"Professor sees Bill C-3 as flawed"

I have been studying and writing about the status and discrimination issues in the Indian Act membership provisions since 1985. My work is well known in the scholarly, feminist, and Aboriginal activist communities. I am appalled that these issues are not yet resolved - despite the Charter and despite the attempt at legislative amendment. I am not in support of the proposed Bill C-3.

I urge you to NOT support Bill C-3. After decades of discriminatory exclusion from access to status as registered Indians, Bill C-3 will still leave many Aboriginal women and their descendants out: 1) descendants of women born before 1951 when there is no such exclusion of descendants of men born before 1951, and 2) descendants of women in common law unions. In addition, it will not even treat equally the Aboriginal women and their descendants whom it purports to take in because they will still receive lesser registration status when it comes to the ability to transmit status.

The discriminatory status provisions, and the unconscionable delay of the Canadian government in remedying its discriminatory legislation, amounts for state toleration of the continued human rights abuses of Aboriginal women and their families. Canada has, because of these provisions and because of other systemic failures, been found to be in violation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; it is certainly in violation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Indian Act status provisions are a prima facie violation of the equality and Aboriginal and treaty rights guarantees in the Charter.

Genuine consultation with Aboriginal people on many other issues is needed. But consultation on whether sex discrimination in the status registration provisions of the Indian Act should continue against some women and their descendants is not supportable.

The Canadian state does not need to consult on whether to uphold human rights, including Aboriginal and treaty rights. It is obliged to do so. The status provisions of the Indian Act constitute a clear issue of sex discrimination in access to status as registered Indians, which has been going on for many decades.

Bill C-3 will be another piece of failed remedial legislation, like Bill C-31. It has taken 25 years to get to the point of talking about undoing the discrimination that Bill C-31 perpetuated, thanks to the 10-year legal struggle of Sharon McIvor. Are we to spend the next several decades in court litigating this matter?

Don't let it take any longer to eradicate sex discrimination from the registration provisions of the Indian Act.

Sincerely,

Joyce A. Green

Professor

Department of Political Science

University of Regina

Regina, Saskatchewan