Senator Lynn Beyak pictured with fellow committee members on March 8. Photo courtesy Twitter, @SenateCA.
It’s been an upsetting week for Indian Residential School survivors across Canada, after a senator said the good done in those schools has been overshadowed by the negative.
The Tuesday comments in the Red Chamber came from Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak, who spoke only an hour after Senator Murray Sinclair detailed a number of assaults against children in the Indian Residential School System.
This included Fort Albany Indian Residential School where Sinclair said “I was told of children who when caught speaking their language or misbehaving in any way were tied to an electric chair and had an electric current run through their bodies until they twisted and screamed.”
Beyak gave equally detailed comments on Indian Residential Schools, supporting her view that “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.”
She cited a Cree man who shares her stance and citing a comment made by the treaty commissioner at the time of treaty-making in the English River area in 1906, who said the Ile-a-la-Crosse mission’s school “is cozy within and the children whom I had the pleasure of meeting there, evidenced the kindly care and careful training of the devoted women who have gone out from the comforts of civilization to work for the betterment of the natives of the north.”
In the fall, former Ile-a-la-Crosse students cited the abuse they endured within the walls of the mission’s boarding school.
Sinclair, who had previously been the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, responded in the chambers after Beyak spoke for 25 minutes on the topic on Tuesday.
“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,” Sinclair said.
On Thursday, Northern Saskatchewan MP Georgina Jolibois said she is in disbelief over the comments and joined her fellow MP Romeo Sanagash in calling for Beyak’s resignation.
“I don’t believe that the senator is ill-informed. I believe that she not only needs to apologize to First Nations across Canada, to also go further and resign from her position,” Jolibois said.
“To me, to undermine the historical impact of residential schools is a very painful process to all First Nations across Canada.”
On Thursday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett reiterated the stance taken by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper made in 2008, saying “the purpose of the residential schools was wrong.”
Bennett said Beyak’s comments are “unfortunate and misguided” and speak “to the kind of education we need to do better.”
Jolibois does not agree.
“The issue around residential schools and boarding schools have been publicly known for a number of years now. I don’t believe that is an issue,” she said.
Senator Beyak has not been present in the chambers since Wednesday. She is not speaking publicly at this time.
The full text of Beyak’s Tuesday comments can be read here under the topic of Increasing Over-representation of Indigenous Women in Canadian Prisons.
The full audio of Beyak’s Tuesday comments can be heard here between 18:33:35 – 18:57:11.