Canada's Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Carolyn Bennett on Thursday apologized to parliamentarian Jody Wilson-Raybould for a text the country's first indigenous Attorney General found "racist" and "misogynist
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th June, 2021) Canada's Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Carolyn Bennett on Thursday apologized to parliamentarian Jody Wilson-Raybould for a text the country's first indigenous Attorney General found "racist" and "misogynist."
On Thursday, Wilson-Raybould, who was forced out of the Attorney General role by Justin Trudeau after testifying that Prime Minister's Office pressured her to cut a deal with Quebec-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin to help the company avoid criminal prosecution on corruption charges, published a screenshot of a text message from Bennett that she found offensive.
Bennett responded to Wilson-Raybould's Tweet that called for "concrete transformative action" on indigenous issues following the discovery of another unmarked grave at a residential school site and a plea for Trudeau to follow through on his earlier promises and to stop his "selfish jockeying for an election," with the phrase "pension?"
"I let interpersonal dynamics get the better of me and sent an insensitive and inappropriate comment, which I deeply regret and shouldn't have done," Bennett said in a statement via Twitter, in which she referred to her former Liberal Party colleague only as the "MP for Vancouver-Granville."
Wilson-Raybould said Bennett's text showed "disregard, disdain [and] disrespect for Indigenous peoples] and reflected stereotypes that First Nations peoples are lazy and money-driven.
The spat came on the heels of an announcement by the Cowessess First Nation in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, which revealed that a ground-penetrating radar scan located 751 unmarked graves on the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School.
The discovery comes just weeks after Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced that a deep scan of the Kamloops Indian Residential School site with ground-penetrating radar confirmed the discovery of 215 children's remains.
