The Prime Minister’s Office announced that Environment Minister Randy Boissonnault will be stepping away from cabinet amid a whirlwind of scandals surrounding his former company and false claims of Indigenous heritage.
“The Prime Minister and MP Randy Boissonnault have agreed that Mr. Boissonnault will step away from Cabinet effective immediately,” reads a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday.
“Mr. Boissonnault will focus on clearing the allegations made against him.”
Veterans Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor will temporarily handle Boissonnault’s portfolios at the employment and official languages ministries while maintaining her current position.
Boissonnault had most recently come under fire after previous claims that he had Indigenous ancestry proved to be false.
He said that after “reflecting on this a lot over the past days” he “unequivocally” apologizes for not being “clear” about alluding to having an Indigenous heritage on Monday.
However, Boissonnault’s apology was not enough for many in the Indigenous community, including former attorney general and minister of justice Jody Wilson-Raybould, who called his claims “shameful” and “extremely destructive.”
“A Prime Minister committed to true reconciliation would have removed Randy (and the other Randy) from Cabinet long ago. Instead we get to watch white people play ancestry wheel of fortune,” wrote Wilson-Raybould in a post to X on Tuesday.
Metis NDP MP Blake Desjarlais also called for Boissonnault to step down, telling reporters that Indigenous people have been victimized by what has happened, adding that those in his Edmonton Centre riding are “embarrassed.”
“This race-shifting that’s taking place is very concerning,” said Desjarlais on Tuesday.
“If he does not resign, it’s incumbent upon the prime minister to kick someone like that out.”
The culmination of these scandals also led the Conservative party to launch a petition calling for Boissonnault’s resignation.
His ancestral claims were dragged into the spotlight after the company he once co-owned, Global Health Imports, purported to be Indigenous-owned while bidding on federal contracts.
Parliamentary hearings reviewing the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business, a federal procurement program designed to boost the Indigenous economy, found GHI to be among those who received benefits from the program.
The hearings were part of an inquiry launched in response to suspicions that the program was being exploited by companies falsely claiming they were Indigenous-owned businesses.
Boisonnault responded by saying that his partner Stephen Anderson made the bid for the program without his knowledge and has since told media that he plans to take legal action against his former business partner.
GHI was already in hot water over conflicts of interest involving federal contracts going to the company while he was a cabinet minister, which surfaced this summer, leading to what has become known as the “Other Randy” scandal. In addition to those two scandals, most recently there has been the issue that GHI shared a post office box with a cocaine smuggler in Edmonton, which came to light earlier this week.