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.