The “Other Randy” scandal took another turn this week after news broke that Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault’s company was awarded a federal contract worth nearly $30,000 in 2024.
Boissonnault, who is currently embroiled in a conflict of interest scandal for allegedly continuing to operate a private company after taking office, will now have to answer for Global Health Imports being awarded a contract from Elections Canada for $28,300.
The federal contract was given to the medical supply company that Boissonnault co-founded in 202o before taking office, although the minister has insisted that he stepped away from its operations upon being elected to office the following year.
Elections Canada, a non-partisan government agency responsible for administering general elections and byelections, paid GHI to supply it with disposable gloves.
While cabinet ministers are permitted to retain shares in private companies that they previously held before taking office, said companies may not receive federal contracts.
According to Elections Canada, the contract began on Jan. 5 2024 and will run until the end of the year, and presently remains active. However, the agency said it has yet to make an order for the products.
Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett called for an independent investigation, saying he planned to refer the information to Canada’s ethics commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein.
“We need that independent investigation,” Barrett told Global News. “Randy Boissonnault should not be serving in the federal cabinet if he is found guilty of breaking Canada’s ethics laws.”
Boissonnault said that as of late June of this year, he no longer holds a 50% share in GHI due to the “politicization of his shareholder status.”
The Edmonton Centre MP is already in hot water over a previous GHI deal after a string of text messages surfaced from 2022 which led to three ethics probes into his relationship with the company.
When text messages referring to “Randy” were presented to the investigating committee last month, Stephen Anderson, Boisonnault’s GHI co-founder, not only claimed that they were not referring to him, but that they were a series of accidental text messages about someone with a different name.
While Anderson would not provide the identity of who the “autocorrected texts” were referring to, he repeatedly stated that it was not Boissonnault.
Initially, the defence was that there are many “Randys” in Canada and that the text messages would have likely just been referring to another Randy employed at the 121-person company.
von Finckenstein initially looked into Boissonnault in May of this year regarding the possibility that he had still been actively operating the company while in office.
Then a second preliminary probe occurred in June after text messages surfaced referring to someone named “Randy” asking for a “partner call.”
In both cases, von Finckenstein didn’t think it was necessary to launch a formal investigation.
However, while the committee was discussing the ArriveCAN probe on Thursday, Barrett asked von Finkenstein if he had watched Anderson’s recent testimony regarding the newly surfaced texts.
“Does this new information require a further look into the matter by you?” asked Barrett.
The commissioner responded by saying that while he was initially satisfied with Boissionault’s claim, the new text messages were a problem.
“We looked at all of that, and there was absolutely no way that there was contact between him and Mr. Anderson. Now this new stuff has come up,” Von Finckenstein said.
Boissonnault did not respond to True North’s request for comment, however, he is expected to testify before the ethics committee in September.