Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I like the message from the Member for Tu Nedhe. We all acknowledge the history of aboriginal people has been very negative, and has had a negative impact on aboriginal people across this country for the last few hundred years.

Despite everything, aboriginal people have survived. I believe aboriginal people will not only survive, but have tremendous potential to recover, to grow and prosper and be a strong people again. I believe we can be stronger than we are today. We have to have a plan and a commitment to work together to improve our lives.

While Mr. Nitah was talking, I remembered one of the first times I made print in the national paper. It was in 1975, when Commissioner Hawson was still a one-man government in the Northwest Territories. I was working with George Erasmus in the Dene Nation office. Mr. Erasmus was not available when a reporter from the Financial Post came to interview someone. I was the only one around that day. I posed for a picture, standing as tall, straight and arrogant as I could.

There was a picture of me and a quote that said "what we want is to have a lot of political control". I remember people saying it was incredible audacity for somebody that nobody knew, I was just a field worker at the time, to say something like that...but that was the kind of thing we were talking about in 1975. It was two years later the chiefs decided to put candidates forward to be elected to this Legislature. That motion is still a standing motion of the Dene chiefs, to put people in here to be Members of the Legislature.

What we have never finished is articulating the strategy of how our MLAs, chiefs and Ministers are supposed to work together once we were all in place. There is a lot of political control in place. We just have not yet decided how it should be used.

One of the biggest difficulties we have is staying positive. We know the problems. For years, people kept saying it was the federal government's fault, or it is the government's fault.

We need to get beyond that and talk about what we can do about it. What can we do? We have a Member of Parliament in Ottawa. We have a Cabinet and a Legislature that is prepared to work closely and strongly with the chiefs, Metis leaders, Inuvialuit leaders and northern peoples. It takes more than just us to do that. We are waiting, and asking the aboriginal leaders to come forward and talk with us about the things we can do together, both the immediate things as well as the long-term things. I think together we will accomplish many things.

Ms. Lee spoke of the tremendous changes she has seen in the last decade or so. There has been a lot of change since 1975. There still is so much more to be done.

Mr. Nitah talked about youth. I think the Member for Tu Nedhe articulated rather well the importance of youth. Many Members will know, especially the ones from smaller communities, about 50 percent of the voting public is under 25. A substantial portion of the people who elect us are considered youth.

We are compelled, if not by a sincere desire to do something about the youth, but to politically ascertain what it is that this part of our constituency wants us to do. What can we do to acknowledge and support them? Even more importantly, what can we do to utilize them, to use them to help us build a stronger, better future for everybody?

This ties into the elders. How the government treats the elders is related to how the youth see and relate to the elders. There is a direct relationship between the responsibility we have to the youth and the elders.

The Minister for Seniors and the Minister for Youth have been designated lead Ministers, so when the youth wish to address a question to this government, their Minister is Mr. Allen. Mr. Allen will take the issue to the appropriate Minister. It may be the Minister responsible for Justice or the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Allen will work in partnership with those Ministers that have responsibility for youth and elders. Mr. Steen will also work in the same way. We will designate an official in the social envelope that will be their principal official to work with these two respective Ministers. Thank you.