Plagiarist Harper: a Follower of Leaders
Stephen Harper, performing his prior role as leader of the opposition delivered a speech to parliament in 2003 urging Canada’s involvement in Bush’s poorly plotted and falsely reasoned war against Iraq. The impetus of Harper’s speech went toward asserting Canadian military resources in Iraq and significantly changing Canada’s stance on foreign policy.
However, the speech wasn’t Harper’s. He copied it from another country’s prime minister and passed it off as his own. He didn’t bother to cite the original author. Thus, on a matter of national importance, putting human lives at risk and influencing the course of world history, Harper committed plagiarism.
The speech Stephen Harper delivered was in fact plagiarized from Australian PM, John Howard. To be precise although we know Stephen Harper didn’t write the speech, (like some other politicians) he often doesn’t write his speeches. Not writing one’s own speeches, while perhaps regrettable, is not the same as plagiarism, it’s a matter of using speech writers. Regardless, Harper ought to be directly accountable for the plagiarism. Here’s why.
While Stephen Harper might deliver many ghost-written speeches, he doesn’t typically give credit to the speech writers when the speech goes over well. He doesn’t stand up and say this was written by so-and-so. Rather he takes credit for the speech, as the one delivering it, as representing his perspective, as representing the position of the Conservative party, even Canada’s stance, depending on the circumstance.
We know Stephen Harper is quite conscientious of the message he delivers and likely works closely with his speech writers. His Conservatives have set up one of the most impressive spin and message control machines in Canadian politics. Prior to 1988, he even wrote speeches for Preston Manning, so he knows what’s involved.
If it’s standard practice to accept the glory of a good speech, then Harper must take equal responsibility of accepting the blame for a speech gone bad. But he didn’t.
According a CBC1 article (30 September 2008) on the subject the speech writer was quickly sent to publicly take the blame, thus deflecting responsibility from Stephen Harper.
“”Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech,” Owen Lippert [the speech writer] says in a news release sent out by the Conservative camp on Tuesday afternoon.”
While this event may lead the public to lose some of its trust in Stephen Harper’s honesty or accountability, that issue pales compared to the more pressing matter, which is that one of our political leaders tried his best to commit Canada to grave action without putting truly Canadian perspectives at the center of his argument, nor even verifying what he was presenting.
Harper undeniably delivered a copied rationale–no matter how faulty it was–of another country, and used that as Canada’s own. How can the public trust that Harper’s Conservatives will hold Canadian interests and perspectives at the crux of their vision for Canada? Harper acted on the behalf of other countries making Canada’s best interests subservient to foreign interests. The argument he plagiarized promoted one of the poorer courses of action that could possibly have been taken on the world stage.
It wasn’t the only time Harper delivered a plagiarized speech. He also delivered a speech that plagiarized Ontario Conservative leader, Mike Harris. The CBC2 also reported on this (4 October 2008).
“Ottawa-South candidate David McGuinty said Friday that similarities had been found between a 2002 speech by the former Progressive Conservative leader and a 2003 address by Harper in the House of Commons.
The Liberals cite Harris’s Dec. 4, 2002 speaking notes as posted on the Montreal Economic Institute website. . .”
Perhaps this is a lesser problem since at least it came from a Canadian Conservative. It’s still a problem because it shows Harper has a history of saying things that are not his own. How can we trust a “leader’s” perspectives when he will not even express them in his own voice?
This issue is also an embarrassment on the world stage as international news agencies carried the story. For example, the BBC3 (1 October 2008) reported on it and touched on the leadership contradiction we see in Harper.
“The BBC’s Lee Carter in Toronto says the revelation comes during an election campaign that has focused heavily on leadership, with Mr Harper depicting himself as honest and dependable, contrasting himself to Mr Dion, who has been criticised for poor leadership and communication skills.”
There is a PDF4 identifying the copied text in the speech, as well as a YouTube video playing the Harper/Howard speeches against each other. It’s pretty obvious how Harper plagiarized Howard.
“In 2003, Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister John Howard deliver largely identical speeches urging their nations to join George W. Bush’s Coalition of the Willing to go to war with Iraq.”
