Liberals accuse Harper of 'lifting' Iraq war speech
Updated Tue. Sep. 30 2008 12:04 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper plagiarized almost half of a speech he delivered in 2003 as opposition leader, Liberal candidate Bob Rae alleged on Tuesday.
Harper gave the speech in Parliament on March 20 -- the first day U.S. forces began bombing Baghdad, and two days after then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard gave a strikingly similar address.
At a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday morning, Rae played the speech by Harper simultaneously with a speech by then-Australian prime minister John Howard.
Much of Harper's address matches Howard's virtually word for word.
Rae released transcripts and videos of both speeches and suggested they serve as evidence that a vote for the Conservatives is akin to voting for a "Republican-Conservative" government.
"This is a disgraceful performance by the leader of a political party there for all the world to see, and all the world is going to see it. They need to see it because they need to know what we're dealing with here," Rae told CTV Newsnet.
"I would say 35 to 40 per cent of the speech is the same, word for word, statement for statement, paragraph for paragraph, as the speech that was given a day and a half earlier by Mr. Howard."
Rae, the Liberal foreign affairs critic, also said the revelation raises questions about whether Harper's foreign policy views can be trusted.
"On this critical issue, on this issue on the world stage, this is a man who chose to parrot and to mimic and beg, borrow, steal someone else's voice," Rae said.
He added: "In law and journalism, in politics, if we can't speak with an authentic voice, who the hell are we?"
Rae said even Harper's opponents at the time acknowledged at the speech was eloquent. But he questioned how Harper could have dealt with such an important issue, using someone else's words.
"He made that choice so blindly and carelessly that he ended up delivering a word-for-word repetition of someone else's words and thoughts," Rae said.
CTV's Roger Smith called the revelations "the Liberal play of the day, the Hail Mary" designed to hurt the Conservatives' election campaign.
"The Liberals are using this to show that Stephen Harper is totally in lockstep with the coalition of the willing, with George Bush and his Australian allies on the war in Iraq and that his foreign policy is copycat policy of Washington," Smith said.
"Bob Rae went on to say Stephen Harper would have been expelled from high school for plagiarism."
Updated Tue. Sep. 30 2008 12:04 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper plagiarized almost half of a speech he delivered in 2003 as opposition leader, Liberal candidate Bob Rae alleged on Tuesday.
Harper gave the speech in Parliament on March 20 -- the first day U.S. forces began bombing Baghdad, and two days after then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard gave a strikingly similar address.
At a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday morning, Rae played the speech by Harper simultaneously with a speech by then-Australian prime minister John Howard.
Much of Harper's address matches Howard's virtually word for word.
Rae released transcripts and videos of both speeches and suggested they serve as evidence that a vote for the Conservatives is akin to voting for a "Republican-Conservative" government.
"This is a disgraceful performance by the leader of a political party there for all the world to see, and all the world is going to see it. They need to see it because they need to know what we're dealing with here," Rae told CTV Newsnet.
"I would say 35 to 40 per cent of the speech is the same, word for word, statement for statement, paragraph for paragraph, as the speech that was given a day and a half earlier by Mr. Howard."
Rae, the Liberal foreign affairs critic, also said the revelation raises questions about whether Harper's foreign policy views can be trusted.
"On this critical issue, on this issue on the world stage, this is a man who chose to parrot and to mimic and beg, borrow, steal someone else's voice," Rae said.
He added: "In law and journalism, in politics, if we can't speak with an authentic voice, who the hell are we?"
Rae said even Harper's opponents at the time acknowledged at the speech was eloquent. But he questioned how Harper could have dealt with such an important issue, using someone else's words.
"He made that choice so blindly and carelessly that he ended up delivering a word-for-word repetition of someone else's words and thoughts," Rae said.
CTV's Roger Smith called the revelations "the Liberal play of the day, the Hail Mary" designed to hurt the Conservatives' election campaign.
"The Liberals are using this to show that Stephen Harper is totally in lockstep with the coalition of the willing, with George Bush and his Australian allies on the war in Iraq and that his foreign policy is copycat policy of Washington," Smith said.
"Bob Rae went on to say Stephen Harper would have been expelled from high school for plagiarism."
