Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in debate of the budget for Education, Culture and Employment, much of the discussion has centred on various topics about Aurora College. I would like to speak again about what has been on my mind lately, as well as that of some of my constituents. This has to do with the long-term vision, but I would really like to see Aurora College becoming a fully accredited university in the not-too-distant future. One of my constituents even wrote to tell me that in fact there is land set aside for such a university north of Frame Lake.

Mr. Speaker, we have so much happening in the North that should be of academic interest. People from all over the world come here already, not just to admire the aurora borealis, but to study the wonders and sciences of it, yet we do not have a research centre studying it. We also have had teams of scientists and engineers studying cold weather technology, whether it be for automobiles, road building or construction of houses. We have been a testing ground for all these, as well as an importer of the technology. We could become a world leader in this regard.

The mineral development in the gold and diamonds of modern times is only the tip of the iceberg in the way of mineral and geological findings, studies of interest to academia. I recently watched a program on TV where a team of geologists and engineers from all over the world converged on the Inuvik area because that's where the most pure form of frozen gas samples can be had, but they spent much of their time talking about how excited they were to send these samples to their colleagues in the U.S., German, Russian and Japanese universities. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had an academic research centre in a university setting right here where these samples could be analyzed and written about, so that the scholars would fly here to learn and spread the knowledge out into the world?

The topic of interest for academic research doesn't just end there, Mr. Speaker. There are a lot of unique and groundbreaking discoveries going on here politically and socially as well. The evolution of our government and the unique challenges we face in our consensus system could only benefit from political scientists who enjoy the privilege of independent minds and affiliations, not from the southern perspective, but from the intimate knowledge they would have from living and teaching here.

We are also on the frontier of developing governance models as a number of self-government agreements are becoming a reality more and more everyday. I have no doubt that a lot of knowledge can be had in this area that would contribute greatly to the age old world dialogue about how and why a society chooses to govern itself the way it does. The list is endless. Mr. Speaker, may I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement? Thank you.