Conservative MP Jamil Jivani is accusing Ontario Premier Doug Ford of interfering with the Tories’ federal election campaign.
Jivani criticized Ford during an election night interview on April 28, noting that Ford was critical of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign in recent weeks while praising Liberal Leader Mark Carney and cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland after recent meetings.
“He’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 in something new and something different — not being a hype man to the Liberal party,” Jivani said during an April 28 interview with CBC News.
Ford met with Carney shortly after he became Liberal leader on March 12 for what he called a “positive and productive” discussion on U.S. tariffs. He also met with Liberal MP and former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on March 18 to discuss reducing interprovincial trade barriers.
Jivani, who was re-elected in the Bowmanville-Oshawa North riding, said he disagrees with the way Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have handled health care and education, but has stayed quiet “out of respect.”
“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 with some kind of political genius that we needed to be taking cues from,” Jivani said.
Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke said during the campaign that the Conservative Party had committed “campaign malpractice” by falling steeply in popularity. When questioned about the statements on April 14, Ford said the federal Tories would not have experienced such a downturn had Teneycke served as campaign manager for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, noting that “sometimes the truth hurts.”
The Liberals had a minority government of 169 seats as of 3 p.m. EST on April 29, while the Conservatives had 144 seats. Poilievre also lost his Ottawa-area riding of Carleton, which he had held since 2004.
When questioned about Ford’s impact on the federal Conservatives and the race’s conclusion, Jivani said he viewed the premier as a “problem for Ontario and for Canada.”
“I think he’s not doing a great job at running this province, and now he’s trying to exercise his influence over other levels of government,“ he said. ”And it’s not like this guy is doing anything particularly well.”
Jivani, who previously worked for the Ontario premier in the role of community opportunities advocate and as a special advisor from 2019 to 2022, said Ford had turned the party into “something hollow, unprincipled, something that doesn’t solve problems.”
During his time with the Ford government Jivani had openly criticized the province’s pandemic policies and then-Education Minister Stephen Lecce over school closures at the time. He resigned his post as an advisor to Ford in 2022, saying he was said he was “compelled” to publicly challenge pandemic decisions made by the Ford government.
When asked on April 29 about Jivani’s election comments, Ford said he was “focusing on unity right across this country,” and that “each other [sic] are not the enemies.”
“There’s one person that’s causing a real problem—not just here, around the world—and that’s President Trump,” Ford said in reference to the U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada.
When asked whether he thought Poilievre should resign as Conservative leader, Ford said that would be up to Poilievre and the federal Conservatives.
“It’s hard to run a federal campaign,” he said. “He worked very, very hard. The people have spoken, the people are never wrong, they have a reason why they vote the way they do, and I just want to move the province forward.”
Ford commented during an April 24 discussion at the Public Policy Forum’s 2025 Canada Growth Summit in Toronto that lately he has been accused by critics of being a Liberal.
“I don’t care about political stripes. I really don’t,” he said. “I work with the Liberal federal government excellent ... I'd work with the Conservative government.”
