It appears Canadians won’t have the opportunity to celebrate a statutory Indigenous holiday anytime soon.
Northern Saskatchewan NDP MP Georgina Jolibois’ private member’s bill to make Sept. 30 a national holiday died in the Senate last week after both houses convened in advance of a fall election.
Jolibois says she is extremely frustrated after Conservative senators used delaying tactics to ensure her bill never made it to second reading.
“Th Senate is unelected,” she says. “Canadians can decide and think about: do we need an unelected senate who are influencing very important bills that are passed in the House of Commons?”
Sept. 30 was chosen as the day for a holiday in honour of residential school survivors.
Conservative senators are also being blamed for using the same delaying tactics to prevent NDP MP Romeo Sagenash’s private member’s bill to align Canadian laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from making it to third reading.
(PHOTO; Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River MP Georgina Jolibois. File photo)