UPDATE: Mystery solved! Turns out that it was Docksteader himself who wrote the speeches, and borrowed from his own work. According to his website, he was working for Canadian Alliance MP David Anderson at the time.
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Because we now have a third allegation of prime ministerial pre-prime ministerial plagiarism, courtesy of j-rad.ca and Bouquets of Gray.
Hot off the National Newswatch aggregwire:
Only days after j-rad.ca’s revelation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apparent cribbing of Mike Harris’s notes, a new case of plagiarism from Harper’s stint as Leader of the Opposition has come to light, this time involving the writings of a prolific right-wing policy analyst.
The speech in question was delivered by Harper in the House of Commons in support of a motion calling for the dissolution of the Canadian Wheat Board. It contains passages that appear to be heavily copied from two columns authored by former director of the Centre for Prairie Agriculture Craig Docksteader and published in the organization’s online newsletter. (The Centre for Prairie Agriculture is now known as the Prairie Policy Centre; Dockstead is currently Operations Manager for another right-wing think tank, the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.)
That makes three in just under a week – two of which surfaced only after the Liberals revealed that an “overzealous” former staffer had cut and pasted more than 800 words from a speech delivered by former Australian Prime Minister John Howard into his then-boss’ “eloquent” argument in favour of signing on with the Iraq coalition. Whether that same staffer – who has already been forced to resign from the Conservative campaign – will once again take the blame for putting someone else’s words into Stephen Harper’s mouth is, as yet, not known, but at this point, it’s hard not to wonder how many other examples of inadvertant lipsynching are out there, waiting to be discovered.
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