Monday, October 06, 2008

Ghost-writer admits to copying

… his own work.

We have already seen that there a section of Harper's speech about the Canada Wheat Board was copied more or less verbatim from the essays of Craig Docksteader of the Prairie Policy Institute.

We know learn that the ghost-writer is none other than Mr. Docksteader himself!

Docksteader, apparently, runs a web-design company on the side and left a message on his own contact page a few hours ago claiming that he had written Harper's speech. Here is what he said:
    A blog has referenced a speech given by Stephen Harper on November 6, 2002 and has suggested that a small portion of that speech was taken from my own writings.

    The speech referenced was one that I worked on for Stephen Harper while working for Member of Parliament David Anderson's office in Ottawa in fall of 2002. I distinctly remember this because it was the only speech for Stephen Harper that I worked on.

    I am not surprised to see that I used some of the same lines because they were good lines that I used repeatedly in these discussions, both in my work at the Prairie Centre and in my work for David Anderson at the House of Commons.
(The ultra-suspicious might note that the address for the web-design firm coincides with that of the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, where Docksteader works.)

And that, as they say, is that.  

There are, of course, other sections of other speeches that are suspicious.  Given, however, that Liberal leader Stephan Dion has now been hoisted a bit on petard of his party's making, I doubt whether anyone will be much interested in them.

Update.  Balbulican discusses Dion's plagiarism, and finds that it isn't.