Why Arif Virani ran for Parliament

All heavy stuff, but Virani is possessed of a vitality and positivity that propels him through the grimmest of work, and his new political job. Days after he clinched his seat in the government he found the energy to knock on neighbourhood doors to introduce himself. A Twitter photo shows him greeting a constituent while pushing his sleepy toddler in a stroller. Virani is a married father of two young boys. He began his legal career as a litigator at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. But after a couple of years, Virani saw a job ad for the Crown counsel and went for it. “It was the right time financially. The Golden Handcuffs weren’t strapped on yet,” he jokes. “It was about an $18,000 pay cut, but well worth it.” He swotted up for a week on constitutional law before the job interview, which turned out to be more academically demanding than a corporate-law interview. “Rather than it being about my knowledge of art or my squash game, it was about my knowledge of the Charter.” He nailed it.

“He brought amazing energy to his work, and an understanding of how to balance competing interests,” says Janet Minor, the current treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada and Virani’s mentor back when she was general counsel for the Ministry of the Attorney General. “This will make him a great MP.”

By Virani’s account, he never pivoted away from job satisfaction at the Ministry of the Attorney General. But, over time, he felt increasingly frustrated with the Stephen Harper political climate. “Entering politics wasn’t an epiphany,” he says. He always liked to talk politics. But one event pushed him over the edge: the robocall scandal of the 2011 election. “It was a blatantly antidemocratic endeavour to prevent people from voting in the proper place and to dissuade youth from voting. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Virani, for the first time, stopped just talking and got politically active. He got involved with the Liberals in his riding. And when the party held open nominations, he felt confident he had the work ethic needed to put in the long hours of a campaign. The hard work paid off: he won both the nomination and a seat in Parliament.

Since being sworn in, Virani has assumed a high-profile post as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. This puts him front and centre in welcoming Syrian refugees, an issue that hits close to home. Virani himself came to Canada as an infant and a Ugandan refugee when Trudeau père welcomed 7,000 exiled Ismaili Muslims. “I don’t remember being a baby at Dorval Airport”—now called the Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport—“in 1972, but I have recently met Syrian families with babies. And looking at these families now, I think, That was me.”

He makes an effort to talk to them about his own past. “I can speak some Arabic, but using a translator I explain I was in their shoes 43 years ago. I say, ‘Canada is a land of opportunity. Please seize every opportunity to be anything you want in this country. I became an MP.’”