Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all have a collective responsibility to do more to make sure our Indigenous languages thrive. This is not an easy task. Young speakers under 25 are much are more likely to gain fluency than those aged 25 to 45, due to a result of intergenerational shame from residential schools and other complicated factors. We have lost a few generations of speakers. I believe there is much more we need to do. There needs to be more oversight in the programs we are delivering. I believe many of the single-class programs we are offering right now are simply failing. We need immersion programs for our Indigenous languages, Mr. Speaker, particularly continuous and reliable land-based immersion programs, which will lead to language transference. No one ever learned French from a single class. In fact, no one really learned any subject from a single class. You have to have immersion as an option.

Now is the time for this work because this is our last generation of people whose first language is an Indigenous language. I am not convinced that we are winning this battle. We have no time to delay this work. If we deliberate and fail now, that is it. There go five millennia of knowledge, or 13 or 65 millennium. Succession plans need to be in place for Indigenous peoples to be the territorial authorities over their languages. Mr. Speaker, we have many amazing language holders who have been teaching for over 20 years, but, if they are not producing more language speakers than we are losing, then this is a losing battle.

The first step along this battle is to make sure we have the proper data in place. I am not talking about the census data, and I am not talking about the work that is been started in schools. We need to be tracking every single year for every single language, whether we are producing more speakers than we are losing. Absent us doing that, Mr. Speaker, we will all see Indigenous languages go extinct in our lifetime. Then perhaps these interpreter booths around us and the translation work we do will just be a reminder of our collective failure. I will not be part of seeing any Indigenous languages go extinct, and the first step along this is making sure we are clearly and honestly measuring how much of a problem this is. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.