Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the area of aboriginal languages and grants and contributions for aboriginal language and heritage and culture, on page 9-18 under operations expense, aboriginal languages is budgeted for $5,591,000. On page 9-19, under grants and contributions, a total of $505,000. That, plus the agreement between the Government of the Northwest Territories and the federal government for languages, another $1.9 million, for a total of $6.4 million. I would like to ask the Minister for a break down of how those dollars are spent and where the dollars are going. I realize it is a lot to ask, so I do not expect the Minister to answer me in detail, maybe just in general. I would like a written copy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I would like to know the success rate of these funds, especially the ones that are going into the schools from K-12. The fact is $5 million is quite a bit of dollars, and it should help in improving the ability of our aboriginal students in learning and enhancing their aboriginal language skills. I know there are language communities working right now on developing a strategy to enhance and revive our languages in the communities. I would suggest that it is a full-time position, a full-time job to do that. Our languages are deteriorating at such a quick rate that we need to battle head on to have any success.

In consultation with these language communities, I would encourage the department to secure funding to hire full-time language coordinators in each aboriginal community. The dollars that are allocated to the language communities are based on aboriginal population. A lot of the communities in the Northwest Territories have a large Metis contingency, and they are not recognized as aboriginal people that speak their languages. I would suggest there are a lot of Metis people out there that are bilingual. A lot of their relatives and children would like to be bilingual also. I think that should be recognized, and it should be accounted for in the funding policy or funding agreements that the department enters into at the language community. I would strongly suggest that.

I wonder if I could get a commitment from the Minister at this time to work with the language communities and see if there is a need, I do believe there is a need for full-time language coordinators, and that he secure funding for those positions for the long term, not a six month project or a five month project or a one year project. This is not a problem that could be tackled in spurts. It has to be a comprehensive and sustained effort on behalf of all involved, especially the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

Further to that, to enhance the cultural awareness and history of the communities and regions and people of the Northwest Territories, the original peoples, I believe there is a need to really tackle the issue that people in the communities are despaired because there is a lack of information about the history. They do not know too much about the history. The elders in our communities, their numbers are getting lower, and with that we are losing a lot of tradition.

I believe we need cultural centres in every community that depict the history of the community, the history of the people with photographs, with written literature. This will help revive and sustain the heritage and cultures of northern aboriginal people and the languages. I wonder if I could get the Minister's thoughts on that, and possibly a commitment in working towards achieving that initiative. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the Minister for leaving me a few seconds to add on to my thoughts and questions. Thank you, Mr. Minister.

I agree that the approach is through the school system. I think we need to address that. It is at a fundamental level. All studies point to the home for language revival. I understand the history of the Northwest Territories with the residential schools. Written language, there are a lot of adults and young adults that do not have those skills.

It is great that the students learn the language at school, but if they do not practice it at home with their parents, it defeats the purpose. I think we need to address the issue head on, the two-prong issue or three-prong issue. We not only have to deal with the students in the schools, but we have to deal with their parents so that they are compatible when they are using the language in the homes.

To that end, I think we need to address the problem at the community level, not only at the school level. I think we have to find the dollars, $6.4 million is quite a lot of dollars for approximately, I would say, 10,000 people that want to learn language.

If you take half the population of the Northwest Territories, which is about 20,000, you take away the people that are already speaking the language, then $6.4 million is quite a bit of dollars for that many people. I think you should be able to find resources that are needed that you say there is a lack of, and be innovative. We are talking partnerships all the time. The federal government has programs and services in this area, as well, and if you work with the language communities and the federal government, I am sure you could find the resources to do that.

I would strongly encourage you to follow up on that with all parties involved. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In regard to the residential school system, that was a very devastating impact on the aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories. It ruined the language, which kind of took away from the culture. There is a sense of disparity in the communities. I would suggest that sense of disparity, the lack of knowledge about the history, leads to individuals' disparity and their spirit is down.

In any society, when the spirit is broken, there are problems associated with that. I believe our education and graduation levels, high percentage of alcohol use, smoking, health problems, all come from this lack of history and lack of spirit about their history and about themselves.

To that end, I think, there needs to be a big push in the aboriginal community and with this government, to establish cultural centres that would depict, as I said earlier, the history of the people, the culture, and try to revive that broken spirit.

I think that leads to a lot of negative impact on the individuals in our communities and as a society in the Northwest Territories. I think this department, in cooperation and in partnership with all other departments of this government, should look at working with each First Nation community and identifying the resources to establish cultural centres.

It could be used for tourism as well. We always say tourism is important for communities, but people do not like to go to communities just for the sake of going to communities. If we have centres such as this, they will be able to go some place and say, "Oh, this is the history of the community. This is the history of the people." You could have a website that you could share with the rest of the world, not only with each other.

I believe that if I could get the Minister's thoughts on that. Is he willing to work with the other departments along with the aboriginal communities in establishing cultural centres, which deals with heritage, culture, language and tourism and information centres? I would appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.