Mr. Speaker, this is coming from a member who built his career on anti-American statements in the 1988 election. That is one of the reasons he was elected. If members recall, we were going to become the 51st state, which was totally illogical.
The Prime Minister's hold on his caucus varies depending on the situation. For example, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac, when the war started, was very hawkish. He totally supported the American position to act unilaterally, contrary to most of the members on his side of the House. Two weeks later he completely flip-flopped his position. In other words, he was questioning the legality of the war and that the Americans should not have gone in.
There is only one reason that he changed his position. His position was changed by the heavy-handedness of the Prime Minister who basically took one of his backbenchers aside and said, “Listen. That is not our position. We do not support this. You're not going to support it”. The member went back home and completely reversed his position. He swallowed himself whole and was forced to do so by the Prime Minister.
The only other thing that we could logically assume from that position was that some of his constituents were telling him that they favoured his original position. However, there is no question of the Prime Minister having things his way and not allowing any dissension within the ranks.
I do not think the member opposite has to give us his interpretation of how the Prime Minister acts and reacts. There is plenty of evidence out there for Canadians to see. What they see they do not like. Perhaps they could learn from some of the comments made by the Deputy Prime Minister because he is taking one of the few reasonable positions among all the frontbench members on the government side.