Conservative senator thinks residential schools were good, wants gays back in the closet

Ever since Conservative MP Rob Anders — who ardently believed that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and publicly speculated that Tom Mulcair may have killed Jack Layton — Canadians have been waiting with bated breath for who will emerge as Canada’s most repugnant Parliamentarian.

Well folks, we finally have a winner.

Lynn Beyak, the Conservative senator from Dryden, Ontario, has scrappily fought her way to the top of the heap, despite stiff competition from Maxime “Red Pill” Bernier and Kellie Leitch, the world’s least convincing demagogue.

“I speak partly for the record, but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants — perhaps some of us here in this chamber — whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part,” Beyak said about the priests and nuns who oversaw the system of genocide known as the residential school system.

It’s an especially shocking statement coming from someone who sits on the Senate standing committee on Aboriginal peoples.

Beyak, who portrays herself as a good Christian woman who is just so irked about taxes, is very pleased that many of the indigenous people who were kidnapped from their homes retained their Christianity after they left.

“I was disappointed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report in that it didn’t focus on the good,” she said. “The people I talk to are Christians.”

She fails to mention the 3,201 children who didn’t have a chance to keep attending church since they died at those schools from abuse and neglect.

To top it all off, Beyak said these horrific statements in front of Senator Murray Sinclair, who not only headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but has spoken publicly about the abuse his father and other family members suffered in residential schools.

But that’s not all.

Last week, Beyak, during a debate on C-16, the transgender rights bill, went on a bizarre rant bemoaning that the radicals of the gay movement expect “all of Canada to be their closet.”

She continued to pine for a happier time when folks like her simply didn’t have to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that gay people exist because they weren’t flaunting their homosexuality in her face.

“By living in quiet dignity, they have never had to face any kind of discrimination or uncomfortable feelings,” she said, without a hint of irony. “I would assert that is how the vast majority of the LGBT community feels.”

I wonder if Beyak would have given the same advice to Christians in Rome who, if they just lived in quiet dignity, would never have faced any discrimination, lions or crucifixions?

Regardless, her sentiment typifies Beyak’s total aversion to facts.

While stressing her love of the assimilationist 1969 White Paper that would have abolished the Indian Act, Beyak stated that it included a one-time payout of $500,000 to Aboriginal people in exchange for their status card. The only problem is that Beyak completely made that up. The only compensation included in the paper was $50 million for a development fund.

Throughout her speeches in the Senate, Beyak is extremely polite and friendly, and gracious to the people she is questioning or criticizing. But niceness is not the standard by which we judge our political leaders. A parliamentarian must also have at least some grasp of reality, an understanding of history and some human decency in the positions and policies they put forward.

Beyak fails on all of these counts. She doesn’t seek to understand Canadian history; instead, she fabricates it. She absolves Christians of genocidal actions because they had “good intentions.” She fights strenuously against the expansion of civil rights by gaslighting LGBT Canadians.

Beyak represents the worst of our politics and our institutions. She should resign.