Calls mount for Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault to resign

OTTAWA — Calls for Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault to step aside began to mount on Tuesday, including from former Liberal cabinet minister Jody-Wilson Raybould. 

Boissonnault joined Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet following the 2021 election, when he won his seat back in Edmonton Centre after losing it following the 2019 general vote.

The Edmonton MP has spent most of the year under scrutiny for a business he started just weeks after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, which he co-owned with former business partner Stephen Anderson to deliver personal protective equipment.

Parliament is currently probing what level of involvement Boissonnault may have had in the company following his cabinet appointment.

New criticism began to mount after it was revealed that Boissonnault has made shifting statements about his connections to Indigenous ancestry over his political career, with his office recently confirming to the National Post that he was “inaccurate” in his understanding of his great-grandmother’s heritage.

Rather than being a “full-blooded Cree woman,” as Boissonnault often told Parliament, a spokeswoman said his great-grandmother’s family in fact had Metis heritage.

“A prime minister committed to true reconciliation would have removed Randy (and the other Randy) from cabinet long ago,” Wilson-Raybould wrote on X.

“Instead we get to watch white people play ancestry wheel of fortune. So shameful and extremely destructive!”

Speaking at a summit of world leaders in Brazil, Trudeau said Boissonnault will continue to answer for his issues.

Fellow cabinet ministers have also been peppered with questions about whether Boissonnault, the sole cabinet minister for Alberta and only one of two Liberal MPs elected in the province, should remain in the role, including Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu.

Testifying at a parliamentary committee Tuesday morning, she told MPs “that’s not a decision for me to make.”

The Opposition Conservatives have demanded Boissonnault resign. Conservative MPs point to text messages related to the business Boissonnault co-owned, where his former business partner mentioned someone named “Randy” multiple times in 2021, which is when the MP would have been in cabinet.

Boissonnault has denied the involvement and distanced himself from his former business partner, saying in a recent statement he should have never entered into business with him, with his office also telling the National Post he was contemplating legal action.

Conservatives have since been mocking the minister’s explanation by saying they are looking for the “other Randy.”

The minister came under fresh scrutiny after a National Post report revealed the company he co-owned twice bid for federal contracts reserved for Indigenous businesses by advertising itself as fully “Indigenous” and “Aboriginal-owned.”

Boissonnault said Anderson did not have permission to talk about his heritage and that Anderson was the one to have made those bids.

When it comes to the minister’s heritage, last week he apologized, saying he could have been more “clear” and that he never tried to claim Indigenous identity.

Over his political career he has identified as “non-status adopted Cree” as well as “white.” Most recently, he confirmed that his adoptive mother and brother became citizens of the Metis Nation of Alberta within the past year.

National Post [email protected]

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