Amy Hamm: Randy Boissonnault is an embarrassment and should resign

Randy Boissonnault, also known as the Strong Eagle Man, needs to soar away from public office. The politician — who once regaled Parliament with the story of his alleged Cree bird-of-prey title — must resign.

Randy the Strong Eagle Man — not to be confused with Macho Man Randy Savage of the formerly World Wrestling Federation — can now be added to the annals of Indige-nots: a short but ignominious list of disgraced Canadian public figures who’ve leveraged a fictitious, or greatly exaggerated, Indigenous identity to further their careers.

Boissonnault was first elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament in 2015, and has served the party in various roles, including as special advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on LGBTQ issues and, currently, as employment minister. He also previously served as a member of the party’s Indigenous caucus, which he now professes was in the capacity of an “ally.”

His claim to an Indigenous identity comes via his adoptive mother; Boissonnault previously and repeatedly referred to his “full-blooded” Cree great-grandmother in the House of Commons, but has more recently claimed the woman who adopted him is “status Métis.” Boissonnault now publicly refers to himself as “white,” an abandonment of his foregoing “non-status adopted Cree” identity.

Does he have an explanation for all the identity swapping? Of course he does. His spokesperson claims that the family has simply been exploring their roots and making new discoveries. A classic move among race hucksters.

Boissonnault’s embarrassing racial fluidity story might have ended there, were it not for last week’s National Post exclusive showing that a company he used to own, Global Health Imports (GHI), had been identifying as “Indigenous and LGBTQ” owned while bidding on federal contracts in June 2020 through Canada’s Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business program. His former business partner, Stephen Anderson, who submitted the bids, does not appear to have Indigenous ancestry. And Boissonnault, now identifying as a white man, doesn’t either. There is nothing indigenous about GHI.

While Boissonnault’s office said “Mr. Anderson had full responsibility for the bids,” the two were in regular contact when the bids were being made.

But wait, there’s more: Boissonnault had already been under investigation by a House of Commons ethics committee for failing to fully remove himself from running GHI after being sworn into public office, which would be a violation of the Conflict of Interest Act. A mysterious and as-of-yet unidentified “different Randy” was helping Anderson run GHI in Boissannault’s absence.

The mysterious Randy appears to suffer from the same shifting identity as Strong Eagle Man. He is at once the victim of a pesky “auto-correct,” and is not a “Randy” at all, but is also merely a “different Randy” who cannot be named for unexplained reasons of privacy.

Unsurprisingly, Boissonnault has been accused of additional acts of fibbing. At his behest, the Liberal party once referred to him as a former “journalist and political commentator.” The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec (FPJQ) has said this is simply untrue. Boissonnault has made no effort to clarify.

Additionally, Conservative MP Michael Cooper accused Boissonnault of misleading the House of Commons by claiming he turned over his phone records for the GHI ethics investigation — when he had, Cooper said, only turned over the records from one device. “It speaks to how little respect  Trudeau and his ministers have for Canadians and how little respect they have for the law. They think they’re above the law,” Cooper said during a June 2024 ethics committee meeting.

Cooper makes an excellent point: What kind of company does Justin Trudeau keep? At this juncture, Boissonnault’s credibility is as questionable as a man’s stated height on a dating app. (Six-feet tall? Sure thing, Eagle Man.) I might even believe someone if they told me that Boissonnault was the inspiration behind the Bitcoin idiom: “Don’t Trust, Verify.” If Boissonnault told me what the time was, I’d ask to speak to his sources. The man makes a mockery of public office. It’s time for his departure.

And after Boissonnault hands in his resignation papers, we should take a moment for a national introspection. Is it useful for Canadians to venerate “Indigenous identity” to such extremes that the status — and financial benefit — it confers is attractive to shameless swindlers and tricksters? And just how many more Indige-nots will it take for us to change our minds?

National Post