Boissonnault’s business associates to testify before ethics committee

The parliamentary ethics committee unanimously passed a motion to have cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault’s business associates testify in an extended meeting on Tuesday.

The motion calls for Stephen Anderson, who co-owns a Global Health Imports (GHI) with Boissonnault, and Kirsten Poon, a lobbyist with ties to the minister, to appear before the committee for an hour. The hearing date has yet to be set.

The motion also requests Anderson and Boissonnault produce “all of their phone records, text messages, iMessages, and all instant messages and call logs from all applications from September 8, 2022” within the next week.

The motion, brought forward by Conservative MP Michael Barrett on June 4, was the subject of much debate over the past few days. After a marathon of meetings on Tuesday, Liberal, NDP, Conservative, and Bloc Québécois members passed the motion, which had been amended several times, in a vote of 10 to 0.

The central question the committee seeks to answer is who the “Randy” referenced in text messages revealed by Global News last week is.

Boissonnault has repeatedly denied he is the “Randy” in the text exchange between Anderson and Malvina Ghaoui, owner of The Ghaoui Group, a California-based personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement company.

On Sept. 8, 2022, Anderson and Ghaoui had been discussing an approximately $500,000 deposit Ghaoui Group was to wire GHI for a large shipment of nitrile gloves. Anderson forwarded Ghaoui a message allegedly from “Randy,” pressuring her to send the deposit as soon as possible.

In response to questions from Global News, Anderson said he worked with another Randy at GHI, but wouldn’t provide a surname for the employee.

Initially, the motion called for “the other Randy” to