Cabinet minister’s firm shared mailing address with person named in cocaine busts

The medical-supply company co-owned by Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault shared a post office box with a woman named in arrests in two major drug busts, according to corporate filings.

It’s a connection that could reveal security gaps in the federal government’s vetting of cabinet picks, corporate ethics and law experts say, and raises new questions about the minister’s judgment amid a recent series of troubling revelations.

The mailbox, rented at an Edmonton UPS Store, appears on the April 2020 licence for the Edmonton MP’s former enterprise, Global Health Imports Corporation (GHI), which National Post obtained from Health Canada through access-to-information legislation.

The mailbox is also listed on a different company’s registration document as the home address for Francheska Leblond, a woman who has been named in run-ins with police since at least 2008, according to Alberta Court of Justice records. She has also reportedly used the name Francheska Quach in the past.

UPS Store spokesman Steve Moorman said that someone named Francheska Leblond has rented the mailbox since 2013. GHI’s name is not on the rental agreement, he said, although GHI’s mail sometimes arrived at the mailbox. He said people occasionally turned up at the store in the Edmonton strip mall looking for GHI.

Boissonnault owned half of GHI at the time the mailbox was shared with her. The Liberal cabinet minister recently said he gave up his shares this year following public scrutiny of the business’s dealings.

This summer, Global News revealed a link between Boissonnault’s former business partner, Stephen Anderson, and Leblond. It reported that after Boissonnault won the September 2021 election and was appointed to cabinet, Leblond and Anderson registered a business together called 13560449 Canada Ltd.

Anderson and Leblond did not respond to National Post inquiries for this story. Boissonnault’s spokeswoman, Alice Hansen, said the minister is now at odds with his former partner, Anderson.

“Minister Boissonnault does not know, and has never met Ms. Lablond (sic),” Hansen said, adding that Leblond “had no involvement” in GHI.

Some information about Leblond has been released through media reports and public records.

In April 2022, authorities in the Dominican Republic discovered more than 200 kilograms of cocaine on a Toronto-bound charter plane with a Francheska Leblond on board as a passenger. The plane’s seven passengers and five crew members were held in the Dominican Republic for months, then released without charge.

A March 2023 report by CTV’s “W5” alleged that a drug-smuggling ring based in Edmonton chartered the plane.

 In 2013, officers with the Edmonton Police Service’s Drug and Gang Enforcement Unit arrested a Franceska Leblond and two others during a cocaine bust, charging her with several weapons offences and two drug-possession offences, the force said in a press release. Prosecutors later withdrew all charges against Leblond.

In 2008, a Francheska Leblond was convicted for marijuana possession, for which she received a year of parole. The Canadian government legalized and regulated the use of marijuana in 2018.

When the COVID pandemic began, Boissonnault was temporarily out of government, having lost his Edmonton Centre seat in the 2019 election, before winning it back in 2021. He and Anderson started GHI to import medical supplies during the pandemic. GHI registered Leblond’s P.O. box address with Health Canada on its federal licence as an operating site.

Hansen, the minister’s spokesperson, said Boissonnault used his lawyer’s address for the business. With regard to the shared mailbox with Leblond, she said Boissonnault believed that “this P.O box belonged to Mr. Anderson. This was the height of COVID and both individuals were working at distance.”

“Minister Boissonnault will be exploring legal action against Mr. Anderson,” Hansen noted, following news reports revealing Anderson’s use of the MP’s name in business dealings after the minister was elected. Ministers are not permitted to be involved in a business’s operations while holding public office.

Boissonnault has been under scrutiny since late March, facing questions from media and opposition MPs about his dealings with GHI. Texts leaked to the media suggest Anderson was communicating with someone named “Randy” about GHI’s business affairs after Boissonnault had been appointed to cabinet and was required to be uninvolved.

Boissonnault said the “Randy” is not him and that he ceased to be involved in the business after October 2021 and has complied with all conflict-of-interest rules.

The House standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics opened an investigation into Boissonnault’s business dealings in May. The ethics commissioner has looked into Boissonnault and GHI in multiple probes and said he found no evidence the Liberal minister had broken conflict-of-interest rules.

Boissonnault apologized Friday for not being “clear” about his heritage, after shifting statements over the years identifying his background alternately as adopted Cree, white and Metis. He does not now claim to be Indigenous. This was after National Post reported that his company had applied for federal contracts claiming it was wholly Indigenous owned. (Boissonnault’s spokesperson said he was not aware that Anderson had made those claims in the bids and did not consent to them.)

Garry Clement, a former RCMP investigator who specializes in international organized crime and money laundering, said on Nov. 12 that the committee needs to examine any possible connection between Leblond and GHI.

“Nobody has done a deep dive on this,” he said.

Political parties must thoroughly vet candidates for political office for any links to criminal activities, he said, to guard against risks of criminal exploitation or extortion.

As “a matter of national security,” the committee must review the link between Leblond and GHI, Clement said.

 Citing privacy legislation, the Privy Council Office (PCO), which vets candidates for ministerial posts, declined to answer whether its checks uncovered the link between GHI and Leblond when Boissonnault was named minister of tourism and associate minister of finance in October 2021.

 As part of the vetting process, PCO consults with federal organizations such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service, along with reviewing open sources, Daniel Savoie, a spokesman for the PCO, said.

The registration of 13560449 Canada Ltd. by Leblond and Anderson was posted publicly two months after Boissonnault assumed office in 2021. PCO did not run a second checkwhen the minister’s portfolio was shuffled to employment, workforce development, and official languages in July 2023, Savoie said.

On Nov. 7, the parliamentary ethics committee called Boissonnault to testify for a third time, along with two GHI employees.

NDP MP Matthew Green, a member of the committee, suggested that MPs broaden the investigation to include Leblond.

The committee needs to know, he said, “Did Francheska Leblond, or Francheska Quach or whatever the alias she has used, have any connection whatsoever to GHI?”

Negar Haghighat, a Montreal-based corporate governance consultant, said it is unusual for a business to allow a third party to handle any part of its operations without a formal agreement — even just picking up the mail.

“Why wouldn’t they just have rented their own mailbox?” she said.

It is unclear for how long the association between GHI and Leblond continued. In July 2021, GHI employees renewed the business’s licence,[2] but swapped out the mailbox for a new office and warehouse space in Edmonton, according to documents obtained via access-to-information legislation.

In Dec. 2021, a few months after Boissonnault was elected again to Parliament and appointed to cabinet, Anderson and Leblond registered 13560449 Canada Ltd. Anderson told Global News that the business never launched operations.

“Every time you turn around, a new piece of information is revealed that raises serious questions about what exactly Minister Boissonnault was wrapped up in,” Conservative ethics critic MP Michael Barrett, of the connection between GHI and Leblond.

 National Post

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