited cherrypicked-content promotional material can have their way, and NPOV is the responsibility of those who haven 't taken the time to write articles/balance....what a crock.  "Skookum if you werent' so heated I would support you" I've heard before; which is just a way of saying "you're making too much sense and I can ignore you because you're not talking in the same passive-aggressive tones that I am".....I'm certain there's Tory spin doctors in Wikipedia, amateur/volunteer or otherwise, adn they're here in larger numbers than any other in the Canadian political spectrum....part of a media machine, part of a revisionist empire....yeah I'm "outing" and NPA'ing, but I'm not stikcing around to put up with more of this so I don't care anymore about "tools" like that that are used to keep the truth from being given the weight it deserves.  WP:DUCK.Skookum1 (talk) 19:51, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Convenience break

 * Keep How can this even be up for debate? I know, I know, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but this is analogous to Premiership of Gordon Brown and Presidency of Barack Obama.  Clearly a notable subject, and yeah maybe it needs work, but deletion shouldn't even be on the list of options for this type of article.  It's been around for four and a half years without problems. I don't think this falls under the purview of Canadian law either, unless they burn books before elections.  If it's spammy or POV, fix it, simple as that. —Torchiest talkedits 19:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep If this isn't encyclopedic then I really don't know what is. A Premiership of a major country's leader. obviously notable. Agree with Mick, AFD is not for cleanup, this subject will always be encyclopedic.♦ Dr. Blofeld  19:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Strongest possible keep Are you planning on deleting the huge amount of similar articles? Are you going to end up deleting Premiership of Tony Blair, Premiership of Margaret Thatcher, Premiership of Gordon Brown, or Premiership of David Cameron? How about Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration? Economic policy of the George W. Bush administration? Domestic policy of Evo Morales?


 * First off, all of these articles are linked to from the main Stephen Harper article. It's quite obvious that all of these articles are the usual application of WP:SPLIT, because they are far too long to include in the main article and would give way too much undue weight to their sections.


 * Secondly, the lack of articles on other Canadian governments is no excuse to delete this one. That just means that the other articles haven't been made yet. Maybe you should get to that? These articles are properly sourced and follow the general rules of splitting long sections off of their main article. I see absolutely no reason why they should be deleted. Silver  seren C 19:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Title Change Made Because the title wording has been a major arguement for deletion, I have moved the article to Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper. I hope this helps. Outback the koala (talk) 04:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Still Wrong as a Title I'm repeating a post above in reply to GoodDay, which your "convenience break" has obscured: Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper" is still not how the normative use of "the Conservative government under Stephen Harper" etc works...the use of "prime ministership" would mostly/if ever occur in phrases such as "Harper got the Prime Ministership in 2006" (or whenever), it's a reference to the JOB, not to the government as run by him.Skookum1 (talk) 06:04, 9 April 2011 (UTC)


 * We need a WP:summary style article that links to longer articles like Foreign policy of the Harper government and Environmental policy of the Harper government. The question is: can we do that from the article Stephen Harper or will that have so much biographical information that we need this as a separatie summary article?  Given that Harper is not well know for anything other than being Prime Minister, I think that the summary of his time in office can fit in his biography article for now, but if that proves to be too long, we can go back to splitting it.  —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:10, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Although there may be WP:NPOV issues to address and clean up here, AFD isn't really the venue for that. Comparable articles exist about many Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and Australia, many Presidents of the United States, and on and so forth — so there's no really compelling reason why Canadian Prime Ministers shouldn't be entitled to the same treatment. This doesn't exist because Harper's a Conservative; it exists because he's actually held power as a national leader — and if another party should win the current election, then the equivalent "Ignatieff government" or "Layton government" or "May government" articles will become valid topics too. It's about actually having held power, regardless of ideology — if there are bias issues in the articles as written, then address them by fixing the bias, and if past Prime Ministers of Canada don't have equivalent articles yet, then that just means somebody needs to start them. The real issue here has less to do with Conservative spin doctoring and more to do with the fact that it's almost always easier to source and write in-depth articles about current topics (for which all you have to do is add three sentences and a weblink every time relevant news happens) than it is about historical ones (for which one might have to actually — the horror! — go to a library and crack a reference book or two.) Keep and clean up if needed. Bearcat (talk) 19:57, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not in favour of the existance of articles like Presidency of Barack Obama & Premiership of David Cameron. But since they're gonna remain, the British PMs should be moved to Prime Ministership of X. GoodDay (talk) 21:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * User GoodDay has now unilaterally moved all of the Premiership articles I linked above (perhaps more) to Prime Ministership. I have notified Wikiproject Politics of the United Kingdom of this change, which you can find here. Silver  seren C 22:20, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I certainly did. Premiership/Premier for sovereign states, tend to be associated with Communist countries, in the english language. GoodDay (talk) 23:47, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Because what this AFD needs is even more irrelevant distraction. postdlf (talk) 00:09, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, no, the terms Premier and Prime Minister are, strictly speaking, identical in meaning and perfectly interchangeable with each other — Canadian English, specifically, follows a usage convention of reserving the title Prime Minister for the national leader and deeming the provincial or territorial leaders as Premiers, but in standard English usage the terms mean the same thing, a provincial leader can legitimately be called a Prime Minister and a federal one can be called a Premier. Bearcat (talk) 00:20, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Does that mean that GoodDay's moves should be reverted? Silver  seren C 00:21, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It might be best to wait for a consensus as to what each country considers to be most appropriate in its own case. Bearcat (talk) 00:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That's true Bearcat. But for common-usage, what do we hear & read more often? UK Premier David Cameron or UK Prime Minister David Cameron. GoodDay (talk) 00:24, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Common usage isn't necessarily the point here (and you didn't assert "common usage" in the comment I was replying to anyway; you asserted an absolute "truth" with no allowance for variability whatsoever.) If you're going to override an established naming consensus by moving articles arbitrarily, without soliciting discussion first, then there needs to be a policy-based reason why the existing title is objectively wrong, rather than just debatable. You should have proposed the moves for discussion first. Bearcat (talk) 00:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Let's go to the UK project, that Silver seren linked to. GoodDay (talk) 00:29, 11 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep, Rename, Pray for Improvement. The reasons given for deletion, with my responses:
 * Spam/Puff piece -- There is a mix (perhaps not a complete balance but a mix) of both positive and negative topics, with hundreds of references to reliable sources. Allegation made that this would be undue influence during the current election campaign. Article could use improvement but there does not seem to be clear evidence of a political campaign or followers wildly influencing the content. More of an overall quality issue to me.
 * Unique /no other equivalent article for Canadian PM -- Yes there is an absence but this does not mean precedent. A standalone article on the politics, policies and events of a current national government seems appropriate to me. I'd rather see a brief sub-section on the person's article with a link to the more wide-ranging, in-depth coverage on the entire term in office than to bog down the person's article with everything under the sun.
 * Gross undue weight on an individual -- Argument is that by giving current PM such breadth of (allegedly biased) coverage that wikipedia favours the current PM. I don't buy the spam allegation and suggest the focus on the current PM is more a case of recent-ism (by his sympathizers and opponents and neutral wikipedians).
 * Big G government is unCanadian or at least uncommon -- True. There is controversy from current PM's attempt to rebrand the "Government of Canada" to the "Harper Government" along the lines of the presidential administration in the US. While the official use is controversial, the use of small-g government is commonplace. See casual use of phrase Martin government, in Paul Martin or Trudeau government in Pierre Trudeau. I do not support the title Premiership in federal Canadian context. I would support Politics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an article.

Canuckle (talk) 05:40, 11 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Per nom, per Franamax, viz. "They do not appear anywhere close to the standard of NPOV that we expect, they are basically puff-pieces that explain why everything the government has done is uniformly good. I'm frankly stunned at the scope of this, I don't see any way to correct the imbalance given the sheer volume of material to go through." –  OhioStandard  (talk) 07:38, 11 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment. Having done some research on names, I believe the most appropriate name for this page (and similar pages) would be "Harper government," this is the term used commonly in the media to describe this article and it is the form used on Wikipedia for Australian premierships (i.e. Howard Government, Rudd Government, Gillard Government). - Pictureprovince (talk) 13:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That would be acceptable, though we've got the 28th Canadian Ministry article. GoodDay (talk) 14:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I also think that article title is a good one. This could be applied to all 5 articles. Outback the koala (talk) 04:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * One hen sitting on the stolen eggs clucking at the other hen, saying "isn't this comfortable". I've done some research on names too, and gee I found all of THIS which was the impetus for this AfD in the first place: CBC, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, YahooNews, Winnipeg Free Press, MSN.com, Tribe Magazine, Rabble.ca (zine), MetroNews, - all these and many more from a google for "Harper government rebrand", 193,000 results.  See also googles for Harper government rename (438,000 results), Harper government renaming (2,010,000 results), Harper government renaming (2,360,000 results)..... - it's clear now why you guys don't have a problem with the POV - you ARE the POV, and the voice of it here.  "Gee I think they sound neutral" yeah, uh-huh, and "I think "'Harper government' is the best name" yeah uh-huh.  WP:DUCK applies.  It doesn't matter what goes on in Australia, this is Canada, and POV rebranding is POV rebranding.  Yeah, I'm "repeating myself" as some arrogant, dismissive snot said about me (and that PA can stand, go ahead and file an ANI on me - again).  I'm repeating myself here again so you are confronted with your own iniquity and chorus of me-too POVism/SOAPistry.  These articles were spam from the day they were written, and as others here agree they are clearly POV/spam puff-pieces.  Your denials of the same, and now your effort to rename all such articles to what the PMO's rebranding campaign wants (which the "reliable sources" now expressly avoid because of the PMO's heavy-handedness) are more proof of DUCK, DUCK, DUCK and now cluck, cluck, cluck....I've been avoiding commenting again but I've obviously been watching this to see where it goes and how the it will be "managed" in order to preserve the Harperite rebranding in Wikipedia, even if it's no logner tolerated anywhere else; and not even the mainstream media are suckered by such cupidity anymore...."good now that Skookum1 has gone driven away let's just keep them all, and create others using the same term he didn't like".  Yeah, uh-huh.  Victory by attrition.  But you know what?  Misinformed and deception-based consensus is still misinformed and based in deception . I'm clearly not the only person here who finds these articles not just POV by design but also by content, and finds it all too obvious that they were CREATED AS PART OF THE the PMO's self-rebranding campaign.  Comparing this to Australia, the UK, or the US is just "not on".  Though there are many comparisons I could think of to China and the former USSR and the like....Skookum1 (talk) 05:28, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * While the controversial rebranding of the government does make it awkward to use "Harper government" as the term has become quite loaded as a result, the fact is that long before the current government chose that branding, the media had for decades used that form (i.e. "Trudeau government", "Clark government", etc) to differentiate different ministries from each other. If you click through to those Google searches you provided, you would find that that is so.  I would be just as happy to merge it into the "28th ministry" but that seems to run contrary to WP:NAME as no one other than parliamentary/governmental nerds would know that Harper heads the 28th ministry, or even that the proper name for a government administration in Canada is ministry.  And for what it's worth, I am not sure what your POV is, but I am a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party and have never voted for the Conservatives, so my bias is certainly not pro-Harper. - Pictureprovince (talk) 14:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete Seems like a PR puff piece. Theo10011 (talk) 01:55, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All 5 articles? Outback the koala (talk) 04:59, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * DUH! Spam is spam, especially when it repeats itself as all these articles do with each other, and as you do in defending them.Skookum1 (talk) 05:30, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "this are exactly the kind of articles that Wikipedia needs more of" - translation: "we need even more articles about Stephen Harper". And it's clear that anyone who points out POV on articles about him will be accused of being POV themselves, and of being "anti-Harper" as I have been (and very definitely am, which is WHY I find these articles highly POV in intent and origin - as do others, which is how POV is recognized; when it is seen as a POV).  Speaking of the term "Harper government", this youtube sums up some of the attitude of the Harper-defenders in this AfD, who maintain that they can't see why they're not neutral, or just say "I don't care"....and who are perfectly content with articles whose main body of citations is recycled press releases and not actual reportage.Skookum1 (talk) 05:44, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This is also apt, concerning the penetration into social media (ofwhich Wikipedia is a part, or at least UGC and these talkpages are defintely social media) of Tory operatives. Not just DUCK here, but WP:If the shoe fits.  And here is a youtube concerning the "harper government" rebranding from moxnews.com, and here is another one, which very amusingly points out the parliamentary language would require "Member from Calgary West government" since you can't name another member in the House.Skookum1 (talk) 06:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, with the assumption that other Prime Ministership of person articles will be created. I'll let others figure out what should & shouldn't be in this article & the other related articles. GoodDay (talk) 18:48, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, Sources provided do provide significant coverage of this topic, therefore it passes WP:N. Auseplot (talk) 22:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't pass WP:SPAM no matter how often the Tory supporters and the innocent-uinvolved here claim that it's NPOV and has no SPAM-intent, which to those of us knowledgeable about what's talked about on the page recognize the basis of it, and the focus of it, despite occasional tweaks is utterly, utterly, utterly promotional material on the so-called Harper government, which is the other big issue here (participation in a rebranding campaign); this isn't just about the Premiership article. It's about overt campaign and p.r. materials, recycled through so-called "reliable sources" largely unaltered from their original press release form, e.g. The Harper government has identified five policy priorities, in the areas of federal accountability, tax reform, crime, child care and health care.

The Conservatives replaced the existing federal child care program with a $1200 per year stipend for each child under age six, paid directly to parents whether or not they incur child care expenses. Harper has stated that his government will work with provincial and local governments, not-for-profit organizations, and employers to create additional spaces, and has set aside $250 million per year to fund these initiatives. which is unadulterated press-release-type language and if press releases were copyrighted would be copyvio. You're all behaving as if neutral-sounding and exhaustive citations were enough to warrant survival; but he focus, style and origin as well as the structure of these were and are all spam in origin and in intent. They are undue in scope, promotional in tone and purpose, and are not encyclopedic; they are only pseudo-encyclopedic and definitely, definitely, p.r. garbage that has intruded on Wikipedia as a planned p.r. campaign and are now being defended for the most specious and evasive regions. Tick-tock, it's now over a week that this AfD began, and these keep on turning up in the first page of any google using their title phrases, and in countless wiki-clones. Cheap, free advertising, very much campaign brochures in purpose and effect, and as of tonight there's 17 days 'til the election....and all I hear here is gamesmanship about names and "lots of citations, therefore they pass WP:N". What an utter crock of twaddle.Skookum1 (talk) 07:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You're free to make any changes you want, to this article & the others. However, these Anti-Harper & Anti-Conservative rants of yours, are becoming boring. GoodDay (talk) 07:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Spoken like a true, typically belittling, Harperite. What's boring is the posturing to neutrality that you are all making while defending clearly POV/SPAM-oriented material.  If the so-called "Harper government" articles are kept, I'm just gona BEBOLD and change them to "X policy debates during the Harper era in Canada", because they shouldnt' be focussed on one leader's/parties platform, but include all aspect of "x policy debate:" including NGOs, op-ed etc. and give equal weight to what the Opposition parties are saying, instead of pretending the world revoles around Harper (as he'd like it to, as all of us who arne't pro-Harper realize all too well and any glance at a "reliable source" lately aptly demonstates.  And don't chide me for a dimssive or POV tone when you clearly have that problem in spades yourself - and a history of pro-Tory editing on other articles. Don't trot out NPA, because WP:DUCK applies.Skookum1 (talk) 09:04, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * And what you did here, and on CANTALK, and on my talkpage, qualifies as WP:HARASS and Wiki-stalking. Demeaning me is not the way to win your little "protect Steve's garden" campaign....it's clear you're making your "boring" attacks because I'm making all too much sense, and despite your claim elsewhere that this is over and done with there are others who see the obvious SPAM/campaign purpose of these articles; all you guys want to do is talk about fiddling with the titles, while shameless ignoring the content issues, and persona-attacking, very childishly, the AFD's proponent as you are doing here....Skookum1 (talk) 09:15, 15 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment/Notification. User Postdlf asked at AN/I that this be closed and that Skookum1 be given a "stern talking to". I have no opinion on whether this should be closed. But Skookem, although I'm not an admin, I don't mind saying that you need to stop arguing and commenting here after everyone's !vote. Please just stop commenting and responding to others comments; you've made your positions clear and you're just alienating people at this point. I voted !delete, up above, btw.  –  OhioStandard  (talk) 12:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.