The Moment Matty Matheson Met Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Footage courtesy Daily VICE

Throughout this dumpsterfire of an election campaign, we have been trying to get Stephen Harper to answer a question, because we have many for the guy who has been running this country for almost a decade.

Since Harper has basically refused to take questions from national journalists at events, we decided to suck it up and pay to get on his campaign plane.

We sent along someone we knew couldn't be ignored on the campaign trail, VICE's Matty Matheson, the host of Munchies' Keep it Canada.

Dressed in his finest blue suit, Matheson was able to get a question to Harper at a campaign stop in Whitby, Ontario yesterday.

"The number one issue our audience at VICE media wants to know is about missing and murdered Aboriginal women: If re-elected, will you change your position on the UN's request for an inquiry?" he asked.

"Our government position on this has been very clear," Harper said in response. "We have moved forward with a whole series of criminal justice reforms that deal with the problems of violence against people generally, violence against women in particular."

The Conservative leader then said more than 40 studies have been done on missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada and that an inquiry would not be needed.

"Most of these murders, sad as they are, are in fact solved," Harper said. "We are way past the time for further study, this is a time for action, and our government is going to proceed with our action plan."

A 2014 RCMP report said 1,107 Aboriginal women were murdered and another 164 went missing between 1980 and 2012. Of those cases as of June 2015, 106 murder and 98 missing cases are unsolved.

Of his first official exchange with the PM, Matheson later said:

"Asking Stephen Harper a question was nerve-wracking, and I felt like I was in front of 100 people that I would never ever be in a room with, normally. I wanted to ask about missing and murdered Aboriginal women because I don't know anything about politics—but this is a human thing. Why isn't our government worried, actually, about hundreds of women being murdered and disappearing from the prairies?

"His answer was the same answer he's been programmed to say as soon as he's asked," Matheson said.

"Politics are dark."

Check out Daily VICE for more of Matty on the campaign trail, and stay tuned for a longer doc on Matty's adventures with Harper next week.