Bill C-31: The Abocide Bill
- Introduction
  by  
Harry W. Daniels   
Former President , Congress of Aboriginal Peoples  
(Note: Speaking notes related to this text are available at this link)

The French have a saying: "Plus que ca change, plus que c'est la meme chose." The more things change, the more they remain the same. This adage aptly describes the changes that Bill C-3 1 brought about more than ten years ago. It is not that the changes Bill C-3 1 made were unimportant, even less that they were ineffective. The amendments Bill C-3 1 made to the Indian Act are without a doubt the most important that had ever been made to the Indian Act regime in its over 100 years of existence. They have affected and continue to affect the lives of Indian and Metis people everywhere in Canada.  

Since 1985, over 100,000 Indian people have acquired Indian Status as a direct result of Bill C-31. There can no question that the Bill has been effective: in fact, no piece of legislation has had a greater impact on the masses of Indian and Metis people in the last ten years than has Bill C-31.   

Yet the more we examine Bill C-3 1 and the effects it has had on the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, the more we are brought to realize how little things have changed after all. The Bill not only continues but will actually accelerate the extermination policies - the integration of Canada's Indian population into mainstream society - that have always been at the heart of the federal Indian Act regime. So serious are the Bill's implications in this regard that, within a few generations, there may no longer be any Status Indians left in Canada.  

The elders tell us that when faced with a confusing and difficult situation if a name can be put on the problem, then you can deal with it. There has never been a name for Bill C-3 1, and it strikes us that it needs one. For us, the Bill is the "Abocide Bill', which is not quite the same thing as genocide, but close. Like genocide, it refers to the extermination of a people; in this case, the extermination not of Indians per se, but of their status as Aboriginal people.