The federal Minister of Official Languages, Albertan Randy Boissonneault, is facing calls for resignation from the NDP and the Conservatives after an accumulation of revelations concerning his alleged indigenous identity.
For years, Mr. Boissonnault held a changing discourse regarding his origins. At times he said he belonged to the Métis nation, and until recently, maintained that his great-grandmother was a “full-blooded Cree woman.”
Shortly after its election in 2015, for example, the Liberal Party of Canada (PLC) celebrated the arrival of the largest contingent of Indigenous elected officials in history to the federal government.
Mr. Boissonnault, who sometimes identified himself as White, sometimes as “Cre adopted and without status” depending on the context, appears in the photo alongside other indigenous elected officials.
This version of the facts collapsed this week, after revelations from National Post. The daily discovered that the minister’s great-grandmother was not Cree.
“I apologize for not being as clear as I could have been about my identity and my family history,” he said last Friday.
Dodgy business
The story doesn’t end there.
A company co-founded in 2020 by Mr. Boissonnault, Global Health Imports (GHI), has bid on federal contracts a few times to import masks and other medical equipment.
Two weeks ago, the National Post found that the company had presented itself as “Indigenous-owned” on at least one occasion. This characteristic can confer an advantage in the procurement process put in place by the Trudeau government.
Reacting to this news, Mr. Boissonnault responded that the submission had been made without his knowledge by his business colleague and other owner of GHI, Stephen Anderson. The minister says he abandoned his shares in the company this year.
Angry MPs
The Conservatives have been on the case of Randy Boissonnault since last summer, but the recent revelations about his false Aboriginal identity are the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“The Minister of Official Languages must do the only honorable thing: resign in shame. Will the Prime Minister fire his impostor minister? asked Quebec conservative Luc Berthold.
In a scathing outing, a NDP MP of Métis origin, Blake Desjarlais, denounced an “abuse of the procurement system” by people like Mr. Boissonnault, “false natives”.
“If he does not resign, it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister to show him the door,” he said.
Former Indigenous Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould jumped into the fray by calling the saga “shameful” and “extremely destructive” on X.
“A prime minister concerned with true reconciliation would have long since dismissed Randy […] of the government,” she wrote.
