Mr. Speaker, I have no difficulty going forward with the Senate amendments as written. I also recognize there could be, and there likely will be, unintended consequences, knock-on effects and policy results that are awkward, difficult and will pose challenges to the department.
Therefore, our job should be to eliminate gender discrimination and move forward with the Senate amendments, while we try to identify, as much as is possible, what problems that change will cause, for instance, in the numbers of people who would then qualify, and whether there are certain communities where the percentage of people who turn out to vote in certain nations is a requirement. That is a very odd requirement, but if we suddenly quadrupled the number of people in the community and it needs a 25% turnout for the election to be considered valid, that is a problem, if getting rid of gender discrimination increases dramatically the numbers of people in that community. The solution to me is not to say we must continue with discrimination based on gender, but to say we better revisit those agreements that create those unfairnesses, which will create problems down the road.
As much as possible, we should do the right thing and deal with unintended consequences. We should not do not decide to do the wrong thing because we cannot properly imagine all the consequences of our decision.