Maxime Bernier has his sights set on Kevin O’Leary as his biggest rival in the federal Conservative leadership race.

Without skipping a beat, the Beauce, Que. Conservative MP named the outspoken former Dragon’s Den entrepreneur as a potential frontrunner in the heated and crowded 14-candidate race.

“It’s between me and him,” Bernier said at a Toronto Sun editorial board meeting this week.

“I must admit that I have the best opponent I can have. Kevin O’Leary doesn’t have a platform. People want to have real, conservative, bold changes. Kevin O’Leary can’t speak to Francophones across the country, I can. I want to debate with him. If there’s another debate, I hope Kevin O’Leary will be there.”

The 54-year-old Saint-Georges, Que. businessman and lawyer has deep roots in politics, serving under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper as minister in four departments — Industry, Foreign Affairs, State (Small Business and Tourism), and State (Small Business and Tourism and Agriculture).

He launched his campaign in April, based on “four principles very important to me” — individual freedom, personal responsibility, fairness and respect.

“I believe in free markets, I believe in individual freedom and I have examples to tell members that I’m serious about it,” Bernier said. “The free market is good for the producers and for me...we’ll be sure to have a smaller government, balance the budget.”

Kellie Leitch, on the other hand, is a candidate Bernier clashes with when it comes to her Canadian Values Test and policies on immigration.

“I disagree with her and the questionnaires and how she’s dealing with that,” said Bernier. “We have a good system of selecting our immigrants. More are coming here because they share our Canadian values. Equality for the law, equality between man and woman and freedom of religion, freedom of speech.”

Bernier said he wants to give Canadian Border Services Agency guards more resources for background checks if they want to do more face-to-face interviews.

“But I’m not Kellie Leitch and having every single new Canadian do face-to-face interviews,” he said. ”The costs will be huge and we don’t need that...I don’t like the style of the campaign she’s doing, but I think our members don’t like that also, because she’s not a front runner right now.”

jyuen@postmedia.com

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Here are a few other excerpts from Bernier (edited for length):

BIGGEST VULNERABILITY OF TRUDEAU:

“The economy. He said two years ago he will bring more opportunities, more jobs and hope. So what’s happening right now? The unemployment rate will be huge right now. For people between 15 and 30 years old, it’s 15%, that’s huge. We have wage stagnation in Canada. If we want to increase our standard of living in Canada, we need at least 3% economic growth. And what the Trudeau government has given us — 1.2%, 1.4% — it isn’t going anywhere. With the huge deficit, if we don’t see the end of that, we will have $100 billion (federal) debt.”

ON A GUARANTEED MINIMUM WAGE AND TAX REFORM:

“No, (a guaranteed minimum wage) is not part of my platform and I won’t bring that. I understand their point about taxes and regulation — that it’s very high and it’s not helping them. What I’m thinking is 15% incorporated tax (reduced) to 10% for every business. I want to have a special corporate rate for small businesses.”

ON IMMIGRATION:

“South of our borders, people are crossing our borders. We must fix that loophole and we must be sure to keep the legitimacy of our borders and immigration system. It is not fair for the real refugees that are waiting to come to Canada, because these people who are coming from the U.S. to Canada are jumping the line, so we must be fair and fix the loophole. I’m asking the Trudeau government to have a meeting with the Trump administration to be sure to fix that loophole...If you need to put more resources for the RCMP to be sure our border will be respected, we must give resources to our border security officials and RCMP to do their work...We must ask the Canadian Armed Forces to (temporarily) help.”

ON MARIJUANA LEGISLATION:

“I’m for the decriminalization. I’m open on the debate for legalization. I’m waiting, like a lot of Canadians, to be able to read that legislation. When they will table the bill, I will look at it and decide how to vote. But I’m very curious and I’m pushing them to table the bill as soon as possible, because we want to know how they’re going to solve a lot of challenges they’re having.”