Kevin O’Leary

Thursday April 27, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 27, 2017

Kevin O’Leary drops out of Conservative leadership race, will endorse Maxime Bernier

Former Dragons’ Den TV star believes he cannot defeat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in next election

January 19, 2017

Kevin O’Leary is dropping out of the Conservative leadership race and will endorse Maxime Bernier.

The businessman and reality TV star is ending his campaign only hours before the last leadership debate in Toronto, and two days before party members can start casting their ballots.

O’Leary is confident he could win the Conservative race, but now believes he cannot defeat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the next election, multiple sources tell CBC News.

He has cited his failure to gain traction in Quebec and his poor French-language skills as reasons for dropping out of the leadership race.

“I have extremely high likelihood of winning the leadership race, but no way to win the election because of Quebec,” he said in an interview with the Globe and Mail on Wednesday. “You have to win 30 seats. So, who can do that? It’s Bernier.”

January 15, 2016

“He’s a front-runner,” O’Leary said. “I like Max. I can work with him.”

n a statement sent to reporters, O’Leary said he has “worked like hell on this campaign.”

“This was not an easy decision for me to make but after much thought and deliberation, it is the right one for the Conservative Party and the country,” he said. “I want the DNA of my policies and objectives to survive into the general election. The candidate that best mirrors my policies is Maxime Bernier.”

Bernier will hold a press conference at 4:30 p.m. ET in Toronto to discuss the developments. CBCNews.ca will carry it live.

April 14, 2017

O’Leary has spent the better part of his relatively short campaign — he entered the race in January — taking jabs at Trudeau, branding the prime minister “surfer dude” and calling his leadership a “disaster” for the country. He has also said Trudeau negotiating with U.S. President Donald Trump is like “Bambi versus Godzilla.”

O’Leary has not left his Conservative opponents unscathed, and, despite his endorsement of Bernier, the two candidates have sparred over allegations of membership fraud and vote buying. The Quebec MP called O’Leary a “loser” after he went public with concerns about vote rigging. (CBC News) 

 

Wednesday January 25, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 25, 2017

Why Kathleen Wynne might tackle hydro delivery charges to cut electricity bills

Premier Kathleen Wynne is signalling she may soon try to tackle the sky-high delivery charges that many Ontarians see on their hydro bills.

With her government bogged down by complaints about soaring electricity prices, Wynne and her advisers are scrambling to find ways to bring bills down.

Wynne telegraphed that delivery charges are in her sights during a speech last week, mentioning a letter she received from an Ottawa Valley man she named only as Lloyd,

“He wrote to me about delivery charges that make up 50 per cent of his bill,” Wynne told a business audience in downtown Toronto. She said Lloyd recently installed energy-efficient windows, and “feels like he’s being punished for the investments that he made.”

Wynne is phoning some of the people who write to her about electricity, including Lloyd.

“He has every right to be angry; that shouldn’t be happening,” she said. “At the end of the day, what people like Lloyd should be paying for is the electricity that they use.”

On average, the delivery charge makes up nearly 30 per cent of a typical residential hydro bill, but the amount varies widely from place to place. Different local hydro distribution companies charge different rates, unlike the cost of electricity generation, which is standard for all residential hydro customers in the province.

A typical Hydro One customer in a medium-density area pays nearly $68 a month for delivery — more than double the delivery charge for a Thunder Bay Hydro customer. The difference adds up to $409 a year.

Questioned by reporters after her speech, Wynne affirmed that delivery charges are on her radar.

“The delivery charge is something that comes up repeatedly,” she said. “I am hearing it consistently as I talk to people across the province.” (Source: CBC) http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hydro-delivery-charge-1.3948106

Maeanwhile, the Premier posted an open letter on Facebook Sunday attacking television personality Kevin O’Leary for erroneously claiming Ontario attracts lower auto investment than Michigan. (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

Thursday January 19, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 19, 2017

Kevin O’Leary makes late entry into Conservative leadership race

It’s finally official: Kevin O’Leary is running to become leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

January 15, 2016

After months of flirting with the idea, he picked the morning after the party’s French-language debate and used a video on his Facebook page to declare his candidacy.

“You know why? I listened to you,” he said in the video posted Wednesday, thanking the “40,000” Canadians he said went to his website and encouraged him to run.

“I’m reaching 1.2 million Canadians a week now on social media,” he said in an interview with CBC News Network’s Suhana Meharchand.

‘Kevin O’Leary has a long record of saying whatever ridiculous thing comes to his mind.’- Lisa Raitt, Conservative leadership candidate

October 25, 2016

“I don’t have a money problem. I don’t have a name recognition problem. I want to do what’s right for the party: sell tens of thousands of memberships and then let them decide … who should carry the torch to Ottawa to perform the exorcism we need in this country in 2019 to rid the country of Justin Trudeau,” he said about Canada’s Liberal prime minister.

“What I’m talking about is beyond Trudeau. His entire caucus is incompetent,” he said, adding that even after last week’s cabinet shuffle, “it’s not working.”

Those wishing to vote for the next Conservative leader on May 27 must purchase a party membership before March 28.

O’Leary, 62, joins the contest months after it started. Three of the 13 other candidates made their candidacies official last spring, and will have been organizing for more than a year by the time the vote is held.

O’Leary’s campaign must catch up in the space of a few months. But his various television programs in Canada and the U.S. have already made him a household name. (Source: CBC News) 

 

Friday January 15, 2016

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 15, 2016

Ex-dragon Kevin O’Leary mulls Conservative leadership bid

Donald Trump is not the only celebrity businessman with his eye on high political office.

Kevin O’Leary, the chairman of O’Leary Funds, probably best known to Canadians as a former investor panelist on the CBC show Dragon’s Den, said he is considering running for the federal Conservative leadership.

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 Ontario to lose equalization payments as Alberta's economic fortunes fall Ontario will shed its status as a poor cousin of Confederation in the coming years, not because its economic fortunes are rebounding, but because resource-rich Alberta is falling on hard times. The federal government is expected to announce how much each province will receive in the fiscal year 2016-17 from transfer payment programs, which include equalization, before Finance Minister Bill Morneau meets with his provincial and territorial colleagues in Ottawa on Sunday evening. The equalization program redistributes national income to help poorer provinces provide services comparable to those of their richer counterparts. But equalization experts say the formula for calculating the payments is slow to respond to changes, including volatile commodity prices, which will leave Alberta carrying a disproportionate burden when the numbers are announced this weekend. Ontario began receiving equalization for the first time in 2009, a dramatic reversal of fortune for the countryÕs one-time economic powerhouse. It is now set to reclaim its status as a ÒhaveÓ province because the disparity between its economy and that of Alberta is shrinking. ÒWhat weÕre talking about here is the bad way of coming out of equalization,Ó economist Don Drummond said. The Ògood wayÓ to come out of the program, he said, is for a provinceÕs economy to rebound so that growth in its revenues offsets a loss of equalization payments. Because the equalization funding is based on a three-year national average of gross domestic product, next yearÕs calculation will still include times when oil prices were high and Alberta was booming. This means Ontario will not get Òkicked outÓ of the program for another two or three years, Mr. Drummond said. Alberta pulled up the overall standard of living in Canada when the countryÕs wealth was sh

“I thought at some point, someone is going to say to me, if you can be such a critic, why don’t you do better? Why don’t you try it? I thought to myself, hmmm, maybe I should,” O’Leary told CBC News.

That criticism made headlines earlier this week when O’Leary said he would invest $1 million in Canadian oil industries on the condition NDP Alberta Premier Rachel Notley resign.

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.

Wednesday December 9, 2015O’Leary, who did not immediately respond to an interview request with the Star Thursday morning, also told CBC News that he was inspired by the campaign of Trump, who is currently leading the pack of those running for the U.S. Republican presidential nomination.

“I know Trump. I know his family. I’ve watched him work. I think he’s smart as a fox,” said O’Leary, who is currently an investor on the ABC reality television show Shark Tank, where he is known for his brash personality and often harsh advice.

O’Leary has named the economy as the main focus of his potential leadership bid so far, saying the primary test for the success of any politician — at the municipal, provincial or federal level — should be whether or not they have created any jobs.

“Did what that person, man or woman, say create one incremental job in Canada? Yes or no?” O’Leary said during a Thursday morning interview with John Moore on Newstalk 1010.
On that front, O’Leary said, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has failed.

“Our prime minister, in his first 60 days on the job, left the country, committed $4.2 billion around the world and didn’t create one incremental job for a Canadian. I call that a fail. I think I can do better,” O’Leary said. (Source: Toronto Star)

Published in the Winnipeg Free Press, January 18, 2016

Published in the Winnipeg Free Press, January 18, 2016