Two former staffers of Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch say they’re shocked by her sudden embrace of Donald Trump and identity politics — and think the strategy reflects opportunism rather than the candidate’s personal beliefs.

Kyle Mirecki was Leitch’s director of parliamentary affairs and issues management for a year. He wrote an op-ed in the Winnipeg Free Press this week criticizing Leitch’s proposal to screen prospective immigrants for their grasp of “Canadian values”, calling it a campaign that capitalizes on xenophobia.

Today, Mirecki, who is in his third year of law school and is volunteering for Maxime Bernier’s campaign, said the “sad part” about knowing Leitch is that he doesn’t think she “personally believes in this policy or strategy.”

“I think Kellie is very ambitious in that she’ll say or do anything she needs to — to win,” he said.

Mirecki said that in his time working for her while she was in Stephen Harper’s cabinet, she never raised “values” or immigration, even in conversation.

Andrew McGrath, who worked as Leitch’s director of communications from early 2014 until the Liberal government was sworn in, agreed with Mirecki’s assessment.

“Kellie never expressed any of these ‘Canadian identity’ or ‘values’ concerns in the years I spent with her office, which is why so many of us were surprised that she chose to go down this path. To position her campaign on the results of a poorly-worded survey question and to take this particular stance is not something I would have expected from Kellie,” McGrath wrote to iPolitics.

McGrath also said that Leitch never expressed any concerns about immigration during his time working for her.

Mirecki said he knows of other former Leitch staffers who share the same views as he and McGrath. He said he heard from about 20 current and former staffers after publishing his op-ed.

“About 20 people reached out with direct support, saying, ‘Look, I can’t comment publicly but I just wanted to say well done, well written, it needed to be said, Kellie needs to lose, this needs to end now.’ [Those] sort of messages.”

Mirecki said he felt compelled to go public because of the weight comments from a former staffer would carry.

“Staffers are in a position of trust and loyalty and very rarely do staffers speak out against bosses and former bosses simply because we don’t want to generate negative news stories, we don’t want to cause problems for each other, we don’t want other parties to take advantage of the infighting,” he said.

This means that when a former staffer does speak out, “people listen” because it’s rare.

“We have a duty to people, to Canadians, people in our party to say this is not a direction our party should be going in, this is not the future of our party and that’s why I did it,” he said.

Popular ideas can be bad ideas, said Mirecki, citing Canada’s refusal to admit Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi terror in 1939. He said Leitch’s proposal to screen immigrants for values before they come in “is presuming guilt until proven innocent and it contributes to a culture of suspicion toward new Canadians. It’s geared completely toward people who fear and have contempt for the values of foreigners and the values they bring to Canada.

“This message is divisive, toxic, and opportunistic policy that capitalizes on xenophobia and proliferates Canadians fears of new immigrants and refugees.”