Stephane Dion admits that the David Suzuki Foundation report was used

Tuesday, September 05, 2006 at 11:02 AM

Caught stealing chunks of a David Suzuki Foundation report to use in his "Clean Air Plan", Stephane Dion has attempted to insert a footnote into his plan linking back to that report.

Too bad it fails on two counts.

First, a footnote does not address the wholesale lifting of text from the report and using it in the plan.

Second, I have the screenshots to prove that the footnote is an attempt to clean up this mess on the sly.

But what's really remarkable is this. The fact that he has put in this inadequate footnote is enough to establish the basis of this case -- the David Suzuki Foundation report was indeed used to write the "Clean Air Plan". Now it's a matter of deciding just how much was used and when.

Updates:

• The main stream media has taken notice
• The Globe and Mail runs the story
• Is the author of both documents David "Tax and Dematerialize Canadians" Boyd?

Here is the footnote section from the Dion plan web page as it appeared last night:

Now here is how it appears today:

This new footnote is attached to this text:

Since the pollutants that contribute to smog were added to Schedule 1 of CEPA a few years ago, the federal government now has the statutory and constitutional authority, confirmed by the Supreme Court, to regulate these substances.³ Therefore, it is now time to implement, to use the tools we have, and to act on the laws we put in place.

Of course, this suggests that this is the only credit that the David Suzuki Foundation has earned in forming the Dion plan -- a legal opinion. It seems clear, though, that there are many more similarities between the two documents. One footnote tossed in after being caught and providing no other explanation is hardly adequate, in my opinion.

But what really matters is that Stephane Dion has now admitted that there is a previously undisclosed relationship between the David Suzuki Foundation report released on August 25 and his "Clean Air Plan" released one week later. That's a huge admission. He'd like for us to think it was just this one paltry sentence. Time will tell if people believe him.

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Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at stevejanke.com.

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