Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have much concern about the issues that my colleague, Mr. Gargan, is raising, but maybe I should take a different tact on this particular matter.

You know, I, for one, will not challenge the knowledge of the elders in our community, or those who speak our language, but I think we have to recognize that there is a professionalism that is important in the work that interpreters/translators do. In fact, what is interesting, is in many cases they are involved in the development of new words, new terminology, and developing, new ways of saying old things, in other words.

In many respects, they also have the responsibility of having the capacity not only to speak the language, but also write the language. In many instances, this is just as important as the oral transmittal of that language from one generation to the next, because I think that many of our aboriginal people in the languages that we speak, we want them to survive, but we cannot always depend on the idea of oral protection.

The fact is, the more we develop our language in terms of the ability to read and write those languages, the more likely our languages will survive. I say that not to be rude, or to be disrespectful to those who speak the language, but I can say to you that having been from a language that has been written since the 1800's, the Gwich'in, I respect a great deal the Slavey, the Dogrib, and the Inuit, for being able to orally transmit that language to their families.

We are a language group that is deeply in danger of disappearing. I look at the young people, and the translators that are here with us today, the Gwich'in, anyhow, those young people that speak the other Dene languages. I think that I could recall when we were first here in 1979, we had no one, and I think we ought to be proud of the fact of how far we have come. I think that we have a long way to go yet, but we have to be proud of where we have come from, and hopefully, it is a sign of the advancement of our own aboriginal languages, no matter what region we are from. I just wanted to make that point, because sometimes we have a tendency of arguing the same issue from a different perspective.

Nonetheless, our intentions should be to protect our aboriginal languages, at least I assume that is the same argument Mr. Gargan is raising.

I think we have to respect the professionalism of the people that do the job for us. I think one of the things that sometimes we overlook is this idea, and I want to point this out to the Minister, who is also the Minister of Education, that language teachers, professional language teachers, are recognized for that in most other jurisdictions across the country. Simply because you are a teacher, does not necessarily mean you are a professional in language development, and I think that has to be considered. I think the same thing has to be done with our interpreters/translators, that in most other jurisdictions, when you are dealing with French interpreters, there is a special recognition for their expertise.

The same thing with language teachers, we cannot always use the argument that in our schools, our aboriginal people have to also be involved in the teaching of our aboriginal languages. I think they are important, but at sometime we have to make a distinction between their role as teachers in all the courses, and their role as language educators.

They are two different things, and we have to work in this system to ensure that is, in fact, the case, because that alone will help the situation that Mr. Gargan has raised. I think we have to move on, and say, let us get on with developing our language, and ability to read and write the systems, and the languages that are available to us.

I think the same concerns I have expressed are what Mr. Gargan has said. The problem is that for us it is unclear, because there are no clear guidelines, there are no policies, and there is no recognition, professional recognition, of the people who are serving us in those languages. So, it makes it difficult for us to appreciate how committed the government is to protection of our aboriginal languages. That is all I wanted to say.