{"id":97100,"date":"2017-04-05T22:55:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T02:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=97100"},"modified":"2017-04-05T22:55:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T02:55:05","slug":"beyak-removed-from-senate-committee-over-residential-school-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/04\/05\/beyak-removed-from-senate-committee-over-residential-school-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyak removed from Senate committee over residential school comments"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Conservative<\/a>
Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak, who famously declared \u201csome good\u201d came out of Canada’s residential schools, has been kicked off the Senate’s committee on Aboriginal Peoples. (Photo: Prayers for Politicians\/Flickr<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak, who famously declared \u201csome good\u201d came out of Canada’s residential schools, has been kicked off the Senate’s committee on Aboriginal Peoples.<\/p>\n

Jake Enwright, a spokesperson for interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, confirmed the decision in a statement late Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Ambrose has been clear that Sen. Beyak’s views do not reflect the Conservative party’s position on residential schools,\u201d Enwright said.<\/p>\n

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission spent six years examining the legacy of the government-funded, church-operated schools, infamous hotbeds of abuse and mistreatment that operated from the 1870s to 1996.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives were in power in 2008 when the federal government delivered an abject apology in the House of Commons to families and survivors, a fact not lost on Enwright.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was Prime Minister Stephen Harper who made an historic apology to the victims of residential schools and launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Sen. Sandra Lovelace Nicholas, who sits on the aboriginal committee, said she was \u201cshocked and dismayed\u201d by her Senate colleague’s remarks.<\/p>\n

She said she would boycott the committee’s meetings as long as Beyak remained a member.<\/p>\n

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde has also called for Beyak to be removed from the committee.<\/p>\n

Early last month, Beyak told the Senate that she believed the schools were not all bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI speak partly for the record, but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants \u2014 perhaps some of us here in this chamber \u2014 whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part and are overshadowed by negative reports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett has called the comments unfortunate and misguided, calling them proof of a need to educate Canadians about the long-standing legacy of the schools.<\/p>\n

Sen. Murray Sinclair, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s exhaustive investigation into the impact of residential schools, was present in the upper chamber during Beyak’s remarks.<\/p>\n

The work of the commission lead by Sinclair was the result of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, reached after residential school survivors took the federal government and churches to court with the support of the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit organizations.<\/p>\n

It was designed to help repair the lasting damage caused by the schools, and \u2014 in addition to compensating survivors \u2014 to explore the truth behind the program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2014 Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak, who famously declared \u201csome good\u201d came out of Canada’s residential schools, has been kicked …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":97101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18,16],"tags":[17577],"class_list":["post-97100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-lynn-beyak","mauthors-kristy-kirkup","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}