Thank you very much for the time considerations.
My name is Yvonne Boyer. I am one of the legal advisers to the Native Women's Association of Canada. My colleague, Mary Eberts, is with me. I will be making the opening statement, and together we can answer questions following my presentation.
President Jacobs and Ellen Gabriel were before you not that long ago and gave you a fairly detailed outline of where the Native Women's Association stands on these issues. Just to recap, I have eight points that I would like to clarify that came out of their presentations. I'll start with those, and then we would like to comment on the position of Indian and Northern Affairs and also the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
First of all, in relation to the repeal of section 67, we want to state that there is full agreement that this is long overdue. But there must be meaningful consultation as a strong first step in an evolving and collaborative process.
Capacity-building and education are necessary, and these are key factors in communities when they're implementing their own mechanisms of protecting human rights. What we're looking at as a timeframe is a minimum of 36 months from the repeal of section 67 to the coming into effect. This is to provide adequate consultation and to put into place capacity-building and education.
There has to be a balance between collective rights and individual human rights, without jeopardizing either set. A core of this issue is to address conflict through various forms of indigenous legal traditions that allow the communities to decide how best to address the conflicts themselves.
An interpretive mechanism is also very important to guide the application of Bill C-44. The process for deciding what would be included in the interpretive provisions would be addressed during the 36-month period before the act came into force.
In relation to INAC's position on some of the key areas, the Native Women's Association disagrees with INAC's stance that there already has been consultation because of various initiatives in the past to repeal section 67 and respectfully disagrees with the statement that there have been significant consultations in the past 30 years.
Further, the position that INAC has taken that there has been no direction from the Supreme Court of Canada regarding a duty to consult before passing legislation is directly contrary to the recent ministerial representative's report on matrimony and real property and the legal opinions she garnered—
Do you want me to slow down? I'm getting excited.
In relation to her ministerial representative's report on the duty to consult, Wendy Grant-John garnered legal opinions on this important issue. In fact, the result of these legal opinions was that she strongly stated that Canada needs to develop a policy on consultation and hasn't done so.
In their presentation, INAC minimized the potential impact on first nations of repeal of section 67, while also admitting they had done no real analysis of that impact.
In sharp contrast with its present position, the government expressed a number of concerns to the La Forest commission. This is recorded by the commission in its year 2000 report, and it's on page 129. These included: that the lifting of section 67 might lead to retaliation against claimants and extra costs to aboriginal governments called to defend their actions; that a period of transition would allow aboriginal governments to review their practices; that new litigation against the department might have an adverse effect on resources available for aboriginal programs; and that aboriginal people, especially women, will need to be educated about asserting their rights. Those statements that were made by INAC are in direct contradiction to their present position.
The Native Women's Association has made a well thought out proposal dealing with all of these issues, including consultation, capacity-building, education, and the bridging of indigenous legal traditions as a foundation and implementation of human rights after the repeal of section 67. To date, the government has not responded to the Native Women's Association's proposal.
NWAC's opinions on submissions made by the Canadian Human Rights Commission are as follows.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission has recommended that the minimum of 18 months before the act applies to first nations should be extended to a significantly longer period. NWAC agrees with this position but prefers a minimum of at least 36 months.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission would like to see an interpretive clause, as recommended by the La Forest review in 2000. NWAC agrees that an interpretive clause is necessary.
On June 7, 2007, the Canadian Human Rights Commission suggested wording for this clause. NWAC, however, disagrees with that approach and believes the final wording should be settled during the consultation phase that NWAC has called for.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission points out that to date no new resources have been allocated to support the commission's initiatives to engage with first nations stakeholders or to plan implementation. NWAC considers the need to provide resources for capacity-building and consultation is very urgent and must be attended to promptly.
Thank you.
