'Hype man for the Liberal party': Ontario Tory Jamil Jivani unloads on Premier Doug Ford

Jamil Jivani, the newly re-elected member of Parliament for Bowmanville — Oshawa North, tore a strip off Ontario Premier Doug Ford in an election-night interview with CBC News. “I see Doug Ford as a problem for Ontario and for Canada,” Conservative MP Jivani said. “He has taken the provincial Conservative Party and turned it into something hollow, unprincipled, something that doesn’t solve problems.” Jivani, who was elected to the federal Parliament in a byelection following the resignation of former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole in March 2024, called Ford an “opportunist.”

Conservative incumbent Jamil Jivani in an interview with CBC delivers a blistering response to Ontario Premier Doug Ford whom he accuses of sticking his nose into the federal election campaign. Applause breaks out at party HQ. #cdnpoli #Election2025 pic.twitter.com/XFCMOkdOLj— Stephanie Taylor (@StephTaylornews) April 29, 2025

Ford was re-elected as Ontario premier following a snap election in February. Jivani said during that campaign the federal Conservatives stayed out of Ford’s way, even if some conservatives had differences of opinion on how Ford had managed Ontario. “When it was our turn to run an election, he couldn’t stay out of our business, always getting his criticisms and all his opinions out, distracting our campaign, trying to make it about him, trying to position himself as some kind of political genius that we need to be taking cues from,” said Jivani. Ford’s campaign manager, Kory Teneycke, was a scathing critic of federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign strategy during the election, which saw the Conservatives fail to win government. “Blowing a 25-point lead and being like 10 points down is campaign malpractice at the highest level,” Teneycke said on a podcast recently . Asked about remarks Teneycke had made, Ford said that Teneycke would have done a better job than the people running Poilievre’s campaign. “But sometimes the truth hurts,” Ford said. Prior to entering federal politics, Jivani was a political appointee of Ford’s government. “I tried to fix problems in this province, and he kept getting in his way, and all his goons around him all the time, they wouldn’t make anything better. And now we’re seeing him because  — this guy’s a political genius because he beat (Ontario Liberal Leader) Bonnie Crombie and former Liberal leader Steven Del Duca? And now we got to sit around getting advice from him? No, no,” said Jivani. There have, according to media reports, long been simmering tensions between the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and the federal Conservatives. Additionally, Ford has been friendly with former federal Liberal finance minister Chrystia Freeland. “He and I have actually come to describe one another as each other’s therapists,” Freeland, speaking of her relationship with Ford during the COVID-19 pandemic, told the Toronto Star in April 2020. Ford also met with Prime Minister Mark Carney last month at an Etobicoke diner. “(Ford’s) glad-handing with Chrystia Freeland, having coffees and lattes with Mark Carney, and I’m sitting here saying we need to be fighting for change and something new and something different, not being a hype man to the Liberal party,” Jivani said Monday night.

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