THUNDER BAY - The Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association has joined a growing chorus of municipalities, Indigenous leaders, and mayors calling for Senator Lynn Beyak’s resignation.
The NOMA board voted in favour of calling for Beyak’s resignation after comments made by the senator from Northwestern Ontario in an open letter issued earlier this month speaking out about the federal government’s decision to create a second ministry responsible for Indigenous issues.
In the letter, Beyak said the problems facing Indigenous people do not relate to the residential school system, but rather are related to the “Indian Act Industry in Ottawa.”
Beyak, who was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and served on the Senate’s Aboriginal People’s committee, first made headlines when she said some Indigenous youth benefited from the residential school system during a Mar. 7 Senate speech.
NOMA president and Shuniah mayor, Wendy Landry, said the call for her resignation from the mayors of Winnipeg and Edmonton, as well as reaction throughout communities in the region, spurred the board to call the vote.
“She is definitely our representative of Northwestern Ontario and we have a large population of Indigenous people,” she said. “And I think it doesn’t help when we are working towards truth and reconciliation, it doesn’t help with building our relationships, and it doesn’t help with our municipalities moving forward with the initiatives we want to do in working with our First Nations.”
Sioux Lookout mayor, Doug Lawrance, also spoke out against Beyak’s comments and said as a representative from Northwestern Ontario, particularly in the Dryden/Sioux Lookout area that had nine residential schools, her comments are offensive to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Lawrance first spoke out against Beyak’s Mar. 7 speech and invited the senator to meet with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in Sioux Lookout. The senator accepted the invitation and met with the committee, along with four survivors of the residential school system at the Meno Ya Win Health Centre.
But both Lawrance and members of the committee feel Beyak’s most recent open letter and use of a photo of the meeting in a link on her webpage was an affront to all those participating.
“Her comments after that meeting, and her use of the photograph, indicating that all was well between us and her and her stance on reconciliation, I think quite honestly we felt manipulated by her use of the photo and her association with the comment she made,” he said.
“Obviously she has a long path to go in terms of knowledge and truth and reconciliation,” Lawrance continued. “So far in fact, I think it’s time for her removal from the senate.”
With the growing number of people calling for the embattled senator to step aside, Landry said she hopes Beyak, who is in a position of influence where comments are usually held in high regard, will resign.
“If you are making comments that are not only incorrect, but targeting a specific group and dividing our communities and making problems for our relationship building processes in the year we are all recognizing truth and reconciliation and what the TRC Commission brought forward in the recommendations, I think you are working against what Canada is working towards,” she said.
