Hon. Lucie Moncion: Would you take another question, Senator Black?

The Hon. the Speaker: Are honourable senators ready for the question?

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

The Hon. the Speaker: Are honourable senators ready for the question?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Would Senator Black take another question?

Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: I have a final question for Senator Black.

Thank you very much, Senator Black, for providing all of this information. I understand that if we adopt this report, it includes one condition: The overall expenditures for this activity will be reduced by 35%, which means that you cannot exceed $87,000 for the trip to Rome. Am I right that it is no longer $134,000 that would be authorized but, rather, a maximum of $87,000?

Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.

An Hon. Senator: On division.

(Motion agreed to, on division.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the inquiry of the Honourable Senator Simons, calling the attention of the Senate to the challenges and opportunities that Canadian municipalities face, and to the importance of understanding and redefining the relationships between Canada’s municipalities and the federal government.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Hon. Josée Verner: I wanted to confirm in French the questions that Senator Plett asked in English. Given that, a few years ago, I myself was chair of the subcommittee that approved travel requests, among other things, I’m wondering whether the rules have changed. In other words, from the moment this request is considered in the House, it means that the said request has been approved, first and foremost, by the Internal Economy Committee, a committee on which Senator Dalphond sits.

Have the rules changed since then? Has that budget already been approved — the one you’re getting a lot of questions about tonight, Senator Black?

[English]

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): If the senator would take one more, although Senator Black basically asked it, but if you would?

Senator Omidvar: I will. I don’t mean to be facetious. I am taken aback by the question of ensuring that we spend money wisely.

I want to tell you that we are asking for $110,000 for a five‑day trip with more than 15 people. We are renting a bus. We are travelling across regions to save money. Was that your question, Senator Plett?

Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, I’m honoured to rise today as a resident of Treaty 6 territory to speak on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people, and to address Motion 96 moved by our colleague, Senator Mary Jane McCallum.

Motion 96 seeks authorization for the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples to examine and report on the misrepresentation of Indigenous ancestry and inadequate self‑identification standards, and the profound effects that such identity fraud has on the further marginalizing of Indigenous people, in particular, Indigenous women. I want to thank Senator McCallum for bringing the attention of the Senate to this concerning and complicated problem.

Every afternoon, as we enter the chamber, we pass a statue of Senator James Basil Gladstone, the first status Indian to sit in the Senate of Canada where he represented my own province of Alberta.

Senator Gladstone was appointed by Prime Minister Diefenbaker in 1958 at a time when status Indians did not yet have the right to vote in federal elections, which meant he was able to vote on legislation in this chamber, but not able to vote for his own member of Parliament.

If you Google James Gladstone, you will quickly find articles that tell you that his father was Cree and that his mother was a member of the Kainai Nation, a part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. But that is not true.

According to public genealogical records, James Gladstone was officially the son of Harriet Gladstone and her then partner, James Bowes. James Bowes wasn’t Cree. He wasn’t Indigenous. He was identified in public records as White and came from Lanark County in Ontario.

Harriet’s family tree is a little bit more complicated. Her father William James Shanks Gladstone was born in Montreal to Scottish parents.

Her mother, whose name was Harriette, was the daughter of Louis Leblanc who, according to government records, was French Canadian and of Angelique Vallee who was Métis with French, Sioux and Saulteaux roots.

As best I can deduce, James Gladstone’s biological claims to Indigenous identity flowed through his Métis great-grandmother. To judge by the public genealogical records I’ve found, he was neither Cree nor Blackfoot.

Was our first First Nations senator a “pretendian”? Well, it’s not quite that simple.

Because of family circumstances, young James Gladstone ended up being sent to the St. Paul’s Anglican residential school near Cardston, Alberta, at the age of 7. At 16, he was enrolled in another residential school, St. Dustan’s Industrial School, near Calgary, where he trained to be a printer.

When he was 24, he married Janie Healy, known as Pok-otun or Little Daughter. She was a member of a prominent Blackfoot family and the daughter of Joe Healy, known as Flying Chief.

Together, they raised their family on or near the Blood Reserve, what we now call the Kainai First Nation. He fought for a decade to be adopted as a member of that First Nation and to be granted Indian status, which he finally won in 1920.

Gladstone became a successful farmer and rancher, and became deeply involved in First Nations politics and the fight for voting rights. In 1949, he was elected president of the Indian Association of Alberta. When he gave his maiden speech in our Senate in August of 1958, he began his remarks by speaking in Blackfoot. The translation of his speech reads:

The Indians of Canada are very happy to know they have someone in Ottawa to represent them in the Government of Canada. I pray that I will be able to speak the right words for them.

Two years later, the Diefenbaker government passed the Canadian Bill of Rights and the legislation granting all registered Indians in Canada the right to vote. Gladstone played a key role in making that happen. How exactly are we to understand his life now?

I wanted to share his story to illustrate some of the difficult complexities of the pretendian issue. It’s easy enough to condemn people who appropriate Indigenous identity in a calculated and cold-blooded way as a fraud, a trick, a way to cheat their way into a scholarship, to market a book or get a promotion in academia.

Pretending to be First Nations, Inuit or Métis as a way to further your career or just make yourself seem more interesting is clearly dishonest and immoral. Such fakery is an audacious insult, a slap in the face to any authentic Indigenous person who has spent a lifetime coping with racism, economic injustice and social inequity. It’s a sort of stolen valour — exploiting not just the suffering and trauma but also the resilience and courage of a marginalized minority group to give yourself economic or social advantage.

It’s harder, though, to know exactly what to do with people who have fallen in love with the idea, the romance, of Indigenous identity. Personally, I blame Jean-Jacques Rousseau, my least favourite philosopher, who celebrated the romantic ideal of the “noble savage” in the 1750s. Some 270 years later, it seems all too many people are still entranced with the idea of appropriating some such Rousseauesque heritage.

It began in Canada with Grey Owl, also known as Archie Belaney, the British adventurer, conman and world-renowned animal conservationist, who claimed to be of Apache descent. His lifelong fraud was only revealed after his death in 1938. He was English through and through, but he posed and postured as exactly the kind of “noble Indian” that Americans and Europeans wanted to believe in. He was a grifter, but he knew his audience well and leveraged his fake feathers into a global success as a bestselling author.

Today, it sometimes seems that we are in the midst of a flock of grey owls — authors, filmmakers, artists, academics and politicians, people who have built identities and careers out of very dubious, sometimes willfully deluded claims to Indigenous identity. In some cases, these bogus claims seem to be based on a naïve misunderstanding of family stories — people who honestly believed that they had a secret or lost Indigenous grandparent or great-grandparent, perhaps because of misheard or misremembered family lore. It might explain the largely debunked claims by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and American Senator Elizabeth Warren to have Cherokee roots — a wistful, wishful exaggeration of a murky family tradition.

In other cases, people seem to have gone far deeper into their romantic delusions, constructing whole professional and social lives around their fantasies of being Indigenous to the point where I suspect they themselves have come to ardently believe their own personal mythologies. Maybe they’re just besotted with that noble savage illusion, with the idea that somehow claiming Indigenous heritage will make their lives more interesting, more intense or more “authentic.”

Perhaps they are so horrified by the violence and injustice of colonization, that they’d rather identify with the colonized than the colonizers. Pretending to yourself that you are Indigenous and, hence, innocent may be easier than facing up to your own culpability in the ongoing project of settler colonialism. For people who have lost touch with their own roots, who don’t know anything about their own ancestry or identity, adopting someone else’s story might make them feel more rooted and centred, more part of a community and less alienated in our deracinated modern culture.

For some, this cosplay may be a relatively benign act of imagination — they dress up in ribbon skirts, buy dream catchers and attend sweats. Their actions may cause some eye-rolling, but they aren’t doing anyone any direct harm.

In other cases, though, this putting on of a fake identity is far more corrosive. Every time a non-Indigenous author, journalist, artist or filmmaker wins professional success and attention by playacting Indigenous identity, it means their voice drowns out the authentic voices of those with lived experience of being First Nations, Inuit or Métis. Every time a self-deluded narcissistic pretendian wins an award, gets university tenure or is given a seat at a boardroom table, it means someone real has been pushed out or denied access. It is all too evident that many such pretendians delight in perpetuating clichés, stereotypes and tropes about Indigenous people, making it even harder for authentic contemporary voices to be heard.

Yet moral judgments aren’t always so easy to make, especially given so many pretendians see themselves as champions of Indigenous causes, and especially given that a few of them have actually done legitimately good work in advancing social justice for Aboriginal Canadians, often leaving heartbroken and betrayed colleagues in their wake when their fraud is revealed.

Then there is the flip side of the issue. For decades, for generations, many Indigenous people, particularly Métis and non-status Indians, were encouraged or even forced to deny and hide their cultural identity. Others lost their status when their mothers married out and were cut off from their culture and their treaty rights. In other cases, Indigenous children lost their identities because they were adopted by White families or raised in White foster homes.

In an effort to weed out the pretendians, we don’t want to overcorrect and deny people who are just discovering their Indigenous roots the chance to explore and reclaim their cultural identity. After 300 years or so of intermarriage, there are dangers in getting fixated on blood quantum as a proof of Indigeneity. It reduces Indigenous identity to a question of genetics and percentages, and history teaches us, many times over, that such calculations are disturbingly reductive.

I started this speech by noting that James Gladstone had a Métis great-grandmother, yet he grew up amongst Indigenous children and lived his adult life as an Indigenous man, was adopted and claimed by the Blackfoot Confederacy and dedicated his life to fighting for Indigenous rights, including during his time as an Independent Conservative senator. As a non‑Indigenous person, what right do I have to critique or police his identity post-mortem?

These questions of identity are so political and so personal. What do we claim? What are we allowed to claim?

My own father of blessed memory was Jewish. I was raised with a strong sense of my Jewish cultural roots, but I’m not Jewish, and I know it offends and angers many in the Jewish community if and when they perceive that I’m trying to pass myself off as Jewish or to claim a right to Jewish identity or voice.

My late mother was born on a Mennonite colony in Ukraine. Her father was Mennonite, but she wasn’t raised as a Mennonite. I have next to no lived experience of Mennonite culture, yet my Mennonite roots are real and authentic. Am I allowed to claim any part of that heritage? Or does that just make me a pretender of a different sort? Have I ever, subtly and not so subtly, ever so slightly misrepresented my cultural heritage in a bid to seem more interesting or to advance my professional and political interests? Well, yes. Over the years, I have probably done just that.

Still, there is something sadly racist and reductive in assuming that our identity is all in our DNA and our bloodlines. In this multicultural country, where we’re sometimes a little too keen to sort and label people by racial or ethnic identity, perhaps we’ve made it too tempting for people to pretend to be something they’re not just so they can pin a convenient label to their metaphorical lapels.

It’s hard to know precisely what the Senate or the federal government could do about this problem of misrepresentation of Indigenous identity. We surely don’t want the state to interfere with the autonomy of universities to hire academic staff, nor with the rights of publishers to offer contracts to the writers they choose to publish. And for the Crown to define who is and isn’t Indigenous is a story we’ve seen before, and it doesn’t end happily.

And yet, it is exasperating, frustrating and infuriating to see so many people leveraging mythical or tenuous claims to be Indigenous to advance their careers or take up space in the public discourse. Sometimes they seem to be the loudest voices, flexing their privilege to aggrandize themselves and shut out others. So I hope the Indigenous Peoples Committee will, at some point, explore the complexities of this sensitive issue. I know the committee will do so with care and nuance.

I thank Senator McCallum for giving us all this inspiration and for being, always, an inspiration to us all. Thank you and hiy hiy.

(On motion of Senator Housakos, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Omidvar, seconded by the Honourable Senator Dean:

That, given reports of human rights abuses, repression and executions of its citizens, particularly women, in Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Senate call upon the government to immediately designate the IRGC as a terrorist entity.

Hon. Robert Black: Thank you, senator. Will you take a question?

Senator Omidvar: Yes, of course.

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Plett, do you want to ask for leave to adjourn in Senator Martin’s name?

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Certainly. I was going to get up and do that, Your Honour. Thank you very much.

Hon Senators: Agreed.

(Debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator McCallum, seconded by the Honourable Senator Campbell:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples be authorized to examine and report on the misrepresentation of Indigenous ancestry, inadequate self‑identification standards and the profound effects that such identity fraud has on further marginalizing Indigenous people, in particular Indigenous women; and

That the committee submit its final report no later than December 31, 2023.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I rise to speak on this important motion from Senator Omidvar calling on the Government of Canada to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a terrorist organization. Of course, this should come as no surprise. Many of you have seen me get on my feet on many occasions in this chamber over the years, and this is an issue that is very important to me, as it has been for this caucus now for many years. Human rights are universal. Human rights have no religion or colour and should have no politics.

Unfortunately, I have seen far too often politics get in the way of doing the right thing and defending human rights unequivocally. It is unfortunate. Of course, I rise to condemn the IRGC and to condemn Iran, as my colleagues have before me. Senator Frum and Senator Tkachuk, when I came to this place, way back in 2009 and 2010, would unequivocally be on their feet on a regular basis condemning the IRGC for their terrible human rights violations and for the fact that they are a regime that is probably number 1 in the world in sponsoring state terrorism. It is a regime that is diabolically set on destroying our Western values and principles, and we’ve seen it time and time again when they fund organizations like Hezbollah, other terrorist groups and fundamentalism, which they’ve been known to fund around the world.

We’ve seen women in this state being treated more atrociously than in any other state. We’ve seen the morality squad picking up citizens without any justification, without any rule of law, imprisoning them and doing even worse. We’ve seen people being lashed because of their religious beliefs, their faith or, for that matter, no faith.

It’s a despicable regime and it’s amongst some of the great bullies of the 21st century, right up there with the Chinese Communist Party in China, in Beijing, and the Erdoğan regime. They’re in a race to see which nation can imprison more journalists and take away more rights from LGBTQ people or women, as I said, or any other rights.

It’s a moral obligation of this institution, of course, to call them out, as it is a moral obligation of the Canadian government to always stand on the right side of history, as more often Canada has done. I go back to 2007, when the Canadian government prohibited Canadians from financial or other dealings with designated persons, as described in UN sanctions, Resolution 1737; or in 2010, when the government imposed additional sanctions against Iran in relation to their proliferation of sensitive nuclear activities. This was carried out in close consultation with like-minded partners, including the United States and the European Union, in response to a grave breach of international peace and security that was likely to result in serious international crisis. Also in 2010, Canada, as chair of the then G8, prioritized action against Iran. Prime minister Stephen Harper at the time stated, “Canada will use its G8 presidency to continue to focus international attention and action on the Iranian regime.”

In 2012, Canada suspended diplomatic relations with Iran, giving Iranian diplomats five days to leave the country. That’s called leadership; that’s called action. It also closed the Canadian embassy in Iran. Canada updated its travel reports and warnings to advise Canadians to avoid all travel to Iran. Simultaneously, Canada listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism under the terms of the State Immunity Act.

Colleagues, these are just some actions that were carried out by a principled government when foreign policy was principled, not transactional or knee-jerk-reaction politics, which was, “Let’s do what the other government before us did.” It was a government that decided to stand up for what was right, regardless of the political or economic consequences. I can tell you as a young senator through the years 2007 to 2012, I was very proud of my government because we put our money where our mouth is.

Now, I look at what has been happening over the last few years, and the truth of the matter is every single time I’ve gotten on the floor of this chamber to find out why the Canadian government hasn’t listed and taken even more steps against the IRGC, I get nothing but vacillating and rhetoric about how it’s difficult, and it’s complicated, and we support human rights, but, but, but. So at some particular point, as I said, you always have to put your money where your mouth is.

We’ve also seen, as of 2015, a government that was elected in this country, and it was one of the most shameful moments of my parliamentary life as a Canadian. None of us should forget that the current Prime Minister and the government used words like, “We have to open dialogue with Iran.” Let’s not forget, colleagues, back in 2016, the current government was talking about reopening our embassy and diplomatic ties.

By the way, they never hit pause when it came to trampling on women’s rights in 2016. They weren’t treating homosexuals, lesbians or gay people better in 2016. They never showed any signs of glasnost or openness. They never said, “You know what? We’re pulling back our funding from Hezbollah.” Nothing had changed whatsoever, except our government decided to do the opposite of what the previous government did, with blinders on. That is nothing more than blatant and unacceptable partisan politics.

Then we saw time and again over that period of time motions in the House of Commons being defeated and pushed back — motions that were calling for strong condemnation of the current regime in Iran. Back in 2018, there was further ongoing sponsorship around the world of terrorism, including instigating violent attacks on the Gaza border. We asked back then in the House of Commons that we condemn the recent statements by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calling for genocide against the Jewish people. We called on the government to abandon its plan back then and cease any negotiations or discussions in regard to restoring diplomatic relations. I can go on and on.

But we achieved nothing. All we got from the government was, “We can do better.” I don’t think it’s better. I don’t think emboldening bullies, terrorists and organizations of that nature to think that a democratic government like ours is transactional and we’re willing to make a deal at any price and sell down the river souls and human rights. I think it’s actually despicable, and it was one of the most embarrassing moments as a parliamentarian for me.

But I can tell you this: I’ve had many embarrassing moments as a Canadian and as a parliamentarian since 2015, because I’ve been unequivocal about human rights. It doesn’t matter if it’s minority Uighurs in China, press freedom and religious freedoms vis-à-vis the Erdoğan regime or, when it comes to Iran, shooting down Flight PS752 and killing 55 Canadians and many more. Never, ever show any flexibility or any tolerance for these despicable bullies.

But our government did and has, and I think it’s wrong. Amongst the list of despicable actions on the part of our government and our Parliament, nothing was more embarrassing than when, a couple of years ago, we had a motion before this floor recognizing what was happening to the Turkish-minority Uighur people in China and calling it what it was — a genocide. By the way, colleagues, of all the democratic houses and chambers in the Western industrialized world, not one except the Senate of Canada defeated that motion — the most shameful experience that I ever had as a parliamentarian. There’s no justification. I still don’t have any logical justification for how a majority of government-appointed senators — 33 of them — got up and voted against a motion recognizing what was going on against the minority Uighurs in China as a genocide. And we know what was going on. Let’s call a spade a spade.

In the other chamber, which is a minority chamber, we had the NDP, the Conservatives and the Bloc all do the right thing and call it what it was, and we had our government abstain — by the way, the only Western democratic government that abstained from calling it what it was. The Americans weren’t afraid. The Brits weren’t afraid. The French weren’t afraid. What in the world was our government thinking to this day of abstaining, other than giving in to a bully and a government that has no respect for human rights? And that despicable behaviour crossed over — it spilled over — in this chamber. Not only did we not allow that motion to stand on principle and shine as a beacon of hope for standing up for people and human rights, but we did the most despicable thing. Thirty-three senators stood up and voted against that motion, and that’s for you to look at yourselves in the mirror as the years go by and ask yourselves why.

Senator MacDonald: They’re independent.