Rachel Notley a 'vicious, poisonous, toxic cocktail' of mediocrity, Kevin O'Leary charges

Kevin O'Leary slammed Rachel Notley again on Thursday, this time calling the Alberta premier a "vicious, poisonous, toxic cocktail" of mediocrity and incompetence who requires "an extreme amount of adult supervision."

In a speech to supporters in St. John's, N.L., the bombastic federal Conservative leadership candidate and reality TV star took aim at Notley and her economic policies.

"My message is this," O'Leary said. "I will not tolerate mediocrity or incompetence at any level of government any more if I make a commitment to you to grow the economy three per cent.

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"So I'll take another example. Let's take a Rachel Notley. She is beyond the measure of incompetent. She just let $12 billion leave. She's a vicious, poisonous, toxic cocktail of mediocrity, incompetence, put together.

"She requires an extreme amount of adult supervision.

"Now I can't have her running the No. 1 piston of economic growth in Canada into the ground. The transfer payments out of Alberta in the last 35 years funded practically every province. And it's broken."

Notley didn't directly address the content of O'Leary's comments when she was asked about them at a bridge announcement in Fort Saskatchewan later Thursday morning.

"There's a number of people in that particular race. Some of them are interested in generating attention through a whole series of fun, creative and somewhat wacky approaches to generating media attention," she said. "Not really my plan to participate in that."

This isn't the first time O'Leary has publicly criticized Alberta's NDP premier.

In January 2016, he said he would invest $1 million in the province's energy sector if Notley stepped down. He claimed she couldn't manage Alberta's resources and wanted her to make way for someone "more qualified." 

O'Leary doesn't get Constitution

O'Leary said people ask him what he could to do "incentivize" Notley to have "the proper economic behaviour."

He said he would prescribe lowering corporate taxes, eliminating the carbon tax, giving tax incentives to encourage investment in the energy industry — "all the things a good fiduciary would do.

"I would simply call her up — although I'm hoping that she won't be there when I arrive, because her popularity's in single digits now, she's lost so many jobs.

"But let's say, through some nightmare, she was still there. I'd call her up, say, 'Look, we're going to work together on three-per-cent growth. These are the following things you're going to have to do. And if you don't — take carbon tax for example — I'll simply deduct it from your transfer payment.

"These are hard words, but we're going to need that kind of leadership and discipline to grow this economy three per cent. That's my focus."

Notley said those remarks show O'Leary lacks knowledge about the workings of Canadian government.

"It demonstrates a significant misunderstanding of the authority that the prime minister of the country has, a distinct misunderstanding of the Constitution of the country, a distinct misunderstanding of many, many things," she said.

"But other than that, I'm not at all interested in responding. As I say, the candidates for the federal Conservative leadership are going to do a variety of things to garner attention. This is one of them. They can do that but that's not something I'm planning on being part of."