First of all, let me thank you for that wonderful question. This is going to be a celebration of the greatest country in the world. The 150th anniversary of Confederation for Canada will be an event from coast to coast to coast that is celebrated in every locale.
We are presently doing these consultations, as you mentioned. Here I'd like to share just one little bit of a proposal put forward by a youth from the north. As you know, we've already got a number of celebrations planned, and in this regard I think of things like the 50th anniversary of the national flag and the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage. Of course, we're in the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and the 75th anniversary of the start World War II. Presently we're commemorating those events.
We've got a number of events on the road to 2017 that we're already acknowledging, but there is this one young person who said to me at a youth round table that his grandmother makes quilts. He's an aboriginal boy from the Northwest Territories, and quilting is part of their tradition. He suggested that for our 150th we should get all of our youth across the country to participate in making a square that would tell people what they think of 150 years in our country, and then we should put all of those squares together from coast to coast to coast and make a beautiful quilt that would then hang in one of our national museums.
And 50 years later the kids are going to be around still, he said, so we should get together again and have the next generation do the same with another quilt, and for years and generations to come people will be able to see how Canada has evolved and how proud we are of everything we have.
These are the types of things I'm hearing from Canadians. And this young boy, I'll tell you, he had an impact everyone in the room.
Aside from that, we're hearing from seniors who want to remember the sacrifices of many of our men and women in uniform, some of whom obviously gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we could have the freedoms, democracy, and liberties that we presently enjoy.
I'm hearing from official language minority communities across the country that they want to make sure that we have both official languages, that they form part of this fabric of our Canadian identity and continue to thrive everywhere, that they're acknowledged.
So I just hope that all of you here will endeavour to do a round table, do a consultation in your own communities, refer people to the website that's now in place and give us your ideas. We want to make this a celebration that Canadians themselves organize and tell us what they want to do. We don't want it to be a celebration where the Government of Canada is telling others how to celebrate. This is an opportunity for all Canadians to have input.