Melissa Lantsman · TranslatePolitics.ca

Government Orders

Report Stage

2026-05-04

“I worked hard to improve this bill in committee. Now it looks like the government might ignore all our changes and just pass the original version instead. That would skip all the amendments we passed to help survivors and make the accountability system stronger. I want the government to change its mind and accept our improvements. This isn't about making life better for politicians, it's about making life better for the people who serve in the military.”

Official Hansard

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. 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. 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 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.

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-05-04

“The Prime Minister spent a lot of money to fix a crisis, but now we have a huge debt. In five years it will be $1 trillion. All that spending hasn't helped. Food, housing and gas are all more expensive. The guy who was supposed to fix the crisis is making it worse with more debt. When will the Liberals stop spending so much so Canadians can afford to live?”

“The Prime Minister said he would spend less. He didn't. He spent $35 billion more. The deficit doubled from last year. The Globe and Mail thinks he's bad with money. Liberals spend a lot. Canadians are paying $3,400 just for interest on the debt. The Prime Minister should stop making us pay for his spending.”

Government Orders

2026-05-04

“The government ignored military sexual misconduct forever. They ignored witness after witness. Now they're ignoring our constructive amendments passed by all other parties, to ram through their bad bill untouched. Making it this bill better shouldn't be partisan. Survivors don't want to be forced into one court or another. The government agrees in committee and now ignores the change anyway. This isn't empowering survivors. It's paternalism. I want victims to have any tiny bit of autonomy and choice we can give back.”

Official Hansard

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-30

“The government's new budget spends $37 billion more. That will make inflation worse and hurt the middle class with higher taxes. It's the government's fault. They should stop. I want the government to stop spending so much.”

“The government's new budget spends too much and helps too little. The government borrowed another $37 billion, nearly $1,000 per Canadian, but Canadians still can't afford groceries or rent. They're forced to max out their own credit cards. Our food and housing inflation are the highest in the G7. The government now pays more on interest than it gives provinces for health care. This reckless spending must stop so families can afford to get by.”

Government Orders

Business of Supply

2026-04-30

“The Liberals are just as bad at math as I am. They think they're saving money, but they're really not. Canadians don't need the government to save money for them. The government just needs to spend less so Canadians can afford their own groceries.”

“The government's new bureaucracy will meddle in the market. It takes money from taxpayers to push unwanted projects. That's not how a free market works. That won't build Canada's future.”

“You want to spend spend spend. You're not really explaining how a sovereign wealth fund works. If Canada actually made money we'd have the kind of fund you're talking about. We don't. So you want taxpayers to bankroll the businesses you think are nice. Your spending chases away business and makes everything cost more.”

Official Hansard

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. That is evidenced by the $1 trillion of capital that has fled this country.

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“This government spending announcement is not what it seems. It's fake. The government is borrowing at 3.5% or 4% and betting that a Crown corporation run by political appointees will outperform that cost. It's leveraged speculation with taxpayer collateral. This isn't a sovereign wealth fund, it's a debt fund. The fund's mandate is politically directed - it's not a real investment fund. Major projects aren't getting built in Canada because of regulatory burdens, not lack of capital. The government should cut taxes, eliminate red tape and trade barriers, fast-track approvals, and scrap bad laws preventing development. None of that requires borrowing $25 billion. This fund will spend borrowed money, pick winners and losers, and distort the market. The government should get out of the way and let private capital and business work.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, there is an old joke about a man who racks up an enormous credit card debt, takes a second mortgage, opens a savings account and tells his wife it did not cost them anything. That joke is a pretty accurate description of the government's economic policy, and we are all the wife. The Prime Minister has announced a $25-billion so-called sovereign wealth fund, and Canadians deserve a serious accounting of what has actually been put in front of them. Let us begin with the most fundamental question: What precisely is a sovereign wealth fund? A real one would be built on genuine surpluses. We heard in the House today about Norway. Norway's government pension fund, the model the Prime Minister so eagerly name-drops, was capitalized by petroleum revenues. It has $1 trillion of assets because Norway saved when times were good. Canada is not Norway. Norway has oil money and Canada has vibes and a $25-billion credit card statement. We are running an almost $70-billion deficit in the current fiscal year alone, double the last guy's, so we do not have surpluses to invest. We have deficits to finance, and $25-billion seed money in this fund is not savings. It is actually borrowed money any way we look at it. It is debt finance, like every other federal expenditure that exceeds our revenues. The Prime Minister is not building a wealth fund. He is building a debt fund, and he should be honest with Canadians about it. Let us be clear about what it means for every Canadian household. The government is borrowing at roughly 3.5% or 4% on 10-year bonds and betting that a bureaucratic Crown corporation run by political appointees will outperform the cost of that capital. It is leveraged speculation with taxpayer collateral, and not the nation building that the Prime Minister is suggesting it is. I have heard Liberal government members say that this fund will be different, that it will be more transparent, more accountable and better governed. I would feel more confident about that claim if they could tell us who is going to govern it, how the projects would be selected, when it would be operational and what relationship any of this would have to the Canada Infrastructure Bank or the Canada Growth Fund. They cannot answer any of those questions today, and we will see that throughout the day. I am certainly not alone in asking them. This announcement landed with a giant thud. The sovereign wealth fund proposal was met with near-universal skepticism, disbelief and, frankly, pure ridicule. The Globe and Mail, not exactly a Conservative voice in Canada, observed this week that the pension funds that presumably partner with this vehicle, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, were not even consulted before this announcement was made. The CPP Investment Board, to its credit, said that the key to long-term success for any public investment institution is “a clear commercial mandate, strong governance, and operational independence.” That is a politely worded way of saying that it has concerns. We should have concerns, because the question cuts to the heart of this whole exercise. The fund's mandate is politically directed toward domestic infrastructure such as ports, mines and trade corridors, with diversification explicitly not a priority. It is then not truly an investment fund at all. In the Globe's words, it is an “off-balance sheet vehicle for fiscal policy.” That is a government wealth fund in a costume. It is actually just another government program. We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which members might remember now as the green slush fund, sent $400 million out to Liberal-backed pet projects with 186 identified conflicts of interest, zero accountability and zero measurable results. The Canada Infrastructure Bank was also endowed with $45 billion in infrastructure. It spent a fraction of that on actual construction while handing out $8 million in bonuses since 2024. The Prime Minister himself made these comparisons earlier this week. With respect, I do not think it is the endorsement he thinks it is. Here is a deeper problem. The reason that major projects are not getting built in Canada is not a lack of government capital, and that is the point here. There is not a lack of capital in Canada. They can ask anybody. If an infrastructure project is not moving forward, it is almost certainly because the private sector stakeholders have determined that it is not economically viable or because of the absurd regulatory environment. They have told us this. One does not solve an onerous regulatory environment by creating a new Crown corporation to fund projects the private sector stakeholders already said no to. One solves it by fixing the actual regulatory environment. Even industry leaders are telling the Financial Times, not a Conservative blog but the Financial Times of London, saying that the government's red-tape cutting efforts are already floundering, costing more in lost trade than Trump's tariffs ever did. Forestry executives are frustrated. People in the oil and gas sector are frustrated. Auto executives are frustrated. What do we do? We create another bypass around the dysfunction, instead of fixing the dysfunction itself. The Liberals have created an $18-billion-a-year regulatory burden. They have interprovincial trade barriers in place that knock $200 billion off our GDP. They are married to Bill C-69, the tanker ban, the policy uncertainty that has chased a trillion dollars out of this economy over the 10 years. Capital did not flee Canada because there was no government bank to subsidize it. It fled because it was simply unprofitable to do business here. A $25-billion Band-Aid applied over a gaping wound does not close the wound. It just becomes a really expensive Band-Aid that Canadians will end up paying for. There are real alternatives to this. We could genuinely cut taxes so that families have more in their pockets every single month and business owners have a reason to stay here or to open up their business here in the first place. We can eliminate red tape and trade barriers that cost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost economic activity every year. I just do not understand how that is never the solution that they go to. We could fast-track approvals and start building things rather than funding another Ottawa office to study the feasibility of someday perhaps getting something built. We could scrap the bad laws, including Bill C-69, the tanker ban and the industrial carbon tax. They are actively preventing pipelines, mines and LNG terminals from being constructed. That is not this side of the House saying that. That is the industry representatives themselves. None of this would require borrowing $25 billion of new money. All of it would create much more wealth than the government ever could. That is how to build a country, not on borrowed money funnelled through a Crown corporation whose governance, mandate and accountability mechanisms have yet to be designed but were announced first and with details to follow. Canadians get to pay the bill. This House is owed answers that the government has not provided. Who runs the fund? How much in terms of management fees did they get? On what criteria are projects approved? What prevents them from being another vehicle for the same Liberal patronage networks that have embarrassed the government repeatedly? We will keep asking those questions. We will keep being the voice of every single Canadian who can see clearly what this is. When this was announced, I could not find a whole lot of people who were excited about it, except for the members on the other side of the House. They keep telling Canadians that Canadians do not understand the potential of this and this is based on hope, but everything this would do is the opposite of what the government says it is going to do. 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.

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-28

“Canadians are struggling with high costs and debt after years of Liberal spending. Liberal ministers got rich while Canadians paid the bill. The government can't keep borrowing and spending. When will they learn to live within their means?”

“Government promised to spend less. But now they max out the taxpayer credit card. Last guy left a $31 billion deficit. This guy can't even stay close to that! Maybe he could cut spending or cap the deficit at the already reckless $31 billion.”

Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-27

“The other party spends too much and puts the bill on families. Their spending made food and rent even more expensive. Families are struggling but the government just keeps spending. Will the Prime Minister stop spending so much or does he think Canadians can just get a higher credit limit?”

“I want to hold Justin Trudeau to his promise of spending less money. Instead, he has increased spending by $90 billion, with a 7% increase in bureaucracy and a 9% increase in operating costs. This is not normal and it's putting the nation's finances at risk. I want the Prime Minister to commit to not exceeding the already excessive $31 billion deficit left by Justin Trudeau, instead of just asking for a higher credit limit.”

Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-23

“The government spends a lot and gets nothing done. All that spending just takes money from Canadians. When will this stop?”

“The government spends too much. It borrows too much. That makes prices go up for everyone. The bank said so. The Prime Minister should stop spending so much.”