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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Every one of 465 lines we hold for Melissa Lantsman, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 10.
“Mr. Speaker, for years the Liberals have known that there are hundreds of Iranian regime officials here in Canada. Two hundred and thirty-nine had their visas cancelled, yet we just learned that the government managed to remove exactly one of those. Its excuse is that they might claim asylum, there are no flights to Iran and we must protect their privacy. Meanwhile, an Iranian Canadian critic of the regime has gone missing, and police are now investigating that as a homicide. Why are the Liberals protecting terrorists, and when will the minister finally have them removed?”
“Mr. Speaker, claiming that a community supports the bill without speaking to clergy is political and government malpractice. The Liberals need to listen to what clergy say right across the country, right through every community.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that the government's motion is not about protecting places of worship. It is about shutting down debate to force through something that was introduced late in the committee stage, not in the original bill. We very clearly offered to the Liberals to take this out and to debate the things that would actually protect religious institutions. Again, after two and a half years of screaming about this in the House, they chose not to. I hope everybody at home sees that when they can act, they choose not to act every single time.”
“Mr. Speaker, just to make it clear, and I am sure others have made it clear to the hon. member, the prosecution was very clear that that is not why it did not charge him, and this defence is not for calling for violence. That is already illegal, and this bill would change none of that.”
“Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, the government needs to recognize this as a national security threat. It needs to recognize this as domestic terror, and that is exactly where the government plays a role, with an integrated capacity from law enforcement. Starting with the RCMP, with partnerships with, in my own province, the OPP and local police, it should start enforcing the law. I almost cannot find anyone in this country who believes that what is going on in the streets right now in communities right across the country is legal. The lack of enforcement, including the push that the federal government can make, and all levels of government, is astounding. The very fact that the member does not recognize that is very concerning.”
“I hope, for our community, that happens sooner rather than later, because I think the exhaustion is there. The days of watching ministers and the Prime Minister give condolences and thoughts and prayers over and over again are over, and there are better days ahead for a resilient community that I know deserves a whole lot better than the government they got.”
“We could have very well taken this out of the bill, had the debate on this specific issue and passed the protections for the communities, but the Liberals chose not to. At every turn, they choose not to act. I will wrap up by saying that the day we dispose with sideshows like Bill C-9 is the day that we can finally get down to business and actually protect our communities. There are those who think they can control what happens on the other side of the world, which they cannot, but we absolutely have control of what we can do on our own soil. We can get the authorities working together. We can enforce the law in this country. We can throw the terrorists out. We can introduce a foreign agent registry. We can do all of those things today instead of doing nothing.”
“The government stood alongside them, could not be bothered to ask them what they thought about Bill C-9 and, instead, spewed into a microphone the bill as a way to stop events like what happened this weekend in Toronto. The Liberals do not have the support of pastors, priests, imams, teachers or Canadians from faith backgrounds. They could have very well split the bill, and they chose not to. They chose to ram it through with something that was not introduced in the original version of the bill, and that is why we have a problem with it. We are all on the same page with faith communities, and the only people who are not are those in the Liberal government who have succumbed to a demand from the Bloc on this issue to ram through debate on a bill that we all know is fundamentally flawed.”
“The rabbinical council of Toronto, the very people who represent the synagogues that were shot at this week, said that the contemplated changes to Bill C-9 threaten and would irreversibly erode the charter-protected rights of Canadians to worship freely and transmit the sacred teachings and principles that have guided and uplifted faith communities for thousands of years. These are the words of the senior rabbis in our own community, the ones who the Minister of Public Safety and other ministers stood at a podium with this weekend after their temples were shot at. They understand what is at stake and that the government left them on their own a long time ago.”
“It is already illegal to spew hate speech and foment violence against groups. That is not what Bill C-9 is about. Instead, it is about a government that chooses overreach every time it could choose leadership or action. It chooses ambiguity and infringement to hide from the very real consequences that its lack of action has brought on Canadians in their own cities. The Liberals will tell us that the Jewish community supports this. I will state clearly for everyone that this is one of the most divisive issues in that community, and worse, the Liberals did not even bother to ask clergy.”
“(1645) We do not go out of our way to censor opponents by limiting the free speech of those we might disagree with. That is not how we fix things in this country. In fact, the Liberal government is censoring this very debate in Parliament on whether to enact a new censorship law. It would go after free expression instead of going after people who shoot up synagogues and Jewish schools, who burn down churches or who vandalize mosques, gurdwaras or temples. It would prosecute faith leaders from all stripes instead of prosecuting the very people perpetuating terrorism in our streets. It would chill the religious discourse instead of chilling the activities of the terrorists and foreign agents roaming free in this country with complete impunity. Let me be very clear.”
“They can round up the terrorists that we know are living on our streets and send them home, such as the 700 identified IRGC terrorists, who dine in posh steakhouses and intimidate our communities. They can hunt down the people who commit these heinous crimes and put them in jail. They have the power to do all of those things right now, but they choose not to. Instead, they pretend the solution is a bill that nobody has asked for, and nearly every faith community agrees is harmful and counterproductive to its goals. We cannot legislate ourselves out of a crisis. I am going to say on the floor what we, oftentimes, do not say enough: We do not need new laws. We need the enforcement of existing laws. We need action from politicians and we need a recognition in this country that this is actually a crisis.”
“We do not need more nice-sounding laws with snappy names that will not be enforced to go collect dust on a shelf somewhere. We do not need another news release, another press conference or more platitudes from a government that certainly stopped caring about this long ago. What we do need is our leaders to grow a spine and stand up to the communities that they swore an oath to protect. They need to actually do their jobs and stop the madness that is unfolding. They can start by coordinating the activities of our law enforcement agencies to prevent attacks, disrupt threats and prosecute offenders. They can make sure that the funding that they promise to these institutions actually flows without the red tape, and they can double that funding today. They can establish the foreign influence registry that they promised years ago.”
“More importantly, the solution that they have peddled shamelessly is one that will, no doubt, be weaponized against the very community that it purports to protect. It also would not have prevented the burning of churches, the targeting of temples, the desecration of mosques or any of the atrocities that we have seen under the watch of the Liberal government and through the callousness of its divisive politics over the last number of years. Shooting a bullet into a synagogue is already illegal. Spray-painting a swastika onto a school is already illegal. Covering one's face and chanting genocidal slogans in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood is already illegal. What is missing is the enforcement of those laws. Our government, our leaders and many of the institutions are frankly missing in action.”
“The Liberal government, unfortunately, wants Canadians to believe that this bill before us, Bill C-9 , is the silver bullet that will fix all of this. It is not. It is a cynical sales pitch in the face of what is a crisis in this country. Nothing in this bill would have prevented these shootings or the violence that we have watched unfold in our streets for the better part of the last two and a half years. Do not be fooled by the legislative theatre or the answers to the questions that we hear in this place. First and foremost, nothing, absolutely nothing has changed a week after those shootings. There has not been a single dollar of more security funding and not one more deportation of the terrorists that we have in our country. Nothing has changed.”
“The Prime Minister and his ministers are quick to run to the podium after events like this to offer things like thoughts, prayers and condemnation, but it always stops after those kind words and it never gets to decisive action. The government will claim that this is not who we are, but it is exactly who we have become in this country. It is terrorism meant to terrorize a community. With two synagogues being shot on Saturday, one being shot last Monday and businesses being vandalized every week, we see there is a tide of anti-Semitism and hatred that the Liberals have allowed to crest over the last two and a half years. We have to admit that this is very much who we are now. This has become a fact of everyday life in Canada. We are number one in the world when it comes to violence against Jewish institutions.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong . I want to start my speech by taking a moment to address the horrific events that took place in Toronto and in Thornhill last weekend. The doors of houses of worship were pierced by a gunman's bullets in the middle of the night. There is nothing more cowardly, more shameful and more un-Canadian than targeting a sacred place under the cover of darkness. It is meant to strike fear in the hearts of those who use that place, in this case the Jewish community in their central place of worship, and intimidate an entire community on the Sabbath, the most sacred day of the week.”
“Mr. Chair, I have a comment and a question. First of all, nothing in the combatting hate act would have stopped what is happening in the streets of Toronto. Would the member opposite agree that what is happening in our streets right now is domestic terror? Will he advocate for his government to call it just that?”
“Madam Chair, the path only starts when the current regime is toppled, and we are a step closer to that today than we ever have been in my lifetime and in the 47 years of this brutal dictatorship. The member opposite has a long illustrious career in this place, and I hope she is not suggesting that we just give up when we do not see the outcome we want. That is not what she has done in this place, so I am surprised that she is advocating that for an entire group of people.”
“Madam Chair, we have always advocated the same position: that the freedom of Iran belongs to the people of Iran, that the future of Iran belongs to the people of Iran and that the decision of how they are led in the future only belongs to the Iranian people. We will continue to take that position. By any means necessary, if this regime is one step closer to being toppled, I think that is a good day for western democracy and it is an even better day for human history.”
“Madam Chair, I think it is a concerted strategy. It is a concerted strategy of saying one thing to one group of people at a certain time and an entirely different thing to another group of people. We have seen that strategy play out, where the Prime Minister divides the Canadian population on an issue of foreign affairs without ever taking a position. The only problem now is that everybody sees the game. Everybody sees the game that the Prime Minister is playing, including our allies. It is pretty sad.”
“Madam Chair, when members in the House line up with Iranian Canadians, chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom”, supporting the rights of the LGBT community not to be thrown off a roof or supporting women's rights in Iran, what did they think that meant? What did they think the hundreds of thousands of people in the crowd were chanting for? Did they think it was just going to be a magical democracy that came out of nowhere? Finally, the Iranian people are on the verge of freedom, and we are right there with them.”
“I want every single Liberal who stood on a stage for the last three years chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom” to actually mean it in the House, to actually show up for this debate and to actually have a position on it.”
“Then he said he was not asked to join the strikes. I am going on and on because we can see how ridiculous it is to anybody watching this, such as our allies and those in the community who are suffering from the repression right here in Canada. I want to make a few things very clear, and I will do it in one minute. I want the government to commit today to expelling every single regime agent who has made Canada their own playground for the activities we see on the other side of the world that have subjugated a population of poets and architects and those yearning for freedom. I want every single one of those agents gone from this country so that the notion of “Woman, Life, Freedom” actually means something.”
“I want to say clearly in the House, because it has not been said: The mullahs are not the history of Iran. The mullahs can never be the history of Iran, and it is our responsibility as the members of Parliament of a G7 country, members of the civilized world, members of a western democracy, to stand up against tyranny at every opportunity we get. That opportunity has been given to the Prime Minister tonight, and he is nowhere to be found in this debate throughout the day in the House. He has not made his position clear in the House of Commons or to Parliament at all. He has made a position sort of clear on one day. He first said that he supported the strikes. Then he said he regretted that support. Then he said it was in contravention of international law. Then he somehow said that he would join the strikes.”
“We know of senior members of the regime's kids who are studying in universities here. I cannot tell the House how disappointing it is to hear the Prime Minister have four different positions on this in four days. In fact, I think we heard two more different positions here in this debate, in the House, throughout the day. This is, of course, unclear to the hundreds of thousands of Iranian Canadians who have been in the streets calling for the toppling of the regime, but it is even more concerning to our allies and to our place in the world. I am going to go back to what we can do right here. There has been violence in our communities. There have been people kidnapped. There have been, potentially, murders because of the reach of the mullah's thugs. I want to speak for a second directly to the Iranian Canadian community.”
“We have 700 IRGC agents, whom we know about, who are currently active in this country. The minister stood up today and could not even tell us if there was more than one who has been expelled. I am a proud member of Parliament who represents a small part of that community. On a regular basis, I get calls from members of that community, members of that community who have run away from that regime. They are scared, with a blurred out background, sitting in their cars, with a blacked out number, away from their homes, because they are terrified that the repression and the reach of that regime is right here in our country. We know of senior members of the regime who have worked out in the same gyms as they have, a neighbourhood gym in my own constituency. We know of senior members of the regime eating in fancy steak houses.”
“Madam Chair, for 47 years, the Iranian regime has ruled in the shadow of repression, crushing its own people, jailing and murdering dissidents, massacring tens of thousands and acquiring a nuclear arsenal. This we have made clear in the debate tonight. For a lot of people, the dream of that regime actually crumbling is closer than it has ever been in their lifetime. There is going to be lots said about the position of Canada, the conflict in Iran, the toppling of a regime and our nation's place in the world, but I am going to talk about what this means right here for us in Canada, because that is what we can control. This is about building a safer country, free of terrorism, a country where freedom and protection under the law actually mean something for everyone here.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member opposite raises an interesting point. There are a lot of these shadow bureaucracies being set up right outside of the bureaucracy, which has grown, by the way, in a disproportionate way. The member opposite should be interested to know that the government is actually looking to set up another $1.5-billion office to buy excess condo stock off the market. The Liberals have not told anybody about it, but that is certainly what they are dealing with here. This is yet another program outside of what is being delivered in what is going to be Build Canada Homes, unless they change it and they can get the votes in the House to support it.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is nice that the member is actually allowed to get up outside of question period. He is not yelling from the peanut gallery. This program is supposed to deliver 500,000 homes. It is going to deliver 5,000. It has delivered about five so far.”
“Mr. Speaker, in terms of what would improve the organization, there is no question that the federal government has a role to play in housing, but the role is not one of an organization or role that picks winners and losers in a market. It is one that does not distort market conditions to allow these things to be built. It is one where GST can be taken off new homes. It is one where we can incentivize municipalities based on their approval of building permits or their lowering of development charges, whether we would grant them federal infrastructure dollars or not. This is the government's role in all of this. There is plenty we can do, but an additional bureaucracy will not do any of that. In fact, it will result in more of the exact same that we have seen over the last 10 years.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that is the burden she thinks it is. We stand on the side of young people who want to afford a house in this country, and she is part of a government that has doubled housing prices, doubled rent and doubled mortgage payments. The Liberals have sat comfortably here while they have done it. Builders have asked them to lower development charges. Builders have asked them for things they want in order to get housing done, and they have done absolutely none of it, so it is not very hard to say that we are on the side of home ownership in this country.”
“At least there would be a piece of it that we could support: a full-on GST cut for homes under $1.3 million for everyone, no matter what. They would have to do a few other things, but we could at least support that measure. Hopefully, the government will revise this legislation to include some of our suggestions on lowering development charges, cutting red tape and lowering the cost of housing, so that young people one day will be able to afford a home in this country.”
“Over the course of the last 10 years and a year of the pretend new government, with all of the same ministers sitting in the front benches and all of the same people piping in on the same exact policy, we have seen housing prices double, rent double and a payment on a mortgage double, and now we see an absolute stalling of new construction in housing. The Liberals know the problem. They have admitted the problem. In fact, the fix that they put forward before this piece of legislation was part of the problem. Now, I know they are thinking about announcing a wider GST cut, but we continue to hear about that over and over again, and it never happens. I do not know why they did not put that in this piece of legislation.”
“The bill would not do the very things that the current government itself admitted it needed to do at the beginning of its term. A year later, we are here with yet another announcement of another federal bureaucracy run by another insider. People need homes. We need supply. They need costs to come down. It is really not that complicated. Builders are telling the government the exact same thing regarding what is required: Get out of the way, cut taxes, cut red tape and let them build. Bill C-20 , unfortunately, would do none of that. Conservatives believe that there is a solution to the housing crisis, but it is not bigger government. It is more homes. Until the government understands that basic fact, Canadians keep paying the price.”
“Certainly, we are seeing that today, but it cannot be another study or another agency. Every month that they wait with the same plan over and over again, another young person believes that the dream is not for them. Again, maybe that is the plan. A country where people stop believing they can build a future is a country that is headed in the wrong direction. It is a country that gets hollowed out by the fact that the youngest, smartest people in our society, who really want to attain the dream that was promised to them, end up looking elsewhere. Unfortunately, the bill that we have in front of us proves that the government still does not understand. Canadians do not need another government program that sounds good in a press release and fails in reality.”
“Clinging to ideology is a really powerful blindfold on the other side. The Liberals always just get halfway there. Sometimes we have to wonder if they are comfortable with this being the new reality, where those young people I talked about do not believe they will ever buy a home. Maybe that is the entire plan. Maybe the plan is to give up on the dream of home ownership and have a permanent class of renters forever. The only problem is that it is not the Canadian promise. It is not how we have lived for generations. It is not how anybody wants to live. The Canadian promise was very, very simple. People work hard, they save, they play by the rules and they build a life. They do not rent that life forever. The answer to the crisis today is that it was created by too much government interference.”
“In fact, we are going to help it throughout this entire debate, and maybe there will be a bill that could come back to the House that would actually be supportable. (1535) Those who get in the way cannot possibly be rewarded. Incentivize cities to actually build homes, not to do the paperwork. Sell federal land. Empty buildings, so that families can live in them. Cut the federal GST on new homes for everyone, up to $1.3 million, to get buyers buying and builders building. I know that they are thinking about that, because the plan they brought forward to cut GST for first-time homebuyers on new homes under $1 million is not working, and they know that. I invite the Liberals to go back to the drawing board. I do not really care how they do it. They just need to do it. It is not rocket science.”
“This new bureaucracy will add 5,000, which is a rounding error, at the cost of $13 billion, which is not a rounding error. That is $13 billion for a government that believes that if one studies a crisis long enough and writes enough reports and makes enough announcements, reality will somehow happen by press release. Here is the truth. No one can live inside a housing accelerator. That was part of their first plan. No one raises their children in a federal task force. That was their second plan. No one calls bureaucracy home. Builders build homes. Workers build homes. Communities actually build homes. The government's job is to get out of the way rather than stand in it. If the government is short on ideas, I will be happy to help.”
“They used words like revolutionary, transformative and historic. Those are their words, but what did Canadians actually get? They got Bill C-20 , which has nothing of what they said. It is just tinkering around the edges, more of the exact same thinking that got us to this point in the first place. Do members want to know the headline feature of the bill? It is unbelievable. It is yet another housing bureaucracy, housing bureaucracy number four. What did the first three deliver? They doubled the price of homes. They doubled rent. They doubled mortgage costs, and they sent housing construction into an absolute tailspin. This year, we are supposed to, according to the government's own numbers, build 500,000 new homes just to keep up with demand.”
“When a person's house is on fire, they do not call the fire department for a literature review on combustion, and that is exactly what we are talking about. It is exactly what the government is doing with yet another piece of legislation on housing. The flames are obvious, the young people are locked out, the renters are squeezed, builders are stalled and jobs are disappearing. Now, imagine that, instead of water, the government arrives with a brand new set of clipboards. It announces a task force on flames. It creates an office of fire awareness. It holds a press conference about historic fire mitigation targets, but the house keeps burning. For a while it sounded like the Liberals understood the urgency. For a while there was talk of a new government and a new plan. They promised the most ambitious housing plan in nearly a century.”
“Last month, fewer than 300 homes and fewer than 100 condos sold in the entire city. That is nearly 90% below average, and 75% of people who do not own a home in that city believe they never will own a home. Think about that. That is now a story in Canada. Three-quarters of people who do not own a home will have already given up on the idea that they will own a home. I repeated that because I want members to let that sink in. This is a country where the dream of home ownership has always been there and should continue to be there. This is not a market correction. It is not a cycle. It is an entire generation losing faith in what their parents and grandparents, and those who came before them, had in this country. It is in moments like this, in a real crisis, that leadership and action actually matter.”
“Mr. Speaker, listening to the debate, as I have been, we would not know it, but there is a quiet but growing anxiety in the country. We can feel it in conversations around the community, with those who work in our offices, with the people one potentially goes to school with, with people on the pickleball court. We hear a pause before a young couple answers the question of when they are buying. We see the construction worker who is constantly checking the listings, the articles about litigation for those who were so close but just could not close on what they bought pre-construction. The housing market in Canada is not just cooling. It is absolutely cracking for these people, for people who want to get into the housing market. In Toronto, starts have fallen to 30-year lows.”
“Mr. Speaker, the minister still has not said a thing. The community does not need the empty condemnations. They need action from a government that has let this spiral out of control for more than two years. They have taken every side of the issue except for the side that protects Canadians. Fund the security programs, hunt down and lock up the people who perpetrate the violence, enforce the law and deport the terrorists the minister knows live here in Canada. When is the minister or anyone in the government going to say any of those things?”
“Mr. Speaker, Canada now leads the world in shootings against Jewish institutions. We have heard countless condemnations and been offered endless thoughts and prayers from the Liberal government. It has failed to address the fact that terrorists live in Canada, that institutions cannot access security funding and that there is zero enforcement of the laws that are already on the books. I am going to give the Minister of Public Safety an opportunity to get up in his chair, say that it is terrorism and tell the House what he is going to do, when he is going to do it and how he is going to do it.”
“Mr. Speaker, the minister still will not get up in her chair and answer basic questions about her job. Nearly three million temporary visas are nearing expiry without the department having a clear plan, and potentially millions more people are going to become citizens, but nobody over there can stand up and answer a single detailed question about legislation in the House. The only response the Liberals give to this side is to call us bad people for asking questions about the legislation. Does anybody over there truly believe that the minister deserves her job, or is there somebody on the backbench who can do it better?”
“Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the immigration minister could not get up in her chair and defend her record. She cannot tell us how many rejected asylum seekers remain in Canada or how many thousands of people came here without a proper security screening, or even give the most basic answers about her job. Her signature bill, Bill C-3 , could give citizenship to millions of people abroad with the click of a button, and she has no details and no explanations. I have a simple question for the minister : How many people, under this piece of legislation, would become Canadian?”
“Mr. Speaker, they just put up a third failed immigration minister to answer the question. This is actually a really serious issue. They can talk down members of the House. They can call them bad people all they want, but Canada's immigration consensus is crumbling. Stakeholders are not getting their calls returned. Controls are gone, putting pressure on housing, on health care and on jobs, while the minister is MIA throughout all of it. The House deserves a straight answer. When is she getting fired?”
“Mr. Speaker, it is that minister who left the immigration minister with the mess that she has to clean up. He knows that even Liberal MPs who have been passed over for a decade can see that she is out of her depth because of the mess that he left. These are direct quotes from them: “[She] has no idea how to respond”, “It doesn't make sense” and “she'll put her foot in her mouth.” At what point will the Prime Minister acknowledge that this file requires real leadership and a serious course correction without the two of them?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal immigration minister is out of her depth and the numbers prove it. Eighty-six per cent of rejected asylum seekers remain in Canada, while 25,000 people were admitted without a proper security screening and nearly three million temporary visa holders are nearing expiry with no clear plan in place. Yesterday, the Prime Minister claimed that the system is “under control”, but there are no real controls left. The Liberals dismantled them and the minister has shown no ability to restore order. With results like these, why is she still in her job?”