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Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply has been dealing with the Estimates of the Department of Education.
Would the minister's staff please enter the Chamber at this time. We are on Resolution 16.1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits.
Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chairman, at the end of last time, we were looking at the responses of the minister's Advisory Committee on Finance to the minister's plans for the year and I guess for the past, and I had been wondering about their response on the aboriginal educational issue. The minister had listed a number of initiatives she believes the department has taken, and it seemed to me that these were in advance of a strategy and that the committee was, in fact, responding to what was being done and saying this is not enough.
The minister had suggested that the aboriginal education strategy had been confidential, which I have no doubt it was, but I am very puzzled as to why such a strategy would be confidential. The strategy, as the minister spoke of it last time, had three parts. One is to increase aboriginal graduation rates; the other is to increase aboriginal participation in the labour force; and the third was to work in partnership with the aboriginal community. It boggles my mind that this should be confidential.
Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, as the member knows, with the development of the initiatives and strategies and new policies and programs for government, that while the details as they are being developed may not be things that are--ones that might be unexpected in a final analysis, and they make good sense, and they may be sort of common goals that one would readily identify with, nonetheless, during the development of those, until the final strategy is in place and has received the blessing and approval of the other people involved--people involved with Native Affairs, for example, other ministries that might wish to have input--that during the process of development they are not kept confidential because there is some strange or unusual thing about them necessarily but rather because they have not yet been formally finalized as government position.
Normally, in the process of developing such policies or initiatives, that is the way in which things operate, and the final pronouncement of goals and objectives and strategies then is fully approved by all those in government that are part of that decision-making process. Until such time as that occurs, the policy is still developmental and not a final product and, therefore, cannot be spoken of as if it is the final product.
So I think that the comment by the educational finance committee is perhaps being just a little bit misinterpreted in that it arose due to a presentation by the School Programs Division on the possible effects on learning, particularly the English language development for a native students grant. I hope that explanation clarifies the processes and sometimes the length of time that things take to be thoroughly vetted through all the appropriate players before something can be announced as the goals of government.
Mr. Chairperson: Shall the item pass? Pass. Item 16.1.(b)(2) Other Expenditures $128,500--pass.
16.1.(c) Native Education Directorate (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $284,000.
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Ms. Friesen: Could the minister give me an account of how this three-pronged policy was developed? How long did it take? How many committees were involved? What other committees had to review it so that this policy became the government's main plank?
Mr. Chairperson: Honourable Minister, you may want to introduce your new staff.
Mrs. McIntosh: We have Juliette Sabot from our aboriginal education directorate and Carolyn Loeppky from School Programs Division with us today, as well as the deputy.
We do not have an accurate calculation of the exact number of meetings, but trying to recollect, we can give it an approximate number if that is satisfactory because we have had formal meetings and informal meetings and discussions and so on. Basically, the member had asked: how long a process was it, and how many meetings did we have, how many committees, et cetera?
Basically, I would say, Mr. Chairman, that it was almost a year, or at least two-thirds of a year, eight months, eight to nine months, in terms of the process. This was led by me and by my staff in consultation with several groups internal to government, those being not just the K-to-Senior 4 side of the department, but also the post-secondary side.
With the Children and Youth Secretariat, with Native Affairs department and various committees of cabinet, we had input as well from the urban aboriginal strategy led by Mr. Newman's department. We have had innumerable meetings internally in terms of formal meetings that were scheduled, prepared, agenda-type meetings, probably 10 or 12 internally, an additional five or so from where we received recommendations from the aboriginal perspective steering committee and feedback from things like the urban aboriginal strategy and as well we received what I would call incidental-type inputs when we would meet with other groups of people who were knowledgeable and, in the course of our meetings on other topics, would bring up this issue and provide some information which we would then incorporate into our formal meetings. The other question was--so, in short, we would say that a little more, 10 or so internal, five with other departments, about eight months in the length of time.
Ms. Friesen: A couple of points of clarification on that. The minister mentioned an urban aboriginal strategy (Mr. Newman, Minister of Northern and Native Affairs), and I just wanted to make sure that that was different from the urban aboriginal strategy that has been proposed by an external group to the government. They have seemed to use the same name. I am thinking of one, for example, that I believe has been prepared by the--Mary Richard is the name that comes to mind. I am not quite sure if I have got the name of the organization correct, but the urban aboriginal council of Winnipeg--I wanted to make sure which one we were talking about.
Secondly, the minister also mentioned an aboriginal steering committee. I think this must be something internal to government, and I just wanted to make sure who that was, who was represented on it.
Thirdly, I wondered if there had been any external consultations in developing the strategy external to government.
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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the urban aboriginal strategy, which the member refers to that Mary Richard is a part of, is our strategy. Mary is involved with the aboriginal council, but the urban aboriginal strategy is a government initiative. Originally it came out of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, of which I am a member, and it was set up through the Minister of Native and Northern Affairs (Mr. Newman) to do an urban aboriginal strategy with public consultation. The minister then of Native Affairs set up the urban aboriginal strategy group, which has people such as George Campbell, Mary Richard and many other aboriginal leaders whose names are known probably to most who follow events in the aboriginal communities.
It is one and the same; there are not two groups. The member asked which group I am talking about, Mary Richard's group or the government's group. It is one group. Mary Richard was asked by government and graciously was willing to lend her time, along with many other aboriginal leaders who worked very hard.
We took part in all of the meetings and in all of the workshops on that strategy, and their recommendations are fully compatible with our education strategy. There was a lot of discussion at those meetings about the full spectrum of our aboriginal peoples, and education, of course, is a key component of that. I hope that clarifies that particular question.
Mary Richard does and has been president of other groups, which made her a very good candidate for the urban aboriginal strategy, but there is only one urban aboriginal strategy. All the people taking part in it have been asked to be there by government, and we are most grateful to them because they have done a very, very good job, I believe, very thorough, and the discussions have been most interesting and productive.
The aboriginal steering committee that the member was asking about, members of the aboriginal steering committee that works with the department in the integration of aboriginal perspectives into the new curriculum. So, as we are developing new curricula, this particular steering committee works to ensure that aboriginal perspectives are integrated throughout that new curricula, not just for the benefit of aboriginal students, but for all students, so that there can be a better understanding of each other across cultural awareness that we believe would be positive in terms of helping people understand each other and be more capable of working together in harmony as citizens of Manitoba.
In addition to the public consultations in the Urban Aboriginal Strategy, because those were very much public consultation, we did that. We did not hold formal structured external meetings, but we did meet with members of the department's aboriginal perspective steering committee, as I have said, members of the AMC, members of urban aboriginal community. As I indicated before, we had meetings with groups where the prime purpose of the meeting was not necessarily aboriginal perspectives, where in the course of the meeting the topic would arise and very important and helpful information would be provided to us that we then would incorporate into our body of knowledge and information.
Those groups I refer to would be things like the social planning council, et cetera, who had come to see us on certain issues that as a component would involve discussions on this aspect. People, like Wayne Helgason, et cetera, who while that was not a formal meeting called to discuss this issue. Out of discussions that arose informally with those kinds of people over time, we were not necessarily able to get new information but to have confirmed for us that the path we were on was indeed the correct path. So those were more where we would say, well, you know, we are doing this, and they would say, that is the right track, that is what needs to happen. Those are all very helpful in helping us build our overall picture.
We also met with members of the Manitoba Metis Federation and officials from Frontier School Division which, as the member knows, has a very high percentage of aboriginal students; primarily all, for all intents and purposes, are of aboriginal background. So those kinds of things that came up through the educational system were also taken into account and considered. I am only mentioning those so the member recognizes that we did not just work internally, but we have had many conversations.
The visiting of schools has been most helpful to me as minister in that invariably when I am visiting schools, I will see or observe certain things that I can take back and say, you know, I have noticed this and that in this particular school that again confirms we are on the right path, or it gives a new piece of information that I can share with staff. In most cases when I do that, staff is already aware, and I am just building my own body of knowledge.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us how this aboriginal strategy is different from the strategy the department had before?
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Mrs. McIntosh: The member may recall us tabling, last set of Estimates, recommendations that had been put forward. Our original strategy which is not in conflict at all with this next piece of the strategy, and perhaps that is the best way to put it, is that the strategy--we started first with the generic strategy and we are now focusing in on aspects of that. Our overall strategy was renewing education for all, and the original committee making recommendations recommended that we not dummy down standards or put up alternate goals for any group of children, that we set high standards and rigorous and relevant curricula for all and renew the education scheme for all, and this we did.
We had a steering committee that recommended 34 items, 27 of which were incorporated. We tabled those last session, and we say that we brought in higher standards for all students so that all could have a goal of success to reach. At the same time, we increased the staffing component by two curriculum consultants, and we put in more money for operating expenditures in this area, and that strategy was one that was very important as a base upon which to build everything else.
Now we are becoming more focused on the aboriginal population, not in terms of the educational goals, because we did establish those recently in our New Directions, but in areas of integration and process.
Now we have said we have set down standards. We are bringing in new curricula. We want all children to be lifted up so that they can reach these standards, so what do we need to do now to ensure that all students will be able to do this, and we are now placing a greater emphasis on target populations, such as the aboriginal population, for greater success, and you will see a number of initiatives that we are bringing in to ensure that we are able to lift up these students to meet the standards, which was a different approach than taken by some, where they would lower the standards for these groups and thence leave them forever disadvantaged.
What we are saying that we intend to do is to establish an operational framework for partnerships between departments and with the aboriginal people in developing and carrying out education initiatives: to implement a department-wide human resource development plan, which includes training for all levels of department staff to increase sensitivity and operational ability to meet aboriginal needs and programs; to participate with other government departments to prepare preschool children for success in school because we know this is a very vital area that needs to be addressed to ensure maximum potential to succeed once the school years are reached; to establish the mechanism for partnerships with other agencies to co-ordinate activities related to social, economic and health issues for aboriginal people. All of this comes, of course, in the creation of effective, relevant and high-quality curriculum and learning.
So the basic difference, then, is that our strategy, originally very generic for all students including the aboriginal population and now laterally to zero in on what exactly it is that we need to do to ensure that these new standards we have set for everybody can be reached by those who have, in many ways, been at risk--not all but a majority of our aboriginal students have been at risk of not being able to achieve the standards we know they must have for success in the world beyond school, and I believe some of the things we are doing or are about to embark upon are tremendously exciting in terms of achieving those goals.
Ms. Friesen: Can the minister tell me what the graduation rate is of aboriginal students at the moment?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the latest census data, which is 1996, indicates 7.6 percent of aboriginal peoples over the age of 15 have completed high school, and that is up slightly, very slightly, from where it was in the 1991 census, which showed 7.4 percent. It is a very minimal increase. We absolutely must ensure that we have a higher graduation rate than what the figures show us.
Now, those are two years old because we only have up until 1996, and I do not know yet if we have seen an increase. That is the only data that we have, but it is one of the reasons we have targeted it as a goal, and more than that in terms of targeting that as a goal, to increase the graduation rate; also, as a goal, to change the employment rate after graduation for those aboriginal students who do graduate.
We noted some years ago that aboriginal students who had worked hard and achieved success in graduating from high school or college were not being employed at the same rate as other students. Hence, the Partners for Careers program was brought into being, and I believe last year that through that program some 300 graduates were hired by industry and are now able to serve as role models. The message that we are hoping that will go to students from that is: look, I stayed in school, I got my diploma, I got my certificate, I got my degree, and I am now gainfully employed, self-sufficient, and independent. That message going to aboriginal students who may be considering dropping out is a message of, we hope, inspiration to them to remain in school because the message prior to that may have been for some: well, I stuck it out, I stayed in school, I got my papers, and then I could not get a job. So what was the point? That is not a message we wanted young people to receive.
So working at it from a variety of areas, including a show of real success to aboriginal students that graduation will lead to productive work, we are hoping that that and a series of other initiatives will help encourage students to stay in school and graduate because we know that they will do better if they do, and because the traditional graduation rates are worrisome. There might have been an era in Canada and in the United States when a Grade 10 education would still lead to a person able to have a job that provided income sufficient for independence, but those days, I think, have rapidly come to a close. You really do have to have at least the high school. You know, with every bit of education that takes place after high school, the chances for self-sufficiency and independence are greatly enhanced. So the data is, in short, to the member's question, 7.6 percent, which is far, far below the norm for the rest of the population.
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Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us how that compares to other provinces in Canada in the '96 census?
Mrs. McIntosh: I do not have that here, but we could probably acquire it and provide it to the member. I do not know if we can get it today, but it must be available. We just do not have it here.
Ms. Friesen: Compared to the overall population of Manitoba, I am assuming that 7.6 number is a Manitoba number, not a Canada-wide number. What is the comparable number for rates of graduation in '96 for the nonaboriginal population?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chair, that number is 60 percent, so when I say it is vastly below the general population, if you compare 60 percent to 7.6 percent, the numbers, I think, are very revealing in terms of the work that is cut out for all of us and why our No. 1 goal for aboriginal education is to increase the graduation rate. That has just got to be the No. 1 goal.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, these numbers obviously include an older population, both the nonaboriginal and the aboriginal numbers. Does the minister have any way of measuring what has happened in the last 10 years when there has been much more opportunity for off-reserve students to have access to Grade 12? Many reserve schools have not had anything beyond Grade 9. There has been a movement away from some of the reserve schools and into towns and cities for Grade 12. What effect has this had upon the graduation rates? We are looking here obviously at a compilation that includes everybody up to the age of--well, all living people taken into the census.
Mrs. McIntosh: Two things in response to the member's question. First, we do not have the data, and I am not sure how easily it can be acquired. I can give her some information that might help partly answer her question. One of the problems that staff has pointed out to me is that I think nowadays more people would be inclined to identify themselves on census forms according to their ethnic backgrounds, but that has not always been the case. So unless they declare whether or not they are aboriginal people, it is hard to know if we have captured them all in the terms of the data that is compiled. So we can only go on what the people themselves provide to the census takers.
We can see there has been a very slight increase. You know, the informal trends do indicate a slight increase in the graduation rate, very small but at least going up as opposed to going down or remaining the same, and we see a slight increase in participation in the communities colleges and post-secondary training programs. This does not tell us the direct answer to the member's question in terms of the trend over the last decade. The trend over the last couple of years is a very slight improvement, which is better than going down, but is not a significant increase the way we would like it to be. But, in terms of those people who are currently enrolled in post-secondary institutions, we are beginning to see more people attending post-secondary institutions either as high school graduates or as mature students. This is encouraging because it does show them attending college with the expectation, obviously, of achieving a diploma or training of some kind that would lead to employment.
Mr. Mervin Tweed, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
Just to give an indication of that, right now Keewatin Community College, for example, of the student population there, 68 percent are aboriginals; at Brandon University, 25 percent of the student population are aboriginals; at Assiniboine Community College, 22.6 percent are aboriginals; at Red River Community College, 11.5 percent are aboriginal students; the University of Manitoba, 4.9 percent; the University of Winnipeg, 2.5 percent; and Collège Universitaire de Saint-Boniface is 1.1 percent. So we have some good percentages, particularly in the Keewatin area, where the people living in the area are by majority aboriginal. We see that reflected in the college. The majority of the students are aboriginal, which is why we are moving the college board there, to 50 percent aboriginal. So we are trying a number of things.
Those are encouraging figures in terms of how many are attending college or university, but it does not give the full answer to her question of the trend over the decade, and I do not know if we have that. We do not have it here and I do not know if we have it in the department. We may not. It might be available from Census Canada. I am not sure. The raw data was just released from Census Canada and, from the raw data, there could be things extrapolated if people had the time to do that research.
I guess our point here is that we have decided that regardless of what history said or how these things came into being and what was the role of the federal government and what was the role of the provincial government and what was the impact of the residential schools and all of those questions, what is the impact of federal offloading and fiduciary responsibility for aboriginal peoples and the migrations from the reserves to the cities--all of those things are all details that are interesting and can help provide some guidance but, basically, we know the graduation rate is unacceptable and it needs to improve, period.
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So we need to start working from where we are and saying we have got to improve the statistics for aboriginal peoples. It is very complicated because it is not just education that is involved. It is the preschool experiences, all of those other worrisome statistics that the member is aware of, because I know this is an area of interest of hers, that the health, the suicide rate, the number of women in crisis, the number of children in care, the number of fetal alcohol syndrome kids, all of the problems the statistics show about our aboriginal peoples in Canada will be ultimately reflected in some way in a classroom situation. So there is a whole initiative that needs to take place outside of the classroom as well as in the classroom to change these demographics and change the statistics. We are working on them on several fronts as a result.
I just had a note from my staff that says that we are working with the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics on aboriginal school-aged population statistics, division by division, which information might be interesting to the member when it is compiled.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, at the moment we are talking about the K to 12 figures, I think. When we get to the area dealing with post-secondary education, I would be interested in talking more about the employment participation goals of the department. The numbers, obviously, for colleges and universities are interesting. They reflect the work that the institutions have done over the past 10-15 years, in the case of Manitoba, and they reflect also the value that the Access programs had in providing role models and providing an opportunity for people who had not finished high school. I am not sure that they actually are consistent with the numbers of graduates. It is not necessarily a parallel guide to providing numbers on graduation rates, because there are so many programs which do make an effort to ensure that those people who had not had that opportunity do have the opportunity at a post-secondary level.
The reason I am asking these questions is that the department has set a goal of increasing graduation rates. After 10 years in office, they have decided to set as their main goal increasing the graduation rates for aboriginal students, a very commendable endeavour. I do not think anybody would have any questions about that other than perhaps the timing of it. But what I am wondering and why I am asking these questions is how is the department going to measure this? We have a date with a number for today, 1996. What measurement will you have for next year or perhaps on a two- or three-year basis? How frequently are you going to measure this change? Who is going to measure it, and how will you know when you have had some successes? Sorry, how will the department know they have had some successes?
Mrs. McIntosh: We will measure this progress the same as we measure everyone else. We have a number of things now that will assist us in measuring. We now have a student number for every student that will be a great assistance here. We have the informal measurement that has always gone on in schools where we have the ability to ask individual schools their observations as to their own graduation rates and whether certain improvements have been made there. We have an indicators project under development having to determine how to measure, getting a really good definition or good methodology of collecting data.
We know where we are now, and as I said to the member in my earlier response, we do not feel that--I mean, we could do a lot of analysis on the history--and that is good and useful to have--but we could spend a lot of time gathering data instead of getting on with the job.
The member had a question. I did not quite catch the question. She had a question about our timing? I did not quite catch it, but something about the timing of doing this. I will just indicate, and if she wants to clarify that, I would appreciate it; but what we did coming into government was to take a look at the education system. My predecessors noted several things, and one was the need to improve the standards and to make the curriculum more relevant and more rigorous. That was not a small task. That was several years in the development, and when New Directions was announced, it was also several years in the implementation, a massive task that, by anybody's indication, would take the better part of a decade.
Indeed, the member herself, I believe, has questioned the speed with which we are moving as being too rapid in many cases; indeed, from the field, we have heard concerns about the rapidity of the change, saying: Can you slow it down just a little bit to make it more manageable? So, if the question as timing was that we are moving too quickly on some of these things, New Directions took a long time to evolve, involving as it did consultations with hundreds of parents and stakeholders over the course of a couple of years, the development of the plan, the presentation of the plan, and now the implementation of the plan, which is still not complete, I recognize, but we have had specific requests from the field to measure the pace of that so that it was not as rapid as the department initially had stated in order to make sure that the field could keep up with the degree of changing that was occurring.
So that is one reason why--we were moving pretty rapidly, and if she feels, we are going too fast, that is the answer to that. If she feels we are going to slow, because I am not quite sure whether she meant we are going too fast or too slow and we have been criticized on both counts: you have moved too quickly with a major overhaul of the education system, the major overhaul being for every student higher standards, measurable standards, diagnostic testing, all of those things, to ensure greater success, in the foundation years and all the way through. Prime importance. Basic, basic best change we could have made.
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Now that we are moving into methods by which we can ensure that the target populations are moved up to the standards, as opposed the old ways of dummying down the standards for them, which did them a great disservice, we are now looking at ways to achieve that. We have had to take a look at demographic changes, the devolution of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. These are the things we have had to be concerned about as we go about making sure that our strategy for aboriginal students is really effective.
Demographic changes, devolution of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, as I said, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Canada-Manitoba Labour Force Development Agreement, the provincial government's commitment to develop innovative strategies and initiatives to address education, training and employment for aboriginal people--all of those underlined the need for a comprehensive, co-ordinated aboriginal education plan from the Department of Education and Training that has to also cross all other departments. These indicators, I imagine that in terms of measuring we are developing an education indicators project that will show a number of things: test marks, which are important, but other things which are important that do not seem to get picked up and understood by the public all that well in terms of learning outcomes. In terms of teaching and measuring this to do the things that we have talked about here, it took a certain amount of time, and it was time that could not be rushed, definitely from an educator's standpoint, could not be rushed.
In terms of teaching, we had said that teaching had to be structured to allow students to become effective citizens through the provision of learning experience that will develop skills outlined in our broad outcomes of education, and that it had to be based on student learning outcomes that are challenging and standards of achievement where applicable, a rich knowledge base related to the subject area and to the repertoire of strategies and approaches, then assistance selecting sequencing, presenting and evaluating instruction content.
By that, we are talking about differentiated instruction, a well-known method of teaching, but not universally employed which now needs to be universally employed in order for students, particularly our aboriginal students or those students at risk or disadvantaged in other ways, to reach the high standard. These things cannot be put in place overnight. Again, the member herself has often talked about the rapid change, and the blizzard of instructions that go into the schools for change, and the need to make sure that pace is manageable.
Critical thinking and decision making, active student participation, relevant challenging and meaningful learning experiences, active student inquiry, a rich variety of approaches, technologies and resources, connections between and among topics in subject areas, the changing nature of knowledge, collaborative planning, teaching and assessing, high levels of intellectual activity, individual and group learning, the promotion of lifelong learning.
Mr. Chairman, that is just one small part of one page of New Directions, and that one small part of one page of New Directions is critical to the measurement of success of all students, including our aboriginal students.
So, when the member asked her question about timing--and I am answering the question about timing to the best of my ability--I am not sure whether her question meant we are going too fast or too slow. But in terms of the accusations that we have received that we have gone too fast, if you consider that is one small component of one page of New Directions and it took two-and-a-half years to develop, it is taking much longer than two-and-a-half years to change the entire system to reflect this for all students.
If she is saying it took too long to bring these measures in along with now the extra things we need to do, we have identified in New Directions what needs to be done to all and for all, and now the extra things that need to be identified to ensure that we lift up the disadvantaged group over and above these, if she is saying that did not happen rapidly enough, then I say to her one has to be put in place before the other can occur and better than to be done in the '90s than never done at all, because it certainly was not done in the '80s. To have it ignored through the '80s and then have the people responsible for education in the '80s concerned that it is taking too long in the '90s, I say, is to go back to the pointing finger is whose fault it was.
We are saying it does not matter that the New Democrats ignored this problem when they were in power. It does not matter that the federal government put people in residential schools in terms of what we need to do now. Those things were important. It was too bad about the residential schools. It was too bad that the '80s ignored this problem. But to point fingers and say you did not do your job when you were there, and then to have the people who were there say and now you are taking too long to do it is irrelevant. It is being done finally and it needs to be done. It is very important, and I think the best thing to do--I know the member is interested in this topic--would be to receive help from everybody, including the opposition, to make sure this helps aboriginal people. Even if as a side effect it makes the government look good, that should not be a concern to members opposite. They should be more concerned about what we need to do than scoring points about whatever it is that may have been trying to be implied there.
Just to conclude, the reconstruction of risk into promise is at the heart of renewing education, creating opportunities for children to learn, children who in the past were not given the benefit of a full evaluation program. Learning has to be reorganized to recognize and locate promise in children who differ from the prototype.
So I hope with that, if I have misinterpreted the question as to timing, you know, the member will no doubt clarify and I will attempt to be more clear, but I do not see how we could have speeded this up any more without severe criticism from the field, and I do not see how we could have introduced these measures in advance of the overall strategy.
Ms. Friesen: Well, the question, of course, had nothing to do with the speed of curriculum introduction.
There was one comment I made and one question. The comment dealt with the slowness of the government to respond to issues which were very evident in Winnipeg, in Brandon, other parts of the province. They were spoken of by the AJI, which the government has chosen to ignore. They were spoken of by groups such as Winnipeg 2000, which talked about the educational issues surrounding aboriginal people, and here we are in 1998, and the government finally has an aboriginal strategy, which, as I said, boggles the mind that it should have been confidential and taken that long to develop.
Nevertheless, the government has it, and my question related to that was the government has stated that it wants to increase the graduation rate of aboriginal students. We have a starting point with the census data of 1996 of 7.6 percent complete high school. I asked how the government was going to measure its success. How will it know how many students, in the future, of aboriginal descent are going to graduate from high school? Is it going to measure this on a two-year, on an annual basis?
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The government came back with it now has student numbers and it has informal measurements and it has an indicators project. Well, the indicators project, it seems to me, that is merely another way of posing the question that I am posing. It is not a solution. It is another way of asking the same question. So, in effect, the government has two responses. Now we have a student number and we have an informal measurement whereby we can ask individual schools.
Well, according to information the government has given me in earlier Estimates, neither of those are new. The government has always been able to ask individual schools. The government for some years now has been saying we have been putting a million dollars a year into this line on the school information system, and, yes, we do have student numbers. One of the issues I have always raised with that student number and that goes back to the days of the previous Minister of Education is how are aboriginal students identifying in that, and the government's response, I understand, has been it is self-identification.
The government has set itself a clear goal of improving graduation rates. We know where we are starting from. How often are you going to measure it, and how are you going to measure it? It seems to me in previous answers that I have got on that question that the student number is not going to do it.
Mrs. McIntosh: I agree with the member opposite that at long last the government has this thing that was needed in previous decades as well as this decade. I am not pointing fingers at them, and I hope that she is not pointing fingers at us. The point is somebody is finally doing something about this problem. The fact that it was not her government or that my government did not do it in year one does not negate the fact that it is now being done. I think that is the point that we need to concentrate on and ensure that together we do it correctly for the sake of the children and the people involved.
I indicated in my answer to the member earlier, and I am sorry if it was not made clear, that we do have the student number, we do have the electronic data and the means to collect and report. I thought I said that, but the member seems to feel a student number, the electronic data is not somehow going to help us. It will help us tremendously to collect. We will be reporting on an annual basis, in answer to that aspect of the question, but we do remain dependent on self-declaration. We do not have the ability to walk into a school board and say, you are this kind of person, you are that kind of person, you are the other kind person. We still remain dependent on the self-declaration of ethnic status, and I think to go in and force people to identify themselves along ethnic lines is--there is something about that that is not palatable.
I think while it does create some problems in collecting statistics and being able to categorize people, I still think it is an important principle that people be allowed the choice as to whether to declare themselves of a particular ethnic background or not. Like with affirmative action, if people do not want to use affirmative action, they do not have to, we do not force them to. We say, if you wish to declare yourselves eligible for affirmative action, you may do so. We provide them the opportunity. But I think to go into schools and force them to say whether they are this race or that race is not, as I say, a palatable or right thing to do. I think they still have to have the choice as to whether they wish to declare their ethnicity or not.
But the good news about that is that more and more people today are becoming proud of their heritage as aboriginal people and are more willing to declare their status or their aboriginal roots. That is a healthy sign because it shows a pride beginning to emerge, and that I think has been helped by a number of things in society, not just schools, but attitudes in general in the public.
I think maybe the one thing I did not indicate to the member in my other answer is that we will be reporting on an annual basis, but I believe I did say that we would have a student number and electronic data means to help us collect and report, and I reiterate, we still are dependent on self-declaration to identify ethnicity.
Ms. Friesen: I am still looking for the starting date. The minister gave me a '96 number from StatsCanada, and that is the most recent number that she has. Does she have from her own student number from the process of self-declaration a number of graduates from last year? Or what is the most recent number that that student number will give her? Where is the starting point going to be for which this student number is going to provide the evidence?
Mrs. McIntosh: Again, perhaps I did not make myself clear in my first answer to this question which was two questions ago when I talked about measuring and saying that we have informal measurements right now from school divisions, and what our approach is, is pretty well known.
Mr. David Faurschou, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
For the record, we are embarking upon a collaborative approach with the Manitoba Association of School Trustees. We will not be beginning our data collection until we have our indicators in place. As I mentioned--I know I did in my answer indicate we had an indicators project under development. We are working with the Manitoba Teachers' Society on that with the Manitoba Association of School Trustees to pick a common start date, which, hopefully, will be September '98. Again, it is a collaborative approach and we are working with the field, so we need to make those decisions jointly. At least, we prefer to make them jointly; I guess, we do not need to. We could do it by just demanding things from them, but I think it is important for the success of this to do it jointly and then we have a common start point. We have indicators which we seek. We have the measurement which is identifiable. We have student numbers that we can use to track students, and we can watch them proceed via data using our indicators and our measurements.
As I indicated, we are in the process of defining a way to collect that data. I said that in my first answer. We should then be in a position to make the tracking of these initiatives meaningful, accurate and thorough. We know that in the basic trends we have seen over the last couple of years, the very slight improvement we are seeing is too slight for our goals. We need to see a much more substantive improvement. We need to work with our partners in education to ensure not only that we have everything in place that is correct. We have gone through a long process right now to develop the measurements and goals that we think are the ones that will work. We now need to start tracking that to begin the process of following students on their progress to see if our initiatives are having the effect that we expect that they will have. I do not know if that clarifies it, expands a little bit upon my first response in sufficient detail that I have clarified, perhaps, that which was not totally clear in my first response.
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Ms. Friesen: Yes, it does clarify it. Essentially, the student number is one of a series of tools that will be part of data collection which has not yet begun, and I understand what the minister is saying. I understand the importance of collaboration, but I am at a loss to understand what the school information system has been doing with its million dollars a year for the last six or seven years. This is not the line to discuss that. Maybe we will discuss that when we get to it. There have been newsletters appearing from it in the last couple of years and just before Estimates. I do not think I have had one this year, but we will see what has been happening there.
It seems to me for a government that has set itself that kind of a goal that the ability to monitor it would be crucial, and it is a difficult one to monitor--there is no doubt about that--because it does deal with a variety of different ways of collecting statistics. There are different agencies involved. There are the issues of self-identification. So it would seem to me, if you are going to set a goal that is defined in that way which invites, in fact requires, measurement and reporting, then it is one that perhaps might have been included in the task that the government had set itself.
I wanted to ask about a couple of things in this department, this section of the department. We are on 16.1.(c), Mr. Chairman, still. I am very curious as to why this reports to the deputy minister. It seems to be quite an anomaly in the whole reporting structure of the department. This section of the department has been around for many years. It used to be numerically a very strong part of the department. I believe at one point it had at least 17 employees. It has been down to as low as three. Now, I see it is up to five, and it reports to the deputy minister. I find that very curious, and I wonder why that has happened, where it fits with the field, where it fits with all of the groups with whom it would need to be involved in order to accomplish its mandate.
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, it is not a native education branch. It is the Native Education Directorate. It went from three people to five people. It used to report to special programs division. Now, because of its expanded mandate, it reports to both deputies and through the deputies to me.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, when it reports directly to the minister, or through the deputies to the minister, how does this particular directorate--I believe it has actually been called a directorate before. I do not think there is any name change there. I do not see a vast change. In fact, I do not see many changes in its mandate, and I am still curious as to why it has been put directly under the deputy minister. I do not understand the minister's explanations of that, and my concern beyond that, having that puzzle resolved, is how this particular section of the department then interacts with all of the field staff and the regions and the school divisions that it needs to interact with to fulfill its mandate.
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, it has been called the directorate for a year or two. I just mentioned that because the member had called it a branch and it is probably inadvertent. Why has it become important to have it report to the deputies instead of programs division branch? Because its mandate has changed. It used to be part of a team to help with one small unit, to help develop curriculum for languages, et cetera. Now, it is an important part of policy setting for the whole department and greatly changed mandate. Very important then that it have expanded influence that it can then work to help us with full implementation of a policy of inclusion which includes an integrated response.
So the aboriginal education and training strategy and the directorate needs to be seen in a larger context of overall government and departmental priorities because those are interdependent. They require linkages. A policy of inclusion, such as the one we have gone to, will influence policy development and result in action through policy implementation, and that includes legislative and regulative policy, government structures, curriculum policies, assessment policies, et cetera. So it is a changed mandate. It is an expanded mandate. It reports to the deputies, because its impact is department-wide and no longer just limited to one portion of one branch.
The contact with the field occurs in multiple ways with all program areas. The field is not a directorate. The field is not a program delivery unit and, as I say, contact with the field occurs in multiple ways in all program areas. The directorate via contact and collaboration with the program areas gathers information, and that information will augment other means of information gathering. It is a small part of a team. It works with staff and the minister to provide advice to the minister, and it oversees overall the implementation of effective responses for aboriginal students. So it is a greatly expanded mandate, and we are blessed with Juliette Sabot who works tirelessly along with the others, tireless efforts to ensure success in this area, a very valued and knowledgeable person in that position.
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Ms. Friesen: Well, that response was not very different from the response I used to get when I asked why they cut the number of people in this section of the department. Ministers, not just this minister but previous ministers, used to answer--well, we have expanded the mandate; we have given them the role of integrated response; we are going to expand--when I used to say: Why are there not any curriculum materials coming out anymore in the way that they used to? Why are the supports not there for the classroom in aboriginal materials? The argument was, well, it is going to happen in the field; it is going to happen through integrating our response in curriculum, et cetera. Essentially, the same list the minister has just given me, so I think we will have to leave it at that. There has obviously been some reason for this shift. I am not quite sure what it is, but I do look for the integrated response.
I wanted to go on to talk about the additional staff which the footnote in the Estimates suggests that this is for curricula frameworks and aboriginal perspectives. I wonder if the minister could, for the record, tell us who the additional staff are, whether these are permanent staff. My understanding from reading the board minutes, I think it was of Winnipeg No. 1, is that one staffperson is seconded, so I am not sure whether these are actually long-term staffing arrangements or whether this is a short-term kind of circulation of people in and out, which is another way of staffing and an interesting combination. So I would be interested in knowing some more about that and the longer-term plans for this directorate in terms of staff, which is an issue I have raised I think many, many times because it is one of concern to me.
If the minister would like to tell us a bit about the curriculum frameworks that are being developed with aboriginal perspectives in them, this is something that I understand has been going on for some time, and now we have two additional people there. I am glad to see that, but could the minister tell us where that fits with what has been happening and what the plans are?
Mrs. McIntosh: We went through this last year, I remember, fairly clearly because I could not seem to help the member understand a certain philosophy, that is, the philosophy promoted, accepted and requested by aboriginal people with whom we have consulted. The member still feels somehow that having a large team of people develop little things for curricula that would say this is for an aboriginal student is somehow the right way to go.
It is the way things were done for a period of time, and it did not work. It was seen by some as patronizing. It was seen by some as segregating. It was seen by some as not the way to go. What all our feedback from our consulting has told us is this: aboriginal perspectives need to be threaded throughout the entire curriculum. The old-fashioned viewpoint the member keeps asking us to reintroduce is to bring in a big team of people who will sit down and write a curriculum that is specifically just for aboriginal people, that does not integrate aboriginal perspectives through the entire learning process in all subject areas in all curricula.
The new approach, the approach sanctioned by the aboriginal people with whom we have consulted, is the one that I have outlined for the member last year and again this year, that we are working on with the western protocol with colleagues in other provinces, that will say here is a curriculum in language arts, and as you go through the curriculum there are things that are in the curriculum that are cross-cultural awarenesses that are there for aboriginal and nonaboriginal students to better understand each other's culture, each other's way, so that they can be proud of who they are and live in harmony with each other because they understand each other.
I went through this last year. It is a new approach and it is one that is seen to be much preferred than the approach the member keeps asking us to reinstate, the approach that was used and discarded as not being as effective as the new way. Maybe the member feels the other way was the better way, in which case perhaps if she wishes to state that, it might help clarify why she keeps asking to have the old-fashioned way reinstituted. We are saying we have a new and better way that we believe, in the long run, will uplift people more and give greater dignity to individuals and help increase understandings.
In our new blueprints, we indicate that we want those understandings of each other to occur. As I indicated earlier, first we laid down the overall blueprint for New Directions, the overall generic statements about education for all children, and then we do a number of things. We put in place the special needs review to see how those children can fit into New Directions in a meaningful way. We bring into being the way in which we are going to handle our aboriginal students to do for them the maximum benefit in lifting up their standards, and so on and so forth.
We are remodelling apprenticeship, soon to be announced how we are doing that so that we can see how we can prepare students for that aspect, but all under the umbrella of overall excellence with measurable standards and rigorous and relevant curricula. Relevant curricula for our aboriginal students in our opinion is not the thing the member has twice, for two years now, asked us to reinstate. A large group of people preparing specific curricula designed to be exclusive rather than inclusive, we do not believe that anymore. That is an old-fashioned view.
So I think it is important to stress that because I obviously did not help her understand that last year, at least accept that that is our position. If it is not her position, she can keep asking us to bring back the old way. I will maintain that I think we are on the right track. I do not want to go back to the old way. It did not work. The graduation rates we are seeing today came about because of that way, and they are not good. The students who are graduating today, I may remind the member, or the students who are not graduating today, who are dropping out today, started school under the reign of the former Premier of this province, Howard Pawley, and they started school and they dropped out. They did not graduate, so obviously their early years and their early beginnings were not working or they would have completed.
That is why we have got the strong emphasis on early intervention. That is why we are going that route. I am quite willing to have the member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) speak if he would like to.
An Honourable Member: You have been government since 1988. They were six years old then.
Mrs. McIntosh: They were in Grade 1. The member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) maybe does not realize school is 12 years long, not 10, and I am talking about early intervention and early years being a focus of our emphasis here because it is part of our overall aboriginal strategy that the early years are extremely important and they have to be a prime focus in order to ensure a graduation rate down the road. He may not realize that the students who would have graduated this year started school while Mr. Pawley was Premier of Manitoba and had their early years in school during the Ministry of Education in place by the NDP, and the graduation rates--they should be coming through today--are abysmal.
And so we are working to correct it and putting in new ways that have been sanctioned by the key players affected, and we will track the results and we will have the things that we can show in support of our approach. I am confident that we will show an increased graduation rate with higher levels of learning and greater success in the world.
The member had said that we did not increase the staff, but, then, in her response she indicated that she did acknowledge we had increased it by two. So she may have just made a misnomer, and I appreciate her acknowledging the staff has increased by two there in that small, concentrated directorate that is working cross-department, interdepartment, et cetera. We do not have plans at this time to add more staff. We use the whole-department approach to support the directorate. It is a directorate. We expect that all staff and all consultants will support the goals in their work, and the consultants and all of those people work for everybody, including aboriginal students.
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So to imply, as the question very clearly implies, that unless a person is out there especially designated to work with aboriginal students, they are not doing any benefit for aboriginal students, is to do an extreme disservice to our many department people who are out there working hard for all students, including aboriginal students.
I really would like the record to show that the people in our Programs Division, the people preparing curricula, the people working to improve standards and help children at risk and develop early interventions and bring in reading recovery are not going out and saying because we are not part of the aboriginal directorate, we refuse to work with aboriginal children. We will only work with those at-risk children who are nonaboriginal. They do not say that.
They go out there--reading recovery, for example, where it exists is working with students at risk in Grade 1 regardless of their ethnic background. They work with aboriginal and nonaboriginal students, and to imply that the only people who can do anything to help aboriginal students are those who work with Juliette in the Native Directorate is to do a very grave disservice to those very good department staff we have who work for all children and who try to meet their needs as the needs are identified, without consideration for the colour of their skin or their economic background, but taking rather the child to help develop that child's brain and that child's knowledge.
So, please, please, do not leave any further implications that staff who are not directly consulted with the Native Directorate do not do any work for aboriginal children. It is wrong. It is the wrong interpretation.
So we will not be adding staff unless we feel it is necessary, because we have this inclusive attitude that is working, and we have outcomes identified, solutions in place. We have a clear workable framework for collaboration with the department. Those outside the department and our branch works in close conjunction with--our aboriginal branch is very familiar with New Directions, for example. They know the standards that we are attempting to have all students meet. So they are back and forth with each other on a constant basis.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, well, that was an interesting meander around the issues. The minister chooses to believe or chooses to misinterpret what I am saying. It is a constant problem with this minister, and then she has a little discussion with herself and interviews herself on the issues that she has raised.
I do not think I have ever been able to get across to the minister that this is not an either/or situation, that inclusive curriculum and the development of curriculum materials for aboriginal students and for all students is not mutually exclusive, but the minister wants to take a particular other perspective and to develop some arguments around that.
My questions dealt with the curricula frameworks that have been, or are intended to be developed in this department according to the Estimates book and for which the new staff have been hired. I believe those fall into a number of criteria, and I believe some of them have to do with both aboriginal languages and aboriginal studies. These would be for I think it is the elementary school levels, high school levels. Perhaps the minister could tell us which curriculum materials are being developed.
Mrs. McIntosh: I could provide some information to the member. It is best discussed under Section 2.(e) where it appears for a formal discussion, but I can provide some information for the member in the meantime until we get to that line.
The integration of aboriginal content in Manitoba curricula is titled Aboriginal Perspectives. That integration applies to learning experiences for all students. Examples for the social studies curriculum of Aboriginal Perspectives, produced for that social studies curriculum, would be the Manitoba Education and Training released to the field; Native Studies Early Years K-4, a teacher's resource book and the accompanying framework in August of '95; Native Studies MiddleYears Grades 5-8, a teacher's resource book and the accompanying framework released in April '97 by the Department of Education and Training. The Manitoba Education and Training will release into the field about now. I am not sure if it has gone out yet, but it should be. If it has not, it will be going out soon. Native Studies Senior Years S1-S4, a teacher's resource book, that will go out through our bulk mailing system to everybody.
These are curriculum support documents that provide background information, activities and sources for teaching social studies from kindergarten to Senior 4 using an aboriginal perspective. Our new curriculum, of course, will include pre-European Canadian history, as well, which has not been there in previous--it may have been touched upon in some text but not the way in which it will be in the new curricula.
The department has also released Success for all Learners, a handbook on differentiating instruction, a resource for kindergarten to Senior 4 schools. That is for all students, as our policy is, but it contains in it examples of teaching strategies based upon aboriginal learning processes which will be particularly useful for aboriginal children and may have some benefit for others, as well.
The department has set as a priority the inclusion of aboriginal perspectives in all curricula being developed, and aboriginal people are included in all program development project teams. We, of course, identified this need in '94, the need to integrate aboriginal content into curriculum in Manitoba. That need was expressed not just by government but also by educators and aboriginal people who expressed the need to integrate aboriginal content into curricula. That was identified in 1994 by the then Minister of Education in Renewing Education: New Directions, A Blueprint for Action, and it was reinforced in Renewing Education: New Directions, a Foundation for Excellence, which was in August '95. So here we are some three or four years later with some of the subcomponents of this fleshed out and in the process of being implemented.
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We intend to have aboriginal participation continuing on all the project teams, and aboriginal perspectives will continue in all future development of Manitoba curricula. The English language arts and the math framework are now complete, and we are currently working with the western protocol to develop social studies, and in particular the social studies framework of learning outcomes will have a very strong infusion of aboriginal perspectives in it.
That is a brief bit of information. I think when we get to 16.2.(e) we could have a better discussion on that topic as that line appears in the Estimates.
Ms. Friesen: I would like to ask the minister to table a set of the documents that she has talked about, the social studies K to S4 teachers' resource books and curriculum support documents. The success for all learners, I believe, has been tabled before, but if it has not, if that could be tabled and hence become a public document.
I wanted to ask the minister about the math framework documents that have been published. If she could indicate where the aboriginal perspective is in that. What does she mean by aboriginal perspective in there? Could she give me some examples, page numbers? I do have the math documents. I am interested to know what the minister understands to be, or believes to be, the level of example and--I am not sure what the right word would be--I guess, conceptual framework.
Mrs. McIntosh: That is what I meant when I said it might be best discussed under 16.2.(e) when we have the staff here that have been working on those kinds of details. We can at that time get into that kind of detail, but because we are offline in that, we do not have those staff people here--I mean, we could pause and go and get the information, but we might be better to wait until we actually get to that line and the correct staff people are here who have been working on those areas.
I do want to indicate something I left out in my other comment, in my other response, in that Cree and Ojibway curricula development are beginning in this '98-99 fiscal year with planning to ensure that the frameworks developed by the western protocol will be further refined to meet Manitoba needs. We have been working--a major emphasis on collaboration on basic education initiatives in developing frameworks for international languages and aboriginal languages, and the western protocol frameworks will be used as kind of generic frameworks that will guide the development of language specific, a foundation for implementation documents.
Ms. Friesen: I understood the minister to say we would discuss specific curriculum elements later on, but I also asked her to table the documents, or to agree to table the documents. I understand the minister will do that.
My other question, however, does come specifically from this line, and that is the two additional people who have been hired to deal with curricula frameworks and the development of aboriginal perspectives. So I am looking for an indication of what they will be doing. I am still puzzled as to why I cannot discuss it under this heading, which seems to me, as it says here, to oversee the implementation of the department's aboriginal education and training strategy. Again, that is one of the difficulties I am having understanding why this is here and why other things are elsewhere and how they interrelate. But for the moment, if we could focus upon the footnote on page 29 of the detailed Estimates book, which says that these two additional positions are for the development of aboriginal perspectives in curricula frameworks and desktop services.
Mrs. McIntosh: The member is correct in looking at that in that it is--you know, it would lead one to come to that conclusion the way it is worded, and that is unfortunate because I understand that footnote was added after. What has happened with that footnote, it explains the new staff by classification type and not by their function. In their function, they are looking at the policy development, et cetera, those analyses, and the classification type is in that category. To be more clear and to be more fully accurate, the footnote should have read their function or an explanation of the classification type.
The member is asking for detail that we can, and would, be willing to provide. We just do not have it here right now. In the case of mathematics, just as a generic statement, the outcomes in the curriculum framework of outcomes and standards are broad enough in nature to accommodate content and activities that reflect a diversity of cultures, including aboriginal cultures, and the specific aboriginal perspectives are being included in the foundation for implementation, which are documents suggested as part of the suggested instructional and assessment strategies and learning resources. I hear what she is asking for, and we will eventually get her that information.
Our time, I see, is up for the day at any rate, but it is a good question, and as we get further into Estimates the answer will be provided for her.
The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Faurschou): Order, please. The hour being 12 noon, pursuant to the rules of the House, I am interrupting the proceedings of the Committee of Supply, with the understanding that the Speaker will resume the Chair at 1:30 p.m. today and that, after Routine Proceedings, the Committee of Supply will resume consideration of Estimates. Thank you.
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