Government concedes to Senate demands on Indian Act update

Changes aim to end sex-based discrimination

As it tries to stave off a legislative crisis, the Trudeau government is caving in to Senate demands that an Indian Act update do more to eliminate sex-based discrimination in status registration.

Advocates for the changes say the government’s decision is a “giant leap forward” for Indigenous women and their descendants.

A motion from the Liberals’ representative in the Senate Wednesday afternoon attempts to prevent deadlock between the two houses of parliament before a court-imposed deadline this December. The government is proposing changes that it says would eliminate all sex-based discrimination and go into effect after consultations early next year.

Since the Liberals introduced Bill S-3 in 2016, senators and Indigenous advocates have been urging the government to make good on promises of reconciliation by going well beyond the narrow scope of legislative changes required by a Quebec court decision in 2015.

After the Senate passed the government bill with several amendments, the House of Commons accepted some but rejected the biggest, a change that would have opened status registration up to a large number of people whose ancestors had faced sex-based discrimination. This has left the bill in limbo since June.

On Tuesday Liberals announced they would address the Senate’s concerns, but they may not necessarily go as far as the Senate amendment’s nickname — 6(1)a “all the way” — suggests.

Senators will vote on the motion from Sen. Peter Harder to send a message to the House outlining changes, but they can amend the message if a majority want to. The House, with its Liberal majority, would need to concur with the message before the bill can become law.

Liberals are willing to eliminate a cut-off in the Indian Act that extended eligibility to descendants of women removed from the register after marrying nonIndians, but only for those born since the Indian Act took effect in 1951.

The new amendment would also give full Indian status to women who lost status because of sex-based inequities and to their descendants born prior to 1985.

“We’ve been trying to get this for so many decades it’s hard to believe that we actually have it,” Sen. Lillian Dyck, a champion in the Senate’s push for the changes, said tearily in reaction to the motion. “And when I listen to you, Sen. Harder, I almost broke down and cried . ... I think this is a giant leap forward for First Nation women and their descendants.”

With Harder’s proposal, which was greeted in the Senate chamber with applause on Tuesday, the Liberals argue all sex-based inequities will be addressed. The amendment would come into effect after a consultation period, which would decide on the “how” (not the “whether,” he assured). It also requires the government to report to parliament on the consultations’ progress within five months and again within a year of royal assent.

The senators’ “all-theway” amendment would have attempted to address further issues of lost status, stemming from mixed parentage, Métis identity and more. Harder said its drafting, however, caused concerns about “significant ambiguity as to its actual effect.” Other forms of discrimination senators highlighted “will be addressed through broad-based consultations on registration and membership issues beginning early next year,” he promised.

The Post obtained government research, distributed to all senators Monday, which details the possible scope of changes to who is eligible for Indian status.

The widest estimates show that population more than doubling. But research doesn’t speculate on how many people would actually apply for or obtain status.

Based on existing Indian register data for the 2016 population, about 50,160 people would become newly eligible on the strictest interpretation of what the government is proposing, while 86,900 people would become newly eligible under an “all-the-way” amendment.