In this interview, Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman argues that Canada’s economy is in serious decline despite official statistics that suggest otherwise. She contends that GDP‑per‑capita figures are inflated by government spending and immigration, and that ordinary Canadians feel their standard of living has worsened over the past decade. Lantsman and the host discuss a "brain drain" of talent and capital, stagnant or negative job growth, and a soaring cost of living, especially housing. She blames bloated government bureaucracy, excessive regulation, and high development taxes for the housing crisis, proposing that the federal government should release unused land, cut development charges, and partner with the private sector to build affordable homes. Throughout, she emphasizes a philosophical divide: the government should not be the primary driver of economic activity, and reducing its role would restore productivity and opportunity for Canadians.
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So we've got a really, really big problem in terms of our own productivity and we're juicing, frankly, as a country, you're juicing the GDP number with— Government spending. Well, with immigration as well.
Oh, that too.
And so you've got super flawed metrics and then the government sort of comes out and tells you that you're amongst the best in the G7 or you have like a low debt per GDP ratio in terms of borrowing. But it's all nonsense. Feel it. You can, you can ask anyone, is your life better today than it was 10 years ago? And the answer is no.
Anyone who can leave is trying to leave Canada. The brain drain is very real. It's not a new thing. I think it's accelerated. Capital and people, talented people, those who have options, are leaving Canada.
Look, you certainly see the capital outflow, and there's lots of things we can do on, on, on, on the tax side, on the investment side, on the, you know, developing our, our, our own sort of God-given resources in, in this country. On the, on the people side, I think it's— look, I think it's a little bit different. And you worry about the ones that you lose because they're the job creators, they're the innovators, they're the ones that take, you know, take risks. I think it's really, really hard to just uproot your life and move somewhere. And I think it's not an option for many, many people, both from a, you know, family and life perspective. And then from a, you know, a regulatory perspective of they probably work— some of them probably work in jobs that are regulated. It's not so easy to get credentialed in other countries. It never has been. I think we have to do everything in order to keep people here. Again, that's on the investment on the tax side, but it's also on just the cost of living, on the cultural issues here, on the getting the sense back of like bravado that you can do anything, like you can be from any family, any background, any walk of life. And if you worked hard and you did everything right, we've got to be able to provide that dream. And that dream has to do with homeownership, and that dream has to do with opportunities in the workforce. And that dream has to do with stopping to, you know, to put forward a lot of these policies that are making it impossible for people, right?
So let's get into that, because the cost of living has skyrocketed. You brought up a couple of great examples regarding food inflation. The cost of buying a house is almost impossible in major Canadian cities, and minor—
and smaller ones too, right?
Right, exactly. The economy is weak. Our economy is— you know, we've lost net 8,000 jobs since Prime Minister Carney took over, right, in April. We've lost net 8,000 jobs.
80,000. 8,000. Yeah, over the, over the course of the time, 80,000.
Um, regardless, we've lost jobs, and you think the opposite would happen because Mark Carney is an economist and all the, all these credentials are very nice. Um, I'll put up a couple of charts for, for the people watching. Um, let's take just the first metric, GDP per capita. Yeah, as soon as Justin Trudeau was elected in 2025, you know, you see GDP per capita going up and then going back down, uh, meaning it's not— it's a flawed metric, but it's a good proxy as far as we can have for the productivity of the economy.
It's not such a flaw. It's not such a flawed metric because it tells you the picture of, you know, how, how you're doing. Um, and what's worse about the GDP per capita is it's actually like— it's in, it's in the 2022 federal budget. Maybe they left it in by accident, but it's on page 24 or 25. They've got the chart from the OECD, and it, it goes— it talks about GDP per capita, and we've got the worst outlook for the next 30 years of any of those advanced economies. Um, so we've got a really, really big problem, um, you know, in terms of our own our own productivity and we're juicing, frankly, as a country, you're juicing the GDP number with immigration as well.
Oh, that too.
And so you've got super flawed metrics and then the government sort of comes out and tells you that you're amongst the best in the G7 or you have like a low debt per GDP ratio in terms of borrowing. But it's all nonsense. Like you can feel it. You can ask anyone, is your life better today than it was 10 10 years ago? And the answer is no. And I'll, you know, I'll ask you, like, is your life— I mean, probably in a different stage of your life, but is your life better in terms of, you know, financially, family planning-wise, like all of the things that you're supposed to do? Is it better now than it was 10 years ago? The answer is like a resounding no a lot of the time.
Right. I've noticed it's much harder to make money. It's much harder to do anything. Like just in my own business, venture capital, we'll get into it.
Right.
It's, it's, it's chaos. Like in Canada, it's almost— if the government wasn't pouring money and the private money is going towards later stage stuff. I'll have to get into it, but I want to focus on this idea of GDP per capita a little bit. Um, I try to think, I try to steelman my opponent and a little bit like, are these people just dumb? Like, if you like, what, what are they doing that's wrong that they think they're doing right? Like, are they just flawed in their conception? Is it bad execution? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the Canadian people economy? Like, what, what is going wrong?
I think it's a worldview that's, that's just very different than well, mine or yours or one that makes sense in my estimation, like the government can't be the answer to everything. It can't actually even be the answer to anything. You don't have an economy that's going to be productive and fast-paced if the government is the sole investor. Government doesn't know how to do stuff. I mean, it's that simple. If you've ever had to try to get a passport or try to get anybody on the phone at CRA I use these examples because they're constant examples in my own office on a daily basis. Like, why on earth would you want government doing those things for you? And fundamentally, that's the difference of view. And then when you make government so bloated and so fat and so excessive and it does things that it never had core competencies or did before, well then it becomes very hard to remove government from all of those things. And that's what we saw. We saw this, we talked a little bit around the time of the pandemic and we saw sort of the creep of of government getting bigger. And when government gets bigger, it's impossible to shrink.
Right. I mean, the government should only be involved in those things that private industry shouldn't be involved in, not because it wouldn't do it better.
Like public security, like, you know, the things that matter. And then in those cases, like, they're not even doing a good job.
Let's talk about housing because, yeah, I mean, I'm 35 or 36. I forget what age I am. 49 people do the math at home, whatever. Thank God I was able to get into the housing market when I was 26. I worked very hard.
Smart.
Worked very, very hard. Lucky I lived for a time in a basement, one single room in a basement with no windows, just to save enough money for a down payment. I was very lucky I got into the housing market, so I'm good, thank God. And I've had a decent job for, for a long time, so I can afford all those things. But most people I know can't afford a house, right? Uh, the average home of a, uh, the average price of home in Toronto and a place like Vancouver is over $1 million. That's including condos, including today when the price has already gone down a bit. And to get a mortgage today, you have to have a household income of over $200,000 and a down payment of $200,000. Is there a realistic path to fixing that issue? And what would the Conservative Party do to solve it?
Yeah, like homeownership is— it's not a dream anymore. It's sort of a nightmare for a lot of people. And rightfully so, because, you know, without a home, like, you can't do the other things. Like, we use this example of like a home is more than just like, you know, four walls and some windows and eventually some flowers in front. It is like the key to everything else. It's the key to family planning. It's the key to like, you know, having a foothold in the world. And it's based on a very, very realistic dream that you can come here and work hard and get a house. Like, that's like, my parents moved here in the late '70s and they like, they moved to this neighborhood like in the early '80s already buying a home for like a fraction of obviously the price of a downtown Toronto parking spot these days. But it led them to be able to do everything else and it led them to a certain kind of freedom that you can't enjoy. It led them to be able to, you know, have kids and raise them and like, you know, holds, functions. Like it was more than just like the physical house. So that's why the dream sort of exists for so many people. And like, it's not, again, like it's not that complicated. The majority of a home, like a third of it is taxes. It's regulation. It's, you know, development charges from our municipalities. Like we have, like fundamentally the federal government has like a big, big tool and it's like the biggest part of the public purse. And so we can reward those who get out out of the way of home building and punish those, frankly, with a bit of a stick approach of those who are in the way, cut development taxes, open up our own free land. Like, the federal government sits on lots of their own land, lots of their own properties that aren't being used, being able to, you know, get partners in the private sector to develop that land. Like, there's lots of things that the federal government does, but building, you know, bureaucracy after bureaucracy. So I think we're on bureaucracy number 4 now. So this one is $13 billion so far, an announcement of building 4,000 homes.
Which comes out to what, like $3 million or something?
Yeah, $3.2 million for, you know, for a container effectively. I don't want to live in a container. I certainly don't know why anybody wants to live in a $3.2 million container. But all of that aside, like, again, that's another bureaucracy, another office to tell you about the things that we need to do to get out of the way of housing. Like, all of this is like— I don't know the scientific term. I'm going to just use cuckoo bananas. Is, is how I look at— like, it is taxes, it is regulation, um, it is the availability of, of land. And we've got land and we've got lumber and we've got, uh, labor. Like, we are rich with all of that, um, uh, and putting it to, uh, to good use by getting out of the, of the way. Like, my— there's a theme in all of this. It's like, get government out of the business of doing stuff that it doesn't need to do, right?
Right. I'm down with that idea.
Yeah, I figured you might be.
Now, I'd like to believe my fellow citizens are, you know, paying attention enough to politics so they can make informed decisions and have an informed vote. But it seems like many Canadians are okay with the status quo, where they believe that the same party will change things even though their stated policies are almost the same as the prior one. Why do you think Canadians haven't resonated enough to the message of the Conservative Party when it's clear the status quo isn't working for them? Just like, like you said, with food inflation, housing prices, cost of living, all that.
