Conservatives are ramping up pressure on Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault to resign following a news report that said his former medical-supply company shared a mailbox with a woman who was held in a drug bust.
An report published in the National Post on Monday said that in 2020, Boissonnault’s former company Global Health Imports Corporation (GHI) shared a rented mailbox at an Edmonton UPS Store with Francheska Leblond — a woman who was detained in a cocaine bust in the Dominican Republic in 2022.
Boissonnault owned half of GHI at the time the company was sharing the mailbox with Leblond, according to the National Post.
During question period in the House of Commons on Monday, the Edmonton MP repeatedly denied having any connections to Leblond.
“I never met that person. I’ve had no dealings with her whatsoever. Those are the facts,” he said.
Boissonnault has been facing scrutiny over conflicting claims about his family’s Indigenous heritage and allegations that his company claimed to be “Indigenous-owned” when bidding for federal contracts in 2020.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett moved a motion in October calling on the House to find Stephen Anderson, chief operating officer of Global Health Imports and Boissonnault’s former business partner, in contempt of Parliament. That motion is now being debated.
Anderson is at the centre of a House ethics committee probe that was launched after a series of texts were released as part of legal proceedings.
Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault apologized Friday for ‘not being as clear’ as he says he could have been about his family history. Boissonnault said he was adopted into an Indigenous family, but he himself never claimed Indigenous status.
Those texts show him referring to a person named “Randy” in business conversations with associates, prompting questions about whether Anderson was still consulting Boissonnault on business matters while Boissonnault was in cabinet.
Boissonnault has denied having any involvement in the business since he was re-elected in 2021 and has claimed Anderson was working without his consent to “advance his personal interests.”
Global News has reported that Anderson and Leblond registered a numbered company together — 13560449 Canada Ltd. — in December 2021 after Boissonnault was elected and appointed to cabinet.
The Conservatives accused Anderson of failing to answer questions when he appeared before the ethics committee and of not providing documents related to the matter.
Indigenous identity claims
Although Boissonnault has never claimed to be Indigenous, he has referred to his great-grandmother repeatedly in public statements as a Cree woman, said he was given a Cree name in 2021, spoke Cree at least twice in Parliamentary proceedings and self-identified as a “non-status adopted Cree.”
On Nov. 8, Boissonnault said in a media statement that his “adopted mother and brother” are status Métis.
But others — including the Liberal Party — have claimed Indigenous identity on Boissonnault’s behalf.
In 2015, the Liberal Party’s Indigenous Peoples’ Commission — an internal party group that promotes the interests of Indigenous party members — identified Boissonnault as one of ten Indigenous Liberal candidates elected to the House of Commons.
The claim was repeated on the social media platform Instagram.
In 2019, the Liberal Party told CBC News that Boissonnault was Indigenous — but five weeks after an article listing the number of Indigenous candidates was published, the Liberal Party sent a clarification stating that Boissonnault does not claim Indigenous heritage.
The party said the information identifying Boissonnault as Indigenous “came from a staff error.”
At the time, the Liberal Party said Boissonnault’s mother was Cree.