MADRID 21 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Canada’s Employment Minister, Randy Boissonnault, announced this Wednesday his resignation from office after weeks of questioning about his changing claims about his indigenous ancestry that would have given him advantages in his commercial businesses.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained in a brief statement that “Boissonnault will step down from the cabinet with immediate effect” and that the cabinet “will focus on clarifying the accusations made against him.”
He has also indicated that the Minister of Veterans Affairs will temporarily assume responsibility for the ministerial portfolio that until now has been in the hands of Boissonnault.
Calls for her to resign came to a head this week after the Canadian newspaper The National Post reported that claims that her great-grandmother belonged to the Cree people, an Amerindian nation in North America, were false. Boissonnault said his great-grandmother was a “full-blooded Cree woman” but had mixed bloodline.
He later apologized for not being “clear” about his family’s ties to Indigenous ancestry and said he was learning about his family heritage “in real time.”
But the minister has been under scrutiny for months as the House Ethics Committee was investigating that he co-owned a company (Global Health Imports) that claimed to be Indigenous-owned while bidding for government contracts.
The now former minister assured that this description was made without his consent, blamed his former business partner and clarified that this company failed to qualify as an indigenous supplier.