On my left is Mark Aitken, legal counsel; and, on my right is Dan Daniels, assistant deputy minister responsible for education and culture.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, I missed the comment.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Merci boucoup, mahsi cho, qujannamiik and thank you, Mr. Chair. I am here to address Bill 32, An Act to Amend the Official Languages Act, No. 3.

The Department of Education, Culture and Employment received the Report from the Special Committee on the Review of the Official Languages Act in mid-March. Since that time, we have reviewed the report, met with the accountability and oversight committee Members in early June, with my colleagues and government officials, developed a GNWT response and made a presentation to AOC on September 19, 2003.

On September 30, 2003, I tabled the GNWT response to the special committee's report highlighting the actions being taken by the present government. On October 2, 2003, I introduced in the Assembly Bill 31, before you today.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Members on the Special Committee on the Review of the Official Languages Act for its hard work and the chair, Mr. Steven Nitah, for his commitment to languages in the NWT.

Mr. Chairman, Bill 31 is an initial step to laying a strong foundation to implement the special committee's recommendations. Bill 31 achieves the committee's desire for an aboriginal languages board by proposing the creation of an aboriginal languages revitalization board. The board will be charged with the important task of aboriginal languages maintenance, promotion and revitalization.

The board will also take over the responsibility for languages promotion from the Official Languages Commissioner.

The board members will consist of one member from each aboriginal language community, nominated by their respective communities.

This bill will also create an official languages board.

Through this board, all NWT official languages, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, will be represented. This board provides all official languages committees with the opportunity to advise and make recommendations to the Minister on the administration and delivery of services by government institutions.

This board will have one member from each aboriginal languages community as well as an English and French member. Members will also be nominated by their respective language communities.

For both of these boards, Bill 31 proposes that members be appointed by the Executive Council on the advice of the Minister and, of course, the language community.

Bill 31 also introduces changes to the mandate of the office of the Official Languages Commissioner and designates a minister responsible for the act.

In addition to this, the bill makes a number of changes as requested by the special committee. These include:

• • Amending the preamble to the act to recognize the important role of language communities in preserving and developing their own languages.
• • Recognizing North Slavey, South Slavey, Inuvialuktun and Inuinnaqtun in section 4 of the act, and remove them from the interpretation section;
• • Removing repealed sections of the act and correct spelling, terminology and translation errors;
• • Addition provisions for the government to respond to the annual report of the Official Languages Commissioner within 180 days of tabling of the annual report;
• • Adding provisions for the recognition of the collective language rights of aboriginal people within their homelands; and,
• • Adding provisions for smaller scale evaluations every five years beginning in 2008.

Mr. Chairman, Bill 31 will set the direction for the future preservation of languages in the NWT. The two board structures proposed here will support all minority languages while addressing the critical and immediate need to revitalize, maintain and promote our disappearing aboriginal languages. Mahsi cho, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as a territorial government, our Ministers have been coordinated through the Premier who has been chairing several meetings. We've had Mr. Dent as part of our committee, and we've involved the mayor from time to time, and included the union and company officials. We are in touch with those officials, Mr. Speaker, and we'll do our best to keep everyone informed publicly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, as I say, Mr. Speaker, we first have to update ourselves on what action has been taken, what the union has entered into discussions here with the corporation itself and what the plans of the corporation are; timeframe and so forth. We can provide an update to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a good question, Mr. Speaker. Naturally we want to ensure that we maximize, to the best possibilities, all of the employees that are at Con at the moment who have been employed by Miramar, to ensure that they are able to maximize their pensions and so forth. There's also a consultant who has been hired; David Milne who has worked, I understand, previously with Miramar, to assist workers on a transition plan. We can certainly enter into some questions and discussions with Miramar on this, Mr. Speaker, to find out what the plans are, what the timeframe is and how the employees can be involved. Also I'm sure that the union itself is naturally interested in this area, so we'll touch base with the various organizations in this.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I understand that the company has transferred a number of employees to the Giant Mine operation, and I'm not sure what the company's plans are with respect to the reclamation of the site and whether company employees are there for the long term, for the full reclamation project. I understand that some are working on some of the initial work that needs to be done. We can certainly pursue that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The DECs are restricted, Mr. Speaker. Other than we have initiated a school improvement project for student success, and we're doing this on a pilot basis in seven different districts. Each one chose a school to do a specific project, which could be an area that we could look at for next year to see if we can expand and that was our intention. As we see successes happening, then we can expand the student success projects. They're small funded projects, but they're specifically geared to testing projects to see if they are successful, and we want to take our best examples and repeat that in other areas, Mr. Speaker.