O’Toole’s Conservative Party Struggles to Answer Questions from Conservative Media

Conservative Party of Canada candidate for the riding of Thornhill, Melissa Lantsman, instead of answering basic questions about her time as a lobbyist for Walmart Canada during the last year of lockdowns, instead decided to take a much less diplomatic path to avoid criticism of her past.

Rebel News reporter David Menzies approached Lantsman at the campaign event and asked her a pointed question about her lobbying for Walmart Canada and whether she felt at all responsible for small businesses going under while she advocated for special treatment for a multinational corporation so they could continue offering “non-essential” services.

Lantsman responded to the question saying that she had been “clear” in the past about her work and then proceeded to answer that, “the mandate for Walmart was entirely on vaccines” which did not seem to address at all Menzies question regarding the unequal treatment of small businesses and large corporations during the lockdowns. 

Afterward, Lantsman fled from her own event and called the police on Menzies, presumably claiming some sort of harassment or assault for approaching her with his questions.

Peter Kent, the retiring current MP of Thornhill, who was hosting the event with Lantsman, later released a video on Twitter claiming Menzies was “physically harassing” Lantsman and claiming he asked a “hateful question”. 

The question being called “hateful” was a question Menzies asked which was, “Is Melissa here based on merit or sexual orientation,” which Kent and Lantsman would later use to justify why she left the event and would not take Menzies questions.

Lantsman claimed in a statement posted to social media that she had stopped taking Menzies questions when they “became homophobic and related to my sexual orientation,” and that she left the event due to feeling “unsafe”.

Rebel News responded to the accusation against Menzies by releasing footage of Lantsman refusing to answer any questions after Menzies first asked about her lobbying for Walmart Canada. 

What Menzies asked that was deemed “homophobic” by Lantsman in context was specifically about the way Lantsman consistently references her sexuality, just like she did in her statement defending her actions against Menzies, seemingly as a political tool.

Conservative author Sue-Ann Levy who is also Jewish and openly gay criticized Lantsman’s press release that claimed Menzies was being “homophobic,” which Levy viewed as evidence in and of itself that Lantsman exploits her sexuality to play identity politics.

Menzies in his video about the situation took time to talk about how he found it odd that Lantsman was able to be elected as the Thornhill CPC nominee in the first place. Menzies cited exit polling that showed MPP Gila Martow seemed to be the clear favourite to win on election day and that Lantsman had not prepared a victory speech, presumably because she thought she was clearly going to lose. It should also be noted in the nomination race for Thornhill Chani Aryeh-Bain was also disqualified (one of Lantsman’s two opponents) which Aryeh-Bain claimed to be religious discrimination against her for being Orthodox Jewish and observing the Sabbath.

It seems that in the attempt to deny conservative alternative media the ability to ask tough questions Lantsman and her campaign instead ended up scoring on their own net by turning what could have been a mildly contentious interview into the real controversy that trended on Twitter and brought her a lot of unneeded attention.