Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was going to make a statement last Tuesday, which was Shrove Tuesday, but I realized that we have so many dates on our calendar that have significance and meaning to them that you could stand up on almost any day of the year and find it is a special day for some reason or another. Instead of talking about going to the priest last Tuesday and asking to be forgiven for all my sins and then having pancakes -- which would be the last good meal I would have for 40 days, until Easter -- I decided people don't do this any more. That is not what people do on Shrove Tuesday.

However, today is a very important day which is meaningful to many of us because it is Heritage Day. It strikes me that in this great country of ours, and particularly in the Northwest Territories where we have so many cultures, it would be an opportunity for us to do something rather special, something different. Instead of just marking it on the calendar and saying this is Heritage Day, we should be doing things within our own society, within our own country, within our own language, which are meaningful right now, today. The calendar is full of dates that have been set aside by the Christian church and there has been a great civilizing influence throughout the centuries, but many of these customs and traditions are not really part of everyday life in the way we know it today. I would like to urge people today to reflect on this matter. Many of the challenges that we face relate to the fact that we are from different backgrounds, different histories and different cultures, and the challenge for us to live together may be to find respect for the way people look at the world. We could all live together more fully, I suppose, if we really appreciated the kind of cultural baggage we bring with us, the history we bring with us, so that by looking forward, we can solve the problems ahead. I would particularly urge the Minister of Education and Culture to look at this to see if in future we could do something definite, just more than simply observe it on the calendar. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

---Applause