Jamil Jivani just can't stop digging |
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. That’s known as the “First Law of Holes,” and it’s wisdom the caucus colleagues of Conservative MP Jamil Jivani desperately need to familiarize him with before he digs any deeper into the political hole they’ve all found themselves in.
It was bad enough that he decided to freelance a trip down to the White House, where he met his old friend, US Vice President JD Vance, and returned with assurances from US President Donald Trump that he “loves” Canadians just a few days before Trump threatened to arbitrarily close the new Gordie Howe Bridge in Windsor. The comments he made on a Breitbart (yes, that Breitbart) show might be even worse, at least as far as his political party’s fortunes are concerned: “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.”
This won’t help Canada’s Conservatives get themselves out of the hole they’ve spent the past 14 months digging. Their stubborn insistence on portraying the Liberal Party as a bigger threat to Canada’s future than Trump cost Pierre Poilievre an election everybody — including me, it should be said — thought he couldn’t possibly lose. As my colleague Supriya Dwivedi wrote recently, “you can’t claim to be on Team Canada when you are reciting Team Trump talking points at Canadians. The Conservatives should have figured that out days into the last federal election.”
Somehow, it seems, they still haven’t figured it out. At his leadership convention speech in Calgary last month, Poilievre didn’t even mention Trump by name, much less call out the way Trump has treated the country Poilievre so desperately wants to lead. Instead, he saved all of his vitriol and venom for Prime Minister Mark Carney, the guy trying to protect Canada from Trump’s increasingly delusional gaze. “Mr. Carney likes to make grand speeches around the world, while making Canadians pay more here,” he told the audience. “Clearly, Mr. Carney is a big shot elsewhere, but a small player at home.”
That line might have played well with the Conservative faithful in Calgary, but the broader public clearly isn’t buying it. In the latest Abacus Data survey, taken after Poilievre’s big convention speech, the Conservatives trail the Liberals by a staggering 44 points when it comes to which party is best to take on Donald Trump and his administration. That’s a key issue for Canadians and it’s probably not a coincidence that this poll also has Carney’s Liberals ahead by seven points, the biggest lead that Abacus has reported for them (or anyone) since the 2025 election.
Those numbers are unlikely to improve for the Conservatives so long as they insist on pretending it’s still 2015. According to a recent EKOS poll that asked Canadians to describe their impressions of various major countries, the United States has a -50 net unfavourability, with a whopping 70 per cent of respondents rating it unfavourably. Only Russia is more unpopular among Canadians. And yet, for some reason, Jivani thought it would be a good idea for him to head down to Washington and get chummy with an administration most Canadians revile. “I think we found a lot of commonality in what we want to achieve for our respective countries,” he told Breitbart.
Canadians aren’t looking for commonality with this administration. Even last summer, when Trump had yet to threaten Greenland and the Gordie Howe Bridge, polls showed that a huge majority — 80 per cent in a Nanos survey — of Canadians didn’t trust his administration to honour his word in a trade deal. Not surprisingly, then, they’re not looking to rush into one. As pollster Bruce Anderson told Peter Mansbridge on his podcast last week, “the number of people who say we should take the time necessary to get a good deal is 75 per cent now. It was about 25 per cent if we go back a year.”
The Conservative Party of Canada can't seem to find its footing, or its tongue, when it comes to criticizing Donald Trump. Jamil Jivani's solo trip down to Washington isn't going to help them there.
What we want is a path that leads away from our longstanding dependence on the United States, and it’s one the prime minister just happens to be busy building. As Politico reported last week, Carney is “spearheading” discussions around a massive economic alliance between the European Union and a “12-nation Indo-Pacific bloc,” one that presumably includes Canada. That’s a good start.
The Conservative Party of Canada is, of course, free to continue digging their hole. Maybe they feel like they can’t compete with Carney’s Captain Canada campaign. And maybe they worry that the disproportionately high number of Trump supporters in their base makes it dangerous for them to climb out of the hole. But they might want to get Jivani to put the shovel down before he ends up burying them all under a Liberal electoral landslide.