Nah, Harper and his Reform party spend two decades worming their way into Canadian politics by at first showing their hand in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then learning to hide it and play it slowly. Any time any of their cult played their hand in the 2000s it was always an "outburst" or "temporary error in judgement".
They then conned the existing sane conservative party into "merging" with their their smaller party, and through cheating the internal politics of the combined party and pandering to the GOP, got the funds to crush the sane conservatives at the federal level.
It has nothing to do with social programs. Has everything to do with a decades long plan to push politics rightward into accepting extremism.