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OTTAWA — Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault is stepping down from cabinet after revelations from the National Post that he had made shifting statements over his ties to Indigenous heritage over the course of his political career.
A note sent by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office on Wednesday specified that Trudeau and Boissonnault both came to an agreement that the minister will be stepping away from his ministerial duties effectively immediately to “focus on clearing the allegations made against him.”
Veterans Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor will temporarily assume responsibility for Boissonnault’s portfolios of employment and official languages in addition to her current duties as minister of veterans affairs and associate minister of national defence, read the note.
Boissonnault has referred to himself as a “non-status adopted Cree” and claimed that his great-grandmother was a “full-blooded Cree woman” in the past but those claims are untrue. He has since clarified that his great-grandmother’s family in fact had Metis lineage.
He apologized last week for not having been “clear” about his family’s links to Indigenous ancestry and said he was learning about his family’s heritage in “real time.”
Boissonnault has also been under fire for co-owning a company that claimed to be Indigenous-owned while bidding on federal contracts, although he said that claim was made without his knowledge, and that company did not successfully qualify as an Indigenous supplier.
Those revelations had prompted growing calls for Boissonnault to resign from cabinet, including from the Conservatives and the New Democrats.
On Tuesday, Métis NDP MP Blake Desjarlais said that not removing Boissonnault — whom he accused of “pretendianism” — is sending a signal to all people out there who falsely claim Indigenous heritage to their benefit that they can get away with it.
“The real victims here aren’t the Liberals. The real victim isn’t Randy. The real victims are Indigenous businesses, Indigenous people that did everything right,” said Desjarlais, who represents an Edmonton riding near Boissonnault’s.
That same day, former Liberal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, an Indigenous MP who broke from the party, accused Boissonnault of playing a “shameful and extremely destructive” game of “ancestry wheel of fortune.”
Conservatives spent Tuesday’s question period finding new ways of trying to characterize Boissonnault as a “liar” or a “fraudster” which is against House of Commons rules.
At one point, Speaker Greg Fergus ejected MP Michelle Rempel-Garner for the rest of the day after she called Boissonnault a “fraud.” She had quoted Cree lawyer Leah Ballantyne, who referred to “identity fraud” in a story about Boissonnault in the National Post.
Prior to the announcement on Wednesday, Liberal MPs offered varying levels of support for their embattled colleague — with some saying he should stay on, some deferring that decision to Trudeau and at least one other saying that Boissonnault should clear the air.
When asked if Boissonnault should stay in cabinet, Jamie Battiste, chair of the Liberal Indigenous caucus said “that’s a decision for the Prime Minister, not me.”
Vance Badawey, who is also a part of the party’s Indigenous caucus, said Boissonnault is the one who should be answering questions about his own heritage.
“He’s a big boy. He’s got his big boy pants on,” he said.
Liberal MP Ken Hardie said that, as a former broadcaster, his advice to Boissonnault would be to have a roundtable with reporters and answer all of their questions. Instead, in recent days, Boissonnault has made blanket statements that allegations against him were false.
“If I was giving him communication advice, I would ask him to be a little bit more fulsome… in response to the character assassination from the Conservatives,” said Hardie.
Others, like Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, came to Boissonnault’s defense, arguing that he made a mistake and that it “happens to all of us.”
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said Boissonnault “has every right to remain in cabinet” — pointing to the help the minister offered in standing up against a recent health care directive from the Quebec government that would have affected English speakers.
“My community cares about getting our services in our minority language, and he’s done a good job on that,” he said about Boissonnault’s work as minister of official languages.
— With files from Stephanie Taylor and Christopher Nardi.
National Post [email protected]
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