If Stephen Harper had plagiarized in high school, he would have been penalized. If he’d plagiarized in university he would have been penalized. So a speech given in the House of Commons as Opposition leader plagiarized by his writers means he gets a free pass and someone else takes the fall.
So who’s speech was this really? Howard’s? A third party distribution? Did Harper have input? Is he responsible for what he delivers on Parliament Hill?

Would Owen Lippert be a professor if he was found to plagiarize? Would he have written again for any media outlet if he plagiarized?

That someone is Owen Lippert. Lippert was Harper’s trade and immigration policy advisor during that time frame so what was he doing copying from a Howard speech? He now works. the Canadian International Development Agency.

Mr. Lippert is an expert in intellectual property – a field that includes such things as patents, trademarks and copyrights. He took a leave of absence from his job as senior policy analyst for International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda to work in the Conservative “war room” in Ottawa.

After earning a Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Notre Dame, he worked as managing editor for the Asia and World Institute in Taiwan, according to online biographies. He returned to Canada in 1984 to work as a caucus researcher for British Columbia’s Social Credit government and then as a policy analyst for the premier’s office until 1991.

He was Kim Campbell’s press secretary when she was the federal justice minister and was an adviser to her campaign for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. He has also taught at Carleton University and the University of British Columbia, was a senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, and wrote editorials for The Globe and Mail for a short time in 1996.

Earlier Tuesday, Conservative spokesman Yaroslav Baran told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Rae’s “attack” was evidence of Liberal desperation. A senior Conservative strategist dismissed the allegations of plagiarism as not being relevant and characterized them as “gotcha” journalism and why Liberals are now at “an all-time low in the polls.”

Many of the lines of Mr. Howard’s speech were also used in editorials Mr. Harper submitted to newspapers such as the Toronto Star, National Post and Ottawa Citizen.

October 1, 2008. 9:23 pm I took the embedded video out. If political parties want to release them fine, but as a consumer using the embed feature if I can’t turn off the sound so BDBO readers aren’t assaulted, it’s goine. You can find Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister John Howard“>it here.

Transcripts of the Harper/Howard speeches