Canada’s Indigenous Relation Minister, Carolyn Bennett apologized publicly to an Indigenous MP yesterday after suggesting Jody Wilson-Raybould’s concern over residential schools and Indigenous rights was really a ploy to secure a generous MP pension. “Earlier I offered my apologies directly to the MP for Vancouver-Granville. 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,” Minister Bennett said in a Twitter post (in the screenshot above).
Wilson-Raybould took to Twitter to call out Trudeau over what she called his “selfish jockeying for an election” and to demand he deliver on his 2018 promise to deliver transformative Indigenous rights legislation.
As a result, Bennett apologized after Wilson-Raybould posted an image of a private message (in the screenshot below) she received from Bennett citing her tweet. The message consisted of a single word: “Pension?” Wilson-Raybould described the message as “racist & misogynist.” She said it reflects the “notion that Indigenous peoples are lazy” and suggests that “a strong Indigenous woman is a bad” Indigenous woman.
According to the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, MPs have to contribute to the plan for at least six years before they can claim a pension.
Wilson-Raybould was one of 142 MPs elected for the first time on October 19, 2015. For those MPs, defeat in an election taking place before October 19, 2021 would deprive them of the pension.
Wilson-Raybould served as a justice minister and attorney general, now an Independent MP for Vancouver Granville, famously resigned from the Liberal cabinet and was later removed from the party by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the SNC-Lavalin affair.