OTTAWA—The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations is calling on the Senate ethics committee to “review” Lynn Beyak’s actions, after the controversial Ontario senator was booted from the Conservative caucus Thursday night.

In an interview with the Star, Perry Bellegarde said Beyak’s decision to promote “racist and stereotypical attitudes” towards Indigenous peoples — in her own comments and in letters from supporters that she posted online — falls short of the high standard to which members of the upper house should be held.

“Sen. Beyak is damaging our work towards reconciliation in Canada, and her words and her actions are very hurtful and very disappointing to First Nations people and to Canadians,” Bellegarde said.

“When you have letters like that that were posted, it perpetuates the myths and stereotypes, and misinformation that’s out there, that First Nations people just want things for free,” he said.

“It’s hurtful, and again, we have to rid not only the Senate but Canada of those racist and stereotypical attitudes.”

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What the letters on Sen. Beyak's website said

Bellegarde also applauded Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer for his decision to kick Beyak out of the party’s caucus. He said that he texted Scheer on Thursday night when he heard the news to say that the move showed “strong leadership” and that there’s no place for racism in the Senate.

Scheer announced late Thursday evening he had removed Beyak from the Conservative caucus, citing “unacceptable and offensive” letters posted by the senator on her parliamentary website.

Dozens of letters posted by the Ontario senator voiced support for her controversial comments when she told the Senate in March 2017 the “good works” of the “well-intentioned” residential school administrators have gone unacknowledged.

Some of the letters push derogatory stereotypes of Indigenous peoples forced into the residential school system. Scheer cited one that called Indigenous peoples “hunters and gatherers” looking for government handouts.

Scheer said some of the comments posted on Beyak’s website were “simply racist.”

On Friday, Scheer’s office clarified that it wasn’t Beyak’s repeated comments on residential schools that led to her ouster, but the posting of those comments and the senator’s refusal to take them down.

“(She promoted) comments that Mr. Scheer determined were offensive and unacceptable because it is racist to say that Indigenous Canadians are lazier than other people,” Jake Enwright, Scheer’s director of media relations, told the Star.

Enwright declined to speculate if Beyak would still be welcome in the Conservative caucus if she had taken the comments down. “I’m not going to answer a hypothetical. I’m going to let the statement that Mr. Scheer put out stand,” he said.

Beyak’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Carolyn Bennett, the Liberal government’s minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, said on Facebook on Friday that it is “disappointing” it took so long for Beyak to be booted from caucus while she continued to “use her position in the Senate and its resources to espouse her ill-informed and offensive views about Canadian history.”

Bennett said many of the letters posted on Beyak’s website are seen as “nothing short of racist” and lamented that she is able to remain in the Senate, even after being kicked out of the Conservative caucus.

Indigenous leaders and politicians of all stripes have condemned Beyak for months, since she first spoke about the purported bright side of residential schools during a speech in the Senate last March. Beyak spoke of the “kindly and well-intentioned men and women... whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part and are overshadowed by negative reports.

“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,” she said.

MPs such as the NDP’s Romeo Saganash quickly called for her resignation — Saganash compared her statement to saying “there are some good sides to what Hitler did” — and others called for her ouster from the Conservative caucus which she’s been a part of since she was appointed to the upper house by Stephen Harper in 2013.

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The residential school system lasted from the late 19th century until the last one closed in 1996. More than 150,000 Indigenous children attended the schools, many of them forced to live apart from their family and home communities.

An inquiry called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in 2015 that residential schools were an “integral part” of longstanding government policy to extinguish Indigenous cultures and languages in an act of “cultural genocide.”

An unknown number of students — estimated to be in the thousands — died while attending the schools, and thousands experienced physical and sexual abuse, according to the commission.

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