By Kris Sims
OTTAWA – A Senator who represents a First Nations reserve is boycotting the Senate Aboriginal Affairs Committee until Senator Lynn Beyak steps down following her controversial statements about the forced Indian Residential Schools.
“She should apologize for her comments, her comments hurt thousands of people, I don’t think they deserve that and I want her off of the committee,” Senator Sandra Lovelace Nicholas told Evan Solomon during Ottawa Now on Newstalk 580 CFRA. “I refuse to sit across from her at the Aboriginal committee.”
Senator Lovelace Nicholas represents New Brunswick for the Liberal Party of Canada in the Senate and lives on the Tobique First Nation in western New Brunswick near the border with Maine.
Senator Lynn Beyak is part of the Conservative caucus in the Senate and she sits on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.
Beyak stated last month during a meeting that “remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales go unacknowledged” when discussing the impact of forced Indian Residential Schools on First Nations people, and “obviously the negative issues must be addressed, but it is unfortunate that they are sometimes magnified and considered more newsworthy than the abundance of good.”
Beyak has stood by her comments while Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose has rejected Beyak’s comments as “unexplainable.”
“I don’t feel sorry for her, I feel contempt for her saying something like that and hurting thousands of people,” Lovelace Nicholas told Solomon Monday.
The Liberal Senator says she is considering protesting with a sign outside of Centre Block on Parliament Hill Tuesday rather than attend a committee meeting with Beyak.