The Conservative candidate elected in GTA byelection is taking aim at “liberal elites” he says are betraying the working class.
Jamil Jivani won the Durham byelection Monday night with 57.4% of the vote, a 20-year record margin of victory.
In Jivani’s acceptance speech at Chuck’s Roadhouse in Courtice, Ont., he said “elites” are to blame for many of the problems facing Canada today.
“When we talk about what’s happening in the country right now, I do think it’s Liberal elites betraying the working class. When I say liberal elites, I am talking about Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party,” Jivani said.
He wasn’t just talking about the Liberal’s in the House of Commons, however. He railed against big banks and telecommunications companies – and also Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government.
“I’m also talking about the liberal elites who run the Ontario ministry of education in this province…the liberal elites who are activists and academics trying to consistently undermine law enforcement and public safety, leaving the most vulnerable Canadians with fewer protections from our justice system,” he said. “They’re the people pushing DEI and ESG initiatives while hiking up the cost of living for hardworking people.”
Jivani said these efforts amount to “performance theatre” that doesn’t help ordinary Canadians.
“They are the people who virtue signal and engage in performance theatre while your life gets harder. And they’re the people who serve the interests of a privileged few and make you feel like a bad person for expecting our country to work for you, and they’re wrong,” Jivani said.
During his speech, Jivani remarked on the moment Trudeau called him a “two-fer,” which several Conservatives accused of being a racial term.
“Justin Trudeau doesn’t really know what to do with people like me and with a lot of people in this room,” Jivani said. “He looks at us and thinks his party owns us and owns our communities. He looks at me and sees a millennial son of an African immigrant, grandson of a public school custodian, a survivor of cancer thanks to our public health care system and raised by a single mother, and he thinks that people like me owe his party something, that we have to fall in line with his party, I disagree.”
With over 57% of the vote, Jivani reflected the mandate given to him as Durham’s newest MP-elect.
“I think that people want change in this country. When you have a byelection, you have the opportunity to show that. As people think about what the general election is going to look like, we want to show them. People want change. People want Pierre Poilievre,” Jivani said. “We need a change in Ottawa.”
Jivani said his first priority as MP will be trying to build more homes in Durham Region. As a millennial, he ran on the fact that he is still a renter at 36-years-old despite working his whole life.
“There’s a lot of people my age, people younger than me, who want to own homes, people living with their parents that want to start a family and move forward in their lives. So housing and affordability, those are my main concerns.”
Oshawa Conservative MP Collin Carrie was also in attendance.
“Jamil’s the type of guy that gets people on board. He’s young, he’s intelligent and a great communicator and that’s contagious,” Carrie said. “There’s a real enthusiasm for change and Jamil represents that.”
Carrie said the number one issue he heard from Conservative voters when door knocking with Jivani was getting rid of Trudeau’s Liberal government.
In contrast with Jivani getting over 57% of the vote, Erin O’Toole, when he was leading the Conservative Party in the last election in 2021, received 46.39% of the vote.
Robert Rock, the Liberal candidate, who ran against Jivani in the nomination for the party received 22.5%.
