Joan Beatty is running for the federal Liberals in the by-election in Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River.

Here is Joan Beatty's biography from the Saskatchewan legislative assembly webpage, which is copyrighted 2007, and which is still up and names her as the NDP MLA for Cumberland:

Joan Beatty is the MLA for the Cumberland Constituency in the north east of the province. In November 2003, Joan became the first Aboriginal woman and the first First Nations person to be elected to the Saskatchewan Legislature. Less than a month later, she was appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Culture Youth and Recreation and as the Provincial Secretary. In February 2006, she became Minister of Northern Affairs and the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women.

Joan is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and comes from Deschambault Lake. Her parents, Oscar and Jean, raised their 13 children immersed in the traditional values of living off the land, hunting, trapping and fishing - roots Joan is immensely proud of. She speaks Cree fluently.

Before being elected to the Assembly, Joan had a varied career in human resources, business development, and as a journalist, including a number of years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Joan is passionate about community development and has always been very active in her community. She is founder of the SaskTel Aboriginal Youth Awards of Excellence, and completed a marathon in Switzerland to raise funds for the Canadian Arthritis Society. She has served on a number of boards including Saskatoon District Health, Regina Board of Police Commissioners, SaskCulture Board, and Inter-provincial Association on Native Employment, just to name a few.

She has received a number of awards in journalism for real life stories about Aboriginal people. She also received the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for Community Development in Saskatoon and the First Nations Award in Journalism.

Joan has recently been appointed Minster of Northern Affairs.

Joan considers it a privilege and an honour to serve as the MLA for the most beautiful part of the province. “I know everything I’ve achieved in my life is because of my faith and the tremendous support of my family, my friends, and my mentors. Tinike.”

Here is Joan Beatty's biography from her election website.  I've highlighted the overlapping portions:

Joan is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and comes from Deschambault Lake. Her parents, Oscar and Jean, raised their 13 children immersed in the traditional values of living off the land, hunting, trapping and fishing - roots Joan is immensely proud of. She speaks Cree fluently.

In 2003, Ms. Beatty became the first Aboriginal woman and First Nations person to be elected to the Saskatchewan Legislature. Shortly thereafter, she became the first Aboriginal woman and First Nations person to be appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Culture Youth and Recreation and Provincial Secretary.

In 2006, she became Minister of Northern Affairs and the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. Until recently she served as the critic responsible for Women’s Issues and Northern Affairs.

Before being elected to the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly, Joan had a varied career in human resources, business development, and as a journalist, including a number of years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Joan is passionate about community development and has always been very active in her community. She is founder of the SaskTel Aboriginal Youth Awards of Excellence, and completed a marathon in Switzerland to raise funds for the Canadian Arthritis Society. She has served on a number of boards including Saskatoon District Health, Regina Board of Police Commissioners, SaskCulture Board, and Inter-provincial Association on Native Employment, just to name a few.

She has received a number of awards in journalism for real life stories about Aboriginal people. She also received the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for Community Development in Saskatoon and the First Nations Award in Journalism.

Joan is looking forward to representing the views of Saskatchewan’s North in the House of Commons after the March 17th byelection.

I'd say it was pretty obvious that Joan Beatty is not respecting the copyright notice that appears at the bottom of the Legislative Assembly webpage.  The only substantive changes seem to be corrections to dates, and to the tenses of some of the statements (given that since she abandoned her provincial NDP seat to run for the federal Liberals, some of the statements needed to be reworked, injecting phrases like "until recently" and so on).

But then it is her biography.  Does that count for anything?  Does she need to receive permission from the Legislative Assembly to tell her life story, even if she uses exactly the same text as the Legislative Assembly does?

Really, this isn't about Joan Beatty as such.  It's not like the legislative assembly is losing revenue because the biographical text was lifted almost entirely for Beatty's website.  But they did take the trouble to establish their copyright.  I just think it's an interesting question.

Still, as a former reporter and broadcaster, Joan Beatty probably understands copyright laws better than me.

By the way: These are the keywords for her election website as listed in the home page HTML code: joan, beatty, beaty, desenthe, missinippi, churchill river, northern saskatchewan, sask byelection, by-election, liberal by-election, ralph goodale sask, saskatchewan, dorion,orchard, laronge liberal, ndp

So Joan Beatty would like her Liberal election site to associated with "ralph goodale" and even "ndp", but "stephane dion" doesn't make the cut.

Ouch!

Addendum: An insightful explanation from SP:

Anyone who writes and publishes a work has automatic grant of copyright.  That person can go through the motion of "Registering" his/her copyright, but registration does not alter the fundamental copyright ownership by the author.

Some publications require that an author "assign" his copyright when his material is published in their publication as noted by Mecheng above.  As a tangential comment, this is a mild form of extortion as often the author may have no other choice but to assign his copyright if he/she wishes to be published in a particular field.  But the fact that Mecheng assigned his/her copyright confirmed he/she was the original owner.

Thankfully, the internet is breaking down this barrier.  My present letter is being published on your website Steve without your requiring I surrender my copyright to the letter as the price for me to be able to publish.  This is not in conflict however with your copyright relative to your article entitled  "Did Joan Beatty break a copyright by lifting her own bio?" or your copyright over global content of your website in which your article appears.  Anyone who copies your articles or website material is violating your copyright.  Anyone who copies this present letter is violating my copyright.

The question is, do either of us care.  Well in my case probably not, provided it is not taken out of context and someone uses it to impugn my reputation or haul me up before the CHRC or something.  In you case it might be more serious for if someone started to copy and claim as his/her own, the web site content of "Angry in the Great White North", you might view this as a serious issue.  In such cases, remedies are available under Canada's Copyright Law, but it can be expensive and time consuming to pursue. 

Which brings me to your question, "what if Ms. Beatty did not write the biography?".  In this case the copyright belongs to the unknown author(s).  If Ms. Beatty contributed to the bio in a material way, the copyright could be deemed to be shared between Ms. Beatty and the other author(s).  

One needs to remember that in practical terms, copyright does not mean material cannot be reproduced, it just means that one should seek the author's permission to do so.  The author may require payment of a fee to allow someone to reproduce an article.  A person who reproduces articles without permission of the copyright holder runs the risk the holder will sue the reproducer for damages and lost fee revenue.  In practice this rarely happens because the value that can be recovered is usually far outweighed by the costs of pursuing one's copyright's. 

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