Thank you.
My name is Sharon McIvor. I'm appearing at this committee for the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, which is a B.C. group of chiefs that has been in existence since the mid-1970s, and whose major focus is aboriginal title right and treaty rights.
Today I'm just speaking specifically to Bill S-3, the amendment to the Indian Act. You have to understand that status under the Indian Act is exclusively the jurisdiction of the federal government. It's in 91(24), so it's a relationship or recognition of who the federal government recognizes as Indians. It has nothing to do with self-determination or self-government. Those issues are out there to be discussed at another time and place.
Up until 1985, the Indian Act was blatantly discriminatory against women. Lots of pressure was brought, but mainly the Charter of Rights and Freedoms kicked in on April 17, 1985, and forced the government to deal with that ongoing discrimination.
With Bill C-31, there was an agreement at that time between Minister Crombie and his department that although he wanted all the discrimination gone, I understand that it was too expensive, so he allowed the second-generation cut-off and said that those guys could come and fight for themselves.
I took up the challenge. In July 1989 I started a case that was called the McIvor case about the ongoing discrimination in the Indian Act.
In 2010, after court decisions, the government got together to do Bill C-3. Bill C-3 continued with the discrimination. We've been here before and done this before because of the ongoing discrimination, and the government decided it was okay to continue to discriminate against aboriginal women and their descendants.
Looking at Bill S-3, it's exactly the same thing.
I can tell you what happened in 1985. The government threw out this thing to say that they had to consult with the people about whether or not they should end this discrimination.
From my perspective, and for most people who believe in human rights, discrimination isn't negotiable. As the Government of Canada, it's your responsibility to make sure your legislation complies with the charter, so you can't go out and ask all of those aboriginal organizations, which are mainly led by males, if it is okay to continue to discriminate against the Indian women. I can tell you that most of them will say, yes. We know, because in Jeannette Corbière-Lavell's case, the Assembly of First Nations and their allies were sitting against her with the government. In other cases we've taken, those male-dominated organizations sit on the other side.
It's your fiduciary responsibility to make sure that your legislation, no matter what you pass, complies with the charter. Bill S-3 does not. What Bill S-3 does is it continues the discrimination.
I have a petition with the UN Human Rights Committee to say that Bill C-3, the McIvor amendment, did not take all of the discrimination out of the Indian Act. That's sitting there. It was to be heard in July 2016. The Department of Justice put in a request to the UN committee to suspend the hearing of my petition, because of the bill—now S-3—that will bring gender equality to the Indian Act in February 3, 2017.
I handed a package to the clerk. There is a media release in which Carolyn Bennett promises that. I also have in the package the request to the UN committee by the Government of Canada, and in several places they said that by February 3, 2017, all known discrimination will be out of the Indian Act.
They knew it and they could do it, and then they were going to do a second phase, consulting nation to nation with the aboriginal people. The only thing that I'm saying today is yes to the consultation. You cannot consult about ending discrimination. You cannot consult about asking somebody else's permission if it's okay to continue to discriminate against me.
It's totally unacceptable and the position that you're taking as parliamentarians is really untenable. I absolutely can't understand why you're doing it. Discrimination is contrary to the charter and you know and I know, and you've heard probably from a lot of people, that there's still discrimination in the Indian Act. You have the ability to scrap the bill and do something that's going to take all of the discrimination out.
In 1985 the Government of Canada did something that helped take care of some of the bands' problems. The bands are not nations. The bands are an artificial construct by the Government of Canada, but what they did is they separated the membership and status. Section 10 allows absolutely every band in Canada to decide who can be a member. They cannot take membership away and the women who married out were to be put back into their birth bands, but second generation can be left out. You don't have to give membership to them. They separated that out.
The Government of Canada is determining who is an Indian and who do I have responsibility for and who do I have a relationship with. Absolutely every band in Canada has the right to make a law that determines who their membership is.
I just don't want the waters to be muddy there. What we're looking at is the Government of Canada deciding whether they're going to recognize me as an Indian. The other piece that's really important is that when I was born, I had birthrights. Outside of the human rights that every human is born with, I have aboriginal rights that come from my heritage. Those cannot be defined away. I cannot be discriminated against so I cannot exercise those rights, and recognition of me as an aboriginal person is one of those rights.
When we're looking at what you're doing with Bill S-3, what you did with Bill C-3, what you did with Bill C-31, you violated my rights as an aboriginal person. My plea to you is you can clean it up. If you look at in May 2010 the House of Commons committee reviewing Bill C-3 brought to the House an amendment to Bill C-3 which for the most part alleviated all of the concerns about the ongoing discrimination based on gender. That was rejected.
Actually, it wasn't rejected. The Speaker ruled most of it out of order and it was left in one piece, but you know how to do it. It's there. I put that in the package as well. It's a two-pager and it will alleviate most of the discrimination, all of the known discrimination. There are some things still there that need to be fixed, but for the most part it's doable and that's your fiduciary responsibility. You cannot continue to make legislation that has known discrimination in it. It's your fiduciary responsibility to take it all out. That's what the charter is all about.
Thank you.