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.”
The complete record
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 9 of 10.
“Based on this, it should come as no surprise that, despite promising a lower amount of newcomers, the government is still issuing a record number of permits. This year, there have been nearly 100,000 study permits and 50,000 temporary work permits. This should be expected from an immigration minister who told this country, in her previous job as the immigration minister for Nova Scotia, that she wanted absolutely no caps on immigration. She has denied that. It is not a great track record to engender confidence in the new seventh minister in 10 years. If the members opposite actually want to take an interest in making this better, I have some advice to make it better. While we do need to fix the wrongs of the past, the former bill did that.”
“It does not work for people who cannot afford a home, people who cannot get in to see a doctor when they need one, people who cannot get a job when they have to or the people who have spent years languishing in lines, waiting their turn without any idea of when any of this would actually happen. It does not help the people who were scammed by the fake colleges or foreign-cash-addicted universities that, under the watch and the encouragement of the government, have gotten out of control. It does not serve the people who came here for the promise of this country. About 40% of our newcomers already say that they want to leave. We cannot pretend that using a hammer, in this case, is going to fix something that could be fixed with a scalpel.”
“It has ensured that people like my parents can come here and flee the place that they do not even want to talk about anymore for a new life in Canada, where their first-generation child can become a member of Parliament, something that they would never have dreamed of. It is resilient. It makes our country unique, and it is part of our cultural and economic strength. The country needs immigration, but it also needs to work for Canadians and to work for Canada. Right now, it does neither of those things. It works for nobody. It does not work for the young people, the old people, the first generation or the sixth generation.”
“There needs to be concern about a system that has lost all of its integrity and has lost the confidence of Canadians. We would want to ensure that the backlog does not get worse. Our own budget watchdog tells us that it will take $21 million, but he is handicapped on understanding the bill, as they do not know the numbers, how many it would affect, or how this would happen. However, those are all secondary issues. Not only is the bill far away from what this country needs on immigration, but it is also a big step in the wrong direction. I think it would make the problems that the Liberals have created over the last number of years worse, so nobody should be celebrating. (1315) I will make this clear: Nobody should be celebrating that our immigration system is broken. It has built this country.”
“Bill C-3 talks about citizenship for people who have hardly spent any time in this country, just 36 months, which do not have to be consecutive. That is the number one problem with it. What about security screenings? We have not talked a lot in the House about security screenings, the ones that the minister could not describe last week. She did not even know what they entailed. Bill C-3 would extend citizenship without basic security checks, without a single background check and without a single interview. What about the backlog in our system that we have not talked much about? It has kept literally millions of people in line for years. The backlog of asylum claimants alone is nearly 300,000, while the citizenship backlog is about a million. Bill C-3 would obviously add to that backlog.”
“Here is what I have to say to the seven ministers in 10 years who have added to the breaking of the system in Canada and the consensus we once had with the system: The bill does not solve the problems that it was intended to solve. It actually creates more of them. That is what we need to ensure that the House understands. Immigration levels have been far too high for the last number of years. I certainly think so. Municipal leaders think so. Provincial premiers think so. Even non-partisan civil servants think so. They have said as much. The proposed fix cannot be to have 100,000 people become citizens with a stroke of a pen or a vote of the House. Maybe it is 100,000; the government does not even know the number. We have heard multiple estimates from multiple members on the other side. That is irresponsible.”
“It seems like members of the Liberal government at this point are crossing their fingers. They are throwing anybody who has not yet been in the role of the immigration minister into the fight, hoping the problems just go away. That does not make our country safe. It does not ensure that people can access health care. It does not give people the opportunity to find jobs, does not help them find homes and does not keep the offenders or, frankly, terrorists from entering our country. Members may have noticed that the most reasonable people in this country on immigration are no longer walking on eggshells about the issue. They have called it out for what it is: a deeply broken system that the government over the last 10 years broke.”
“The vast majority of Canadians, and any rational person, would look at this and say the exact same thing: The immigration system needs fixing. We need something to restore the trust and integrity that it once had. However, now we have an immigration minister who cannot answer the most basic questions. In fact, there are members on the other side of the House who spoke today who probably read the legislation, who were at committee, and who have answered every single question better than she could. I learned that first-hand last week when the minister could not say how many people we have welcomed to Canada. She could not tell us whether they would ever complete proper security checks. She could not tell us who was going to leave, when they were going to leave nor how they were going to do that.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time. This might be a new Parliament and a new Prime Minister , but we are tackling the same old problems with the exact same fraught solutions, and we have heard a lot about that today. What is worse is that the Liberal government cannot even admit the failures that every single Canadian now, no matter whom they voted for, can see exist. I am going to cut right to it. The current government broke the Canadian immigration system. It broke the 100-year consensus of our system, and it has taken a system that was once the envy of the world, of so many people who have come to call Canada home, and made it a system that is now rife with abuse and incompetence. Frankly, it was not that way 10 years ago.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not going to take lessons from that member and his party, which supported the previous government all the way through only to sit with seven people in opposition. Here is the point: We cannot force people to do something against their economic interests. That is what we will stand for every day in the House.”
“Mr. Speaker, from the beginning, it has made absolutely no sense for the government to want to tie itself to the EV mandate for the next nine years until it does some weird mental gymnastics and backs out of the very central piece of its policy. It is the very fact that Canadians cannot choose. It does not make economic sense, particularly in that member's riding, for anybody to drive an EV. It takes a good couple of hours to get around his riding, and I suspect the charging infrastructure is not there and will not be there. The Liberals are married to a plan that does not work. I suspect, after they get bonked over the head with it over the next couple of years, there will be a reversal, just like there was with the carbon tax when Conservatives pushed them to drop it.”
“Mr. Speaker, nobody is denying that there are times when there is a choice to drive an electric car or denying the people making that choice. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the government mandating that everybody drive an electric car instead of a gas-powered car rather than giving them the choice. The decision has to make economic sense. It has to make sense for the driver and the Canadian economy. That is what we are saying here today.”
“Mr. Speaker, Doug Ford has had no influence on the member in the insane decision of mandating electric vehicles for people to drive. There is a $31-billion government investment that is going to vanish in this country. Jobs will vanish in this country. Members should tell that to the 38,000 auto workers who will be out of a job and the 56,000 auto workers whose jobs are at risk today. If he wants to make a joke about Doug Ford, that is his prerogative, but this is serious. It is about the people who work in this country and get to choose what they drive, how they live their lives, what straw to use and every decision regarding their lives. We are not going to take a lesson from the government on how to live our lives.”
“We will stand up for the decisions made that are common sense, by the auto sector, by the workers in the auto sector and by every single Canadian who wants to make a decision.”
“We do not have really cold temperatures. With the right incentives, it makes sense based on what people choose. However, try telling somebody who lives in rural Alberta, who has to drive an hour or more just to run errands, and where it gets to -40°C, that they are going to be mandated to drive an electric vehicle by the government. It makes no sense and is not rational, which is exactly why we oppose this mandate. All those on the opposite side of the aisle might be content to pursue the ideological war on the gas-powered car, but Conservatives on this side of the House will not stand for it. We will speak for every single person who wants to make their own decisions, who wants to make a rational economic decision. We will stand up for the auto workers and for those who build our sector.”
“The government wants to build an economy based on edicts, mandates and ideologies, and a healthy sprinkling of fairy dust, and none of this is actually going to happen. Edicts, mandates, ideology and all of those things do not put food on the table. All of those things do not actually help people. All of those things do not provide the choice that someone should have as a Canadian. This might come as news to the government, but that is what it does. Individual people living their lives as they see fit, participating in a free market, making decisions based on rational analysis and scarce resources is something the government knows nothing about. For instance, in my community, there are lots of people who drive electric vehicles because it makes sense. They drive short distances. We do not have erratic weather.”
“The Liberals believe they can control someone's life better than they can. They can make decisions better than Canadians can for themselves, and we get significantly worse outcomes. In fact, they backtrack on some of those outcomes. We get those outcomes at a greater cost. It sometimes takes seven times longer than it should, and it leaves everybody worse off. Instead of a government that does a few important things really well, we get a government that does a zillion things badly. We still cannot get anybody's passport to come in the mail on time because the passport printer is broken and the mail people are on strike. This is a government that wants to do everything for Canadians, to creep into their lives and to take control.”
“They are being replaced by a government that thinks it knows best about what someone should eat, what they should drink, how they should drink it, or what you should use to drink it, and yes, what kind of car they should drive. For those watching this at home, the government does not want them to drive their gas-powered cars anymore. It has decided to mandate that everybody drives an electric car. It is insanity. The bureaucrats, the middle managers, the members of Parliament and the ministers of the government think they know better than Canadian consumers, and they want to make those decisions from Ottawa. They think they should be in control of every aspect of someone's life. We have seen this show before. We know how it ends. We can take our pick. It is a mandate, a carbon tax, some weird DEI quota or plastic straws.”
“In Ottawa's mind, the electric vehicle revolution is happening because they said so. Incentives are not their problem. Infrastructure is also somebody else's problem. Communication seems optional for them, but the mandates are very real, and they are sticking to them. The result will be that automakers will face penalties for not selling enough electric vehicles, consumers will face higher prices and dealers will face unsellable inventory. They have told us as much. They have told the government as much. Ottawa will face absolutely no accountability for any of it. What is more is that the liberty and freedom of choice that is guaranteed to every single Canadian vanishes with each passing decision.”
“Let us not forget the nearly $31 billion in subsidies that were handed out to foreign automakers and battery manufacturers, all of which are already going bust in a really big way. There are billions for multinational corporations and their executives, but heaven forbid a consumer gets $5,000 to buy one of these things. (1015) The new economic model the Liberals always think of is to subsidize the company that builds the product, then subsidize the consumer that buys it, and hope that nobody notices that the math does not add up. We cannot prop up both ends of the see-saw forever. Eventually, someone is going to want a product the government will not write a cheque for. Markets do not work on that basis, when Ottawa plays both the buyer and the seller in all of this.”
“The federal electric vehicle rebate program just ran out of money two months early, poof, gone, vanished, just like that, but the sales mandates are still in place. It is like telling Canadians that they have to eat nothing but steak for dinner every night while simultaneously taking away their grocery budget and calling it a climate plan. Automakers, dealers and consumers were shockingly not thrilled to find out that the $5,000 rebate evaporated overnight. Some poor souls even went to the dealership expecting that rebate and did not get it when they were in line to buy their electric cars. I am not a fan of the rebate to begin with, but nothing says stable investment climate like a last-minute pullback of a rebate that Canadians thought they were getting.”
“I do not think the environment minister has taken any time to think about these mandates in a real way. I know that her accomplice, the heritage minister , who actually put these mandates in place, has not either. This is what we get when we govern by vibes instead of governing by logic and reason. Canadians have certainly gotten used to this from the Liberals, but even by established standards, this ban deserves some kind of award in creative governance. If we take a deeper dive into the program and the inconsistencies and lack of oversight, we end up with just plain lunacy. I think Canadians watching this at home have no idea that it is happening. This is a plot twist that nobody saw coming, except for every single automaker in the industry.”
“Let us not forget that the Liberals want to do all of this at a time when our auto sector is already menaced by tariffs south of the border, when we are already losing jobs left, right and centre, The Globe and Mail reporting more today, and when Canadians are still reeling from the worst inflation in four decades. Add an industrial carbon tax to this and we now have a recipe for uncompetitiveness, all while preaching the bravado of “elbows up”. Canadians cannot even think about putting food on the table or finding a place to live. Frankly, I think the last thing on their minds is putting a new Tesla in the driveway. The government is going to come in with another job-killing mandate, another burden on consumers and the economy, all because it knows better than people do.”
“It would mean even lower car sales, lost jobs, higher auto prices and misery for consumers and workers alike. That is not according to me. That is according to the CEOs of some of the largest automakers in Canada. Canadian economists and the non-partisan number crunchers say that this ban would cost us 38,000 jobs, if the sector remains operational at all. The boots on the ground, the people who make the cars, purchase the parts and navigate international trading relationships, say that a move like this would take us out of alignment with key trading partners like the U.S. in an integrated North American market, threatening our position in the supply chain and the global economy.”
“We know that members across the way like to think while wearing their radical thinking caps or their CN Tower-climbing jumpsuits, but let us take them off for one second and really consider what a policy like this does for Canadians and the Canadian economy. It would mean that we would need nearly 700,000 charging ports from coast to coast in less than a decade. We have 60,000 right now, and get this. In 2024, last year, the government managed to install fewer chargers than it did the year before. Apparently, the only thing moving slower than the construction of electric vehicle charging stations is the government email mandating them. This ban would also mean that $600 billion would have to be spent preparing infrastructure. That is over $11,000 for every single car on the road at the moment.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time. I rise today in support of the Conservative motion in opposition to the government's authoritarian, misguided and altogether nonsensical ban on gas-powered vehicles. A ban on gas-powered vehicles sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory or something straight out of a science fiction novel, but it is real stuff. It is happening right now, and the Minister of Environment told us as much last week. She did not tell us that it was some aspiration or some kind of 100-year plan. She told us that it was a hard ban, a concrete requirement the government is going to bring in less than 10 years from now.”
“moved: Motion That, given that the Liberal government is banning the sale of gaspowered vehicles that will force Canadians to buy electric vehicles, and this mandate will drive up the cost of vehicles by $20,000, in order to allow Canadians the choice to purchase any vehicle that meets their needs at a price they can afford, the House calls on the Liberal government to immediately end their ban on gas-powered vehicles.”
“Mr. Speaker, here is the problem. As the G7 begins, the world may find out what Canadians have known for years: The Liberal laws still in place make it nearly impossible to get anything built. The Prime Minister 's solution is not to fix the problem. Instead, he wants to give hall passes to the very few favoured VIPs to skip the line while everyone else waits. Bill C-69 , the emissions cap, the shipping ban and the industrial carbon tax are all still on the books. Everyone knows the laws are broken and we need to exempt projects for them, so why not just repeal the laws, period?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is at the G7 today surrounded by allies in the largest oil-producing province in the federation, but thanks to the Liberal government, the oil and gas products they are demanding are still in the ground instead of powering our economy and Canadian paycheques. We have laws blocking extraction, a cap that halts production, a shipping ban that stops it from leaving and an industrial carbon tax that makes it all more expensive to build. Will the Liberals repeal our anti-energy laws and approve projects so that we can get jobs for our people and get our resources to market?”
“Do not let Canada's moral equivocation and a foreign minister speaking out of both sides of her mouth embolden the regime, a regime that has crushed dissent and policewomen's bodies, arrested without cause, executed at scale, erased gay rights and terrorized the world for more than 40 years. The biggest state sponsor of terror killed 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents. It has a former Liberal justice minister under 24-hour protection and intimidates our own people. The next time the foreign minister speaks, I hope she remembers that.”
“Mr. Speaker, to those who know what is at stake with the nuclear Iran and to the Iranian people, they should remember who they are; not the hunted, the lion; not the silenced, but the rising sun. The time has come, fierce in spirit and brilliant in purpose, to reclaim their homeland and fulfill the ancient promise of Cyrus and the legacy of civilization over barbarism. Let this be the hour when the prison doors close, tyranny falls and freedom takes root: a free Iran, a proud nation restored and, with it, the hope for a more peaceful region led by its most resilient people.”
“Mr. Speaker, if we accept the findings and do the exact same thing, Canadians who need a place to live are the ones who end up paying the price. The federal lands initiative, the crown jewel of the government's agenda on building housing, has attained just 7% of its target. The people in charge of that initiative are now the justice minister and the finance minister . They actually got promoted. In the real world, incompetence of this magnitude has consequences, so I have a simple question: Which one of them is getting fired?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's new report on housing shows just how badly the government has failed Canadians. Since 2018, the government has spent over $300 million to fund a new bureaucracy called the federal lands initiative. It built 309 units. That is fewer than 50 units a year. That is over a million bucks a unit. Now the Prime Minister says he is going to create another bureaucracy to do exactly the same thing. How much more of Canadians' money will be flushed down the drain to pay for bureaucracies rather than paying for building homes?”
“Mr. Chair, Ahmed Eldidi was the 2008 Syrian refugee who was charged in 2024 after appearing in an ISIS torture video, which was missed by initial screenings by this government. Did the Liberal government spend enough time vetting him? Just a simple yes or no.”
“Mr. Chair, these are immigration questions. The minister decides who comes into Canada. Does she believe that non-permanent residents who have been convicted of a criminal offence should be deported, yes or no?”
“Mr. Chair, does the minister think the amount of time spent on vetting Muhammad Khan, who was the student arrested last year for plotting an ISIS attack in New York whose social media had extremist content, was sufficient?”
“Mr. Speaker, forgive me if I am a bit skeptical of the housing minister, who increased the price of housing by 179% in just eight years in Vancouver. The Liberals broke housing. They fuelled inflation, which drove up rates. They rewarded those who blocked housing construction. They supercharged immigration numbers, which outpaced the availability of housing. The housing minister says we need affordable housing, which is great, but then he turns around and says that home prices should not go down. Both of these things cannot be true, so which one is it?”
“Mr. Speaker, the housing minister, who increased building taxes by 141% the last time he had a chance, should be aware that the Oxford Economics global cities index found that residents of Toronto spend more of their income on housing than any other city in the world. However, the man in charge of housing does not think that is a problem. He says that housing prices should not go down, period. If he does not think that housing prices should go down, can he tell the residents of Toronto how much more of their income they are going to have to spend on their homes?”
“I know they want to go home early for their summer vacation. We saw that when they ignored calls from the House to present a budget. However, I think this is important and requires an emergency debate. Therefore, I am requesting one, on behalf of Canadians and on behalf of members on this side of the House.”
“Mr. Speaker, it now seems that the Liberal government failed to get a deal on tariffs. In fact, we learned that during the last campaign, the Liberals quietly reduced the retaliatory tariffs to near zero. We found out yesterday that Donald Trump has increased the unjustified tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50%. Of course, this is after the person who was elected in this country claimed that he was a man with a plan, that he was the guy we hire in a crisis. What we see now is a 50% increase in tariffs. For steelworkers who say that they are “on the verge of collapse”, for families who are worried about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head and for businesses that need certainty, Liberal ministers need to answer to the House. I know that is not something they care to do.”
“Mr. Speaker, every Canadian family now pays $1,400 more for government consultants, but let us go back to groceries. The Prime Minister might not know this, but when Canadians go to the grocery store and leave with two bags, they are oftentimes more than $100, and it is getting worse. Again, on behalf of the millions of Canadians who are waiting for a plan to tackle food inflation, will the government introduce a budget or ignore the will of Parliament and take a summer vacation?”
“Mr. Speaker, “Canadians will hold account by their experience at the grocery store” are the words of the Prime Minister , so let us see what the new stats say about his performance. Since the start of 2025, the price of rice has gone up 14%, the price of potatoes is up 13%, the price of infant formula is up 9% and beef is up a whopping 33%. By that measure, he is failing miserably. The Prime Minister claimed that he had a plan for inflation, but all Canadians got was another half a trillion dollars of spending with no budget. Where is it?”
“Mr. Speaker, if the government had a plan, it would have tabled a budget yesterday and told Canadians exactly how their money is being spent. Of course, nothing says affordability like hiring the architect of the housing crisis to fix the problem here. The new housing minister let Vancouver home prices rise by 179% when he was in office. I have a very simple question. Can the minister tell us, with the government's inflationary spending, how much each Canadian mortgage will go up as a result?”
“Mr. Speaker, leave it to the Liberals to tell Canadians that a half-a-trillion-dollar blank cheque and an 8% spending hike, after promising to cap it at 2%, mean good news for Canadians. A request for a half-a-trillion-dollar blank cheque is not a plan; it is the exact opposite. So far, the plan is that the government wants to spend $1,400 per Canadian family for government consultants. The Prime Minister said the Liberals would cut it by $7 billion; instead, they increased it by $6 billion. If the Prime Minister is the man with the plan whom people want to hire in a crisis, why does he need to hire so many—”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister spent weeks parading around the country and promising Canadians he would “spend less”. However, the guy who was supposed to give us fiscal restraint dropped an 8% spending hike after promising he would cap government spending at 2%, a big broken promise and a half-a-trillion-dollar spending bill without an actual budget. He called himself an Ottawa outsider, but he is picking up pretty quickly on the ways of old Liberal Ottawa. Businesses and households across the country spend their money and live within their means. Why can the Prime Minister not do the same?”
“Mr. Speaker, I would be the first one to say that I do not want to talk about anti-Semitism in the House or ever in this country, and I do not think anybody should ever have to. However, the fact that the Liberals do not leads me to use this seat to speak for my community. With regard to youth unemployment, I think the data is very clear. We are seeing the highest youth unemployment rate in Ontario, and we are seeing the highest unemployment rates in Ontario.”
“In fact, we have a housing minister whose record in Vancouver was to have housing prices rise 180%, who is now building a bureaucracy rather than building homes, and who is married to the generational divide that the Liberals caused in this last election between those who own their home and those aspiring to get one. That is not the right course of action, and Conservatives will stand ready to make sure that we bring solutions to the floor of the House of Commons and that they take more of our ideas on it.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think the member is referring to the decelerator funding or whatever the last scheme of the Liberal government was in terms of giving municipalities more money in order to block more homebuilding. It is the exact opposite of what we have said. When I talked about home ownership in the speech, I talked about it as an aspiration that so many in this country have, and about the blocking of it from governments right across the board, municipal, federal and provincial, that do not see the value in actually getting homes built.”
“Perhaps the member can tell the Prime Minister that this is actually a problem, since the Prime Minister has come back to Canada, and he can advise him on doing something rather than saying nothing, or, in the case when they do say something, that it is not parroting the talking points of a terrorist organization.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that was a question, and perhaps it was a comment, but it is more platitudes from this government. It talks about diversity, and its members talk a strong game about diversity, but when it comes to the actual protection of minorities for the lawlessness that is in the streets, and not just in the Jewish community, not just against Christian churches and not just against Hindu temples, they are nowhere to be found. The same repeat violent offenders, the same mobs of people covering their faces are the ones who rule the streets, and the Liberals have been silent about it.”