Mr. Speaker, when I started teaching again 40 years ago, my cousin ended up going to Botswana and was teaching at same time. Similar to the story that the member just mentioned was something he talked about. People would walk for miles and miles to classrooms of 50 people and it was the significance of the education they had.
If I go back to some of the earlier experiences I had as a teacher, I could see the excitement that young students had as they would come into school. However, as time would progress, they would find they were having some difficulties. I had many situations where people from first nation schools came back into the public school system and a lot of remedial work was required. However, they worked as hard as they possibly could to get back to a level where they could read and process , and from that point they did amazing things.
This is the second time I have been on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. The first time we did a study in the territories and we had a chance to talk about different barriers to development. One of the key barriers that was mentioned was education. We had a chance to speak to various individuals there, and these were young people in their twenties and thirties. They had such amazing skills because they had learned it from the land and also from the education system, which they had been able to work through.
Therefore, if we give first nations the opportunity, the talents are certainly there and we will see some amazing things for our next generation of aboriginal students and for our country.