VOL. XLVI No. 24B - 9 a.m., FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1996

Friday, April 26, 1996

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA

Friday, April 26, 1996

The House met at 9 a.m.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

(Continued)

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Mr. Deputy Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. The committee will be resuming consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training. As I have said a few times, we are still on 1.(b) (1) on page 34. Shall the item pass?

Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to see the--

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Before we get started, the minister had been answering a question, and I was wondering if the minister would like to finish it.

Hon. James Downey (Deputy Premier): Most certainly.

Ms. Friesen: I wanted to thank you for last time for being flexible on that time and that seemed to me very appropriate. I am delighted to welcome the fifth Minister of Education that we have seen in this department, particularly glad since I was at the end of last time talking about rural Manitoba and reading into the record my summaries--and certainly they were selected summaries--of the responses in rural Manitoba to the Boundaries Commission. I know that the cabinet is aware of these responses, but I was not convinced that rural Manitoba had heard their voices back, that they had not had, it seemed to me, a response to their concerns about the kind of maps and the kind of proposals that Mr. Norrie was drawing.

There were many meetings, many discussions, the whole sort of panoply of democracy in rural Manitoba--very, very active--which took the time to respond to the map that Mr. Norrie proposed, and it was my sense that overwhelming arguments were being made against amalgamation on a forced basis. There were certainly--and I included these in my remarks, the Deputy Premier (Mr. Downey) should be aware of--there are certainly areas, and I specified them, where there were concerns or a desire to amalgamate. There were areas where they thought they might be involved in pilot projects and I believe the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism's own riding is one of those areas that suggested it might be involved in pilot projects, but the rural municipalities and the school trustees themselves, in the majority of areas, expressed themselves as opposed to the kind of forced amalgamation that is being suggested in the Norrie commission.

I would say on many of the issues the old Scottish verdict of not proven is really what people would argue. It is not proven to them that savings can be made and I was able under freedom of information to get two of the reports of the government that they commissioned for this and one of them based on rural Manitoba by Dr. Rounds is very clear that in fact there are not the cost savings there that the government had perhaps anticipated.

Secondly, I think it is not proven that there are educational advantages. I do not think Mr. Norrie made the case adequately for anybody in rural Manitoba, including those who are already ready to amalgamate, where the educational improvements are to be made. Where are the opportunities for improvement of professional development? Where are the improvements that are possible as a result of this supposed larger tax base?

I think every division said, you have not shown us how this is going to make a difference in the classroom, and I know that is the minister's concern. I assume it is the concern generally of the government, and it is also our concern. I think the government has a much bigger case to make for those changes and improvements in the classroom.

The minister spoke in her response of pilot projects that could be started. The member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) has talked of best practices and how the government in fact should be the lighthouse for best practices. Other submissions to the Boundaries Commission talked about choice. They talked about transport problems, wondered how, in fact, the actual changing of boundaries was going to make a difference.

One of the things that I noted of interest, and it is a theme that runs right through the submissions to the second Norrie commission, is the issue of amalgamating, or at least--justifying, I guess would be the word--justifying municipal boundaries with educational boundaries in rural Manitoba. That was one of the principles that Norrie said he was going to abide by, and he continued in that in his second or final report. Many, many school divisions said this is not the way to go, that is not the right principle, so I am drawing it to the minister's attention as a particular principle. There were many, many school divisions and rural municipalities that said, our community of interest, our community of transport, our social communities, our trading communities are not the municipal boundaries anymore, if indeed they ever were in parts of rural Manitoba. So I think for Norrie to continue, or the minister to accept that principle in Norrie, I think is one that would be going against the grain of the changes that rural Manitoba would want to see. So I draw that to her attention as an underlying issue.

I think the whole issue as well of forced change is one that people addressed in that second round. I do not know, the minister may be familiar with I think it was Prime Minister Laurier in the Laurier-Greenway compromise. He talked about his sunny ways and he had a little childhood story about the difference between the power of the sun and the power of the wind, and it is the sun which persuades the man to take off his overcoat, not the wind. I think that is what rural Manitoba is talking about: Find us the best practices; find the right principles; support those who are ready to amalgamate; create the kind of pilot projects that will demonstrate to us, that will show us where the improvements are to be made.

So I think my question really is for the minister--$700,000 I think is approximately what was spent on this commission. The minister I think feels that it perhaps posed questions to people that they would not otherwise have faced, and that may be true. But is the minister proposing as a result of this $700,000 another whole range of changes that are going to be forced upon people, that are going to be the wind rather than the sun, and which are going to bring about change on the wrong principles and which will force, as they said in many submissions, rural Manitobans to choose between community and school.

Those, I think, are my concerns that arise from the presentations that I read.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Before we go to the Minister of Education, I would like to recognize the honourable Deputy Premier, who is kind enough to sit in for a few minutes.

* (0910)

Mr. Downey: Just a brief comment, and I know how disappointed the opposition members are that they cannot chew me up in this, but I will tell you the minister who is there now is very capable and will carry out the responsibilities.

I would make one comment, if the minister would permit at this time, as it relates to the boundary review. I acknowledge what the opposition member has said, but I do want to compliment our Minister of Education whom I believe has been very sensitive to the comments that have been coming back, particularly from rural Manitoba and the whole issue of boundary review, that there has not been an aggressive--saying this is absolute, and has moved without being sensitive to all the discussion and particularly some of that that has been put on the record. We are aware of the Rounds report. So I just wanted to put that on the record, that I believe our Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) truly is sensitive to the feedback that has been coming since the Norrie report has been put out.

I would also say, though, I think there is an acknowledgement out there that it is appropriate to assess where we currently are at, because the status quo sometimes, although we think it is working to the best interests of education and the movement of our students and the activities, there is a lot of activity going on, whether it is through distance education, whether it is shifting of populations, so I think it was an appropriate exercise to go through and I have all the confidence in the world that the Minister of Education is fully aware of all the concerns and will deal with it appropriately. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, I thank the Deputy Premier for his comments and, as well, I thank the Deputy Premier for sitting in for the first few moments in Estimates for me this morning. I very much appreciate his doing that for me and for the committee.

I, like the Deputy Premier, indicate that we have heard these indications of concern through representation to me as minister and to the local MLAs from rural Manitoba, and I appreciate the Deputy Premier's comments about the number of people I have been talking to and listening to across Manitoba on this issue and I wish at the same time to compliment local MLAs for the diligence with which they have put forward their constituents' views and opinions and ideas on this whole issue of boundary review and of indeed the many recommendations contained in the Norrie report because, as members know, the Norrie report was not just about boundaries. There were 43 recommendations in the Norrie report, and the vast majority of those have already been accepted by government and are being acted upon, one being schools of choice, very obviously being acted upon in the field.

So of all of the recommendations put forward by Norrie, I believe only some eight actually apply to where lines were drawn as boundaries around divisions. Those eight have been examined in depth. I believe it is one of the most thorough and in-depth examinations that I have been through in terms of the quality and quantity of feedback, and local MLAs have been key communicators in that feedback being made available to the minister. I have met, as I indicated the other day, with almost every board in Manitoba at this point and with innumerable parent groups and taxpayer groups, too many for me to count or retrace, but they have all been very forthright and thorough in their comments. They normally come accompanied by their local MLA. I think the research and the communications provided to this minister by local MLAs is very deeply appreciated, because they have helped me gain a very much in-depth, much broader understanding of this issue than would have been possible without their representation.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I am delighted to hear that the government is not going to be aggressive, that it is not going to be absolute, and I am quoting the Deputy Premier on this, in its pursuit of the changes that Norrie had suggested in rural Manitoba. So I want to ask the minister about the manner and the nature of the changes that she wants to see or is considering, I should say at this point, is for the city of Winnipeg.

I read into the record the concerns of rural Manitoba. I had read them in the submissions to the second Norrie report. Similarly, the city of Winnipeg in its numerous divisions made many of the same kinds of arguments. Obviously there are not the same issues on municipal boundaries, although in the case of the north end of Winnipeg that is certainly an issue.

What I think comes through in the city of Winnipeg presentations is, again, the sense of community, and I think that has been conveyed to the minister by a number of my colleagues here, from the member for Osborne (Ms. McGifford) who spoke about the Fort Rouge School; the member for Transcona (Mr. Reid) and the member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar), who each of them came to speak about different aspects of boundaries. The member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk), I believe, has already talked to the minister at length about the St. James' responses to this particular commission and also about some of the concerns, the very serious concerns, that Winnipeg 1 has in the kind of proposed fragmentation of its programs and its history, and a very strong and proud history in education as an educational leader that Winnipeg 1 has had. I do not think any government would want to lose that.

I do not think any government would want to lose the kind of programs, such as the minister, I think, was very proud to show to the Prince of Wales yesterday, the Children of the Earth School, Niji Mahkwa, the tremendous impact that Winnipeg 1 has had on aboriginal education across the province because it is one of the two divisions which, in fact, does do an enormous amount in aboriginal education. That involves a great deal of work and an enormous amount of resources that have been put into early childhood education as well.

So I think what the minister has heard from Winnipeg divisions is a great sense of pride, a sense of community, a sense of history, and a concern that fragmentation and division are going to change that. I want to add to that some of the considerations of Mr. Nicholl, a former deputy minister who was commissioned by the Norrie commission to do a research report for the commission on the proposed changes in the city of Winnipeg.

One of the concerns that he has, and it is put in perhaps cryptic terms, shall we say--he puts his points in point-form whereas Richard Rounds wrote in sentences--one of his concerns about the changes in Winnipeg is the creation of an elite school division. Now that is his terminology, not mine, but I think when you look at the map, what I see as a historian is a map that is very much a recreation of the old lines of 1919, using the rivers as boundaries. In fact, Mr. Norrie enunciates a principle of trying to keep the rivers as boundaries, which is something he has always favoured in city politics, but he goes against that in his own report.

To create this elite division--this is what it looks like on paper--in order to create an elite division of St. James, Fort Garry, River Heights, Tuxedo, Charleswood, in fact, he ignores one of the main principles that he sets out at the beginning. I think that is one of the things that has led to a great deal of puzzlement and a lot of concern about the social implications for Winnipeg, not just for changes in school divisions.

So I want to draw that to the minister's attention as something that obviously people are very concerned about. At the very obvious level, what you see as a result of this, and Norrie is very clear about it, is an increase in taxes in Brooklands and in Transcona, the poorer areas of Winnipeg, in some cases, and you see, of course, a decrease in taxes in what is clearly one of the upper income areas of Winnipeg, River Heights, and you have that area taken out of Winnipeg 1 and placed into what now appears according to Mr. Nicholl to be an elite school division.

* (0920)

So my concerns are for the social divisions in Winnipeg and for the abandonment of a principle that Norrie had expressed in his report. What I want to ask the minister is how she intends to proceed on this. I know that she has met with a lot of people. I know she has heard a lot of these concerns. I do not think any of this is new.

Many people are concerned that the changes to boundaries can be done very quickly by regulation. What is the next stage? Is there a process for those people who have made the same kinds of concerns known to the minister as I have tried to put on the record today? Is there going to be a process where they will know that their voices have been heard, their concerns have been addressed and that there will be a public process for the next stage?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, there were several points raised in that question. I will attempt to respond and I hope that I do not overlook any one. If I do, then I ask the member to refresh my memory.

I acknowledge that change of the magnitude of amalgamations with divisions the size of those within the city of Winnipeg is not something that can occur overnight. We have said all along that any changes that might occur because of amalgamation or because of changes to boundary lines would be changes that would be made with the time made available for school divisions to adjust. We have also indicated, as Norrie recommended, if amalgamation does proceed in either the form that Norrie presents or some other, that implementation committees and people whose duty would be to assist divisions with amalgamation would be put in place to help with some of the many intricacies that would be involved in an amalgamation process.

We realize it is not something that could be done overnight. It would be a multiyear process because of the magnitude of the changes. We do know, as the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) indicated in her comments, that the merging of policy manuals is not a task that could be lightly done, and we are aware of the comments that were made the other day about trustees having difficulty deciding which programs to retain and which to not retain in the backroom deals that get made between trustees, and I will support your item if you support my item, or vice versa. We see that, as has been indicated at city council, kind of backroom dealing, and we are aware of the types of problems that occurred when Unicity was created.

We are aware of those things. We have seen those as red flags that do need to be watched. In implementing any plan that might come forward, we look at the Norrie commission report on page 156 when he talks about the implementation committee. I would invite the member to look at that again to see that he recommends a small group of permanent staff throughout the implementation period that would be supplemented by appropriate departmental staff that would be a multidisciplinary committee and that would work with school divisions involved in the amalgamation process.

They would, of course, have to be working with the four education associations. Norrie suggests that they be invited to be full participants in fact on the implementation committee, that is being MAST, MASS, MASBO and MTS. As well, they know that they will be needed to deal with any union or nonunion school division staff who may be involved in such a process. There will be decisions to be made surrounding those that we recognize will require a lot of energy and a lot of time, and therefore we would not be looking at this as an overnight process but one that would take a couple of years to complete and would require strong support systems from the Department of Education, both in terms of people and time. We would expect that a lot of departmental time would be devoted to ensuring that any implementation was not done, you know, by the snap of a regulation but that was carefully thought out.

I acknowledge something that the member indicated at the beginning of her comment that the issues for city divisions are just as real and just as heartfelt as those in rural or northern areas of the province. I also indicate that the possibilities for co-operation and collaboration and the forming of partnerships are just as real in the city, maybe in some cases more easily achieved because of proximity and the concentration of population. So that double-sided coin that exists in rural Manitoba I acknowledge exists as well within the city of Winnipeg.

As was discussed the other day, you can flip the coin back and forth in terms of comments that have been made about rural Manitoba where you have the two opinions being brought forward, depending upon who it is to whom you are talking. You will have one person say, well, do amalgamate in rural Manitoba because they have small numbers of students in their divisions, relatively speaking, compared to the city of Winnipeg and they could benefit from larger consolidated schools.

The other side of the coin or the flip side of the coin is that, well, yes, they have a smaller number of students but they have greater geographical distance. The converse, of course, we know to be true in the city, that people will say, amalgamate in the city because you have too many divisions in a small geographical area. The other side of that coin is, yes, the geography may be proximate but the numbers of people in each division are quite large and they have differing program thrusts.

* (0930)

So the case for and against, I know the debate that is going on back and forth with the case for and against. I appreciate the member’s perspective and the comments that she has made. If I have neglected to answer any part of the question she put forward, perhaps she could refresh my memory and I will attempt to come back.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I think the minister has covered most of it. I did ask I think about pilot projects and about the possibility of expanding some of the suggestions for co-operation across boundaries for service agreements. For example, I know that is the way that Saskatchewan is going. I think probably they started at the first step, which is those kinds of service agreements, and they are having some success in voluntarily bringing people together on a co-operative basis.

So I think my criticism of this whole issue has been, first of all, one of process. That $700,000 was spent on an extensive review which certainly led to a lot of very, very concerned citizens feeling that they were going to be pushed into something that was not proven to them, for which they had no evidence that there were savings. In fact, they had evidence to the contrary.

So the minister’s acknowledgement of this, that she is going to proceed slowly, that nobody is going to be dealt with, I think it was the Deputy Premier’s (Mr. Downey) word, “aggressively” on this, I think is very welcome and that sense of that there will be a longer public process is also welcome.

But again, I want to underline for the minister that I do not believe there is consent either in rural Manitoba or urban Manitoba to the kind of final proposals that we saw from Mr. Norrie, and I think the government has a considerable distance to go in many areas of Manitoba to gain that consent. Method is one of them; pilot projects is another; the enhancement of voluntary movement, I think, is another one.

I also wanted to put on the record one of the city of Winnipeg concerns which I think is in a sense a very typical one, but it is the kind of neighbourhood which has very strong neighbourhood ties and which has been able to come together and to make very clear statements on it, and I know that they have made them to the minister. That is the district of Elmwood. Elmwood has long been part of Winnipeg, a very important part of Winnipeg’s educational community, and the Norrie commission, at the same time as it removed River Heights from Winnipeg No. 1, at the other side of the river, it also removed Elmwood.

Elmwood is very concerned--the parents of Elmwood, the parent advisory committee. I know the minister is very committed to listening to parents, and it is the Parent Advisory Council of the Elmwood schools which has led, I think, the protest in the city of Winnipeg in organizing rallies and speaking to the minister and trying to get that point of view across that the kinds of changes that are available to people in terms of school choice--Elmwood is in an area where there is transportation certainly for high school students and others. There seems to be no educational benefit to the kinds of changes that Elmwood is faced with. At the same time, what Elmwood is saying on the record over and over again is that there is considerable community loss; that they will lose something that is very, very important to them. They see no benefit.

So it is again in the public process that needs to happen. The minister will have a long way to go in a number of communities across Manitoba to establish the evidence that there are savings to be made in the long run, that there are educational benefits to children in the classroom and that there will be no weakening of communities, whether in the city or in rural areas of Manitoba.

The minister may want to respond to that, but I also wanted to move on to some final questions on Enhancing Accountability and that is to look again at process, and to ask the minister what is the next step in that? The minister has said that there will be, and I am not quoting exactly, but if all things come together, if things can be put together in time, there will be legislation in this session.

I am asking the minister at this time, how extensive that range of legislation will be? We do have a very short time period. It is one of the criticisms that people have made over and over again, from superintendents, to trustees, to teachers, that the process for Enhancing Accountability was very brief and it was dealing with some very, very fundamental issues, from teacher education, teacher remuneration, to the role of trustees. The minister has emphasized this in her comments, a system which has been in place for 40 years, and yet, in a whole range of areas was purporting to be changed in less than six months, and to be changed in an atmosphere where there was not perhaps the best kind of communication going on, where all the partners were not at the same table, as they had been over the past--certainly 40 years ago they were when these changes were introduced.

So, again, my concern is process. How fast is the minister going to move? What will be the range of that legislation? Does it intend to cover all the questions which were raised in that paper, or is the minister proposing to focus on a narrower range of topics for the legislation?

Mrs. McIntosh: There are two components to the question put forward. The first component being the questions on boundaries, and the second component being the concern about the arbitration Enhancing Accountability document.

I would just like to indicate that the member refers to the Saskatchewan model, or to pilots in terms of boundary changes. Certainly I think it is well known that this option has been put before government on many occasions in the past few months. Certainly, we have, as the member knows, some areas of the province that have indicated they are ready to go, so to speak, and would have offered to serve as a pilot. I think that is known. I indicated to the opposition members and observers at the last sitting that all the ideas that have been put before us are ideas that we are examining. It is one of the things that has taken so much of our time because I think there is no other issue that has had such a degree of response and valuable feedback from people who live in this province. So we are looking at those.

I indicate, just to make sure that I have not inadvertently misled, that when I say that the implementation of any amalgamation that might occur would take a very long time, that it would probably take a couple of years, that we need to give divisions a lot of lead time for that. In talking about that, I was talking about an implementation period. An implementation period, of course, normally comes after a decision to do something has been made. So when you see implementation committees being set up, unless they are being set up to deal at somebody's request, to deal with how would it look if we did this, which we are also quite willing to consider, if we had a division, for example, saying--the member will forgive me, I have a slight head cold. So if I am coughing and sneezing and sniffing. I apologize.

The request has been made by some to say, you know, we are looking at it, we are not certain. We would not mind having somebody come and work with us to see what we would look like if we got together. That kind of request has come forward on a couple of occasions. So, if we went with that kind of request then, of course, it might be that an implementation committee would go and work with the group even though no decision to amalgamate had been made as an exploration, like oil exploration, and so the full-fledged introduction of an implementation committee as suggested by Norrie or some modification of that type of committee would be developed once knowledge of whether or not amalgamation would occur or exist. So you would start with a statement of intent as to where amalgamation might occur and then have the implementation committee work with the divisions to assist.

* (0940)

So I just wanted that type of process to be understood. I feel the consultation process has been, as the member indicated, fairly lengthy. A lot of people have been talked to. I think we have a fairly good sense of what the people are feeling, and we are exploring all options. We come back again to our central concerns of taxation, equity and quality, communities of interest and the need to address certain items that are for the benefit of students.

The member indicated the cost of the Norrie commission and indicated something to the effect that it was a lot of money and it has got a lot of people upset. I am paraphrasing because I do not recall the exact wording. I have indicated before this, and I would like to emphasize again that the recommendations as to where boundaries are are only eight of the recommendations in the Norrie commission report out of 43.

Many of the others were recommendations that had great worth and did not upset people. I again use the example that is the obvious one, which I used earlier, which was schools of choice. Norrie talked about that and people liked that. The government has already indicated it is going to do that so there is one recommendation, piece of advice, that can be examined as something that did not upset and that has met acceptance. There are others, of course, in the Norrie report.

The other value that comes from the Norrie report is that it has divisions and division personnel and the people who live in the divisions talking in ways that I have never heard them talk before. It has been absolutely amazing to witness the creative thinking and the degree to which divisions have begun to co-operate, not reluctantly, but eagerly with each other. While we have always had some divisions that have worked together and done joint purchasing, or put joint initiatives together, such as South Winnipeg Technical Centre which is another obvious example that I have mentioned before, we now see and hear them talking about a wide measure of partnership arrangements. I believe absolutely that a number of those conversations and explorations and discussions of partnership have come about as a direct result of the stimulus that the Norrie commission report provided. I find it a very enlightening and pleasing offset or effect to the type of criticism that the member indicates is out there for Norrie.

Yes, anybody who has been listening to the issue knows there is a lot of criticism, but at the same time there is this increased and renewed co-operation in partnershipping that I think is very important. We do know that decisions made by boards, whether they be the current boards or new amalgamated boards, will still rest with trustees. I agree that it is difficult to predict what trustees might decide to do.

One can make assumptions and one can pass laws and one can encourage or inspire or mandate, but the way in which any new amalgamated divisions would ultimately govern themselves in terms of programs they choose or what items they would delete or add is as yet unknown. I think this can be said true. We talked about the loss of schools and small schools possibly being closed because of amalgamation and that too could happen. It does happen today that where the boundary line is drawn has not changed, for example, in my home division, the need for that local division to close schools if they are not viable. So I think that school boards will ultimately wish to please the people who are in their constituencies by making good decisions and not want to see towns closed because a school is small, and we have, as I said, many things in the funding formula to support the continued existence of small schools.

If I may, Mr. Chairman, yesterday there was a little bit of extra time allowed the member. If I could take that now to respond to the second part of her question, and I will do it briefly. The member had asked about the Enhancing Accountability document and is interested in knowing, as I appreciate she would be, where do we go from here and what is going to happen now that the hearings are finished.

We have indicated that if we are able to bring forward some legislation this June to correct some of the problems in the field around this issue, we would attempt to give as much lead time as possible so that people would have ability to influence and shape the final shape of proposed legislation, and we had indicated this before the panel hearings. We cannot indicate that the legislation will be this way or that way if and when it comes forward because we are still working with not just the trustees but also the teachers, and we are soon to receive the summative report and attach suggestions, if any, from the small group that went and solicited feedback for me in the province. I received papers and listened to the explanations and rationale for those papers from Manitobans.

Legislation in this particular area, depending upon its final intent, need not necessarily be complicated legislation. It is what the legislation sets out to achieve that can have an effect that could be small, moderate or extensive depending upon its intent. So it need not be complicated legislation, but in some way would need to address the concerns that one of the parties to the bargaining process feels. I think the continued dialogue that is being carried on with teachers and trustees is a very good dialogue that occurs and hopefully, if the best of all worlds could be achieved, one could find those two bodies coming to some agreement with each other, and the best of all worlds is not always achieved in this very real place in which we live.

* (0950)

I guess what I am indicating to the member is that it is difficult for me at this point to indicate the exact nature of potential legislation or even to confirm that legislation would be coming forward, although it is our desire to correct this imbalance as quickly as possible. Introducing legislation this spring for hearings and passage in the fall would be my personal preference as minister. I think the expressed urgency proclaimed by the trustees would also assist in the field, because implementing legislative change on arbitration would take a full year after the passage of such change so, when we have trustees feeling an urgency, I think that moving quickly but wisely is better than delaying and repeating over and over concerns that are unchanging. I think we need to see, it is not enough just to hear the same things repeated over and over. We need to see some solutions coming out of discussions and presentations and thinking presented to government.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Okay, I think that we did a little bit of, like yesterday--I would hope that the committee would allow me to do that once in a while if I see that somebody is trying to, as yesterday, read a summation that they had into the record, I will try to do that, if that is okay, and I will show that leniency as much as I can but not to encourage you to go over the 10 minutes. So I will try to make that ruling at the time.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, yes, I think that is appropriate and obviously you are being very even-handed about this and that is what we appreciate.

I wanted to ask one last question. That is almost a cliche around here.

An Honourable Member: Just as long as you do not say, I will resign.

An Honourable Member: Is your name Sheila?

Ms. Friesen: No, it is not even my middle name.

I wanted to ask the minister about something that she has raised and which obviously people are beginning to turn their attention to as a result of the Norrie commission, and that is the issue of schools of choice. We have talked about this last time, and I noticed by the way in looking over the Estimates for last time, we were suffering through 35 degrees, was it, in Estimates last time, and the minister says that she has a head cold. I am surprised we are not all sort of laid up as I look out at the snow and the floods. Anyway, it is quite a difference from last year.

I want to talk about schools of choice. Obviously in the city of Winnipeg and I believe parts of Brandon as well, there has been school choice for a considerable length of time. The Norrie commission had some interesting tables that he prepared on school choice and on the number of students who used it and how the money flowed back and forth. I would think, in the vast majority of cases, it has been well organized, well run. There are not the kinds of concerns that perhaps there were 10 years ago in the administrative aspect of that. There are not overall in the province, and he does actually take his numbers right through the province. There are overall relatively few numbers of students who are moving back and forth across boundaries for whatever reason.

Studies, I think, from other jurisdictions show that that is not likely to change at the elementary school level. High school level might be something different, and that is where I want to address my concerns to the minister--I have raised this in the House with her--and concerns, I think, as they are being expressed, particularly in rural Manitoba and in those urban suburban school divisions where there is a changing population. In some areas it is growing, in some areas it is declining, and those are the areas and parts of rural Manitoba, particularly the Interlake and southwestern Manitoba where people are very concerned about the loss of small schools.

The prospect for having a school--and this would be I would think schools from K to 12 as well as high schools--the prospect of having one or two families withdraw from a school one year going through all the right motions, putting things in at the right time but taking two or three children, maybe two or three families do this, they move to another division, and it is enough to close down the school. It is enough to make their existing home school not viable. If they are not happy, if they are not satisfied, if transport routes change, if they find that the transport issues are too much, if there is a change in family circumstances and those families then might need to go back to their home school, but it will no longer exist, that is my concern for all the opportunities that choice may involve.

(Mrs. Shirley Render, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

I think we have to be very careful about the guidelines, the democratic participation that there will be and should be in those kinds of decisions, in the length of time that schools are allowed to be given that kind of flexibility before there are decisions which have to be made, and what kind of financial support is the minister considering for schools who may find themselves in those kinds of precarious situations as a result of a provincial decision to encourage and to enhance choice in this way.

The Acting Chairperson (Mrs. Render): Up here one minute and I am sneezing.

Mrs. McIntosh: Madam Chairman, it is dangerous sitting next to me, you know. You will all start to sneeze.

I have to indicate the chuckle I got out of the member's comment when she said, I just have one last question and maybe she will get a similar chuckle if I say that I shall try to be brief because we do have these sorts of statements that always raise eyebrows.

I know yesterday--this is for the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski), we might as well get all parties in on this one--I was talking to one of the federal MPs and we were discussing the very weather conditions the member for Wolseley just referred to and he said, well, this is happening in Manitoba, we will have to do something. We will complain to the provincial government, and I pointed out that Environment Canada was responsible for doing things about weather. It was a federal issue, so we can start passing things back and forth. We both immediately looked around for the city councillor, who was not there, and figured that is who should receive the phone calls on it.

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At any rate, I thank the member for her question. It is a good question. Whenever you put together an idea that has really strong advantages for people, there are always peripheral issues that need to be addressed. I think it is important that we enable the choice that Norrie has recommended, that the government accepts, and it is something the government has long talked about with or without Norrie in terms of what could we do to provide more choice for people. So I hear what the member is saying as a caution, that as we proceed we be conscious of the peripheral issues that could have some negative side effects, good medicine with some potential side effects.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

We have said we want to enable choice but not unfettered in the sense that it is a loose cannon kind of choice. We have put three conditions. One is that a parent can choose any school of his or her choice. It does not have to be within their own school division, any public school, and presumably it would be a division close by, because logic would dictate that they would not want to live in Churchill and attend a school in Winnipeg because of families wanting to be together and so on. But if they choose a school, the school that they choose must have room to accommodate the student who is being sent, and that is a statement of principle.

One could then discuss the details of, well, what does that mean? What does having room mean? Does it mean if they put on a portable classroom and could accommodate them because there is space in the schoolyard, is that room? So there are a variety of questions around that, but the principle is that the school should not have to alter its configuration or dramatically alter its way of delivering because of extra students in the school to accommodate students who are making a schools of choice decision. So there must be space in the receiving school.

The second condition or principle is that there should not be any new program or policy changes required by the receiving school to accommodate the student. In order words, you choose a school because of the way it is, not because of the way you would like to see it changed to be. It is kind of like getting married. It is the old dictum, I will marry him or I will marry her and change him or her to suit me after we get there. [interjection] The deputy has made some comments and we will not put them on the record.

What I am trying to say is that you choose something because you like it the way it is and, therefore, you should accept it the way it is and not get there and say, now that I am here I am going to change it to be something that was not the thing I had chose. So they should not have to put in new programs or change school division policies to accommodate the student who has chosen. They need to apply by a certain date so that proper notice is given so that schools in both the receiving and sending divisions have a good count on their student population and can plan their staffing and timetabling appropriately.

The other thing that we have indicated is that if there are to be incurred expenses in transportation that would be beyond the norm for a school division to provide that the parents would be asked to accommodate that themselves. I think those kinds of restrictions, particularly the latter, where parents would have to pause and consider, is the program and milieu offered by the school I wish to send my child to worth my going to any degree of trouble to get there, is one that would force a clear commitment and not a frivolous, oh, what the heck, let us just go there because Johnny is going there kind of decision making. So I think those kinds of things will still provide the choice,but not unfettered choice, and be thoughtful, rational planning around that choice.

There may be others, as well, and as we go through this issue, I appreciate the member's comments because they have validity and merit. As we go through this process, if the member spots anything else in this that we should be conscious of, we would appreciate knowing because we want it to work, and as with anything new, close examination sometimes can reveal things that you thought you had noticed but had not. So I just leave that answer, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Gary Kowalski (The Maples): First of all, to follow up on the discussion that was just occurring, I was not going to ask questions in regard to it but it just raises a question in my mind. In every change, there are always benefits and there are also some detriments. There is the possibility of some inequities with this schools of choice.

I will give you an example. In the Seven Oaks School Division, there is no international baccalaureate program. In River East School Division, Miles Mac Collegiate, there is one. So under this schools-of-choice situation, if I wanted my daughter to go to Miles Mac and there was space there and they would not have to change their policies and there was room, she could go. I would then have to pay for the transportation, whether I sent her by cab or whether she took the bus or she bought a car or whatever.

In the Maples, we have some public housing. A student from that public housing who could not maybe afford that cab, could not afford the extra transportation, there is the possibility of an inequity. I will grant you that, if it is that important, that student could possibly take a bus, get up at five o'clock in the morning or whatever, if that was necessary. But in some families, even a bus pass for a month for a child would be a hardship. So has the department looked at the possibility of that inequity in schools of choice?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we believe, first of all, that a simplified system of residual fees will be the ultimate equalizer in terms of providing opportunity that is not there right now. I appreciate what the member is saying, and the full, total, equal access that would occur if the taxi fare or the busing or whatever costs were covered is one scenario that, if offered, would lead more quickly to the scenario described by the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen). So you weigh one against the other.

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The opportunity for schools of choice without having to pay a residence fee enables far more students to access a particular program. It may not be available for every student if the member is describing a situation where pennies are really tight and transportation costs are genuinely a problem, and while I think that would not happen too often, I acknowledge that the possibility exists. But as with so many decisions made, you try to maximize the opportunity for as many as you can, and certainly schools of choice opens up opportunities for vast numbers of people who hitherto had no such opportunities made available to them. You cast the net as wide as you can and recognize that it may not capture everybody, but it certainly addresses majority need.

It does not necessarily negate student need either because, depending upon the school division busing policies or transportation policies, there sometimes are and there certainly is the ability for arrangements to be made for impoverished students in a wide variety of venues. They have not always been done in the past because in the past the distances to be travelled may not have been as far as they might be under this particular model.

I can recall as a trustee, and the member may or may not have had similar experiences where, with French Immersion, for example, we would have occasional requests made to the board because of a family’s particular financial stress, either temporary or permanent, and the need to access transportation to a school within the division that was beyond walking distance. Trustees can make decisions to assist or to have a policy that would allow assistance for those individuals that occasionally find themselves in dire straits like that.

I still believe that we do have to have some parameters and criteria around choice for it to be structured and workable. I hope that is a satisfactory answer for the member.

Mr. Kowalski: When this policy is implemented, the schools of choice, possibly the Minister of Education could communicate with the Minister of Family Services (Mrs. Mitchelson) to give direction that there is funding for those on social assistance for special needs, that this may be coming forward a number of applications or a number of requests for special needs funding for students to have bus passes so that they would be enabled to take advantage of schools of choice and possibly that could be part of the implementation of that policy.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, that is a suggestion that is a good one to consider. I will pass that on to the Minister of Family Services. It may be something that, again, when we look at the relationship that is being built between the two departments, the Child and Youth Secretariat might be interested in those kinds of suggestions that overlap jurisdictions.

I just wanted to add, Mr. Chairman, while I am in control of the microphone, just a follow-up comment to what the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) had asked earlier. I have been thinking as we were talking here, the member for The Maples has sparked some thoughts in my mind about this whole issue of schools of choice. The member for Wolseley had indicated concern, would this lead to school closure? I had indicated the parameters. The member for The Maples then said, those parameters may be too tight in terms of full and complete access. The way the argument goes back and forth is very instructive because the downsides and upsides get examined this way.

I did want to indicate that we are attempting as diligently as we possibly can to preserve that balance between ensuring choice and at the same time ensuring the sustainability of small schools in communities. It is a tricky balance, and we are working hard to make sure that we can keep that balance good. We still give financial preference in our funding formula to small schools and that will continue and we also recognize that in the end it is only boards and school boards that can, in a case-by-case basis, close schools. They have to abide by school closure guidelines. We are placing faith in the accountability of school trustees to be cautious and careful, particularly in small communities, to make decisions as to school closures or the examination of school closures with care, knowing that they wish to see their constituents advantaged as opposed to disadvantaged.

So I just wanted to indicate that we are aware of the balance between the two points raised very clearly by both opposition parties, both valid points, each displaying one side of the coin that is opposite from the other and both of those perspectives are ones that we are highly conscious of and very sensitive to and are working hard to achieve the balance. So I thank them both for those questions.

Mr. Kowalski: Just moving to another area. Dr. Rounds' report, we had talked to Dr. Rounds and asked him for a copy of his report and he indicated that it was not appropriate for him to release it at the time. I understand now that the NDP Education critic has received a copy of the report as a response to a Freedom of Information request. I am wondering if it is possible to request a copy of it from the minister without going through Freedom of Information.

Mrs. McIntosh: I think what we could do, if it is of assistance, would be to table that here in Estimates this afternoon. Just checking with staff, I believe that we could have a copy up here for after the lunch break, and then that could be made available.

Mr. Kowalski: Okay. Just a couple of further questions in regard to the Enhancing Accountability: Ensuring Quality document. Many of the questions that I had have already been asked. I have not been in the committee room at all times, so if any questions I am about to ask have already been asked, I do not want to waste valuable time in these Estimates. Let me know, and I will read the parts of Hansard that I missed.

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The Manitoba Teachers' Society put out a document entitled How to Make a Herring Red that had some criticisms of the document. I would like to put some of those points forward to get the minister's response to them. First of all, in regard to the table on page 7 of the document, in regard to Canadian teachers' salaries, one of the criticisms from the Manitoba Teachers' Society was that the Manitoba salary figures for '93-94 and '94-95 do not show the impact on teachers' salaries of the Bill 22 days on that table. Can you respond to that criticism of that table in the document, if it has not already been done in Estimates?

Mrs. McIntosh: It is a new question, so I will be pleased to try to provide an answer. The salaries that you indicate there are the base salaries. They do not include either Bill 22 days from Manitoba, which some divisions but not all took, and they do not include the rollbacks that occurred in other provinces. They are the base salaries agreed upon and not any subsequent divisions made in whole or in part to teaching groups in various provinces across the country.

Bill 22 days were not taken by half of the divisions in Manitoba so it is something that was not picked up by school trustees as a cost-saving measure by half of the province. It could not be applied equally in the first instance since so many people did not receive Bill 22 days. Secondly, the rollback of teachers' wages that occurred in other provinces were not applied to their base rates. What was kept was the base rate, the base rate being the foundation that stays in place because even with those divisions that took Bill 22 days, their base rate did not change. They did not have a rollback per se that would change their foundation base. They were still earning $50,000 a year, if you like to put it that way, but they just were not working some of the days.

It was not like them coming back the following year with their base rate only being 48. They come back the following year, their salary base has not changed. In fact, that was the complaint that some trustees put forward when they said, we are not going to bother taking Bill 22 days because it does not get at the heart of the problem for us as a school board. It does not get at the base rate. It just enables us not to pay them for some days we give them off but next year we will have to pay them for that plus any raise, and we are not any further ahead. It is just a temporary one-year relief. So school boards said, we do not need a temporary one-year relief, we need a long-term solution to the problem, and we are not taking Bill 22 days.

I do not know if that provides the answer the member is seeking but that is the reason they used base rates and not any subsequent adjustments by Manitoba or any other province.

Mr. Kowalski: I think it just shows that possibly we are comparing apples and oranges. I do not think we need to get into that debate any further because as the minister has indicated, in other provinces there were rollbacks. We do not know if they were less or more than Manitoba. It is an average. It is not the reality of what maybe the majority of teachers received in Manitoba or the minority of teachers. So I guess we go back to Mark Twain's quote about statistics: There are lies; damn lies and then there are statistics, and they are always open to interpretation, comparison and that. So I think we can move on from there.

The next criticism found in that document that I referred to, How to Make a Herring Red, is the table on page 9 that indicates the number of students versus the number of teachers. What the Manitoba teachers know--[interjection] Someone at the table says that a number of educators know--this table is entitled: The number of students versus the number of teachers. The Manitoba Teachers' Society have on their document used data from the FRAME final budget reports and from professional school personnel database analyzed by the MTS research office. Their indication is that combined full-time equivalency of certified personnel since 1996 has decreased by 4.2 percent and actual number of persons has decreased by 2.8 percent.

Can the minister respond to the differences between the government's document and what is in this paper put out by the Manitoba Teachers' Society?

Mrs. McIntosh: I harken back to what the member said about the Mark Twain quote, which I cannot quite recall, but it was a humorous quote that applies to the red herring document very well. Let us keep flipping this thing back and forth, because the red herring document could be referred to as, how to build a mountain on a plateau or on a prairie. I am not talking about making mountains out of mole hills, I am talking about building mountains on flat land that has no mole hill even to begin with. Because a lot of the things that are in that document, the red herring document, are deep crimson in colour and could be the granddaddy of all red herrings.

However, what the teachers have done for their own purposes, and I am not questioning what their purposes are, but they have chosen the year 1990, when teachers numbers were at their peak in Manitoba. I cannot imagine why they would have done that for their start as they are starting their countdown.

I can tell you what we have done. We have started with the year 1988-89, which is the year that we came into office and, as the member knows and is probably sick to death of hearing this side of the House say whenever we stand up, when we came to office in 1988, things were this way, since 1988, when we came in office, things are now another way. So 1988-89 is a benchmark year for this government, and it is frequently, maybe not in every instance, but frequently used as the starting date for comparisons between things that happened before and things that happened since.

So we started with the year we came to government, and we show a 2.5 percent increase in the number of teachers, and that is correct. Those are full-time or full-time equivalent teaching positions, signed to a Form 2 contract in the schools in Manitoba. That is up 2.5 percent, and that is correct. The teachers started from the peak; they started from 1990 when teachers were at their peak numbers and the teachers have only counted classroom teachers. They have not talked about the other Form 2 teachers that might be in schools such as resource teachers or teacher/librarians who teach full-time but do not register a class. They have not counted vice-principals, all of those people who are educators and signed to a Form 2 contract who have a teacher's salary cost applied to them by the school division. I am not talking about secretaries or custodians or staff units, I am talking about teachers and only teachers sign Form 2 contracts with school divisions.

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The teachers in their red herring document threw out their own red herring and counted only classroom teachers, as if resource teachers and clinicians have no value in a school in terms of the education of the students and as if clinicians and resource teachers have no impact in the classroom. While they may not register a class, they have absolute impact on a classroom. Just ask any school that does not have a resource teacher or that for some reason cannot get a clinician on the day they want them what it is like for a classroom teacher not to have those other teachers in the school, even if they do not register a class.

Yes, statistics lie--whatever it was that Mark Twain said. The sword cuts both ways. The red herrings in the red-herring document turn the ocean a bright, bright hue of red.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: I wonder at this point if it is the will of the committee to take a 10-minute recess.

An Honourable Member: Yes.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Ten minutes.

The committee recessed at 10:33 a.m.

________

After Recess

The committee resumed at 10:45 a.m.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.

Mr. Kowalski: Just to get some clarification. I am looking at the MTS document and on their table for 19--

An Honourable Member: Gary, can you pull your mike closer.

Mr. Kowalski: Yes, I am sorry. I keep doing that. I apologize to Hansard and the committee for doing that.

In the MTS document, they show that in the 1990-91 school year, they show 11,889 full-time equivalency of instructional teaching personnel assigned. They show another 160 full-time equivalency of clinical personnel assigned. They show 655 full-time equivalency of principals and vice-principals assigned for a combined full-time equivalency of these certified personnel of 12,705.

The government's document shows the number of teachers as 12,703, a difference of two. Now, if the minister is saying their methodology was wrong, how do they account that their 1991 figure is within two people?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I do not believe I indicated the MTS figures were wrong, but I am saying that the figures do not compare apples to apples. It is like the old half-full, half-empty argument. Their figures are not wrong, but they are based upon a different year and different types of teachers. So when we say we are starting with the year that we took office and we are including for our calculations all those people employed in a school who are assigned to a Form 2 contract, which is the contract given to teachers, we are counting in terms of cost then, the true cost to the school division to employ teachers. Some of those teachers may not actually register a class but are in the schools to provide support to the classroom teacher and specialized services to the students in the school. They are, nonetheless, real teachers truly employed, truly paid, truly in the schools providing services to students and teachers and, therefore, their existence cannot be denied.

To not count them is to dismiss them as being irrelevant and of no consequence unless, of course, you are wanting to do a study on classrooms only, like the structure of an individual classroom only, without counting the whole service provided to the student body. So if you were using only instructional staff and you left out the clinicians, et cetera, then you will arrive at one figure which will be correct if identified, as the MTS document does, as only being the teachers who register a class. If you include all the actual teachers in the building who work with and for teachers and students, then you will get another also correct figure. One reflects only the classroom photograph; the other reflects the school photograph. One reflects only partial true cost to the division for those employed by a Form 2 contract; the other reveals actual true cost to the school division for those employed on Form 2 contracts.

So the figures in either case are not incorrect, but they are not comparing apples to apples and they are not talking about the true cost of hiring educators for schools in the teachers' document. They are in the accountability document, and that I think is part of the trustees' concerns. The member has been a trustee and probably understands the fact that the cost of Form 2 contracts is not a cost that can be toned down because some of those holding Form 2 contracts do not register a class.

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So, I guess with a lot of these things where you have equally valid statistics being used to prove a point, that we could argue back and forth over the stats used by the teacher, which exclude numbers of Form 2 contracts, and the stats used by the accountability document, which includes all Form 2 documents, are differing statistics.

But I am wondering, if when we do that, we are entering into the red herring area that the teachers are working hard to create, and I am wondering if then, that draws the focus deliberately or unconsciously away from the issue at hand. I might be interested to know if the member acknowledges or agrees with the difficulties stated by MAST.

I have not heard from either opposition party as to whether or not they acknowledge that trustees may have a difficulty with trying to contain escalating costs. We know, for example, that this year we are beginning to finally see some zero settlements. Many of those zero settlements this year will be offset by the fact that a lot of teachers will still be getting an annual increment anyhow and are offset in some cases by the fact that it is a multi-year agreement, which sees a raise coming in the subsequent year.

If the member could indicate to me in his next commentary whether or not he acknowledges that whatever statistics are used, the cost to division for teachers' salaries rises, and that trustees' complaint that sometimes their ability to control that cost of escalation is taken away from them, is a valid concern or not.

Are we looking to address something here that really is no problem?

Mr. Kowalski: At the beginning of the last answer, the minister indicated that maybe I was not recognizing the fact of the years being taken into account. I do acknowledge in the government's document--they started in '88-89, and in the MTS document, they started '90-91--there is no question that there is a difference. But when I look at the year 1990, where they start, the number of teachers in the government document is 12,703 and the number of teachers in the MTS document is 12,705, so there is only a difference of two teachers.

Now, what I understand from what the minister is responding to that, when you go to 1995 where the government document shows 12,643, and the MTS document shows 12,354, the extra 289, she is indicating to me, are not classroom teachers. So that means between 1990-91 and 1996, there have been 289 nonclassroom teachers added into the education system. This is what she is telling me that the MTS document does not account for. Is that what the minister is saying?

Mrs. McIntosh: That can be the only conclusion that can be drawn from the difference in the figures. The figures that we have drawn from come from the actual contracts signed by MAST, like signed and verified through the Manitoba Association of School Trustees. They are the employers. They know which contracts they have signed. They also are figures that are available from our school finance branch. I have been assured that both of those sources are reliable. They are the funding and governing bodies of teachers in Manitoba. So the difference has to be then that there are more clinicians, resource teachers, those kinds of people in the schools which would reflect in some cases the entrance into the school of special needs students of differing types and would also perhaps reflect the number of people required to offset increased prep time in schools and so on.

Our inclusion of tables on pupil-educator ratio, teachers' salaries, number of employees were put in the accountability document to provide information to describe the major component of school board costs. If we used Manitoba Teachers' Society figures, the essential matter is still the same; board costs for employment costs attributed to teachers is still around 65 percent. I am rounding off to give just a vision. That employment cost is real, verifiable and there. So, however you wish to describe it, and our figures are sourced from reliable sources, are confirmed to be accurate, do use different years and differing groups, then the Manitoba Teachers' Society's very selective statistics do. Ours are encompassing statistics.

But the matter still is the same. Boards are indicating they need some better control over their costs for future decision making. I am wondering if the member feels that is a legitimate concern that government needs to examine or if government should not be examining that particular issue.

Mr. Kowalski: On the next page, page 6 of the red herring document, there is a comparison made of Manitoba teachers' salaries percentage change in comparison to Manitoba average weekly earnings. The point that MTS brings forward is that it is comparing apples and oranges in the fact that it, for the teachers' salaries included in that percentage, is increments for experience. They are indicating that the government's figures for Manitoba average weekly earnings do not include that. It is on base salaries.

Mrs. McIntosh: What page?

Mr. Kowalski: Page 6 of the MTS red herring document. What you compare is page 9 of the Manitoba government paper. And can the minister indicate the differences in how this is presented?

Mrs. McIntosh: I am somewhat hampered. I do not have the red herring document in front of me. Maybe if we could kind of trade documents for a moment. I have got the Rounds report here now which we had indicated to the member we would try to table. If I could just pause for a moment, I have three copies, so there is one for each group here at the table, and I will provide that if it is possible just to get a quick look at the page the member is referring to. The three documents, Mr. Chairman. Need one more? Here.

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I thank the member for sharing the document with us for that particular page. Indeed, it is true that in the average teachers’ salaries that the annual automatic raise is included. The annual increment is included because that is real money that is given to teachers automatically on an annual basis because they have been in the classroom another year. It is a very true cost.

The other costs that are shown with the average Manitoba weekly earnings is also the true amount of money that people take home, and you cannot compare--if you are going to make a comparison, you have to say, if this year you took home $110 and last year you took home $109, then you have actually taken home more money in your pay cheque than you did before. Your neighbour, who may be in a different occupation or a different field of endeavour, last year maybe took hyear, but the difference between last year and this year for him may not be as great as for teachers. Obviously, looking at these figures, it would appear to bear out that the average Manitoba weekly earnings have not had as high a percentage change as the average Manitoba teacher's salary percentage change.

To say that the annual increment does not count because it is given automatically for experience is to deny that there is any extra money given. School boards writing the cheque know the money they are writing on the cheque is real money that has to come from someplace.

The inherent assumption in the member's question is that all those who do not teach receive raises every year automatically on an incremental basis. That is simply not true. There may be some sectors of society that do, but I can assure you many people, and I think the member may know many people as well, are employed with various occupations or industries where there is no such thing as an annual increment, that wages reflect the profitability of the firms for whom they work, or wages reflect the employer's ability to pay, or wages reflect the quality of service given.

Commissioned salespeople, for example, do not receive an automatic raise because they have been working in the sales field a year longer. In fact, if they are not producing they receive lesser money because their efforts have not been able to produce enough to generate the commission that might have been received the year before.

I am not for a minute suggesting that commissioned salesmen and teachers be recompensed in the same way, because that would be absolutely impossible. But I am just using that to indicate that, yes, the annual increment is included, and yes, it is absolutely proper and important to include it, because it does reflect real money and it is a valid comparison than apples to apples, with the average teacher's salary and the average weekly earnings earned by Manitobans who may not be fortunate enough to receive a raise because they have been in their jobs an extra year.

As the member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) pointed out so eloquently on behalf of the NDP the other day, one more year's experience could be a very bad year of experience, could be a year in which bad habits are reinforced and make the teacher absolutely worse than before. The member for Burrows, the NDP critic that day, put that on the record as the NDP position: that a year of experience does not necessarily make a person a better teacher. A year of experience could, in fact, reinforce bad habits. That is the NDP position, and we acknowledge that many trustees concur and are worried about that question.

I believe the vast majority of people, and I think that the NDP also would agree, that the vast majority of people, as they gain experience, do improve and become better, because of that experience. But the point made by the member for Burrows is a point that trustees have asked, for some cases, for, I hope, exceptions and anomalies, not the rule.

But still and all, in most cases, with very, very few exceptions, the annual increment is an automatic increment given regardless of performance, but simply because another year of experience has taken place.

Mr. Kowalski: Just a brief comment on the value of a year's experience in many professions, and I will refer to my profession on police work, how many times the old senior cop has been around for 20 years. Maybe he has never been promoted, but he remembers a similar crime that happened 20 years ago and he has something of value. Yes, sometimes, it is a bad year's experience in any profession, but, in the most part, experience does add some value and knowledge. So I will just make that general comment about a year's experience. It is a common practice in many professions and occupations. I believe right here in the government service that if we look at our caucus staff, if we look at our civil service with experience, they get automatic increases.

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Mrs. McIntosh: Just a quick correction, first of all, I indicate I do agree. I believe that in nine cases out of 10 experience does add value and knowledge. Particularly in police work, which is the member's background, you will see those whose years of experience are bad very quickly weeded out. The police force is one area where people who have successive years of bad experience do not traditionally remain, because the police force is pretty stringent about applying those.

I just want to indicate though that in the civil service there is a provision for a merit increment, an automatic increment as the member indicates, but it is not automatic. It has to be provided and I know because they come across my desk. Before anybody can receive their annual increment, the supervisor has to submit a signed approval form indicating that the performance has been evaluated and has been deemed to be meritorious and worthy of an increment. I believe the member may have received a copy of that so that it is not automatic by any stretch of the imagination, whereas in school divisions it is given unless somebody intercedes to say, hey, do not give that which, if you check the record, very seldom happens, very seldom happens in education.

Mr. Kowalski: On that same page, I do think that the teachers make a good point in that form. The teachers in my community or my neighbours and the ones I know through different committees that I have been on are always taking courses, are always continually improving their knowledge of the field and that, more so probably than any other occupation I know of. Professional development is part of the culture in education, and that is a culture they try to pass on to their students. I do think they make that point very well in that when you are comparing percentage increases in pay, one of the reasons is that teachers do make the effort to continually upgrade their skills more so probably than many other professions. I do think they made that point very well on page 6 of their red herring document. That is just more of a comment than a question.

The last area in that document that I would like to give the minister a chance to respond to on record here is in regard to the comparison of starting salaries, university graduates, where they show a teacher with four years university, $32,860, and then they compare that with someone with a masters degree making average $32,500. In their document, MTS notes that the engineers, for example, a survey report in 1994, the starting salary for engineers in Manitoba was $33,600. What they are saying is that amongst professionals, many professionals, that figure that teachers have as a starting salary is not out of line. Does the minister want to comment on the MTS document?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the member had two points and I will address the last one first because it is fresh in my memory, but I would like to go back and talk about the professional development and the training and so on because I think he has raised an important point that warrants discussion.

The point that he has just raised regarding the comparison of starting salaries, I find it interesting, and the member should note, that the MTS document, their red-herring document, they have used the same KPMG survey study that we did. So in that sense we are starting--we both sourced a document that is identical. They cherry-picked the occupation they chose to highlight. I think the member knows the implications of that.

We chose not to cherry-pick. We took the average salary of all disciplines in a bachelor's degree and, according to the same study that the MTS document also sourced, we said--if you went to university and took a bachelor’s degree in any of the disciplines available: a bachelor’s degree in music, a bachelor’s degree in law, a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a bachelor’s degree in science, a bachelor’s degree in arts, a bachelor’s degree in education, a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a bachelor’s degree in social work, a bachelor’s degree in human ecology, a bachelor’s degree in you name it, all of the disciplines--what is the average starting salary for all disciplines with a bachelor’s degree, and the answer is $27,200. That is the average. All of those people have been to university for the same number of years, studied, we would presume, fairly similarly to each other in terms of the degree of difficulty of task, and then went into the same world, Manitoba, to seek employment, and the average starting salary for them all was $27,200.

The average salary for those who got master’s degrees in all of those disciplines--psychology, human ecology, architecture, engineering, science, arts, education, biology, chemistry, pharmacy, all of those with master’s degrees--the average starting salary is $32,500. That is a fact. It is from the same study that the teachers used.

Teachers, in their bachelor degree--average starting salary, $32,860. Now we did pull teachers out and identified them specifically, because this whole document is about teachers’ salaries and how the teaching profession is compensated and the costs to boards.

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society, by pulling out one discipline only, civil engineering, have cherry-picked an occupation. One could ask themselves why and one may be able to conclude an answer--because the starting salary for engineers is higher than the starting salary for teachers by about $800. So engineers start about $800 a year more than teachers. We are not going to get into arguments about whether or not it is harder to be an engineer because you have to take 11 courses a year instead of five which you have to take in education and all of those things that people can argue about.

Is it harder to obtain a degree in engineering than a degree in education? Engineers would probably say yes. Teachers would probably say no. It is one of those things. But, they chose one out of all. We chose all and we did not choose to cherry-pick and look around to see if we could find a discipline that had a lower starting salary than teachers. We are not going to. We are not going to look to cherry-pick. We are saying the average of all disciplines is this and the reality is factually known that the teachers start some several thousand dollars higher, except maybe engineers, who earn $800 a year more in their starting salary. So that is one aspect and I do not apologize for refusing to cherry-pick occupations.

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By taking the average, I think you get the real place that--I would compare my salary against the average MLA's salary across the country. I do not like to, actually, because it ranks ninth out of 10, but that is neither here nor there. I would not compare it just to one province. If I wanted to get a real indication of where I stood as an MLA, to compare it simply to one province does not give me that true, valid comparison. To compare it against all does and that is what we have done here.

You had indicated about education and training and we absolutely agree that professional development is a very important part of the culture, and it must be ongoing. We know other occupations know this. Chartered accountants, for example, can actually lose their licence if they do not continue to upgrade themselves. Nobody pays them to upgrade themselves. Nobody gives them the money to upgrade themselves. Nobody gives them extra credit for having upgraded themselves, but they are able to keep their licence and continue practising if they do.

Doctors regularly upgrade themselves at their own expense and then write exams to upgrade themselves, and some of the exams cost $150 each to write. I have a good friend who is a physician who, in upgrading himself, had to fly to Toronto at his own expense to write an exam that cost him $150 to write at his own expense, and they must do that. So we say this is also good. Teachers must also be relevant and upgraded and we applaud those who do use their summers to take courses relevant to education that will help them in their classes. We say this is a good way to spend the summer holiday. I say holiday, I maybe should take that back. I am told it is not a holiday, it is a period of unemployment.

It used to be that teachers were paid on a 12-month basis and then they were given a 10-month basis. I know in one division absolutely, because I was there when it happened, the teachers demanded the 10-month pay period as opposed to 12 months because, quote, unquote, it was really awkward driving in from the lake to pick up that August cheque. However, they asked for and received a 10-month pay period in some divisions so they are now paid their annual salary over 10 months. I understand that the two months in the summer is now referred to as a period of unemployment. That then has led some to say that the hourly rate for teachers has risen accordingly because they are only paid for 10 months of the year. We can quibble about that. I do not want to. I am saying, I applaud them, many of them, for using the summer unemployment period to upgrade themselves and earn extra degrees and so on. We believe that is important.

The question then comes, though, what benefits accrue to school divisions? In many cases they are dramatic. People who take certain courses and credits at university make a dramatic improvement in their ability to come into the classroom. Others will take courses that bear no relevance to what they are teaching in the classroom and could also receive compensation.

The question asked is, is there sufficient benefit in all the courses that are taken or in some and should any course taken, if it is in a course unrelated to teaching, be granted credit and extra money as applied to the classroom? That is a question we do not have an answer for. It is a question we have asked and the member may have some views on which we would be pleased to hear from the opposition.

Mr. Kowalski: This will be my last question or comment, depending on the answer, of course. So I do not know how much longer I will ramble on. But I thank the minister for her response to this document. I do not find that much value in debating the different points unless I have a real expectation of being able to change the minister's mind on some of these arguments and, other than that, I do not want to use up Estimates time other than to get information and get the minister on record.

In that light, the minister has asked me to put some things on the record. The minister has asked, do I think trustees, if I could paraphrase the question, if I remember it accurately, are concerned about rising salary cost and it is a need that needs to be addressed? I think that was the minister's question, that school trustees in Manitoba are concerned about salary costs.

I would say, yes, they are concerned about salary costs, but they are also just as concerned about funding of education in Manitoba, they are just as concerned about teacher morale, because all of us have stated here at the table how important it is for teachers to feel valued because of their importance in the classroom. We have all said it, that the most important element in the success of a student in education is the quality of teacher.

I will not repeat what I said early in these Estimates about this document about, what is wrong with asking the question? I have already talked about that. But I know, my niece, Shelley Kowalski, is graduating from the faculty of education next month. Out of her class of 40, not one of them anticipates having a job in education in Manitoba. Whether that was the government's intent or whether some other people tried to create the impression that this document was attacking teachers, many teachers feel that way, and that has been passed on to students.

I asked the question in the House that the first minister responded to yesterday about, what future do teachers have in Manitoba as a career? As a result of decisions made at the Winnipeg 1 School Division, as a result of their funding from the province, they have indicated that 27 first-year teachers may be facing layoffs. They will be added to the 600 graduates from the different faculties of education that will be looking for work in education. This document has made many teachers, many people considering teaching as a profession wonder, question whether teachers and educators are valued in this province and whether teaching education is still a good career to be in.

That was my main concern about this document that--you know, we have all read the history of how teachers retreated in small towns in early Manitoba, that quite often if they failed a school trustee's child they were out of a job, that their working conditions were poor and that they had to band together to be treated fairly. This document has made many teachers feel that they are under attack, whether that is correct or not.

I remember at the hearings in St. Boniface, there was one Grade 12 student who had come forward and said that she had changed her mind from entering teaching as a career after this document was put out. I will not repeat what I said earlier, but I am concerned on what this has done to the morale of teachers in Manitoba, how teachers feel they are respected by society, by the government, by the public, that teaching is a good profession, a respected profession, and it is a good career to be in. Depending on the answer, that will be my last comment on this line in the budget.

Mrs. McIntosh: I do not know if the member was in the Health Estimates this morning, or here, when the member for Wolseley (Mrs. Friesen) said that it would be her last question, and I responded that I would be brief. So here we go again at any rate.

The member raises several points that are worthy of discussion. I first want to say that the member indicated he would put some comments on the record if he thought he could persuade me to change my mind. I have been sitting here for many days saying that my mind is not made up on these issues, and I am seeking feedback and opinion from people out there in the opposition. It is all right then to put your opinion on the record because it would be seen as helpful.

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I also had asked if the member could indicate to me if he felt that trustees' concerns were valid in terms of escalating costs. The member replied that he acknowledged that trustees had concerns. We know trustees have concerns. We are painfully and absolutely aware that trustees have concerns. That is what sparked this whole process. I think the whole world knows that trustees have concerns. My question to the member was though, did he feel trustees' concerns were valid? Everybody knows trustees have concerns. I am interested to know if the opposition feels that the trustees' concerns are valid. Are they right to be concerned about rising costs? Are they correct in their repeated statements that the current process takes away their ability to make decisions in some areas that they feel they require the right to make decisions in? I did not hear the answer to that, so if you want, when I am finished, come back and indicate that, I would be pleased because sometimes I think in criticizing the process or in criticizing the fact that trustees have asked for strike, the opposition seems to be implying that the trustees' concerns are not legitimate and that there should be no change to the system of binding arbitration or teachers' compensation packages.

I know there have been many who have contacted me who have asked me why the opposition does not seem to recognize the problem. I have said, I do not know it is that they do not seem to have recognized the problem, they have not said where they stand on the problem. They have identified problems of process in our quest for discovery and feedback, but they themselves have not come forward to indicate whether they agree that trustees have a legitimate concern. We can get arguing about the way in which the government has put forth the paper and held the hearings and so on to the point that the real issue is not discussed, and sometimes it is a favourite tactic of opposition parties to talk about the process rather than the issue.

I am not implying by any stretch of the imagination that the member for The Maples is doing that. It would be more the official opposition, I think in that category, that takes that tactic. [interjection] The member is official, but in terms of the official opposition, the NDP has been notorious in not replying to the question as to whether or not there is a problem. They criticized the process, the fact that the panel had two government MLAs rather than two opposition MLAs, or the fact that there was only two meetings of the Carlyle committee, or the fact that this or that or the other thing, but have yet to put on the record whether or not they feel trustees' concerns have any legitimacy or relevance.

Because I am open-minded on this issue in that I am open to suggestions as to solutions, I acknowledge absolutely as Minister of Education, as an individual MLA and as a member of government and as a representative of my constituency, that I believe trustees do have a valid concern about the process of dispute resolution mechanism.

I have yet to hear any member of the opposition tell me whether they feel that concern is legitimate or whether they feel that the status quo is the preference. I think it is critical for the purposes of this debate that the opposition have the courage to come forward and indicate where they stand on this issue because it is beginning to appear from a wide variety of observers that at least the official opposition does not have the courage to indicate whether or not the trustees' concern is legitimate, and that they can rather, by attacking the process of discovery and search for solutions, be seen to be walking both sides of the fence, pleasing the MTS by criticizing the process we are going through without offending the trustees by stating that the trustees do not have a concern.

So I think it will be imperative, and I will be pressing in the next few days to find out where the NDP stands and if the Liberals have a position, as well.

An Honourable Member: Of course, we do.

Mrs. McIntosh: Okay, then the member can give us that position, and I encourage the NDP to give the position later in the day because this process requires absolutely in terms of accountability and responsibility that the opposition put its views as to the legitimacy of trustee concerns on the record. They have to be accountable as official opposition.

When the government has stated they are developing a position, it is part of their responsibility as official opposition to state yes or no to the question, do the trustees of Manitoba have a legitimate concern? Yes or no. The opposition must state that to be truly accountable when the government has said it is looking for an indication of how to address this issue. To do otherwise is to abject their duties, to abdicate their responsibility, to fall short of their obligation as official opposition in terms of offering constructive criticism and opinion. Straddling the fence and wading through the issues and trying to pretend they are on everybody's side is something that happens in opposition--

An Honourable Member: That is the Liberals.

Mrs. McIntosh: Well, no, but the Liberals really believe that. The Liberals really could fall either way off the fence. The NDP usually is more strident in its position than that. So there is an obligation to come clean, to be honest, to put your position on the record. Do trustees of Manitoba have a legitimate concern, yes or no? The official opposition can no longer duck the question, and must be responsible opposition members and provide that.

However, the member for The Maples asked about the concern about how the Winnipeg School Division was concerned because they are having to lay off first-year teachers. They have to lay off first-year teachers, why? Because the collective agreements will say last hired, first fired. Why is the collective agreement in place? Because we have a bargaining system that runs a certain way. Why is this Winnipeg School Division laying off instead of retaining teachers? Because their salary costs have risen; their funding revenues are down. Their funding revenues are down because we have a variety of circumstances that have impacted on school divisions that are real and cannot be avoided.

School divisions would willingly pay less to their employees in order to retain full staff and are unable to. I indicated yesterday that school boards had said to us that unless they can get a handle on the problem of dispute resolution mechanism and binding arbitration, they will have to resort to two things: raise taxes or begin to lay off hundreds of teachers. They would probably resort to a combination of both because they absolutely refuse to raise taxes beyond a certain level, and we applaud them for that because we have taken the same stand. So they are left with one thing that they can do and that is to lay off teachers.

I ask the member when he implies they are laying off teachers because of funding cuts--and I say to the member that the funding reductions that we have had to pass through are far less than our own revenue reductions would have imposed had we passed the whole cut that we received through. I say to the member then, is there another factor maybe that might have influenced the layoffs? Could it be that teachers, by refusing to accept the lower settlement requested by boards, have had some small ability to influence whether or not there are layoffs in their division? Could it be that having made the decision that a certain level of salary was more important than a certain staff number in the division that the teachers themselves had some ability to influence who was laid off? I know that in industry that this holds true, that the employees will take a lower raise or a freeze or a cut in order to keep the full staff employed.

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Ms. MaryAnn Mihychuk (St. James): Mr. Chairman, I would like to change the subject and move into what I believe is a pressing issue for families and children, and that is the pending pilot testing of the Grade 3 math exams coming up May 28 and 29. Many families and children--these are eight-year-olds that I am speaking of--are going to be facing a test provincial exam in preparation for next year and many of these young children are feeling a great deal of pressure, both by families and teachers as they wish to have their students perform well. Evidence that we have indicates that this may indeed hurt their performance in the future, and I wish to go through several questions in terms of the pending Grade 3 standardized math exam and the test that is coming up.

A group of concerned parents have come together and they are called CAST, the Coalition Against Standardized Testing. I am going to go through their brief which I think is quite comprehensive and quite good, and I understand that the minister has been forwarded a copy. They raise several significant issues. They have done what looks to be a fairly comprehensive review of research, and one of their No. 1 issues is that after reviewing the research and contacting the department, they state that they have found no sound pedological information to support standardized testing at the Grade 3 level.

Can the minister provide that empirical, statistical documentation to support standardized provincial-wide testing of Grade 3 children?

Mrs. McIntosh: I am getting some information here that will enable me to better respond to the member's question. I do not know if it is coincidental or not, but I am intrigued that suddenly the topic and the subject got very swiftly changed the minute I asked the official opposition to put its opinion on the record as to whether or not the trustees had a valid concern. I thought I had made a rather strong, impassioned plea for the official opposition to come clean and be honest and answer the question with a yes or no; do you or do you not believe that trustees have a valid concern regarding the dispute resolution mechanism under which they are legally bound?

That request was made, and rather than give me the answer that I required to help me in my decision making, the member very quickly said, I am going to change the subject, which does not surprise me because they have been ducking that issue, straddling the fence, saying we do not like the wording in the document. We do not like that you are asking these questions. We do not like that teachers are worried. But they have never said where they stand, and that is irresponsible as official opposition on an issue of this magnitude, and I am disheartened and discouraged that they will not indicate whether or not they feel trustees have a valid concern.

I would ask that some point be--particularly when this minister has indicated that her mind is open to receiving opinions and suggestions. So I would hope that at some point in the process the members opposite would have both the courtesy and the courage to answer the question trustees have. Are trustees credible in expressing their concern, or do they have no point? Government needs to hear your position. The trustees need to know if you support them or not, and the public needs to know where you are coming from.

They know full well you do not like the process that has been used, but are we going to keep deflecting attention away from the issue to discuss the wording that maybe could have been more user-friendly, and I acknowledge that, but the big issue here is not whether the wording could have been more user-friendly. The big issue is, what are the answers to the questions, and where do you stand on them.

So, here in Estimates, I realize that the opposition is never compelled to answer questions. I am here to answer questions. The opposition can ask questions. The opposition has no obligation to answer questions, and therefore can duck issues, as they are doing on this one. So as the opposition continues to duck questions, refuses to reveal its position, will not identify where it stands, the opposition can claim that they do not have to reveal how they feel about these issues, or where they stand, or what decisions they make, because they are not here to answer questions. I quite agree.

They are not here to answer questions, and I have no right to ask them questions. It would not matter because every time I do ask them a question, they, as the member has just done in saying, I think I will change the subject because I do not want to talk about this anymore because, indirectly, the minister is putting questions on the record that: (a) I cannot answer, (b) I am unwilling to answer, (c) I do not have the courtesy to answer, and (d) I do not have the courage to answer.

So at some point in this whole debate when we make our position clear, you could do the people of Manitoba a great service and let them know that you do have some answers, some solutions, some alternatives, some suggestions, that you are able to do more than to just say, no, no, no, or ask questions for which you yourself have no answers. It is important you ask questions. I believe part of your role is also to present some alternatives and you have not done it.

I just say that if you want to change the subject and avoid the question that I have asked--[interjection]

An Honourable Member: Answer the question . . . development of children.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. The question has been posed. The members sitting around the table on the opposition side and government side have the right to ask questions in the way that they choose, and the minister also has the right to answer those questions in the way she chooses. As long as we are within this section, which applies to almost everything within the budget of Education and Training, that is how it has to be.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I have been unfailingly courteous. Except for this particular question, the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) has not been in this Chamber over the last couple of days where I have been sitting here with great patience and courtesy and friendliness to answer questions put forward. I have been constructive dialoguing for days here. If the member had ever been here she would know it, and the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) can confirm the degree of detail and patience that I have shown in answering the questions.

Finally today I say: Where do you stand? And I get: Change the subject. Fine, I will change the subject, but to imply that my role here is not, first and primarily, for the benefit of children is an implication that is wrong, and I do not accept that. Just as I acknowledge that she does care about children, I expect that same acknowledgment back to me based upon my record and the way I have answered questions to date, until I came to your blocking on the issue of arbitration for teachers.

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I want to indicate that nowhere in that document are we attacking teachers. We value teachers. I do not want that to be left unsaid. For the benefit of children, the member asked that I talk about what is of benefit to children. I am answering her question. I value teachers. Teachers are essential, and they must be fairly treated. If we do not retain good people then we will not be attracting good people to the profession, but we also have to have a fair and sustainable balance in the system between what we can afford and what we would like to be able to afford, and when a Ph.D. is achieved and it may be of great value, is it something that boards are willing to give up hiring a second teacher for to obtain in the classroom, and I think those questions are questions that are fair and reasonable to ask. It is not meant at all in any way as an attack on any particular group of people, because we do value teachers just as we value other groups of society whose wages and remuneration are being questioned by the ratepayers and the taxpayers and those who employ them, in this case school boards.

Boards feel they have lost some control over employer rights. I still would like to know if the opposition feels that boards are correct when they say they feel they have lost control over employer rights. It gets right back to the heart of the issue, and I still feel it would be nice to know if the opposition feels boards indeed have lost some employer rights.

Regarding the testing of Grade 3 children, these tests are not being counted for a final mark unless the division wishes. They are intended to be diagnostic in their presentation. They are to be able to provide a snapshot of a moment of learning on a wide comparative basis. It will be based upon the curriculum, so there should be no surprises to anybody. They are pilot tests. The results will not be published. They are expected to be invaluable, based upon experiences in other jurisdictions and historically, into providing early insight into the progress of a child, so that diagnostically measures can be put in place to ensure maximum development and potential.

There is not research on standardized testing regarding the value of early testing, and we are not talking standardized testing. We are talking standards tests. They are norm referenced. They are standards tests, criterion referenced. They are not standardized tests, and I believe the member knows the difference between standardized tests and testing for standards. Two very, very different things which I am going on the assumption she understands, given her background, but if she would like explanation I would be happy to provide it.

Those will provide very helpful, useful information to inform parents and teachers and students about progress. They are designed to be helpful, and we believe they will be helpful not hurtful. We have to assist parents, teachers and empower them with valid, reliable information early in a child's progress in the school system, but it is regrettable that the member and her supporters do not believe that standards testing will help or whether they believe they will be harmful. We do not believe it is harmful to do early diagnosis, and without early diagnosis, you condemn some children and their parents to many years of schooling trouble before problems are identified.

Ms. Mihychuk: Mr. Chairman, I am particularly upset with the minister's 90 percent of her preamble to getting to the answer of my question. I sincerely came for nine o'clock this morning to ask a series of questions in regard to the Grade 3 exams. I do not appreciate her political rhetoric and her baiting the opposition. This is a very serious issue that affects children and families. She clearly used, I would say, nine of 10 minutes on something that I did not come here to discuss, and I thought it was my mandate to ask the questions. So I take from that that her priorities are clearly not what mine are. I was not trying to avoid her baiting. Well, perhaps I was. She chooses to spend the morning insinuating and attempting to rile up people, while my goal here was to try and get some facts and, hopefully, sound rethinking perhaps on the matter of provincial testing of eight-year-olds.

The minister is insulting, quite frankly, insulting those families that are concerned about this issue and insulting all of these parents who have indeed forwarded their concerns to the minister by her addressing a totally different subject--I find unbelievable. This minister in the past has been co-operative to me as one member in the Chamber, and I am extremely disappointed that she did not take my question seriously and did not answer it, I think, in a comprehensive way that it deserves. I am disappointed because the member in a past life was a trustee, did deal with families, understands that eight-year-olds who are facing--I am not talking about testing--there are all sorts of tests that occur all the way from the year that children enter schools, and she knows that. The point is that they are going to be facing for the first time a standardized exam, provincially run, and this is the preparation for an event that is going to occur next year.

The issue here--and my question was never answered. My question was to the minister: What empirical and statistical documentation is there to support standardized testing of Grade 3 children? A comprehensive review of the research indicates that by preparing one test method, or even three test methods, is not going to mean that those children will have a tool that can measure their capabilities. In fact, that is why, one of the sound reasons why back in the '70s standardized exams were abandoned. It was not a comprehensive testing tool that worked. In fact, the minister and her government are now moving toward a program of testing that will involve compulsory testing of every child in Grade 3 except for those that are in a very specific category, I believe, that fall into a category of special needs, using a fairly specific testing instrument that may be wrong for that one student. The concerns about the psychological damage that this could cause to eight-year-olds is what my question was surrounding.

For the minister then to go on a tirade about a document that my colleague from the Liberal Party was discussing with the minister seems to be--like I said earlier--a matter that tried to deflect and avoid answering the serious questions that are dealing with a situation that is going to affect every child in Manitoba who is eight-years-old, and that is to take effect, if the program goes on as scheduled, next year.

Now, I hope more reason will follow, as I know the minister has said in the past that she has an open mind, and I ask her to review, to ask the department to review all of the research that is available in terms of this program to see if we can look at a more comprehensive form of testing that is not administered centrally by the province.

There is clearly the need for standards testing, and that can be done locally. Parents need clear outcomes and clear accountability. The concern that I have is that there is going to be a test administered May 28 and 29 to most students in the province of Manitoba, and in this case I have heard horror stories of children who are already apprehensive, are trying to prepare for the exam, teachers are teaching to the exam, and families are, as the minister would know, preparing for a massive boycott of participating in the exam on May 28 and 29.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. We will be recessing for dinner. When we return, the member will have four minutes remaining to pose comments and/or questions. We are recessed for dinner until one o'clock.

The House recessed at 12 noon.

________

After Recess

The committee resumed at 1:04 p.m.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Peter Dyck): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon, this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education. When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 1.(b) (1) on page 34 of the Estimates book.

The honourable minister, to respond to the question that was asked before.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the question had been put just before the lunch break requesting some additional information about student assessment. There had been a bit of debate going on about the arbitration paper, which was tidied up, and then on to this particular topic. I note just in passing and a one-sentence observation that the member asking the question, the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) had indicated that I spent a goodly portion of my answer addressing the previous question on accountability and she wanted to talk about assessment and exams. I just note in passing, by interest when people check Hansard, in doing that she spent a goodly portion of her question addressing the same previous question before getting down to the assessment question. As I have indicated before, a sword cuts both ways and standards that are to be applied to one should also be applied to the other.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

Having said that, I will move off the arbitration paper because I know the opposition is reluctant to continue discussing that. We will move on to the area of assessment which is extremely important and an area that this government has taken a position on that in this instance the opposition has also taken a position on. We believe in assessment and evaluation and regret that the opposition does not share our views in this regard, because we believe that assessment and evaluation is an extremely important step in the ability of a student to progress in a reasonable and thoughtful way through the learning process. We believe that it is important to know that a student has acquired prerequisite skills before new areas of learning are imposed upon that prerequisite. We believe that the only way you can know if a student has acquired the required prerequisite knowledge is to check, to assess, to evaluate and to test to see if before you begin the multiplication tables the concepts of addition are truly and genuinely absorbed by the student.

We also believe that before you begin the teaching of certain areas of literature that it is important to test for literacy so you know that when you assign these students to a higher skill task, the essential preliminary skills are known and understood. I think that most educators believe that as well. Whether or not there have been formal processes of evaluation and assessment put in place, the majority of good teachers have instinctively and automatically done that assessment. What we are saying is that we believe it is important that it not just be done by accident but that it be done by design.

I would indicate from New Directions that testing at all levels or grades stems from a foundation of common sense and as New Directions indicates: Student assessment is a continuous systematic and comprehensive process designed to determine the extent to which student learning outcomes have been achieved. This assessment process involves careful planning, systematic implementation and comprehensive analysis, interpretation and reporting of results. It is an integral part of teaching and learning.

Assessment must be based on clear student learning outcomes and standards of achievement where applicable. Assessment must reflect the breadth, depth and complexity of the learning situation and the learning requirements of all students. Assessment must consider aspects such as cultural and gender bias as well as learning requirements such as the need for large print or Braille assessment tools or oral testing procedures. Assessment must allow all students to demonstrate the progress they have made towards achieving their highest potential in relation to student learning outcomes and standards of achievement. Assessment must be clear, must be meaningful, must be honest to students, parents, teachers, employers, educational institutions and the public. It is essential that students be allowed to demonstrate the progress they have made because such knowledge can give a sense of progress and motivation.

The member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) had asked this morning that we be concerned that students were worried about the exams and that the exams would be hard on the students in terms of their egos and their comfort. I indicate to the member that there is no need, in my opinion, for students or parents to worry about the fact that the student's progress is going to be assessed.

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On the contrary, I think that most parents are pleased, in fact. It was a major request of parents; in fact, it was almost at the very top of their list. If not first, I believe it was second on the list of requests that parents made to us in the Parents' Forums when they were first established, that they wanted measurable standards. They wanted to know how their students were doing and they wanted to know how their students' progress compared with others in like learning experiences. This was something that was deemed to be of high, high importance.

We know as well, of course, in the upper grades that universities and industry and so on are wanting to know what the standard is. They know right now that an 80 percent at one school means something completely different than an 80 percent at another school, and they are concerned to the point of talking about putting in a first year at university that would be common to all so that they can determine just where the students are. They have talked in the past about entrance exams so that they can determine just where the students are.

We believe that it is our responsibility as deliverers of kindergarten to Senior 4 education that we are able to provide them with an understanding of where our students are. We believe that as an accountable system, it is important at the end of schooling that we be able to state to those who look at our Grade 12 certificates and say, if a student has an English language arts exam credit from Senior 4 Manitoba, it means the students have achieved a measurable standard of and then be able to identify it. We believe that is part of being accountable.

No item would leave a factory, if we wish to use that analogy, without a test as to its ability to satisfy the consumers' needs. Even automobiles are put to tests before they are allowed to be sold, and if we do that for cars and consumer goods, which are far, far less important than the students of Manitoba, who are people, who are human beings, who have futures and feelings and potential and hopes, if we do these types of tests for things, why, why would we deny that ability to the far more important service delivery of education?

So we feel that in the elementary school, at the primary level, the Grade 3 examinations in mathematics are diagnostic in nature. I have already given an answer to the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) as to the fact that this is a pilot this year but that even when it is no longer a pilot, they are not intended to be tests used for passing, failing. They are to be used for diagnostic purposes. If there are students who face particular circumstances that are difficult, then I should indicate that the department takes special care when testing Grade 3. The member for St. James alluded to the fact that we need to take special care, and I am indicating that indeed we do, thtat there are exemptions and special accommodation guidelines being drafted that would indicate students who may not be writing the Grade 3 exam, students with emotional and psychological states that would be detrimentally affected by the writing of standards tests.

I have to emphasize, the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) repeatedly referred to these as standardized tests. I have repeatedly indicated these are not standardized tests. These are standards tests. There is a big, big difference. She does a disservice by referring to something that we have thrown out of the system quite plainly many years ago, to replace them now with standards tests, as opposed to standardized.

I will continue with the rest of this later.

Ms. Friesen: I think the member for St. James' (Ms. Mihychuk) questioning, if I could continue on that line, dealt with the research base for testing at the Grade 3 level. I think she presented the opinions of some parents who had looked at research and felt that the Grade 3 testing was not effective, and she asked what the minister's corresponding research was that led her to believe that this was the best way to go. So it was the research base, I think, that was an issue. Amongst others, that was one of the questions that she asked, and I wanted to pursue that with the minister and to see what kind of research base there had been for these tests.

The minister makes the point about standards tests, and I know that certainly in areas where these kinds of tests are being introduced, one of the concerns is that the test be of an international standard. I think that the minister, perhaps in her response on the research base, might indicate where these tests are given on an international basis and diagnostically how effective they are and what the result has been and how the department is going to apply that to Manitoba.

Will, for example, these tests be developed in Manitoba? Who is developing them? Are they developed in the context of American tests which are used at this level or British tests that are used at this level?

I think the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) also was concerned about the voice of parents in this, parents particularly who feel that it is not the right thing for their children at the Grade 3 level to be involved in these tests. I am wondering what the minister's response is going to be to those parents. I believe she has recently received the same kind of material that the member for St. James and I had received.

So the parental role in this, how are parents to be involved in this? I know that is something that all of us are very concerned about, the parental role in education. For this first test that the government is instituting, I think the opinions of parents and parent councils, and I have been at parent council meetings in the last few weeks, in fact, where very serious concerns were expressed about Grade 3 testing. I am sure the minister has also had much correspondence dealing with the implications of Grade 3 testing in the immersion programs.

The Grade 3 testing in mathematics, for example, is to be based on a very different way of teaching mathematics. That link between curriculum, between assessment, between professional development which ideally any school division, any minister would be concerned about, I think people believe that that circle is not complete in the immersion area because the testing, for example, and I suppose this applies equally to both French and English, is intended to be based upon explanation rather than mechanical problem solving so that verbal explanation is important. And yet students have not been taught for the past three years to develop those kinds of verbal explanations in the same way that one assumes, as the new curriculum is introduced, that they will be.

So some of the concerns that I have heard from teachers are, first of all, that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy at work here, that you introduce tests before the curriculum has been well established or before the professional development has been done on a widespread basis throughout the province and that inevitably the results of students are going to improve as they are in effect, three years from now, examined on the curriculum upon which they have been taught.

A second area of concern is for immersion children whose abilities to express themselves in the second language are not as developed at the Grade 3 level as the students in English programs. The concern is there that this is not a fair test of their mathematical abilities, that it will be examining much more intensively their verbal abilities, which are not as extensively developed in the second language.

So I think there are a number of areas of concern about the Grade 3 testing: first of all, the parental involvement, the role of parental permission to engage in these tests; secondly, the relationship between curriculum initiation and the timing of the test; then, thirdly, the second language issues.

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Mrs. McIntosh: Just a quick clarification, I apologize, did you ask, will we be asking parents for permission to write the Grade 3 tests? I am sorry.

Ms. Friesen: I did use the word “permission,” yes. What I am concerned about is the parents who are expressing the concerns that they feel it is not beneficial to their children to be taking that Grade 3 test. What is the minister's response going to be to those parents?

Mrs. McIntosh: I indicated, first of all, that the assessment testing is deemed to be an integral part of education. We do not believe that you can have a full and thorough education unless you have had a process of assessment that takes place throughout the learning experience. So a child coming into school will be taking the curriculum and the assessment and all of the other things that are part of education as a requirement of attending school. Those same standards will apply to public and partly funded schools as well.

While we are giving tremendous choice to parents, more choice than they have ever had in the past. We still do feel that there are some things that are just basic to education. One of them is that the student would show up at the school, be part of the learning process and have their progress assessed as they go through the system to see if, in fact, they have absorbed the knowledge that was presented to them or taught to them.

Having said that, of course, we do have, as I started to indicate in my earlier answer, guidelines to determine which students could be exempt from writing exams. I have indicated that students who have severe emotional and psychological states that are determined to be sufficiently abnormal or beyond the norm may, under certain circumstances, not be expected to write the standardized exams if it is felt that they would agitate or detrimentally affect that emotional or psychological state which would already be unusual in its influence on the student.

There may be some English as a Second Language students in the English program whose language proficiency is right at the beginning level whose ability to write the exam would be limited if there. They would be noted as those who did not speak English and could be exempt from writing the exam because they probably would not be able to put anything on the paper. But it would be noted for the statistical purposes that they were not literate or fluent in English.

Certain physically disabled students who might require major modifications to the test administrative procedures or students with IEPs based on cognitive disabilities that are significant in nature such that they would invalidate the use of the test or students enrolled in programs such as those offered at the learning assistance centre, and there may be some others. On the specific dates for the piloting of the tests, it might be that a student could be exempted for the normal kinds of reasons: death in the immediate family; mandatory attendance at family court; a doctor's indication the student is too ill, on a medical certificate, to be present.

We do have accommodations we are able to make providing more time to certain kinds of students to allow them to complete the test if they are disabled in some way. Perhaps they have a motor ability that takes them longer to do the writing, for example, or they require a Braille text. Maybe they have to have someone read material to them if they cannot see and those types of accommodations that can be made.

I want to indicate that the member for St. James had made quite a point of asking this question. Her main question to me was this. I know she did at the end squeeze in a question or two about research but, to me, the main thing she emphasized was this concern that I have just expressed about students who were upset that they had to write an exam and that the parents were worried because of the effect on the ego and the psyche of having to be tested and that they were not being able to sleep and those kinds of things. So that to me was the main thing that she dwelt upon, but I will answer the other concerns as well.

She had indicated, you know, well, this would be very bad because teachers would begin to teach to the test. I say to that that the teachers will be teaching to the curriculum because the test is based upon the curriculum. So, no, they are not teaching to the test, they are teaching to the curriculum, which is what they should be doing because, as the member herself knows, with her insistence and emphasis on proper curriculum development, we would not spend all the time on curriculum development if we did not think the curriculum should be taught. So the teachers will teach to the curriculum and, in doing so, which they would do anyhow, I would hope, and they have not always in the past, but now I think they would have renewed enthusiasm for teaching the curriculum because their children will be tested on that curriculum someday.

I do not see anything wrong with encouraging teachers to teach to the curriculum. In fact, I think it is what we are supposed to encourage them to do. Now, the member for St. James may disagree with me on that but I, as Minister of Education, really do want to see teachers teaching the curriculum and I do not apologize for that or think it is a bad thing. I also do not think it is a bad thing to test on that curriculum.

The tests, I indicate, are not counting for marks. In the future, other subjects, all pilot tests, will only occur after one full year of implementation so they would go for a year first as a pilot curriculum and then do the test. The use of the tests in Grade 3 is diagnostic. These tests assess the curricula, as well as the learning, and it helps us understand if the curriculum that has been developed is assisting the acquisition of knowledge and I think that is an important thing to seek to find out. They are not standardized tests. If the tests were standardized or counted for all or some of a Grade 3 child's mark or were the only means of assessing, then I would be as concerned as the member for St. James. But the member for St. James is concerned about tests which are not standardized, which do not count for any of the mark, which are not the only means of assessing and I should indicate to her that her concerns need not be upsetting when she considers what they really are, not what she thinks they are or has been told they are.

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Regarding the immersion testing, we are fully aware of all of the things the member has mentioned. We are more than fully aware. We have done a lot of study and consultation on the very topic she raises as a question. It is not a new question to us. It is one we have spent a lot of time on and we have talked to a lot of people about. We have developed the math test in English. It is then translated into French and then reviewed for language appropriateness. We involve French Immersion teachers in that process and the tests will assess the students on matters that have been taught. It will not assess the students on matters that have not been taught.

We are also fully aware and have done a tremendous amount of examination of the learning curve that occurs in French Immersion schools. The department was instrumental in helping set up French Immersion schools. They are fully conscious. One might say they are experts. In fact, one should say they are experts in this area and that people come to them to seek opinion on their expertise in the delivery of French Immersion. They are sought out as the experts from whom people seek research. So while we do our own research, I should indicate that we are not starting from a base of ignorance and lack of knowledge here, far from it. The French Immersion students we know are mostly verbal in the first three years, will experience a lag behind the English language arts until they hit a certain point at which time their curve goes sharply up and you begin to see very swift progress rising very swiftly up the graph.

What we need to have statistically for our own purposes in terms of understanding a snapshot, a statistically correct snapshot of Manitoba students, is how well the students do on those tests. We fully expect that on the French mathematics test the students may not show as high a result as if they had done all their learning in English. That will be factored into any analysis and we may eventually have a statement that says in Grade 3 French, at a certain level, we would expect a good mark would be a mark that would be a certain percentage less than the English mark and it would be counted as equal to that English mark. We know the results will rise once proficiency in the language does.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I wanted to follow up with a couple of questions on exams, but I know that we are not really on the area of testing and New Directions, so I just want to let the minister know that for some of this I do want to come back to it when she has the staff there for that. We did introduce the discussion here of the Grade 3 exams because it is a policy decision, it is a new policy and so that is the relevance to this particular line.

One thing that I wanted to follow up on was the exemptions that the minister gave me, and this in effect does apply, I believe, to the whole testing issue, and that is the issue of significant cognitive disabilities. Those are the people who are to be excluded or who may be excluded from exams and who may have an “M” or a “modified” written on their final graduation certificate, I think, is the issue. One of the concerns that I know the minister is aware of again, and I do not know whether it is being answered satisfactorily in divisions throughout Manitoba, is who decides that? The people I have heard from are very concerned that they do not have the expertise in their own schools, and they are not sure about how that significant cognitive disabilities is to apply. Is there a standard that the province is looking at overall? Is there a list of those standards? What proportion of people does the minister anticipate will have significant cognitive disabilities?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the deputy is getting some information there which I will have in just a few seconds. Regarding the matter of research which the member asked earlier, I agree that probably is more appropriately handled in 16.2 under the Assessment and Evaluation unit of SPD, but I just would indicate that research on standardized tests is inconclusive, we believe, and even if it is showing testing of young children, is not supportable. This is not research on standards testing, so that research on standardized testing is not research on standards testings. We do believe we have a different and new approach, that we are evolving new approaches routed in these very important pedagogical principles. They follow: test what is taught--that is item one, test what is taught; two, test as an outcome of teaching the curriculum; three, early diagnosis of children is critical since early intervention is critical to the later success of children.

Can we definitively show that Grade 3 is the “correct” early grade to assess? Could it be Grade 2? Could it be Grade 4? Maybe, but Grade 3 is felt to be the age where you would get the best ability to assess someone who has already enough chance to begin the learning process but still early enough for intervention. You do not want to wait too long. You do not want to catch them before they have had any exposure to learning. So Grade 3 was deemed to be the year. As I say, standards testing is relatively new. It is a new pedagogical approach. All the research on standardized testing shows standardized testing really does not do what it had been hoped to do. That is why we do not use it anymore. That is why we have moved to standards testing.

We can get into that later when we get going on, but these tests will reflect wholly the curriculum outcomes, and they are constructed using experiences, using expert Manitoba teachers. I like to call them master teachers. They will be developed in Manitoba and not outside of Manitoba.

The question you asked on the significant cognitive disabilities, my deputy has indicated here that the people who decide that would be the schools and the divisions, and he has referred me to page 4 in the Special Education in Manitoba document, and that says: A systematic assessment of a student's educational needs is a prerequisite for special programming and placement. Program and placement decisions shall be made in the best interest of the student in order to provide the most appropriate education within the most enabling learning environment available or possible under the circumstances. In the process of arriving at a programming or placement decision, a co-operative approach involving all persons who have information relevant to the student shall be used. The special education team shall include educators, parents, support personnel and, where possible, the student. The team shall recommend placement or program alternatives to the educational authorities.

Regarding the M designation, as I have said, schools and divisions will make the decision as to whether a student would fit into an M designation category, and they will use available, currently accepted methods, both formal and informal, such as clinical tests, teacher observation, school assessment information, parental observation and views. We believe that most if not all divisions have the tools and the expertise already available for this. The key is a team approach, and that is explained in the book from which I just quoted. There is no set percentage of students. It could vary, but the key is an individualized plan for each child, and I think that may have addressed most of the concerns raised, but if I have missed any, please remind me and I will try to come back to them.

Ms. Friesen: I may be a bit puzzled about the difference the minister, not so much the difference the minister is drawing between standards and standardized tests, I understand the vocabulary the department is using, but on the newness of this. It seems to me that what the minister and the department describe as standards tests, teaching to the curriculum, outcomes, early diagnosis, although perhaps that does not apply in what I am going to say, but that the international programs like international baccalaureate or the French baccalaureate or the British O-levels and A-levels are exactly that and are perhaps almost over a half century old now.

I wonder if I am missing something when the minister says that these are new. Does she mean that they are new to Manitoba? Does she mean that they are new in the context of North America or are they new in some new approach to testing? They seem to me to be quite old and well established in some parts of the world, although certainly not recently in North America where there has been a movement, at least in Canada, away from that until the present government and governments of the '90s.

So maybe the minister will clarify that, how different does she see these tests from essentially the old curriculum-based testing of Grade 12 or the old curriculum-based testing of A-levels or of the current international baccalaureate type of programs? I also wanted to know from the minister what use is intended of the Grade 3 exams. For example, how will they be reported? Will there be an overall reporting to the province? Will it be reported back just to divisions and will it be up to divisions on how to use that information? Will it go down to the level of the classroom? How will parents be involved in the understanding of both provincial results and of the classroom results and of their division results? How will the marking be done? Will that be done by the classroom teacher, at the divisional level, and what kind of time frame is there for that? When does the minister anticipate that the first results will be available from these tests?

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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I am not sure if I got all the questions down but, again, I will just make my statement that there were several questions in there and I was trying to answer them all and it is easy to ask a question in one minute but sometimes they take three or four minutes to answer, so I may need a bit more time to come back on them.

The member started off by saying that the standards test followed the same or were the same as I.B. or A-levels or O-levels or things that had been done in the past, and the member is mistaken in that. They are different and, you know, maybe some of the difficulties that are being expressed from the benches opposite is that the members keep trying to compare it to what was.

The member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) says, well, these are standardized tests. The member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) says, well, these are like I. B. or O-levels or A-levels. We have said these are different and, I guess, as we continue going through the questions, we keep pointing out differences, it may come out then as the final picture.

In the old curriculum and even in the International Baccalaureate are very few if any identified, specific outcomes. There is no framework as we have in our Grade 3 mathematics. We have a framework where we identify specific outcomes. The test for I.B. sets the standard, whereas in our way the standards are predetermined in that we say these will be the standards and everything we do will move toward those standards. With the I.B. the test will set the standard at the end rather than at the beginning.

The curriculum sets the standard in our standards testing. The test simply assesses standards to see if the level has been reached, to see if it can be measured. We do not mark on a curve, for example. It is possible that every student could achieve the standard. You will not see a certain percentage syphoned off because you have marked on a bell curve, and some place at the top, some place at the bottom and the bulk in the middle. It is possible for all students to achieve the maximum standard, or should be.

In Grade 3, the results will be returned to the school. The individual results are then provided to the teacher and the parents. The school results are for the use of the school or for the division but the province will not be publishing any of the school-by-school marks. We will release province-wide results only in terms of overall conclusions. We will not be saying this division or that division had this or that outcome. We will be saying, in Manitoba, students, and then whatever the fact is that we conclude from the assessment.

What is new about the standards testing is that there are few if any jurisdictions that have this curriculum that is developed with general and specific outcomes and standards of performance followed by testing in mind at the outset of the curriculum development, and it puts a different spin on the whole process. If you say, for example, as might have been done in some areas in the past, we should tell the children about geology and how rocks are formed, and we will do that--now we have done that, we have developed a curriculum now--we should find out if we do any testing of what they remember and so we will give them a standardized test that might be where they could tick off the following points, you know, granite looks like this, tick, tick, tick. It is completely different from saying, we want an outcome that will have students understanding the properties of the earth around them. We must develop a curriculum and build in all these things as we go through so that that outcome, that understanding, is achieved.

The marking for the Grade 3 mathematics, we will be using this year's Grade 3 mathematics pilot to pilot not only the test instrument, but also both local and central marking. As the member may recall, we had central marking for the L.A. exam in Senior 4 last year for a variety of reasons, the overriding reason being that in other jurisdictions it had been clearly indicated that the only way where you had true consistency was centralized. Even with regional marking where people had been through the same training process for the marking, there were great discrepancies in the test scores. One group of markers, wherever they were congregated, had significant deviations from the other. We will be checking to see if that holds true if we try a regional or local marking for the Grade 3.

So we will develop some recommendations on local versus central marking. Hopefully, we will have that feedback for us in time for the September '96 school year. But that was a matter of some controversy because of the inconvenience of marking in a central location. However, statistically, we have been led to believe that that is the only way we could guarantee a consistent approach to marking. We will be checking for that in this pilot.

I think I left out one. I did not get them all written down when you were asking.

Ms. Friesen: I think the only one the minister left out was the timing of the response to schools. She talked about the method of responding to schools and divisions, but I had asked also when parents might learn of the results of the test.

If I could add while I am discussing that I also would be looking for some response on the use of the test to assess curriculum. That circle, that loop that I have talked about before and I think is also contained within the departmental guidelines, how is that to be carried out? How is that curriculum assessment to be done based on the kind of testing and testing results, and in what way will it be different from the continuous assessment of curriculum that was done in the past by the department and that was made known through public reports or departmental reports? So I am looking for, again, the public record on the assessment of the curriculum and some comparison with how the department feels that it will be improving upon what had existed before in Manitoba.

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Mrs. McIntosh: In terms of the timing, they should have that information around the third week in June. The member asked about the use of the assessment testing to assess curriculum. The curriculum assessment versus standards tests way of doing things--the curriculum assessment test is to indeed assess curriculum. The member is correct, but they only are used to assess curriculum.

The standards tests will do things a little more thoroughly. The standards test will assess curriculum, as did the earlier curriculum assessment tests, but they will not take a year and a half to do it. It will be done in a matter of weeks, and they will also, at the same time, provide a profile for each individual child, which the former curriculum assessment tests did not do.

The standards tests will have absorbed components of things that were done before, such as curriculum assessment, but will reject other things that were done before such as the standardized testing and those kind of things. Essentially the curriculum assessment, which was done before, will just be done using this vehicle but still have the same impact. This one will be faster and will assess the whole child as well, give a profile for each child.

Ms. Friesen: The former assessment process, which the minister says took a year and a half--I do not know what length of time it takes, so I am sure the minister is right on that--but it did involve an assessment of curriculum across the province that was then reported back to people, so there was the production of a document. There was, I assume, also the sense of, here are the recommendations for improvement; here is the kind of professional development that is needed; here is where the curriculum is not meeting the kind of needs that we think we have; and here is where perhaps there are indications that our students have changed and where the curriculum itself needs to change.

I think what went into that year and a half was some careful consideration. It was not every course every year. It was on a rotational basis, so that over a number of years we had a sense in Manitoba of how our classroom needs were changing, how our curriculum needed to be changed and how professional development needed to deal with that. So again, it is that whole circle of curriculum development and standards that I am addressing.

I am wondering how this new process of using the standard tests as one of the elements of curriculum assessment, how that is going to be fed back into the public record, the public knowledge, the community involvement, in developing curriculum and standards in Manitoba.

Mrs. McIntosh: The member is making an assumption that is not correct in assuming that because this can now be done very swiftly, that those elements that used to be in curriculum assessment are not going to be done. It used to take a year and a half to do those things that she named. Those things that she named are still going to be done through this process, but they will be done swiftly in a matter of weeks rather than a matter of many, many months, a year to a year and a half under the old way versus a matter of weeks under the new way to do all of those things that she just mentioned. They are not going to be left undone.

One of the assumptions was that you always had to take eons and eons and eons to do that kind of work. We know and those who are experts in evaluation know that one of the hallmarks of successful assessment is that you get immediate results so you can take immediate corrective action. To do a thorough assessment, it is like if I am driving a car and I am assessed on my driving and the assessor takes a year and a half to get back to me, and I have been driving around for a year and a half, reinforcing bad habits and maybe getting into accidents or maybe damaging my vehicle to such a point that I have no car, the fact that they come back a year and a half later and say, by the way, we notice that you cannot see, so you should not be driving, is not going to have helped me in the year and a half, and may, in fact, have done me irreparable harm through the delay.

So one of the hallmarks of successful assessment, evaluation and diagnostic techniques which are usually designed to enhance progress, improve progress, enrich progress, is that it be done swiftly with immediate response, like an immediate first responder, rather than an unseemly delay. I stress that because I appreciate her concern, and I wish to reassure her that those things are not going to be lost because the process is now more swift.

In terms of the difference between standardized tests and standards testing, standardized tests are often off the shelf. They are kind of prepared en masse, and you can pluck them from somewhere and apply them to your students, so they usually assess recall knowledge and some applications, but they are often not very reflective of any particular curriculum. They are largely geared to content recall in most subjects, and you will find this in some of the areas that she discussed earlier that she thought were the same as what we are doing now, that tests can be pulled off the shelf and applied and not geared to the development of the curriculum.

They are normed and they are often then marked against that norm, which is usually a right or a wrong answer, and they do not allow students' thinking to be included nor the methods by which they have determined the answers to be marked. We will be looking at not just what is the answer to your question, but how did you arrive at the answer, and that shows an understanding of the methodology as well as the right or wrong answer.

Standards tests, on the other hand, focus on all aspects of performance. There will be criteria referenced reflecting what was taught. They do not focus on recall alone. They focus on application, problem solving, critical creative thinking. For the most part, you cannot teach to a standards test because what is assessed is the learning skill and performance, not how the child was taught or the vehicle used to assist the learning. The Grade 12 mathematics exam, which I know is not a discussion here, gives a good example. We can maybe go through it in some detail--I do not know if the member has had a chance to go through the awareness one that we did this June--so you can see how that evolved. It really does test literacy.

So I will not go into that right now, but I just do point out those differences. These are not off-the-shelf exams that can be applied. They are ones that are developed through the curriculum.

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Ms. Friesen: One of the main differences that the minister seems to emphasize in this kind of testing that the department is involved in, is outcomes based. I wonder if the minister could tell us where the outcomes are for the Grade 3 test that will be developed, and how will the community be involved in looking at those? Will parents be able to see those outcomes that their children are supposed to meet, and when will those be available?

Mrs. McIntosh: The curriculum document--the member was asking about the outcomes and when would parents know the outcomes. That was provided to the schools about a year ago. They were sent out to the divisions. Divisions were encouraged to send them home with students. In fact, in St. James-Assiniboia, where I live, the board sent the outcomes home with the parents a year ago, last June, so they would have it in readiness and those outcomes, of course, are part of the curriculum. The curriculum states the outcomes. The standards tests are a reflection of the curriculum which contains the outcomes. They do not buy a test and then wildly teach the children everything they can learn about the test. They develop the curricula, state the outcomes, and the tests reflect those outcomes, which went to the schools a year ago and in some divisions, one that I know of for sure, went home with the students to the parents.

When the test marks are released to the parents, the parents will receive a profile of how their students did on each outcome. For example, if the mathematics test has four strands and the strands--I do not have the test here so I am just going to do some creative thinking--but let us say the strands are patterns, are shapes, are numbers, so say four strands, and there will be various components under each strand. The parents then will receive an indication of how their students did on each of the strands so they might get a document that would say, here is your student's profile.

As you know, the outcomes were so students should be able to demonstrate that they recognize four different shapes, whatever the outcome was, and your student, under all the different categories under shapes, here is the profile. Here is what they were able to demonstrate they understood. Here is where they were not able to demonstrate they understood or a partial demonstration, et cetera. So all of that determination goes home to show how the students measured against the standard, how well they were able to learn the outcome, how are those standards calibrated. I just got a little note from here saying that they did four days of in-servicing for Grade 3 teachers this year on that particular item that I am discussing.

But the standards are calibrated for Grade 3 mathematics. They have three levels of standards which describe how well students perform in relation to a given outcome or a set of outcomes. There is a proficient performance, which is within the provincial standard; limited performance, which is below the provincial standard; superior performance, which is above the provincial standard.

The following example which I am going to give from Grade 3 mathematics demonstrates the process the department teams use to develop and calibrate the standards. First, the team familiarizes themselves with outcomes from curriculum framework. So the outcomes from Grade 3 mathematics being that students can use manipulatives, diagrams and symbols in problem-solving context to demonstrate and to describe multiple strategies for determining sums and differences to 100, to recall addition and subtraction facts to 18. Those would be outcomes, and they familiarize themselves with those from the curriculum framework.

The second thing then is that the team designs and develops an authentic assessment task that enables students to demonstrate a variety of levels of performance for particular learning outcomes. They have a story problem, the answer is 18, what is the story problem? Those could actually be fun for students to play with when you get that kind of situation. It is kind of like the television show Jeopardy that everybody watches and tries to figure out from the answer what the question was. So you can have fun playing with those.

(Mr. Frank Pitura, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Then the team field tests assessment items with students and gathers student samples to use as data for determining standards and performance levels. The team will develop criteria, analyze the student samples, and sort them into levels. For the limited response level one, they might have a criteria for assessing student responses that would show some indication of a mathematical story problem formation, may have context but no question, may have a story problem, but the answer is not the 18 that might be expected.

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To give you an example of that, one example that has been put forward is, Stephanie is having a sleepover party. She invites eight people. She makes 10 invitations. What is 10 plus eight? Ten plus eight equals 18. That is a student sample story problem made up by the student.

So level two, which is a proficient response, contains a mathematics problem with complete information. It asks the question; the student's question must have an answer of 18. Student sample would be there were 10 giraffes and eight monkeys. How many were there in all? Just a simple example.

The level three or superior response would meet the same criteria as level two, but it contains a two-step problem having different number operations, or a story problem of unexpected complexity. Then, an example here, a student sample is something like this: Mrs. McGonigal gave Chris 50 carrots. Chris's family ate 40 of them at supper. The next day at school Jeffery gave Chris 10 beets. Chris's family ate two of the beets for supper. How many vegetables does Chris now have? The answer is 18. That is complex beyond what was expected. It is a superior indication of, here is a story problem boys and girls; the answer is 18; now tell me the story. Make up a problem the answer to which will be 18.

Children enjoy this type of thing. They really do, and you can really understand their grasp of mathematics when you begin asking them to state the questions.

The fifth thing that happens when they are deciding how to calibrate the standards would be that the team would establish definitions and descriptors of standards and performance levels for inclusion in curriculum frameworks of outcomes and standards documents. That, I hope, will provide some of the clarification the member is seeking in her question.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister table what was sent to the school divisions, that is, the list of outcomes as contained in the curriculum, and just further to that, the minister indicates that in St. James School Division they were sent home with students. Does the minister have any way of knowing how other school divisions dealt with it, because presumably we are now looking at a standard test across the province? If you have some divisions that sent it home and some did not, recognizing that this is a diagnostic test, one would have anticipated that there would be standardized ways of handling this kind of information.

Having talked to parents in some parent councils, it is not my understanding that they are aware of these outcomes, or indeed, that these outcomes are available to them at the moment.

Mrs. McIntosh: I think the member has just absolutely underscored the point that we have been trying to make consistently throughout this. St. James did not send home the test. They sent home the curriculum which contains the outcomes. That is the point that we have been trying and trying to make. The outcomes need to be known before the work begins, and we have been saying that to divisions. We say that to everybody who will listen. The outcomes need to be known from the very beginning. They need to be known before the curriculum is written, and certainly need to be incorporated in the curriculum, and parents should be familiar with what those outcomes are and what that curriculum is, just as teachers should be.

If divisions and boards and schools are not telling parents what their children can expect to learn in Grade 3, we would contend that they should be encouraging them to say: Your child is now going to begin Grade 3. During Grade 3 they will learn certain subjects. One of them will be mathematics. In Grade 3 mathematics, we expect that by the end of the year, your child will have achieved proficiency in certain outcomes. These are the outcomes. We would like them to be able to compute to a certain level, to have a basic understanding of shapes and patterns. These four strands in the curriculum will lead us to the outcomes we desire for your child, and at the end of the year, your child will be assessed to see if in fact that knowledge has been absorbed.

Schools should be doing that. School divisions should be doing that. They are not being given the test and they are not--if parents are being told what the outcome should be and not understanding that those are the outcomes upon which their children will be assessed, they should be.

I have to indicate when I say that St. James sent home the outcomes, what they sent home was not the entire curricula, which is extremely thick and heavy. What they sent home was a newsletter with the students indicating the key aspects of the Grade 3 mathematics curriculum. That is not an onerous thing to do. It is a fairly simple thing to do, to highlight those key aspects of the Grade 3 math curriculum at the beginning of the year, or at the end of the year in preparation for the following year. The key aspects of the Grade 3 math curriculum do not take a hundred pages to highlight, although if you take the curriculum, of course, it is very thick indeed, but a one- or two-page summary can be most useful for parents and can give those key points in ways that will help parents understand what their children are going to be doing.

So we have encouraged all school divisions to do this, but when we are asked, we notice that some still have not.

We hesitate to order school divisions to share with parents what their children can expect to learn in school in any given year, because the minute we order, then we are told of usurping the authority of the board or stepping in or sending letters to parents without board approval.

We once sent the report. In fact I think the opposition took us to task for it in the House, in questioning in the House, took us very roundly to task in fact for having inadvertently sent the Canadian report on education in Canada to student councils. In some cases, they did not get to the school boards, and we were slapped on the wrist pretty hard, not just by the school board but by certain members of the opposition. So we want to avoid saying you have to bring all the parents in and tell them what their children are going to be learning next year.

We believe the majority do that, because first of all most parents will ask what is my child going to learn this year. What sort of things do they have to do? Most schools are responsible enough, or most divisions, to let parents know the kind of work their children are going to be learning or what outcomes they should be looking for. Our staff will present to parents when we are invited to a division and we extend this service to divisions. We are quite eager to be invited. Our math consultants have, in fact, presented this information to many parent groups upon request, so when we are invited to come we show up very happily. We consider it a wonderful opportunity to share with parents and help them become part of their children's learning, and so we are anxious for those invitations and hope, indeed, that boards will do the information sharing.

We talked about outcomes and standards in a very general way in the parent report that we sent out ourselves in September 1995. Then in our September 1996 parent report, the math specifics will be the focus, and it will explain the curriculum and standards of math and that parent report should be widely available to parents, but it is still not an obligation of school boards to inform parents of Grade 3 students what the outcome should be in their schools.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I just wanted to ensure that the minister would be tabling those outcomes so that they can be part of the public record. Thank you.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, we will indeed. We will bring those in. We do not have them here today, but we will have them for Monday.

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Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, what I would like to do is to look at those and then come back to the whole issue of outcomes and standards at a later time.

I note that we are still on line 16.1 (b), and I have one other area of policy to discuss here, but it can equally be done elsewhere. I do not know what the minister's staff's time is like.

What I wanted to ask about was the business council and the business advisory group on education that the minister has established. I raised some questions about this in the House and I wanted to follow up here. I am concerned that there are a number of areas of the provincial economy which are not represented on this board and particularly the area of telecommunications on an advisory council on education and business. I would have thought that there were many people in Manitoba with excellent experience and credentials who could have been involved in this committee. Given the department's and everyone's concern about distance education, given our concern with making the Internet and those elements available to Manitobans, I would have thought that there would have been a place for one or even two people right at the beginning of this advisory group who would be able to look at that.

This is not to say, of course, that any of the individual members of this committee would not, obviously, have some experience in their own businesses, but it is much broader than that and to try and establish policy and to develop the programs which I think is what the minister will be looking at from this committee for Education, post-secondary and K to 12--and I must admit, I had not picked that up and I know it is in the press release. That was something I had not picked up right at the beginning, and it was when I began to look at this committee in the context of both sections of Education that some of those areas seemed to me to be overlooked.

My initial reaction, of course, was also that there did not seem to be any connection with the North, that there were no connections here that I could see with aboriginal people, and again in terms of the future of Manitoba, the age structure of Manitoba populations that is very significant, I think, for a province. Obviously, considerable concerns for a committee which will be looking at work experience and apprenticeship, that there are no labour representatives on this committee.

If I were to look at it from the perspective of rural Manitoba, I think the kinds of businesses, if I can put that in the broadest context, that are represented in rural Manitoba, co-ops or credit unions, Manitoba Telephone System, Manitoba Hydro, the Crown corporations in which we have an enormous amount of technical expertise, professional expertise, that I would like to see connected to the schools. Similarly co-ops and credit unions, there is a very wide range of expertise in both of those, very much connected to the business future of Manitoba. My concerns are that there is much opportunity here to broaden the representativeness of this particular committee.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

Mrs. McIntosh: There were a whole series of questions in there, and as always when there is a whole series of questions, I am madly trying to write them down hoping to keep track of them well enough.

I want to indicate for starters that it would be impossible, if we are trying to keep the group down to a manageable size, to have absolutely every single sector recognized. I think the member appreciates that. The member suggested a number of other people with other kinds of skills, knowledge, or categories, could have been on the group, and that is absolutely true. But we felt we had to limit the number of size to a workable number.

I also indicate that this type of group has never been established before, and I appreciate what I thought I heard was a compliment, that the government had taken the initiative to establish such a group. I know it has been widely praised with the business community and with chambers of commerce and people in those categories that this effort has been made to try to establish some sort of link with the business community.

The people who have been chosen in some cases may be representative of emerging sectors; in others, may have generic knowledge that is applicable to a series of emerging sectors. The chairman, for example, as director of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses is plugged into literally pages of businesses with a variety of viewpoints and aspects. So you could technically say that the chair, by virtue of being the director of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, represents every sector that is reflected in his particular association, which is just about every small business in the whole province.

But more than that, even if you go down and start to take a look at the individual members that are there, and you look at a Ralph Bullock, for example, the vice-president of Bristol Aerospace. Is he there as a representative of the aerospace industry? Partly. Is he there because he is a member of the lifelong learning task group? Partly. Is he there because of his position on the Economic Innovation and Technology Council? Partly. But, basically, he is there because he understands philosophically and he understands from experience the interconnection between business, between government, between education, between service, and between economic growth. He has a very good grasp of those issues. He also happens to be a prominent business person of a large group that happens to be an emerging sector with a very strong knowledge of technology, running a business that relies heavily upon the capabilities of technology.

But if I were to say, why did I want Ralph Bullock on there? I would say, those are all wonderful good things. He is a technocrat; he is an Economic Technology Council person. He is an innovator by definition, by virtue of his membership on the Innovation and Technology Council, emerging sector, high executive placement, understands the capabilities of technology and what they can do, understands the relationship. Why would I want Ralph Bullock on? Because he is wise, because he is intelligent, because he is knowledgeable, because he is able to communicate and articulate well with labour, with business, with government. He understands the issues relevant to economy and economic growth, and he knows the skills and talents that are required in such a way that he can provide opinion to me on what we need to do in the schools.

We always look at the resumes of people coming onto bodies such as this, a new body. The first time something like this has been done in Manitoba--long overdue. It should have been done years ago, should have been done in the '70s, should have been done in the early '80s, never was, is being done now. Aside from the resumes, what I look for when I look at people for these areas is first of all I look for their get-up-and-go. I look for qualities of character, personality and overall knowledge. You can have someone with the most impressive resume in the world who can sit on a council and be too shy to say a word, or who can sit on the council and monopolize the conversations so that no one else can give input, or who can sit on the council and want to hear only his or her own views and not be able to listen to others, or who would not know how to reach out to groups who are not on the council because this group will have to do that. They will have to be reaching out and communicating and dialoguing with people beyond themselves. They need to be the type of people who are eager to enter into dialogue and learn from each other.

So those qualities of character are very, very difficult to put on a resume. I also know when we look at these people that we need to try, and we tried very hard, and I think we did do this to make sure that we had a council that did not just reflect the--what did the members opposite call us one day?--the silver-haired aging old men. I think it was recently, I know last year the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) called us a bunch of old white guys, but this year somebody called us a group of silver-haired aging old men. I see one member around this table who would love to have--be the silver-haired head. Of course, those of us who are female on our side of the House do not really take kindly to be calling silver-haired aging old men. However, we understand that there is posturing in the House. We say things sometimes that upon reflection we regret, and we did not call the members on it because, what is the point? We know we are not old men. But I want to make sure I do not have old men on this committee either. I have middle-aged men, old men, young men, women. Nothing wrong with old men. Some of them are pretty nice, and some of them are very wise and carry long years of experience. That is a perspective that needs to be put before.

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We also, of course, have been trying to get Manitoba people. We want Manitobans. We have got people on here who own businesses which I think is really interesting. The three women for example on this--and I am so proud of these three women--Manitoba-based businesses. Gail McCullough, for example, and Bev McMaster starting their own businesses, responding directly to the needs of Manitobans, seeing a need, moving in to fill it. Women from Manitoba, rural women responding to a need and finding the need met far beyond their expectations to the point that in the one instance, for example, with Bev McMaster, a Manitoba woman, not an American, not an Ontario person, not a Saskatchewan person, a rural Manitoba woman responding to a need that she noticed in the community within a very few years has not only won all awards that she has won but has 41 franchises and thousands of employees, a remarkable, remarkable accomplishment. We need to know how those things happen.

So we have deputies, of course, Mr. Chairman, on the committee. In addition to the deputies, we have the concept of membership evolving as it has with other councils previously established. We have both deputies also sitting on the Distance Education and Technology Council, which is structured via the regional consortia which will enable partnerships locally between business, schools, communities. MERLIN is also on that council. The mandate includes the empowerment and the responsibility to liaise and consult with others to take a system-wide approach. Several members, at least, are very broadly knowledgable on it because they are on the economic council. We expect that these people will be talking to others because it is impossible to have everybody on this council. This council will be reaching out to those members of society who may not be directly represented here but whose contribution can and should be felt reaching out to obtain their views as they get to those points in their work. Thank you.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, well, my concerns with this committee are, as I said, essentially the representativeness of Manitoba and, obviously, areas like telecommunications and mining and agribusiness are not as represented here as one would expect. I did not know that MERLIN was going to be on this committee. I am not sure if it said that in the departmental press release, but I think that is certainly a good idea that they should be part of it. I am concerned that northern and aboriginal Manitoba is not, so far, part of this group.

My other concern, of course, is the nature of a co-operative province. I do not just mean that in reference to the co-ops and credit unions that I talked about just a minute ago--but the fact that labour is not involved in this, I think, is not perhaps representative of this province or of the nature of this province where there has always been a strong labour movement. One of the things that I was very discouraged to see had not happened in the previous eight or nine years was the fulfilment of--and it was Brian Mulroney's initiative--the Labour Force Development Board, which did bring together labour and business and direct them towards dealing with education, not just in the context of creating a labour force and connecting it to the labour market but in a broader sense, too, of labour, business and education.

It seems to me that is the partnership we should be looking for, and although I think, yes, the minister has taken a step with this group, my concerns are that I think there was a potential that remains unfulfilled for a government to bring together those groups and to bring together a group which is more representative than I think this one is of Manitoba. My concerns are not with the individuals. The minister has spoken very highly of certain individuals. They are not people that I know, but my concern here is not with the individual capabilities of any person on this board. It is with the nature of its composition and the belief that I had that it was possible in this province to bring together labour and business and education and to direct them in the best interests of our students and of our education system.

So it is, in a sense, if I can put it in these terms to the minister, looking to the future. If there are expansions, if there are directions that this board can go, those are the ones that I would think would be of the most benefit to Manitobans. I wanted to ask the minister a couple of just specific questions because I did have difficulty following up on one of them. Gail McCullough, whom the minister spoke of, the owner of Homecade (Manitoba), I could not find any information on Homecade. I could not even find a telephone number, or otherwise I would have phoned them to find out what the business was. The Manitoba Telephone System did not have a phone number under that name. Has the business name changed, or is there perhaps some description and location and history of the company that the minister could give us?

Secondly, lifelong learning task group, is that a task group of the Innovation and Technology Council? It is not a terminology I am familiar with.

Mrs. McIntosh: It is a task group of the EITC, and I should clarify as well MERLIN is not on the business advisory group. MERLIN is on the obviously the Distance Education Technology Council, but the deputies are on both. There is cross-pollination occurring was what I was trying to say. So I just wanted to clarify that the ability to cross-pollinate is there because those groups are intertwined, and MERLIN is on the group with which the business advisory council has intertwination, if that is such a word. That is like when the Minister of Housing said pretzelizing.

Gail McCullough, it may be a new listing. It is a new business. It is computer--what is the word?--they have computer games, they have computer technological entertainment, Nintendo, those types of things. It is a retail business that sells to the retail market computer adaptations basically for entertainment purposes. That business is new. I believe it should be listed in the phone book--well, maybe not. This is nearly the end of the year, should have it some place. At any rate, that is the nature of the business. It is that type of enterprise. It is a small business, family-owned small business.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: 1.(b)1 Executive Support Salaries Employee Benefits, $631,900--pass.

1.(b)2 Other Expenditures, $128,500. Shall the item pass?

Ms. Friesen: I just had a question on the Supplies and Services line which shows some increase. Could the minister tell us what that increase is for? It goes from $30,000 to $39,000. At the same time, I think there is 22.7 increase in staff years as well. So could the staff give us some information on that?

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Mrs. McIntosh: I wonder if the member could point out to us exactly where she is looking. We see a decrease here but not an increase, but maybe we are looking in the wrong place.

Ms. Friesen: I am on Other Expenditures, 16.l (b). In 1995, on the first line, there was $24,000 for transport. That goes up to $29,000 in 1996-97. Moving further down it goes from, on Supplies and Services, from 30 to 39. Are we on the right lines now? Then I was also just questioning some information further down on the 22.7 staff years, an increase from 13.7.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I should indicate that it is just a fairly simple explanation. We have realigned the dollars with different categories so they reflect more accurately the actual expenditures.

In the past, the totals were very concise and clear, but inside the totals we were not able to be as specific as we are now. For example, when we say, as we do if you look down to the bottom where it has 128 on that page, you can see that we are down $300 on our operating expenses. So we are within $300 of last year. We are down $300. We are pleased to be down rather than up, and we are down $300 due to savings in telephone rental and long-distance charges. That is basically how that adjustment occurs.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, the adjustment then from staff years, however--I am not sure how that works within the regular procedures of government. The shifting from 13 to 22 seems rather large to me, and I wondered what the explanation was of that.

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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, those are not staff years. They are other expenditures. If you look at the top, you will see other expenditures--[interjection] Pardon me? Yes, there is a difference of about $9,000 there--I see where she is looking. She is pointing up to the top where it has SY--but if you see the solid black lines under the 11 and the 11.

So we have increased some other office supplies, and it has come from reductions in other places. That is the 22 to the 13, but those are not staff years. Those are other expenditures.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: 1.(b)(2) Other Expenditures $128,500--pass.

1.(c) Planning and Policy Co-ordination (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $423,200.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, this is Planning and Policy Co-ordination. We have discussed a lot of the policy issues, I think, under an earlier line.

But specifically here, I wanted to ask about the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. I know the minister is taking a delegation to Edmonton soon and that it deals with post-secondary education, in particular. I have asked in the past about the Council of Ministers of Education and its plans, policies, organization, the way in which it has the opportunity, in fact, to bring a national presence or a national voice to bear in post-secondary education. Ministers, not just this minister but ministers in the past, have said it has been very difficult to focus the attention of the CMEC on post-secondary education.

So I am particularly interested in this forthcoming conference. What kind of policy papers have been prepared for the minister on this? What kind of message is Manitoba taking to this conference? Who is involved in the delegation to the conference, and, really, what does the minister anticipate will be the outcome?

Mrs. McIntosh: I do not know if the member has received a copy of the agenda. If she would like one, I would be pleased to provide her with one, because it is interesting and I think she would be interested. When I finish referring to it here, I will table it. This one is a little grungy. [interjection] Yes, that is a good one. It is not as grungy as most of ours, but it has a few little smears. Here is a cleaner one, and I will table this for you to look at. It is not primarily focused on post-secondary education although that certainly will be part of it.

There are topics such as accountability in Canadian education, are we getting what we value? Now that covers the whole gamut from kindergarten to doctoral level in terms of--the heading is Are We Getting What We Value. It is actually in light of some of the controversy going on here in Manitoba, probably an appropriate one, and it also I think underscores the fact that this is a topic that is of very high interest to every province and territory in the nation.

I am taking with me someone from the Manitoba Teachers' Society. I had hoped it could be Linda York, the president, but she is having to go to another meeting so I will be taking her designate with me. I think if you look down you will see under the Accountability, Canadian Education, Are We Getting What We Value: you will see Values, Expectations and Needs; What do Canadians want from Canadian Education; Current Best Practices; What can be Learned from Best Practices; Accountability Practices in Education; Accountability for Universal Quality; How do we Achieve Quality Education; et cetera, et cetera.

That topic is one, there is quite a bit actually going on through here in accountability, but as I table this you can see the topics, and if you would like to discuss any of them or indeed provide me with thoughts on any of them I would be pleased to take this under consideration when I go to the meeting.

We are limited in the number that we can take this year because of cost. The Ministers of Education across the nation agreed that this year trying to contain cost they would only take a limited number of people. There will be representatives in attendance from the superintendents' association; the school trustees association; the Manitoba Teachers' Society; it used to be called Home and School, it is now called the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils. Of course the two deputies will be with me. I am taking with me one university student. There will be a representative from the Independent School Federation. Every stakeholder group that we are aware of in education has a representative going. We are taking with us directly representatives from any groups that were not already on the list. So the groups all signed up, and any group that was not able to, or for whatever reason was not on the list, we have invited to attend with us, so all groups in Manitoba with an interest in education will have a representative there, plus I will be there and my two deputies.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, does that mean that six plus two, the total delegation is eight, or is there essentially a longer list that the minister is tabling? My other question was what kind of a message, what kind of papers have been prepared for the minister? What is Manitoba going to be focusing upon and what kind of outcome does the minister expect from this conference? These are annual events. Manitoba now has a history and a record of attending these conferences. Some have been more valuable than others, I expect, and what does the minister hope for and expect from this conference? Could the minister also tell me who the university student is, or shall we say from which university since we have not identified the other individuals?

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: While the minister is getting ready to give that answer, I would just like to put to the committee: since we started a few minutes late, would it be the will of the committee to make up those few minutes at the end? We can do that on a Friday. We can adjust the time if we wish. You do not have to. It is up to you. We started four minutes late, if you will. It is not a big deal, but I am just saying to you, if you wish.

Mrs. McIntosh: I will just try to give you a fairly brief answer for now, presuming this line of questioning will continue and we will have a more thorough discussion on Monday, if you wish. Where to start?

The university student that I am taking with me will be the president of the students' union at the University of Manitoba. The president that I will be taking is the incoming president, and that will be, I think, his first real thing that he does on behalf of the students' union in his role as incoming president.

Students are not normally included at this level, but I have a propensity for including students, particularly adult students who have some sense of experience and, as the consumer of the system, some expectations as to the quality of service we deliver. So I keep running around saying, schools are for students, educational institutions are for students, so wherever I am legally allowed, I will include a student. I have chosen the president of the University of Manitoba Students' Union because it is the largest post-secondary educational institution in Manitoba. I did not have room to take along all the others, although I would have if I could have.

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I think the students have a sense of each other's needs between institutions, and I thought that his perspective would be valuable. This did not mean that I wanted to replace any of the other organizations because the way the conference is set up, there will be groups who will receive invitations, though not directly from the minister's office. But, through other channels, they will receive invitations to attend the Council of Ministers of Education.

What we did in my office, then, was to obtain a list of the representatives who were going. We have a list in our office of what we sort of call the stakeholder groups in education. We took that list and compared it with the list of people who were already going and determined that the superintendents had a representative registered but that the teachers did not--that type of thing.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. Is it the will of the committee to allow the minister to finish her answer? [agreed]

Mrs. McIntosh: I will be brief. So we just went down that way and said, we have five plus three. We are allowed to take--we will fill in the holes and make sure that every stakeholder group, if they are not already going under a different invitation, then can be put on the minister's list to be invited.

The other question you had was policy papers, and we have already supplied our policy papers to CMEC for this consultation. We can bring those in Monday as well, if you wish. We are looking to find priorities for common action. We are looking for a collaborative action between the partners to achieve these priorities. We are now meeting twice a year, not just once a year, and the degree of co-operation, I am told, by the staff that has been ongoing is unprecedented. It has never been seen before in the history of this country in terms of the issues that we are tackling and the way we are working together as an entity. We are no longer just a networking group; we are a hardworking team. We will get into this more, but I must indicate that I am thoroughly enjoying getting to know and working with ministers of Education of all political stripes. I find them all to be very concerned about students and education and delightful to work with, each and every one of them.

I think that covers all your questions for now unless I have forgotten one again.

Ms. Friesen: There was a little bit more on anticipated outcomes that are sort of a reflection on the whole process, which we can leave for next time, but the minister did offer to bring in the policy papers that have already been presented or that the department has prepared. I would appreciate those as a tabled document.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes. I will be pleased to do that. I want to indicate to the member, just so that what we go through there is understood, that we present a policy paper and we will have those kinds of formal discussions. The bulk of the real nitty-gritty kind of work comes when questions are thrown out and dialogue begins and out of the dialogue then surface ideas and reactions to ideas that may not be contained in a policy document from any one of the provinces but that rather surface from the combined mind meld, so to speak, of the people who are there.

You may not find everything in the policy papers or in my anticipated outcomes that we will include all that we might end up discussing once we get there, because it always kind of grows like bread rising. Just for clarification, I put that forward to you.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: The time being 3:05 p.m., committee rise.