Five interesting quotes from Stephen Harper’s year-end interviews

At all times what I was told was that Mr. Duffy was going to repay his expenses as I thought he should. I think all the facts are very clear on that. Obviously I wasn't told the full story and...to be frank, I've had a range emotions about that. Anger, betrayal, disrespect, you name it. Disappointment. But...in the end when you have these kinds of situations, as a leader, you have to take responsibility and there are two things we've done.

One is to obviously make sure those who undertook these actions have been held accountable and I think they have been and are subject as you know to further investigation.

And the other is to...obviously look at our processes and try to figure out how we can make sure something like that never happens again. Because clearly the leader has to be fully informed, has to give his consent to any kind of major decision like this.

"What I will not do, I can tell you right now, is hold a bunch of constitutional conventions and meetings because nobody wants to go back to that era. But we’ll see what it is we can do [after the Supreme Court reference]. And then contemplate our next steps from there."

"It’s kind of surreal, I tell people, being in this job.

One day I open the paper and see that I’m planning to resign, the next day I open the paper and see that I’m calling a snap election ahead of the legislated date."

"Well, I think there’s two easy answers for that. The first one is that the government has done, I would say, probably more than any other government in history over our three mandates. No government has owned as closely to what it ran on and made a point of actually acting on the basis of which it ran.

The second one is substantive. Which is that, I think time has proven that the things we have done have been good for the country. The country still has significant challenges because we are in a very uncertain and challenging global economy. But the country is doing well."

"Some provinces have made choices that have placed them in a bad financial position, but it’s not because of Ottawa, where we have refused to increase taxes and have placed strict limits on our expenditures.

I can tell you that the financial state of the provinces is their responsibility. The federal government has provided a record amount of transfers, and one can’t explain a bad financial situation in a province by a lack of transfers from the federal government."