Alberta MP Randy Boissonnault has resigned from cabinet amid allegations about his business dealings and criticism of his shifting claims about his Indigenous ancestry.
“The prime minister and MP Randy Boissonnault have agreed that Mr. Boissonnault will step away from cabinet effective immediately. Mr. Boissonnault will focus on clearing the allegations made against him,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement. .
That Trudeau is a fickle one.
#Pocahontas – come get your boy.
For years, Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault spoke in Parliament and at public events of his great-grandmother as “a full-blooded Cree woman.”
Now, facing scrutiny over shifting statements he made about his connections to Indigenous ancestry and, presented with records suggesting otherwise, Boissonnault’s office acknowledges that this was not true and his adoptive great-grandmother’s family in fact had Metis lineage, and she was not “full-blooded Cree.”
Questions surrounding Boissonnault’s heritage emerged following a National Post report revealing that the business he co-owned called itself fully “Indigenous” and “Aboriginal-owned” as it tried to bid on federal contracts reserved for Indigenous businesses.
The minister has said his former business partner made that bid without his knowledge and did not consent to it.
How DARE you call that Pretendian a fraud!
Heap big trouble for Trudeau’s plucky little pretendian;
The medical-supply company co-owned by Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault shared a post office box with a woman named in arrests in two major drug busts, according to corporate filings.
It’s a connection that could reveal security gaps in the federal government’s vetting of cabinet picks, corporate ethics and law experts say, and raises new questions about the minister’s judgment amid a recent series of troubling revelations.
The mailbox, rented at an Edmonton UPS Store, appears on the April 2020 licence for the Edmonton MP’s former enterprise, Global Health Imports Corporation (GHI), which National Post obtained from Health Canada through access-to-information legislation.
The mailbox is also listed on a different company’s registration document as the home address for Francheska Leblond, a woman who has been named in run-ins with police since at least 2008, according to Alberta Court of Justice records. She has also reportedly used the name Francheska Quach in the past.
The internet sleuths on X have been on this for days.
So Francheska LeBlond (woman busted with 210 kilos of coke) who runs a numbered company with Randy Boissonnault’s partner, Stephen Anderson, uses the same legal firm for her numbered company as Global Health Imports does, and no one knows each other?
OK.
“Global Health is a wholly owned Indigenous and LGBTQ Company,” Boissonnault’s former business partner, Stephen Anderson, specified in a June 2020 bid by Global Health Imports Corporation (GHI) for a contract to supply face masks. National Post obtained the bid through an access-to-information request.
Anderson repeated the statement in a follow-up message to Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and called the company “Aboriginal” twice when submitting another bid to supply face shields.
The federal government tells potential suppliers that they can only identify themselves as “Aboriginal” if they are on an official qualified list of enterprises eligible to benefit from procurement programs that favour Indigenous–owned firms. GHI was not on it, a government spokesperson said.
Neither Boissonnault nor Anderson answered National Post’s questions about which First Nations, Métis or Inuit groups they belonged to.
And that’s why I’m investing in physical gold: From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime!”
Related: Free Palestine! Free Pizzas!
This is extraordinary. The indigenous cultural competency course at @LawSocietyofBC contains debunked references to the discovery of “the bodies of 215 children.” Two lawyers have proposed to correct the false information. But[BC First Nations Justice Council] claims that correcting the record is tantamount to “denialism.” The BCFNJC also repeats the long-debunked three-year-old fable that “mass graves” are being discovered across Canada. A complete lie.
It’s not extraordinary.
(Warning: story may be triggering to taxpayers). Funding for indigenous burial searches.
When we decide to hand out goodies based on skin colour and race.
Blacklocks- Oppose ‘Pretendian’ Vendors
Contractors pretending to be Indigenous to land federal work are “of great concern,” Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. An audit of Indigenous claimants has yet to be disclosed.
The Department of Indigenous Services on March 7 said it was verifying the status of all contractors claiming to be Indigenous. Authorities set aside five percent of contracts for suppliers that are majority owned by Indigenous shareholders. Some 2,600 companies are listed in a federal Indigenous Business Directory.
In this ten minute Frontier Centre interview, retired judge Brian Giesbrecht discusses the increasingly popular “land back” movement and what it might mean for Canadian property owners. In a nutshell, the news isn’t good, particularly since Canadian courts are openly siding with the collectivists.
Beijing is targeting Canada’s First Nations leaders with intelligence operations based on tourism that are aimed at securing Aboriginal-controlled natural resources, a Top Secret report from Ottawa’s intelligence-review watchdog NSICOP says.
Additionally, Beijing funded a British Columbia provincial candidate and its Consul General in Vancouver took actions to cover up the candidate’s “possible Chinese Communist Party membership,” NSICOP’s June 2019 draft report alleges.
The Bureau exclusively obtained NSICOP’s unredacted, 2019 report on foreign interference, which details China’s pervasive operations to bribe, coerce and co-opt Canadian leaders at all levels of government.[…]
“Many of the same tactics used to target elected officials at the federal level are replicated with provincial, municipal, and indigenous officials,” the June 2019 NSICOP report obtained by The Bureau says.
Canada’s Aboriginal leaders — and the tension between federal and First Nations jurisdictions over natural resources in northern Canada — are an unexplored aspect of the Chinese interference story.
But the 2019 NSICOP report demonstrates crucial national security issues at stake.
It suggests Beijing is seeking clandestine relationships with First Nations leaders under false pretences in order to control Canada’s strategic resources in areas of increasing geopolitical importance.
“In late 2011, China invited a national-level group of Aboriginal leaders to travel to China. A CSIS assessment noted that the invitation was advertised as an opportunity to develop tourism for First Nations,” NSICOP’s report says.
“According to a Minister Counsellor at the PRC Embassy, the tourism opportunity was merely “beipian” (Mandarin for ‘to be fooled’) and that the true intention of the invitation was to pursue Aboriginal-controlled natural resources.”
If treaty payments in the neighborhood of $126 billion don’t sink the Canadian economy, I don’t know what would. While it’s true that the annual per person treaty payments are very low, why wouldn’t a court also take into account the mushrooming budget for the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs which made such payments redundant over many decades?
In a unanimous ruling, the panel of nine judges declared both Canada and Ontario had “dishonourably breached” their obligations under the Robinson Treaties signed with the Anishinaabe of Lake Huron and Lake Superior in 1850.
Harley Schacter, a lawyer for Red Rock First Nation and Whitesand First Nation which started the group’s fight back in 2001, told reporters on Friday he believes his clients are owed “a couple of billion to as much as $126 billion.”
“It’s a victory for everybody.”
Everybody, that is, with the exception of taxpayers.
Some days I’m floored at how many nonsensical concepts can be packed into one article, but someone seems to have outdone themselves once again. These folks might want to take a step back from the race baiting mill and acknowledge the benefits of a technology that exists thanks to a culture of entrepreneurship and individual rights that they routinely conflate with colonial oppression.
“It’s really a decolonial effort where it returns the power into our hands so that we can again assert our own self-determination, determine how it unfolds within our region,” said Jacob Taylor.
“There have been no treaties signed for the sky, so Indigenous people have an inherent right to participate in the aerospace industry.”
Sorry, but having to work within the confines of a budget is not part of a plot set up by evil colonialists to destroy you. Whoever came up with this number probably assessed the progress so far and decided that it was time to get back to reality. Proper investigation would entail forensic excavation and the affected parties seem to be doing everything to avoid exactly that.
David Monias, chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba, was on the Zoom call.
“I am profoundly dismayed by the Canadian government’s decision to impose a cap of $500,000 per year on funds allocated for unmarked residential school burials,” he said.
“This reduction is not only inadequate but reflects a troubling denialism regarding the true scale and significance of this issue. It is essential to recognize that these burial sites are crime scenes, and as such, they must be protected, preserved, and properly investigated.”
It’s anyone’s guess as to what this latest apology entails, but I’m sure it includes large monetary payments. What’s more bizarre is that the recipients didn’t originate in Canada, but in the United States.
As detailed in this more balanced article, the Sioux and Lakota were properly considered refugees, not original inhabitants.
The government appears to have granted these refugee-American-Indians full rights under Section 35, meaning that multi-billion-dollar land claims and reparation demands are imminent. Many Indigenous speakers at the press conference stated that the Dakota/Lakota and other tribes were already on their traditional lands when they escaped into Canada, a fact disputed by the foregoing evidence from the official North West Mounted Police history.
The only real anomaly in this narrative is the fact that certain political leaders do not understand the concept of evidence.
A search of the grounds of a former residential school in northern Manitoba has uncovered 187 anomalies, according to First Nation leaders.
To know for sure what the anomalies are, Monias said the sites would have to be excavated and DNA testing would be required.
To do that, he said the First Nation would need funding from the federal government.
In what universe would the discovery of a potential crime scene require federal funding prior to investigation?
When it comes to abuses suffered by indigenous school kids boarded in private homes, it’s apparently not the job of the mainstream media to actually investigate such claims, but rather to accept them uncritically. Anything beyond that would just delay the writing of cheques by the federal government, or so it would seem.
Now, the suffering of boarding home survivors is being recognized and compensated under a Federal Court-approved $1.9-billion settlement agreement with Ottawa.
Survivors are also allowed to submit more than one claim — the first to get $10,000 for attending a boarding home, and a second for additional compensation based on the abuse suffered.
But like the day school settlement, and unlike the residential school claims process, the claims process for boarding home survivors is entirely paper-based and won’t involve hearings with lawyers.
You don’t have to dig far into the details to find out that this “loan” is really just a giveaway, or, in modern parlance, a “special-purpose vehicle”.
The government sent a letter to First Nations groups last year proposing a special-purpose vehicle that would hold a stake in the pipeline, and individual groups would be able to choose whether to opt in. For those that want a piece of the action, the government intends to provide risk-free access to capital, the letter said, without providing details such as how big of a stake it would sell.
If someone’s going to question whether a $510 million legal fee is excessive or not, why not ask the same question about the $10 billion settlement that triggered the fees in the first place?
Two First Nations have launched a court application against the lawyers who helped bring forward a $10-billion settlement with Canada and Ontario, saying the $510 million they’re set to be paid is too much.
“The legal fee is extremely over-the-top,” said Garden River First Nation Chief Karen Bell.
She said she has an “obligation to seek accountability and transparency,” and the application should not disrupt payments to beneficiaries. Those payments are scheduled to start flowing in August.
And some people are more treaty than others: Did you know about the British Columbia’s quiet plan to co-manage all public lands with provincial First Nations? Robin Junger talks to Mike about the B.C. NDP’s new economy-destroying legislation.
Canfor has announced the permanent closure of its Polar sawmill in Bear Lake, BC, the suspension of its planned reinvestment in Houston. This follows the announcement that one line of production will be indefinitely curtailed at the Northwood Pulp Mill.
h/t Trace
You could erase the dates in this article and aside from the monetary amounts there would be no way to tell whether it was written today or 5, 10, 20 or 50 years ago. No half-awake thinker need be perpetually stumped as to why an economic system premised on the Soviet model doesn’t suddenly produce great outcomes. Note to Canada’s developers of aboriginal policy: stop banging your head against the wall.
“Time after time, whether in housing, policing, safe drinking water or other critical areas, our audits of federal programs to support Canada’s Indigenous Peoples reveal a distressing and persistent pattern of failure,” Hogan said at a press conference Tuesday.
“The lack of progress clearly demonstrates that the government’s passive, siloed approach is ineffective, and, in fact, contradicts the spirit of true reconciliation.”
It’s the fourth time since 2003 that the auditor general has held the government responsible for unsafe and unsuitable First Nations housing.