From ex-Dragon to horse in the race? O’Leary mulls Tory leadership bid
OTTAWA— Donald Trump is not the only celebrity businessman with his eye on high political office.
Kevin O’Leary, the chairman of O’Leary Financial Group, probably best known to Canadians as a former investor panellist on the CBC show Dragons’ Den, said he is thinking about joining the leadership race for the Conservative party.
And while he considers himself “agnostic” as far as partisan politics go — and doesn’t speak French, although he says he knows Quebec because he was born there — O’Leary said he has the one qualification he thinks should be the price of admission for any aspiring political leader.
“If you are going to run for leadership in any party, whether municipal as a mayor or provincial as a premier or the prime minister of the country, you shouldn’t be allowed to unless you’ve at least made payroll in a business for at least two years that has $5 million in sales,” O’Leary said in an interview Thursday.
“Otherwise, you are completely oblivious to the challenges that the most important sector has in our country: those business leaders that create private sector jobs. And that’s why our policies are broken, because most of our leaders have never had any experience running a business.” The announcement that he was considering a bid — on the heels of his promise earlier this week to invest $1 million in the Canadian oil industry on the condition NDP Alberta Premier Rachel Notley resign — drew immediate comparisons to Trump, the unexpected front-runner for the U.S. Republican presidential nomination.
But the viewing of the world through the lens of business, the reality television show (and, perhaps, the brash personality) is where those comparisons should end, O’Leary said Thursday as he expanded on his desire to save the sinking Canadian dollar.
“I’m not anywhere near the policy direction that Trump is going. I’m a Lebanese-Irish Canadian born in Montreal. I’m very inclusive in the way I look at Canada,” O’Leary said when asked to compare himself to Trump, whose plans for U.S. immigration policy would not be described as inclusive.
O’Leary, who is an investor on the ABC reality television show Shark Tank, where he is known for his tough, show-me-the-money responses to aspiring entrepreneurs, said he is motivated by his experience teaching business and engineering students who plan to leave Canada to begin their careers.
“They don’t want to be paid in ‘dollarettes.’ They don’t want to be taxed at 58 per cent. They perceive their opportunity and career as much higher somewhere else. . . . There’s a big problem, there.” O’Leary said it reminded him of the “brain drain” in the 1990s that first sent him to the U.S. because he had trouble raising capital.
“I don’t like that and that’s not my vision of what Canada can be. It can be a very successful, competitive country, but it’s being misled now at both the provincial and federal level. I congratulate Justin Trudeau in his new mandate as the prime minister, but he spent his first 60 days making commitments all around the globe. He spent about $4.2-billion. He didn’t create one incremental Canadian job. That’s a problem,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary said the economy is “the only theme” of his would-be leadership race, which also includes ideas to let the private sector handle a stimulus program and to make building pipelines a federal mandate.
His thoughts on foreign policy, however, may not be entirely embraced by the Conservative fold.
“The flag you want on the back of your backpack when you travel in the Middle East is a Canadian flag. I don’t see the need for us to be warmongers. We should pick our place as the greatest peacekeepers on earth,” O’Leary said when asked what he would do about the Islamic State if he were prime minister.
The Conservative Party of Canada is expected to hold its leadership convention to find a successor to former prime minister Stephen Harper sometime in 2017.
Rona Ambrose is currently interim party leader.