Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Labrador. I totally agree with him. That is exactly it. I would not go so far as to call today a historic day, but it is an extremely important day.
Will we perpetuate the discrimination that exists? The worst part is that this discriminates against women, not men. It is unacceptable. Furthermore, this systemic discrimination will continue against aboriginal women.
She had the misfortune of being born a girl and then marrying a white man. She loses all her rights and so do her 10 children. That is what is unacceptable. That is what the British Columbia Court of Appeal is telling us to fix. That court said it could not fix the situation, that its role was strictly to rule on the question referred to it. It cannot fix this problem, but it indicated that we as politicians have the power to fix it and that we should seriously consider doing so. That is precisely what we are doing and that is our objective: to put an end once and for all to the unacceptable discrimination found in the Indian Act.