Conservative MP-elect Jamil Jivani leaves after a meeting of the Conservative caucus on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, on May 6, 2025.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Jamil Jivani, the Conservative MP, and American Vice-President JD Vance are close friends. A Black guy from Toronto and a white guy from Appalachia, they bonded at Yale Law School where, as Mr. Jivani recalls, they felt like “fish out of water” at elitist wine-and-cheese liberal gatherings.

At Mr. Vance’s 2014 wedding, Mr. Jivani read a Bible passage. He helped run a non-profit social welfare organization for Mr. Vance in Ohio.

Last month, Mr. Jivani wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney, saying he was prepared to use his personal contact with the Vice-President to help build better relations and ease tensions between Ottawa and the Donald Trump White House.

Those tensions hardly abated in Davos on Wednesday, with the bully President saying in a warning to Mr. Carney that “Canada lives because of the United States.”

Mr. Jivani stressed that any effort to speak with the White House would be undertaken in a bipartisan spirit. “I ask with humility, would you please consider how I might be able to help in a way that is constructive and strategically aligned........

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