Jivani’s win clears the way

Victories should be savoured, and this week saw a victory conservatives everywhere should feel happy to applaud. The outspoken Jamil Jivani has been made a Conservative member of Parliament.

Jivani’s riding of Durham is a historically Conservative seat, so his byelection win Monday was nothing unexpected. Notable, though, was his relative performance compared to the past: by winning 57.4 per cent of the vote, he outperformed his predecessors by two to 10 percentage points.

Also notable was the electoral smothering he dealt to the Liberals and the NDP. The past 20 years have consistently seen the Durham Liberals pull 30 per cent of the vote or higher, while the NDP in that time peaked at 18 per cent. On Monday, Team Red only managed to get 22.5 per cent of the vote, while Team Orange collected a measly 10 per cent.

The win can partly be attributed to voters’ ever-increasing fatigue with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and his de facto coalition with Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. But that doesn’t tell the full story.

Jivani, an author, lawyer, organizer and media commentator, is known for offering unapologetic public criticism on social issues that many actors — conservatives included — evade with a wide berth. Monday’s resounding victory signals that it’s safe for Conservatives to proceed along Jivani-style rhetorical lines, as there is clearly an appetite among voters for what he has to say.

“Wokeness?” Safe — Jivani himself has fallen victim to the “superficial commitment to diversity and inclusion” of the corporate world, having experienced, he says, pressure to politically comply as a Black, heterodox radio host at Bell Media. While progressives often complain that “woke” is an undefinable concept used by the conservative-minded to lazily castigate their opponents, Jivani demonstrates that this is not the case.

Wokeness in the bureaucracy? Safe — the issue has been a priority, and frustration, for Jivani for years. He’s also been a stalwart critic of critical race theory and the radical change it inspires within Canadian institutions. Specifically, he’s called out the Ontario education ministry, which he once worked for, for increasingly promoting ideological initiatives such as race-based data collection and race-conscious professional development programming.

Wokeness in criminal justice? Safe — in Jivani’s view, individual choice plays a role in criminality, as does the presence of father figures and male role models. This is a far cry from the progressive view, which tends to blame crime on the system: systemic racism and other systemic disadvantages being understood as the foundation of crime. Because it doesn’t hold individuals responsible for their actions, the current government has taken a soft-on-crime approach to punishment that coincides with the philosophy of equity.

Particularly in the past year, the term “woke” has been used in Conservative messaging as shorthand for attacking Trudeau. However, many of the prime minister’s radical social policies have resulted in only silence from Conservatives. For example, the federal public service, like the Ontario education ministry, promotes politically correct staff training, racebased data collection and critical race theory, and the Official Opposition doesn’t seem to care.

Perhaps Pierre Poilievre largely avoids the identity politics of the Trudeau government because of how disastrous going on the offensive has proven to be in the past. Remember the bad press on Stephen Harper’s niqab strategy? But Jivani expertly dodges this trap. He faces CBC scrutiny headon when it inevitably comes, and he often finds a way to tie the culture war to economic issues, which are of primary importance to voters.

Such an example was provided in his victory speech Monday night. The working class is in a terrible place right now, and this, he points out, is an outcome animated by “people pushing (diversity, equity and inclusion) and (environmental, social and governance) initiatives.

“I do think it is the liberal elites betraying the working people of this country, betraying the middle class, betraying the working class. And when I say liberal elites, I’m talking about Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party — but not just them.

“I’m also talking about the liberal elites who run big banks and big telecommunications companies, driving up the cost of everything. I am also talking about the liberal elites who run the Ontario Ministry of Education in this province, I’m also talking about the liberal elites who are activists and academics and trying to consistently undermine law enforcement and public safety, leaving the most vulnerable Canadians with fewer protections from our justice system.”

As Conservatives delve deeper into culture war territory, Jivani is the perfect scout. He’s honest when others fear to be blunt, unafraid to disagree when others abandon their principles and he has a natural sense for blending social policy critiques with urgent economic concerns that particularly impact the nonwealthy, helped no doubt by his own upbringing in a working-class milieu in Brampton, Ont.

Trudeau may dismiss conservative efforts to talk social policy as unwanted “American-style” politicking, but Jivani’s resounding victory this week shows that if anything, this talk is in short supply. The electorate wants more, and this new MP has the capacity to deliver.

THERE IS CLEARLY AN APPETITE AMONG VOTERS FOR WHAT HE HAS TO SAY.