It’s finally official: Kevin O’Leary will run to become leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.<\/p>\n
After months of flirting with the idea, he picked the morning after the French leadership debate and used a video on his Facebook page to declare his candidacy.<\/p>\n
“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 enter the race.<\/p>\n
“What an opportunity we have in this country. Limitless bounty,” he said. “Such opportunity to turn it around. I’m so excited. It’s time.<\/p>\n
“The potential of this country is absolutely immense. It’s just really mismanaged,” he said.<\/p>\n
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 over a year by the time the vote is held May 27.<\/p>\n
O’Leary’s campaign must now scramble to catch up in the space of a few months. But his\u00a0television programs have\u00a0already made him a household name across Canada.<\/p>\n
Waiting until Wednesday morning meant O’Leary was not required to participate in the party’s French-only debate, held last night in Quebec City.<\/p>\n
The 13 other candidates \u2014\u00a0many\u00a0of whom, like O’Leary, aren’t bilingual \u2014\u00a0were forced to answer eight questions entirely in French at an event where no translation was provided.<\/p>\n
O’Leary has been critical of the debate formats the party is using in the race, and said he wouldn’t participate\u00a0in the French debate “out of respect\u00a0for Quebec and French-Canadians.”<\/p>\n
Once he files his papers and pays the required deposit, however, he’s\u00a0required to attend the final two bilingual debates. The next one is in Edmonton on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n
Those wishing to vote for the next Conservative leader in May have until late March to purchase a party membership. The final deadline for any other candidates to enter the race is Feb.24.<\/p>\n
It’s finally official: Kevin O’Leary will run to become leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. After months of flirting with the idea, he picked the morning after the French leadership debate and used a video on his Facebook page to declare his candidacy. “You know why? I listened to you,” he said in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-63720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}