Mr. Speaker, I have a confession. I have a 25-year habit I cannot kick, thinking like a physician.
I have observed the Reform Party with clinical interest over the last two years. My diagnosis: collective schizophrenia evidenced by irrational behaviour, delusions of grandeur and loss of touch with reality.
Observe a party that emoted over the 14 women gunned down in Montreal yet which opposes gun control; a party that claims to support universal medicare but wants a two tier U.S. style system; a party that said it supports Canadian unity but was absent at the Montreal rally and stands unanimously with the Bloc on every issue of Canadian unity.
It called for a B.C. veto and then sided with the separatists against any region's getting a veto; a party whose leader so desperately wants to be Prime Minister, a position denied him by the people of Canada in the last election, that he committed the ultimate irrationality of asking the crown to remove a democratically elected Prime Minister from office.
Actually this is not schizophrenia, it is coldly calculated political opportunism; a party willing to sacrifice Canada's future to advance its own political position.
As Ebenezer Scrooge would say: "Bah, humbug".