Calls mount for Senator Beyak to step aside from committee after residential schools remark

The chair of the Senate’s Aboriginal peoples committee is asking Senator Lynn Beyak to consider a resignation from her post after “ill-informed and insensitive” comments she made about the Indian residential school system.

Liberal Saskatchewan Senator Lillian Dyck’s office has received a number of calls and emails since CBC News first reported the remarks Beyak made in the chamber. The Ontario Conservative Senator mounted a defence of the system and its “good deeds,” and lamented that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not “focus on the good” done at these institutions.

People have been urging Dyck to turf Beyak from her committee, something that can only be done by the Red Chamber’s selection committee.

“While I respect the right of all Senators to express their own opinions, I am concerned that Senator Beyak’s comments may have tarnished the good reputation of the [committee] and that her opinions may negatively impact the future work,” she said in a statement.

“Aboriginal people must be able to feel that they can trust the members of the committee and that we respect them.”

Dyck initially said she didn’t want Beyak to face any sanctions for her comments, but she is now asking her Conservative colleague to “reflect on whether her continued presence on the committee will do more harm than good as we move forward.”

The committee is in the midst of an exhaustive study of the history of Indigenous peoples and their interactions with the Canadian state, and is expected to make recommendations on how to foster a “new relationship” between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

• Tory senator wants to put ‘focus on the good’ done by residential school system
• MP Romeo Saganash likens senator’s view on residential schools to those of Nazi apologists
• Senator’s residential school comment ‘hurts the integrity of the Canadian system,’ survivor says

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/beyak-aboriginal-peoples-committee-1.4027716?cmp=rss