Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As I said in my Member's statement yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I would like to again talk about the importance of seniors and elders in the NWT in the context of retaining our languages, cultures and traditional knowledge.

Mr. Speaker, the elders of the NWT represent a vast wealth of information and knowledge that the residents of the NWT cannot afford to lose, especially at the alarming rate that we have witnessed in the past few years with the passing of many prominent elders. Mr. Speaker, the information and the knowledge of the elders who have passed on, and those who have not been utilized to date will be forever lost if we do not start to develop and encourage the sharing of these resources within our school systems, institutions, and this government.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to encourage this government to be more receptive to development of a database or an institution which encourages the growth and retention of all of the traditional knowledge so that people from all walks of life can enjoy all of the historical knowledge and stories that are passed on to our children, and also some of this traditional knowledge to help them in their daily lives, be it information on traditional medicines used by our ancestors, traditional activities and customs, traditional trails and hunting methods, or just some historical information that is told in the words of the elders who have been directly involved in a lot of the issues that we as northerners are living with today, such as treaties, land claims, northern development, and non-development of our lands and resources.

That being said, Mr. Speaker, I would like to again emphasize the importance of this initiative and, in particular, the growing reliance on our seniors within our society to ensure the success of many of this government's and other governments' programs and services. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause