Former prime minister Stephen Harper is injecting himself into the Ontario election campaign, the Star has learned.Harper will speak on May 28 at a private $1,222-a-head Toronto fundraiser, hosted by former premier Mike Harris for his son Mike Harris, Jr., who is running for the Progressive Conservatives in Kitchener-Conestoga.The 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. event will be held at the exclusive Albany Club on King St. E. and the ticket price is the maximum annual provincial political contribution allowed.Harris, Jr., who was personally appointed as the Tory candidate by PC Leader Doug Ford on April 21, will not be in attendance because it is illegal under Ontario law for candidates to participate in fundraisers.Ford anointed him as a candidate, despite the fact the younger Harris lost a nomination battle to Dan Weber in the neighbouring riding of Waterloo just two weeks earlier.The leader’s late father, Doug Ford, Sr., had been an MPP in the older Harris’s first term as premier, from 1995 until 1999.Kitchener-Conestoga was unexpectedly vacated when Ford sacked incumbent MPP Michael Harris, no relation, over allegations he sexted a former intern in 2012.The woman never filed a complaint and her texts to him were, themselves, flirtatious.Even though previous PC leaders were aware of the incident, Ford pulled the trigger on Harris, clearing the seat for his friend’s son.Harper is not the only prime minister to be involved in the June 7 provincial election; Liberal Jean Chretien spoke to more than 1,000 people on April 24 at the nomination meeting of Vaughan-Woodbridge Grit candidate Steven Del Duca. That event was not a fundraiser.Several of Harper top political aides are helping to run Ford’s election campaign. He was prime minister from 2006 until he lost the last federal election in 2015 to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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