Beyak taken off Senate committee
Senator has been removed from aboriginal issues panel over controversial comments
OTTAWA— Sen. Lynn Beyak, who stirred controversy for saying there was an “abundance of good” in the residential school system, has been removed from the Senate committee that oversees aboriginal issues.
Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose made the move Wednesday after continued pressure from critics who wanted Beyak, a Conservative senator, off the committee, even out of the Senate entirely.
“Ms. Ambrose has been clear that Sen. Beyak’s views do not reflect the Conservative Party’s position on residential schools,” Jake Enwright, press secretary for Ambrose, said in a statement that tried to distance the party from the controversy.
“It was prime minister Stephen Harper who made a historic apology to the victims of residential schools and launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Enwright said.
In a speech on March 7, Beyak highlighted what she called the “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.
“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.
Those views sparked quick con- demnation on Parliament Hill and across the country from critics who noted that the harmful legacy of residential schools continues to this day.
Even leaders of the Anglican Church of Canada, which administered schools that took in hundreds of students, penned a forceful letter to Beyak to declare “there was nothing good” about institutions rife with physical and sexual abuse, stripping children from their families and denying them their heritage.
“We are compelled to say that while there are those glimpses of good in the history of the residential schools, the overall view is grim. It is shadowed and dark; it is sad and shameful,” the letter stated.
Despite the furor, Beyak had remained unapologetic, issuing a statement that said she was “especially grateful” to people who “respectfully” engaged with her “in this era of fake news and exaggeration.”
But she stoked further controversy at the committee when she asked a Cree women, who had just tearfully related her own experiences in a residential school, about a proposed audit of First Nations spending.
The criticisms showed no sign of dying out.
Earlier Wednesday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said that indigenous people would find it “very difficult” to appear before the committee as long as Beyak remained a member.