Jivani Reveals How Carney Maybe Sabotaging Trade Talks With Trump

[00:00:00]There's one thing Canadians want to see in their politics and it's their politicians to have courage to say the tough thing to speak on the issues that may be unpopular for the media but are very popular for the people that are feeling the pain on the ground. Today we had the benefit of talking to one of those politicians who doesn't take no for an answer, speaks the truth, doesn't bend the knee to pressure, and is all in fighting for his constituents.

[00:00:31]My friends, we have MP from Bowenville, Ashawa North, Jamil Jam.

[00:00:47]Happy to have you on the show, man. How are you holding up? How is life these days?

[00:00:52]>> Well, this is a long week. They uh Well, first off, good to see you, bro. I appreciate you very much. And uh it's been a long week. So, basically, the sort of end of the session before the summer break of the House, they will often sit until midnight to jam in all the bills that haven't gotten the required hours of debate. So, it's been a lot of long nights the last couple weeks, but uh we're we're getting through it. And I will be honest with you, it is frustrating when they've got a majority and we just kind of, you know, we do our part, but we just watch them pass through all the horrible legislation that they want. It's uh it can be demoralizing at times, but we we keep up the fight.

[00:01:33]>> Yeah. It seems like they're really trying to rush through Bill C22 these days, aren't they?

[00:01:37]>> Yeah. I mean, you know, and and we're going to wind up voting on Bill C9 this week as well. They've got a lot of unpopular legislation, and they're shameless about, you know, restricting debate on it, too. They try to rush these things because they know the more the Canadian people hear about these things, people aren't going to like it.

[00:01:55]So, they're just hoping there's no conversation, people won't pay attention, and they'll be able to get their way. And that's Mark Carney's entire agenda.

[00:02:03]>> We're going to get into a little murky water here, so I don't want to get you into too much trouble. Uh but something that was brought up on our show is the bill C22 that the Liberals are currently focused and trying to pass through uh specifically around surveillance issues and coming in back doors into encrypted technologies. A bill like that was actually proposed similarly uh some odds about 12 years ago underneath the conservatives uh and it was vehemently by the public just like no we are not doing this. Even backbenchers of the conservative party saying we we can't push this through. And it seems like what the liberals are putting through is something very similar. And if that was kind of what the mentality was back then, I know there's probably a little bit more acceptance now because everyone thinks everything's dangerous now on social media. But I still think I still believe in the overall Canadian population that they probably still would reject something like that. Is that what you feel or what are your thoughts on that?

[00:02:57]>> Yeah. So, I mean, the pattern here and and you're going to keep seeing this from the government is they take a legitimate issue that most people would agree on and then they attack uh uh a number of rights that you have as a and and use the legitimate issue as a justification. So with with C-22, the legitimate issue is police organizations, law enforcement have identified some limits in the law and their ability to do investigations. And the Liberals have taken that legitimate point and said, "Oh, you want more power to do investigations on criminals?"

[00:03:33]Well, why don't we grow the federal government's ability to look at your personal data and force tech companies to hand over your personal data on a much broader range of things. And that's the pattern that they keep doing. You're seeing this with the um you know they're acknowledging that people are concerned about minors using social media pretty widely held view among a lot of parents and they are attaching to that a whole host of other ideas to control adults and this is the pattern they keep using.

[00:04:03]So you're right to bring up that you know 12 years ago there was an attempt to do this. Uh happy to say I was not a member of parliament at that time. So I certainly did not support what was being done back then either. But um you know you look at what's going on today and you say like well it's obvious that this is a pattern they're using. And unfortunately a lot of the mainstream media coverage focuses on the one unobjectionable idea and sort of you know downplays all the bad stuff that's attached to it. And so the average person might see this stuff and go, "Oh, well, the police should have more ability to investigate criminals, but then when you look at all the details in C-22, you see it's about a lot more than that." And that's what you've heard from a lot of my colleagues, you know, like Matt Strauss and Jacob Mantle and others who've come out, you know, and really call this out. And I'm really proud to work with them. And I think they've done an excellent job, you know, shining light on this to the point where now we're seeing all these uh businesses and tech companies in Canada and in other places as well point out just how offside this liberal legislation is.

[00:05:08]>> Absolutely. And let's let's zoom out a little bit. You know, uh a lot of people hear the name Jamil Javanni and they kind of tag a bunch of stuff to it.

[00:05:16]maybe a American lover or you know doesn't like Canada you know all this nonsense. Let's zoom out a bit though.

[00:05:24]Uh let's because people like to tag names and terminology to the name but you are more than that. You are also a person that has grown up in the suburbs of Toronto. You grew up here in Canada.

[00:05:36]Um made it through and went to had an amazing education in postsecary. But where I do know you grew up in a suburb of Toronto, but whereabouts in Toronto did you grow up and what was that like for you?

[00:05:48]>> Yeah. Well, I grew I grew up in a few different places. I moved around a bit as a kid. So, I was in Missaga, Bmpton, and North York. And um yeah, like I I was raised by a single mom. You know, my my my father was not around for most of my childhood. Um certainly myself and my two younger sisters, we saw a side of life that can be very difficult and challenging. When I was in high school, I was labeled illiterate. Um, you know, and I had a really tough time as a student. Um, eventually I figured it out, but it took a lot of effort and a lot of help. And, um, so it's funny when people sort of try to simplify to your point like as if, you know, I am not uh a patriot because I'm not a liberal or that I don't understand this country or because I oppose DEI, I don't understand the diversity of, you know, places like Toronto. It's like that's been my life, dude. You know, and the difference between me and I think a lot of the folks who think that the country is on the right track right now is that I just believe that I learned a lot growing up about what it takes to succeed. People need to be told that working hard is good and that it's not going to be easy to get ahead and that the more challenges you overcome, the tougher you have to be. And we've lost that sense of toughness in our culture to the point now where everybody acts like the government can be a savior and and just wave a magic wand and solve all of your problems. But if you're really trying to help people, you don't feed them that fiction. If you really want to help people, you tell them. You know, you got to take your destiny in your own hands.

[00:07:17]And that's what this country was built on. And that's what I hope the future of this country will come back to is that sense of, you know, we believe in our people. We believe in our ability and our talents and we need a government that, you know, facilitates us to flourish as opposed to trying to control us.

[00:07:35]>> Yeah. And so I I I like that you're saying that because I I it was funny even the way I framed that for you and it was an option to kind of talk more about yourself, but that is something that you don't do very often is you don't like talking about yourself too often. Your focus is you you want to make it about what you can do, what you can provide, how you can have impact.

[00:07:54]And I think that's something that people need to know about you. And that's why I like to try and peel back some of the layers of what Jamil Javanni is because I even remember I think it was last year when you brought up I believe is it you beating cancer. Uh and am I wrong with that? Yeah. And I think that and you reluctantly brought that up because there had been some shenanigans happening behind the scenes of people trying to get information off of you to expose something along those lines.

[00:08:17]>> Yeah, that was a crazy situation, man. I don't I still to this day don't know who it is and and the investigation is not uh revealed to us who did it, but somebody hacked uh you know some some files from the party that included our background checks and put it out as if you know and my point was like look I'm an open book like I'm not trying to hide anything. I come from a situation where yeah we didn't have money in my family so I'm not going to be like poor shamed based on where I come from. But the reason why the cancer stuff came up is like there was a year and a half of my life when I was 30 years old where I couldn't work and uh you know you just think about you know those of us who are over the age of 30. I mean it's a pretty key year a period in your life where you got to establish your career and for me like I had you know student debt to pay and all sorts of stuff and these scumbags were trying to make me like feel ashamed to talk to the public about that. It's like, "No, dude." Like, yeah, I I was a cancer patient for years. I had stage 4 non-Hodgkins lymphoma uh that grew into my spine and you know, it was a very tough period of my life, but it's certainly not one that I will ever be ashamed to talk to people about. And and part of the challenge is like we act like normal people who have normal problems. Like I'm sure everybody who's watching this knows somebody who's been sick and knows somebody who's gotten, you know, a tough hand in life at some point at least. And we're act like we're supposed to be ashamed of that. Like not everybody was born with a silver spoon.

[00:09:48]Not everybody had uh, you know, an easy path to where they are. And I think that's not something to be ashamed of.

[00:09:54]So that's why I like to talk about it sometimes. And even especially as a conservative, like you know, they always want to fearmonger about us, like we are against health care and we don't want poor people to get treatment. It's like I literally would have in most countries would have been six figures plus in debt because I was 30 years old, got diagnosed with cancer, and had no plan for insurance or anything like that, right? And but because of this country making sure we take care of poor people and that poor people don't go bankrupt when they get sick, I didn't have to worry about that. And I I think that's something people need to know is like that's a part of this country. Do does our health care system need a lot of work? Absolutely. But I also think that we should be proud that like we don't put people in debt for getting sick and that's like pretty awesome part of being Canadian. So that's a part of my story and it's a part of a lot of families and um I don't think you have to be this like closed book and be ashamed of the hardships that you go through just because you're in public life. In fact, I think being open about those things makes it better because there's a lot of people who can relate but they don't know that they can survive these things and they can overcome these things and that they can have a a positive life down their road no matter how hard it might be right now.

[00:11:07]I think you bring up something very important there and you talk about public life and you know people people tend to dehumanize those who are on the public light a lot on both sides of the aisle. It's just part of the game. Uh but someone that you you strike me as someone that you know I'm a sports guy so I'm use sports sports terminology here is I think you're an absolute dog.

[00:11:28]Uh you like to get after it. And what do you I think my my main kind of my question is is you have had shifting beliefs over time. Um I think it was an op-ed in national post about five and a half years ago where you talked about where you you you viewed yourself as a liberal going through school. Uh you were a card carrying member of the liberal party. Can you talk about what had may have changed or what was your perspective and what happened over that amount of time to kind of change your perspective and now that you were a conservative MP?

[00:12:02]Yeah, that's it's a good question and I think a lot of people have gone through this and I hope a lot more people will go through this or transformation because when you grow up in the suburbs of Toronto and it's probably similar in big cities like Montreal and Vancouver as well and you're from you know minority community like most of my neighbors are from Jamaica and Trinidad, you get taught very early on that the Liberal Party is the party that welcomed you into Canada, welcomed your father, welcomed your ancestors and you get conditioned to think that if you want to be interested in politics, that's the party that is your home. And that was how I thought through a lot of part big part of my life. When I graduated from law school and I came back to Canada, I was like, oh, I'm, you know, maybe I'm going to want to learn more about politics cuz I I had an interest in law and policy. So, when I thought about getting involved in a political party, I registered to be a member of the Liberals. That was just where my head was at. And after a while, I started to realize like just because my father's black and I'm, you know, a biracial guy, uh, doesn't mean that I have to be like limited to the one political party. And I started to ask more questions about like, do I actually agree with the Liberal Party on things? Do I believe that they share my values? And as I got older, I started to just realize they don't. Um, the reality is I think the Liberal Party views a lot of people from minority communities as if we are just a different skin tone or that we look different than them, but they don't really see that that, you know, we often come from religious backgrounds. We have values that are important to us. And the Liberal Party is actually very hostile to those things. So once they started jumping on the, you know, transgenderism stuff and they started pushing this very anti-Christian view, I just got very uncomfortable with the party. And eventually, you know, as I became more public about my beliefs and I I wound up writing a book and, you know, doing more media like this, um, I realized that, you know, the Conservative Party is where people with my values actually have a place to talk about our values.

[00:14:03]where the Conservative Party doesn't just encourage you to be part of it because they're looking to tokenize you because you look differently, but also to say, "Well, do you actually agree with us on things?" And if you agree with us, it doesn't actually matter what you look like or where you come from, cuz it's a party based on values and ideas. So, that was my my journey towards being a conservative. And, you know, I've always been someone who's like very strong in my opinions. My mom will tell you that I was a very opinionated toddler even. So um you know I started to get very concerned that like people with my views are being pushed out of all sorts of places. You know people were hiding themselves at the workplace so they won't get fired and people were feeling like man if I if I hold a traditional view on things like gender or you know masculinity that like I'm supposed to be running away from the public square. And I just wanted to come out and say no like there's a place for people with these views. I think most Canadians still believe in a traditional sense of sex and gender and I don't want to have to run away from that. So my hope is that anyone listening to this who also grew up in a liberal community will realize you don't have to be a liberal forever and maybe you should look for a political party that shares your values because I think all Canadians deserve that.

[00:15:22]>> Absolutely. And I think we I've been kind of looking through some of the polling that's been taking place and obviously, you know, you're seeing a lot of polling that's still favorable of Mark Carney, but there is an aspect of some of these polls that have been catching my eye recently. And that's the fact that more Canadians now think Canada's on the wrong track than they do think it's the right track. And there's just confusion of where where they think that like the next leader will take them. That's where a lot of the confusion lies right now. And I remember back in January where you know there's a lot of uncertainty around Kosma USMCA our trade agreement with the United States and I'm sure you struck me and you also spoke about this is how you're feeling frustrated by the uncertainty.

[00:16:05]You think Canada is on the wrong track as well. you're a part of that percentage of those polling and you decided to leverage your connections that you have down in DC and go have a conversation of what in God's name is currently going on because there wasn't much information being provided to the Canadian public at the time. You went down in January, you also went back down, I believe in April. What was the difference between those two trips? What was the vibe of the first trip versus the second trip for you?

[00:16:32]>> Well, yeah. So the first trip I went down because you know I've been buddies with JD Vance or Vice President Vance for you know over 15 years now and for me it was like you know the Carne government was telling the Canadian people that they could not work with the Trump administration and I wanted to go see for myself what do those guys have to say and when I went down there I felt like they were actually a lot more receptive to working with Canada especially recognizing the national security issues related to China. Uh, and also recognizing that, you know, our countries will always be doing business together, probably a lot of business together forever. And so we, you know, there was a recognition of that mutually. So I went down there just to see like, is this Carney narrative actually true? And what I found was that it I just didn't think Carney was trying his best to actually get a deal done. I I I was and continue to be worried that Carney is exploiting the tensions between Canada and the United States for his own political benefit because for as long as people blame another country for our economic problems, Carney doesn't have to take responsibility for the fact that as you said, most Canadians don't think the country is going in the right direction right now. So, um I wanted to see that for myself and I I saw it and I shared with Canadians what I was seeing.

[00:17:51]I said, I met with uh Secretary of State Rubio. I met with President Trump. I shared this is what I heard and this is what they told me. I did media interviews to explain like this is what I saw. And of course, you know, the liberals got mad and they called me names and all sorts of stuff because they want to control what people see and who gets to tell the story, but they don't get to control me, right? The people I I'm accountable to are the people who elected me in Bowmanville, Asha North. I'm not accountable to Mark Carney. that's not my boss. My boss are the people in my community. So, I I felt the need to make that point. Um, and then once I kind of got a read of what was going on down there, I started to u get have a lot of conversations with different industries across Canada, different business groups and business communities who were also concerned about the lack of progress on trade negotiations. So, the second trip I took in April was bringing some of those people to see it for themselves, right?

[00:18:49]to meet people in the US government themselves and have that direct conversation. So, it wasn't just me being the middleman, but I could bring them and say, "Why don't you guys talk to each other?" And what we learned from that is I think I I can't speak for every Canadian who was there, but there were a couple dozen Canadians there. And I think what they all saw was there's a lot more possibility of working together than what our federal government has been leading Canadians to believe. And I wish I could take all 40 million Canadians with me to have that that experience because I think they need to know that the future relationship between the two countries doesn't have to be negative. It doesn't have to be toxic or corrosive. There's actually a lot of opportunity between both countries. That's the message I will continue delivering. I frankly don't care what people call me. I don't care about the fingers that get pointed in my direction. I'm a man on a mission. like I'm here to do my job and do what I think is best for the country and uh that will mean that I disagree with Mark Carney a lot because I don't think he's doing what's best for the country right now.

[00:19:54]>> Well, I think I was reported as well that second trip in April. I like kind of I like that you brought that up. You brought a bunch of Canadians uh in terms of business interests down to have those conversations themselves. I believe a part of that group and not the group that you brought but this person was involved uh was uh you uh Canadian ambassador Mark Weisman and I believe it was reported that you guys did talk and or at least were in some type of communication. Is that true? And what did that look like?

[00:20:18]>> Yes, it was true. You know, like out of respect for his role as the ambassador, I wanted to reach out to him and say, "Look, this is something I'm doing. I you should be there if you want to be there." And you know, kudos to him. He took me up on the offer and he joined us. We also had representatives from Manitoba, uh, Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. So, four provincial governments were also represented there as well because, as I said, my goal is just to have other people see the truth. I'm not trying to filter anybody out. So, I was glad he was there. We had a good conversation. You know, he has um, you know, he has an extensive business career before becoming ambassador. I hope he finds ways to make that useful for the country. Um, but you know, at the end of the day, he represents our government and our government is not run by him. It's run by Mark Carney. So, if Mark Carney is not sincere about getting a deal done, there's only so much our ambassador is able to do. And uh, that's why I think it's important for Canadians to remember the buck stops with Carney.

[00:21:16]The lack of progress he has to be accountable for and he can't put that on his ambassador or his chief negotiator or anybody else. He's the one who has should be answering the questions of the public. Unfortunately, he doesn't really talk much about this. He's not very transparent, you know, and that's like part of his approach to politics is skating away from the tough issues because I just don't think he wants to be held accountable.

[00:21:40]>> So, you said something there that caught my ear and that was the fact that you want to bring people down to see the truth. So, from your perspective, what is the sticking point here? What is the issue? You've talked to the American side. You're kind of hearing rumors of rumblings of the Liberal Party appear of what the issues are. if you can, you know, obviously we're not going to know the truth of what's going on, but from your perspective, what in God's name is even going on right now, this relationship?

[00:22:06]>> Yeah. I mean, the key word you use there is relationship, cuz I think people need to understand how much uh of this has been a result of friction between specific personalities, right? Um, President Trump came in and he said a lot of things about Canada that I disagree with and things I wish he didn't say, right? I mean, I don't ever want to be the 51st state. I don't think, you know, the vast majority of Canadians want to be the 51st state.

[00:22:33]We're an independent and proud country, and we should be. But the response to that was not to, you know, resolve any of the issues. The response that was coming from the Canadian government was to exploit that for political gain. And so when we did see some progress last fall and this is the one period of time in this whole last year and a half that I would say Mark Carney was doing something right when it came to the US last October he was negotiating with Trump and they were making progress and then Carney and Doug Ford decided to run an ad during the World Series criticizing President Trump in the United States. Now if you're actually trying to get a deal done that makes no sense. And so the question then became, do they actually want a deal done? And that led to more friction between the two countries. And since then there has not been very much substantive dialogue.

[00:23:26]Thankfully in recent weeks there's been a bit more. But if you want to look at how things could have gone differently if we have different leadership, just look at what happened with Mexico. Trump was equally as insulting to Mexico as he was to Canada. But the Mexican leadership did not exploit that for their own political gain. They put their head down and went to work and they focused on building a relationship with the government. They focused on doing right by their workers and businesses.

[00:23:54]And now there's been tremendous progress in the trade negotiations between Mexico and the United States. We could have taken that approach too. That would have been the best thing for Canada. But we did not. And I believe we did not because we have a government and frankly a liberal party in power that wanted to cash in politically on the issue because they knew a lot of people would take their side and they knew a lot of people might vote for them if they made Donald Trump the boogeyman in Canada. So that was the fork in the road and now you know when I look at it I see that you know we could have made different decisions. We could have focused on being practical instead of emotional. I had a famous comment that made the rounds where I described a lot of the Canadian government's response to the US as being a hissyfitit because that's how I see it. It was very emotional. It was not logical. It was not rational and it was not about getting what was uh best for Canada accomplished. So, you know, that's what I would like to see from Mark Harney. And he still has time. He's going to be prime minister for at least, you know, who knows until when he might call an election, but let's assume for at least a couple more years he's going to be prime minister. He has time to fix this. He has time to course correct. But he will not fix it if we don't tell the truth. And if we're all tiptoeing around everybody's feelings instead of talking about what's right for Canada, he's not going to be forced to be in a position to do right by our country. As a member of the opposition, that's my job. My job is to tell the truth and try to push the government to do the right thing. And that's the approach I've taken. It's the approach I will continue to take.

[00:25:29]>> Well, I really appreciate just your your cander, your honesty, and your perspective. I know my listeners definitely do. Uh we are going to shift over to our our membersonly uh segment where we're going to talk about the likes of Doug Ford and Ontario politics to a degree and kind of your perspective on a lot of it. Uh but before we do that, is there any last comments you want to make to the broader audience?

[00:25:50]Yeah, I just want to say, you know, I know I I'm a I'm a subscriber to your your channel. I'm a I'm a fan of your show and I'm sure a lot of the people who are too, you know, they're getting a lot of good information about this country and I'm sure sometimes that can be frustrating because you're seeing what's going on in Ottawa and you're seeing that the Canadian people don't have a government that they deserve. I just want to encourage people to, you know, don't give up on the fight. I I I I pray and work hard every day and many other people do too that one day you will have a federal government that honors you and that is our goal and you know we'll keep at it.

[00:26:24]>> Awesome. Thank you so much, Jamal.