All-Indigenous steering body for Senate committee brings ‘invaluable’ experience to table, say members
In what’s understood to be a historic first, the Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples has a steering committee made up entirely of Indigenous Senators, something its members say lends “invaluable” experience to deliberations.
“Each member certainly within the committee itself brings a unique experience and perspective … and certainly on steering you have accomplished and dedicated individuals who basically have spent their entire careers supporting, helping, advocating for Indigenous people,” said CSG Senator Paul Prosper (Nova Scotia), one of four steering committee members.
“That’s something that I think is quite invaluable: to have that experience, that knowledge, that connection to regions and communities and organizations. Myself, as a former chief within my community of Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation and former regional chief with the Assembly of First Nations, I’m able to sort of bring a unique perspective, along with other members of the committee.”
The 11-member Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples is chaired this Parliament by PSG Senator Michèle Audette (De Salaberry, Que.), who picked up the gavel on June 25, 2025, for the first time since being appointed to the Senate in 2021.
Audette comes from the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam in Quebec as the daughter of a Quebecer father and an Innu mother. Sitting on steering alongside Audette and Prosper this Parliament are ISG Senator Margo Greenwood (British Columbia), who is deputy chair of the committee and is of Cree ancestry, and Conservative Senator Mary Jane McCallum (Manitoba), who is also of Cree heritage.
As their name suggests, steering committees are where key decisions are made in guiding the work of parliamentary committees. Meeting in camera, it’s where proposed studies, work timelines, meeting agendas, travel plans, budgets, and other decisions about what committee business will proceed, and how, are first discussed before being taken to the wider committee membership.
Speaking with The Hill Times, it was Audette who first highlighted the unique nature of this Parliament’s Indigenous Peoples steering committee. Looking through information on the composition of past steering committees, Audette said that while the group found examples with “a few” Indigenous members, they found no other instance where all four had Indigenous backgrounds.
During the previous Parliament, two of the four steering members were Indigenous: now-PSG leader Brian Francis (Epekwitk, Mi’kma’ki, P.E.I.) and Prosper, who were joined by Conservative Senator Yonah Martin (British Columbia) and ISG Senator David Arnot (Saskatchewan).
“For me, I’m just pleased with what I see and the knowledge in that steering [committee]. A former regional chief [Propser]; a former academic who put [forward] so many initiatives that resonate in my own community, Margo Greenwood; the first [Indigenous women to become a] dentist in Manitoba, who survived and speaks about her experience in residential schools, and shakes the Senate also … I’m pleased and honoured,” said Audette.
Asked what difference she thinks having an all-Indigenous steering committee makes, Audette offered an example.
Canada’s founding fathers “sat down a long time ago” and decided French and English would be the official languages of the country, she said. “Of course, if we had also Indigenous voices there, they would have said, ‘it’s important that you protect the French and you protect the English, but the Indigenous languages that were here for thousands of years … should be also recognized as official languages.’”
“There’s moments that people do things for themselves, for their culture, for their way of religion or the way they are set up as a nation,” she said.
While a steering committee made up of non-Indigenous Senators would be hard-pressed to argue against a study for which Indigenous members were calling, with competing priorities and limited time, “they might make decisions that will not support or help us with the current agenda or current crisis" or emerging issues, “where, for us, we’re connected to our communities, to our nation.”
Beyond the steering group, other current Indigenous members of the committee are Francis, and ISG Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut), who is Inuk.
Finding a balance
Audette took the reins as chair of the Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples from Francis, who was named leader of the Progressive Senator Group last year (becoming the first Indigenous person to lead a Senate group).
Audette said the PSG “made sure” to keep chairship of the committee within their group when it came time for such negotiations between Senate leaders, and she subsequently spoke with Francis and made clear that “if the group wants me, it’s going to be a great honour.”
Prior to her appointment to the Senate, Audette held a number of leadership roles, including as president of the association Femmes autochtones du Québec, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and deputy minister to the Secrétariat à la condition féminine du Québec. She was also notably one of five commissioners of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, whose work spanned 2016 to 2019.
Audette said when she was first named chair of the Senate Committee, she felt “like a child, nervous, you know, it’s big.” But, faced with those nerves, she said she reminded herself of the “training” she’d gotten through her time as commissioner navigating difficult subjects and “tension in the room.”
Bolstering her further, she said, is the small drum she makes sure is by her side in the committee room, which she said serves as a reminder of where she comes from, and “that we’re all equal, and I’m allowed to do—they would say ‘mistake,’ and I call it ‘learning experience.’”
“It’s the drum we bring in the sweat lodge, and there’s little rocks inside that sparkle when you shake it quickly,” she explained, noting it’s something that is given to a firstborn child when they start being able to grab things, “so they have the sound, mother beat, the drum beat, and the little star that they were before.”
“I’m blessed to be in that space to humanize our ancestors that were pushed away,” she said, adding that she shakes the drum each time before she uses the traditional gavel as committee chair.
Audette said she tries to “find a balance” between the deliberative approach she’s used to as an Indigenous person and the rigid rules of the Canadian parliamentary system, which imposes tight time limits on questions and comments heard at committee.
In multiple meetings, Audette has been seen to give witnesses more leeway to finish their statements even if they’ve gone over time.
“I understand that it’s the culture of that committee, so I’m not there to tell them, ‘hey, you don’t cut an elder [off]’ … so I often remind the people in our committee, you know, it’s hard for me to see coming from a place that we listen, we receive their truth, [whether] we agree or not, our values, it’s to receive it,” she said, adding she’s apologized to witnesses she’s had to cut off. “And they say, ‘no, no, no, you gave us more time.’”
To try to reduce such occurrences, Audette said she’ll ask to see witnesses’ speaking notes in advance, or otherwise get a sense of their length, and works with clerks to try to book witnesses accordingly to have “three speakers instead of five,” for example, to give each more time to say their piece instead of being squished “like sardines” into one panel.
A ‘timely’ study
The Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples is currently in the midst of a study on the Crown’s duty to consult and accommodate Indigenous Peoples—a study committee members agreed to last December, which is the first undertaken since Audette became chair that isn’t directly tied to proposed legislation.
The study’s subject matter has become all the more relevant since, with Indigenous leaders and communities raising repeated concerns over the current Liberal government’s approach.
“The frustration … it was already there a long time ago, but it was more and more” a problem, said Audette. “For me, when I saw [Bill] C-5 last June, I said, ‘that’s it.’ It set the tone,” with the government trying to explain away its lack of advance consultation on that bill, but then stressing the need for consultations on another bill, S-2, as a result of Senate amendments that sought to address a long-criticized and studied second-generation cutoff for status under the Indian Act.
Prosper agreed the study is “certainly timely,” and noted—as Audette did—that fellow Senators “are quite interested in learning and understanding more about the duty to consult.”
“It’s an evolving legal doctrine founded on things like the honour of the Crown and constitutionally recognized and protected rights,” said Propser.
It’s important to recognize “good” examples of government and industry using practices that “lead to constructive arrangements with Indigenous Peoples,” he said, “but also to outline some of the inconsistencies that tend to exist.”
As an example of recent inconsistencies, Prosper similarly pointed to the contrast between the government’s handling of Bill S-2 and Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act, which sped through Parliament to get royal assent within 20 days of its tabling “amid a number of concerns expressed by Indigenous groups and organizations” whose requests for “meaningful consultations” went “unanswered by government.”
Prosper also highlighted Bill C-37, the First Nations Clean Water Act, tabled on June 16. While intended as a follow-up to last Parliament’s Bill C-61, which died on the Order Paper, Prosper noted that, unlike that bill, which was co-developed with Indigenous representatives, consultation on C-37 has, to date, “been lacking significantly.”
Bill C-37 “highlights the need for consistency,” said Prosper. The duty to consult is “an obligation that is based on the honour of the Crown, and the Crown has to maintain that honour and integrity” regardless of which “particular bill is being considered through the parliamentary process.”
Audette noted plans for the steering committee to meet over the summer to discuss the road ahead for the study, which it will pick back up when Parliament returns in September.
In the meantime, she encouraged interested individuals to get in touch if they want to weigh in.
“You know, it was always the same group [testifying at committees] when I was outside demonstrating,” she said, and while so far the committee has heard some “different expertise” from new faces, which she said is “a good sign—still, the door is open.”
The Hill Times