In late 2025, the Canadian Senate passed Bill S-2, An Act to amend the Indian Act (new registration entitlements) at third reading and sent it to the House of Commons as a Senate government bill sponsored by Senator Marc Gold.¹ It’s being sold as a critical step toward fixing “long-standing inequities” in Indian Act registration and band membership that have “deeply affected First Nations individuals and families.”² ³

On paper, that sounds like the opposite of everything I’ve been warning about.

So why does it still feel like more people being invited into the same cage?

This piece follows on from Two Hats, One Circle: What Benwah’s Meme Accidentally Admits. There, I argued that Jasen Benwah’s little graphic — one circle, two hats, the same people rotating roles — quietly confessed how power really works in Newfoundland land politics.

Bill S-2 is the same circle, scaled up to Ottawa.

The Meme Moves to Ottawa

In Two Hats, One Circle, the trick was simple:

• Hat 1: community defender
• Hat 2: land-claim institution

Same faces, same circle, different labels depending on what they’re selling that day.

Now look at Bill S-2.

In the federal story, the hats are:

• Hat 1: “ending discrimination in registration”
• Hat 2: “maintaining control of the land registry, Canada Lands, and liability exposure.”

You hear a lot about Hat 1. Hat 2 lives in the fine print.

According to Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), Bill S-2 is supposed to deal with “remaining inequities” in registration and band membership, especially those rooted in enfranchisement — the old system where First Nations people had to give up Indian Act status to vote, own property, or pursue certain jobs — and in rules that kept treating enfranchised families and their descendants differently.² ⁴ ⁵ Before 1985, enfranchised people didn’t just lose status; they lost band membership and the right to live on reserve.⁶

At the same time, ISC now admits that the second-generation cut-off has had “deep impacts” since 1985, stopping many status First Nations people from passing entitlement to their children and grandchildren after two generations of parenting with non-status partners.³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁷ The federal “Understanding the Second-Generation Cut-off” booklet spells it out: after two such generations, the third generation loses entitlement completely.⁵ The Assembly of First Nations has been saying for years that this rule erases people from the registry even when their families have stayed rooted in their communities.⁶

Legal commentators and senators are now comfortable saying the quiet part out loud: this is “legislated extinction” built straight into the definition of who counts as an “Indian” under federal law.⁷ ⁸

So yes, Bill S-2 goes after real injustices.

But this is Bayman’s Paradox, not Ottawa’s press office. So we have to ask a second question:

What happens when you “fix” discrimination by enrolling more people into the same federal cage — without changing who owns the cage, who surveys it, or who gets sued when something goes wrong?

What Bill S-2 Actually Changes

The official ISC overview frames Bill S-2 as a tidy bundle of technical fixes to the registration provisions of the Indian Act.² ³ ⁴ Under that framing, the bill would:

• Expand entitlement for individuals and descendants who lost status through enfranchisement, including women who were pushed out and their children.² ⁴ ⁶
• Patch some remaining inequities between registration categories created by earlier amendments (Bill C-31, Bill S-3).² ⁸
• Create a mechanism for voluntary deregistration, so people can ask to be removed from the Indian Register if they choose.² (Read it once...twice...go look at your ancestry DNA test...think rationally, not from the emotional greed perspective home really loves.)

Most of this is presented as Parliament doing its homework after court cases like Nicholas v. Canada, which found that the registration rules still violated equality rights for descendants of enfranchised families.⁸ ⁹

The Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples (APPA) then pushed the bill further. After hearing from First Nations leaders, women’s advocates and youth, the committee adopted amendments that would:⁷

• Eliminate the second-generation cut-off by moving to a simple one-parent rule: if at least one parent is entitled to registration, the child can be registered.³ ⁵ ⁷
• Scrap the discriminatory “unknown paternity” rule that punished children of status mothers when the father wasn’t listed.⁷
• Delete a proposed “good-faith” liability shield that would have limited the federal government’s exposure for past discriminatory registration decisions where officials claimed they acted in good faith.⁷

If the House of Commons leaves these amendments in place, that is a real win on paper. Generations of women and their descendants — people who were downgraded or erased by overtly sexist and enfranchisement-based rules — would finally see a more complete repair.⁶ ⁷ ⁹

So yes, more people will be entitled to an Indian Act registration number.

That’s the “more cards” part of this story.

Now let’s talk about the cage.

What S-2 Doesn’t Touch: Canada Lands and the Cage

Status is not the same thing as sovereignty.

The Indian Act is still a federal law that governs registered Indians, their bands, and the system of Indian reserves.¹⁰ It still defines who is, and who is not, legally recognized as an “Indian,” and how reserve communities are supposed to be governed.¹¹ ¹² It’s been called what it is for a long time now: a colonial governance framework that replaced Indigenous systems with band councils under federal control.¹³

On the land side, the key category is Canada Lands. Under the Canada Lands Surveys Act, “Canada Lands” explicitly includes “surrendered lands or a reserve” as those terms are defined in the Indian Act, plus other federal Crown lands.¹⁴ ¹⁵ Natural Resources Canada explains that Canada Lands Surveys “define the extent of a reserve’s lands” and administer surveys for thousands of First Nations reserves and other Canada Lands.¹⁶ ¹⁷ The Surveyor General’s standards set the technical rules for how those surveys are done.¹⁸

In plain language: reserve land is still Canada Lands, and the maps, plans and legal descriptions that make that land legible to courts, corporations and bureaucrats are all produced inside a federal system.

Bill S-2 does not touch that.

It doesn’t change underlying title. It doesn’t turn Canada Lands into something else. It doesn’t dismantle the imposed band-council model. Even federal “self-government” material quietly admits that Indian Act bands are operating inside a colonial structure that Ottawa is only willing to loosen on its own schedule.¹³ ¹⁶

So when people say S-2 will end the “era of legislated extinction,” what they really mean is: extinction from the registry. Not extinction of the colonial land categories themselves.

The circle is still there. They’re just letting more people stand inside it.

From Federal Shield to UNDRIP Shield

One of the most celebrated Senate changes is the removal of the “good-faith” liability clause that would have shielded the federal government from some responsibility for historic discriminatory registration decisions.⁷ That matters. No government should be able to say, “we discriminated, but we followed our own rules, so we’re off the hook.”

But zoom out to the bigger legal context.

In 2021, Parliament passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDRIP Act), which affirms the UN Declaration as a human-rights instrument and sets a framework for bringing federal laws into line with it.¹⁹ ²⁰ The Department of Justice calls it an “action-oriented framework” and a roadmap for changing federal law and policy over time.¹⁹ ²¹

In practice, that often turns into a procedural checklist:

• Were the recognized rights-holders consulted?
• Did the process follow the UNDRIP-approved steps?
• Did the right Indigenous bodies sign the agreements?

If the answer is yes, Ottawa and its partners can present whatever they do next as not only legal, but UNDRIP-compliant — the gold standard of reconciliation.

That’s what I mean by an “UNDRIP liability shield.” You can pull down one shield and still be wrapped in another, stronger one that’s harder to challenge because it arrives stamped “human rights” and “partnership.”

When Bill S-2 expands the list of who qualifies as a rights-holder inside the Indian Act system, it also strengthens the procedural legitimacy of whatever comes next: more cardholders, more people Ottawa and industry can point to when they say:

“We consulted. Your leaders agreed. Your people benefit. What more do you want?”

Paper Bands, Real Land

Now bring this down to the ground — to the Port au Port Peninsula and beyond — where wind-hydrogen projects and land claims are tangled up together.

We have already watched people like Jasen Benwah, Mildred Lavers, and Peggy White wear two hats in the same circle:

• On one day, the community hat — talking heritage, culture, and “representation.”
• On another day, the rights-holder / land-claim hat — drawing lines on maps, talking territory from Port au Port to the Northern Peninsula to Caudroy–Port aux Basques, and speaking for “the people” in rooms most of those people will never see.

Those roles draw their legal weight from the same Indian Act–UNDRIP framework that Bill S-2 is busy expanding. The more people who hold status under that framework, the more bargaining weight these paper institutions can claim when they sit down with Ottawa or with developers.

Here’s the part that never makes the news release:

More bargaining power for the band does not automatically mean more sovereignty for the individual.

If you are an Indian Act status holder whose band leadership:

• does not represent your views on wind projects,
• signs impact-benefit agreements you believe are wrong,
• or uses band-level status to push territorial claims over communities that never voted for them,

then every new status card is another piece of paper behind their leverage, not yours.

From a distance, it looks like empowerment:

“Look how many people are being brought back into the fold.”

Up close, in places like Port au Port, it looks more like this:

• More people enrolled into a system where Canada still owns and surveys the underlying land category as Canada Lands, through the Canada Lands Surveys Act and CLSS.¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁸
• Stronger justification for Ottawa and industry to say: “We dealt with the rights-holders. We followed UNDRIP. Case closed.”¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹
• Less space for dissenting locals — status or not — who object to the deals, the maps, or the definitions, but get told that the proper structures have spoken and everyone else is on board.

That’s what I mean by paper bands: institutions that gain more and more legal footing with every expansion of the registry, even when their democratic legitimacy back home is paper-thin.

More Cards, Same Cage

So does Bill S-2 fix real injustice? Yes.

• It finally goes after some of the damage done to families affected by enfranchisement — people who were forced to choose between basic rights and their legal identity as First Nations.² ⁴ ⁶ ⁹
• It takes a serious run at the second-generation cut-off, which federal documents, First Nations organizations and legal commentators now openly describe as a rule that erases people from the registry after two generations of “wrong” relationships.³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸
• It rejects, in its Senate form, the idea that Ottawa should have a “good-faith” escape hatch for decades of discriminatory decisions.⁷

All of that is real.

But it is also true that:

• The Indian Act framework is still the main vehicle for federal control over registered Indians, bands, and reserves.¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² ¹³
• The Canada Lands / CLSS machinery still defines, marks, and describes reserve boundaries and other federal lands.¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁸
• The UNDRIP Act now provides a powerful procedural shield: if the boxes are ticked and the recognized rights-holders sign, the decision arrives wrapped in the language of human rights and reconciliation.¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹

That’s the paradox.

You can genuinely end one form of discrimination while tightening the overall system of control. You can invite people back into the circle while keeping the circle drawn by the same surveyors, on the same federal maps, under the same land category.

More cards. Same cage.

Questions for INAC Card Holders

So here’s my “very humble opinion,” stretched into a few blunt questions:

• If your band is using its status to back projects you oppose — like wind-hydrogen developments on land you still consider home — does expanding the registry give you more voice, or just give them more leverage?
• If Canada keeps the final say over Canada Lands, surveys, and the underlying legal categories, how much “sovereignty” are you really gaining when your registration category changes, but the land regime doesn’t?
• When the next big project comes — hydrogen, mining, transmission — will your card make it easier to say no, or just harder to refuse the consensus that was already rehearsed in the circle?

People want the benefits. After everything that’s been taken, of course they do.

But benefits attached to an Indian Act registration number are not free.

They are attached to a structure.

Bill S-2 may change how many names fit inside that structure.

It does not change who drew the circle.

See Also

• Two Hats, One Circle: What Benwah’s Meme Accidentally Admits
• The Quiet Framework: How Self-Government Gets Built Behind Closed Doors
• The Edit That Gave It Away: When “Private Property” Becomes “A Land Base”

References