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The Union of BC Indian Chiefs called the justification for further consultation “extremely unclear” and expressed concerns about the “further politics of delay, which only serves to enrich Canada financially.”
One of Canada’s largest Indigenous groups says it won’t participate in consultations with Ottawa on potential changes to the second-generation cutoff, accusing the government of working to delay ending the controversial law that designates who can be awarded Indian status.
In an email sent last week and shared with iPolitics, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs called the justification for further consultation “extremely unclear” and expressed concerns about the “further politics of delay, which only serves to enrich Canada financially.”
“The consultation process is a clear conflation of status, membership, citizenship, and self-government, which are all separate legal issues,” read the email, attributed to UBCIC president Grand Chief Phillip Stewart, vice-president Chief Linda Innes and secretary-treasurer Chief Marilyn Slett.
The second-generation cutoff denies Indian status to people who had a non-First Nation parent and grandparent. It has been criticized as a colonial policy that allows Ottawa to determine who qualifies as Indigenous and designed to limit the government’s obligations to status peoples.
The Senate recently amended government legislation on the Indian Act to end the policy and allow status to be passed on to a child if at least one of their parents were recognized as having status.
But the government hasn’t moved past first reading on Bill S-2 since it was introduced in the House in December.
The House’s Indigenous and northern affairs committee began a study earlier this month on issues related to the Indian Act registration. It remains unclear how or if that will tie into the House’s work on S-2.
When reached earlier this month, Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty’s office said the minister was unavailable for an interview on the topic. She didn’t respond to questions from reporters as she headed into Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.
The Liberals haven’t signalled if they will support the Senate changes and said more time is needed to consult with First Nations rights-holders.
The government has started seeking submissions on the issue that they say will then be reviewed by a panel of First Nations experts. Once completed, the submissions would then be packaged into a guide for consultations at a series of First Nations-led events that are expected to start in the spring.
Critics accused the government of using the consultations as a delay tactic, with other changes in S-2 facing a court-imposed deadline of this spring.
The second-generation cut-off was brought in through amendments to the Indian Act in 1985. Those changes ended the practice of enfranchisement, whereby First Nations people who wanted to own land, vote or enjoy other rights had to give up their status.
People who were enfranchised lost the right to be recognized as members of their First Nation and to live on reserve.
Women who married a non-status person would also lose their status prior to the 1985 reforms.
But those changes didn’t allow people whose ancestors were enfranchised to obtain status or pass it down to their descendants.
The Liberals introduced legislation in 2022 to repeal this rule but it died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued in early 2025.
As originally drafted, Bill S-2 was virtually identical to the previous legislation.
A B.C. Supreme Court ruling last summer found the existing rules violated the Charter and gave the government until the end of April 2026 to pass legislation to end the practice.
The UBCIC said it supports efforts in S-2 to remove sex-based discrimination from the Indian Act but changes are urgently needed to end the second-generation cutoff, warning that it threatens the long-term survival of many First Nations communities.
“It is widely recognized now that the second generation cut-off perpetuates race- and sex-based discrimination and is a legal extinction plan that is causing contemporary, and serious, harms to individuals by depriving them of the benefits of status — rights, belonging, statutory benefits, and political voice in their communities — and harms to First Nations by robbing them of their members and the strength of their Peoples,” read the email.
Some chiefs have warned that many First Nations would lose all status members in coming decades without changes to registration requirements. If a First Nation loses all its status members, their reserve territory would become Crown land.
The UBCIC said it can’t support “yet another consultation process” when decades of research and case law shows that the government knows that the cut-off and existing rules on status violate the Charter, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the “many historic treaties” signed with First Nations.
The group said the Senate provided a “clear pathway” to ending the cut-off that came only after receiving “explicit input and direction of the majority of First Nation witnesses and title and rights holders.”
The UBCIC said issues around citizenship should be determined in a “self-government negotiation process outside of the Indian Act entirely, and can take many decades to negotiate.”
“Indian status, and the rules surrounding it, is law made by the Government of Canada, and Canada cannot continue to discriminate in that law while (and if) self-government agreements are negotiated.”
While First Nations have the option to control their own membership, the federal government is directly responsible for determining who can get Indian status.
In a statement to iPolitics earlier this month, the Chiefs of Ontario said it supported amendments to the Indian Act that “aim to address its longstanding inequities and remove discriminatory language that should never have existed.”
But it called on Ottawa to “work directly with First Nations to create a framework that allows them to fully control their own membership, free from restrictive federal oversight, with decisions recognized as authoritative for all purposes.”
This would require a “sustainable funding base” that would allow First Nations to “properly develop and maintain citizenship laws and protocols,” the group added.
Some First Nations have expressed concerns about their financial capacity to handle new members if the government ends the cut-off rule, though the Senate changes won the support of the Assembly of First Nations in December.
The AFN advocates on behalf of over 630 communities.
More to come…
