When The Red Guard Came For Senator Beyak

A Shameful Example Of Canadian Cancel Culture

Senator Lynn Beyak

The other day during a conversation among some politically energetic friends of mine, the topic of Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak came up. I vaguely remembered her name dominating the news cycle at one or two points within the last few years, but the details were a little shady. It was recommended that I read an essay on the topic by Canadian author Peter Best called Senator Lynn Beyak- The Unjust Scarlet Letter “R” Branding of a “Heretic”. (you can download this 3-part essay from the link provided. It’s second on the list). To get the full story, I highly recommend it.

Senator Beyak’s case is a particularly egregious example of illiberal cancel culture. Her story includes bullying by powerful individuals and by the institutions and mobs that act out the wishes of the bullies they support unwaveringly. It’s upsetting. It’s un-Canadian.

The aim here is to promote Senator Beyak’s side of the story - a side that her millions of supporters never doubted - and to help ensure there exists as many records (and as much commentary as possible) in defence of a truly great Canadian who was treated terribly and shamefully.

As a Canadian, I apologize to Senator Beyak for the hostility and outrageously illiberal and undemocratic way some Canadian agencies and citizens acted towards her.

I’ve exerted a sectioned of Peter’s essay below. And below that I’ve included the content of an email sent to supporters from Senator Beyak (she encouraged recipients to share broadly):

Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak, from Dryden, Ontario, a heavily mixed Indigenous-non-Indigenous part of Northern Ontario, from life experience, education and common sense, like the mainly Indigenous persons quoted above, knows that the TRC cultural genocide orthodoxy is false. And she dared say so publicly, and so brought the high priests of this orthodoxy down on her head. They metaphorically branded her with the Scarlet letter “R”, for “racist”, and suspended her from their Senate community with a command to take training to learn the Error of Her Ways as a condition of being allowed back in.

In early 2017 she wrote, echoing the opinion of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, that Indigenous people should voluntarily give up their special, separate legal status and join the Canadian mainstream as legal equals. She also wrote that at least some good came out of residential schools. For making these defensible assertions, in careful and respectful terms- for challenging the TRC cultural genocide orthodoxy- she was mocked by politicians from all parties as an ignorant, “hate speech”, racist rube and by most of the media as well, especially the high priests of the TRC cultural genocide orthodoxy at media institutions like the Toronto Star, Globe & Mail and the CBC. She was taken off the Senate Indigenous Affairs Committee and there were calls for her resignation from the Senate!

In January of 2018, after she allowed some overwhelmingly non-racist letters of support from citizens to be posted on her Senate website- support for both her opinions, but more importantly, for her courage in exercising her duty of and right to free speech on this important national issue- and after refusing to remove any of these letters from her Senate website, she was kicked out of the Conservative Caucus entirely. Then, without due process or debate she was suspended from the Senate without pay for the balance of the Parliamentary session, physically escorted from the Senate chamber, locked out of her office,  and then ordered, Maoist-like, to take “Indigenous Cultural Competency Training”.  It all constituted a shameful example of the embarrassingly primitive state of our national discussion of this issue, and more importantly, it showed the continuing, shameful and disgraceful failure on the part of all of our elites to uphold the principles of freedom of speech and due process, crucial Enlightenment rights and values enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedom. - Peter Best (From the essay Senator Lynn Beyak- The Unjust Scarlet Letter “R” Branding of a “Heretic”)

And here is Senator Beyak’s email to supporters:

January 25, 2021

To Family, Friends and Supporters,

Since my retirement from the Senate of Canada, at the end of my eight year term, the same few people who have brought forth costly inquiries and unconstitutional motions for three years are still opining, unrelated to the issue. It’s time to set the record straight without further censure and misunderstanding, and most of you already know the details. Please share as you wish.

It has never been about racism or letters, whose similar content already existed in numerous publications, media and government sources across Canada. It was about stifling debate on the good side of the residential schools and the costly misnomer of reconciliation, as outlined in the less than balanced Truth and Reconciliation Commission summary report. I read the 3232 pages of the full report when it was published in 2015, and there is an abundance of good recorded. The Summary report with the reference to cultural genocide is an incomplete and selected sampling, written for the monetary Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

My objective has always been a wiser use of tax dollars and to better the lives of the grassroots Indigenous people and their remote communities in our region of Northwestern Ontario and across the nation. The unsafe water, inadequate housing, and lack of education opportunities have nothing to do with reconciliation, the past, settlers, colonization or schools, but everything to do with failed government policies, over many years. Most of my critics have not read my March 7, 2017 speech in the Chamber about the costly and divisive proposal to rename buildings and roadways across Canada when too many Indigenous Canadians are either incarcerated, or live in squalor and despair.

https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/421/debates/102db_2017-03-07-e    (1830)

For decades my position on racism has been clear. There are racists everywhere in the world, including Canada, of all skin colours and ethnicities. I, and many noted scholars and professionals, do not believe we have a systemic racism “problem” in Canada and we dared to say so. Millions of people want to come to our nation and no one wants to leave. We must be doing something right. When we see inequities we address them. Those who practice identity politics are dividing us. The majority of Canadians believe we are all equal members of the human race and we all bleed the same colour, and that privilege does not come from skin colour as much as from wealth and social standing. There are riches and royalty is every race and ethnicity around the world, often existing side by side with abject poverty in the same region.

Letters about reconciliation, taxpayer dollars and residential schools from many Canadians were on my website for comment and discussion, without a word of controversy for 6 months, their content similar to documented publications across Canada. Many of us have Indigenous family and friends, and out of love and respect I would never post anything racist. A single journalist wrote an inaccurate article, and an inquiry was initiated on five letters. 

Academics and journalists took the time to read hundreds of letters on my site. Some wrote they were edgy and thoughtful. No expert on racism was ever called to the inquiry. Indigenous chiefs, students and mothers wrote to support the content of the letters, and the harm done to their children by massive compensation payouts without accountability. Thousands of other Canadians wrote, and many advised they had never written to a politician in their life but corresponded because of my honesty, courage and integrity.

Although we submitted everything, none of this support was counted in the number of letters, or included in the Senate Ethics Officer’s inquiry report, of March 19, 2019 and one must ask why. They are referenced in my May 9, 2019 speech in the chamber on freedom of expression.

https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/421/debates/286db_2019-05-09-e#64 

The same five letters have now been on the website of the Senate Ethics Office for two years, apparently offending no one.

To repeat, it was never about letters or racism. It has always been about stifling the positive stories of the residential school history.

Those accounts do not detract from the bad experiences or condone them in any way, but they are just as important to history. We have acknowledged, apologized and compensated for the wrongs, and now we need to tell the whole truth, especially when conveying it to our children in their school curriculum. My six grandchildren deserve that, as does every other child in Canada.

There is a reason no definition of racism is included in the Code of Ethics for Senators today and why our founders did not include it in the Constitution Act, 1867. Racism is a very subjective term, and often used to silence those who disagree, but in a democracy all opinions should be welcome. Rightfully there are laws against hatred.

The only racist remarks in this whole scenario came from other Senators and MPs on twitter accounts, and in a statement from a leader's office using the phrase “ lazy Indians.” That word or phrase did not appear in any letter on my website. Another alarming sentence is contained in the inquiry report itself on page 27 "The above excerpts refer to Indigenous people as opportunistic, pampered whiners who are milking the government and exploiting the taxpayer….and that Indigenous people are lazy, opportunistic, inept, incompetent, greedy and/or worthless and, therefore, must be an inferior race."  Sadly, that sentence became the chant of critics, and some media.

It was a fabricated sentence, strung together in the report, selecting dozens of words from several parapraphs in five letters completely out of context. One letter referred to “some” Indigenous groups and none of the letters had any reference to a superior or inferior race. When taken in their entirety, each letter reflected the concern and frustration 60% of Canadians, Indigenous and non alike, feel about a system that does not work. We need an open, honest and balanced presentation of all sides of this Canadian disgrace. Apparently providing clean water to reserves is still a challenge in our country, in spite of our Great Lakes and 150 years of effort.

When I apologized in the Chamber it was with sincere regret. By then the word racist was being used indiscriminately, and the content of the letters had been so misrepresented they caused unnecessary hurt to many of my own family, friends and associates in our integrated (not assimilated - we respect many cultures) region. Many letters to my office from Winnipeg, Thunder Bay and across Northwestern Ontario lament the outsiders who come to write reports, have never lived here, and presume to judge us on the actions of a few. The vast majority of our citizens are kind, compassionate and welcoming, and many of us have Indigenous roots in our own families. This strategy of name calling and cancel culture is used by the powerful within the status quo, to stifle any debate with which they disagree, and is the reason our wise founders made only serious crimes a reason to expel a senator. Costly personal crusades against one another, do nothing for the taxpayers of Canada and were not the intent of the Constitution.

In one of his many exceptional writings, Teaching the Residential School Story, retired Judge Brian Giesbrecht says this…..”of course, Residential Schools did some good. The harm that they did is well-documented and widely known, as it should be. But the fact that a good many Indigenous people received an education that they would otherwise not have had should be known as well. From all the evidence, it is clear that most teachers, administrators, and supervisors at the schools were decent people, and that good, as well as bad, came from Residential  Schools. But I have often been asked why I don’t simply shut up about them. Why try to tell the real story? What does it matter? In reply, I ask this question: Shouldn’t we first try and discern what the truth is before we pass it on as truth to our children in school?  If so, we need to learn the true Residential School story "

Noted author and lawyer Peter Best sums it up articulately in his essay, Lacking of Judicial Principles in writing the TRC Report. “Even before the TRC Report was published, Senator Sinclair knew that he was not revealing the full picture. In 2010, he wrote a relatively balanced opinion article in the Calgary Herald in which he stated: While the TRC heard many experiences of unspeakable abuse, we have been heartened by testimonies which affirm the dedication and compassion of committed educators who sought to nurture the children in their care. These experiences must also be heard. Surprisingly, there is no hint of this positive thought in the Summary volume of the Report. Nevertheless, buried deep in a volume 4, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials is evidence of the positive experiences of many students: “Many students had positive memories of their experiences of residential schools and acknowledge the skills they acquired, the beneficial aspects of the recreational land sporting activities in which they engaged, and the friendships they made. Some students went to public schools so that they could graduate and attend post-secondary institutions and develop distinguished careers”. In another volume, The Survivors Speak, there is a chapter entitled “Warm Memories” containing numerous positive recollections of people who were clearly not residential school “Survivors,” but residential school “Thrivers.” Again, there’s not a hint of these unequivocally positive and relevant stories in the Summary volume. There is, however, a reference to the Northern Ontario Spanish residential school in the Summary, but there is no reference to the famous book about that school, Indian School Days, by Basil Johnston. Johnston writes a positive account of his experiences at the school, and he went on to become a high school teacher and an ethnologist with the Royal Ontario Museum. He gave a “qualified yes” to the question: “Is there a place for residential schools in the educational system?” It is wrong that the TRC Report omitted reference to this balanced and authoritative account of the Spanish residential school. Retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice Jack Major was a friend of Basil Johnston and knew the Spanish residential school quite well. He regards it, based on his personal experience, as having been a generally positive place for the students who went there. He says that the notion that pupils were torn from happy homes is a myth. He remembers that a lot of students there were rescued from starving on trap lines and many had tuberculosis and they received special care for this disease. He wrote to me that it’s true that English was paramount, “but how else to equip students to function off the reserve?” Justice Major further says: “It is strange that native spokesmen are reluctant to tout any success in the modern world of pupils of residential schools…I suppose the silence reflects the motives of the vocal elements and misguided followers.” After the release of the Summary Report in 2015, the renowned Cree residential school Thriver, novelist, playwright, classical pianist, and Order of Canada recipient Tomson Highway, publicly said that: All we hear is the negative stuff, nobody’s interested in the positive, the joy in that school…You may have heard stories from 7000 witnesses that were negative. But what you haven’t heard are the 7000 stories that were positive… I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn’t have happened without that school. This did not deter Murray Sinclair from perpetuating the narrow, rigid “genocidal trauma” narrative of residential schools laid out in the TRC Summary volume even though he was bound by the principle that, “A Senator shall uphold the highest standards of dignity inherent to the position of Senator.”  In 2017 Senator Lynn Beyak from Dryden, Ontario, publicly said that some good things happened in residential schools and that many of the teachers and administrators were well-intentioned. For saying what Basil Johnson, Tomson Highway, and a number of other people said in the “Warm Memories” chapter, Senator Sinclair called her a “denier,” and “delusional.”

The Myth of Canada’s Indigenous Garden of Eden by author and publisher Colin Alexander eloquently says this.  “Many Canadians harbour foundational misconceptions about marginalized Indigenous communities and ignore the grim future for next generations. For multigenerational welfare families in remote settlements and urban slums, the gap has never been wider between the marginalized Indigenous underclass and the government’s much-vaunted middle class. Except for a privileged minority, by standard measures of societal dysfunctionality, the gap the government undertook to close widens exponentially. Mandated to address deep-seated challenges, Canada’s misnamed Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry disregarded the obvious: that educated and skilled citizens in rewarding employment seldom commit suicide, seldom disappear, are seldom addicts, are seldom spouse-beaters or sexual predators, and seldom end up in prison. Indigenous youth gained nothing from these expensive endeavours or their resulting reports. The pre-industrial lifestyle changed forever some three centuries ago, with European contact and the fur trade. But that trade has been defunct for decades, and nothing has taken its place. In 1876, upon affirming Treaty Six, the great leader and peacemaker Chief Poundmaker said: “When I commence to settle on the lands to make a living for myself and my children, I beg of you to assist me in every way possible. When I am at a loss how to proceed, I want the advice and assistance of the government. The children yet unborn, I wish you to treat them in like manner as they advance in civilization like the white man. Overriding what Poundmaker expected, millions of immigrants arrived and pushed aside members of the Indigenous community unprepared for the opportunities.

The wisdom, and support of these three academics along with my late friend Christie Blatchford, renowned writers and other true investigative Canadian journalists across Canada like Conrad Black, Barbara Kay, Rex Murphy and many others, the exceptional media and citizen support in my own region, and my countless political friends and associates, have sustained us through a difficult time.

The late Cecelia Hodgson McCauley Grand Chief of the NWT Dene, age 95 at passing, Bernice Logan, age 89, faithful residential school teacher from Tangier, Nova Scotia and residential student Angus Cockney whose son went on to the Sochi Olympics, were among my first supporters. They told the residential schools good news for decades and I am honoured to carry their message forward. They are heroes to me and to many Indigenous people across Canada, who consider themselves victors, not victims. There are 930,000 documented Indigenous people in the 2011 census, most living off reserve and identifying as Christians. Many took the teachings from the schools, melded them with their own traditions and are happy and prosperous enjoying the “peace that passes understanding”. Sadly a few thousand consultants and Indian Industry members ( grass roots term not ours ) keep about 300,000 of their people in squalor, to maintain their own jobs and funding.

My family and friends and all dear loved ones have been a rock throughout the misrepresentation, and I am forever grateful.

Finally, I want to sincerely thank the thousands of informed and intelligent Canadians who wrote long, handwritten personal letters or sent emails, and the millions more who simply want to hear all sides of several challenges facing Canada today whether the economy, spending priorities, the virus, border security, fossil fuels, climate change, Indigenous issues, immigration, carbon taxes or others.

Our great democracy is set on solid pillars, because of our founders and their defence of freedom, free speech and the many other rights we enjoy.

It is incumbent on each of us to insist on critical thinking, and the right to civilly and respectfully disagree with one another, without fear of job loss and censure.

We are one of the greatest nations on earth, and will remain so for our children and our grandchildren, if we proudly protect our history, extolling the virtues, and learning from the error of our ways.

Sincerely,

Lynn

Hon. Lynn Beyak

Retired

Senate of Canada