Mr. Speaker, I was happy to hear that the member understands the importance of language to indigenous communities across the country as the core of their culture and the core of reconciliation.
We have 70-some indigenous languages across Canada. Most of them are in British Columbia, where it is very diverse. In the Okanagan, where I live, the Syilx people speak Nsyilxcen. There are only 50 fluent speakers of Nsyilxcen left. It is at risk of extinction, as are three-quarters of indigenous languages in Canada.
Reversing that trend is at the heart of reconciliation, and it takes money. The NDP is very much in favour of legislation to benefit indigenous language knowledge across Canada, but we see one big flaw in this legislation: There is no long-term funding. The Syilx people have a fluency training program, one of only three in Canada, whereby they are desperately trying to teach young people fluency in the language. This takes time and money, and yet there is no funding in this legislation for that kind of work. That work is at the heart of this whole idea of retaining these languages and retaining indigenous cultures across Canada.