Owen Lippert, a former Senior Fellow at The Fraser Institute in Vancouver, resigned from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's campaign this afternoon, after admitting he plagiarized a speech by former Australian PM John Howard when he wrote a 2003 speech in which Harper argued for sending Canadian troops to Iraq.
"In 2003, I worked in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition," Lippert said in a statement released by the Tories. "I was tasked with – and wrote – a speech for the then Leader of the Opposition. Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech. Neither my superiors in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition nor the Leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so."
Lippert, who is a former Senior Fellow and former Director of the Law and Markets Project at The Fraser Institute, also wrote speeches for former B.C. Premier Bill Vander Zalm and former justice minister Kim Campbell.
An earlier version of Lippert's online bio also claimed that in 1996 he joined the editorial board of The Globe & Mail. If true, it's interesting that the Globe has not yet disclosed this in its otherwise exhaustive reporting on the Lippert-Harper speech.
Fraser Institute communications director Dean Pelkey said Lippert is a "former employee" of the institute.
The Tyee asked whether the institution will review the originality of Lippert's considerable body of writing under The Fraser Institute's banner. More than a dozen of Lippert's papers remained for sale on the institute's new web site as of Tuesday evening.
"We haven't had that discussion today," Pelkey said. "That's something we may have to look at, and probably should plan to review in the future."
Monte Paulsen is editor of The Hook.
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G West
3 years ago
nice
Nice to see a clear illustration of the migration of neo-cons and their enablers from politics to the Fraser Institute.
Does that chop shop still have charitable status?
I wonder if Harper really is as clever as he likes to think he is.
Delivering a totally plagiarized speech is pretty dumb.
The connections between Harper and his tactics and Howard and the mess he made of Australia is informative - and has been commented upon in the Australian Press.
de Falla
3 years ago
Any other examples?
A Guinea to the sharp youth who can find another example of Mr. Lippert's unavoidable haste.
libertinus
3 years ago
harper's plagiarism
The Simon Fraser Institute Fellow says that no one knew about the plagiarism.
There comes a time when even a conservative Canadian, albeit a Joe Clark Conservative has to say - enough is enough.
When a Canadian political leader advocates that our country join in an illegal war with another country that never harmed us and does it by giving a speech written by a staffer, without double checking the sources for every word uttered, that's troubling.
It seems to me that a matter of this magnitude is something that requires considerable forethought and reflection.
That is the sort of speech that ought to have been written by the politician himself and not by a staffer. It might have been appropriate to have the staffer fact-check it, but not the other way around.
Maybe he just didn't have the time...even though by making the speech, he was playing fast and loose with the lioves of Canadian soldiers.
Shame.
mwatkins
3 years ago
Its Dr. Lippert...
Over the last two Dr. Owen Lippert has worked in the policy areas of federal and provincial parties and governments.
But wait, he's also an author - something of an expert in fact on "intellectual property protection" - and indeed he wrote a book on same (you can find Competitive strategies for the protection of intellectual property at an Amazon near you).
Is it believable that Lippert, an expert on the preventing the theft of ideas, would himself steal the ideas of an allied (to Harper) major country leader (Howard) who had uttered the words just two days prior? That is not credible in least.
More likely Lippert/Harper et al (and Howard) were *offered* the words - perhaps something of a build-your-own support kit for Iraq war supporters.
Yeah, he resigned. Lippert isn't the story.
Norman Spector
3 years ago
From today's Globe and
From today's Globe and Mail:
He was Kim Campbell's press secretary when she was the federal justice minister and was an adviser to her campaign for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. He has also taught at Carleton University and the University of British Columbia, was a senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, and wrote editorials for The Globe and Mail for a short time in 1996.
Budd Campbell
3 years ago
Owen Overated?
I think Norman has found the key to the situation, Lippert's past association with Kim Campbell. It's a tipoff to the fact that Owen was always a bit overrated, like Kim herself.
His need to do some copying kind of fits in with that.