Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to say that we have put a lot of work into the Education Act over the last few days. We worked on it for quite a bit here. In the last few days when we were actually going clause by clause and it wasn't strong enough regarding treaty rights and aboriginal issues, we were able to strengthen that and I would like to thank the Members of this House for that. I think it will go a long way in satisfying people with treaty concerns, and who have been raising this issue for many years. Finally, it is in here and, hopefully, it does something better.
I wanted to get bigger and better clauses in here, but we were able to compromise. I still would like to see those amendments in there, especially for languages. Unfortunately, we were unable to put in that it is mandatory to teach the aboriginal languages. Now it is the choice of the communities, and perhaps that's a good thing. But I was thinking that the flexibility that is there, while it may be good, could be bad too. A mandatory clause to teach aboriginal languages, in the long run...We're a majority here, but in the future, aboriginal people may become a minority. It's the choice of the communities now, but we're going to sit with this thing for the next ten years or more.
If it had been mandatory that we have to teach aboriginal languages, it would have gone a long way to save the languages. It was the survival of the languages that I was concerned about. I was thinking for the future but, unfortunately, didn't get it. I would have liked to have seen it in there, but it's not. That's the way it goes. We were outvoted. We'll see, in time, how this is going to have an effect on our languages.
Overall, there was give and take and compromises. I would like to thank all the Members for the supporting the clauses that we were able to put in here. Thank you. Mahsi.
---Applause