TORONTO

Kevin O’Leary doesn’t just see himself as becoming the next prime minister of Canada.

He sees himself as the one who can rid the country of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his majority Liberal government.

“I am Trudeau’s worst nightmare,” O’Leary said in an interview with the Toronto Sun just an hour after he announced his official candidacy into the federal Conservative leadership race on Wednesday.

It’s always fun to talk with Mr. Wonderful, famous for being a Dragon and Shark on TV and for his brash comments on business. The investor and businessman is one part of him. The show business part of him is obvious. There is the husband and father component. Philanthropist too, which he does very quietly.

And now he’s a politician.

In explaining what pushed him over the top to decide to run, O’Leary alludes to the exclusive front page story in the Toronto Sun earlier this month that forecasted, under Trudeau, Canada’s debt in the next four decades could balloon to $1.5 trillion, something that “should upset every Canadian,” O’Leary said.

It infuriates him.

“Not a chance in hell am I going to let him do that,” he tells me. “My job is to show Trudeau his ambition in life and it is not running Canada.”

To that end, everything Trudeau does he will be on top of.

“We have to be honest. We are in trouble here. We have a very weak leader with a very flawed mandate and we have to stop him from doing any more damage,” said O’Leary. “My job is to make sure he does as little damage to the country until I can get there in 2019.”

First, he hopes to convince Conservatives of this at the leadership convention in the spring, and then Canadians in 2019.

“This is not going to be an election but an exorcism,” said O’Leary. “Where is it written in the Constitution we have to settle for mediocrity and incompetence? I am scraping that all away. We deserve so much better. I will get rid of the malaise of Trudeau.”

He believes it’s the very millennials who seem to love to jump into selfie pictures with Trudeau who are going to help O’Leary do it.

“The millennials, entrepreneurs who watch Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den, are my people,” he said. “What Trudeau has them doing is sitting in their parents’ basement staring at the ceiling.”

Changing this starts by lowering and eliminating taxes and fostering investment and job creation, he said. And, yes, that means the end to carbon taxes and cap-and-trade initiatives as well as excessive regulation.

O’Leary is important to the Conservative race and to federal politics in general because he brings no-holds-barred excitement to a moribund race in need of a star who can take on a superstar in Trudeau. O’Leary’s issues are real and they resonate with people. Canada needs the anti-Trudeau candidate and it’s wonderful that they now have one.

O’Leary’s not the same as incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, but he talks straight and direct like him. Agree or disagree, it’s a language people understand. And those Canadian people will ultimately have to decide.

“People are starting to see the rot in Trudeau’s mandate and they are smelling the failure and they are telling him that in his town hall meetings,” O’Leary said. “Let me tell you the facts: We are in a real race to save the country. This is going to be a carbon tax-free country as soon as I get to Ottawa. I am going to reverse everything Trudeau did.

“You won’t remember his name when I am finished.”

But he believes you will remember the name Prime Minister Kevin O’Leary.

‘STRONG LEADER’ A MUST

Who would you prefer at the negotiating table with soon-to-be president Donald Trump?

A shark or “surfer dude?”

New Conservative Party leadership hopeful Kevin O’Leary says Canadians already know the answer.

“We need a strong leader to deal with Trump. That’s going to be a big problem,” O’Leary told me. “I think Trudeau is ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that the U.S. is putting forward and you can see it manifest itself.”

O’Leary fears the American Rust Belt that helped Trump win the election will out-price Canada’s manufacturing regions without strong negotiations and even stronger business partnerships.

“Trudeau could have used the Trump election as an excuse to reverse all of his damaging economic policies, he could have stopped the implementation of carbon taxes, he could have reduced taxes to be competitive with the U.S., he could have stripped away regulation, He didn’t do any of it,” said O’Leary. “Instead, he charged on into oblivion and now the country is totally uncompetitive and it its grinding to a halt.”

As Trump changes the game to bring back manufacturing and jobs to America, O’Leary believes Canada can benefit.

But he says it can’t be “Bambi taking on Godzilla” but instead a tough Dragon who “knows how to prepare a balance sheet” and had to “make a payroll.”

jwarmington@postmedia.com