Colleagues, to know and to have had the honour of working with the iconic Lillian Dyck is a gift. Senator Lillian Dyck, an award-winning scientist and member of the Gordon First Nation, is the daughter of Eva McNab, a residential school survivor, and Yok Leen Quon, a Chinese immigrant to Canada who had to pay the head tax.

Joining the Senate in 2005, Senator Dyck would find herself sitting in Senate beside Senator Lovelace Nicholas who had taken on the sexist provision of the Indian Act which had disenfranchised Senator Dyck and her mother.

Lillian helped push the federal government to get the Canadian government to apologize in 2006 for the racist laws that had discriminated against Chinese people, including the requirements to pay a head tax and the subsequent exclusion of Chinese immigrants from 1923 to 1947.

Her magnum opus, though, was her work to remove sexism from the Indian Act and to shine a light on injustices experienced by all Indigenous Canadians, and Indigenous women in particular.

Whether it was the work she did on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, the studies on reforming First Nations education and the history of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada, her work on amendments to Bill C-75, pushing for stiffer penalties for perpetrators of violent crimes against Indigenous women, her work on Bill S-3, designed to remove the remaining sex-based inequities in the Indian Act or welcoming Indigenous youth to the Senate, our colleague Senator Lillian Dyck was a steadfast and courageous defender of human rights and a creative architect of a better future for Indigenous peoples and all Canadians.

Colleagues, Senator Lillian Dyck epitomized the word “honourable.” Senator Dyck conducted herself in the chamber and as Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples with honour, dignity, respect and decency. I marvelled at her ability to make committee members and our guests feel comfortable and valued.

I was shocked to witness the patronizing and demeaning behaviour she was subjected to while chairing a June 2019 Aboriginal Peoples Committee meeting, but I was not surprised to witness Senator Lillian Dyck handle the tense situation with grace and fairness.