Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take a few minutes to thank the
Members of the Legislature and yourself for providing me with the opportunity to, I believe, in the latter part of last week, to attend the Aboriginal Achievement Awards in Calgary. I thank the Premier and the Cabinet for supporting me, as well as yourself, in being able to attend that event. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to draw the Members' attention to something that I found to be of great significance while attending it, not only in receiving the award this year, which I am very grateful for, but also to draw attention to a very important fact, which is this National Achievement Award is the only forum in this country that gives recognition to achievements to aboriginal people across all sectors of our lives, and it is done by a national jury of aboriginal people. So it is a national jury of aboriginal people that make the selection every year and it is aboriginal people that make the nominations.
What I found to be incredibly enriching is while attending it I have now become aware, where I was not before, of achievements that we have made as aboriginal people in other fields. For instance, we have met doctors, aboriginal doctors, judges, lawyers, and film makers, actresses, and actors, authors, and poets, as well as business people and artists and members of the clergy. These people are world class, nationally renowned, internationally acclaimed people in some cases. This forum provided to me, for the very first time, an opportunity where I could meet people from these other fields and to celebrate with them the achievements that they have attained and this has not been available, so it provides me with the opportunity, as well, to advance their achievements to young leaders that we have here in the north, in forums that will be available to me. Thank you very much.
-- Applause.