Jamil Jivani's Confession
If you want to understand a Conservative or a Republican’s intentions, listen carefully to what they are accusing Liberals or Democrats of doing. Every accusation is a confession.
While no Conservative government has taken Canada from deficit to surplus since the 19th century, and economic outcomes are consistently better for the general public under both Liberals and Democrats, the right wing has successfully sold the notion that they are the great defenders of the economy.
As the Trump administration is proving, once again, the only part of the American economy that is doing well is the owner class. Those with enough assets to have real investments are making a killing. The ever-increasing proportion of the population working for subsistence — if that — wages are getting destroyed. For Trump, the “golden age” he describes is referring to his own assets and those of his supporters.
The American right is accusing the left of being communists while taking control of the means of production in what even the right-wing Cato institute refers to as “state capitalism.” Under Trump, the US government has heavily and often forcibly invested in numerous corporations, often blatantly exchanging equity for regulatory approval.
The QAnon movement, if you recall that conspiratorial underpin of the MAGA world, is built on the premise that the west is controlled by the “deep state” who are a sadistic group of child molesters — who will be arrested and executed by Donald Trump. The idea that Trump could possibly be a sex offender after having that backing seems unreasonable to his supporters, but the spread of this wild notion, again, appears to have been far more of a confession.
It is hard to get accurate facts out about any of it as what they call the “liberal media” is increasingly a wholly owned subsidiary of the MAGA movement. The more they accuse the media of a left wing bias, the further to the right goes the media.
The Republicans are a homophobic lot, overwhelmingly opposed to nearly all gay rights, gender fluidity of any sort, and especially sexual contact between people of the same sex, rooted in a Christian ‘family values’ philosophy that sees women as subservient to men, and homosexuality as breaking that hierarchy. Yet Grindr, the gay hook-up app, consistently crashes during major Republican events. And it is ‘family values’ Conservatives who keep getting caught in homosexual relationships. Once again, the accusation is the confession, made all the more ironic in that if they had not locked themselves in the closet and shouted about its existence, nobody would actually have cared what they did in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
In Canada, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre caters to this viewpoint, having once again explicitly refused to attend any of this year’s Pride events.
Poilievre’s consistent accusations against Mark Carney should be taken in the same light. Poilievre’s anger at Carney standing up to Trump’s illegal tariffs, his outrage at Carney getting the Gordie Howe bridge open, his description of Carney living on the public purse, are all confessions. Poilievre would not have defended Canada against Trump, he could not have gotten that bridge open, and he has been living on government money for more than 20 years, even refusing to leave the publicly-funded opposition mansion at Stornoway after losing his election.
That last bit had plenty of precedent. Preston Manning famously derided Stornoway through his time in public life until he became leader of the official opposition in 1997 entitling him to the residence by virtue of his office. After some brief public hesitation, he decided that he should live in the building he had promised to turn into a bingo hall.
The notion that “all politicians are the same” is an essential part of right wing philosophy, masking their own malfeasance behind an intellectually lazy premise.
The objective of all of these is to neuter criticism of their own actions. A public that has been told that the left cannot balance a budget or manage the economy will not blame the right for not being able to, because it is easier to accept that all politicians are incompetent than that they believed the liars.
Right wing government buying up or taking control of private enterprise and the means of production is not communism because communism is bad.
The traditional and social media world being almost entirely owned by far-right oligarchs is justified as a perfectly reasonable counterpoint to liberal media bias.
Republican leadership having so many sex offenders at the top is not an issue because the crazy left wing deep state does it too!
Right wing leaders living on public salaries and housing subsidies while buying up real estate portfolios and shutting the poor out of the housing market is not a problem because the Prime Minister dares to live in his de facto official residence!
Which takes us to Jamil Jivani, the Conservative MP who brags about being university friends with American vice president JD Vance. The one who traveled to Washington to negotiate on Canada’s behalf without any such mandate. The one more comfortable with American leaders and philosophies than Canada’s. He has spent this week accusing Mark Carney of wanting to be the leader of the Democrats.
It is an absurd argument, barely worth dignifying with a response, except that it was published in that bastion of liberal media bias, the National Post. His premise is that Carney met Josh Shapiro, Elissa Slotkin, and Pete Buttigieg, all potential candidates for the Democratic nomination in the 2028 election, back in May at an event organised by the Center for American Progress.
Jivani states in his bizarre op-ed: “Canada needs leadership that will do what’s necessary, not what’s fashionable. That means treating Canadian families as a priority, not chasing international applause or globalist approval.”
While he is accusing Carney of wanting to lead the Democrats, something which Carney would have no interest, reason, or even American constitutional ability to do, it is Jivani who has been spending his time in office trying to be a part of the Trump administration, to portray himself as a leader in the Republican movement and its Canadian subsidiary, while seeking international applause and American approval. To paraphrase his own conclusion, Bowmanville—Oshawa North deserves a Member of Parliament who will put Canada first.
It is increasingly clear that Jivani intends to succeed Poilievre, to take over the Maple MAGA movement, and to continue the Conservative path toward Canadian subservience to American interests as little more than a vassal state.
The accusation is, once again, the confession.