I think it's important to recognize that we're living in the age now where the Indian Act, and the provisions under section 6, are now starting to exclude individuals from falling under the Indian Act. We are seeing the extinguishment of the status Indian by way of legislation. I think that's a fundamental problem with moving forward with any type of amendment, or slight adjustment, to election provisions under that umbrella.
I think that we are approaching the point where any type of alteration to a piece of legislation that extinguishes the existence of the status Indian requires the free, prior, and informed consent of the people who are most impacted.
I think that we did start out right in this exercise. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs did start out right in approaching it from a bottom-up process. Community engagements cannot be argued with. They're unarguable. No one is going to argue with the opportunity to go to the community and talk to them about how best to proceed, but as we moved up the chain of process, we lost the ball. We lost the handle on this somewhere and then out came a piece of legislation that fundamentally alters the messaging that was carried to the communities. Now we end up with this draft bill. We're sitting here today and are expected to support a draft bill that alters what the community has asked for.
It's bottom up and now it has to come back down again, and it has to come back down to a point of free, prior, and informed consent of community people.