ADAMS: Jamil Jivani does not speak for Bowmanville—Oshawa North.

This is a hard week for lots of people in my riding. Workers in Oshawa, small manufacturers along Highway 2, families in Bowmanville who already stretch every paycheque, people in my community and across the country are staring at 50% tariffs and wondering what comes next. When your MP puts out a statement in response to a serious situation like this, you'd hope it lands somewhere close to reality.

Jamil Jivani's statement did not do that.

Jamil opened with solemn words about tough conversations around kitchen tables; he then went straight to blaming Mark Carney and Doug Ford for putting “political self-interests ahead of Canadian workers.”

As always, he has nothing to say about his friends in the Trump administration that actually imposed the tariffs or the last-minute American demands that, according to our own government, would have limited Canada's ability to sign deals with anyone else. Just the familiar script: Liberals bad, Conservatives good.

I have knocked on doors with Bridget Girard more times than I can count this past year. On countless porches and doorsteps, I have heard the same story from people who used to vote Conservatives like Erin O'Toole without thinking twice; they are done with Jamil. One longtime Conservative in North Oshawa put it bluntly: “He's not our guy anymore. He's Vance’s guy.” Another in Bowmanville said she stopped answering his mailers after he called Canadian anger at Trump an “anti-American hissy fit.”

Jamil likes to present himself as the fighter for the working class, but look at what he actually does; he flies to Washington, meets his old Yale classmate JD Vance, comes home, and lectures the rest of us about unity while never once telling us what was said in his closed-door sessions.

The timing of his statement dropped before Pierre Poilievre's own response, and by name-checking Poilievre and claiming he encouraged him to “keep fighting,” Jamil implied this partisan garbage statement to be something his party would endorse. Poilievre later said the U.S. tariffs were unjustified and that Canadians must stand united, which is the line a serious national opposition should take. Jamil's version was nothing more than personal score-settling at a moment an external power decides to squeeze our industries.

President Trump has spent the past two years questioning our sovereignty and treating CUSMA like a suggestion. The United States solely is responsible for setting the midnight deadline and then moving the goalposts at the last minute. Of course, Carney can (and should) be criticized for earlier concessions like the bridge revenue share, the alcohol restocking requests, and the Online New Act being almost repealed.

Those are fair targets, but pretending this entire problem begins and ends with Carney and Ford is as ridiculous as blaming a homeowner for a fire after an arsonist set their house on fire.

Our riding did not elect a parallel foreign minister. Jamil's pattern of using our community as backdrop for his Washington-first, partisan-shots-second agenda has already cost the federal Conservatives support on the ground in my riding, and the longer Jamil remains in caucus delivering this message, the more damage he does to his party's brand and to any chance of a united, non-partisan, Canada-first response.

Conservative leaders of old removed members when their words and actions crossed lines before. If the Conservative Party wants to be taken seriously as a patriotic opposition that can hold the government accountable while still putting our country first, it cannot afford to keep giving a platform to someone who consistently soft-pedals anti-Canadian ideologies while hard-targeting Canadian leaders.

It is time for the Poilievre Conservatives to decide whether this pro-Trump agenda belongs in their caucus.

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