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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