Liberals accuse Harper of plagiarizing 2003 speech on Iraq

[daleo]

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae accused Conservative Leader Stephen Harper on Tuesday of plagiarizing a speech from Australian Prime Minister John Howard in a 2003 address in the House of Commons calling for Canadian troops to be deployed to Iraq.

At a campaign appearance in Toronto, Rae played video showing then prime minister Howard speaking to the Australian Parliament on March 18, 2003, alongside video of an address by Harper — at the time the leader of the Canadian Alliance — two days later in Ottawa.

The two speeches, which the Liberals posted to their website, appear to have lengthy duplicate passages, according to a comparison of the two parliaments' Hansard transcripts.

In one segment, both leaders are heard saying:

"It is inherently dangerous to allow a country, such as Iraq, to retain weapons of mass destruction, particularly in light of its past aggressive behaviour. If the world community fails to disarm Iraq we fear that other rogue states will be encouraged to believe that they too can have these most deadly of weapons to systematically defy international resolutions and that the world will do nothing to stop them."
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/09/30/rae-harper.html
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Either both Howard and Harper were parroting the same made in Washington speech, or Harper plagerized Howard. Likely, both are true. Harper will have to find a fall guy, to pin this on (i.e. blame the speech writer). Even that looks bad - for an issue this important, Harper should have written his own words.

[glarius]

1. Dion should ask Harper, during the TV debate, why he went on Fox TV

and apologized for Canada not joining the Iraq attack. He actually said in his address to the Americans that most Canadians were in favour of us joining the "coalition of the willing." This would be the perfect time to be sure many Canadians are aware that Harper would have had us in the Iraq war if he was Prime Minister. Surely it is possible for the Liberals to get a clip or video of Harper's address.
Harper's plagiarizing the Howard speech just emphasizes Harper's deviousness.

[daleo]

3. The Conservative Party line seems to be to blame someone called Staff Turnover

Apparently he wrote this five years ago, and nobody can locate the knave now. Perhaps Staff Turnover also bribed Cadman and came up with the In and Out scheme.

http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/09/30/btc-live-blogging-a-briefing/

Do you know who wrote the speech? “I appreciate the question … Staff turnover in politics is very high. This was five years ago. I’ve really said all I want to say about it.”

Apparently Staff Turnover is also a drug user, as he was very high.

[ClusterFreak]

2. "Accuse" implies doubt...

...there is no doubt. It is a word-for-word lift of sections of Howard's speech.

[HeresyLives]

4. Conservatives have just admitted it

and somebody named Owen Lippert is taking the fall for it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080930.welexnplagiarism0930/BNStory/politics/home

On edit: added url.