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Bill Updates Indigenous Membership and Estate Rules

An Act to amend the Indian Act (new registration entitlements)

Summary

  • Expands eligibility (“new entitlements”) for registration under the Indian Act in response to Charter equality issues raised in Nicholas v. Canada.
  • Ensures newly entitled individuals also have the right to be entered on a Band List maintained by the Department of Indigenous Services.
  • Modernizes language by repealing the term “mentally incompetent Indian,” replacing it with “dependent person,” and updates related ministerial estate-management provisions.
  • Allows individuals to voluntarily remove themselves from the Indian Register and Band List, while preserving descendants’ entitlement to register.
  • Limits Crown and band liability for good‑faith actions related to past non‑registration and new deregistration, providing legal certainty.

Builder Assessment

Vote No

Overall, the bill is largely rights- and administration-focused with minimal, indirect economic effects; it does not materially advance productivity, investment, exports, or tax competitiveness. While it modestly enhances economic freedom and legal certainty, it is incremental and not geared to large-scale prosperity.

  • Strengths: enhances individual autonomy (deregistration), remedies discrimination, and adds legal clarity/liability limits.
  • Gaps vs. tenets: no direct actions on productivity, exports, investment, tax reform, or government efficiency at scale; potential program cost increases.
  • To better align: pair with Indigenous economic empowerment measures (property rights modernization, faster permitting on reserve, clear capital access), targeted investment incentives, streamlined service delivery/one‑window administration, and outcome-based funding tied to employment and business creation.

Question Period Cards

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Principles Analysis

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Canada should aim to be the world's most prosperous country.

Primarily a rights and administrative update with no direct impact on national income or growth strategy.

✓

Promote economic freedom, ambition, and breaking from bureaucratic inertia (reduce red tape).

Reduces discriminatory barriers to status and band membership and allows voluntary deregistration, modestly enhancing individual autonomy and legal clarity.

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Drive national productivity and global competitiveness.

No direct measures affecting productivity, skills, infrastructure, or competition policy.

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Grow exports of Canadian products and resources.

Does not address trade access, export capacity, or resource market development.

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Encourage investment, innovation, and resource development.

Clarifies registration and membership but does not reform land, capital access, permitting, or investment rules.

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Deliver better public services at lower cost (government efficiency).

Limits liability and clarifies rules (potential efficiency), but expanded eligibility could increase service/program costs; net fiscal/efficiency impact is unclear.

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Reform taxes to incentivize work, risk-taking, and innovation.

No tax policy changes.

✗

Focus on large-scale prosperity, not incrementalism.

This is a targeted rights/administrative fix rather than a broad economic strategy to lift national prosperity.

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S-2

PartySenate
StatusAt second reading in the Senate
Last updatedMay 29, 2025
TopicsIndigenous Affairs
Parliament45