Two men from disparate backgrounds who say they forged a friendship while feeling like outsiders at an elite American institution could help chart the future of the Canada-U.S. relationship.
Those men are Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance — who was picked by former president Trump as his running mate on Monday — and Jamil Jivani, the Conservative MP who was elected to Parliament in a byelection earlier this year.
If their respective parties win power this year and next, the long personal history between these two political neophytes could be an asset for Canada, some politics-watchers say.
Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman told CBC’s Power & Politics she is “very happy” to see Trump pick Vance, someone she said is well-known at the embassy for “supporting the Canada-U.S. relationship.”
Power & Politics asks Canada’s ambassador to the United States how the dramatic U.S. election campaign affects the ‘Team Canada’ push.
Some European diplomats, meanwhile, are fearful of Vance, an avowed isolationist who’s campaigned against more aid for Ukraine.
A second Trump term — which, according to most polls, is the likely scenario — could be a turbulent one for Canada, with talk of a renewed trade war and a sustained push to make allies spend a lot more on defence or risk losing U.S. military support.
Canada is highly dependent on U.S. trade. It’s also a long-time laggard on defence spending.
Under a Conservative government, Jivani could be Canada’s conduit to the Oval Office.
Anthony Koch, a former spokesperson for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, said it doesn’t hurt that one of Poilevre’s high-profile recruits is close personal friends with a possible vice-president who’s familiar with Canada and its people.
“But at the end of the day, national interest will trump personal interest,” Koch told CBC News.
“I suspect both Jamil and J.D. are primarily concerned with serving their constituents more so than being chummy-chummy with the other side. But, yeah, it’s cool, we’ll see.”
Vance — a self-described “hillbilly” who grew up in a white working-class Ohio family with roots in neighbouring Kentucky’s coal country — and Jivani, the Black son of a single mother from a Toronto suburb, were classmates at Yale Law School.
It was there that the two became, according to Jivani, “best friends.”
“We attended a wine-and-cheese reception. I didn’t know so many different kinds of cheese existed. And I had never tasted wine before. Needless to say, I felt out of place. Across the room stood a fellow student who seemed equally unfamiliar with wine and cheese,” Jivani wrote of Vance in a November 2020 National Post op-ed.
“We went on to develop a strong friendship, forged through moments of shared discomfort over the course of our three years in the Ivy League.”
Jivani also performed the Bible reading at Vance’s wedding to his wife, Usha. In a social media post, Jivani described the U.S. senator-turned-VP candidate as his “brother.”
While previously unfamiliar with “hillbillies” and the people of Appalachia, Jivani said he bonded with Vance over their similar personal circumstances — growing up with poverty, addiction, “fatherlessness” and inadequate health care.
Jivani was not available for an interview.
Vance achieved fame after his book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a best-seller amid Trump’s rise to the presidency.
Vance’s memoir depicts his struggle to succeed in a “rust belt” town damaged by drug addiction and job loss as the manufacturing base was destroyed, in part, by globalization.
Vance’s book was praised by critics for offering an inside look at why so many working-class voters in Middle America have grown disaffected with their political leaders.
After the book’s success, Vance formed Our Ohio Renewal, a charitable organization focused on economic and social revitalization, and tapped Jivani to run its day-to-day operations — a testament to their continuing closeness years after their time at Yale.
‘I think people don’t love Trump, but they’re willing to listen to him because he’s diagnosing the problems around them,’ says author J.D. Vance.
The short-lived organization did relatively little work and brought in only about $300,000 in donations, according to a New York Times investigation.
Jivani would later say the group’s work was derailed by his cancer diagnosis — his lymphoma is now in remission. Our Ohio Renewal was wound down as Vance plunged into electoral politics.
But the group’s stated purpose — to tackle joblessness, the opioid crisis and broken families — reveals what drives these two millennial political figures.
In a 2017 video recorded at an event in Toledo, Ohio, where Jivani was representing Vance and his charity, the Canadian tied manufacturing job losses in the American heartland to drug addiction and broken families.
Jivani argued for more government intervention through community benefit agreements that guarantee jobs and benefits from companies that get government contracts.
In another era, conservatives like Vance and Jivani might have touted private sector solutions as the only fix.
Vance, an economic nationalist, and Jivani — a cultural warrior and critic of “wokeness” and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies — are on the frontlines of the fight to reshape conservatism into a form that eschews total devotion to free markets and free trade and supposed political correctness.
Jai Chabria, a former political adviser to Vance during his Senate race, said the VP pick is all about Trump’s nationalistic and protectionist “America First” agenda.
“J.D. Vance is probably the best person to go on TV and very tough environments with hostile hosts [to] advocate for his vision. He has the ability to communicate a message to the cocktail party set, but also to everyday working class Americans,” Chabria said when asked if Vance is the right pick for the job.
“He wants what’s best for America.”
In an April 2020 interview for Jivani’s now-defunct YouTube series, The Road Home, the two men discussed economic decline, disorienting technological change, the decline of the two-parent family unit and the rise of China.
Vance, a critic of libertarians, lamented the decline of traditional working class institutions like churches and unions and the demonization of civic nationalism.
While he’s the product of a prestigious law school with past work experience as a venture capitalist in San Francisco, Vance accused “elites” of ignoring people outside big, wealthy cities.
“The elite business class in our respective countries has become hyper-international. If you talk to a bank consultant in Toronto or Vancouver, would they feel more comfortable having dinner with an elite lawyer in Paris? Or a coal miner or an oil and gas worker in Alberta?” Vance told Jivani.
“For the elites of the U.S., there’s this gravitational velocity where their interests are no longer connected to the working class of their own country.”
In his March byelection victory speech, Jivani also railed against “liberal elites” in the Liberal Party but also people who run big corporations like banks and telecoms and Canada’s public schools.
Conservative MP-elect Jamil Jivani says his win in the byelection for the Greater Toronto Area riding of Durham shows the Conservative Party best represents the values of Canadians’ communities.
This sort of populist, anti-corporate rhetoric runs through the Vance-Jivani strain of conservatism.
In his interview with Jivani, Vance said corporate behemoths like Apple and Google develop products in North America only to offshore manufacturing to cheaper jurisdictions like China ��— depriving workers on this continent of good jobs that can sustain a middle-class family.
Vance said the U.S. has to take a hard look at its relationship with China.
“We want to ensure our critical supply chains are controlled by America or actual allies like Canada or the U.K., as opposed to the Chinese,” Vance said in his interview with Jivani.
Vance has since endorsed Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs as high as 10 per cent on all U.S. trading partners as part of a bid to spur companies to make more products in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
In an op-ed he wrote in 2021 with former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer — who renegotiated the trade pact with Canada and Mexico — Vance said Mexico is one reason why “America’s industrial core” has been “hollowed out.”
“These policies have made our country far less self-sufficient economically,” Vance said, suggesting further changes may be needed to the trilateral trade deal.
But Vance’s state depends on Canada — Ohio exports $21.4 billion in goods to Canada annually, according to government data. Ohio sells more goods to this country than to its next eight largest foreign markets combined.
“He’s going to fight for what’s best for America — not necessarily other parts of the world,” Chabria said of Vance. “There are some conversations to be had with the rest of the world.”