Melissa Lantsman

Lantsman previously worked as a communications advisor to several cabinet members in the 28th Canadian Ministry of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Melissa Lantsman MP (born April 8, 1984) is a Canadian politician and public relations executive who serves as the Member of Parliament for Thornhill in the House of Commons of Canada.

A member of the Conservative Party of Canada, she was elected in the 2021 Canadian federal election.

Lanstman is the first openly gay and first Jewish woman ever elected as a Conservative MP.

Upon Pierre Poilievre's election as Conservative Leader, he named Lantsman one of two deputy leaders along with Edmonton MP Tim Uppal.

Lantsman was born in Toronto in 1984 to a Russian Jewish family and raised in Thornhill.

Her mother was an accountant and her father was an engineer who worked in the taxi business and ran several pawn shops.

She attended a French immersion program at Langstaff Secondary School in York Region and speaks fluent French in addition to English and Russian.

Lantsman has one brother.

She attended University of Toronto and graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Arts.

She later pursued graduate studies at the University of Ottawa and Rotman School of Management.

As an adolescent, Lantsman volunteered for Conservative Party candidates in local elections.

The election resulted in a majority government for the Progressive Conservatives, the first since 2002 after 16 years of Liberal government in Ontario.

After the election, Lantsman joined Hill+Knowlton Strategies, an international public relations strategy firm, at its Toronto office.

During the 2008 Canadian federal election, she was appointed a senior communications advisor, with the party forming a minority government.

Thereafter, she was appointed director of communications for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Ministers Lawrence Cannon and John Baird, serving from 2008 to 2011.

Kent had represented the electoral district since 2008.

The riding has Canada's highest proportion of Jewish residents, at 37%.

From 2011 to 2012, she was the director of communications of the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada and accompanied Prime Minister Stephen Harper on domestic and foreign visits.

After a brief stint at The Coca-Cola Company as a senior public affairs advisor, Lantsman returned to government as director of communications for the Ministry of Finance under Joe Oliver.

Following the Harper government's loss in the 2015 Canadian federal election, Lantsman returned to the private sector as a senior director for CIBC Capital Markets.

She was a senior advisor to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and its chief spokesperson during the 2018 Ontario provincial election.

Lantsman was previously the National Vice President of Public Affairs at Enterprise Canada, a strategic communications firm.

In 2018, Lantsman served as director of communications for Ontario MPP Caroline Mulroney's candidacy for leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

After Mulroney's loss, Lantsman joined the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario's campaign for the 2018 Ontario general election as its chief spokesperson and war room director.

In this role, she oversaw all press communications and social media releases by the campaign.

Since 2019, Lantsman has appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News' Power & Politics as well as CTV's Power Play as a political panelist and has hosted a radio show on CFRB 1010 AM.

She has sat on the board of the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Jewish Addiction Community Services (JACS) and the Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto.

After the 2019 Canadian Federal election, Lantsman and fellow Conservative strategist Jamie Ellerton published an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, criticizing then-leader Andrew Scheer handing over LGBT rights and advocated that if the party wants to win, they needed to be more inclusive towards the LGBT community.

In 2020, upon Peter Kent's retirement from Parliament, Lantsman announced her intention to seek the federal Conservative nomination in Thornhill.

She defeated the incumbent Progressive Conservative Member of Provincial Parliament, Gila Martow, to become the riding's Conservative candidate on March 17, 2021.

Lantsman was elected to parliament on September 20, 2021, and sworn into office on October 28.

Since November of that year, she has served as the Shadow Minister of Transport in the Opposition Shadow Cabinet of Erin O'Toole.

Lantsman was elected the vice-chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport and Infrastructure.

In 2020, she joined Enterprise Canada, a strategic public relations consultancy, as its vice president for National Public Affairs.

She relinquished her partnership in Enterprise in 2021 to focus on her political candidacy.

According to public disclosure records, Lantsman is a director of a Toronto based Venture Fund focused on investing in early-stage companies that prioritizes women founders.

In 2020, Conservative then-Member of Parliament for Thornhill Peter Kent announced that he would not seek reelection at the next year's federal election.

Lantsman announced her candidacy for the Conservative nomination on November 27, 2020.

She was endorsed by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, former federal ministers John Baird, Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre, Rona Ambrose, Michelle Rempel Garner and Lisa Raitt, and incumbent Ontario provincial ministers Caroline Mulroney, Stephen Lecce, Greg Rickford and Paul Calandra.