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OTTAWA — The federal government has averted a potentially chaotic, country-wide halt to Indian status registration.

In the wake of a dramatic showdown at the end of the parliamentary year in June, a Quebec Court of Appeal decided Friday to give Liberals until Dec. 22 to finalize a bill that’s been held up by the Senate.

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The bill, a response to a Quebec court decision from summer 2015, is supposed to address sex-based inequities in the Indian Act — basically, problems with the existing law that were keeping some Indigenous people from being able to obtain the government services they are entitled to.

But the piece of legislation, Bill S-3, has reached an impasse with the Senate fighting to keep amendments that would seek to address further discrimination issues by widening the scope of what qualifies as Indian status.

Unlike with the federal budget and several other pieces of legislation this year which the Senate contested, the upper house wasn’t willing to back down on its amendment and as the houses rose for the summer it instead deferred discussion over the bill to this fall.