By Stanley Ugagbe

More than a year after her suspension, Sen. Lynn Beyak is set to return to the upper house as the Senate’s ethics committee has recommended that her suspension be lifted since she has taken anti-racism training and apologized for posting derogatory letters about Indigenous Peoples on her website.

The committee in a report to the Senate stated that Beyak has acknowledged the wrongs of her past conduct and committed herself to improvement after taking a four-day program to educate herself about Indigenous history and the role of the Senate in promoting minority rights.

In view of that, the committee noted that Beyak has met the conditions the Senate laid down for returning to the upper house in good standing.

It would be recalled that the Senator was kicked out of the Conservative caucus and eventually suspended without pay in May 2019 after refusing to remove the offensive letters from her website.

According to official record, that suspension ended automatically when Parliament dissolved for last fall’s federal election. However, the Senate voted in February to suspend her again because, while she had finally apologized, she still hadn’t completed an anti-racism course which is sine qua non.

The Nigerian Canadian News gathered that Beyak took the course in May. The four-day program was led by Jonathan Black-Branch, the dean of law at the University of Manitoba, and involved seven instructors, some of whom were Indigenous.

The ethics committee, in their comprehensive report succinctly noted that “one educational course alone may not yield attitudinal changes on Indigenous matters or informed behavioural changes.”

However, the committee stated that based on Black-Branch’s evaluation of Beyak’s conduct during the course “she was engaged in the required process, was willing to learn and did indeed learn.”

The senator, in a recent letter of apology tabled before the Senate, apologized again and said the anti-racism program “made more clear and distinct to me the adverse impact caused by posting the letters.”

“I learned a blunt lesson in understanding and compassion, that just because people rise above the harm they have suffered, it does not soften the raw edges of hurt and distrust”.

“I have learned new ways of advocating that are tactful, compassionate and respectful and, once again, apologize sincerely and unreservedly for my hurtful actions and wrongful conduct.”

Reports have it that the offending letters were posted in response to a 2017 speech in which the senator argued that residential schools did a lot of good for Indigenous children, although many suffered physical and sexual abuse and thousands died of disease and malnutrition.

Following investigations and evaluation, the Senate’s ethics officer, Pierre Legault, concluded in March 2019 that five of the letters in particular contained racist content, suggesting that Indigenous people are lazy, chronic whiners who are milking the residential-schools issue to get government handouts.

But the senator refused to delete the letters for almost a year before they were eventually deleted from her website by the Senate.