MPs blast residential school speech
Look at the ‘good’ things system did, Tory senator said
OTTAWA— Claims by a Conservative senator that residential schools were “well intentioned” is like trying to find some good in the Holocaust, says a New Democrat MP who spent 10 years in a system that isolated thousands of indigenous children from their families and traditions.
Romeo Saganash (Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou) was among the sharpest critics Thursday as politicians of all stripes were quick to condemn the comments by Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak as ill-informed and hurtful.
“We’re talking about genocide here, and no one can say that there were good parts of genocide and bad parts,” said Saganash, who was taken from his home as child to attend residential schools.
“It’s like saying, ‘Well, there are some good sides to what Hitler did to the Jewish community,’ ” he told reporters outside the Commons.
Saganash called for Beyak, named to the Senate in 2013 by former prime minister Stephen Harper, to resign her seat. Others questioned how Beyak could continue to sit on the Senate’s aboriginal affairs committee. Beyak made the comments Tuesday in the Senate during a debate about the overrepresentation of indigenous women in prisons.
The Ontario senator said little about that topic and instead presented what she called a “somewhat different side of the residential school story.”
She spoke of the “kindly and wellintentioned men and women . . . whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part and are overshadowed by negative reports.”
“Obviously, the negative issues must be addressed, but it is unfortunate that they are sometimes magnified and considered more newsworthy than the abundance of good,” Beyak said.
In her speech, Beyak did acknowledge the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which over five years compiled the harrowing stories of the residential school system and issued 94 recommendations.
“Mistakes were made at residential schools — in many instances, horrible mistakes that overshadowed some good things that also happened at those schools,” she said.
Sen. Murray Sinclair, who led the commission before his appointment to the senate, immediately pressed Beyak on her views following her speech.
“I am a bit shocked, senator, that you still hold some views that have been proven to be incorrect over the years, but, nonetheless, I accept that you have the right to hold them,” he said in the chamber Tuesday.
Beyak wasn’t talking Thursday. Shirley Molloy, her executive assistant, responded to an interview request by pointing to the senator’s speech on Tuesday.
But the condemnation flowed on Parliament Hill as politicians urged Beyak to read the findings of the commission report, which found that residential schools “permanently damaged” many students and left their lives “disrupted and scarred.”
“Residential schools were a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal Peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples,” the report stated.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett called the comments “unfortunate and misguided.”
Conservative MP Cathy McLeod, her party’s indigenous affairs critic, offered no defence and instead encouraged Beyak to read up on the topic “because clearly it has been a sad chapter of our history.”