Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary is expected to announce his candidacy for the leadership of the Conservative Party on Wednesday, CTV News has confirmed.
The campaign launch will come one day after the French-language leadership debate that 13 other leadership candidates are expected to participate in Tuesday evening in Quebec City.
O’Leary, known among Canadians for his television appearances, launched a software company that was eventually acquired for more than $4 billion. He also started O’Leary Funds, O’Leary Financial Group and O’Leary Fine Wines.
He has often been critical Justin Trudeau’s economic policies, calling the Canadian economy “deeply broken.” He told CTV News Channel in December that he has an “army” of young supporters who are “still living in the basement” and that Trudeau’s “selfies” and United Nations work are proof that the prime minister “doesn’t care about those millennials anymore.”
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, whom some Conservatives have encouraged to run for the job, told CTV’s Power Play soon after the news broke Tuesday that he wants to hear more about O’Leary’s policy proposals, including on climate change.
“I have heard notionally that, at least for a time, he was in favour of a carbon tax and we’ve got some real concerns around that,” said Wall, who was one of two premiers who refused to sign on to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change strategy last month.
Wall added that it’s important for the party leader to be “very fluent in French” and he’s not sure O’Leary is up to the challenge.
O’Leary CTV Question Period host Evan Solomon last week that he’s taking lessons and will be “proficient” in French by 2019. He also joked at the time that there are “three official languages” in Canada: English, French and “the language of jobs,” which Trudeau will never speak.
Leadership candidate Andrew Saxton, who is bilingual, told Power Play that he thinks the next leader must speak French.
“Some people say that he’s trying to avoid the French language debate because he doesn’t speak French,” Saxton said. “Well … my Canada is made up of both English- and French-speaking Canadians and his Canada should be as well.”
O’Leary has said more than once that he was waiting to get into the race until some of the candidates dropped out, and that it was pointless to participate in debates with more than a dozen candidates on the stage.
“That’s not really a debate at all, it’s a series of 20-second soundbites,” he told CTV News Channel in December.
“I don’t have the name recognition problem, I don’t have a money problem, I have a too-many-candidates-in-the-race problem,” he said at the time.
In addition to targeting his lack of French, O’Leary’s fellow candidates have criticized his statement last week to Question Period host Evan Solomon that he would consider reforming the Senate by selling seats to “accredited” people willing to pay “a hundred thousand or a couple hundred thousand each year.”
The Conservative Party holds 12 of Quebec’s 78 seats and many political pundits believe those seats would be at risk with a non-bilingual leader. Four of the MPs from Quebec have endorsed Saskatchewan’s Andrew Scheer and two have endorsed fellow Quebec MP Maxime Bernier. Both men are bilingual.
