Randy Boissonnault drops out of election race

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EDMONTON — Randy Boissonnault, the Edmonton Liberal who has come under fire for a pandemic-era health-contracting company and allegations that he had made shifting statements over his ties to Indigenous heritage, has announced he won’t be running in the 2025 federal election.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was minted as Liberal leader in early March, is expected to call an election on Sunday.

“It is no secret that the last year has been an incredibly difficult one for me and my family,” Boissonnault wrote in a letter posted to X Friday evening. “It’s time to embark on a new adventure.”

It means the Liberals will have to find a new candidate for the riding of Edmonton Centre, which is one of the few in Alberta that the party hopes to win.

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Boissonnault represented the downtown Edmonton riding between 2015 and 2019, before losing to Conservative James Cumming. Boissonnault returned to Parliament in 2021, winning his seat back by a margin of only a few hundred votes.

In 2020, during the pandemic, he formed a company, Global Health Imports, along with Edmonton hockey coach Stephen Anderson. However, that company found itself at the centre of an investigation launched by the House of Commons ethics committee last year over allegations that Boissonnault had continued involvement with the company after he took elected office. Boissonnault has denied those claims.

The controversy further deepened when National Post first reported that Global Health Imports had been bidding on federal contracts identifying itself as an “Indigenous owned” business.

“Global Health is a wholly owned Indigenous and LGBTQ Company,” Anderson, Boissonnault’s former business partner, wrote in a June 2020 bid for a contract to supply face masks. Boissonnault had said that Anderson’s contracting claims were made without his knowledge.

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In a series of exclusive stories late last year, National Post detailed how Boissonnault’s personal history had shifted over the years since he entered federal politics. The Post’s reporting detailed how Boissonnault had referred to himself as a “non-status adopted Cree” and claimed that his great-grandmother was a “full-blooded Cree woman” in the past, but that those claims were untrue.

“I’m learning about my family in real time. I’m learning about my family lore, and I take my responsibility as an MP and as a minister very seriously, and that means representing people,” Boissonnault said in a statement in November 2024.

Boissonnault has since said that his great-grandmother’s family had Métis lineage.

Boissonnault, who was serving as employment minister, stepped down from cabinet following National Post’s reporting, on Nov. 20.

In his Friday evening note about dropping out of the race, Boissonnault thanked his staff, volunteers and family for their support over the years.

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“Representing Edmonton in Ottawa and delivering for our city and our province has been a great honour,” he wrote. “Whatever the future brings, I will always be there to fight for our city.”

One possible contender for a new Liberal candidate in the riding is Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi. Sources have said that Sohi, who served as a Liberal MP for Edmonton Mill Woods from 2015 to 2019, plans to enter the race, but the mayor has declined to confirm or deny.

He told the Edmonton Journal Friday that he had been approached by the Liberal party to run.

“I have not fully said ‘Yes’ yet. I still have a few things to sort out, but I see this as an opportunity for having a strong voice at the table if Liberals are going to form the next government,” he said Friday.

With additional reporting from Patti Sontag, Catherine Lévesque and Lauren Boothby

National Post

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