It’s been a long eleven months for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his fellow Conservatives. After a strong start in May 2011 following the election of his first-ever majority government, Harper has faced months of relentless attacks in the House of Commons—and the strain is showing.

Now the public is witnessing another Stephen Harper. Always in control, he now has a hard time getting his message through. Day after day during the daily Question Period in the House of Commons, the prime minister has had to defend unpopular positions about costly fighter jets, a rollback on pension eligibility (from 65 to 67 years old starting in 2023), and the suspected involvement of the Conservative Party in an alleged scheme to mislead voters on election day last May.

Not to mention that Harper is facing a court challenge from the provincial government of Québec over the dismantling of the federal long-gun registry and all the data it contains. Québec is contesting the federal decision because it wants the data collected on the identity of Québec rifle owners to set up its own provincial registry.

But the Tories’ main problem is the growing controversy over the cost of 65 F-35 stealth fighter jets it plans to buy from the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin as part of an international consortium. Other nations have scaled back their military orders as the ballooning costs became apparent. But the Harper government remained tight-lipped about its plans for months.

That all changed on April 3. A new report from Michael Ferguson, Canada’s Auditor General who acts as an independent controller with authority to comb through the expenses of federal departments and agencies, lists the cost of these fighter jets at a minimum of $25 billion rather than the roughly $15 billion that was previously anticipated. After initially saying that defense officials withheld information from ministers, Ferguson said it was likely the Harper government must have known about the true cost of the program. He faulted the government for mismanaging the F-35 program and not telling Canadians about the true cost of the country’s largest-ever military purchase.