Dawn Lavell-Harvard to advise on appointments to the Canadian Senate
OTTAWA—Dr. Dawn Memee Lavell-Harvard is a very busy woman, as president of the Ontario Native Women’s Association and president for the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and most importantly, the mother of three girls, but her days just got a lot busier. The Wikwemikong band member has been named as one of two Ontario members of the Senate Advisory Board—and the only aboriginal member.
The creation of an appointment advisory board, which includes two members each from the federal government, Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba, forms the core of the next phase of the Trudeau government’s plan to make the Senate more independent and less partisan.
“It was quite a shock,” said Dr. Lavell-Harvard, recalling the December phone call asking her if she would consider accepting the appointment to the committee should it be offered to her. So the next call she received totally bowled her over. “I hadn’t given it a lot of thought,” she said of the initial call. “I really never expected that I would be chosen.”
Once the appointment was announced the calls and texts started coming in fast and furious. “Yes, just about everybody I call wants to be on the shortlist,” she laughed. “I must have gotten 50 text messages within minutes of the announcement.”
Dr. Lavell-Harvard is the daughter of famed Debajehmujig Storytellers elder Jeanette Corbiere-Lavell (and filmmaker David Lavell of Mindemoya), herself a founder and former president of ONWA and a strong advocate for Native women’s rights and she has followed closely in her mother’s footsteps—committed to “breaking cycles of poverty for aboriginal women and their children.” Dr. Lavell-Harvard is co-editor of ‘Until Our Hearts Are on the Ground: Aboriginal Mothering, Oppression, Resistance and Rebirth.’
The appointment is no simple sinecure, however, the pressure that comes with the job is considerable.
“I had assumed that we would be given a big list to work from,” she said. Not so. “It is up to the committee members to come up with the names. We are completely independent.”
So Dr. Lavell-Harvard, along with her fellow committee members, have to provide the first shortlist of names by February 10, and the deadline for the final list is February 25. “It is pretty intense,” she admitted.
Along with the short timeline, the committee currently has three staff members to assist in their efforts and a strong impetus to improve on the recent track of Senate appointments. “There is a lot of interest in doing a better job,” she said. “We really want to make some better choices.”
Interestingly, her own mother’s name was put forward by a number of people, but Dr. Lavell-Harvard noted, without going into detail, that some of the requirements for a Senate seat would get in the way. Senators have to be below a certain age.
Dr. Lavell-Harvard admits that she is approaching the process wearing her ‘Pollyanna’ glasses. “I am really hoping that this will mark a real change in the way appointments to the Senate have been made in the past,” she said. “How can it not?” she laughed. “Who could imagine that a little girl from Manitoulin Island would be one of the ones making these decisions.”
For anyone familiar with Dr. Lavell-Harvard’s accomplished mother and the list of accomplishments of Dr. Lavell-Harvard herself, it really does not require that big a stretch of the imagination.
