Senator Dumped from Aboriginal Issues Committee for Controversial Views
By Bruce Campion-Smith
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 an 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 well-intentioned 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 condemnation 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, that stripped children from their families and denied 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. Some of Beyak’s fellow Conservative senators had defended her right to free speech. But others said her viewpoints had made her position on the Senate’s aboriginal peoples committee untenable. 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 woman, 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. “It is hurting people that she doesn’t think she has anything to learn from the survivors of residential schools,” Bennett told reporters after a caucus meeting. “It is upsetting to all of us as parliamentarians that there’s a parliamentarian who thinks she has nothing to learn on this file,” she said. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair also questioned why no action had been taken against a senator who was “so insulting” toward indigenous peoples. “Can we remember why we had to apologize here in the House of Commons? It wasn’t a good thing, the residential school system. And for that senator to continue turning the knife in the wound, I think it’s totally inadmissible,” he said.
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