Cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault’s former company is facing its seventh lawsuit and an allegation of fraud by an Edmonton seniors care not-for-profit.
Shepherd’s Care Foundation and its affiliate, Christian Care at Home Trust, filed a claim against Global Health Imports (GHI) and Boissonnault’s former business partner, Stephen Anderson, on July 12.
The suit, filed in Edmonton, accuses Anderson of moving more than $430,000 worth of Shepherd’s Care’s inventory out of GHI’s Edmonton warehouse and producing a fraudulent document to cover it up. The products were allegedly never returned.
This is the second allegation of civil fraud Anderson faces. Boissonnault is not named in the new lawsuit.
Boissonnault co-founded GHI, a medical supply company, with Anderson at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and helped run the company until he won back his Edmonton Centre seat and was appointed to cabinet in the fall of 2021.
Boissonnault said then he resigned, as is legally required of public office holders, but remained a 50 per cent owner of GHI until this past June, when he surrendered his shares.
Currently employment minister, Boissonnault is under scrutiny from Canada’s ethics commissioner over allegations he may have been involved in GHI’s business dealings while in office. Ministers may own stakes in companies but are prohibited from operating or managing them.
Recent Global News investigations revealed GHI’s legal troubles and raised questions about whether Boissonnault was communicating with Anderson about a business deal in 2022 — when he was tourism minister.
The Edmonton Centre MP said he hasn’t been involved with the GHI since his re-election and his office told Global News he disposed of his shares due to the “politicization of his shareholder status.”
The events laid out by Shepherd’s Care regarding the missing inventory allegedly took place in 2022, after Boissonnault said he stepped down from GHI. While Boissonanult was a co-owner of GHI at that time, in general, individual shareholders are not liable for the actions or debts of a company.
Most of the lawsuits against GHI thus far were over allegations it did not pay its bills. The company currently owes $7.8 million in court-ordered debts to six companies.
Court documents show GHI and Anderson were under increasing pressure in 2022 from suppliers to settle their tab.
Over the same period, GHI entered into a contract to sell a U.S. company $17 million worth of medical gloves. The deal fell apart in the fall of 2022 and the company, The Ghaoui Group, is now suing Anderson and two other GHI employees for fraud. All three deny the allegations, which are unproven.
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The first lawsuit against GHI came just two weeks after Boissonnault was re-elected. He is not named in any of the suits.
Still, critics are questioning Boissonnault’s position in cabinet over his recent ties to GHI and Anderson, whose testimony to the parliamentary ethics committee last month left MPs in disbelief after he blamed “autocorrect” for typing “Randy” nine times in text messages to Malvina Ghaoui, principal of The Ghaoui Group.
Anderson said Boissonnault has not been involved with GHI while in office, but would not disclose the identity of the person he refers to only as “Randy.” Boissonnault denies he is the “Randy” in the texts.
Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett has called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fire Boissonnault.
“This is the type of person that Justin Trudeau’s employment minister chose to associate himself with, and only looked to distance himself from once that relationship became public,” he said in an interview last month.
Boissonnault’s director of communications Alice Hansen said the minister “has no involvement in this legal matter” and “remains focused on working for Edmontonians, Albertans and all Canadians.”
Shepherd’s Care notes in its claim, “at all material times,” its point of contact at GHI was Anderson.
The statement of claim contains allegations that have not been proven in court. No defence has been filed yet and Anderson did not respond to questions by deadline.
Shepherd’s Care declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation.
Shepherd’s Care’s contract with GHI
Shepherd’s Care said in its lawsuit that it entered into a contract with GHI in March 2020 to supply personal protective equipment (PPE), such as masks, gloves and gowns, to its senior care facilities across Edmonton.
At the time, the first cases of the COVID-19 virus were being reported in Canada. On March 5, Alberta Health announced the province’s first positive case. Two weeks later, an Edmonton man became the first person to die from the virus and the city promptly declared a local state of emergency.
Supportive living and long-term care facilities, which housed the province’s most vulnerable residents, were scrambling to acquire life-saving PPE.
Shepherd’s Care said it sought out GHI because Anderson asserted “that they could acquire PPE that other vendors could not.” The organization did not say how it learned of GHI, which was not incorporated at the time.
Corporate documents show GHI was incorporated federally on April 1, 2020. The next day, it was registered in Alberta.
Boissonnault, who was running the company alongside Anderson at the time, did not answer Global News’ questions about what role, if any, he had in connecting Shepherd’s Care to his medical supply startup.
Credit: (Left) Instagram/Stephen Anderson, (Right) The Canadian Press/Justin Tang
Allegations of missing inventory
To sweeten the deal, GHI and Anderson allegedly offered to warehouse other equipment and inventory provided to Shepherd’s Care through Alberta Health Services, such as wheelchairs and mattresses, free of charge.
An inventory count in March 2022 allegedly valued the goods stored at around $1.2 million.
During a September count, however, Shepherd’s Care said it discovered a “significant volume” of that inventory had gone missing. Anderson allegedly told Shepherd’s Care the product was in transit and produced a bill of lading as evidence it was accounted for.
A bill of lading is a legal document issued by a carrier to acknowledge the receipt of cargo. The document, according to the statement of claim, was by a company called Parker Transport Ltd.
Shepherd’s Care said Parker Transport “does not appear to be a legitimate business” and that the document appears to be a fraud.
The arson fire
On Sept. 25, 2022, within weeks of Shepherd’s Care allegedly discovering the equipment was missing, a fire was deliberately set at GHI’s Edmonton warehouse.
Three people broke into the warehouse with a small jerrycan and set stock on fire, according to surveillance footage and a police report obtained by Global News through a freedom of information request.
A burnt aisle in Global Health Imports’ warehouse after the fire on Sept. 25, 2022.
Edmonton Police
Edmonton police investigated the arson, but the case was never solved.
Shepherd’s Care’s insurer determined there was $436,797 worth of inventory missing from the warehouse at the time of the fire.
GHI suit against Shepherd’s Care
In a separate lawsuit filed in June, Anderson’s companies GHI and Global Healthcare Solutions (GHS) sued Shepherd’s Care, Christian Care and Support Association, and “John Doe as Trustee for Christian Care at Home Trust” for $1.3 million in alleged unpaid invoices, dating back to October 2021.
GHI and GHS, which is described as a medical supplier and staffing company, claim the defendants breached their contracts by not paying on time and unjustly enriched themselves.
No defence has been filed yet and the allegations remain unproven.
If you have information for this story, or information for another story, please contact me in confidence at krista.hessey@globalnews.ca
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