Randy Boissonnault and the Liberal Scandal That Won’t Go Away

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Published

1 year ago

9 minute read

Dan Knight

Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs: How Fraud, False Identity Claims, and Liberal Entitlement Expose a System Rigged Against Canadians

Ladies and gentlemen, today, we take a closer look at what happens when the carefully constructed facade of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party crumbles. This isn’t just a scandal about one man’s lies—it’s about a government-wide culture of entitlement, deception, and corruption that prioritizes Liberal insiders over the hardworking Canadians they claim to represent.

Why are we here? Because a man named Randy Boissonnault—a former Liberal cabinet minister and trusted Trudeau ally—has been caught at the center of a scandal involving fraudulent business dealings, false claims of Indigenous identity, and federal contracts stolen from real Indigenous businesses. The setting? The Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, where Boissonnault faced over two hours of questioning from MPs determined to get to the truth.

But did we get the truth? Absolutely not. What we got was a masterclass in Liberal arrogance, evasion, and deflection.

At the heart of this controversy is Boissonnault’s involvement in a company called Global Health Imports (GHI), which falsely claimed to be Indigenous-owned in order to win lucrative federal contracts. For years, Boissonnault portrayed himself as a “non-status adopted Cree” based on vague family anecdotes. This label, of course, conveniently blurred the lines, allowing him to gain credibility in Indigenous spaces while avoiding legal scrutiny. Not only did GHI fraudulently secure taxpayer money meant for Indigenous businesses, but Boissonnault’s name and supposed Indigenous heritage were plastered all over Liberal Party campaign materials. For years, the Liberals actively promoted him as Indigenous, exploiting the very communities they claim to champion.

When the media and whistleblowers finally exposed the truth, Boissonnault resigned from his cabinet position. And now, he’s here, at INAN, supposedly to set the record straight. Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

Boissonnault’s opening statement was a lesson in political deflection. He apologized—not for the harm done to Indigenous communities or Canadian taxpayers, but for the “confusion” around his identity. He insisted he never claimed Indigenous status, despite evidence to the contrary, and described his use of the term “non-status adopted Cree” as an effort to honor his adoptive family’s supposed heritage—a claim Indigenous researchers have outright denied.

When pressed on his involvement with GHI, Boissonnault claimed ignorance. He told the committee he left the company in 2021 and had no idea his name was being used to secure fraudulent contracts. Really? We’re supposed to believe that a man who co-owned 50% of the company and whose name was actively used in business dealings was completely unaware of its activities? Either he’s lying, or he’s astonishingly incompetent.

It gets worse. When asked why he hasn’t sued his former business partner, Mr. Anderson, for allegedly using his name without consent, Boissonnault offered the weakest excuse imaginable: he’s “consulting legal counsel.” Months have passed since this scandal broke, and he still hasn’t taken a single step to clear his name. If someone stole your identity to commit fraud, wouldn’t you act immediately?

Thankfully, not everyone in the room was willing to let Boissonnault off the hook. Conservative MPs Michael Barrett and Martin Shields led the charge, relentlessly exposing Boissonnault’s contradictions and demanding accountability. Barrett zeroed in on Boissonnault’s failure to take legal action against GHI, calling it a clear sign of either complicity or cowardice. Shields turned his focus to the systemic failures that allowed this fraud to happen in the first place, pointing out the Liberal government’s negligence in safeguarding programs designed to support Indigenous communities.

Meanwhile, Bloc MP Nathalie Sinclair-Déguin and NDP MP Lori Idlout focused on the harm done to Indigenous communities. They highlighted how fraudulent activities like GHI’s undermine trust, reconciliation, and real opportunities for Indigenous businesses. They also demanded systemic reforms, like stricter oversight and verification processes, to prevent future abuses.

Of course, no Liberal scandal would be complete without the party’s MPs running interference. Enter Ben Carr and Anna Gainey. Carr used his time to praise Boissonnault’s “allyship” and steer the conversation away from fraud and deception. Gainey, who didn’t even bother to show up in person, framed the controversy as a “learning opportunity” for Boissonnault and the government. Neither of them asked a single hard question. They weren’t there to seek answers—they were there to protect their colleague and the Liberal Party brand.

Final Thoughts

Let’s be blunt. What we witnessed at the INAN hearing wasn’t just a scandal about Randy Boissonnault—it was a damning indictment of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal regime and its entire culture of corruption, entitlement, and betrayal of the Canadian people.

Think about what’s at stake here. We’re not talking about a minor oversight or a simple mistake. We’re talking about a Liberal insider who exploited a sacred cause—reconciliation with Indigenous peoples—for personal and political gain. A man who co-founded a company that defrauded taxpayers, deprived Indigenous businesses of opportunities, and damaged trust between the government and the communities it claims to support. And yet, instead of taking responsibility, he shows up to a committee hearing and feeds us a steady diet of deflection and excuses.

But let’s not just focus on Boissonnault. What about the rest of the Liberal Party? A party that promoted him as Indigenous in their campaigns, used his fabricated narrative to boost their image, and now refuses to hold him accountable. What we saw at the hearing was a carefully orchestrated performance. Liberal MPs didn’t ask hard questions because they didn’t want answers. Their job was to protect Boissonnault, protect the party, and protect their grip on power.

And here’s the tragic part: the real victims of this scandal aren’t sitting in Ottawa’s plush committee rooms. They’re the Indigenous entrepreneurs who lost out on contracts, the taxpayers who unknowingly funded this fraud, and the millions of Canadians who believed in a government that promised to do better.

This isn’t just a Randy Boissonnault problem. This is a Liberal problem. A systemic problem. A Trudeau problem. It’s about a government that’s so addicted to power, so comfortable with corruption, that they don’t even bother hiding it anymore.

But here’s the good news: Canadians are waking up. They’re seeing through the Liberal lies and realizing that the system isn’t broken—it’s rigged. Rigged for the insiders, the cronies, and the friends of Justin Trudeau.

So what happens next? That’s up to you, Canada. You have a choice. You can let this scandal fade into the background like so many others before it. Or you can demand better. Demand accountability. Demand a government that works for you, not for itself.

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Canada’s river water quality strong overall although some localized issues persist

Published on December 22, 2025

Duane Rolheiser

From the Fraser Institute

By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari

Canada’s rivers are vital to our environment and economy. Clean freshwater is essential to support recreation, agriculture and industry, an to sustain suitable habitat for wildlife. Conversely, degraded freshwater can make it harder to maintain safe drinking water and can harm aquatic life. So, how healthy are Canada’s rivers today?

To answer that question, Environment Canada uses an index of water quality to assess freshwater quality at monitoring stations across the country. In total, scores are available for 165 monitoring stations, jointly maintained by Environment Canada and provincial authorities, from 17 in Newfoundland and Labrador, to 8 in Saskatchewan and 20 in British Columbia.

This index works like a report card for rivers, converting water test results into scores from 0 to 100. Scientists sample river water three or more times per year at fixed locations, testing indicators such as oxygen levels, nutrients and chemical levels. These measurements are then compared against national and provincial guidelines that determine the ability of a waterway to support aquatic life.

Scores are calculated based on three factors: how many guidelines are exceeded, how often they are exceeded, and by how much they are exceeded. A score of 95-100 is “excellent,” 80-94 is “good,” 65-79 is “fair,” 45-64 is “marginal” and a score below 45 is “poor.” The most recent scores are based on data from 2021 to 2023.

Among 165 river monitoring sites across the country, the average score was 76.7. Sites along four major rivers earned a perfect score: the Northeast Magaree River (Nova Scotia), the Restigouche River (New Brunswick), the South Saskatchewan River (Saskatchewan) and the Bow River (Alberta). The Bayonne River, a tributary of the St. Lawrence River near Berthierville, Quebec, scored the lowest (33.0).

Overall, between 2021 and 2023, 83.0 per cent of monitoring sites across the country recorded fair to excellent water quality. This is a strong positive signal that most of Canada’s rivers are in generally healthy environmental condition.

A total of 13.3 per cent of stations were deemed to be marginal, that is, they received a score of 45-64 on the index. Only 3.6 per cent of monitoring sites fell into the poor category, meaning that severe degradation was limited to only a few sites (6 of 165).

Monitoring sites along waterways with relatively less development in the river’s headwaters and those with lower population density tended to earn higher scores than sites with developed land uses. However, among the 11 river monitoring sites that rated “excellent,” 8 were situated in areas facing a combination of pressures from nearby human activities that can influence water quality. This indicates the resilience of Canada’s river ecosystems, even in areas facing a combination of multiple stressors from urban runoff, agriculture, and industrial activities where waterways would otherwise be expected to be the most polluted.

Poor or marginal water quality was relatively more common in monitoring sites located along the St. Lawrence River and its major tributaries and near the Great Lakes compared to other regions. Among all sites in the marginal or poor category, 50 per cent were in this area. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region is one of the most population-dense and extensively developed parts of Canada, supporting a mix of urban, agricultural, and industrial land uses. These pressures can introduce harmful chemical contaminants and alter nutrient balances in waterways, impairing ecosystem health.

In general, monitoring sites categorized as marginal or poor tended to be located near intensive agriculture and industrial activities. However, it’s important to reiterate that only 28 stations representing 17.0 per cent of all monitoring stations were deemed to be marginal or poor.

Provincial results vary, as shown in the figure below. Water quality scores in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta were, on average, 80 points or higher during the period from 2021 to 2023, indicating that water quality rarely departed from natural or desirable levels.

Rivers sites in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba and B.C. each had average scores between 74 and 78 points, suggesting occasional departures from natural or desirable levels.

Finally, Quebec’s average river water quality score was 64.5 during the 2021 to 2023 period. This score indicates that water quality departed from ideal conditions more frequently in Quebec than in other provinces, especially compared to provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and P.E.I. where no sites rated below “fair.”

CanvasJS.com

Overall, these results highlight Canada’s success in maintaining a generally high quality of water in our rivers. Most waterways are in good shape, though some regions—especially near the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence River Valley—continue to face pressures from the combined effects of population growth and intensive land use.

Agriculture

End Supply Management—For the Sake of Canadian Consumers

Published on December 22, 2025

Todayville

This is a special preview article from the:

By Gwyn Morgan

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policy is often chaotic and punitive. But on one point, he is right: Canada’s agricultural supply management system has to go. Not because it is unfair to the United States, though it clearly is, but because it punishes Canadians. Supply management is a government-enforced price-fixing scheme that limits consumer choice, inflates grocery bills, wastes food, and shields a small, politically powerful group of producers from competition—at the direct expense of millions of households.

And yet Ottawa continues to support this socialist shakedown. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters supply management was “not on the table” in negotiations for a renewed United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, despite U.S. negotiators citing it as a roadblock to a new deal.

Supply management relies on a web of production quotas, fixed farmgate prices, strict import limits, and punitive tariffs that can approach 300 percent. Bureaucrats decide how much milk, chicken, eggs, and poultry Canadians farmers produce and which farmers can produce how much. When officials misjudge demand—as they recently did with chicken and eggs—farmers are legally barred from responding. The result is predictable: shortages, soaring prices, and frustrated consumers staring at emptier shelves and higher bills.

This is not a theoretical problem. Canada’s most recent chicken production cycle, ending in May 2025, produced one of the worst supply shortfalls in decades. Demand rose unexpectedly, but quotas froze supply in place. Canadian farmers could not increase production. Instead, consumers paid more for scarce domestic poultry while last-minute imports filled the gap at premium prices. Eggs followed a similar pattern, with shortages triggering a convoluted “allocation” system that opened the door to massive foreign imports rather than empowering Canadian farmers to respond.

Over a century of global experience has shown that central economic planning fails. Governments are simply not good at “matching” supply with demand. There is no reason to believe Ottawa’s attempts to manage a handful of food categories should fare any better. And yet supply management persists, even as its costs mount.

Those costs fall squarely on consumers. According to a Fraser Institute estimate, supply management adds roughly $375 a year to the average Canadian household’s grocery bill. Because lower-income families spend a much higher proportion of their income on food, the burden falls most heavily on them.
The system also strangles consumer choice. European countries produce thousands of varieties of high-quality cheeses at prices far below what Canadians pay for largely industrial domestic products. But our import quotas are tiny, and anything above them is hit with tariffs exceeding 245 percent. As a result, imported cheeses can cost $60 per kilogram or more in Canadian grocery stores. In Switzerland, one of the world’s most eye-poppingly expensive countries, where a thimble-sized coffee will set you back $9, premium cheeses are barely half the price you’ll find at Loblaw or Safeway.

Canada’s supply-managed farmers defend their monopoly by insisting it provides a “fair return” for famers, guarantees Canadians have access to “homegrown food” and assures the “right amount of food is produced to meet Canadian needs.” Is there a shred of evidence Canadians are being denied the “right amount” of bread, tuna, asparagus or applesauce? Of course not; the market readily supplies all these and many thousands of other non-supply-managed foods.

Like all price-fixing systems, Canada’s supply management provides only the illusion of stability and security. We’ve seen above what happens when production falls short. But perversely, if a farmer manages to get more milk out of his cows than his quota, there’s no reward: the excess must be
dumped. Last year alone, enough milk was discarded to feed 4.2 million people.

Over time, supply management has become less about farming and more about quota ownership. Artificial scarcity has turned quotas into highly valuable assets, locking out young farmers and rewarding incumbents.

Why does such a dysfunctional system persist? The answer is politics. Supply management is of outsized importance in Quebec, where producers hold a disproportionate share of quotas and are numerous enough to swing election results in key ridings. Federal parties of all stripes have learned the cost of crossing this lobby. That political cowardice now collides with reality. The USMCA is heading toward mandatory renegotiation, and supply management is squarely in Washington’s sights. Canada depends on tariff-free access to the U.S. market for hundreds of billions of dollars in exports. Trading away a deeply-flawed system to secure that access would make economic sense.

Instead, Ottawa has doubled down. Not just with Carney’s remarks last week but with Bill C-202, which makes it illegal for Canadian ministers to reduce tariffs or expand quotas on supply-managed goods in future trade talks. Formally signalling that Canada’s negotiating position is hostage to a tiny domestic lobby group is reckless, and weakens Canada’s hand before talks even begin.

Food prices continue to rise faster than inflation. Forecasts suggest the average family will spend $1,000 more on groceries next year alone. Supply management is not the only cause, but it remains a major one. Ending it would lower prices, expand choice, reduce waste, and reward entrepreneurial farmers willing to compete.

If Donald Trump can succeed in forcing supply management onto the negotiating table, he will be doing Canadian consumers—and Canadian agriculture—a favour our own political class has long refused to deliver.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal. Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.