Mr. Speaker, clearly, the government does not want to do the right thing here and end discrimination. I would think that it is partly because of the costs, or maybe it has no plans to actually fund the costs.
The first nations band councils have not heard whether the government will be increasing spending for the roughly 45,000 people who will be gaining status. If the government is not tying the funding to population growth, and if there are many fast-growing communities already under strain as we speak, how are the liabilities of the government and the band councils going to be affected if there is no increase in funding and services cannot be offered to all the new claimants?