If Kevin O'Leary goes on to win the Conservative leadership, Tories will have only themselves to blame when Team Trudeau sends Mr. Wonderful back to the U.S. cable airwaves — his preferred habitat.

Conservatives have been warned about their candidate's fatal flaw. Repeatedly. O'Leary's snub of a Conservative leadership debate in Toronto on Sunday in favour of a U.S. cable news appearance — live from Miami — to discuss U.S. healthcare reform leaves no doubt over where Kevin O'Leary's interests lie.

The answer you're looking for, Conservatives seduced by this fickle charlatan, is: not in Canada.

O'Leary was absent from the recent Conservative leadership debate. (Susan Lunn/CBC)

If you're still on the fence about this, and if you're a sentient being, you really shouldn't be, O'Leary erased all doubt with one small, simple word: "we."

In discussing U.S. healthcare reform, O'Leary chucked around the word "we" liberally, which is a wee bit of a problem when aspiring to lead a political party in another country.

Learning from Ignatieff

As the cautionary tale of Michael Ignatieff illustrates, candidates with tangential attachments to Canada and personal pronoun problems vis-à-vis the United States go over in the same way the Hindenburg did — to pick a reference from a country whose history O'Leary ostensibly understands.

Does anyone supporting Mr. O'Leary — including those on his campaign payroll — remember how thoroughly Conservatives clubbed Iggy with the pronoun truncheon? Running against O'Leary would let the Liberals make the election about personality, and not the failure of Liberal policies.

At this point, the only argument in O'Leary's favour is he would allow Conservatives to bypass the Stéphane Dion era of post-loss rebuilding entirely, and move straight to the aftermath of the Ignatieff immolation, when Justin Trudeau eventually took root and rebuilt his party.

O'Leary's supporters point out his appeal with millennials and his electability with the broader electorate. Fine, let's have a look under that particular hood.

O'Leary's lacklustre appeal

Conservatives already have zero seats in Atlantic Canada. O'Leary's response? A threat to dismantle the equalization program. Sure, there's a conversation to be had about how to reinvigorate the Atlantic economies, but ask anyone from the Harper era how reforming employment insurance turned out. Tough medicine with a mandate is one thing, threatening it before the election is to guarantee you'll never have the chance to administer it.

Then there's Quebec, the province in which O'Leary has already dug himself a hole with his, um, nascent bilingualism. The silver lining of the Conservative defeat in 2015 was the party's growth in Quebec. This mustn't be reversed, let alone set back to square one.

Kevin O'Leary explains why he's running for the Conservative Party leadership 0:51

How about the vast rural swathes of Canada that produce reliable Conservative votes, i.e. the "base." I'm sure O'Leary saying "there's nothing proud about being a warrior" will go over well in military communities. Just as his nonchalance about abortion will go over well in social conservative circles. And what about his support for legal pot? I'm guessing Trudeau will bogart that cohort.

This leaves those who favour a low-tax, small-footprint government that respects provincial jurisdiction. Allow me to introduce you to Maxime Bernier, a genuine libertarian with cabinet experience and a following in Quebec. The experience bit is important: limiting government requires understanding how it works, another area in which O'Leary is sadly deficient.

Fine. Forget Atlantic Canada, forget Quebec, forget the base, and forget small government libertarians. What could O'Leary offer voters in the critical suburban ridings of, say, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)?

O'Leary's campaign said he couldn't attend the recent debate because he was celebrating his anniversary. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

Which brings us back to Sunday night's debate in Eglinton-Lawrence which, last time I checked, is in the GTA.

Not satisfied with merely snubbing the candidates who respected voters enough to present their ideas in person, O'Leary's campaign aimed lower by proffering a false personal note: their man couldn't attend because he was celebrating his 27th wedding anniversary with the missus.

Yes, he was celebrating it, albeit in Miami as mentioned above, which is a little tone deaf. And 27 years is an impressive figure, which demonstrates commitment. But as a soppy cover for skipping the debate, which is what the campaign was clearly aiming for, it was undone the moment his mug popped up on MSNBC.

O'Leary's 'truthiness'

Worse still, it wasn't the first time O'Leary's "truthiness" has been exposed. When he missed an event in Winnipeg the other month, he blamed bad weather for a cancelled flight, when in fact no flights were cancelled.

O'Leary has proven he'll lie about the small things, has no clue about the big things, and no attachment to anything other than himself.

Conservatives shouldn't, therefore, feel badly about snubbing O'Leary. He'll do fine on his own. As we can all see, O'Leary clearly prefers his party of one.

This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.