Mr. Speaker, the cracks in the Alliance Conservative Party are beginning to expand every day. Canadians are having confirmed what they suspected all along. This is not a real merger. Instead, the extreme social agenda of the Reform Alliance party is being imposed on the members of the Conservative Party.
Reports are coming in from across the country that the leader of the official opposition and his centralized office are forcing out moderates who refuse to adopt his radical social views. One former party executive in Toronto said that “democracy...is not being followed at all” under this Conservative leader.
In a February 4 Globe and Mail article, in New Brunswick the Conservative riding president in Moncton says there is an obsession by the party leadership to “have the ridings operate more or less by remote control by Ottawa...”.
The backlash to this centralized control was apparent when the Leader of the Opposition recently went to a GTA Conservative meeting and was heckled by his own members. Only this leader would be this out of touch with what--