Today's political potpourri:

ANDREW COYNE - "Looking at the speech he delivered, I’m just upset at being reminded how far he’s fallen since then. The Harper of 2003 supported a just war, and Canadian participation in it, forthrightly and without apology or equivocation — even if it was somebody else’s words. I’ve no idea how the Harper of 2008 would respond." (Huh?)

[Editor: Noted journalist Andrew Coyne has stumped me on what he really means by this but regardless of the interpretation its safe to say I won't agree. See the comments on Coyne's post at the link.]

ORMISTON ONLINE - Politics or Plagiarism? (CBC)

LIBERALS - Put up over the past week an improved Harpernomics website.

Brison flattens Flaherty

CBC: TV Town Hall: The X-Challenge: A 90-minute debate between four representatives of the main national parties on issues related to Canada's economy. The twist? The audience, made of 100 people with different political leanings, gets to vote on who won in real time! The four participants: Jim Flaherty of the Conservatives, Scott Brison of the Liberals, Chris Charlton of the NDP and Ralph Torrie of the Green party. (You can view the show online at the link.)

[Editor: Former Progressive Conservative now Liberal MP Scott Brison (I still have Brison and Prentice t-shirts from the last PC Party leadership race) flattend Conservative MP and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. An impressive turnaround, the audience voted Conservative with some margin as the leading party before the show; Brison's performance apparently changed many minds as he handily won with 52% of the vote while the CPC tally dropped precipitously to 29%.]

DEMOCRACY WATCH: Democracy Watch Files Court Challenge of Prime Minister's Federal Election Call -- Violates Both Fixed Election Date Law and Charter Rights. Democracy Watch has applied for an order that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's advice to the Governor General of Canada on September 7, 2008 to dissolve Parliament and call an election violated the fixed election date measures that Bill C-16 added to the Canada Elections Act because a vote of non-confidence in the Conservative government had not yet occurred in the House of Commons, and therefore the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of the election was illegal.

[Editor: I agree with this. Bill C-16 is short and to the point. Read it - the important sections are right at the start of the bill: 56.1(1) and (2). The relevant paragraph is the first. Harper is using an interpretation of section (1) - that the Governor General only dissolves parliament on the request of the Prime Minister - as giving him the loophole to break his own law. Why bother with a law in the first place if you never intent to live by it?]

AFGHANISTAN: A respected French publication, Le Canard enchaîné (The Chained Duck - duck is slang for newspaper), has published the details of a confidential cable from the French Deputy Ambassador in Kabul to the French government. The coded memo cites specific quotations of British Ambassador to Kabul - the very outspoken Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles - which indicate he believes the war in Afghanistan is all but lost.

“The current situation is bad. The security situation is getting worse. So is corruption and the Government has lost all trust. Our public statements should not delude us over the fact that the insurrection, while incapable of winning a military victory, nevertheless has the capacity to make life increasingly difficult, including in the capital.

“The presence — especially the military presence — of the coalition is part of the problem, not the solution. The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them. In doing so, they are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis (which, moreover, will probably be dramatic)." Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, UK Ambassador in Kabul

Futher details at The Times (UK).

CALGARY - Controversial Conservative incumbent Rob Anders' political views are again coming under fire, as a local lawyer and humanitarian says Mr. Anders told her he believes Canadian diplomacy and humanitarian work should focus on changing outsiders' language to English and faith to Christianity. (National Post)

RICHMOND - [Richmond Conservative candidate Alice Wong] is associated with the Canadian Alliance for Social Justice and Family Values Association, a far-right social-policy advocacy group that has fought legal protections against hate crimes and hate speech for gays and lesbians. (The Province)

[Editor: Alice Wong's reputation in "conservative" circles precedes her, and many wish she wasn't on the ballot. After two failed attempts running with the Canadian Alliance she wasn't allowed to run again, but this ultra-social conservative is getting another chance because the Conservative Party is, notionally, a new party.]

ECONOMIC NEWS - September's ISM Manufacturing Index "Screams Recession" - Paul Ashworth from Capital Economics said the report suggests the U.S. economy may be "slipping into a potentially severe recession."

[Editor: Harper is going to suggest he's the only one that can manage the economy in uncertain times, yet consistently over the last 18 months he's been downplaying the problems of the U.S. economy and its impact on Canada, suggesting that Canada was a new "energy superpower" and as a result could stand more easily on its own. But of course we can't. There is no disconnect formed between Canada and the U.S., our largest trading partner by far. No amount of free trade deals David Emerson has signed will change that any time soon - Canada is tied a the hip to the U.S.. Downplaying the risks and doing nothing is no way to manage the country through what are going to be very hard times ahead.]

The speech that won't go away, won't go away

The Conservative vapid response team initially responded to the Harper-mimics-Howard story with a denial of sorts, asserting that whatever Harper said in 2003 certainly isn't relevant today.

News flash: The story remains completely relevant. We shouldn't have to point out the obvious: there is still an immoral war raging in Iraq and Bush's unjustifiable decision to invade, which Harper rather giddily supported, continues to negatively impact our military in Afghanistan.

Dr. Owen Lippert

Sensing perhaps the press and public would not be mollified with anything less than someone's job on the line, the Conservative vacuous response team dished up a speech writer from 2003. Owen Lippert fell on the sword for his party's sake, stating this afternoon:

In 2003, I worked in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. 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. Dr. Owen Lippert, Canadian Alliance speech writer in 2003

Owen owns up, and quits the campaign for the good of the party. Lets not feel pity here, Owen will no doubt land a better job or return to his old post working for Conservative MP and minister of Canadian Heritage, Bev Oda.

Excuse my manners, its Doctor Owen Lippert. It turns out that Dr. Lippert is an expert on the protection of intellectual property (a speech is a form of intellectual property). In fact, he even wrote a book on it - Competitive strategies for the protection of intellectual property. In 1999. Four years before he allegedly stole a speech from another major country.

But I digress. He's been around a long time, Dr. Owen Lippert has. Not only is he an expert on the protection of speeches and other intellectual property but he's also listed as a senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute, but in contemporary papers published by the Fraser Institute, Lippert is listed as a senior fellow. His conservative political connections date from the present day all the way back to the Socreds in B.C. where in the early 90's he worked both for then Minister of Justice Kim Campbell and in the Premier's office. Lippert would have worked alongside that other paragon of virtue, David Emerson, who worked at a senior level both with Campbell and the Premier.

Why this is still important - Having established Lippert's bona fides, lets consider the key question: which of the following two scenarios is more believable:

1. Lippert stole huge chunks then Australian Prime Minister John Howard's key Iraq war speech - without telling anyone, and I mean anyone, in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition (Harper's office at the time). Harper and crew like it so much they made thousands of copies and distributed the speech broadly in pamphlet form. Howard, an arch conservative whose government has had close ties with Harper's inner circle for many years now, never finds out about it despite plenty of cross-pollination between Harper and Howard's teams.

OR

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2. Lippert was provided the speech by either a) Howard's people or b) by a third party who made the components of the speech available to more than one country. Could the U.S. State Department, or even the Whitehouse, been in close contact with conservative parties in countries seen as key allies? This is altogether the most likely scenario.

Did Harper's team use "boilerplate" arguments provided by a foreign power other than Australia such as the U.S.? Or did Harper's team, openly working with Australia, ask for and receive permission to borrow components of Howard's speech?

It is not credible that a lettered and published expert on intellectual property protection would himself then steal in a substantive manner the intellectual property of a world leader who had, only two days prior, spoken the very same words.

What the Liberals are saying - that Harper effectively was outsourcing foreign policy to a foreign power - perhaps even the U.S. itself - is absolutely bang on in my opinion.

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