Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2026

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'll go online now.

I share the frustration that many have expressed in terms of how this government is very good at making promises and announcements and saying a lot of the right things, but then we don't often see that follow-through. I think of the promise to end all boil water advisories on reserve. I think it was by 2019 when the promise was first made. Obviously, that hasn't happened. A former minister of public safety promised that legislation to recognize indigenous policing services as essential would be right around the corner. That was in 2022 or 2023. It's taken a long time to drive around that corner. There's housing and child welfare; the list goes on. I know that all in this meeting know this very well. We also see a similar situation here in the government dragging its feet.

I'll go to Shelagh Day, if I can, because you're on the screen in front of me. I see you there. If anyone else wants to jump in, time permitting, please do so.

Can you speak further to the frustration with how slow the process has been and the impacts it has on people who have been waiting?

[Shelagh Day]

Thank you for the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

You have just over 30 seconds, please.

[Shelagh Day]

I will speak very quickly.

I work with the Indian Act sex discrimination working group. As many of you know, that's a coalition of the lead plaintiffs in the litigation and UN petitions that have been brought to deal with the sex discrimination with the largest first nations women's organizations in Canada, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and Justice for Girls. It's a broad coalition of groups and individuals. It also includes the leading legal experts on this matter.

The frustration in that coalition of expert groups and individuals is profound. They've been dealing with this since Jeannette Lavell—whom you heard from this morning—did so in 1971. It's 50 years of dealing bit by bit with sex discrimination that transforms itself, takes a different shape and gets added to at the same time as bits are subtracted.

The frustration you hear from Jeannette, Dawn, Mary Hannaburg and Ingrid Green is profound. I hope the committee members will listen to it. This can't keep going on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

For the final questioner, we have Dr. Hanley.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thanks, everyone, for being here and for participating.

Grand Chief Alatini, I don't think anyone has given you a shout-out yet for how early in the morning you had to be up in order to be present at committee. I'm not sure if you were able to witness the first hour. It's certainly forgivable if you were not.

As always, you've been very clear in your message. In your opening words, you noted “the promise and the burden of Canada's laws.” We've previously had discussions around the interface or the overlap between membership, citizenship, and status and non-status. You referred to that a bit in your one minute in the previous testimony. I wonder if you could elaborate on that, using Kluane First Nation as an example.

There are examples, for instance, of people who become citizens but are non-status, as you've described. There are also people who may be status but either are not eligible or choose not to become members. However, they have an allegiance or a hereditary relationship with Kluane First Nation. There are definitely some nuances and overlaps. I'm wondering if you could describe that for a minute or two to help us understand that difference.

[Grand Chief Math’ieya Alatini]

Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Hanley, for your representation of Yukoners in Ottawa and for that question.

I want to highlight the fact that among Yukon first nations, there are 11 modern treaty holders. We get to create our own citizenship code. Most of those nations have something defined in the citizenship code that looks at your familial ties to a nation. From our Kluane First Nation perspective, you have to tie your ancestry back matrilineally to Kluane First Nation from 1949 and prior. We get to determine those who become citizens of Kluane First Nation, and we provide services to all those citizens.

There are some weird anomalies in which we have individuals who are status Indians—maybe they were in the sixties scoop or they were adopted out—and who do not want to be citizens of Kluane First Nation but have applied to have their status under Kluane as Indian Act status members. Those two things don't reconcile. That's one issue.

The larger issue we see in implementing our modern treaties is the fact that we've established our citizenship list. This is not recognized by Canada at the negotiation table when it comes to negotiating our financial transfer arrangements with Canada for programs and services and for core dollars. There are complex equations applied to that. Our status numbers are used. As Shelagh mentioned, those numbers are decreasing because of the diminishing ability to have individuals registered as status Indians. It directly affects our modern treaty holders in Canada because of the inability to register our citizens as status members.

I was going to give an example about my grandpa and my grandmother, who have very different lines when it comes to status citizenship, but I'll leave it there.

There is definitely an impact on modern treaty holders in the territory.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Sheehan]

Thank you very much.

That brings us to the conclusion.

If anybody has anything they want to share in writing, they can send it in to our clerk, and it will be given to the analysts to be included in the entire testimonial process. Thank you very much.

Chi-meegwetch to everyone. I truly appreciated your testimony. Have a great day.

There we go. We're done.