Inside The PQ Crazy House

Parti Quebecois leadership candidate and psychiatrist Hugues Cormier has quit the race after being suspended from his job for signing up patients at the mental hospital he works at:

The party had approached Mr. Cormier following a verification of the names supporting his candidacy. Mr. Cormier withdrew following the meeting, said PQ spokesman Joel Simard-Menard.

According to Radio-Canada, the psychiatrist signed up patients to help fulfill the party's requirement to have 1,000 signatures to become an official candidate.

The Louis-H.-Lafontaine Psychiatric Hospital in Montreal suspended Mr. Cormier on Aug. 19 for the duration of the leadership contest. It argued his participation raised serious ethical problems.

Mr. Cormier confirmed to CBC's French-language service that he asked 30 patients to sign his candidacy papers. Some of them had severe intellectual disabilities, he said.

Why punish Dr. Cormier for drawing support from the PQ's most natural constituency?

Source: Globe and Mail