A senior campaign staffer for the governing Conservative Party resigned on Tuesday after admitting he wrote a speech for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that plagiarized another leader’s address urging support for the US-led war in Iraq.
The opposition Liberals released transcripts and video of speeches delivered by then-Australian prime minister John Howard on March 18, 2003, and one by Harper two days later in the Canadian parliament when Harper was the opposition leader.
Liberal foreign affairs spokesman Bob Rae said nearly half of Harper’s speech was a word-for-word recitation of Howard’s comments.
“How does a political leader in Canada’s parliament, on such a crucial issue, end up giving the exact same speech as another country’s leader?” Rae said during a speech in Toronto as the parties campaign for national elections next month.
Rae said it was further evidence “of how Canada’s foreign policy is now in lockstep with the right-wing foreign policy of the Bush administration.”
Canada’s Liberal government at the time turned down Washington’s request to send forces to Iraq, while Australia sent troops.
Conservative campaign worker Owen Lippert resigned later in the day after taking responsibility for the speech. He said he worked in Harper’s office in 2003 and wrote the speech calling for Canadian troops to be sent to Iraq.
“Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech,” Lippert said in a statement.
He said neither Harper nor anyone else in Harper’s office had any idea he copied from Howard’s speech.
A spokeswoman for the former Australian prime minister who was voted out of office last November said yesterday that Howard had no comment on the issue.
A message seeking comment from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was not immediately returned yesterday.
Tom Flanagan, a former campaign director for Harper, called it an eloquent speech in his book Harper’s Team and wrote that they printed out the speech in pamphlet form and mailed out thousands of copies.
Rae said a number of lines from Howard’s speech were also duplicated in a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal under Harper’s byline on March 29, 2003. Rae said duplicated lines also appeared under Harper’s byline in guest editorials in the Toronto Star, National Post and Ottawa Citizen.
Yaroslav Baran, a spokesman for the Conservative party, said Lippert’s apology is comprehensive and that he takes responsibility for the speech and any editorials that derived from it.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS