Not that he is relevant in today's politics

Conrad Black on why he’s lost his love for the Conservatives

Stephen Harper’s Conservative party has lost one of its biggest historical supporters: Lord Conrad Black.

Speaking to the Star at the Ideacity conference, Black described his own disillusionment with the party he once famously supported.

“I’m no great enthusiast of Harper’s now,” he told the Star in an interview at Ideacity. “He’s been a competent prime minister, but it’s a government that has run out of steam.”

Black lamented the Conservative Party’s tough-on-crime platform, and said that too many people “languish in jail” while waiting for bail. Black has been outspoken about the need for prison reform both in Canada and the U.S. since his release in 2012 from a three-year stint in an American federal prison for charges related to mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

“The present government’s plan of just building more prisons ... is just nonsense,” he said.

As the former owner of The National Post, Black became known as one of Canada’s strongest Conservative voices. Now, he finds himself weighing the merits of both the Liberals and NDP.

“Justin is underestimated, he deserves a serious look,” he said of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. NDP leader Tom Mulcair is, “quite responsible on his tax policy by NDP standards” but a “demagogue” and foolish to want to leave NATO, Black says.

READ MORE: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/06/18/conrad-black-on-why-hes-lost-his-love-for-the-conservatives.html