Liberal Randy Boissonnault loses his status as minister after an accumulation of revelations surrounding his false indigenous heritage and his business activities.
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“The Prime Minister and MP Randy Boissonnault have agreed that Mr. Boissonnault will withdraw from the Council of Ministers effective immediately. Mr. Boissonnault will focus on shedding light on the allegations against him,” Justin Trudeau’s office informed Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Boissonnault, elected in Edmonton, was the Minister of Official Languages as well as Employment and Workforce Development. He passes the torch to Acadian Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor.
This outcome came a few hours after many Liberals reiterated their confidence in their colleague.
“He is a great colleague who has contributed greatly to the firm. So yes, we will work with him,” said, among others, Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
One controversy does not wait for the other
For years, Mr. Boissonnault held a changing discourse on his origins, sometimes identifying himself as White, sometimes as “adopted Cree and without status” depending on the context.
At times he said he belonged to the Métis nation, and until recently, maintained that his great-grandmother was a “full-blooded Cree woman.”
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.
On the other hand, Mr. Boissonnault also founded a medical equipment import company in 2020, after failing to get re-elected in 2019. Re-elected in 2021, he would have continued to be involved in his company despite his position as minister, which is prohibited according to the code of ethics.
The icing on the cake: his business partner allegedly declared on submissions to the federal government that the company was owned by Aboriginal people, which can confer an advantage in the federal procurement process.
“Not the end of the story”
On Tuesday, a Métis NDP MP and riding neighbor of Mr. Boissonnault made a formal outing against the former Liberal minister, demanding his resignation.
Now that his wish has been granted, his colleague and deputy party leader Alexandre Boulerice indicated that this was “not the end of the story” and that “we will have to know exactly what happened”.
“I think it’s about time. It was untenable. He could no longer stay in the cabinet with these scandals,” he said.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre took pleasure in Mr. Boissonnault’s fall to attack Justin Trudeau’s management of his caucus.
“I think that what happened is what should have happened,” commented Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet. “A government whose benefit of the doubt or confidence is already seriously shaken could not maintain such distraction with, possibly, such appalling errors within the council of ministers.”
