Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department really is supportive of the development of language skills among the population and a lot of money is put into, for instance, helping northerners do better at picking up their languages. For instance, ALCIP, the Aboriginal Language/Culture Instructor Program, has been expanded to next year. It will be a two-year course. That's expanded by one year. The first year will focus on language acquisition. What we are trying to do is make sure communities are better supported to have teachers who speak the aboriginal language of the communities. We should have in our communities, all of the schools able to offer an immersion program from kindergarten to Grade 3 in the language of the community. That is the goal. We are only able to achieve that...I believe we have only a couple of communities that are offering immersion in kindergarten and Grade 1. The problem is we haven't been able to train enough teachers who then stay in the job and speak the aboriginal languages. So it's more than just interpreters and translators. We want to see more people in the Northwest Territories who are able to and comfortable speaking their community language.

In terms of supporting the college, we are quite prepared to support the college if there is a demand for people to take these courses, but to date there hasn't seemed to be as much interest. That's perhaps because there don't seem to be all that many jobs out there for people in this field. I think that's discouraged some people from following it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.