CEDAW/C/81/D/68/2014 under the Canadian Human Rights Act is still pending; the Commission has applied for a review of the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal before the Federal Court. The State party further submits that the author has failed to bring a constitutional claim of discrimination under the Canadian Charte r of Rights and Freedoms. 4.4 Furthermore, the State party submits that the communication is inadmissible because the fact on which the alleged discrimination is based, the author’s grandmother’s loss of entitlement upon marriage in 1927, occurred prior to the entry into force of the Optional Protocol. 4.5 On the merits, the State party submits that, as a definitional provision, article 1 of the Convention cannot be violated in and of itself. According to the State party, the communication, at its core, concerns the criteria for determining who is eligible to be registered as an Indian. The State party indicates that it establishes who is an “Indian” to ensure that those who are eligible for Indian status have a sufficient degree of descent from, i.e. are sufficiently connected to, the historical First Nations peoples. The State party clarifies that there is no human right to be registered as an Indian and that the registration provisions under the Indian Act are no longer based on gender, but on birth and marriage dates. 4.6 The State party claims that it has fully met its obligations under articles 2 and 3 of the Convention. While recognizing that the Indian Act had traditionally discriminated against women, the State party submits that eliminating discrimination on the basis of gender had been a primary goal in the amendments of 1985. 4.7 The State party submits that the amendments of 2011 addressed the eligibility for status of the grandchildren of women who had lost their status prior to 1985 upon marrying a non-indigenous person, and that it is precisely owing to that legislation that the author is entitled to registration as an Indian. The State party concludes that the only present-day distinction is the circumstance of differing entitlements to registration as an Indian for the great-grandchildren of indigenous women who married non-indigenous men, as opposed to the great-grandchildren of indigenous men who married non-indigenous women, where there was so-called “parenting out” prior to 1985. The State party specifies that the amendments of 2011 left in place a cut-off for parenting out, passing it to the next generation. The author is now eligible for status, but only under section 6 (2) of the Indian Act; the author’s children, as the great-grandchildren of an indigenous woman, may not be eligible. The State party recognizes that, on the contrary, the grandchildren of indigenous men who married non-indigenous women prior to 1985 have status under section 6 (1), rather than section 6 (2), and that therefore the great-grandchild of an indigenous man are also eligible to be registered. 4.8 The State party submits that it does not believe that the level of consultations with indigenous peoples is relevant to the question of whether the registration provisions are discriminatory against women. Additional submission from the author 5.1 On 15 January 2015, the author submitted reports of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 4 and the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, 5 as support for his assertion that the violations that he is claiming are ongoing violations. __________________ 4 5 22-03658 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in British Columbia, Canada (2014). Available at www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/indigenouswomen-bc-canada-en.pdf. A/HRC/27/52/Add.2. 5/19