Jamil Jivani, a conservative member of Canada’s Parliament who represents Bowmanville-Oshawa North, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that Canadian officials are harming the country with their “anti-American hissy fit” on trade.
Jivani joined Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle on the program on the heels of meeting with President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this month, which led to a liberal member of parliament, John-Paul Danko, labeling Jivani a Nazi sympathizer.
Jivani, who has known Vance for a decade and a half, said he took it upon himself to meet with top American officials because of the stalemate and lack of communication between the two countries on trade.
“I’ve been friends with Vice President Vance for 15 years now. We went to law school together, so I’ve been watching this whole thing go on for months and months now, where the Canadian economy is genuinely struggling. We’re losing jobs. We lost 52,000 private sector jobs in the last month alone. They’re saying we’re in a recession watch. So I thought, you know, let me go down there,” Jivani said. “I know the vice president, let me go chat with him, see if there’s anything I can do to help build a bridge between our two governments because right now, it’s been three and a half months of very little dialogue between the two countries, and so I got a chance to meet President Trump as well. You know, good conversations.”
“I found them very receptive to a lot of what I had to say. And I think most Canadians saw that and said, ‘Great, this guy’s trying to help.’ But a lot of the liberals in my country just had a total freak out. And, you know, I’ve been called a Nazi. I’ve been called all kinds of juvenile names in response to this. And, you know, I mean, from my point of view, this is about trying to save Canadian jobs, and these guys have tried to turn this into, you know, petty, schoolyard insults. So it’s been an insane last week and a half trying to figure out how to get some of these folks to grow up and mature so we can hopefully get a deal done with the president.”
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Jivani emphasized that he is a black man when underscoring the absurdity of being labeled a Nazi sympathizer.
“Just for some context, Matt, I am a black man, and I am the first black member of Parliament from my riding, or, as Americans call it district, so that’s who they’re calling, a Nazi, right? Like, that’s how crazy this has gotten, where it’s just illogical,” he noted. “And what we’re trying to put across here is, you know, there’s a pathway forward, and America and Canada need each other.”
“We share the largest border in the world. We have to work together. But for Canada in particular, three-quarters of our exports go through the United States,” he added. “We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we continue this anti-America… hissy fit, and this is the kind of reason I’m trying to talk into our government and some of the liberals who have just gone way off the reservation on this.”
Jivani told Boyle that there is common ground between what he wishes Canada could achieve and what the Trump administration wishes to achieve in the United States, particularly regarding the revitalization of manufacturing locales in both countries.
“I’m certainly optimistic after… chatting with the president, the vice president. I mean, I shared with them that I think we need a sense of urgency to get this done,” he said. “You know, I have people losing jobs in my community, in large part due to the uncertainty that has been created by the lack of progress on a trade agreement here. You know, the president was clear to me. He said, ‘Please tell the Canadians I love them.’ I think he wants Canadians to understand that whatever issues exist between our governments, it is not a reflection of his views of the Canadian people, which I think is an important thing for people to know and keep in mind.”
“They are very clear in their desire to want to rebuild American towns and cities that have been gutted by the decline of American manufacturing,” he continued. “That is the vision of the Trump administration. That is the vision of the vice president to want to rebuild places like Toledo, and Cleveland, and Detroit, and so, you know, they shared that priority with me… and I understand that because on the Canadian side of the border, we want to do the same for similar towns like Hamilton and Oshawa. So I think we found a lot of commonality in what we want to achieve for our respective countries. Where we need to get to now is a point of dialogue where we can do that together, where it is not an opportunity cost to grow jobs in the auto industry in Canada, but we can actually be supporting the growth of manufacturing on both sides of the border at the same time.”
Jivani emphasized he wants to see a “willingness” from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to engage in dialogue, adding that while Mexico and the United States have made progress on trade talks, the same cannot be said for Canada. Jivani said it is a “red flag” that Canada is unable to make progress but Mexico is.
“It’s a huge red flag, right, because it shows that progress is possible,” he said. “Why is it not happening with Canada? And you know, the ball is in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s court. Like I’ve offered to help him, I think it’d be awesome if we went down there together. I think we’d get a lot done working together. But he’s got to decide whether that’s something he wants to do or not. I’ve met with his minister in charge of U.S.-Canada trade. I’ve talked to him. I’ve made clear that to me, this is not about fighting with the prime minister. This is about trying to get something done for the good of our country. It’s up to him whether he wants to do it or not.”
And while Canada has not made progress on a trade deal with the United States, it is deepening ties with China. Canada entered into a preliminary trade agreement with China in January, as other nations around the globe seek an off-ramp from ties to China and the Belt and Road Initiative.
Jivani said that Canada furthering its relationship with China is “100 percent” a mistake.
“I do believe we can turn it around, but it is going to, frankly, take… a reality check. As you describe. Sometimes it takes way too long for politicians to get a reality check on China,” Jivani told Boyle. “We have said to China, we are going to take in 50,000 of their electric vehicles that comes with their technology that we know can be used to spy on people. We know it creates a whole bunch of national security risks. Keeping in mind, by the way, Matt, they’re not taking any of our cars. They’re not taking any Canadian or American-made cars. So it’s a one-way deal here, and it’s not good for our country. It’s not good for our auto industry. It’s a huge problem.”
“I think the only reason why this was even possible is because so much anti-American resentment has been ginned up among, you know, liberals in Canada, and so it made China look better,” he added. “But I’ll tell you, less than a decade ago, we were voting in our parliament that China is a genocidal government, and look how fastly things change. You go from calling them a genocidal government to now wanting to buy their cars. I don’t like it. I think it’s really bad news. The president is right to call it out, and I think we need to reverse course.”
At the end of the conversation, Boyle asked Jivani about his Restore the North Tour, which mirrors the initiative of college campus outreach in America spearheaded by the late Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated at Utah Valley University in September.
“We started planning it before the great Charlie Kirk was assassinated; rest in peace. But… in the aftermath of that tragedy, there were so many Canadian students who spent their entire lives watching him on YouTube, and wanted to honor that same commitment to free speech and free debate that he represents,” Jivani said. “So we got so many invitations to go to Canadian universities and colleges, and we’ve been doing this tour since October now, very much like Charlie did — open concept, open dialog, you know, not closing people down or making them feel censored in any way. We want to hear what people have to say.”
“And the biggest message we’re getting from Canadian students, especially young men, is concern over jobs, concern over how immigration policy is affecting their job prospects, and feeling like they are anxious about the future they have in our country right now because of the way the economy is going. So that’s been overwhelmingly the message that we hear,” he added. “We don’t find students being very stereotypical at the sort of blue-haired activist — that’s not the majority of the students we encounter, the majority are really just concerned about having a good life and wanting politicians like me to hear them out and represent them well. And that’s what we try to do.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.