Canadian PM a Plaigarist

If only he was American he's now qualified to be a Dem VP candidate!
 
Heh. Steve's good buddy Ralph, Drunken Oa Premier of Alberta decided he'd get a university degree by correspondence while being running the province. (Apparently, he had lots of spare time, since he was letting the oil companies do most of the deciding for him.) He read out, as part of one of his speeches, part of an essay he had written for a political history course. It was found to be plagiarized from the net.

How would you like to be that prof? You have a student with the political power to completely strip funding from your university, and the entire province finds out that he's cheated on a paper. Do you flunk him?
 
Damien Evans said:
It seems that your good buddy steve:mad: may actually be your lazy plagiarist steve.
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I've heard of "A day late and a dollar short", but checking a speech from 2003? That's pathetic. Plagiarism should be caught immediately, not 5 years later.
 
Since nothing ever happens in Canada, its only natural that they would have to look to more awesome countries for something to talk about.
 
Somehow this "issue" didn't make it into the English-language leaders' debate tonight. I agree with the poster who said it probably should have been caught earlier than now.

By the way, where is the special section for our exciting Canadian Federal Election--to be held on OCT 14 following our Thanksgiving holiday? Tonight's was a fun debate and none of the leaders (even a "Green" was there) really came off looking foolish. I kept hoping Jack Layton would blurt out something really stupid but he didn't.

At least Gilles Duceppe (BQ) said aloud that three of the leaders at the table honestly had no hope of becoming our next PM. He included himself, naturally.

It was literally a table, too, as they avoided the podium format in favour of a big round table.
 
dudalb said:
Every Politician steals from other politicians. No big deal.
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In Harper's case, he isn't stealing, he is the loyal underling, following in the footsteps of John Howard, and ultimately, George W. Bush.

The best part of this incident is that it will remind the electorate how keen Harper was to have Canada join in the war on Iraq, to appease his lord and master.
 
It's fun to see how long a thread goes before the blame lands at President Bush. There were some near misses, but FreshHat wins this one.
 
As much as I'd like to nail Harper for this one, I really think his speechwriter is the one to blame. I expect Harper trusted his speechwriter to give him a good speech, and he got one.

I've heard that politicians very often will not read or even skim a speech prior to delivering it. If Harper himself had caught the fact his speechwriter had copied a major section from John Howard, I could accuse him of being a micromanager, a quality I don't want in a prime minister.

Yes, in the end Harper is responsible for the actions of people in his employ. But how far does this extend? Should every politician have a speechwriter plus one or two other staff people to vet the speech before he (or she) delivers it?
 
Blue Mountain said:
...I could accuse him of being a micromanager...
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Others have and do accuse him of habitual micromanagement. He did recently change his PR person although it's hard to say whether his style has changed much as a result.

Nevertheless it's hard to imagine he would purposely purloin a speech. Last night, too, Harper explained his stance on Iraq when Opposition Leader was in error.
 
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