By Kris Sims

OTTAWA – Kevin O’Leary thinks Canada should send Canadian Armed Forces peacekeepers to Syria within the next six months.

The business television star and potential Conservative Party Leadership candidate also says that the Canadian military should be deployed solely as peacekeepers in future because “there’s nothing proud about being a warrior.”

“Syria itself has to get a place of stability. The thing about civil wars like this - it’s almost a combination of terrorism and civil war - it’s horrible, but, it burns out when enough suffering has occurred and we are getting to that place, people just don’t want to suffer there anymore and they want to stabilize,” O’Leary told CFRA’s Kristy Cameron during the Ottawa Now with Evan Solomon drive home show on News Talk Radio 580 CFRA Friday. “Even the rebels there are getting decimated by this process so it’s horrible. But when we’ll know, and I think it’s going to be sometime in the next six months, we should offer our services as Canadian Peacekeepers.”

The deadly strife in Syria has been raging for more than five years with nearly five million people fleeing the country and more than 6 million people being internally displaced. The United Nations estimates that 400 thousand people have been killed.

O’Leary has previously stated that based on his personal experience in Cyprus he wants the Canadian Armed Forces to only be used for peacekeeping and that jihadist terrorist groups like ISIS pose no threat to Canadians.

“If there’s anybody that has the moral brand to do it, (peacekeeping) if there’s any country on Earth it would be us, maybe the Swedes and the Danish but very very few countries enjoy the reputation we have in the Middle East, and those peacekeepers that served decades ago we owe them a huge gratitude because they built that equity,” O’Leary said during his radio interview Friday. “Canadians are known as peacekeepers above all and not warriors. There’s nothing proud about being a warrior, war is a desperate outcome for a human being, peacekeeping is extremely noble.”

There are currently 14 candidates running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and the party members vote for their selection in May 2017.