Meet The Canadian George Santos, Randy 'Strong Eagle Man' Boissonnault!

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

Canada’s employment minister is out of a job.

After several months of being a laughing stock in Parliament over shady business dealings and accusations of having faked Indigenous heritage for personal gain, Edmonton Centre MP Randy Boissonnault has stepped down from the Liberal cabinet, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put out a statement saying Boissonnault would use the time away from his ministerial duties to “focus on clearing the allegations made against him.”

Which seems a bit like OJ Simpson vowing to find the real killer, and “the Honourable Randy Boissonnault” will have his work cut out for him clearing his name after digging a George Santos-sized hole for himself through a series of improbable whoppers and doozies.

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His political opponents are now calling for him to resign entirely after news broke that the medical supplies company he co-founded during the pandemic, Global Health Imports (GHI), has been temporarily banned from bidding on federal contracts after lying about being “a wholly owned Indigenous and LGBTQ Company” and is now under police investigation.

Strap in folks as there’s a lot to unpack in the wildest scandal to involve a Canadian cabinet minister since Mad Max Bernier, the Conservative foreign affairs minister at the time, forgot some classified documents at his sketchy biker moll girlfriend’s place way back in 2007. (Hilarity ensued.)

The term “pretendian” entered the lexicon in recent years for someone who claims to have Indigenous DNA but is unable to back it up, and a variety of high-profile Canadian public figures have been brought down for seeming to embellish their bloodlines, including filmmaker Michelle Latimer, legal scholar Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, author Joseph Boyden, and even sainted singer Buffy Sainte-Marie. The portmanteau was coined for “pretend Indian,” which frankly isn’t great since we only call Indigenous people of North America — or Turtle Island, if you prefer — “Indians” out of some weird lingering deference to the genocidal Christopher Columbus, who was under the impression he’d discovered the Indian subcontinent back in 1492. It’s certainly catchier than, say, fauxboriginal or imitigenous though.

Boissonnault insists this is all just a big misunderstanding and has apologized “for not being as clear” about his family history as he could have been at a recent press conference, adding:

I never asked the party to refer to me as an Indigenous person. I never clicked any box in any form with the Liberal Party. I have never put an Indigenous claim to any contract or any application in my entire life.

Maybe not, but he did often say he was “non-status adopted Cree from Alberta” who is “known as Strong Eagle Man in the Cree community” while claiming that his great-grandmother was “a full-blooded Cree woman.” Boissonnault was also a sitting member of the Indigenous Liberal Caucus, although he now says he was only there as an ally. Presumably their meetings have the best bannock.

A cabinet minister owning a business seeking federal government dollars is obviously a major conflict of interest, but initially Boissonnault had some wiggle room. He was first elected in 2015, lost his Edmonton seat to the Tories in 2019, and was re-elected in 2021, one year after starting GHI with business partner Steve Anderson to provide protective medical stuff during the pando. He claims to have stepped away from the business when he got his old gig back — not unlike how Dear Leader theoretically handed over control of the Trump Organization to his idiot sons Uday and Qusay during his regrettable first term — but it turns out he only got rid of his 50 percent ownership share this past summer. Oops.

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It was his claims about having a Cree background that first drew a closer look from dubious fellow Parliamentarians, due in part to a policy that aims to ensure at least five percent of all federal contracting dollars are awarded to First Nation companies in order to help level the playing field. And his claims of no longer being involved with the company were quickly undermined by old business texts mentioning a mysterious “Randy” calling the shots. Prances With Wolves insists he is NOT the Randy in question, has no idea who it might be, and that it may have just been an autocorrect typo. Perhaps in reference to an equally mysterious Andy or Sandy on the payroll. Or that it was due to Anderson exploiting his former partner’s good name for business reasons like a common Hunter Biden.

But his insistence that everything is on the up-and-up hit a substantial bump in the road when it came out GHI also shared an Edmonton post office box with a woman involved in a couple of major cocaine busts. Francheska Leblond has had run-ins with the law since at least 2008, and was arrested in the Dominican Republic two years ago after local police found more than 400 pounds of gak stashed aboard a charter flight bound for Canada. The plane’s crew and six other passengers were ultimately held in jail for several months before being released without charge.

Unsurprisingly, Boissonnault claims to have never heard of Leblond, which led to one of the funnier exchanges in recent House of Commons history when Conservative MP Michael Barrett asked a question about “Cocaine Randy,” which drew a request from Ahmed Hussen, the minister of international development, to strike the unparliamentary language towards a fellow MP from the record. Barrett replied he was simply referring to “the other Randy” who was evidently still running the show.

Perhaps it’s the Randy of Sunnyvale assistant trailer park supervisor fame, who famously has no known surname, although he is canonically more of a weed guy.

“Randy Bobandy” is just Mr. Leahy’s term of endearment for his sexy colleague rather than his full name. (Photo: The Diamond Mine Agency)

But “Cocaine Randy” — which honestly sounds more like slang for drug-induced horniness — is certainly a much kinder nickname than the Elizabeth Warren-inspired “Cocahontas” currently making the rounds on social media. And at least nobody is demanding proof GHI is entirely LGBTQ-owned as well.

[CTV News / Canadaland / The Fifth Estate / National Post]