oleary-leitch_thumb-1.png
oleary-leitch_thumb-1.png This article is more than 7 years old

Kevin O’Leary, Kellie Leitch threaten to impose Ottawa’s will on provinces and cities

O'Leary and Leitch say they'll run roughshod over Canada's division of powers and bully provinces and cities into bending to their will.

atip-ad-banner.gif

What a time to be a Conservative in Canada!

Two of the higher-profile contenders in the Conservative leadership race suggest that if they become prime minister, they’ll run roughshod over Canada’s division of powers and bully provinces and cities into bending to their will.

Makes sense – it’s not like the idea that Liberal governments under Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien centralized too much power in Ottawa figured prominently in the grievances of Canadian Conservatives over the last several decades or anything.

On Thursday, Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary told a town hall event in Calgary that if Alberta doesn’t drop carbon pricing, he’s prepared to “be nasty.”

Specifically, O’Leary says he’ll punish Alberta’s sick and elderly by cutting transfer payments to the province’s health care system in a sadistic bid to force Alberta to submit to Ottawa’s will:

“I will definitely be punitive on transfer payments on health care. I’m going to have to push back. It’s going to be nasty. I have to get her back off this carbon tax … I’ll go to war with her, trust me.”

Maybe O’Leary’s billionaire buddy Mark Cuban wasn’t kidding when he said O’Leary confided to him in private that his prime ministerial ambitions are driven by a desire for “carte blanche” power over Canada.

Meanwhile, fellow Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, whose campaign has focused on scapegoating immigrants and uploading awkward videos to YouTube, upped the ante tweeting that she will cut-off federal funding for public transit to any Canadian city offering protection to refugees as “sanctuary cities”:

Boy, doesn’t that sound like a distant echo of the Conservative Party of Canada we once knew?

It feels like only yesterday when a young Stephen Harper and his friends Tom Flanagan, Ted Morton and Ken Boessenkool wrote a letter to Ralph Klein in the National Post saying he needs “to build firewalls around Alberta” to defend the province against a “so-called ‘tough love’ campaign” by the federal government in Ottawa. 

“It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.”

In fact, O’Leary’s approach sounds more like a Jean Chretien Liberal than a Stephen Harper Conservative, if you know what we mean:

“In our view, the Chretien government undertook a series of attacks not merely designed to defeat its partisan opponents, but to marginalize Alberta and Albertans within Canada’s political system. One well-documented incident was the attack against Alberta’s health care system.”

Maybe the Conservative Party of Canada’s new slogan will be “More Ottawa, Less Alberta” too?

Photo: Instagram / YouTube.

Our journalism is powered by readers like you.

We’re an award-winning non-profit news organization that covers topics like social and economic inequality, big business and labour, and right-wing extremism.

Help us build so we can bring to light stories that don’t get the attention they deserve from Canada’s big corporate media outlets.

 

Donate
PressProgress
PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism.

Most Shared

thumb-sources Podcast

Take Back Alberta Leaders are Training ‘Scrutineers’ to Infiltrate Campaigns and Act as ‘Security’ on Voting Day

Related Stories

Podcast

Jason Kenney’s Rocky and Scandal-ridden Pursuit of Power, with Jeremy Appel

View the post
NEWS

City councillor says regulatory framework needed for psychedelics in Vancouver

View the post
News

RCMP Confirms Hundreds On UCP Voter List Told Police They Had ‘No Knowledge’ They Ever Voted

View the post
Our free email newsletter delivers award-winning journalism directly to your inbox.
Get Canadian Investigative News You Won't Find in Corporate Newspapers.
Our free email newsletter delivers award-winning journalism to your inbox.
Get Canadian Investigative News You Won't Find in Corporate Newspapers.