Madam Speaker, at this point there can be very little doubt that the Liberal Minister of Employment, who is the member for Edmonton Centre and Alberta's only member of the Liberal cabinet, willfully pretended to be indigenous. He should not be in cabinet. Of course, I know there are slim pickings among Alberta Liberals. They are either with the pretender or with the porch pirate, but the minister certainly should be out of cabinet.
As a consequence of his pretense, the company that he co-owned also pretended to be indigenous-owned, and this pretense was used to advance the minister's political image and potentially to advance his private commercial interests as well. Now that he has been found out, the minister should offer a more fulsome and sincere apology than the one he offered on Friday, and he should resign or be removed from cabinet.
There is an Instagram post that the Liberal Party put out in 2016, one of many examples of things published at the time and since, that makes very clear how the minister was being positioned. The post in question proudly highlights that apparently the Liberals had elected the largest number of indigenous MPs ever and includes a picture that shows the indigenous Liberal caucus, photos of nine MPs, one of whom is the current Minister of Employment.
The minister has most recently claimed that he participated in the activities of the indigenous Liberal caucus but only as an ally. In other words, he says he never pretended to be indigenous; he just happened to be the one and only white guy who happened to be invited to an organization that identified as the indigenous Liberal caucus. Obviously, that does not pass a pretty basic smell test.
There is a post saying that the Liberals had elected a significant number of indigenous MPs. It is accompanied by a collection of photos of MPs. That would surely be designed to give the impression that those MPs are indigenous. Why in the world would the minister be the one white guy in an otherwise all-indigenous club that was repeatedly publicly identified as in an all-indigenous club, unless he was trying to create the impression that he was indigenous?
However, we do not even need Liberal Party social media posts in order to see the problem; let us look at the minister's own words in the House. In 2016, he described himself as an “adopted Cree”. In 2018, he switched to calling himself a “non-status adopted Cree” and a “member of the indigenous caucus”. As recently as a year ago, the minister told the House that his Cree name means “strong eagle man”. There can surely be no doubt what this was supposed to convey, even as he was also talking about Métis family members and admitting, alternatively, that he was neither.
The thing is that in listening to the minister's damage control now, he sounds a lot like the Prime Minister. When pressed on the point of misidentification, at a press conference on Friday, he said that on the one hand, the Liberal Party had misunderstood, that he apologized if anyone was confused and that he is learning about his family history in real time. He did not at any point actually admit wrongdoing. He later said he was going to continue the journey and will share this journey with Canadians as he continues down that path.
The minister sounded much like a Prime Minister, who thought a groping scandal was just a matter of someone experiencing things differently and who thought his own repeated wearing of racist costumes was a learning opportunity for the rest of us. The minister says he is on a journey, but actually I think the journey that most people want the minister to take is first to the backbenches and then out of Parliament entirely.