Melissa Lantsman on Carney's caucus crackdown

Well, some recent polling suggests the federal liberals are riding high with 50 % support, but behind closed doors, nobody in Mark Carney's caucus seems to be celebrating.Cracks have developed in party unity.The image some Canadians have of the prime minister is one of an open, reasonably approachable leader.This week, a much darker picture of the man has emerged from his own caucus with anonymous leaks to the media.reports the PM has a short fuse and is condescending that he ridicules MPs who disagree with him.Here's what CBC pundit Chantal Hébert had to say.

But what I do find striking goes back to this notion that you're at 50 percent in the polls and you've got MPs who are going around saying it's not nice.What will happen when you're at 27 percent in the polls?I've watched Brian Mulroney at 20 % and no one was going to journalists to say things like that, to Jean Chariot in Quebec.So yes, there is a message there about caucus management.But I'm not surprised that this is happening because I have this quote, a public quote from the prime minister who says, I don't want to hear what people are against.We want to hear what they're for.

I have translated it now into what they're for if it happens to match what we're for.

That was at the Vancouver Board of Trade where he said that publicly.

What I'm for really because I believe it's a defining quote.

And when I read out the column, I thought, yeah, others point to Carney's authoritarian streak is insistence on things being his way or the highway.

There is trouble being stored up here for Mark Carney.We've already discussed many times in this program.his authoritarian streak.He also suffers, I think, from smartest guy in the room syndrome.And if you've always been the smartest guy around the table, or at least think you are, in his case, probably with some justice, it can impair your judgment.You're not able to see other points of view.

You're not able to hear signs of trouble brewing, not just in your party, but in the country.You're not getting all the facts, and you can be too locked up in your own brilliant schemes and not see the flaws in them.So sometimes the smartest guy in the room doesn't necessarily have the best judgment.

And so the image emerging of the prime minister this week, at least according to some, is one of a Jekyll and Hyde character, joking with reporters and smiling when he's on camera, but of a short -tempered demagogue behind closed doors.Our guest today is Melissa Lansman, MP for Thornhill.Welcome to the show, Melissa.

Thanks for having me.

Tell me, what do you make of some of the reports coming out of media regarding these caucus meetings and some of the behavior that we're hearing about as far as the Prime Minister goes towards his MPs.

I think you're seeing exactly what we've been talking about for months and months and almost more than a year now since he's been elected.There is the reality and there is the illusion.And that's true in all of the policy announcements that he's been making versus the actual delivery of results.And it's also true, it turns out, in his personal character.But more than just personal character, I think it says something about him that the people should pay attention to.You see, MPs are there as a conduit, as representatives of constituents, of real Canadians on the ground.

We hear these stories day in and day out.And to have a guy who just doesn't want to hear any of it, I think tells you everything you need to know about the world that Mark Twainlives in, like the high -flying sort of Davos speeches versus the everyday pain that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are feeling on groceries, on gas, on the price of homes.That stuff's uninteresting for him.And he's dismissive of that.And that's exactly what I think when he's dismissive of an MP.

Yeah, the sense that he's this plutocrat, you know, completely bubble wrap as far as the pain that Canadians are feeling.And also, if he's showing this level of disdain towards his own members of Parliament, I mean, Imagine how little he thinks about the rest of us.

Well, I mean, that's it's it's it's one in the same, right?Like you're there really as, first of all, privileged position to be there.But you're there really as a condiment for the people that you represent.And you're supposed to go to Ottawa with the voice of those people.You're not supposed to be the voice of Ottawa in the constituency.And I think he's got it all wrong.

And I think it speaks to to his character.I think it speaks to the type of prime minister that he is.

And when you see the amount of money being spent on these in -flight meals.You're talking about $200 ,000 for three flights.I mean, that kind of money is going to jump out.It's going to make people's hair curl because they themselves have been suffering.I mean, No doubt.

Look, it's $834 on orange juice for a single flight.$3 ,800 on chocolate mousse.Like, I don't even think chocolate mousse is very expensive.So $3 ,800 of it is like, you might as well bathe in a tub.But to your point, it's exactly at the time where Canadians are tightening their belts.We have the highest food inflation in all of the G7.

Grocery prices, another $1 ,000 per yearfor a family of four.So at a time when Canadians are tightening this belt, we think the Prime Minister should just be doing the same thing.3 ,400, you know, we've got stories of luxury buttercups or luxury butter and and I don't even know what kind of buttercups are they're not on my menu so it's hard for me to understand, and I think it's hard for every Canadian to understand that a time of an economic crunch at a time where Kearney is the only G20 leader that has put this country into a recession.He's driven the economy into decline three out of four of the last quarters.And new data says that it's getting worse.

At that kind of moment in our present day experience as Canadians, it doesn't look good, it doesn't smell good, and it shouldn't be happening.

Yeah, I mean, we did get some good news in the way of job creation today with 88 ,000.I want to get to that in a minute.So a lot of the polling that we've seen, it was the Leger poll, it has liberals upwards of, you know, 50 percent, but the prime minister's own level of support is 56.But these are unheard of numbers.And so it really makes you wonder about this massive gap between the perception, assuming these polls are correct, of the prime minister for whom they think he is and what's going on behind closed doors and whether or not these types of stories are going to continue.And it'll also be interesting to see how Carney handles this now, because now he's got leaks, right?

He's got a leaky boat.He's got people in there giving little notes and giving calls to people at the Toronto Star and the CBC about this.So does the prime minister get angry?Does he lower the boom on people that he thinks are responsible?What do you think happens now?

Well, look, I you know, I think the the internal politics of the Liberal Party is is something that's so uninteresting to me and it's souninteresting to the everyday Canadian that is struggling with food prices and getting into housing.We have the second highest unemployment in the G7.We have a youth unemployment crisis at 13%, even after today's job numbers.This is like inside baseball.But what I think Canadians will be looking at is how he responds to actually turning in turning up.

turning his economic credentials into results for Canadians.You know why this is so damning for the prime minister?These economic numbers that we're talking about is because he promised Canadians that he would be the sound fiscal manager.He was the guy you hired in a crisis.He was the guy to get, you know, to get a tariff free deal with the US.He was the guy to bring our economy back into the black.

And instead, he's the only one out of all of his peer industrialized countries that has put us in the And that speaks directly to the credibility of the Prime Minister.So I think he's got a number of problems on his hands.One is this caucus.One is Canadians.The other is the economy.And they're all going to catch up to the Prime Minister when you see that the illusions of what he's promised the Canadian public just don't match the results.

Yeah, maybe his lack of political experience coming in might be starting to be reflected in his behavior and maybe the fact that he's getting stressed out as as he encompasses the kind of opposition that he never used to.He didn't get a whole lot of opposition as the central banker, did he?It was what he says goes, he has staff.

That's right.Yeah, he never questioned the central banker.But look, this is also like, let's not, your viewers cannot forget that this is the same minister sitting in the same seats, oftentimes in the same portfolio that have brought us into this disaster, that are still responsible for shepherding the country through this term of government.So you've got a minister of heritage who wants to ban verses from the Bible, still the minister of heritage.You've got the minister of jobs who spent time in other portfolios, destroying the economic output of Canadians via productivity.You've got a minister of industry who's a failed minister of foreign affairs everybody there just keeps failing upwards.

So if that's going to be, you know, if that's going to be the, the, the, the future of the, of the Carney government, then I don't think it's going to last that long.

Yeah.Well, we've also got this advisory council, you know, that's supposed to be helping ease the situation on antisemitism made up of, well, quite possibly antisemites, but we've also learned that the Carney government has blown past its deficit targets by about $7 billion.So even as we're handing out checks to 12 million people, We're seeing where it's coming out.It's just more debt, really.It's an inflationary, isn't it?

Yeah, well, this is this is like this is interesting news.So yesterday, the PBO reported that there is a one percent chance that the government is going to to to meet their what's called a fiscal anchor.And that's the debt to GDP ratio.It'll be missed by the Liberals as as Canada is in a recession and the economy is projected even to be weaker than expected.The PBO projects it.We have a spring economic statement where the economic growth will be weaker and that was revised.

So this year and next year, it was revised down to 1 .1 % and 1 .6%.That's down from 1 .3 % and 1 .8%.The downgrade doesn't even include the most recent GDP number.So we're going into weaker economic growth.It's not just the PBO saying it, it's Scotiabank.it's, their forecasts are about at 0 .8 % growth for Canada.

That's less than half of what they projected before and BMO projecting even worse growth numbers at 0 .5.We continue to see, despite the gaslighting, we continue to see a productivity crisis in this country and business investment being weak as companies postpone their plans to grow because of the uncertainty.And look, you don't want to be you don't want to be ever cheerleading the the economic situation that we're in, because this is very real costs for a lot of people, but you can't ignore the situation either.And that's, you know, our job is to call it out and shine a light on the very reality that so many millions of Canadians are facing, whether it's through their own cost of living, whether it's through not having the confidence that they might have their job at the end of the year, whether it's, you know, whether it's any of those things and making sure that we're doing what we can in Canada and what we should be doing in Canada to lower investment attract attract to lower sort of taxes and attract investment to make sure that that Canadians can see a bright future rather than a bleak one.

And now we learn what a bubble the economy has been in probably years based on the immigration levels.I mean, all you have to do is pump the brakes a little on immigration.That was enough.for us to slip into recession.That's that's how tentative the grasp on having a.

Yeah.But let's let's be very careful.Let's not you know let's let's not just you know not let's not just use that as a as a as a solution.There's no doubt that juicing the the the economy through immigration numbers has been somethingthat is happening for years and years in this country and anybody who sort of looked at the indicators can see that but just pumping the brakes on on immigration won't work either because our per capita GDP that means how rich every single person is. regardless of the net number, has gone up only 0 .2%.That's anemic.

So, you know, if they think that they can sort of paper over their weak economic numbers by reducing immigration a little bit, it's not going to work for everyday Canadians.In fact, it's not working for everyday Canadians.So that can't be the answer.

I did mention the job numbers from today, 88 ,000 jobs created and this post by the Prime Minister himself.Today, money is going into the bank accounts of more than 12 million Canadians.That's the new Canada groceries and essentials benefit at work, giving a boost to Canadians who need it most.And well, we all know that a lot of Canadians need a boost, but what they really need is lower prices, you know, not just a periodic handout.What do you make of this?

Yeah, look, look, two things there on the job numbers.Like we're I mean, we're we're very happy to hear that there's some rebound in the job markets, but that's not going to erase the more than one hundred and twelve thousand jobs we lost since since January.We still have a youth unemployment rate that is almost double the national average.And there was four hundred and forty two thousand youth unemployed, you know, just just last month.So, you know, Having new benchmarks is not going to be be the answer.And we've got to actually fix what's at the bottom of this on the grocery rebate.

The exact same thing, right?Like, you can't, you know, you can't simply just provide an inflationary, an inflationary boost to groceries when groceries are out.inflation is the highest in the G7, when families will be paying $1 ,000 more per family of four next year than they did last year for groceries.We've got to get to the bottom of this.We've got to make energy more affordable.We've got to cut the industrial carbon tax on the farmers, on the truckers, and at the end of the day, consumers.

We've got to get rid of a food packaging tax that's a billion dollars.There are real things that you can do without just pumping money into the economy.You're not getting to the bottom of the problem.The bottom of the problem is that we have locked in our energy development.We have low productivity and we have an economy that's feeble and weak.

Melissa Lansman, thank you so much for coming on the show.We appreciate it.

Awesome.Thank you.

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