text: You would do well to educate yourself on Ibbitson's informed view of Stephen Harper, warts and all, by reading his Shaughnessy Cohen award winning biography titled "Harper" which was published shortly before the 2015 election.   This award comes with a $25,000 prize and is given for the most consequential Canadian political and public affairs book of the year. 
  
  I have this book and I can tell you that it is an exceptionally even handed accounting of the 22nd PM's impressive strengths and political successes as well as the former PM's impressive weaknesses and political failures.
  
  It is a good read, a cogent analysis and makes it obvious that neither Harper nor any other contemporary Canadian PM is John Ibbitson's hero. 
  
  One of Ibbitson's great strengths as a journalist is that he is scrupulously objective, thorough, fair and candid concerning the people he covers as a columnist.
  
  This makes him an increasing rarity among the ink stained wretches.