Conservative Jamil Jivani wins federal byelection in Ontario riding of Durham

Conservative candidate Jamil Jivani handily won the federal byelection in Durham on Monday, with preliminary results from Elections Canada showing he secured more than 57 per cent of the vote share.

"We set out to send Justin Trudeau a message and I think we were successful," Jivani told supporters at a restaurant in Clarington, Ont., after results came in.

The win means Jivani, a lawyer and commentator, will take over the Greater Toronto Area seat once held by former Tory leader Erin O'Toole. The byelection was triggered by O'Toole's retirement from politics and subsequent resignation last year.

With 100 per cent of polls reporting, preliminary results suggest that 18,610 voters cast their ballot for Jivani. Liberal candidate and runner-up Robert Rock got 7,285 votes, about 22.5 per cent of the vote share.

Jivani managed to increase the Conservative vote share in the riding relative to the 2021 federal election. In that contest, 46.4 per cent of total votes went to O'Toole, while the Liberal runner-up secured 29.9 per cent of votes.

Durham, a riding with a mix of suburban and rural areas, has been a Tory stronghold for two decades.

Meanwhile, turnout in Monday's byelection was low. Only about 27.9 per cent of Durham's 116,259 eligible voters cast a ballot, preliminary results from Elections Canada show. Official figures should be released in the coming days.

Jivani is a past president of the Canada Strong and Free Network, the political advocacy group and think-tank formerly known as the Manning Centre, and has penned columns for the National Post and the Toronto Sun.

He grew up in Brampton and earned his law degree at Yale University. He's written about his close friendship with J.D. Vance, his one-time Yale classmate who became a bestselling author with his book Hillbilly Elegy and now serves as a Republican senator for Ohio. Vance is a vocal political ally of former U.S. president Donald Trump.

Jivani is the founder of the Policing Literacy Initiative, a think tank dedicated to improving policing and community safety practices through a youth-driven approach, and the the author of the 2019 book Why Young Men, which examines the phenomenon of violence perpetrated by young men.

Turnout in Monday's election was about 27.9 per cent, according to preliminary results from Elections Canada. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

In his victory speech, Jivani repeatedly criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his governing Liberals.

"Justin Trudeau doesn't really know what to do with people like me. And he doesn't know what to do with a lot of people in this room. He looks at us and he thinks that his party owns us and owns our communities," Jivani said.

"He looks at me and sees a millennial, son of an African immigrant, grandson of a public school custodian, survivor of cancer thanks to our public health-care system and raised by a single mother. And he thinks that people like me owe his party something, that we have to fall in line behind his party. I obviously disagree," he added.

While Monday's results won't shift the balance of power in the House of Commons, they could serve as a preview to the relative strength of the parties in the electorally critical GTA with a federal election looming next year. They come as public polling suggests Pierre Poilievre's Tories hold a double-digit lead over the Liberals.

"Durham wants Pierre Poilievre to be the next prime minister of Canada. I think that has been the resounding message from Scugog to Oshawa to Clarington," Jivani said.

"I think there are many conservatives like me ... who acknowledge that in 2024, it is our party that best represents the values of our communities."

Jivani was at the centre of a controversy in July 2020 when he posted on Twitter that heightened gun violence in Toronto was in part caused by "young gangsters" starting online "drama." Jivani was at the time advising Premier Doug Ford's government on how to reach out to at-risk communities.

In January 2022, he was dropped from his show on Bell's iHeartRadio network and has since sued the company, alleging breach of contract and wrongful dismissal. He's arguing the company fired him because he did not fit their stereotype of a Black man. The company denies the allegations.