Canada PM Harper faces plagiarism charges

Conservative leader and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper listens to a question during a news conference in Ottawa September 29, 2008.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian politicians accused Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper of plagiarism in a 2003 speech on Iraq on Tuesday, giving the front-runner an unwelcome bump as he heads into this week's election debates.

The Liberal Party played tapes from a speech Australian Prime Minister John Howard had made on the need to back the United States on Iraq, and one Harper delivered two days later, with large sections being word-for-word identical.

"It matters a lot. Canadians want that their country speak with their own voice on the world stage. It's true for the prime minister. It's true for the leader of the opposition," Liberal leader Stephane Dion told reporters.

Harper made the comments when he was leader of the opposition Canadian Alliance, a forerunner of the current Conservative Party he now heads.

He has been prime minister since February 2006 and is seeking re-election on Oct. 14 in a campaign in which the Conservatives have a polling lead of seven to 11 percentage points over the Liberals.

For the Conservatives, the news is unwanted diversion in the preparation time before the 37-day campaign's two national leaders' debates on Wednesday and Thursday.

Harper himself did not respond to the plagiarism accusations, but a Conservative spokesman dismissed the opposition's charges.

"This is a five-year-old speech, three Parliaments ago, two elections ago, made by a leader of a party that no longer exists. It's very much old news and the fact that the Liberals are focusing on this is a sign of the desperation of their campaign," the spokesman said.

On Tuesday Harper asked the broadcast consortium running the debates, which will be two hours each in French and English, to extend the amount of time devoted to the economy to up to an hour in each session from the planned 12 minutes.

"The United States financial crisis has deepened since the debate format was finalized. The economy is, understandably, top of mind for most Canadians," Harper said in a statement.

For Liberal leader Dion, who has been unable to electrify the electorate with his proposal for a carbon tax accompanied by income tax cuts and subsidies, the debates represent a crucial time to turn around a struggling campaign.

"It's difficult to see how he can do that, but this is his last chance in a sense to do it," said York University political scientist Robert Drummond. He said the plagiarism flap may help the Liberals but would not resonate much with voters as much as it might with academics.

One problem will be that the debates will have five party leaders, leading to the possibility of unproductive cacophony.

"It's hard to mount a sustained challenge to your opponent -- each one of them may have a different opponent in mind as a primary target -- in a five-way debate," said University of Manitoba professor Paul Thomas.

Dion has the advantage of low expectations, but he has to hope Canadians actually watch. Thursday's English-language debate coincides exactly with the U.S. vice-presidential clash between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.

"I'll be channel-flicking," former Liberal Ontario Premier David Peterson admitted recently in a radio interview.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren)