Senate delays Indian Act update past July deadline
Move comes after Commons removes crucial provisions
While all eyes were on the Senate’s approval of the federal budget Thursday, senators have forced the government’s hand on a different piece of legislation and appear ready to put up a fight this fall.
With both chambers rising for summer, Bill S-3, the government’s answer to a court decision that highlighted sex-based inequities in the Indian Act, will not be able to pass into law before a July 3 deadline. That’s because the Senate decided to essentially ignore the House’s wishes Thursday morning. The Commons had amended the bill to remove provisions introduced by the Senate that senators say would have better addressed issues of discrimination.
Plaintiffs in the Descheneaux case, which originally mandated the government to make changes to the law, asked Justice Chantal Masse of the Quebec Superior Court for a deadline extension earlier this week.
She ruled she would not get between the House of Commons and Senate, but would stand by in case the government decided to support the idea of extending the deadline. The Senate, apparently with the blessing of government representative Sen. Peter Harder, has now forced the government’s hand.
“We believe the Government of Canada has no choice but to seek an extension,” reads a press release from senators Lillian Dyck, Dennis Patterson and Murray Sinclair, the chair, deputy chair and a steering committee member of the Senate aboriginal peoples committee.
“We look forward to working with the government in a productive and co-operative manner to address gender-based discrimination in Indian registration.”
In a statement, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett’s office said that “given the current impasse with the Senate, the Government is exploring options for next steps to try to avoid the majority of registration provisions in the Indian Act becoming inoperable after July 3.”
“What we just did today basically opens a good path for the government to do what is, frankly, the only sensible thing to do. Go back. Get an extension. Don’t purposely put yourself in contravention of a judge’s order. Use the time to fix the mess,” independent Sen. Marilou McPhedran, whose amendment was struck down by the government, told the National Post.
It wouldn’t be the first deadline extension. The government had to seek one in January after the Senate aboriginal peoples committee asked it to redraft the original bill introduced in September. The new version came in May, but senators still felt it didn’t go far enough.
McPhedran said she didn’t understand why the House would delete the amendment, dismiss the bill and rise Wednesday before hearing back from the Senate — especially since Bennett had emphasized the urgency of the deadline.
“I’m mystified by how they’re conducting themselves,” she said of the government, saying various consultations, court cases and legislative efforts since 1970 have failed to address the problems that a revised Bill S-3 could.
“I can tell you that I was in the gallery and it wasn’t annoyance, it was heartbreak. It was just a sense of, ‘why are they doing this? How does this make any sense for the values that have been espoused by this government?’”
That the government made the decision on National Aboriginal Day was “such a painful irony,” she said.
A team of “the best lawyers in the country with expertise in the Indian Act,” as McPhedran put it, worked with Sinclair to draft a “comprehensive amendment” to improve the bill. Sinclair was prepared to move the amendment Thursday, McPhedran said, and senators were “reasonably sure” they had the needed votes.
“Let’s not assume that we have to do the same thing over and over and over again. Let’s raise our eyes up, let’s get a broader horizon, let’s look at the tools that are sitting there, available, and why not give it a try?”