Kevin O'Leary's campaign is stepping back from his assertion he uses private jets to get around to campaign events, telling CTV News that he has only chartered a plane once since joining the Conservative leadership race in January.
O'Leary's campaign spokesman, Ari Laskin, says the celebrity investor flew in a chartered plane from Orlando to Ottawa last week for the Manning Centre Conference, at which he debated the 13 other leadership contenders.
"He does take them regularly for his business ventures, like when he's doing stuff in the U.S. for O'Shares [O'Leary's investment company]," Laskin said.
"But in terms of this leadership we've only had one chartered flight, that was for the Manning Conference."
Under Elections Canada rules for federal leadership contests, all campaign expenses must be paid by the campaign or are considered a donation. Donations are capped at $1,550 per person and corporate donations are banned under federal law. There's a $25,000 cap on how much a candidate can contribute to his or her own campaign.
In an interview published Tuesday morning in the Globe and Mail, O'Leary said he's been using private planes but only charging the campaign the price of a standard airline ticket. That raised questions about whether he would exceed his own donation limit.
"Yeah, I do use private planes as I do in business, but I can't charge that to the campaign. I can only charge the price of a ticket. Sometimes I have to be in four cities at once. Why wouldn't I use a private plane?" he reportedly told the newspaper.
Federal campaign spending laws are intended in part to level the playing field so candidates with personal wealth don't have an advantage over others.
A spokesman for Elections Canada said expenses incurred to use a private plane "are leadership campaign expenses that must be paid using campaign funds or accepted as a non-monetary contribution subject to the contributor's contribution limit."
"If a private plane was used exclusively for the purpose of the leadership campaign, the entire cost of the use of the plane would be a leadership campaign expense," John Enright said in an email to CTVNews.ca.
A leadership candidate could get away with expensing "only the incremental cost related to the leadership campaign" if there were non-campaign reasons for the trip, and the trip included some campaign activities on top of its original purpose, Enright said.
Earlier Tuesday, O'Leary suggested to CTV News Channel that he had flown in a private jet more than once for the leadership race.
"I make use of private planes all the time in business because I need to be sometimes [in] five cities in one day. That's exactly what's going on in this campaign -- I'm jumping all over the place and occasionally I do use a private plane. But we are going by the rules," O'Leary said.
"I would have funded this whole campaign myself if I'd been allowed to. I'm only allowed to put $25,000 [in combined contributions, loan and loan guarantees] into the campaign, which I did. All the rest I'm raising $1,550 at a time. That means I have to sign up 13,000 people to do that," he added, calling the rules onerous.
"I have an agent auditing me, I’m playing the rules obviously, but I wish I didn’t have to burden Canadians with this. I would have paid for the whole thing myself but I cannot do that."
Laskin said O'Leary's campaign team is advising him on Elections Canada rules, which are known to be complex. O'Leary's campaign chair, Mike Coates, has significant experience in federal politics, having worked on federal election campaigns for former prime minister Stephen Harper.
O'Leary also told the Globe that he won't attend a fundraiser that promises less than $50,000 for the campaign, and defended his support for the proposed Eagle Spirit Alberta-to-British Columbia pipeline, which he said came about following a fundraiser for him hosted by Francesco Aquilini, one of the project's backers.
This story has been updated to correct the limit for leadership candidates to donate to their own campaigns.
