APTN National News
OTTAWA-Canada’s Senate on Thursday passed the so-called McIvor bill that could extend status to as many as 45,000 people.
The controversial bill, which was tabled in the House of Commons earlier this year, would give status to the grandchildren of women who regained their status in 1985.
It’s estimated that about 45,000 people would fall in that category.
Now that the Senate has passed the bill it needs Royal Assent to become law.
Prior to 1985, First Nations women who married non-First Nations men were stripped of their status, while First Nations men who married non-First Nations women kept theirs. With the passage of Bill C-31 that year, those women regained their status, along with their children, but not their grandchildren.
Under Bill C-3, the grandchildren of those women would regain status, as is already the case for the grandchildren of men who married non-native women.
McIvor, however, maintains that the bill does not go far enough and women still face discrimination when it comes to passing status on to their descendants as opposed to men. She is taking her case to the UN.
McIvor has said that that the descendants of First Nations woman who were born before 1951, which was the cut-off set in 1985, and the illegitimate daughters of status men along with the children of status women who have unstated paternity would still be left out in the cold.
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