Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a Member of the special committee that travelled around the North to hear from language communities, to hear from interested residents, I have to say that it's particularly gratifying that this legislation has come before us now and will likely be passed before the 14th Assembly fades and goes off and the 15th Assembly takes over where it left off. This was one of the things that I felt was very important for us to finish so that we could have some sense of completion, so that the people of the Northwest Territories could recognize that after this 10-year review there would be an effort to improve the use of languages in the Northwest Territories.

I have to say that, I think, in our travels the one thing that I was most struck by, maybe, was the level of interest around the Territories, particularly in small communities. Particularly from aboriginal language groups. The concern about the loss of language and the realization, for me, Mr. Chairman, that there are generations of people who do not have use of the language anymore. The elders are typically hanging on to the language. But, Mr. Chairman, as they leave us, oftentimes their children have not kept up use of the language and, therefore, their children as well, in turn, do not have the language.

We are starting to see some revitalization of the languages in schools, but it's very difficult for the youngest children, school-age children, who come home and have parents who have lost their language.

The francophone community, it was also interesting, was very concerned about accountability of language funding. How it was being spent, where it was being spent and whether there was adequate reporting going on so that this money could be tracked and accounted for. They also, I think, were insistent that there be a Minister responsible for official languages; somebody that could be held to account. It was interesting to see for me that the francophone community was really concerned about the provision of services in their language, whereas some of the aboriginal language communities I think felt that it was much more important to concentrate, acknowledging that we have limited dollars, on revitalization of language. I can't remember who talked to us about this, but somebody made the point, a number of people made the point, that provision of service is fine and it is important, but there will be no one to use these services in these languages if we don't do something about revitalization of languages.

Mr. McLeod spoke of Daniel Sonfrere who spoke and presented to us on the Hay River Reserve. Indeed, he did feel that the focus couldn't be limited to just language, that in fact we had to ensure that it was linked with culture. The two could not be separated and government and the people had to make efforts to acknowledge this and recognize it.

I think for our part we had a lot of discussion as a committee about making sure that our recommendations were doable. There were many things that could have been done and I think we wanted to focus and concentrate on the things that we knew the government could achieve and would not get lost. We were very conscious of not wanting to have a report with very nice sounding, but seriously expensive recommendations that would gather dust on a shelf somewhere. I think we've achieved that. I think this bill is ambitious, but it's also reasonable in its scope and reasonable in its attempt at dealing with our language challenges.

As Mr. Nitah, I think, said, there are consequential amendments to come. We hope they will come to other bills; the Education Act, most notably. It will be up to this Assembly and the next Assembly to keep the Minister's feet to the fire to ensure that those actions are taken so that we can have a comprehensive overhaul of our language system and work and do what we can to make sure we don't lose our languages and make sure there are provisions of service in the official languages where it's required.

I think that's about all I have to say, Mr. Chairman, except again to reiterate that it's very gratifying as a Member of the committee to finally see this come forward. I want to thank, certainly, our committee chairman, Mr. Nitah, and all of our colleagues on the committee. We did a lot of hard work over the last two years. I thank all the people who showed real interest in coming out to make presentations to the committee. Thank you.

---Applause