Thank you very much, and I acknowledge the great work you have done on this cause as well, Joy.
This has been discussed a long time, ladies and gentlemen. It has reached the point where, as a nation, we have an obligation to deal with this. The law was changed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1986. That's a long time ago. Several years later in Manitoba--in 1988, as I recall--the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba called for legislative action on this; it hasn't happened. RCAP, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, called for legislative action; it hasn't happened. The standing committees of the Senate and the House have called for action on this, and it hasn't happened. So it behooves us to move forward and to be the Parliament that deals with it.
There have been various discussions about the length of the consultative process, and to address this question squarely, why is there a consultative process? There are several reasons. One is that it's good policy to do so. There is also the Supreme Court of Canada reasoning that would suggest that it is necessary, from a constitutional perspective, to do this. But it's not simply that. It's the process of building a consensus and support for matrimonial property rights, and that's why we're proceeding down this road.
I've asked Wendy Grant-John to come back to me in about December. She will be spending the next couple of months getting the process up and running. She will then be into a period of consultation through September, October, November, and December. We will take stock of where we are in December and determine if further consultation is necessary into January.
My hope is that we will be finished the consultation process at that stage and we will be in a position to introduce legislation into the House of Commons in the late winter or early spring. It's my hope that there will be a consensus around that legislation and that this Parliament will be prepared to act and to do so with integrity and dispatch.