Jamil Jivani

Jamil Jivani (born October 24, 1987) is a Canadian politician, radio host, and political commentator.

He is the founder of the Policing Literacy Initiative, is a co-founder of Teachers Beyond the Classroom, sat on the Premier's Council on Equality of Opportunity and is the Advocate for Community Opportunities for the Doug Ford government.

He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a Conservative for the Ontario riding of Durham in a by-election held on March 4, 2024, which was held following the resignation of former Opposition Leader Erin O'Toole.

Jivani was born in Toronto, Ontario, to an immigrant father from Kenya and a mother who is Scottish-Irish from the United Kingdom.

He grew up with his two sisters, who their mother raised in Brampton.

Jivani also has two stepbrothers through his father side.

After attending Fletcher’s Creek Senior Public School then Mississauga's Gordon Graydon Memorial Secondary School, Jivani attended Humber College and York University.

In 2013, he earned his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

Before attending law school, Jivani worked as a dishwasher and line cook in local Toronto area restaurants.

While a student at Yale, Jivani was Program Director of the Yale Chapter of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project and President of the Yale Black Law Students Association.

He was also part of the Innovations in Policing Clinic, in which he authored a case study of police-community relations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Jivani also interned at the office of Cory Booker, the then-mayor of Newark, and current Democratic U.S. Senator from New Jersey.

At Yale, he was a classmate and best friend of future Republican Senator from Ohio and author of Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance.

In 2013 Jivani founded the Policing Literacy Initiative (PLI), a youth-driven public education and advocacy group focused on community safety issues.

Jivani stated to CBC Metro Morning that the purpose of PLI is to spotlight progressive voices among police and community groups and work with them to find common solutions.

Jivani was a 2013-14 Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance DiverseCity Fellow.

As a Fellow, he co-founded Teachers Beyond the Classroom, which seeks to "help thousands of unemployed teachers transfer their skills to non-school employment opportunities across the Greater Toronto Area."

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto.

Jivani was also a 2014–15 articling student at Torys LLP.

Jivani wrote an editorial for the National Post in February 2014 about his experience with Toronto Police and the Office of the Independent Police Review Director and the use of mediated conversations for citizen complaints.

In April 2014, Jivani co-produced with Dan Epstein a documentary about police-community relations titled "Crisis of Distrust: Police and Community in Toronto."

On February 13, 2014, Jivani was named Yale Alumni Magazine's Newsmaker of the Week.

On December 11, 2019, the Government of Ontario appointed Jivani as the province's first Advocate for Community Opportunities.

In this role, and as a Special Advisor to the Premier, Jivani opened lines of communication between communities and the government to empower community members and enabled them to increase their participation in government decision-making.

Critics, such as his former mentor Neil Price, felt that Jivani used his role to criticize the communities that he was supposed to uplift.

He was reappointed on April 1, but resigned on June 9 after criticizing Education Minister Stephen Lecce on social media over the closure of schools and vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jivani moderated the first unofficial debate during the 2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election where he took aim at Patrick Brown, who skipped the debate by arguing that he was manipulating diaspora politics to boost his campaign.

Jivani later revealed in 2020 that few years after law school, he held card-carrying member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

In 2020, he was appointed senior fellow for Diversity and Empowerment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a conservative, libertarian think tank affiliated with the US Atlas Network.

His association with the Institute ended in 2023.

He later became president of the Canada Strong and Free Network, but stepped down to announce his candidacy for the Conservative nomination in Durham.

He has written about youth and equality issues for Huffington Post.

and has articles published frequently in Postmedia chains.

On September 8, 2020, Bell Media announced that Jamil Jivani would host a new weekday nightly radio talk show Tonight with Jamil Jivani, from 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM.

The show would air on CFRB and across the iHeart Radio Network.

In February 2021, Bell Media went under a corporate restructuring within its radio division.

It was announced Jamil Jivani would move to the 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM time slot and his show would be rebranded as The Jamil Jivani Show.

Jivani was later fired from Bell Media, which he claimed was due to him not conforming to Black stereotypes.

In August 2022, Jamil Jivani sued Bell Media for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract.

Bell filed a statement of defence, claiming that Jivani was let go because he showed disdain for concerns raised by Bell management over issues such as avoiding pushing back against COVID-19 misinformation and misgendering Demi Lovato.