"I 'm not paranoid about conspiracy," said Pierre Curzi, just as he was about to launch into his paranoid conspiracy theory of how federalists have deliberately rid the Montreal Canadiens of French-speaking players. No, and I' m not writing this column.
It's no surprise that a politician who can deny saying something just as he is about to say it would also deny saying things he's already said.
That's what Curzi did in a letter to The Gazette ("Pierre Curzi defends himself," Sept. 18) in reply to my column about his outburst about the Canadiens.
I had written that the Parti Québécois language critic had previously "expressed alarm that there are too many people on Montreal Island whose mother tongues are not French" and "raised the possibility of restricting access to health services in English."
Curzi replied that he had "never" said either thing.
So judge for yourself.
Curzi must have missed my column of last June 22, in which I gave sources for both those statements, and web links to them.
The main one is the "study" Curzi published in April entitled Le grand Montreal s'anglicise - Greater Montreal is becoming anglicized.
How is it becoming anglicized, according to Curzi's report? The proportion of francophones, which the report defines by mother tongue, is declining, in particular on Montreal Island. And that's just another way of saying there are too many people left whose mother tongues are not French.
And contrary to what Curzi wrote in his letter, the exodus of francophones from the island is not the only reason. It's only one of nearly 20 factors he mentions.
Among other things, his report says that, in order to show immigrants that French is "the principal asset for self-enrichment, self-development and self-advancement in the social hierarchy, it is urgent to act.
"New steps must be taken in the areas of the language of work, the language of education, the language of health and of commercial signage," the report says on page 54.
The language of health? When I read that, I called Curzi to ask him, in French, what he meant. He answered evasively, even contradicting his own report on the urgency of acting.
"I have no idea whether we should do something and of what nature that something would be" he said at one point, after I had asked him twice for an explanation. "Is there a problem? I don't even know. ...
"Honestly, what we know is that in health, things are going well. The practice in Montreal, in fact, I think there's no problem in health."
Five minutes after I first asked him for an explanation, Curzi mentioned university research - which is not the same thing as health, and which his report mentioned only in a different chapter.
Finally, in answer to a direct question, he assured me access to health services in English would "never" be restricted.

But I later came across an account of an interview with Curzi published last November in the left-wing sovereignist periodical L'Aut'journal.
It quoted Curzi saying there must be changes in a linguistic "environment" in which "a good number" of nonfrancophones speak French, but "live in the English-language culture."
It said Curzi's portrait of the language situation was "particularly dark." Among other things, there was "the situation, which Curzi calls 'delicate,' of health care in the two megahospitals."
He didn't elaborate. But it appears that the "delicate" situation is that the new McGill teaching hospital would provide care to non-anglophones in what nationalists say would be the very English-language environment that Curzi deplores.
And when a nationalist alludes to the "delicate" situation of services in English, he doesn't mean they should be more accessible.
Of course, even a politician has the right to change his mind. But this wouldn't be the first time a politician tried to get away with saying one thing to a French-language publication and another to an English-speaking journalist. And it certainly wouldn't have been the last time that Curzi contradicted himself.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com