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The Senate's ethics officer says Sen. Lynn Beyak violated the upper chamber's conflict-of-interest code by posting racist letters about Indigenous people on her website.
Pierre Legault says Beyak's conduct did not uphold the highest standards of dignity required of a senator.
Nor did she perform her duties with dignity, honour and integrity or refrain from acting in a way that could reflect negatively on the Senate, as stipulated in the code.
Legault says he proposed that Beyak delete the racist letters from her website, post a formal apology and complete a cultural-sensitivity course with an emphasis on Indigenous issues, but she hasn't done any of those things.
Beyak posted the letters to show that she had support for a speech she gave in the Senate in January 2018, in which she argued that Indian residential schools did a lot of good for Indigenous children, although many suffered physical and sexual abuse and thousands died from disease and malnutrition.
In a report released Tuesday, Legault concludes that five of the letters contained racist content, suggesting that Indigenous people are lazy, chronic whiners who are milking the residential-school issue to get government handouts.
Beyak was appointed to the Senate in 2013 by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. She was kicked out of the Conservative caucus last year after refusing to remove the letters from her website.
Comments
The systematic separation of children from their families and communities has never been productive of healthy , undamaged human beings. Even and perhaps especially, among the Upper classes who made a habit of sending their children off to other nobel households for "nurturing" - actually a form of hostage diplomacy, was succeeded by the elite schools we all know and loathe. Children, whether detained in wire cages or in the rigours of private residential schools are inevitably vulnerable to the predatory behaviour of their peers, and their instructors. Such predatory behaviour continues to this day as we see from the too frequent exposures of youth coaches, leaders, etc. who are able to gain damaging power over the children entrusted to them by their parents. When, as was the case with the forceable confinement of indigenous children for the sole purpose of expunging the "indian" from the child, whatever paltry gains they might have aquired were obtained by soul destroying treatment. Parents and communities might be imperfect agencies of child rearing, but like democracy, they are better than any other alternative!
Lyne Beyak's claims that the residential schools did a "lot of good" is equivalent to praising Mussolini for making the trains run on time. This parsing of language is intended to disguise the deeper realities and damages of human political maneuverings.
Stephen Harper had a bizarre penchant for putting crappy people in important positions. Part of it has to do with knowing he will have guaranteed votes but there also seems to be a trolling aspect where he was thumbing his nose at the rest of Canadians. In the Senate alone we were treated to Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and Linda Frum. I could go on for days about who he made into cabinet ministers. I'm thinking about you, Tony "Carlos Doofus" Clement.
How is it possible for a Senator to remain one after making these offensive remarks? The Senate is meant to be a place for reasoned consideration of the laws passed by the Commons. Sen. Beyak's opinions continue to perpetrate uninformed and hateful rhetoric that only turn up the heat on sensitive topics. Just as political parties fire their members for making these kinds of remarks, the Senate should show Ms. Beyak the door.