Who is Jamil Jivani — and why you should be paying attention to him

Yet no one in his party has had more success in pushing themselves to the forefront of a series of defining debates than the Bowmanville—Oshawa North MP. 

Jivani held court at the close of the annual Canada Strong and Free Network conference in the capital last week, expounding on the future of Canada’s relationship with the United States.

It didn’t seem to matter that the backbench MP — who enjoys a long-standing friendship with U.S. Vice-President JD Vance — holds no trade portfolios for the Official Opposition, or that he recently met senior U.S. officials in Washington, a mission Poilievre has said is better left to the governing Liberals.

In a party known for its message discipline, Jivani has emerged as an MP as intriguing as he is unconventional. Leveraging his ties to the ruling American right and a personal story that lends credibility to the issues energizing the modern conservative movement, the millennial MP is gaining influence — and carving out territory that could shape where the party heads next.

For Tim Powers, the chairman of Summa Strategies, Jivani’s nonconformist approach to politics is a “curiosity” at a time when there are questions about Poilievre’s ability to become prime minister.

“I don’t think he’s viewed as a team player,” Powers said, but “if there’s one thing about Mr. Jivani that I will appreciate, it’s that he’s not a sycophant.”

Powers said it is notable that the MP — who declined to speak to the Star for this story — appears to have the “space and latitude” to pursue his own political objectives in a caucus that rarely lets its members go it alone.

“I’d hardly be shocked if he decided to run for leader if that became open, or for another leadership position elsewhere,” Powers said.

It’s no secret that Jivani “marches to the tune of his own drum,” said conservative strategist Cole Hogan. 

Part of that is because of the MP’s backstory: he’s the son of a Kenyan father and Irish-Scottish mother who fought his way out of a troubled youth to study law at Yale University.

“The idea of entrepreneurialism, basically, is important to the ideology of Conservatives,” said Hogan, and in the context of a Liberal majority, there’s now room for “new forms of conservative thought and argument.”

By that, Hogan means Jivani isn’t going all in on traditional Tory fare like tax cuts, but is using his own experiences to put fresher issues on the Conservative agenda.

“I think Jamil, by my impression anyway, is saying that…we have to be able to have a conversation about social issues, and not just cede that ground to Liberals who have been winning it for the last 40 years,” Hogan said.

Here’s how the Conservative maverick has struck out on his own.

A self-appointed voice for Canada-U.S. relations

Jivani’s ties to Vance have given him a personal pathway into the White House that no other MP enjoys.

In February, he visited Washington on his own and scored face time with the vice-president, U.S. President Donald Trump and other top officials.

After his self-assigned diplomatic mission, Jivani told Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News  that the Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney were throwing an anti-America “hissy fit,” earning a rebuke from Poilievre, who spoke to Jivani about his comments and said the Conservative MP only speaks for himself.

Jivani reunited with Boyle last Friday at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference, where he spoke to the gathering of conservatives about the Canada-U.S. relationship after returning from a second trip across the border.

Discussing the Tories’ 2025 election loss, Jivani criticized Trump for making “regrettable” comments about Canada in the lead-up to the campaign, and delivered a bitter assessment of the country’s electorate, saying voters “bought into the hysteria” offered by Carney instead of embracing a Conservative alternative.

Jivani said that as a result of his visits to the U.S., he sees “far more opportunity” for progress on the trade file “than sometimes meets the eye,” and that he believes Canadians are “being misled” into thinking that American trade aggression will disappear when Trump exits the White House.

“I do believe that the changes he’s making now, many of them will be mainstays in American public policy,” Jivani said.

“A lot of the challenges that Prime Minister Carney faces and that people in Ottawa, the public policy community here faces, are going to be longer term. They’re not things that are just going to go away with a new president or a new administration.”

The leader of the anti-woke brigade

Jivani closed his appearance at the conference with his version of a land acknowledgment, which mocked a statement that was delivered earlier in the day.

“We gather here as free men and women, on land governed by private property laws,” he said to applause. “And yes, and we are enthusiastic to keep that as a tradition in this country.”

The move was part of Jivani’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which are aimed at removing barriers facing marginalized people, and which the Ontario MP has dismissively branded as “woke.”

Jivani has taken on the anti-DEI mantle for the Conservatives, launching a campaign last year to end what he calls a type of “discrimination” that is eroding meritocracy and polluting the country.

Last week, Jivani called for an end to “Liberal racism” after Louise Arbour was named Canada’s next governor general, due to the incoming vice-regent’s previous calls for more diversity in the country’s military.

He was the first Conservative MP to openly criticize her appointment.

But even if Jivani is a rogue member of his caucus, 22 of his fellow Tory MPs attended an anti-DEI event he held in Ottawa last fall, where he also revealed his desire to improve his French — a goal often tied to potential leadership ambitions.

A champion of young men

Another of Jivani’s rallying cries is his pledge to “Restore the North,” anchored by a university campus tour aimed at fighting for the alienated young men the MP believes are being lost to socioeconomic and mental health crises.

While parallels have been drawn between Jivani and Charlie Kirk, the American right-wing political activist who was assassinated in Utah last year — the MP’s campaign revives themes Jivani explored nearly a decade earlier in his book, Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity.

Jivani’s outreach to that subset of the population isn’t just a pet interest; the MP is speaking to a slice of the electorate that traditionally gravitates towards the Conservatives is now, according to pollsters, viewing the Liberals more favourably than in years past.

An outspoken critic of Doug Ford

Once a Ford-government appointee who broke with the premier over the Progressive Conservatives’ pandemic policies, Jivani’s disdain for Ford burst into public view on election night last spring.

Following a federal campaign that featured a frosty relationship between the Ford government and Poilievre’s Conservatives, Jivani called Ford an “unprincipled” leader and “a hype man for the Liberal party.”

The backbench MP’s open condemnation of one of the country’s most successful conservative leaders raised eyebrows at the time. So did Jivani’s support a few months later for Project Ontario, an effort within conservative activist circles to push Ford more to the right.