Jamil Jivani wins federal Conservative candidacy in GTA riding of Durham

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A former outspoken Ontario advocate for community opportunities, Jamil Jivani, has won the federal Conservative candidacy in the Greater Toronto Area riding of Durham, replacing former party leader Erin O’Toole since his departure from politics.

At the end of March, Mr. O’Toole announced he would not seek re-election in the riding that he held since 2012 and he would vacate his seat in the House of Commons at the end of the spring session.

Having won the Conservative nomination with 83-per-cent support over his competitor, Theresa Corless, Mr. Jivani will run under the Conservative banner in that forthcoming race.

A date for a federal by-election in Durham has not yet been announced. In a news release earlier this month, Elections Canada said the Chief Electoral Officer had received notice from the Speaker of the House of Commons that the seat in Durham is now vacant. A by-election must be announced before Jan. 30.

On Sunday evening, Mr. Jivani posted on X, the social-media site formerly known as Twitter, calling for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to announce a date for the by-election.

“Our communities are ready to make a statement: Canadians want change, and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives will deliver,” he wrote.

Mr. Jivani is a well-known figure in Conservative circles. He previously served as the president of the Canada Strong and Free Network, formerly known as the Manning Centre, designed to support the Conservative movement.

The 35-year-old Black lawyer, writer and political commentator, published frequently by the Postmedia chain, was appointed to his role as the advocate for community opportunities for Ontario Premier Doug Ford in 2019.

He has been open about his personal story, including in his 2018 book Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity. For example, Mr. Jivani said he was considered illiterate in high school and was placed in applied courses as part of the province’s academic streaming policy (the system was eliminated by Ontario in 2021) and references the experience as one of overcoming adversity.

Mr. Jivani went on to study at Humber College, York University and then Yale Law School. He became a lawyer and a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

He has received harsh criticism from some advocates in the Black community, such as for comments he has made against the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to defund the police. While he was serving as the provincial advocate, Mr. Jivani received pushback for comments he made after the uptick of gun violence in Toronto in 2020.

“One reason gun violence is up again: during COVID a lot of young gangsters were talking trash on Instagram and YouTube, making videos about rivals, starting e-drama,” Mr. Jivani wrote on Twitter at the time.

He also said people were dying while “out of touch Twitter activists talk about defunding police.”

Mr. Jivani’s comments were lambasted by some academics, such as sociology professor at the University of Toronto, Julius Haag, who called the comment “shameful” on Twitter. Prof. Haag said there was “no clear evidence that conflicts on social media are a widespread vector for real-world violence.”

Mr. Jivani has since written about the fact that he believes the country’s “chattering classes” of academics, journalists, politicians and chief executive officers do not “recognize the success of previous generations of black Canadians who fought hard for a better life.”

“They advance a worldview that suggests little has changed and that black victimhood has remained a constant throughout the decades, with blacks ostensibly held down by abstract ideas like ‘systemic racism’ and ‘white privilege,’” he wrote in a piece for the online publication The Hub.

Throughout his Conservative nomination efforts, Mr. Jivani has billed himself as a candidate who comprehends the need for a more affordable economy for people of all cultural backgrounds.

In a video to announce his candidacy, Mr. Jivani said he understands what Canadians are going through, referencing his own experience with cancer and that he was raised by a “single mom with a heart of gold.”

Conservatives need MPs who can stand up for the “hard-working families of this country,” he added, noting that he has proven himself by standing up to “big corporations, the mainstream media, the woke establishments.”

Mr. Jivani previously hosted The Jamil Jivani Show, which began airing on the iHeartRadio network in February, 2021.

In September, 2022, a statement of claim was filed on behalf of Mr. Jivani with Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice stating he was hired by the broadcaster as a token before being fired in January, 2022. The statement said that Bell expected him to “espouse only certain kinds of views – ones that fit a stereotype that Bell thought a member of the Black community should conform to.”

Bell Media spokesperson Sara McLaren said Sunday it does not comment on matters before the court but said it can confirm that the company is “defending ourselves against these false claims.”