Mr. Speaker, on August 4, just to give a little bit of background in the context of departmental consolidations, the Cabinet transferred the official languages section of the Department of Culture and Communications to the Department of the Executive. The responsibility, I would just like to go on, of that unit is the coordination and delivery of official language services throughout the government, and this includes: development of government-wide guidelines for the provision of services; the coordination of government initiatives with respect to the maintenance and the revitalization of aboriginal languages, including identification of priorities; the coordination of negotiations with the federal government for the funding of official languages agreements; and the coordination of the implementation of official languages agreements and evaluation of monitoring of these agreements. As well, the coordination of responses of reports, recommendations and requests for information on the Official Languages Commissioner.
Mr. Speaker, as well, Elizabeth Biscaye was appointed Assistant Deputy Minister responsible for the official languages units. In a more specific response, we are supportive of the utilization and the promotion of traditional knowledge within the limits of what is possible, I suppose, within financial restraints. What I am trying to do, as Government Leader, is to take that report in acknowledgement of the timing that was initially agreed to, recognizing that we are behind time in responding to that report.
With the official languages, as well as a number of other initiatives, we want to put together a working group, and I know that the honourable Member feels that it is further delaying some of the implementations, but I would hope that if the honourable Member -- I know, that there are a lot of people that are interested in the traditional working knowledge, and I fully support that because I believe for a long time now we have not really taken adequate notice of traditional knowledge. I have a very special interest in that, and I want to get together and look at the report and look at the commitments we have made.
I know that there was a paper in June brought forward to the Cabinet by the Minister of Culture and Communications, and I am going to make a commitment to bring back to you the findings and the workings in November of what steps we are planning and the priorities we are going set in November. Thank you.