Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank my friend and colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou for his advocacy and work.
While I am here and have the opportunity, I have been asked by the Nuu-chah-nulth people to take every opportunity to thank the member for standing and defending indigenous rights that are protected under the Constitution and for standing in solidarity with the Nuu-chah-nulth people. I say ƛ̓eekoo in their language and meegwetch in his language.
The member talked about the sense of urgency. Les Dorion, president of the Ucluelet First Nation, spoke about there being 15 native speakers of the Barkley dialect of the Nuu-chah-nulth language in 2015. Today there are only nine.
We are losing speakers of our important languages. The Province of British Columbia was waiting for the federal government to move forward with legislation and money to understand the sense of urgency to protect languages. It could not wait any longer and has invested $50 million to get things started, which is far from enough.
I would like to ask my friend and colleague if he could speak about the sense of urgency on getting money rolling to help support our elders and youth to learn and protect languages.