The race to succeed Stephen Harper got nasty this week as leadership candidate Kellie Leitch embraced Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory and attempted to siphon off a little of the president-elect’s star power.

Here’s our weekly wrap:

Leitch drives the wedge in further

It all began Sunday night with a fundraising letter to her supporters. Leitch slammed her rival candidates — notably Lisa Raitt — who oppose her proposal to screen new immigrants for “anti-Canadian values.”

“Add Lisa Raitt to the list of Conservative leadership candidates who WILL NOT screen visitors, refugees or immigrants for anti-Canadian values,” Leitch said in the email. She also targeted Maxime Bernier, Andrew Scheer, Chris Alexander, Michael Chong and Deepak Obhrai, who oppose her proposal.

Leitch compares herself to victorious Trump

Leitch wasted no time comparing herself to Trump in the early hours following his shocking victory.

In another fundraising email — Leitch’s preferred method of messaging, to date — the candidate said: “Tonight, our American cousins threw out the elites and elected Donald Trump as their next president. It’s an exciting message and one that we need delivered in Canada as well.

“It’s the message I’m bringing with my campaign to be the next Prime Minister of Canada.”

Michael Chong warned in a statement that Leitch’s Trump-esque embrace of identity politics threatens to lead the Conservative Party of Canada up a political blind alley:

“My caucus colleague, Kellie Leitch, is urging Canadian conservatives to ape Donald Trump’s divisive path to the Presidency of the United States of America. This is a mistake.”

Leitch continued to sing Trump’s praises during the first all-candidates debate in Saskatoon, where she pointed to the “common interests” she shares with Trump — among them, an embrace of “values-based” immigration vetting.

Deepak Ohbrai, a Tanzania-born Indian-Canadian immigrant and an MP since 1997, tore into Leitch on stage. After saying he didn’t “give two hoots” about a woman wearing a niqab — a controversial subject in the last federal election — the Calgary MP momentarily started trending on Twitter.

“Donald Trump’s divisive policy on immigration and social policies (has) no room in the Canada that I believe in. Unfortunately, one of my colleagues admires Donald Trump, but let me tell you as parliamentary secretary for international human rights, I will not stand for any erosion of any human rights of anybody, whether in U.S. or in Canada,” he said.

Throughout the debate, Leitch cited a book written by Vic Satzewich, a McMaster University sociology professor, to justify her plan to boost face-to-face interviews with immigrants, refugees and visitors and screen them for “anti-Canadian values.”

Satzewich, however, told iPolitics he actually couldn’t disagree with her more about her proposal — and he told her so over the weekend.

Obhrai continued taking the fight to Leitch after the debate, issuing a press release calling the proposal to screen newcomers for ‘anti-Canadian’ thoughts “an insult to all Canadians.”

“Kellie Leitch’s admiration of Donald Trump does not fit into my vision of Canada,” he said in the release.

“Canada was built by successive waves of immigration. Why should a bureaucrat decide who comes to Canada?”

Predictably, Obhrai reported receiving hate messages after tearing into Leitch’s immigration policy. Obhrai told Tim Naumetz of The Hill Times that he’s received angry emails to his MP office telling him to leave the country.

In other Leitch news, the Ottawa Citizen‘s Jason Fekete reports that the candidate, who has a habit of railing against her critics as out-of-touch “elites,” is holding a $500-a-person fundraiser in downtown Toronto Monday organized by high-profile Bay Street lawyers.

The latest count

There are now 12 official leadership candidates whose paperwork has been accepted by the party and who have paid the first $25,000 instalment of a $50,000 deposit: former Tory MPs Alexander and Andrew Saxton, Winnipeg physician Daniel Lindsay, and MPs Bernier, Steven Blaney, Erin O’Toole, Scheer, Obhrai, Brad Trost, Raitt, Leitch and Chong.