OTTAWA—Former prime minister Stephen Harper announced Friday his long-expected resignation from the Commons and his Calgary seat in the low-key fashion he adopted after losing his majority government last fall.

He posted a taped video statement to his social media accounts, Twitter and Facebook, reading out a letter also released on Commons letterhead that began with a formal and stilted: “Greetings, fellow Calgarians and fellow Canadians.”

Harper, 57, gave no indication of his career plans, which include launching a global consulting business, saying only that he was grateful to voters, party members and Canadians for letting him serve “as I bid farewell to the Parliament of Canada and prepare for the next chapter in my life.”

It was vintage Harper. There was no riding off into the sunset. No emotional goodbye, nor chance for reporters to question him. Just a brief statement, delivered not live or via a nationally televised news conference, but via social media channels, in a rehearsed and distant manner.

His successor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saluted Harper’s years as Conservative leader and prime minister, his family’s sacrifices during that period and his orderly, respectful and graceful handover of power after losing to the Liberals in October.

“His service as prime minister, and before that, as party leader, to country has never been questioned.”

Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Saguenay, Que. that he’ll remember, in the aftermath of the Parliament Hill attack on Oct. 22, 2014 that Harper and other party leaders hugged on the floor of the Commons, “physically” demonstrating a united front.

He said Harper had strong convictions about the role Canada should play in the world. Trudeau said that while they disagreed, “I certainly know that he as a former leader of a G7 country will have contributions to make and I wish him success.”

Harper has only appeared in the Commons for votes since he lost power last fall, and has never spoken in debate as the MP for Calgary Heritage. He did not quit his seat, having had no exit strategy, no job lined up, and believing he should ease the transition of the party into opposition.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says Harper will be entitled to an MP’s pension of about $127,000 a year topped up by another $58,000 a year in prime minister’s pension that he will earn upon turning 67. Director Aaron Wudrick posted the numbers online Friday. “Say what you will about” Stephen Harper,” tweeted Wudrick, “when it came to his own personal pension entitlement, he really showed leadership.” He said Harper’s changes to the parliamentary pension plan “retroactively reduced his personal take by up to $2 million by age 90. Bravo!”

Harper bade farewell as leader to his party faithful at the Conservative convention in May in a rare public speech that echoed themes of his goodbye statement Friday.

In July, Harper angered many Conservatives at his annual summer barbecue by endorsing Jason Kenney, his former cabinet colleague and Calgary political neighbour, while Kenney’s opponents sat in the audience, as the leader to do what he did for national conservatives: unite the right-wing parties in Alberta.

After four months of speculation, Harper’s statement formally ends a political career that began four decades ago when he first worked as a young political aide to a Progressive Conservative MP from Calgary in the Brian Mulroney government.

He didn’t last long. Disillusioned by Mulroney’s political compromises, Harper left Ottawa to return to his adopted hometown of Calgary, completed a masters degree in economics and became policy director for the Reform Party, the creation of which split the conservative vote in Canada.

He would go on to defeat his first boss MP Jim Hawkes when he ran for election himself under the Reform Party banner in Calgary in 1993.

By then, Harper was a skilled political operator.

In December 1993 he married Laureen Teskey, a graphic artist and fellow Reform supporter, in a civil ceremony. They later had two children Ben and Rachel.

Harper soured on Ottawa under the leadership of Preston Manning, and stepped down before the 1997 federal election to advocate for conservative political causes at the right-wing National Citizens Coalition.

Drawn back to Ottawa in 2002 to replace then-Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, Harper quickly moved to unite the divided right with PC leader Peter MacKay under the banner of the Conservative Party of Canada.

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He lost his first bid for election in 2004, brooded over the loss, but remained as party leader, defeating Liberal Paul Martin in the 2006 election.

Harper won a minority government on a simple low-tax, tough-on-crime platform. Although his base was socially conservative, Harper embraced incremental change in power, moderating the party’s position on abortion and allowing a free vote on same-sex marriage, a measure that passed.

But Canadians remained wary of the uncharismatic man at the centre of the Conservative government. As the global economy tanked in the fall of 2008, the man who said he was allergic to deficits won only another minority victory.

He responded to the global crash with an economic plan that ignored stimulus spending and picked a funding fight with the Opposition parties, which held a majority of votes in the Commons. In one of the most dramatic periods of his tenure, he nearly lost power when they bid to unite against him in a coalition in the Commons. Harper, the fiscal conservative, held on and brought in a budget that pledged billions in spending to kick-start the economy

It worked, and sealed a political legacy that he claimed Friday was one of his proudest accomplishments.

In 2011, Harper finally won a majority, picking up key urban voters in Ontario to boost his party’s still-strong western base, only to lose them last fall in the sweep that brought Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to power.

In his Friday announcement laced with the same talking points he used on election night, Harper said he leaves elected office “proud of what our team accomplished together.”

He listed uniting Conservatives, cutting taxes, passing tougher crime laws and putting “families first,” and pointed to his government’s management of the economy after 2008 through the worst global recession since the Great Depression.

“We took principled decisions in a complex and dangerous world,” he said, on a day when the Liberal government reversed one of those decisions: to stay out of peacekeeping operations in Africa.

The Conservatives are now in the middle of a leadership race to replace Harper, and have scheduled a vote on this for May 2017. The expected heavyweights have not yet shown their cards. Kenney is not running. And the field has so far failed to excite Conservatives, let alone Canadians, in the face of a popular new Liberal government leader.

Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose issued a statement Friday that ensured Harper shared credit with small-c conservatives for the party’s formation and record.

“In 2003, Stephen Harper was at the forefront of the movement to unite conservative Canadians across this country under one banner. It would mark the beginning of more than a decade of his principled leadership.”

It went on to praise Harper’s record and take aim at the Liberal government, saying “Under his leadership, Canada’s foreign policy was clear-eyed and robust, and our nation’s principles were never for sale.”

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