O’Leary skipping Tory debate shows ‘lack of respect for our members’

OTTAWA • Celebrity businessman Kevin O’Leary has ripped another page out of U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign playbook, backing out of a planned Conservative party leadership debate over frustrations with the format.

His move to boycott Tuesday’s debate in Edmonton prompted cries of foul from his competitors, some of whom accused him of making up the notion that all but one of the 14 leadership contenders agreed that the format needed to be changed.

O’Leary contended that having all 14 candidates appear on stage together to answer the same questions — as is planned for the Edmonton event — is unproductive.

“It allows no time for ideas to be explained, or any real debate to transpire,” he said in a statement Monday.

He claimed his team had worked to build consensus for a switch to the format used at a conservative conference in Ottawa last Friday and that all candidates but one agreed. In Friday’s debate, organized by the armslength Manning Centre, the candidates were divided into small groups, each of which tackled a specific policy issue. In refusing to adopt the same format, the party let down its membership, O’Leary said.

“I believe it should be responsive and focused on what will provide members with the best opportunity to hear from candidates in a meaningful way,” he said.

Erin O’Toole said it is O’Leary who is letting down grassroots Conservatives.

“It shows a continued lack of respect for our members,” he said.

O’Leary has been complaining about the debate format since before he joined the race, and delayed joining at all until after the only French-language debate.

O’Leary faces a $10,000 fine for failing to appear at a mandatory party event. His campaign says the money will come out of the $25,000 he personally donated to the race — the maximum each candidate can contribute to themselves.