Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to touch on percentages. In the Northwest Territories, we seem to have a lot of percentages, especially in the aboriginal community. We have a high percentage of drop out rates in school, a high percentage of unemployment, a high percentage of health problems, high percentage of illiteracy. These are all areas that are very important.

Then we go to the other side, which is still very important. We have a very low percentage of high school graduates, a very low percentage of university graduates. Those are all concerns of mine. What is even a bigger concern, Mr. Chairman, is the very low percentage of aboriginal speaking people in the Northwest Territories. We are failing at educating them and we are failing them on preserving and enhancing it. A lot of that responsibility lies within the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

I would like to give some suggestions for possible remedies to these problems. One of the areas I would like to ask the Minister about, and I will suggest a solution, if he gives me time with his quick answers. I have a table here that speaks to the aboriginal communities funding levels for language development. It is broken down into Chipewyan, Cree, Dogrib, Gwich'in, Inuvialuit, North Slavey, and South Slavey. It gives a percentage of the population based on census. They then compare it to another census. They give you a percentage of the total population and funding accordingly. I sure would like to see the French people moved out and be put in this table. If I could get that by tomorrow, it would be nice. Can the Minister commit to that for me please?

Thank you. That is good to know. I would still like to see that information.

Thank you. That will be nice. That will be a good comparison. I think I stated in the last session that there is $1 million for francophone language and $1.9 million for aboriginal languages, which works out to about $1,000 per francophone and about $100 per aboriginal. I would like to look at it differently from another table. I do not think that status has changed.

In the Akaitcho territory, there is a language strategy that has been developed. Mr. Miltenberger and I had met with Sabet Biscaye this morning to discuss it. Some of the information that was given to us was kind of disturbing. There was a letter that Mr. Miltenberger referred to earlier in the day, signed by Pauline Gordon, assistant deputy minister, Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Some of the words she used suggest that the funding is going to be reduced. There is no encouragement that funding is going to improve. We need funding to save our languages. The language is the key to culture. The culture of the Dene people is based on language. It is disturbing to see this. I will give you an example. I will read one quote;

"Where a reduction in funding is required due to a revision of the population estimates, 50 percent of this revision will be applied to next year's budget and full reduction will be applied to the following year's budget."

They are anticipating the budget being reduced, not increased. When we talk about the language community, what do we mean by that? Do we mean people that speak a language and it does not matter where they live? Or is it the community where a language is predominantly spoken? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there are two parts to the question. In terms of the allocation formula, what was done was the allocation, as I believe the letter points out, was based on the population statistics in the Territories. The population statistics could go up or down. I think the Member is correct to point out that in fact they could go up in a region as well as they could go down. We simply wanted to be clear in the correspondence that if there had to be an adjustment, it would not happen all at once. It would be phased over time. That would be true if it was reduced. That was the intention, I believe, of that clause. As the Member correctly points out, it could go up as well as down.

With respect to the second part of the question, when we discussed the matter with representatives from the various languages, before we set up the allocation formula, they pointed out to us that the relative health of languages differs across the Territories. They suggested that we allocate the funding based on the number of people in the aboriginal communities as opposed to who spoke the language or did not speak the language. That is why the percentage by population was used as opposed to language speakers or the other. We expect that language activities will vary between groups simply because of health of language or the appropriate language activity. Thank you.