A group of students from Newfoundland and Labrador have once again shown that they can compete and succeed on the national stage.

Each year, the Department of Canadian Heritage sponsors a national video competition called Racism. Stop it! This contest encourages students to create a video that speaks to the elimination of racism. On March 21, a team of five students from Gander Collegiate was named one of the top five high school winners. This is the first time that a team from this province has been named as one of winning teams.

The five team members are Laura Gushue, Mike Mosher, Zach Healey, Rhea Simms and Nida Najifi. They wrote and produced the video as part of their work in a local technology education course offered at Gander Collegiate.

The winning videos were selected by a panel of judges for their originality, audiovisual quality and effectiveness. The message from the Gander students� message was � it only takes one to make a difference. It�s a simple message, but true and one that clearly resonated with the judges.

The winning videos will be shown on national television. Even better, the Gander Collegiate video will be the only one broadcast on both French and English CBC TV, as theirs was the only video without dialogue, and therefore required very little translation.

This is a tremendous accomplishment for these young students. They developed the idea for the video, as well as acted in and produced the final piece. What�s more, as Christmas holidays began, they got together to create and record an original score for the video.

Efforts like this to stop the racism and inequalities that are faced by those most vulnerable are exactly what we are working hard to promote through the Violence Prevention Initiative. We have committed $9.2 million over six years to reduce violence in Newfoundland and Labrador, and to eliminate the attitudes that continue the cycle of violence in our province. It is extremely encouraging to see our students embrace this important effort.

On behalf of this honourable House, I extend my sincere congratulations to these talented young people and to their teacher, Mr. Brian Mosher. I�m sure we haven�t heard the last from them.

2008 04 23                                                   2:20 p.m.