Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I would like to echo my colleagues' thanks for your journey here today and being willing to come before the committee on this very important issue.
A number of you have talked about the unintended consequences of previous legislation. I'm going to reference specifically Bill C-31, subsection 6(2).
The department has done an analysis on cost drivers. I want to quote a bit from it because it talks about how big the impact has been, just in terms of the government's own assessment. This was titled “Legislative Change/Disruption”, and it says:
A successful court challenge against the registration sections of the Indian Act, in particular the “6(2) cutoff“, is likely in the near future, according to the Department of Justice. There are over 45K applicants whose claims to registration have been denied, and an additional 30K whose claims have gone dormant. These individuals will quickly be included in the backlog, and increase by ten times its current size. Depending on the impact of the legislative change, there may be a requirement to review all of the 250K C-31 applicants held at Headquarters, or even a review of many of the registrations completed by the regional offices as well, which could number in the hundreds of thousands of cases.
The reason I raise this is this. What I've heard many of you talk about is that one of your big concerns is that you haven't had the kind of consultation that would prevent a situation like the Bill C-31 subsection 6(2) cut-off. This is denying people access to their rights.
I wonder if you could comment on the kinds of unintended consequences and impact that bills such as Bill C-31 had on your nations.
Thank you.