What we've tried to do in the bill right now.... We have a legal obligation. The court has told us that this is discriminatory and against the charter. We decided that we would fix that. We also decided that we would include in this bill the very simple cases that are clearly sex-based, and that's how we get to the 35,000. The other cases are complicated by date of birth, or there wasn't a registry before 1951, and there are other ones that are not sex based. They may well win in court one day, but at the moment there is no court decision to.... We want to go out to consult and see how you would do it. How do you even do the ones where there wasn't a registry before?
Asserting a right doesn't necessarily mean that you have a right, because rights have to be determined among people. We will do what we know is right, but we have to talk to the people who will be affected by this, and we don't believe that can be done in a parliamentary committee. We believe that, as Canada, we have a responsibility to go out and hear from people as to how they would see their rights being exercised. That's why, right from the beginning, we've taken this two-stage approach. We would do the things that were simple and that the court told us we had to do, and then we would go out and deal with the more complex ones, but in a timely fashion.
I would be more than happy to come back to the committee, if you wish, to give you an update on the work we're doing as we move into phase two and as we come to really getting rid of all the discriminations in the Indian Act.