Senator must resign
The thing about a so-called “teachable moment” is it’s only useful if the person involved has the ability and willingness to learn. Sen. Lynn Beyak, it seems, might not possess those attributes.
Last April, Ms. Beyak was removed from the Senate’s Aboriginal Peoples committee after controversial and ill-informed comments about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) failure to “focus on the good” that was done in Canada’s residential school system.
The senator from northwestern Ontario, who was appointed to the upper chamber in 2013 by then-prime minister Stephen Harper, did not seem to glean any immediate lessons from her ouster, calling it a threat to free speech and an indication political correctness is getting in the way of thoughtful conversation in this country.
Five months later, having been freed of Senate committee obligations and, one presumes, given plenty of time to reflect on her earlier comments in the context of the ongoing reconciliation process, Ms. Beyak remains unmoved and, by all appearances, unenlightened.
After the recent federal government cabinet shuffle, which included the division of Indigenous affairs responsibilities into two separate portfolios — one focused on bureaucratic initiatives such as negotiating treaties and the other tasked with delivery of services — Ms. Beyak posted an open letter on her Senate website. In it, she criticized the creation of another ministry, reiterated her praise for residential schools’ achievements and stated it’s time to “stop the guilt and blame and move forward together.”
The letter also suggested Indigenous people “trade your status card for a Canadian citizenship, with a fair and negotiated payout to each Indigenous man, woman and child in Canada, to settle all the outstanding land claims and treaties, and move forward together just like the (Indigenous) leaders already do in Ottawa.”
This suggests the senator is unaware that Indigenous people who are born in Canada are, in fact, Canadian citizens.
When the issue of Ms. Beyak’s perspective on residential schools first made headlines last spring, Sen. Murray Sinclair — the principal architect of the TRC’s report and recommendations — defended his colleague’s right to hold unpopular views, while at the same time pointing out that those views “have been proven to be incorrect over the years.”