From the Globe and Mail:
Liberal leadership candidate Stephane Dion's campaign hastily changed part of the candidate's environmental platform as posted on his Web site today after a blog reported that part of it were almost identical copies - without attribution - of a David Suzuki Foundation paper published the previous week.
Mr. Dion plans to formally unveil his $10-billion energy and climate change plan later today, but he has already been trumpeting his "Clean Air Plan" since Sept. 1 on his Web site.
The plan carries striking similarities to a paper published one week earlier on Aug. 25 by the David Suzuki Foundation, entitled "The Air We Breath."
Yet, prior to this morning, Mr. Dion's paper was not crediting the Suzuki Foundation as a source for the plan. After the issue was raised by the bloggers, a small footnote was put on the Web site to say that the Suzuki report was one of the sources for the Dion platform.
Striking similarities. Nice choice of words. Scott Deveau knows how to string together a sentence. Deveau lays it out -- the report looks like it was copied, and there is proof that the footnote was added afterward:
Only one footnote on the Dion Web site this afternoon is directly attributed to the Suzuki foundation's paper in Mr. Dion's plan. However, several passages appear almost verbatim.
Acting on a tip, political blogger Steve Janke took screenshots of Mr. Dion's web page on Monday night before they were changed Tuesday.
As noted on Mr. Janke's blog, what appear to be several sections of the Suzuki paper ran without attribution on the Dion Web site.
The Suzuki report says: "Across Canada, air pollution causes thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and hundreds of thousands of days absent from work and school annually."
And on another page: "The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) estimated that there were 5,800 premature deaths due to air pollution in Ontario alone in 2005."
The opening paragraph of the Dion report as posted on his Web site reads: "In Canada, air pollution causes thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and hundreds of thousands of days absent from work and school annually. The Ontario Medical Association issued a report in 2005 saying that every year 5,800 Ontarians will die prematurely because of smog related illness."
Now the spinning begins.
First, the David Suzuki Foundation makes no attempt to protect its copyright (it appears on the fourth page of the report):
Pierre Sadik, senior policy adviser for the David Suzuki Foundation, acknowledged there were several similarities between the Dion Web site and the foundation's paper but said that's a "non-issue" for him.
"We're delighted any time a politician picks up our proposed solutions to Canada's environmental problems."
Good to know. Presumably a similar excuse has been used by generations of students facing charges of plagiarism. My friend was happy to let me copy from his essay. He was flattered. I'm sure that in such cases, failed grades were not handed out, and repeat offenders were not expelled.
So the David Suzuki Foundation spokesman says he's happy the report was copied.
But then why are Stephane Dion's people insisting it wasn't copied?
According to Andrew Bevan, a spokesperson for the Mr. Dion's camp, that particular passage was part of a draft that written in early August by Mr. Dion's camp.
"It definitely wasn't taken after Aug. 25 (when the Suzuki Foundation paper was released)," Mr. Bevan said. "It's not an unusual construct of sentences. It's a contextual statement about where we are when it comes to clean air."
Let's recap.
Dion: "air pollution causes thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and hundreds of thousands of days absent from work and school annually"
Suzuki: "air pollution causes thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and hundreds of thousands of days absent from work and school annually"
Twenty-four words in a row. Pure coincidence.
Or maybe what really happened is that the Suzuki Foundation copied from Stephane Dion!
Mr. Bevan said he was uncertain whether Mr. Dion's policy advisers had an advance copy of the Suzuki paper, but said: "I think some of the people who help with our policy stuff have also been putting stuff into other pieces as well, but I don't know which way the information was going." [emphasis added]
OK, so he seriously suggesting that the phrases and ideas were written for Dion's plan, and just ended up in the Suzuki report. So it was just dumb luck that the copy, the Suzuki report, was published first? I wonder what the Suzuki Foundation spokesperson would have to say about that.
But even as this blogger takes aim at Dion, another comes to his rescue. From Jason Cherniak:
Of course many ideas are similar; that just adds support for Dion's policies. Any text that is identical or similar was appropriately referenced in the correct version of the document. Apparently, the one initially released and posted on this blog were without notes. However, the correct version now appears on Dion's website.
Actually, this isn't true. The correct version makes only one reference to the Suzuki Foundation report despite the many striking similarities, and it isn't even for the sentence that reads exactly the same for twenty-fours words in a row. The fact is, a university student handing this in would find himself looking for a job that doesn't require a degree, since he would be expelled for stealing both words and ideas.
No academic tribunal is going to go after Stephane Dion. But it will be interesting to see if Gerard Kennedy, Michael Ignatieff, Scott Brison, and the rest of the gang (and their operatives inside and outside of the blogosphere) let this issue die. We'll see in the next few days, I guess.
