CEDAW/C/81/D/68/2014 5.2 According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Indian Act affected women’s right to be free from discrimination. Although the amendments of 1985 addressed some of the discriminatory provisions, in that women who had lost status by marrying non-indigenous men were able to regain status for themselves and for their children, their grandchildren did not regain their right to status. Because of the discriminatory allocation of status in the past, the descendants of an indigenous woman who married a non-indigenous man were subject to the second generation cut-off, at which point status could no longer be transmitted. With the amendments of 2011, there remained some provisions that had a discriminatory effect for indigenous women, and such status classification could rise to the level of cultural and spiritual violence against indigenous women, given that it created a perception that certain subsets of indigenous women were less purely indigenous than those with “full status”. 6 5.3 In paragraph 55 of his report, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples stated that the amendments of 2011 did not address all sex-based discrimination stemming from the Indian Act, as acknowledged by the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, and that some classes of people continued to be excluded from status on the basis of the historical discrimination against matrilineal descendants. Author’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 6.1 On 8 February 2015, the author submitted comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits. He notes that nowhere in article 2 of the Optional Protocol is it stated that an individual must be female in order to submit a communication when claiming to be a victim of gender-based discrimination. The author recalls that he and his children are victims, as descendants of an indigenous woman, of the violations perpetrated by the State party against indigenous women and their descendants. 6.2 The author further submits that the discrimination is ongoing, given that it was perpetuated by the amendments of 2011, which, as acknowledged in the State party’s submission, differentiate between matrilineal and patrilineal descendants. The author recalls that the Committee has expressed its concern about the fact that the Indian Act continued to contain discriminatory provisions and recommended that the State party eliminate the continuing discrimination with respect to the transmission of Indian status. 7 6.3 On the supposed necessity for the author to bring a case before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the author recalls that the Human Rights Committee, in its decision of admissibility in Lovelace v. Canada, 8 noted that the Optional Protocol did not impose on the alleged victim the obligation to have recourse to the national courts, if the highest court of the State party concerned had already substantially decided the question at issue. The author notes that it took Ms. McIvor 26 years to receive a partial remedy. The author therefore alleges that a remedy under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is an unreasonable and illusory option, because it takes many years and is very expensive and as such would not be financially feasible for him. He has a very low annual income and is a beneficiary of a Canadian disability pension plan. 6.4 On the merits, the author recalls that the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights noted in its report on the amendments of 2011 that it did not deal with all sex __________________ 6 7 8 6/19 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Canada, para. 69. CEDAW/C/CAN/CO/7, para. 18. Human Rights Committee, Lovelace v. Canada, decision of admissibility of 14 August 1979. 22-03658