Madam Speaker, the minister has just made our point. We are discussing a report stage amendment, basically one amendment to put back clause 9. There was no support from first nations to make the amendment the government is proposing and the minister did not even come up with any when he had a chance to speak to it just now.
I agree with him about doing a surgical strike. We should do a surgical strike and simply remove the couple of items that continue discrimination in the Indian Act against aboriginal women, and then carry on with this collaborative process about all these points related to membership that are being brought forward to the minister.
Hopefully during that time he will also come up with a better estimation of the costs of removing this discrimination, because it will be the Government of Canada's responsibility. Obviously there are more costs when there are more status Indians approved. Certainly this should not be going on in isolation to estimates, and estimates for the first nations as well because, as the minister mentioned, there are costs to the first nations and to their memberships.