Conservatives need sensitivity training
DEAR EDITOR:
Independent Senator Mary Jane McCallum of Manitoba, who attended residential school since the age of five, brought forward a motion to expel Ontario Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak, who in October 2017 refused to remove derogatory letters posted on her website about residential school and how residential schools did a lot of good for Indigenous children.
When in fact, Indigenous children suffered physical and sexual abuse and thousands died of disease and malnutrition at the schools.
Throughout the controversy, Beyak presented herself as a champion of free speech and a victim of political correctness. She was suspended without pay May 2019, but her suspension ended when Parliament dissolved for the fall federal election.
However, in February 2020 the ethics committee voted again to suspend Beyak without pay, calling her apology “perfunctory” and “her sensitivity training a fiasco.”
She eventually did offer a second apology, though it was not perceived genuine by the grand chiefs, but she did complete her fourday virtual education program of sensitivity training.
So by June 2020, the ethics committee recommended rescinding February’s suspension and the Senate broke for summer recess without further discussion.
The suspension prematurely ended in August 2020, when Liberals prorogued Parliament. Beyak was quietly reinstated as a senator without her peers ever deciding that should happen.
McCallum said: “The way the senate has dealt with Beyak is an example of institutional racism.”
When a life-appointed Conservative senator is suspended because she refuses to adequately atone for insensitive public comments, when the party leader is publicly shamed and forced to admit his racism in hope of recapturing lost political capital and when other prominent conservatives like Conrad Black, in a recent op-ed in the national media, deny “institutional racism exists in Canada,” it would appear some sensitivity training would help many Conservatives.
Jon Peter Christoff
West Kelowna