Melissa Lantsman
Thornhill, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the secretary of state confirmed what many Canadians already feared. A foreign government is funding and directing attacks on synagogues, businesses and the U.S. Consulate, and now the murder of a Toronto police officer. This government has known for years; they did nothing.”
“Mr. Speaker, one thing is clear, which is that the families of those police officers deserve better answers than that. The Liberals are in government. They have been there for 11 years. They are not bystanders in any of this. They let terrorists flood our country. They built a catch-and-release bail system.”
“I think this bill deserves to be debated and the House should give it that. Instead, the Liberals have rammed it through with what is called the programming motion to sweep this away right before they take their summer break. Let us go back to the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong .”
“That has never been done in this place except with Bill C-9 , the last bill the government passed through the House. My colleague mentioned that she had never seen that happen in her 15 years in this place, which is longer than I have been here.”
“In a previous life, she sat on this side of the House as the Conservative shadow minister for civil liberties. She participated in nearly every civil liberties debate in this chamber. Every single time, she told Canadians the truth, which was that the government could not be trusted with privacy.”
“Let me say this to anybody watching at home at this late hour: The Liberals' argument in this debate is completely disingenuous, and they know it. I appreciate the police chief of York Regional Police. We have an enormously good relationship, a great one. I have also met with the commissioner of the OPP and with the Toronto police chief.”
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“This would open international markets to Canadian stories and give our content creators a massive market to tell their stories. Schitt's Creek did not succeed because a regulator forced it into a content fund. It succeeded because it was brilliant, it was funny and people chose to watch it. Our job is to create an environment in which the next Schitt's Creek gets made, not to tax Netflix and declare victory for Canadian culture on the backs of Canadian families. The Liberals never seem to learn the lessons that Canadians already know instinctively: We cannot tax a country into prosperity. Families are not variables on a spreadsheet, and artists are not government programs. Conservatives believe in a free people, free markets and free expression.”
“They will say that opposing this tax means opposing Canadian culture. That is a false choice on the floor of the House of Commons, and Canadians really deserve better than that lazy argument. Conservatives believe in Canadian stories, the ones that are worth telling. We simply disagree about how to get there, because there is another way. Instead of taxing streaming platforms and hoping the money trickles down to creators, we could expand direct production tax credits that put resources in the hands of the writers, of the directors and of the producers, not the hands of the bureaucratic behemoths this is going to fund. Instead of regulations that protect legacy broadcasters from competition, we could invest in co-production treaties with our allies, such as New Zealand, the U.K. or Australia.”
“In all of this, the retaliation could fall again, and it could fall on Canadian agriculture, on Canadian lumber or manufacturing. These are industries that also employ hundreds of thousands of Canadians, who are waiting with bated breath for something from negotiations that have not taken place since October. The Prime Minister often says that we can control what we can control, and I agree. The choice to bring in these new taxes is an entirely controllable one. Why are we voluntarily picking another fight with our largest trading partner at exactly the moment at which Canadian businesses and workers need stability, as they deserve? That makes no sense. The policy itself makes no sense, but the timing makes even less sense. Now the members opposite will try to caricature our position on this.”
“It is how the Liberal government protects its cronies at the expense of our cultural ecosystem, and it says that anybody who disagrees with it must not like culture. On that point, there is one really big foreign entity taking a very keen interest in the signals that this is sending, and that is the United States government. Let us put it plainly: Taxing American streaming giants is a provocation. We know that. They have said that. In fact, the Prime Minister admitted that himself when he rescinded the digital services tax. That was a 3% tax. This is a 15% tax. How do members think that is going to go over with the Americans? By the way, the Prime Minister did not get a single concession for rescinding that tax when times got tough.”
“Second, these taxes effectively shield broadcasters like the CBC and CTV from competition, rather than nurturing the creators who actually need the help. Over and over again, every independent analysis has proven that these funds disproportionately flow to established government institutions, the ones with relationships and high-priced government access payrolls, not the independent YouTuber in Calgary, the podcaster in Halifax and the digital filmmaker in Winnipeg who are building audiences on their own terms. They are now being penalized by the very subsidies that go to their better-connected competitors. That structure is not a recipe for a healthy, competitive marketplace, and we have discussed that in the House time and time again.”
“By every common-sense measure, it is a Canadian story told by Canadians, but under the CRTC's own rules, it does not qualify as Canadian content. Not a dollar of this new tax flows to productions like it. What exactly are we funding? We are not funding the things that Canadians are actually watching. Remember, it is the number one show. Folks in the House might not know it because it is a young adult audience, but that is what people are watching and celebrating. Instead, we are funding what Ottawa has decided counts. It is a distinction that says everything about who this policy actually serves. (1140) Canadian stories cannot and will not succeed just because we have taxed our way to cultural relevance. They will succeed because those stories are worth telling and people want to hear them.”
“In the abstract, I think we can all agree that having more things made in Canada is good. Telling Canadian stories is a good thing. It is better for us, and it is better for our country. However, we should consider what the argument ignores. Drake, The Weeknd, Schitt's Creek and Letterkenny are some of the most celebrated Canadian cultural exports in a generation. Beloved here at home and around the world, they succeeded not because the regulator mandated their existence but because they were actually good. They were brilliant, in fact. We should also consider this: If we are making this argument today, I think we have to be honest about it. Off Campus is the number one show on Prime Video right now. It is filmed in Vancouver. It is based on a Canadian author's book. It features music from a Canadian band.”
“Instead, it is a self-inflicted wound on the country. Of course, Conservatives will strongly and loudly oppose all the new taxes from this place, from Ottawa, on struggling families. We understand that when government takes less, families keep more of what they earn, businesses can invest and grow, and people have the freedom to make choices themselves rather than having unelected bureaucrats make those choices for them. It is a very simple argument, and I am sure that by the end of today, the folks on that side will understand it. There is a broader narrative at play here too. This decision reveals something about how the government thinks or what the government's values really are. First, this new Netflix tax is being levied under the guise of supporting so-called content creators.”
“Anybody who says that is not the case has not been here in the last 10 years. The last thing that Canadians need right now is more taxes. On this side of the House, we will always advocate to get rid of every single one of them. Forty per cent of people in the country are within $200 of insolvency. They are within $200 of going broke. One-quarter of households are food insecure right now. We know that. We talk about it in this place all the time. When streaming becomes more expensive, people do not stop watching; they turn to things like piracy. We know that too. Canada already has some of the highest rates of piracy in the G7. This tax, of course, will make that worse. That is not a victory for Canadian creators. If we listen to the debate in the House, one would think that this was all about Canadian creators.”
“For someone watching at home, let us put a number on this and what it means for families. Netflix alone earns about $1.5 billion annually from Canadian subscribers, and 15% of that is $225 million. When passed on to consumers, that will be potentially three dollars or four dollars every single month per household, on top of everything else that Canadians pay. That might not sound like a lot of money, but that is exactly where the tax that Ottawa is collecting is going to go: directly to the consumer. At four dollars a month, that is $50 a year. We know what happens when the Liberal government levies taxes on corporations. They simply get passed on to consumers. It is never a minister that pays them. It is never the government that pays them. It is always the consumer.”
“Madam Speaker, I want to start today by offering a short recap to those watching at home, because this is still a developing story. There is one important newsflash that I think Canadians ought to know. The message is to get ready for another Liberal tax. That is it. The government has already taxed our gas. It has taxed our groceries. It has taxed our capital gains. God knows it has taxed our income. It is now coming for our Netflix. That is really what today is about. The Liberal-appointed CRTC, which is an unelected, unaccountable body that regulates streaming services and digital content in this country, just mandated that companies such as Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video fork over 15% of their revenues to Ottawa. That is a 200% increase from where they were.”
“Mr. Chair, what is true is that we have the only shrinking economy in the G7, and the answer is that it is 30% down. If he were truly interested in investing per worker, he would do so, and it has fallen by nearly a third. Stats Canada projects that non-residential capital spending across all industries will grow by less than 2% going forward. Does this sound to the minister like an economy that has turned around or is turning around? It certainly does not sound like that to anyone on this side of the House or anybody watching at home.”
“Mr. Chair, the Minister of Finance knows, and if he does not know, he can ask the officials sitting right in front of him, that the true measure of Canada's health is the domestic investment. Canadians investing in Canada, businesses investing per worker, is the single best indicator of whether Canadian firms are growing and becoming more productive. He knows this. He is not telling the House this, but he knows it. Can the minister tell us if domestic investment per worker is up or down in the last decade?”
“Mr. Chair, that answer is condescending and it does not show that he, as finance minister, understands what foreign direct investment is. It means a foreign company buying a Canadian one. Strategic decisions are moved abroad. The intellectual property moves abroad. The profits move abroad. He knows that as the finance minister. Again, he is treating those in the House like we are stupid. C.D. Howe finds mergers and acquisitions generally do not create new jobs or investments, so why is the minister celebrating in the House the hollowing out of the Canadian economy?”
“Mr. Chair, I will answer the question for the minister, since he does not want to. The answer is 45%, nearly half. Can the minister explain to Canadians, as the finance minister, what a merger and acquisition actually means in that context? It does not mean a new factory. People at home will know that. It does not mean a new research centre, and it does not mean a new job. What does it mean?”
“Mr. Chair, I can see that the minister does not want to admit it or answer my question, so I will talk about foreign direct investment. The minister frequently celebrates Canada's foreign direct investment numbers, but he knows, as finance minister, that all of those numbers are not created equal. Can he tell the House what share of Canada's inbound foreign direct investment over the last decade came from mergers and acquisitions, from foreign firms buying Canadian firms?”
“Mr. Chair, I am going to start off where I left off. The Prime Minister announced a plan to attract $1 trillion of new investment after that former industry minister watched $1 trillion leave this country on his watch. Can the minister admit to Canadians that this is not ambition, but damage control? He is trying to replace what his last government lost. Is that true?”
“Mr. Chair, does the finance minister know that the single biggest hurtle to investment decisions in this country right now is not tariffs? His own business council, the Business Council of Canada, says it is Canada's own domestic regulatory burden that is in the way. It is government that is in the way of those investment dollars. Does he agree with any of that?”
“Mr. Chair, I will put it into context. For every dollar of foreign investment that came into Canada during that decade, two dollars left this country. It is not because of global issues. It is not because of the tariffs. Tariffs were not an issue then. It is a domestic policy failure that the minister cannot admit he was a part of. Does he accept responsibility, any responsibility, for his role in a trillion dollars leaving this country?”
“Mr. Chair, I will ask the minister the same question again because he did not answer my question. Under his leadership as the minister of industry, during the 10-year period that he was at the cabinet table, a trillion dollars of investment outflow left this country. Does he find that acceptable?”
“Mr. Chair, that was not my question. The answer for the minister is that one trillion dollars left Canada. According to RBC, that is the single largest sustained capital outflow in Canada's history. For a country of 40 million people, just to put it into context for those watching at home, that is $25,000 for every person. Does the minister find that acceptable?”
“Mr. Chair, that is all true, but it does not answer my question. RBC analyzed the full decade from 2015 to 2024, years during which the minister held senior cabinet responsibilities. Can he tell the House the net investment figure in that period? How many net dollars left Canada under his leadership?”
“I am going to split my time, Mr. Chair. I thank the minister for being here tonight. Before he presents himself as Canada's economic rescuer, Canadians deserve an accounting. He sat at the cabinet table as industry minister while the investment climate deteriorated in this country. The policies that drove capital away were his policies, so I will ask him quite candidly if he did anything wrong.”
“Mr. Speaker, when Canadians know that nothing she is doing is working and half the people sitting beside her are saying the same thing out loud, it stops being opposition criticism and it starts being a pattern with the minister. She cannot handle the hard questions from across the aisle. She needs to get a grip on what is actually happening in her ministry. The minister refused to answer a question yesterday. On Thursday, she has four hours at committee to make it right. Will she be there for the full four hours, or will we finally get somebody who is competent at their job?”
“Mr. Speaker, every week Canadians get up to another headline about the immigration minister botching her job. Corruption runs rampant in her department. Criminals walk away with discount sentences. She is issuing 215,000 new work permits while Canadian kids cannot find jobs, with no plan to deport the temporary residents who will not leave. Today, we learn that she is covering the premium health care costs of nearly 74,000 people whose asylum claims have already been rejected as fraudulent. How does it feel to be failing so publicly and so repeatedly on a file that is so important?”
“Mr. Speaker, despite all of the rhetoric and despite the trillion dollars in Liberal debt, young Canadians now make up over a quarter of all unemployed workers. That is double their share of the workforce. They still cannot afford a home; they still cannot afford groceries, and they still cannot afford to get ahead. The Liberals have record borrowing, with billions on the national credit card, to stimulate the same economy they are cooling with record immigration, and they handed the bill to Canadians for all of it. At what point does any Liberal take responsibility for an entire generation that is priced out, crowded out and left holding the bag for their incompetence?”
“Mr. Speaker, a shocking new report found that nearly 500,000 young Canadians were unemployed in 2025. That is a 57% increase in three years, and that is worse than the recessions of 1981, 1990 and 2008 for young people. The Liberals ran an over $1‑trillion debt, and they priced Canadians out of the housing market. We have the highest housing costs in the G7. They then loosened the foreign work restrictions and flooded the labour market. It has been a decade of their support, and somehow every single door is closed for young Canadians. How is the government locking young Canadians out of both the housing market and the labour market at the same time?”
“Mr. Speaker, this report has been sitting on a shelf for 11 years. The Prime Minister had the chance to appeal to members of the armed forces, to give them an environment free of harassment, discrimination and abuse. He had the opportunity to appeal to them and to give them exactly what they asked for in committee, exactly how this bill was changed, and exactly the amendments that are before the House. Instead, he chose not to and defended the indefensible of his own government.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is more than arrogance. We are seeing the beginnings of a very authoritarian streak with the manufactured majority that the Liberals now have. Members who now sit on their benches worked on this report. This is just one example. The Liberals have now shut down four different committees, going in camera to have discussions that Canadians ought to know about. This is a bad start to a majority, and I think Canadians will start to notice.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak directly to the men and women in uniform who are watching this. They had the committee change this bill with the amendments that they, themselves, asked for, both the survivors of sexual violence and the veterans of our military. I want those at home to witness that the Liberals are paving over all the amendments their own members made to this legislation. Justice Arbour did not even come to committee. They waited 11 years to bring this legislation forward. I want them to witness that the Liberals are ignoring the will of this House and the will of the members in uniform.”
“I urge every member of this House, including the members who now sit in the opposite benches who worked on this piece of legislation in committee, to reconsider, to stand with survivors and to support the brave men and women in uniform today and every day in this country.”
“Conservative, NDP and Bloc members agree that these changes are all necessary, but the Liberals have the power to strip these amendments, and that is really what is at the crux of this conversation today. In doing so, they would weaken the accountability of this bill, they would ignore the voices of survivors, and they would remove the very improvements that the victims themselves asked this Parliament to make. We certainly hope they will reconsider, because without these changes, it is not about making life better for those who serve. It would be about making life better for the politicians and the bureaucrats who oversee this, and it is a very different thing. The men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces do not work a nine to five. They serve without limit, and we owe them this in return.”
“I think that is the most important change. We included the clause for future review because these changes must be monitored, they must be measured and they must be revisited when it is necessary or when they do not work. Taken together, these amendments represent a serious effort to fix what is broken and to build a system that is more responsive, more accountable and certainly more just. However, these amendments have to be approved by this House and it seems that they are not even going to be considered. We did all of that work in committee for them to not even be considered by the government. That is not really how it is supposed to work.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am going to continue from where I left off. The bill in question now addresses the appointment process for the Canadian Forces provost marshal, the director of military prosecutions and the director of defence counsel services, positions that the court justices specifically identified as needing independence from the chain of command. We also added consequences for unreasonable delays in transferring evidence. We strengthened the independence of legal actors so that prosecutions are fair and impartial. We improved supports for victims, including the ability to request a victim liaison officer when trust breaks down because, in these cases, that is very much the currency. We addressed the fairness for the accused ensuring access to defence counsel, regardless of which system hears the case.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister told Canadians that he was the guy who people hire in a crisis, and then spent double what the last guy spent. Just five years from now, the Liberal credit card bill will reach $1 trillion. All that spending has brought us the highest grocery prices, the worst housing crisis and two-dollar-a-litre gasoline while everybody falls behind. The crisis guy is racking up more debt and promising that somehow it is going to be different this time. When are the Liberals finally going to stop the credit card craziness so Canadians can afford to live?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised to spend less, but then he spent $35 billion more in the last fiscal update alone. He promised to lower the debt; instead, the deficit doubled from just one year ago. He promised fiscal brilliance, but the not even so conservative Globe and Mail calls that “an inversion of reality”. Once an expensive Liberal, always an expensive Liberal. This year, Canadian families will write a cheque for $3,400 just to cover the interest on the Liberal debt. Why will the Prime Minister not stop forcing Canadians to pay the credit card bill, and just allow them to get by?”
“We also worked to strengthen accountability in the system. We introduce timelines for key appointments, because under the current government critical roles in the military and justice systems have been left vacant for months.”
“For a government that has talked a big game about listening to survivors particularly, in this case, women in the military, after ignoring them for so many years, it is dumbfounding why it would not listen in this case and would go ahead with the very system that they said does not work for survivors. Through these amendments, the committee secured the right for survivors to choose which justice system their case would proceed in. Again, this would be a fundamental shift toward respecting that autonomy, an autonomy the government said it holds dear. It is not just a procedural tweak. Witness after witness confirmed this to the committee. Witness after witness stood in front of members who now sit on the Liberal benches and agreed with these committee members who went out of their way to make that change.”
“This is the exact definition of paternalism, real, actual paternalism as we see it in our system today. It is not the kind of empowerment that is needed to hold trust in a system. (1355) Advocates and survivors have also raised concerns about moving cases into an already strained civilian justice system. We know that both systems have strengths and both have weaknesses. We heard that at committee. However, survivors told us clearly that some prefer others, while others prefer a system that works for them, so the committee made that change. Despite putting that bill forward, with agreement from all three other parties and the witness testimony, the government is choosing to turn its back on it and present the original form of the bill that does not incorporate those changes.”
“It seems that it is going to dig in its heels and go with that, despite all the work that was done in committee, despite the legislative process working as it should, and despite all the survivors sitting in front of the committee and telling us exactly what they needed in order to have trust in this system. The bill, before the amendments, would have transferred all sexual assault offences to the civilian justice system, without exception and without survivor inputs. A survivor and veteran told the committee that Bill C-11 , as originally drafted, would remove choice from survivors and reduces flexibility. That survivor, that veteran, was not the only one who said that. I want to say something in the House, because I think people will listen.”
“Choice matters, because at the heart of the matter, it is about a compassionate, effective system with a simple principle: Survivors must have agency over their own path in justice. We heard it over and over again at committee and over and over again from survivors. It is like with any other Canadian, any other patient, who is choosing their own doctor. Nobody should tell them, and nobody should tell a survivor, which system and which doctor they should use. However, the government's original approach to the legislation would have done exactly that, the opposite of what we are talking about here.”
“In the last year alone, just to put it in context, the sexual misconduct support and resource centre received over 1,400 calls, of which 588 were related to military sexual trauma. That is not an abstraction. That is real Canadian soldiers, sailors and aviators who have been consistently failed by the system. Conservatives approached this bill seriously and constructively. We studied it carefully at committee. We listened to survivors and experts. We worked across party lines with colleagues from the Bloc and the NDP to improve the bill in a very meaningful way. One thing we heard over and over again from the people who have lived through this system was the importance of choice. It was actually brought up by a member who has since decided to sit on the Liberal benches.”
“They put their life on the line for Canada, and they deserve a workplace that is safe, respectful and worthy of that dedication, even after 11 years of the Liberals' not doing anything about it. Just as clearly, every victim of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces deserves timely justice, real accountability and, above all, respect. After successive failures of Liberal governments that have been outlined by my colleagues in the House, the victims are still waiting. This bill is virtually identical to Bill C-66 , which died in Parliament when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. Its recommendations trace back to two independent reports by former Supreme Court justices delivered in 2021. Four years later, survivors are still waiting for a system they can trust. These are the failures we are confronting today.”
“Mr. Speaker, there are bills that come before the House that are routine, and there are bills that remind us why we are here. Bill C-11 is one of the latter. When Canadians put on a uniform, they place their safety and their very life in our hands, and we owe it to them to create a justice system that is deserving of that trust. Today we have an actual chance to deliver one, but it seems throughout this entire debate that the government is choosing not to. The legislation before us tries to address one of the most serious and sensitive issues facing our country: delivering justice for victims of misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. Let me begin by clearly stating that Conservatives are proud of the brave men and women who serve in uniform.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the minister improved her self-control this time around. I am not surprised that another Trudeau holdover is pretending that everything is fine. The reality is that the Liberal government has killed the middle class. It has killed the very workers that it is now purporting to protect for more than a decade, with higher taxes and inflationary spending. The $37 billion of new spending from the latest credit card budget is only going to make things worse. Everybody knows that. Once again, will the government stop these delusions and stop the spending so that Canadians can actually get ahead?”
“Mr. Speaker, this week, our national credit card got quite the workout with $37 billion in new inflationary spending, nearly $1,000 for every Canadian. Who pays? Canadian families forced to max out their own credit cards to buy groceries and pay the rent. For all of that spending, we still have the highest food inflation in the G7 and the highest housing prices, and now we spend more to service the debt than we do on health care to the provinces. When will the government stop tabling reckless credit card budgets so that Canadian families can just afford to get by?”
“Mr. Speaker, that is what some people call “girl math”. I call it “Liberal math.” I have been guilty of doing the same thing. I see a very expensive thing that I absolutely cannot afford, and I buy it on sale when it is 5% off. I convince myself that I got all these savings for it. That is Liberal math. That is how the math works in this place. Canadians do not need a wealth fund. They need a government that is going to handle affordability in a responsible way and stop leveraging the national credit card so Canadians have to leverage theirs for groceries.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always an interesting day here when we agree with the Bloc Québécois. This government has now put forward a 13th new bureaucracy. All of these bureaucracies have one thing in common: They are there to distort the market. Private companies chose not to invest in something, so the government comes and backfills that capital, which already exists in this country, by choosing the projects that go forward. That is the opposite of how a free market works. It is the opposite of how this country was built throughout generations. I cannot understand why the Liberal government always chooses the wrong path when it comes to building Canada's future.”
“Mr. Speaker, I know that we are discussing the sovereign wealth fund today, but this is not what the government is proposing. In fact, the Liberals cannot even talk about it in their questions. The sovereign wealth fund, or the sovereign debt fund, that they are proposing is the exact opposite of one that would actually work. It would work in an economy where we have surpluses and resource revenue, and it would invest outside the country and not distort the market within the country by picking the very projects that make it unprofitable in the first place for businesses to invest. This is the problem with the Liberals' government. Every single time, their solution is to come in and distort the market, regulate the market and subsidize the market so nobody can build here.”
“It is going to spend borrowed money, pick winners and losers, mostly losers, in our own economy and distort the market. Canada's federal deficit sits at 2.1% of GDP. It is higher than it was last year. That is not lower. That is going in the wrong direction. Interest on the debt is heading past $80 billion annually, double what it was just four years ago. I will close with a sincere request for the government. Put down the $25-billion chequebook, step away from the podium at the Canada Science and Technology Museum and try something truly novel the government could not do in over a decade. Get out of the way, so that private capital and private business could be put to work here once and for all.”