Canadian businessman and former "Dragon's Den" host Kevin O'Leary is begging for Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to step down, for the sake of Canada's economy.
“I mean no disrespect when I say this but here’s my offer: I’ll invest $1 million in Canadian energy companies if out of grace and for the absolute good of Canada the premier of Alberta resigns,” O'Leary said on Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010 on Monday.
"She's gotta go."
The entrepreneur said that Alberta's economy is "in free fall" and blamed the premier for both Canada's low dollar and the province's layoffs in the oil patch.
O'Leary also provided a reason why he won't invest in Canadian oil right now.
“I wouldn’t touch them now because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
'Socialist bog'
It's not the first time O'Leary has publicly criticized Alberta's NDP government.
Shortly after Notley was elected in May 2015, O'Leary predicted in an interview with Business News Network that the new government would be a "disaster."
"Alberta was the shining light of capitalism in North America. Now it's fallen off the cliff into a socialist bog."
At the time, he advised all international financial institutions to pull out of the province, because Alberta's economy could best be described as "a horror movie unfolding,” O'Leary told the Financial Post.
Mounting job losses
There have been over 40,000 job losses in Alberta's energy sector since oil prices began dropping in 2014.
Notley has said that while she sympathizes with the plight of energy companies and their employees, the situation is beyond the scope of Alberta's government.
"Quite frankly the energy industry is addressing and succumbing to pressures that are international in scale," Notley told The Canadian Press in October.
"And as much as I would like to be able to inject some mechanism of ameliorating the price of oil, it's quite frankly something that's beyond the capacity of this government."
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