Senator’s status card comment ‘offensive’
Winnipeg mayor urges Beyak to resign or get educated
WINNIPEG— The mayor of Winnipeg is calling for the resignation of a senator who wants Indigenous people to give up their status cards in exchange for Canadian citizenship.
Brian Bowman said the comments by Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak are damaging to the country’s reconciliation. If she won’t quit, he said, she should be better educated and understand that Indigenous people are indeed Canadians. “To have a member of the Canadian Senate be so incredibly ignorant about who Canadian citizens are is deeply offensive,” Bowman said Thursday. “At a minimum, she should be apologizing to Canadians — all Canadians.”
Aletter signed by Beyak and posted on her website Sept. 1 says: “None of us are leaving, so let’s stop the guilt and blame and find a way to live together . . . 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 leaders already do in Ottawa,” Beyak wrote.
“All Canadians are then free to preserve their cultures in their own communities, on their own time, with their own dime.”
The senator made headlines this year for saying “some good” came out of Canada’s residential schools.
Requests for comment to Beyak’s office were not returned Thursday.