Mr. Chairman, I would just like to echo concerns of the Member for Nahendeh in regard to the languages report that was put forward to your department to a whole bunch of recommendations looking at the area of declining Aboriginal languages, especially the ones that are finding themselves in pretty near threatened languages, such as the Gwich’in and Inuvialuktun. Again, I think sometimes we may have to take some drastic measures.
I applaud the French in regards to the court case, because it seems like they have a ton of attention,
a lot of resources going into that. I think we have to realize that we have languages that are threatened. They deserve just as much attention as the French, in regard to the court case. I think that, for myself, we do have to look at the recommendations of the special committee that was put forward and recommendations tabled in this House and moving on some of those recommendations and the urgency of it and also working with the local language organizations in regards to cultural societies and whatnot, because I know that they have concerns that they haven’t really seen an increase over the years. But they are also trying to do their part to revive as many languages as they can, and working with the limited resources and basically asking for an increase so that they can take on the challenge but putting the resources forward. I would just like to put that out there to the Minister. I think that is something that we have to be cognizant of and not lose sight that there are threatened languages out there. I think we have to do whatever we can to revive those languages, but more importantly, get them into being more working languages in our communities, bring them back to the stature that they had in the past and make sure those languages are not only symbolic but also working languages that are functioning in our communities.
Again, I would like to leave that with the Minister and see if we can move on some of these recommendations, but more importantly, make more investments into the Aboriginal language area. Thank you.