Boissonnault says he came up with confusing ‘non-status adopted Cree’ term

Edmonton Centre MP Randy Boissonnault told a parliamentary committee on Thursday that he came up with the term “non-status adopted Cree,” contradicting previous statements where he said an Indigenous researcher provided him with the identifier.

The former cabinet minister’s office claimed in mid-November that the term was “explained to him by an Indigenous researcher” while Boissonnault, who was adopted, researched his family lineage.

“It was an explanation of his adoptive family’s Indigenous history as they understood it at the time,” Alice Hansen, Boissonnault’s director of communications, wrote in a statement on Nov. 13.

But at a House of Commons committee Thursday morning, Boissonnault said he created the term himself.

“I came up with the term ‘non-status adopted Cree’ because I thought it would honour my family. And I thought it would indicate very clearly no status,” Boissonnault said.

The Indigenous researcher Boissonnault previously referred to, University of Toronto professor Chadwick Cowie, told Global News he did not research Boissonnault’s family lineage. Cowie did say, however, he had a conversation with Boissonnault “a couple of times” between 2013 and 2015.

In an interview with the National Post last month, Cowie said he did not give Boissonnault the term ‘non-status adopted Cree’.

“I would have worded it differently,” Cowie said to the Post. “I would have said that he was adopted to a family that had Cree lineage.”

Complicating matters further, Boissonnault then said his adoptive mother and brother became citizens of the Métis Nation of Alberta earlier this year, but that he identified has always identified as white.

Boissonnault’s shifting description of his family’s lineage, as well as revelations that a medical supply business he co-founded in 2020 was under criminal investigation, led him to step down from cabinet on Nov. 20. He was previously minister of employment.

Boissonnault maintains he has had nothing to do with the company under investigation, Global Health Imports (GHI), since his re-election in the fall of 2021. Edmonton police are investigating allegations that GHI defrauded a U.S. company of around $350,000 in 2022, about a year after Boissonnault said he left the company.

Boissonnault told the committee on Thursday that he did not mislead the House of Commons or…