1990 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 34th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 1990

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

9541 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Funding for aboriginal programs. Mr. G. Hanson –– 9541

Meeting with North Dakota governor at Western Premiers' Conference.

Mr. Williams –– 9542

Expo lands. Mr. Williams –– 9542

Negotiations with doctors. Mr. Ree –– 9542

Privatization. Mr. Sihota –– 9543

Provincial Court Amendment Act, 1990 (Bill 4). Second reading

Hon. Mr. Smith –– 9544

Mr. Guno –– 9544

Mr. Sihota –– 9544

Hon. Mr. Smith –– 9545

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Education estimates. (Hon. Mr. Brummet)

On vote 17: minister's office –– 9546

Ms. A. Hagen

Hon. Mr. Smith

Mr. Rose

Mr. Guno

Ms. Edwards

Mr. Lovick

Ms. Pullinger

Mr. Zirnhelt

Mr. Sihota

The House met at 2:03 p.m.

HON. MR. DIRKS :

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of yourself and a number of ministers who are

being visited today, it's my honour to introduce to this House three

visitors to our province and to our precincts who are here in the

desire to reinforce and diversify their relationship with British

Columbia, and to explore possibilities of bilateral cooperation with

our government. The visitors I refer to are the Ambassador of Tunisia

to Canada and his wife, His Excellency and Mrs. Sadok Bouzayen. The

Ambassador is accompanied by the Tunisian consul in Washington, D.C.,

Mr. Hedi Sioud. Would the House please make them welcome.

HON. MR. REYNOLDS :

Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce to the House today Mr. Martyn

Green, the manager of Canada West Petroleum Association, and Mr. Gordon

Winter, vice-president of environment and corporate relations for

Mohawk Oil. Both of these gentlemen from British Columbia are with a

group of 15 gentlemen from the Association of Petroleum Industry Co-op

Managers. They're from Alaska, California, Hawaii, Washington,

Delaware, the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of Canada — Quebec, Nova

Scotia and the Great Lakes area. They are here to review the current

technology and contingency planning for oil spills and also the care of

wildlife that has been affected by oil spills. I'll be meeting with

them after question period today. Would the House please make them

welcome.

MS. EDWARDS : Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the

member for Rossland-Trail (Mr. D’Arcy), who is not here today, I would

like to ask the other members to join me in welcoming a group of 47

band students from Stanley Humphries Secondary School in Castlegar,

with their teachers Mr. Lorren Culley and Ms. Laurie Boskov, who is a

chaperone. Please join me in welcoming these students.

MR. MILLER :

Mr. Speaker, in the members' gallery today is an alderperson from

Prince Rupert, Rhoda Witherly, a person I have had the pleasure of

working with in the community. I would ask the House to welcome her to

the gallery.

MR. CHALMERS : Mr. Speaker, visiting in

the galleries today is a family from the great constituency of Okanagan

South. I would ask everybody to welcome Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie-Elliott

and their daughter Sara.

HON. MR. PARKER : I would ask the House to welcome — and to offer congratulations

to — Mr. Geert Dierner. He has retired to British Columbia after sharing his life

between Canada and Holland. Next week he and his wife celebrate their fifty-eighth

wedding anniversary.

MR. PERRY :

It's a delight to welcome to the House today some students from Jericho

Hill School in Vancouver. They will be receiving the welcome in

American sign language through an interpreter. The students are: Mr.

Justin Walker, Mr. David Gardner, Ms. Leanne Rumbly, Mr. Wade Sorenson

and Mr. Stevens Mah. They are accompanied by their teachers, who are

rather famous teachers in the Jericho Hill School: Mr. Kaz Sluzarczyk,

who is famous not only for his ability but also for the difficulty in

pronouncing his last name, and Mr. Gwillym Smith. I would like the

House to make them welcome.

MR. KEMPF : In the House

again the afternoon is my father-in-law, Norman Burke. Accompanying him

this afternoon are two lovely ladies: his wife, Margaret, and Dorothy

Crawford from Comox. I would ask the House to make them all welcome.

HON. MR. SMITH :

In the members' gallery today is a friend from Kamloops, a member of

our city council, a person who does a great deal of community work. He

is here in his capacity with the union board of health. Would the House

please join me in welcoming Pat Kaatz.

HON. J. JANSEN : Visiting us from the great community of Chilliwack are Mrs. Toor and her son Kavie. Would you please make them welcome.

MR. SERWA :

In the precincts today are 60 grades 10 to 12 students from KLO

Secondary School in Kelowna. The band students are accompanied by their

instructor, Mr. John Mutter, and several parents. On behalf of my

colleague the second member for Okanagan South (Mr. Chalmers) and

myself, I would ask this House to make them welcome.

MR. BARLEE :

I notice in the precincts an old friend of mine, an alderwoman from the

municipality of Summerland, that nice lakeside town on Okanagan Lake:

Sheila White. Would the members make her most welcome.

Oral Questions

FUNDING FOR ABORIGINAL PROGRAMS

MR. G. HANSON :

A question to the Minister of Native Affairs. The federal Secretary of

State has restored funding across the country to women's centres. These

cuts were initially made to aboriginal programs and were equally

unjustified and damaging. Has the minister persuaded the federal

government to restore funding cuts made by the Secretary of State to

aboriginal organizations?

HON. MR. WEISGERBER : No, we haven't. We have, in fact, worked with a couple of the major organizations — Kahtou and Northern Native Broadcasting — to look at other ways of funding them.

[ Page 9542 ]

MR. G. HANSON :

Supplementary, Mr. Speaker. We feel it's important that the federal

government live up to its obligation to the first nations of Canada. We

believe that action to be discriminatory and unjust. My question is:

has the minister decided to demand that his federal counterpart go to

the Secretary of State and have these funds restored?

HON. MR. WEISGERBER :

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I suppose it would be appropriate for MPs across

British Columbia to contact the ministers involved and urge them to

restore funding, and I hope that members across the way will be in

contact with their respective MPs to join in that call.

MEETING WITH NORTH DAKOTA GOVERNOR

AT WESTERN MINISTERS' CONFERENCE

MR. WILLIAMS :

I have a question to the hon. Premier. Did the Premiers meet with the

Governor of North Dakota at the meeting in Portage la Prairie?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : Yes, Mr. Speaker.

MR. WILLIAMS :

Did the Premier not feel there was an inconsistency in meeting with an

American Governor at a time of constitutional crisis in Canada?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : Well, I suppose at the end of the day — which is what it was —

on Tuesday we could have played golf or done any other number of

things. But I think it's tremendously important that we deal with our

constitution and keep the country united. We want a strong Canada.

It's

also important that we maintain good relations with our American

neighbours. They are, certainly, a large trading partner....

a matter of fact, I have been invited to attend one of their meetings

of governors, in the hope that we might work toward ways of encouraging

further and closer cooperation in all matters, including those of an

environmental nature, infrastructure and possibly economic initiatives

and such.

So it is important that we deal with our

constitutional question as we did so thoroughly and so well, and it's

similarly important that we keep our good relations with our American

neighbours.

MR. WILLIAMS : The Governor of North

Dakota, George Sinner, argued for meshing the two currencies: Canada's

and America's. He said: "The stability of human life is a little more

important than whether the Queen or Lincoln is on the dollar."

Does the Premier find this useful at a time of constitutional crisis in Canada?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

Mr. Speaker, Governor Sinner is a fine man. He certainly has a fine

state. He's been elected. He's a very popular individual. He's got a

large family — ten children, as a matter of fact. But he says

things that I don't agree with, and I'm sure we say things that he

doesn't agree with. As a matter of fact, as you are aware, he was sort

of siding with the NDP on the trade issue. I certainly didn't disagree

with him then, and I don't have to disagree with him now. He, too,

comes from a free country, where they're entitled to their views and

are allowed to express them.

EXPO LANDS

MR. WILLIAMS :

I have a question for the minister responsible for the Expo land

contract. Does the Crown still face any unresolved liabilities?

Interjections.

MR. WILLIAMS :

When I asked this question last week, the Minister of Crown Lands stood

up. I presume the minister isn't sure whether he's responsible for the

Expo land contract.

[2:15]

MR. SPEAKER :

The Chair cannot accept interjections from people who are sitting. I'll

ask the minister to stand and make a statement if he wishes to. I can't

rule on something that's just an interjection.

HON. MR. PARKER : The question was taken as notice at an earlier date and will be dealt with subsequently.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH DOCTORS

MR. REE :

My question is to the Minister of Finance. On Tuesday of this week, I

attended a sit-in of doctors on the North Shore. It appears that

there's a reluctance upon the part of the government, or of the

negotiators, to sit down and negotiate with the doctors. Mr. Minister

of Finance, is the government prepared to sit down at an early date and

negotiate with the doctors on the outstanding labour dispute?

HON. MR. COUVELIER :

The answer to the question is quite simply yes. We have been waiting

for the doctors to indicate their desire to get back to the table. We

did meet prior to the doctors taking job action, and at that meeting we

indicated to the doctors our very serious desire to find a resolution

of our conflicts.

As a further indication of our goodwill

and desire to find that solution, we suggested two different approaches

that might have merit. First of all, we suggested that insofar as the

first year of a supposed three-year contract has already expired, we

would therefore be dealing with history in the sense that we might

isolate that first year and try to find a resolution of that particular

issue so that some continued progress might be made.

Secondly,

if that wasn't to their liking, we might consider discussions about a

problem that the government concedes is evident in this dispute. That

problem relates to the general practitioners who are billing the system

appropriately, serving their clients well, but in the process find

themselves trapped with

[ Page

9543 ]

high rental or rental increases, wage increases to receptionists — in other words, overhead costs.

suggested our desire would be that maybe another dispute-breaking

mechanism could be that we would isolate those problems and deal with

them specially in a unique way — all of this designed to indicate the government's serious desire to find a happy resolution of this most difficult issue.

The

doctors' negotiator did not give us any response to either of those

suggestions and suggested that he would call us when he was ready for

his next meeting. We subsequently learned that the chief....

MR. SPEAKER :

Order, please. If you wish to make a ministerial statement, after

question period would be the appropriate time. During question period

the scope of the question has to remain within the answer.

PRIVATIZATION

MR. SIHOTA :

A question to the Premier. Yesterday I raised the matter of

privatization, and I referred to the auditor-general's report, which

concluded with respect to a number of matters that privatization was

costing British Columbians more, and it would have been cheaper to have

certain matters left within the public sector.

With respect

to the government's plans on privatization, the Premier, when he first

made his announcement about privatization, indicated that there would

be phases 2, 3 and 4. Is the Premier prepared now to give a commitment,

in light of the evidence in the auditor-general's report, that the

government will not be moving to those phases?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

Mr. Speaker, this side of the House certainly has great faith in the

private sector, and we believe in the private sector. It's still our

view that if there are services that can best — or equally — be

provided through the private sector as opposed to government, we would

certainly consider the private sector for those particular services.

I realize this conflicts with a socialist approach to governing, where obviously — as we saw after 1976 when we inherited a public service of 47,000, which has now been reduced to slightly under 27,000 — there is a difference philosophically.

I mentioned yesterday to the questioner that we were looking at privatization not only as a means to save money — it is —

but also as a way to provide us with flexibility and to encourage

greater economic activity from those sectors or activities that might

be moved into the private sector and would thus be able to expand.

We've

seen enormous success in that. The privatization program has been a

great success. If there are further services that could be provided for

in the private sector, I would certainly be a supporter of such.

MR. SIHOTA : The Premier should understand that the issue here is not

a matter of faith in the private sector. The issue here is the government cutting

bad deals, as it tries to impose its will on the people of British Columbia

by proceeding with privatization. It's a bad deal when you give away $13

million to BCBC. It's a bad deal when you lose $150 million in gravel pits.

And it's....

MR. SPEAKER : Order, please.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER :

Order, please. We were doing so well in the early part of this week. We

must be getting near the end of the question period. Perhaps if I could

ask the member to stand and just actually ask the question. The rest of

it is probably public knowledge and doesn't need to be repeated.

MR. SIHOTA :

Mr. Speaker, in August of 1987, the Premier said there won't be any

fire sales, specials or giveaways with respect to privatization. The

other day, the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Couvelier) said that in

region 1, rents were reduced to assist a private contractor. Given that

the beneficiary was a campaign manager of the Minister of Finance, has

the Premier investigated to determine that no "specials" — to quote his word — were extended to that former campaign manager?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : Mr. Speaker, I would also like to read just briefly from a report, as the member mentioned a report. It's from the ombudsman.

"An

intriguing question, though, regarding public services delivery is the

extent to which the threat of privatization of the delivery model

induces public sector managers and employees to become more sensitive

to individual fairness issues. In this sense, competitive market forces

may indeed be having a positive impact on the quality of public

services."

That's a very important statement, I think. The

ombudsman is telling us that because some of the services are in the

private sector now, we are in fact providing a better service through

the public service. In answer to the question, I would be the first to

admit that when you're involved in a number of activities in the

privatization process, without a doubt, some might work out more

effectively and, in fact, be better than others, but the measure is the

bottom line and how all these programs collectively affect efficiency

of service and benefit to the taxpayers in the final analysis. I

compare only the last three years to the three years of the NDP from

'72 to '75 and the disaster that followed, the size of government and

its presence everywhere in our province, to today, when we have a

balanced budget, the best economy in the country, a wonderful— however, much smaller — and effective public service and more jobs for all people in the province.

MR. REE : Regretfully I don't have my Standing Orders here in front of me, but I recall somewhere — and probably you can elaborate on it for me — that in question period one is entitled to a supplementary

[ Page 9544 ]

question, when they're being asked. I would ask the Speaker to look at the record and see that I was deprived of that today.

MR. SPEAKER :

While on the point of order, the Chair has been assisted by the

opposition in providing the Chair with a list of people who wish to ask

questions, as guidance for the Chair. The Chair has not had the similar

privilege from government members who wish to provide the Chair....

However, the Chair is not bound by either list; it s only a

guidance for the Chair, and I will take the member's point as a point

of information.

The member has a further point of order?

MR. REE :

I don't wish to argue with Mr. Speaker. But I had been recognized for a

question at the time, regardless of what list you had, and I understand

you may have been advised that I was going to be asking a question.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. REYNOLDS : Mr. Speaker, I call second reading of Bill 4, Provincial Court Amendment Act, 1990.

PROVINCIAL COURT

AMENDMENT ACT, 1990

HON. MR. SMITH : Bill 4 is a matter which deals with pensions in relation to the Provincial Court of B.C. As you may be aware, last year — or perhaps it was the year before —

we had a program in the province dealing with the issue of early

retirement for senior civil servants. This bill is similar to that and

follows along the same principles as that. So I'll give it a bit more

explanation as I move that the bill be now read a second time.

MR. GUNO :

I am glad to have the opportunity to be one of the first from this side

of the House to comment on this important bill. It purports to provide

that the costs of paying for this policy— or for a policy that encourages the judges to take early retirement — will not be borne by the pension fund but, as I understand it, will be paid out by the Attorney-General's ministry.

have a number of questions here; one is the motive of the government. I

think the bill is clearly trying to create sufficient incentive to

encourage provincial judges who wish to take early retirement and to

provide some attractive incentives.

One of the concerns I

have is that I hope this policy is not meant to reduce the number of

judges. If that is the intent, then we would strongly oppose it. I hope

that what we're doing here is to ensure that the work of the Provincial

Court— which is involved in criminal, small claims and family matters — is enhanced and made more effective, especially in the rural areas and the smaller communities throughout the province.

know this is certainly true in the riding that I represent. As a matter

of fact, in order for the Provincial Court judge to hold court, he must

travel to Stewart or New Aiyansh— of course, with a small retinue.

One

of the first questions I would ask is: what assurance does the

Attorney-General have that we're not going to have some form of

judicial drain — a massive exodus of experience, wisdom and people who have developed a certain rapport with people who come before the courts?

The

reason I ask this is that, as you know, in our provincial correctional

system, up to 18 percent of the prison population are people of

aboriginal origin. Yet at the same time, the aboriginal people

represent only 3 percent of the population.

[2:30]

As I understand it, today there is only one judge of aboriginal

descent, and I think he is retiring. Now if this policy is meant to

encourage and to provide more opportunity for people of aboriginal

descent to be appointed as provincial judges— or women.... I think that

the makeup of our provincial courts today does not reflect the presence

of women in the province. So I want to know exactly what the real

motive of this government is in introducing this policy.

MR. SIHOTA :

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I should let the Attorney-General know that

with respect to this legislation we will be supporting the bill, and I

have some matters that are more of a technical nature which I want to

raise during the discussion at committee stage, whenever that may

happen.

Therefore I want to make a number of general

comments with respect to this legislation. It is my understanding, if I

recollect correctly— and I stand to be corrected on this — that the

recommendation of the compensation advisory committee which was made

sometime in 1988, and the review of that by the Labour and Justice

Committee of the Legislature which occurred after the advisory

committee's report, formed the basis of this report.

I must

say that I was a part of that process and worked with the former

Attorney-General, both in his capacity as Attorney-General and

subsequently as a member of the Legislature, in seeing the passage of

those recommendations through that committee, ultimately to the House

and, I take it, now implemented through the provisions of this

legislation.

In that regard I think it's fulfilment of that

work. I think that committee recognized there were a number of

discrepancies when it came to the pension available to judges, as well

as the remuneration paid to judges at the Provincial Court level. We

endeavoured to deal with those in a fair and impartial way, and I was

rather pleased with the outcome. I don't know if the Attorney-General

was or not, but I certainly had no difficulty with the set of

recommendations that flowed from that.

The legislation that

is before the House will, if I can put it this way, allow the

government and the Attorney-General's ministry to rejuvenate the Provin-

[ Page 9545 ]

cial

Court, allow for some new people to come on to the court and allow

those who are desirous of leaving to get on with their lives and get

into other fields of endeavour.

I guess in that regard I

want to look a little further down the line and also reflect back on

the experience of the Provincial Court and the nature of the

appointments that have been made to the Provincial Court. I think in

many ways the process that we have, which is non-political and where we

proceed with the recommendations of the judicial Council, is a

commendable process.

There are, I know, many good

candidates for appointment who are available throughout the province to

serve on our Provincial Court, and I think that 1, the Attorney-General

and my good colleague from Atlin would agree that at the Provincial

Court level the courts are really at the front line of legal disputes

and see the drama of life experiences played out daily. Poverty, the

situation facing natives, small claims matters and criminal matters are

all matters that come to the attention of the Provincial Court.

was reviewing some statistics the other day in relation to the

composition of the Provincial Court, and I would hope that this

legislation would allow the government to address the issues that I am

about to raise. It's my understanding, from memory, that there are 11

or possibly 12 women who now sit on the Provincial Court out of a

total, I think, of about 100 to 115 members of that judiciary. There

is, as my colleague from Atlin has indicated, only one member from the

native community who sits on the Provincial Court.

From experience — because I didn't look at this, and in some ways it's not easy to determine —

there are only one or two people that I am aware of in the Provincial

court who come from visible minorities, despite the fact that there are

good and qualified people from ethnic communities, the native community

and certainly women who have practised law and are quite capable of

serving on the Provincial Court.

I guess in some ways the

composition of the court reflects the attitudes of this government over

the past few years, because it, of course, has been predominantly in

power and has been in a position to address the issue of women and the

representation of natives and visible minorities on the benches.

think it's unfortunate that the Social Credit Party over the years has

not encouraged a greater participation or encouraged those who make the

ultimate appointments to be cognizant of the need to have more women,

natives and visible minorities on the bench. Therefore we've seen the

kinds of numbers that I've talked about. I don't think it's surprising,

when you take a look at that composition, to know that it exists. I

think that with this government, appointments throughout quasi-judicial

functions tend to reflect the same type of percentage as one sees on

the Provincial Court. I know the second member for Vancouver Centre

(Mr. Barnes) in the past has made these same comments about

multicultural communities in British Columbia and multicultural

representation on various boards and councils. I know my colleague from

Vancouver Centre would agree with me that it is absolutely essential to

see more people of visible minority backgrounds, natives and women

appointed to these positions.

It is my hope that the

government, which has not addressed this problem in the past, will move

to address it now, given that there will inevitably be vacancies

occurring on the provincial bench as a consequence of these amendments.

my mind, the proper process to do that is not, of course, through the

government making appointments through the political route, but through

the route we have now: asking those who are responsible and available

to do the evaluations of those who wish to serve on the bench, and to

be mindful of the need to address those groups in society that are

underrepresented on the bench. There are many good candidates

throughout the province who come from those backgrounds, and I would

hope that the Attorney-General will communicate our desire to see

representation along those lines.

Having said that, let me

make a number of other quick comments with respect to this legislation

which I am sure those who serve on the provincial bench are desirous of

seeing implemented. In some ways, the bill is just an initial response

to the proposals made last year in the recommendations forwarded by the

judicial Council to the ministry.

I also believe there

would have been representations from the Provincial Court judges and

the former chief Provincial Court judge, who I understand has now gone

on to serve as a judge of the County Court, if I'm not mistaken from my

readings of the progress of people on the bench. I'm not too sure if I

know all the details of that change. I guess I should inquire to see

what happened in that situation. If I'm thinking of the right person,

he actually did a very good job in his capacity as the chief Provincial

Court judge. If the Attorney-General has anything to say about that

aspect of it, I'd be listening carefully to his comments.

The

bill represents a first step in response to the proposals that were

made last year. There are a number of matters that I think need to be

canvassed at the committee stage. It's my understanding, if I recollect

properly from the bill, that the years of service required— the minimum —

is high: about 23 years. It is my understanding that there is a

one-year averaging in the legislation,

whereas the committee had made a

dissimilar recommendation. I'll check on that, and we'll deal with that

at committee stage when we get to it.

Mr. Speaker, we're happy to support the improvement to the Provincial Court in this amendment, and we'll be supporting it.

MR. SPEAKER : Pursuant to the standing orders, the House is advised the Attorney-General will close the debate.

HON. MR. SMITH : Mr. Speaker, there have been a number of questions raised, which I will be delighted

[ Page 9546 ]

to answer in detail at third reading. Speaking to the principle of the bill with the question raised by the member for Atlin — namely, the motivation or the purpose of the legislation....

couple of years ago, the senior people in our system had an opportunity

for this kind of package. It would have been inappropriate at that time

to include within that same program members of the judiciary, by reason

of the need for separation of the functions. Simply put, this program

allows for the judiciary to have access to that opportunity in the same

way that others had two years ago.

I have discussed it in

meetings with the chief judge of the Provincial Court, as well as

during my attendance at the annual meeting of the Provincial Judges'

Association. I can assure the House that I have not had any contrary

views from members of the judiciary.

Mr. Speaker, with that said, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. SMITH : Mr. Speaker, by leave, I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered forthwith.

Leave not granted.

MR. SPEAKER : I must ask the Attorney-General to move the committee motion for tomorrow.

HON. MR. SMITH :

Mr. Speaker, as leave has been refused by the member for Esquimalt-Port

Renfrew (Mr. Sihota), I move that the bill be referred to a Committee

of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House

after today.

Motion approved.

Bill 4,

Provincial Court Amendment Act, 1990, read a second time and referred

to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting

after today.

[2:45]

HON. MR. REYNOLDS : Committee of Supply, Mr Speaker.

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Pelton in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

On vote 17: minister's office, $308,497 (continued)

MS. A. HAGEN :

Mr. Chairman, I'm delighted to see you back in the chair for more

discussion on education. You're getting educated over the last few days.

want to turn our attention at the start of this afternoon's discussion

to a few aspects of the Royal Commission on Education. I'm going to

choose two or three areas on which to question the minister.

The

first issue that I want to talk about is youngsters who leave our

school system without having achieved graduation status. I believe that

the minister, in his new document "Year 2000, " has used a new term for

such students. I can't recall the term, but I thought it was good.

Perhaps he might want to refer to that term when he responds. We quite

often call such students dropouts. I've never been very comfortable

with that particular description of students who don't finish.

think the minister and I would agree that one of the goals of education

is that the youngsters who enter our school system should graduate in

as high numbers as is possible. The record in British Columbia is not

one to be very proud of. We haven't seen improvements; indeed, we've

seen a deterioration in the number of youngsters who graduate from high

school. The percentage of young people in the 18-year-old group who

graduate in a year is only 57 percent. Almost one in two young people

who are 18 years of age have not graduated from our school system. That

figure has remained relatively constant over a 15-year period, except,

interestingly enough, for one rise in the period from '82 to '85.

the almost 36,000 students who enter grade 12, only 25,000 graduate. So

even though the students have made it to grade 12, only 70 percent of

them actually graduate that year. If we look at the number of students

who enter grade 8, and then look at the number who graduate five years

later, the figure is 64 percent at this time.

There have

been interesting improvements during the last 20 years, particularly in

those students who enter grade 12 and graduate. Presently the

percentage is around 70 percent, as I just noted. Twenty-five years

ago, in 1964-65, the percentage was pretty close— around 69 percent.

It's interesting. Over a period of years, with some variations in the

60 percent range, but notably in the period from 1973 through to 1983,

the percentage showed a steady increase up into the low 80 percent.

don't know whether it's significant or not, but during that time we had

an NDP administration. We also had a Social Credit administration,

during which time the support for our school system grew to its highest

level. Once we got into the period of restraint, starting in 1983, we

began to see a deterioration again. I think it's difficult to know

whether there's cause and effect. But I think it is interesting to note

that there was a period of about ten years, from 1973 to 1984-85, when

the figure stayed in the high seventies, low eighties. In fact, in

1973, the figure jumped from 64 percent to almost 77 percent, and it

held steady there for seven or eight years until 1982-1983.

know the minister might comment that these figures are not accurate,

that we don't have a very good tracking system, that a number of

students do graduate later and do come back to school -all of those

kinds of observations— and I want to encourage him to consider those observations, because I

[ Page 9547 ]

recognize

too that students do perhaps conclude their program in January of the

next year after they're 18 when they pick up a semester. Many students

do drop out for a time and come back to take their GED, but we have a

snapshot here of one in four students who do not graduate, and we have

a pattern of a deterioration in our record since we kept those records.

I think those patterns are of concern to us.

One of the

goals of the Royal Commission on Education, I believe the minister has

stated, is to ensure that these young people do have an education that

encourages and enables them to remain within the system until they do

achieve a graduation standard. That graduation standard, as we know, is

very often a ticket into post-secondary apprenticeship jobs, a whole

range of the activities that young people take

part in once they have

left the public school system.

I want to ask the minister

two questions. What plans around the royal commission implementation

will be in place to improve immediately this sorry state of affairs

which has almost one in two eighteen-year-olds not graduating by the

time they're eighteen? And what financial resources coming out of the

implementation moneys available this year— perhaps next year, because I know this is a multi-year funded plan —

will be available to be targeted to this particular group of young

people and their needs, so that they can indeed have the opportunity to

achieve graduation status and the ticket they need for training, job

opportunities and post-secondary education that will enable them to

participate fully in the economy of British Columbia?

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

I think we have said and have agreed that it is difficult to know

mathematically, and statistically therefore, exactly what those numbers

mean, because we don't have an individual tracking system. So a student

who shows up somewhere else or goes into another institution, into an

independent school, into another province, is in effect subtracted from

the number of students in grade 8, and the difference works out at

about 30 percent. Apparently this is not unique. It is at the 30-35

percent level pretty well across Canada, so we don't know what those

numbers are. Whatever the numbers are, we agree with the Sullivan

commission report that they're too high and that we want more students

to stay in the schools.

The chart that the member uses from the annual report about only 57 percent graduating —

that's not correct. That chart basically says that 57 percent of

18-year olds in the province have achieved graduation standing. There

are many students who graduate at 19, so they would not count in that.

Again we don't know that it's a correct report in that in the survey— and I don't imagine we counted every 18-year-old in British Columbia — only 15 percent of 18-year-olds had achieved grade 12 graduation.

The

numbers have varied from time to time. In the early eighties a change

was made to the graduation requirements, and provincial examinations

were introduced. So that made it a little more difficult for some

students to obtain a "graduation certificate." For some, that delayed

it, and so the numbers would have changed slightly. One of the reasons

for that was that we had come out of the sixties and seventies when

graduation was considered— to state it in extreme terms — that if you

had survived 12 years in school.... The universities, as more people

wanted to go on to universities, were questioning that, and so

provincial examinations and graduation requirements were tightened up

so that the graduation certificate would have validity at the

post-secondary schools, because if it didn't, then we were facing the

possibility of post-secondary entrance examinations.

Having

done that, so that there is some standardization and consistency across

the province, the universities have accepted the school product. I

might point out that the first year started out with a wide discrepancy

between school marks and provincial exam marks, and they have come

together. I think it's partly because, if you were teaching three grade

12 students in a small rural school, how would you know how they

compared against all the fish in the pond? But now people have a basis

for comparison.

Yes, the critics have said that it

standardizes the curriculum, and probably there is some validity to

that too. You train them, and they spout back enough of the right stuff

that they were trained in, and that indicates graduation. Well, we

weren't satisfied with that and neither was the Sullivan commission.

But the commission said that, in talking to many students and many

other people, they found out why kids were dropping out of school. They

said it was because there was nothing there that interested them. They

did not plan to go on to university, and there were no real programs

for them.

The schools and the ministry have made quite an

effort to try to provide various options. As a result, in the new

graduation program to deal with this problem, we have moved towards a

more student-directed curriculum. We're saying that there will be

standards set for what a student needs to achieve, but it is not

necessarily at the same time. So all students will have a common core

curriculum which involves reading and associated skills: communication

skills, numeration skills, practical life skills and fine arts skills.

Beyond that, they can pursue their interests.

[3:00]

To give an example, if someone said, "I don't plan to go to

university; I want to be a mechanic, " perhaps a little was offered in

the school in the way of mechanics but certainly not enough, because we

required all the other things for the student to do. Now they can focus

on mechanics as well as learn to read and critically analyze and all

those things. They can do mathematics and science, built around their

interest in mechanics. We feel that it will go a long way towards

keeping students in school and having them recognize that even a

mechanic is no longer just a wrench-puller these days; he has to be

able to analyze sophisticated technological equipment and read

sophisticated manuals. Some people say that some of those are printed

at about a second-year-university level. They can focus on what

interests them.

[ Page 9548 ]

The

true question is: what is being done immediately? Some of the

curriculum programs have been redesigned and geared towards more

student-directed learning programs. That is happening immediately. As

far as finances go, some money is going into those resources. More

options are being made available. Computer technology is being made

available now. The steering committee and the graduation curriculum

committee have put together a program which has now been approved. It

has gone to the printers and will be out later this spring to give in

more general terms what is expected. Gradually the specifics will be

filled in, as teachers assist us. For instance, the graduation program

will go out this year; next year, all the teachers— and anyone else who wants to —

can have input into what is acceptable and where modifications need to

be made, and all that will be put together. Then in the following year,

the program will again be revised based on that input, as the "Year

2000" document was.

Some of the $140 million this year, of

course, goes into that curriculum development, into analyzing the input

from the system and continuing our efforts to adapt the new curriculum

material and guides towards what the Sullivan commission report said:

focus on learning.

I'm not satisfied with our "dropout

rate," because I don't know if some students, who left school because

they weren't planning to go to university and went on an apprenticeship

program and became craftsmen, should in fact be considered dropouts.

Numerically they were.

HON. MR. SMITH : I have a

question to the Minister of Education. During the discussion by the

member for New Westminster, there was reference to the expenditure

patterns between 1972 and 1983, 1 believe.

The minister was talking about the enhancement of the education system during the period from 1975 to

'83, and referred as well to the issue of the restraint program, around

1982-83. 1 wonder if the minister could tell the House what the

expenditure patterns were between, say, 1975 — or 1972, for that matter

— and 1990, or as close to that as we can get. Could you track for the

House what those expenditure patterns are, by whatever measurement you

wish to use— absolute dollar increases, percentage of population, percentage of enrolment, whatever — and advise the House what the achievement level was and how it was measured for the K-to-12 system during that same period?

Mr.

Speaker, in my short time in this House and during my life in British

Columbia, since I've been interested in these matters, I have listened— interminably, I believe —

to the proposition that expenditure levels, if they're high, result

necessarily in greater achievement and a higher quality of education. I

have recently had a number of my constituents question me about that

notion. They're not certain that one follows from the other, and they

have asked me to try to determine for them whether it is safe,

appropriate and proper to make those assumptions.

I, like

many other people who have been in the school system, have gut

instincts, assumptions and suppositions about what the answer to that

may be. But I don't have a lot of detail or data. So I wonder if the

Minister of Education could enlighten the chamber about that very

important issue. Use whatever time-frames you wish, for that matter. I

think it really goes to the root and heart of the debate in British

Columbia, when you listen to it carefully: if you just pump more money

into the system, you'll turn out a better quality of student; if you

don't, you won't.

I would like it if the minister could perhaps give us some advice about that issue.

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

Mr. Chairman, in very general terms, interestingly enough, during the

1983 to '87 or '89 period, achievement stayed up and improved in the

school system. Achievement results certainly increased. There were some

national surveys done at the grade 4, 7 and 10 levels during the '83 to

'87 period. Our students did well in '83 and better in '87 on those

national exams. So there's certainly no sort of relationship between

less funding and poorer results.

Another thing that many

people, when they make comparisons with spending during the

mid-eighties, neglect to point out is that 1985 was the lowest point in

enrolment in the British Columbia school system. Also, in 1985 — and the opposition is very prone to using 1985; that was the one year the funding went down a bit —

the funding formula changed. The fiscal year, the school year and those

sorts of things changed, so it's very hard to make an apples-to-apples

comparison with that. I think, if you look at it on a per-student

basis, it went up. It's just that the total went down somewhat, because

the number of students, as I mentioned earlier, dropped by about

50,000. In '86 that levelled off, and since then it's been coming up

again. Of course, the funding has gone up dramatically since 1986.

give you some statistical information on that, the gross expenditure

per pupil in 1981 was $3,269; in 1982, $3,873; and in 1983, $3,963.

Then it didn't go up at the same rate; nevertheless, in 1984 it was

$4,007. Then in 1985, which we were talking about— I mentioned the blip there —

it went down from $4,007 to $3,958. In '86, when we get back to a valid

year-to-year comparison, it went up to $4,258; then to $4,495 and

$4,820; and in 1989-90, to $5,478. Those are the gross costs. As I've

pointed out, the gross contribution in the coming budget works out to

over $5,980, if we look at the total expenditures.

As far

as the achievement results are concerned, each year when we put out the

annual report, we put out a statistical supplement which gives all the

facts and figures. There's far too much to put into an annual report.

For instance, between 1983-84 and '88-89, this is the number of pupils

that made As or Bs: in algebra, it went from 34 percent to 37.4

percent; biology stayed about the same; in chemistry, at about 36

percent; in chemistry 41 to 48 percent of the students made As or Bs;

French, 41 to

[ Page 9549 ]

51.2; in geography and history, slight changes there; in physics from 41 to 52.8.

There

is a lot of statistical evidence to show that the achievement results

were there. Parents and the public had been demanding higher standards,

the universities were expecting higher standards and the system

delivered higher standards.

Some of the provincial

examinations and some of the measures that were taken by the government

or by the ministry did help, but I think we also must not forget the

contribution of the teachers who, when they said people expect a higher

standard, worked at that and were able to get the students to come up

to a higher standard.

I think that as we move in the new directions in education, the focus on students — with the new reference points and criteria —

will be competency-based rather than time-based. In other words, for

ten months survival you get a C, and anything better than that you get

a B. I'm being a bit facetious, but in this case at any point in the

year the student and the teacher will know what knowledge, skills and

attitudes the student is to achieve. When they achieve that, they move

on to the next step and the next level.

I think that when

teachers, students and parents are all aware of what knowledge and

skills a student needs to move to the next step, they will be far

better equipped to do better. The student will know: this is what I've

got to achieve; this is what I've got to master to go on to the next

step. If I can do it faster or if it takes me longer, that doesn't make

me a good guy or a bad guy. It simply makes me a little different than

the others— which we've always acknowledged. So I think that's going to

do a great deal. If you know exactly what you're supposed to achieve,

and you set that target for yourself, it's an initiative and an

incentive.

I think our standards are going to go up,

certainly at the enriched level or with some of the students who have

been turned off by marking time in the system while the other kids

caught up. I think those are the students who are going to end up

showing some dramatic initiative, because they don't have to wait for

anyone else and they don't have to leave. When they've finished a

program there is so much more to learn, and you can spend a year in

grade 12 even if you have already mastered most of that material to

carry on and you can....

There's no limit on learning.

There should not be a limit on learning. There's only a limit on an

organized textbook, but there's no limit on learning, and I think these

people are going to do very well.

[3:15]

MR. ROSE :

I was a little nervous about the question that the Attorney-General

asked the Minister of Education about spending and the

relationship between spending, accomplishment and quality, because

if there is no direct relationship between the increased spending and

the quality of the product or the learner, then I think the A-G has

just blown the Minister of Education right out of the water. We've

heard him brag here for the last few days about how much he has

increased the spending, and if he is not increasing the spending to

increase the quality, I don't know why he would do such a thing.

HON. MR. SMITH : New programs.

MR. ROSE : Well, I'm not sure it's all new programs.

you are speaking about new programs, there's another interesting thing

about them. As an ex-teacher, I'm a little concerned about

individualized instruction. I think that's wonderful in theory— everybody goes at their own pace, we don't have a lock-step system and blah, blah, blah, blah.

I've

heard that played over monotonously for about 40 or 50 years. I

understand all that stuff, but I've been a teacher long enough to know

it's darn tough to accomplish. It's even tough in primary school, but

when you get those hormones coursing around a person's body in junior

high it's even tougher, because there are other distractions that some

of us recall vividly, no matter how old we are.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE : Do you want me to describe them for you? Oh, I think you perhaps know what they are.

I'm

sorry the Attorney-General has left, because the Minister of Education

said, "learning is a lifetime thing, and there's no end to it," and I

was trying to enlighten him a little bit. So he cut off and he cut out— he's kind of a dropout, really, when you come right down to it.

I thought the statistic from my hon. friend for New Westminster (Ms. A. Hagen) was quite interesting —

that the highest retention rate was during '82 to '85. That's when the

least amount of money was being spent on education in recent years per

capita and per student. I think the reason was that there were no jobs

out there; they stayed in school because there were no jobs.

All

kinds of things affect the retention rate in schools. Some of the

smaller districts don't have such a wide variety of course options, and

therefore there are more dropouts. There are certain ethnic, native and

language considerations— there are all sorts of things that affect dropouts besides the amount of money you fund.

The

opportunity to have a large number of programs is a function of the

size of the school district. Generally, when I looked at the dropout

rates three or four years ago, it seemed to me it was the small

districts and those with large native populations that experienced the

largest dropout rate, and it wasn't just because of funding. It had to

do a lot with cultural considerations — the fact that they were working in other languages.

don't mean to go on and on, because there are some other things I want

to say. The minister mentioned that as teachers became more experienced

with the external exams, there was less difference between the teacher

marks and the marks of the external examiner. He put that down to a

variety of

[ Page 9550 ]

reasons.

I've got one that he didn't mention: teachers begin to teach to the

test. They narrow, rather than broaden their offerings, so that their

class, and their reputation as a real whiz at getting kids through the

exam, becomes inflated in terms of their own reputation. I think it's

wrong. That's why I have felt that external exams are not always the

best measure. But they are a monitor and people want them— I said that three or four years ago — so we have them.

Finally,

it's very difficult, because of the basis of the statistics and how

they're presented, to know where we stand in terms of educational

spending. I've got statistics here of the 1988-89 expenditures from the

Canadian Economic Observer ,

December 1989, and I've got some other stuff from the same source,

which indicates that in 1989-90 B.C. still ranks eighth in terms of

per-pupil spending. Again, whether you're eighth or seventh or sixth

might not necessarily directly affect your quality; there are a number

of other factors that affect it as well. It's not that we don't think,

because we have such a rich province here, that we shouldn't be near

the top, compared to the other less fortunate parts of Canada.

That's

all I'll deal with for now. I have some other questions relating to my

local situation, Coquitlam, that I'd like to discuss with the minister

at a more appropriate time.

HON. MR. BRUMMET : I know

the member said that the Attorney-General just said that if spending

has no relationship to increased performance, then why are we spending.

The only thing that I can say is that we are spending more money on

education because there are more pupils and because we want to provide

better learning opportunities for them. If you keep the system exactly

the same, and spend more money on each classroom and not change the

system, then I would say it's perfectly true that more money to try to

beat the same stuff into them does not beat more stuff into them. I

think we can dispense with that.

We said when we were going

to make all these changes that we estimated it would take $1.4 billion

above the regular spending, over ten years, to make it happen. And

we're certainly on, track with that.

I could just mention

to the member that I know that sometimes it sounds like semantics, but

he keeps talking about individualized instruction. Yes, some of that

happened at one time. But what we're really focusing on, from the

Sullivan commission recommendation, is individualized learning, with

the teacher as the guide. If you try to teach each student separately,

it's an impossible task. But I would say that a teacher could more

easily guide the learning activities of 25 students than try to teach

25 students and bring them all to the same level of understanding and

comprehension and knowledge and skills, which everyone knows is

impossible. So we end up with, under the same intensified instruction,

some students mastering 51 percent of it to get a pass and some

students mastering 99 percent of it. In this case, under the

individualized focus-on-learning model, students know what it is they

are to achieve. There's a measurement, and the measurements would have

to change, of course, so that they will know when they have attained

that level, and they will know that they are now ready to go on.

keep having difficulty with you saying we rank eighth in per-pupil

spending across Canada. I don't know whether I'll ever convince the

members on the opposite side. I guess it's to their political advantage

to use the lowest possible figure. We have taken just the operating

amount in the school districts and that, we say, is at $5,259. I've

repeatedly said that in other provinces they include the capital cost,

the debt-servicing, the new programs, the new curriculum, all the other

things that they put in there. They include that, and come up with a

figure of $5,500, and ours is at $5,259. But when we compare our total

spending in public school education, it comes out to.... I get this

figure from taking the amount in the estimates and subtracting the

amount for independent schools, because that's at half and there are

different variations with those numbers, so they're not valid. Then if

I divide the balance of $2.96 billion that we're spending on public

school education in this province by the 495,000 students, I get a

figure of about $5,980. It depends on which figure you want to use.

HON. MR. SMITH : What's that, relative to the rest of the country?

HON. MR. BRUMMET : Relative to the rest of the country, I'd say it's at the top.

MR. ROSE : How much?

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

It's $5,980. What is and isn't counted in the different provinces can

change the picture at any one time. I don't know which figure we want

to use, but I know that when we compare all of our spending, we're well

up there. We rate at the top in national academic tests. I think our

spending, when everything is considered, is well up there with the rest

of them.

Might I point out that it is not a spending

contest between provinces. It costs more for a house in Toronto than it

does for one in Victoria, so we shouldn't say that the only way housing

can be equated between Victoria and Toronto is that.... To say that if

it costs $300,000 for a shack in Toronto, we have a poor living

standard if it only costs $200,000 for a good house in Victoria....

Those are the kinds of invidious comparisons we have to deal with in

this political debate and in the politics that happen here in the

House. I guess we can all play the game, but when all of our

expenditures are recognized, we certainly stand well up in Canada in

expenditures and at the top academically.

MR. ROSE :

I was going to continue in my gentle way, but not very far. I know It's

very difficult to make expenditures comparable from one place to

another: you know, that little shack in Sault Ste. Marie, New Liskeard

or somewhere else. You can't always make comparisons between Victoria

and To-

[ Page 9551 ]

ronto either, so we're all guilty of a little comparative manipulation.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE : You don't like that?

HON. MR. BRUMMET : We use statistics to our advantage.

MR. ROSE :

Yes. I was surprised, you know. Everybody over on the other side said

that the budget was just wonderful, and everybody over here said it was

awful. We bring a different perspective individually.

Let

me end on this to display and dazzle everybody with my tremendous

historical knowledge of individualized instruction. I've been around

teaching long enough to know that you don't have lockstep anymore. You

used to have it in about 1930 when the king was on his throne and God

was in his heaven and all was right with the world. Whatever our

mixture was racially, we made them all little WASPs— whatever shade of WASPism we decided on.

But

along the way came various innovations in teaching. I guess among the

earliest was better textbooks, followed by radio and then television.

Then we had programmed learning, various kinds of individualized

instruction, contract teaching and teaching machines. Brother, we've

been through them all; we've had them all. They're all gimmicks, and

they're all part of the learning environment. We all know that.

Individualized

instruction is really difficult. He said: "We're not going to have

individualized instruction, because that's impossible." We know that as

well; I know that as a teacher. It's very difficult for most of us.

Some of us do quite well at it— I'm not one of them — but it seems to

me that all of this stuff will founder like the previous solutions we

came up with. Every innovation, usually American.... I don't say that

as a bad thing. They were creative, and they tried different things.

commend the minister for trying to bring in a new perspective through

the Sullivan report, but we are going to have to train teachers and

parents to expect different things — or educate them, if you want to use educo , "to lead out," and all the stuff we learned at our colleges of education.

I'd

like to say that we found out with these other things, such as

programmed learning, contract teaching and teaching machines, that they

would work fine for certain students who were highly motivated and who

could work on their own without a lot of supervision. They worked well

for them; they didn't work at all well for others. It depersonalized

the teaching, and that's what we have to guard against. Sure, we should

have individualized learning; sure, we should have computers;

sure, we should have all of these other things. But none of these

things is going to take the place, I don't think.... I'm not sure the

minister is making the claim that they will, but my little caveat or

warning is that it's not going to take the place of an inspired

teacher. It may add to his arsenal of skills, but don't expect too much

to come from it too soon.

HON. MR. BRUMMET : Mr.

Chairman, very briefly, I know we've had a lot of gimmicks in

education, but not all of them were gimmicks. I tried programmed

learning with some students. It allowed them to move at their own pace,

and they liked it. Programmed learning by itself — unfortunately,

people felt that would be the answer, because it was good in some

sources. I found that the students got fed up with programmed learning,

if that was all there was. But I found that a combination worked.

saw, as the member says, good examples of "individualized instruction."

I also saw examples of it that bombed out because people were really

trying to instruct each individual at a different pace to accomplish

the same target; that, I contend, is impossible.

What I'm

talking about is individualized, personalized learning. Let me read

from the "Year 2000" document; perhaps that will help the member. We

have said in the document that people can carry forward the things that

worked effectively but focus more on learning. This is the revised

"Year 2000" document, and it says, under "Meeting Individual Learning

Needs":

"The focus on personalized learning

does not mean that individuals are expected to work and learn by

themselves, and in fact, learners will continue to be grouped in

various ways most of the time. Rather, personalized learning refers to

the goal of organizing learning experiences and selecting teaching

methods in such a way that learners can be motivated and their

individual learning needs can be met most fully.

"This

approach should make it possible to address a wide range of learner

needs by using a range of teaching methods, by slowing or accelerating

the pace of instruction, by using special materials or equipment,

and/or by drawing upon specialized support services, as the situation

demands."

I could go on, and I would highly recommend that reading.

[3:30]

The initial "Year 2000" document tried to combine the philosophical

base that educators had developed, with more specifics. This is a

stand-alone document. The curriculum guides — the primary one is

getting into finalized form, and the others are in draft response form—

are the ones that will start to give the details, the how and that sort

of thing. We can carry forward the good practices of the past.

Sometimes students will work most effectively in a group. But I contend

that if the purpose of reading is to assimilate information and

critically analyze what the author is saying, it is not essential that

all students always read the same story. Yet it is quite conceivable

that to make a point or develop a concept, a teacher will have all the

students sometimes read the same story, so that there can be a full

discussion on it. Then it can go to groups.

I have to go

to some of my own experiences as well. I taught special education; I

did some enrichment programs. When you got the students and found out

where they were and what their interests

[ Page 9552 ]

were,

you built on that. Students with different objectives and starting

levels invariably made better progress than if we had tried to stuff

them into the same module. I have had the good fortune, as a principal,

an elementary supervisor and an Education minister, to see many people

in the school system doing this very effectively. If it works for the

slower learners in special education, if it works in enrichment and

makes better progress there, I guess we're saying that the same concept

when applied to all students will in effect make better progress for

all students.

How do you explain that in a few minutes? I

don't think you can. It is supported by everything we know about

learning. Kids learn in different ways. They learn at different rates.

We have concentrated so much of our effort to some efficient method

whereby we can ignore all those variables and somehow or other get them

all to master what's between the covers of the textbook. Thank goodness

many teachers have deviated from that. Just as Education minister, I've

seen that people might be teaching reading or science, but when the

whales were trapped in the ice— guess what? — teachers were teaching

science around that, geography and mathematics around that, reading and

writing skills, speaking and reporting skills. When it is possible to

do that, if I might use that one analogy....

I talked to a

primary teacher who was very excited, because the royal commission

recommendations have, in effect, given her the support to do the types

of things she has always wanted to do, rather than be confined to

saying to all the kids, who have full comprehension of words such as

word processor, computer and that sort of thing: "Now I want you to

master 'See Jane run. See Dick jump."' The kids are well beyond that,

so why not let them deal with...?

I have to quote this

example from a teacher using the "I wonder if" approach. I've seen it

used in primary classrooms, and teachers spread the word around. In

this case, it was: "I wonder if spiders have hearts." This was a

kindergarten and grade 1 class They had quite a discussion. All the

kids got interested, wondering if spider have hearts. "How do we find

out?" They went to the library. There were pictures there, but they

weren't clear enough. One of the students said: "My dad teaches at the

university; maybe he can help us." He got his dad to send in some

information. I'm not even that expert on biology, but they tell me that

the students found out eventually that spiders don't really have a

heart as we know it, but they have a kind of pumping system that keeps

the bloodflow going. Kids started that. There's just no end to the "I

wonder if" when kids are excited about trying to answer the questions

they're interested in instead of the 20 questions at the end of a

chapter. I did that when I was in school. "Why do I have to do these

questions?" "Because they're there, and because the ministry put out

that book as a prescribed book." We are no longer doing prescribed

books; we're doing authorized material that says: "This material has

been checked by the ministry and certainly is not unsuitable." However

you can use that. I'm sure that all of us can come up with many

examples: "Why do I have to do this?" If you could answer that "why"

question satisfactorily, they were away to the races.

I see that the member now — like he accused the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Smith) — is dropping out of the House. With some of the conversation that goes on here, I think it's very easily understandable.

MR. GUNO :

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to continue the speculation about whether

spiders have hearts. But I think a more realistic question that we from

the north wonder about is whether the minister and his bureaucrats have

hearts in terms of understanding the special needs of a riding like

mine.

The minister recognizes that in Atlin in northwestern

B.C. we have a unique situation. There you have the smallest school

districts. You have one school district that is primarily aboriginal;

that's the Nisga'a School District. There are some particular questions

and needs when we talk about educational standards and individualized

learning. They are very exciting concepts, but there the basic question

is one of survival, of continuing to try to provide very basic

educational programs under very trying conditions in the north.

the minister well recognizes, there are many factors that provide this

kind of uniqueness. At the top, of course, is the higher cost. Just

shipping the material north to build even the most basic facility is a

nightmare in terms of trying to anticipate the rising cost.

With

the operating costs, we never can anticipate from one year to another

whether there's going to be a more severe winter, with the whole

logistics of trying to move students to the school. In the Nass Valley,

for instance, children are bused from Greenville, which is

approximately 60 kilometres away. Often, because of the severity of

winter conditions, the children have the option of missing school

because there's no transportation available, or they're boarded in New

Aiyansh and often spend days without their parents. I don't think these

are the kinds of experiences that kids from any other parts of B.C.

experience.

So it does start to beg the question: exactly

how does this new policy accommodate these sorts of problems? We have a

tougher time in teacher recruitment, simply because in many of these

northern communities there are not the kind of amenities that many

young teachers want or have taken for granted.

Also, there

is this tremendous cultural gap in New Aiyansh. I know I've witnessed

the tremendous adjustments that teachers and students have to make in

terms of dealing with one another's differences in background. Even in

non-native communities in the north, there's still that adjustment made

between largely rural children having to deal with largely urban young

teachers, who have yet to understand that way of life in the north.

All

these factors add up to providing a tremendous challenge in

establishing some very basic educational programs. So it's not

surprising that there are

[ Page 9553 ]

higher dropout rates in these communities. It's not because of just the difficulty of obtaining a quality education — that is taken for granted in other parts of B.C. — but

also the whole sense of despair: "What is it after this? How much of my

education...? How do I compare with kids from other parts of British

Columbia, especially the southern part of British Columbia?"

There's

this built-in inferiority complex that our education provides. I've

read the Sullivan report, and I know that it addresses it to some

extent, but I'm wondering if the minister has any more light to cast on

some of these difficulties that I've just enumerated.

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate some of the concerns that the

member has raised. I wish I could say, without reservation, that the

extra cost per pupil in the Atlin, Stikine or Nisga'a district has

solved the problem and provided a fully equitable educational

opportunity. We keep talking about the $5,259 figure. The member may be

aware that in the Stikine, because of its remoteness, its secondary

school and the way it's spread out, the cost per pupil works out to

over $13,000. It's the extreme one in the province. In the Nisga'a

district it works out to about $9,846 per pupil, compared with a

provincial average of $5,259.

We are trying to put in other

programs. For instance, we acknowledge the busing. Sometimes the busing

is necessary because there do not seem to be enough students in one

place to make an effective school situation. I wish we had the answers

to all of that.

Some of the things we have tried to do.... In the regional correspondence schools, now at least people visit there —

not only the students who are not going to school, but also those who

are going to school and taking some of their courses by correspondence

because you can't have enough qualified teachers to provide all the

courses in a secondary school of 25 or 50 students. Not all the

teachers can be experts. Under the guidance of the teacher, the

correspondence courses and other things can happen.

[3:45]

We're trying to work the fax technology into the computer

technology, so that it should no longer take several weeks for an

assignment to get in; it can get on a fax. We've got that started; it

has been piloted, and we're trying to get it out there. It's not the

fax machines that are a problem; it's the connections— the hookups. We

now have cases where a student could actually send in an assignment to

the marker by fax in the morning; it's relayed, and if the marker

happens to be handy, it could technically even be done that day and

sent back by fax to the school, and the student can get on with it.

That's the kind of help technology has provided to us.

have the small-district and small-school projects, remote funding....

For instance, in the small secondary schools we also have ratios

something like eight to one as compared with 22 to one in some of the

larger schools.

We have tried to assist with the teaching

situation, in that we have rural teacher education projects, the Alaska

Highway program.... We hope to expand that into the northwest. We've

also got the loan forgiveness program for people; they get one-tenth of

their loan written off for every year they stay in a rural area. We

have put out some language and cultural grants for native programs. I

guess I'm very optimistic. With the flexibility in the curriculum

materials, more and more local materials.... I've seen some of the work

they're doing in the Nisga'a schools, where they are doing stories

about the native culture and lore, which is much more meaningful to the

students, and they are more interested in reading it. More and more of

the money is going out there for them to choose the resources they wish

to use for students to learn.

I still remember very

strongly my experience as an elementary supervisor for the Stikine

district many years ago. I travelled to Telegraph Creek, Atlin,

Cassiar, Lower Post and all of those schools. Particularly in places

like Telegraph Creek, where the native population was something like 43

out of 45 students in the school, we had all the standard materials

that didn't make sense. As the member knows, even a simple thing like

the word "cow".... Kids in Telegraph Creek had never seen a dairy cow,

but there was a picture of this dairy cow, "c-o-w," and the kids

couldn't figure out what it meant because "cow" was a cow moose. So we

had a teacher there who started picking pictures that made more sense

to those people. I use that as a simple example. She wrote some stories

on the natural thing, and through my office I combined with her and did

a workbook exercise. At least it was something relevant to the

students. The students enjoyed it a bit more because it meant something

to them. Once they learn to read from that material, then the progress

can go on.

We're trying to put out special grants. We have

put aside money for language and cultural grants for native programs,

and we are assisting in that regard.

The curriculum

flexibility is really going to be one of the biggest benefits. Using

the whole language approach the primary teachers use.... If students

are writing and reading about what they're interested in, they develop

better reading skills, and when they develop better reading skills,

then they are more competent in any field. I would like to think that

right through to the graduation program, if what they are studying has

more relevance to them, they will perform better in the future.

Just

to give you another example of the type of thing that has happened: the

"Year 2000" document went out. It was following the concept that this

is a bilingual country and so all students should take French as a

second language from grades 4 to 7, or whatever, and there was a lot of

discussion on that. In the final draft.... Some people in the native

French? I want to learn a native language." As the capability to teach

some of the native languages is coming into the schools, a new "Year

2000" document says that the school board may, at

[ Page 9554 ]

the local level, decide that another language — the native language — is more important as the second language. It provides that option. So there has been recognition of the input.

have also combined with the University of Alaska on their project where

they are taking students in from the native community, and there is....

I was going to say "indoctrination," but that's not the correct term.

They bring them in for about three months— or one or two months or whatever the case is —

so the students can get a concept of what the post-secondary institute

is like and see what they can do. Then if they enter later in the fall,

it's not the same shock.

The university of the north, I

would hope, is going to add a fair amount towards getting what we would

like to see as our goal: that native students will graduate at the same

rate as any other students in this province.

MR. GUNO :

I was quite interested to hear the minister's response to some of my

concerns. I am gratified to hear that he recognizes the tremendous cost

per student of providing education in the north, and also the whole

question of the relevancy of some of the materials used in the schools

and the flexibility in the curriculum.

I can relate to

that. As a kid going to school in a small schoolroom in Aiyansh, I had

difficulty understanding the background of some of the materials that

we had. All of us of a certain generation can remember Dick and Jane

and the kind of cultural background that that provided, which was

totally foreign to me as a child trying to understand it.

think there are certain movements towards trying to provide, at least

in the Nisga'a School District, more relevancy in terms of providing

cultural input. But there is also a concern that that program is

becoming diluted because it is no longer an integral part of the

process. The minister may correct me on that, but it has become

something isolated and not the main part of the whole curriculum

development process in the school district.

Related to

that, I want to know exactly how the master tuition agreement fits in.

What does it fund? Is it an augmentation to the general cost of

education in those areas, or is it there for providing special

programs? How are these funds allocated? What sort of focus do they

have?

HON. MR. BRUMMET : We saw the master tuition

agreement as an arrangement for the federal government to provide the

funding for the native students who attended the public school system

in British Columbia - for that contribution. So we saw it as a funding

transfer.

In the last draft of the MTA, we looked at some

of the possibilities and I think tried to recognize what we could, at

the point we were.... Where a native community comes up with an

agreement with the local school board, then the funds can go directly

to the native community and to the school board by whatever arrangement

they make. So we were still on the funding arrangement. To begin with,

the approval of the federal and provincial government was needed for

those agreements. We made a modification and said no, if the school

board and the local band agree, then that's all that is needed.

More

of the royal commission money Is being directed towards native

education, and I would be somewhat reluctant to see the native

curriculum become an isolated development. What I was trying to say was

that if you can make it more relevant when people are learning to read,

then it is not limited to that particular curriculum. In other words,

they learn in a wide range of areas.

I could use other

examples. I happened to start teaching in the north Okanagan when the

reserve schools were being closed down and the native students were

being integrated— or assimilated, if you like — into the schools. There

were some pretty dramatic adjustments, and we did try to cope, with

what success.... I saw the first students staying in up to grade 8; 1

saw the first graduates later on, some of whom had been at the school.

When

I moved to Fort St. John some 15 years later, that process was just

happening there. They were closing down some of the reserve schools and

expecting these kids to walk out of a reserve school from grade 7 and

walk into a junior secondary school at grade 8 and somehow or other,

overnight, overcome the cultural differences. We didn't have the answer

to it, but we tried to accommodate them, to do what we could with them.

But I saw the process repeated; I saw the first native student graduate

from North Peace Secondary School. There are quite a few of them doing

that now.

Now I guess there is some emphasis on going back

to native schools on the reserves. Some of that may be good; some of it

may have some problems, particularly at the secondary level.

But

we're willing to listen. We have had a native representative on the

provincial advisory committee and still do; we've got a native

education advisory committee over and above that that we hope will

help. We can use all the help we can get, because even though we are

committed to trying to provide the native language in the schools, we

have to overcome the reluctance. In some schools we don't have

certified teachers who speak the native language. We have the BCTF

objecting to our bringing in people who don't have teaching

certificates.

We're trying to pull all that together so that — maybe under the guidance of a teacher, which the act now allows —

we can actually pay someone who speaks the native language to teach it

in the schools. It's a matter of time. I know there's impatience, and

I'm impatient as well. In time I think we will get more of the students

developing the native language and getting their teaching certificates.

The NITEP project at UBC has graduated something like 83 native

education teachers in the last couple of years. They're still carrying

on with that program, and we are assisting with it.

One of the measures we have taken is full-day kindergarten. We are funding full-day kindergarten

[ Page 9555 ]

for

native students. I guess time will tell whether they want that or

whether the students are capable. The Sullivan report and others were

saying to us that the native students had so much adjustment to make

that they didn't have enough time; they came in different than the

other students and with half-day in grade 1 they had progressively

fallen behind. So we said: "Okay, if you want to and if you can, we

will fund full-day kindergarten where you would like to do it."

[4:00]

I guess the reason I am somewhat hesitant is that I know that what

we are doing is inadequate. I know we are making the effort, but we

need a lot of help. Even all of the funding and all of these methods

don't cure the problem overnight. I have to go back to relying on

patience and perseverance and the will of the people out there to make

the program work. I think that will come to be, hopefully much faster

than even I dare to hope.

MR. GUNO : I would like

to make one comment in light of the minister's last statement about

asking for patience and perseverance and understanding. The problem

here is that we are watching generations of native people more or less

going to waste because of the inadequacy of the two levels of

government in responding to their educational needs, and the lack of

understanding of the steps that should be taken to deal with this very

difficult question.

At one time the answers were very

simple: herd all the native kids out of their communities and put them

in residential schools thousands of miles away. When I was ten years

old I remember boarding the train in Prince Rupert and travelling for

four days to Edmonton. I don't know what bureaucrat decided that I

should, at ten years old, attend a residential school in Edmonton, but

those were the very simplistic solutions that were provided.

Today,

of course, I think we have become a little more sophisticated, and we

recognize that the question is complex. I think that the whole issue of

teacher-training is something that this government should really

seriously think about. As you pointed out, there is the NITEP program

which has— and I take your word for it — graduated 83 teachers. But

have we ever followed through to see how these teachers are being

recruited? Is there any follow-through in terms of how they are doing

in the educational mainstream?

The last comment I want to make arises out of a conversation I had with a teacher in Kitimat, who on her own decided to — well, they were mainly non-native kids; there were only about two that were not — bridge what she called "a gap of two solitudes," of people who don't basically understand one another.

[Mr. De Jong in the chair.]

She felt that the best way to do this would be through the grade 1 children

that she had under her charge, and so took field trips to the nearest Indian

reserve and talked to some of the elders. She developed her own material that

showed the history of the local tribe.

I think that when we talk about relevancy of material, it shouldn't

just be geared toward the native or aboriginal kids, but also toward

the non-aboriginal kids so that they have a basic understanding of the

people who come from the neighbouring aboriginal communities. It's an

aside, and I don't think it's really all that relevant here, but it's

an opportunity for the kind of initiatives that we should encourage in

terms of broadening the understanding and tolerance between these two

solitudes that I referred to.

I think the NITEP program, as

I understand it, is a partnership between the Department of Indian

Affairs and the provincial government. What sort of assessment has been

done recently to see how effective it is in providing that need to have

more native teachers in our schools?

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

No, I guess I can't say I have talked to the UBC people. I've talked to

some native people who are familiar with the NITEP program, and I keep

searching for their views of it.

I also know, I guess from experience, that sometimes we can come up with our ideas and great intentions — and I think we have learned something —

then we try to ask the native people what they think of our intentions.

A field trip could accomplish the exact opposite of what the intent

was, if it isn't there.

We are sort of committed to saying

that into all of our school curriculum we want more incorporated about

our native culture and history. We want that in social studies, science

and other curriculums as much as we can, and we also want to assist the

natives in developing a curriculum there.

I am personally

convinced that asking native persons what is important to them is a far

better way to find out than for me to decide what is important. I think

some of that is happening in the system. I don't know whether I have

answered the member's questions.

The report I have on the

NITEP program so far is that it has provided that educational

opportunity with some consideration, instead of the rigid application

of: "You've got to have met all the hoops through grade 12 in order to

fit." They have made some allowances and a more open door entry, and

are focusing on the native aspects far more in that program. The

reports that I get informally— because I haven't traced all of those teachers, and I don't know of a system that has — are that it may not be the be-all and end-all but it has helped a great deal. Perhaps we can improve on it.

MS. EDWARDS :

I want to continue asking and clarifying in my own mind how native

people are going to get funding for the public school system through

the local tuition contracts. With the new school taxation process, I

just want to be sure that we're talking from common ground.

As you know, the Kootenay people have signed local tuition contracts and have been working....

[ Page 9556 ]

They

have signed a couple in various places, in various parts of the process

of negotiating. In doing so, they have talked to your ministry. Before

I ask specific questions about that, I would like to clarify that right

now, under the master tuition agreement, the ministry gets enough money

from the federal government to cover the shareable costs— 90 percent of the block, as I understand it. Is that correct?

HON. MR BRUMMET:

Mr. Chairman, as to how the money gets to the native bands.... The

member must be aware that Kimberley and Windermere, I believe, were one

of the first areas in British Columbia where.... The local band and the

Kimberley district signed an agreement. When that happens, then the MTA

per-pupil amount that would generally come to us, and go from us to the

school district, goes directly to the band. The agreement signed

between the band and the school district determines how they arrange

the money. That's basically what happens.

When an agreement

is in place, we say: "There are a hundred students here. At the cost

per pupil in that area that they have generally provided to us....

If it was $5,000 per pupil, the money —100 times $5,000; $500,000, say —

for that area used to come to us, and we sent it through the distribution system

to the district. Now it would go directly to the band.

The

arrangement is between them and the school board as to whether they put

all of the money towards paying for education or.... Usually in the

agreement conditions have been built in to ensure that the band is not

going to just give the money automatically to the school district

without getting something in return. I think it's a local agreement

that can work quite well.

MS. EDWARDS : I wonder if

the minister could perhaps move back to the Fernie and Cranbrook

districts. In those cases, if there were native children going to

school, then under the master tuition agreement the federal government

pays a transfer payment to the provincial government, and the

provincial government pays 90 percent of the block to the local school

board. Is that correct, under the new block funding?

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

No. We pay 100 percent of the block per-pupil amount to the school

districts. We then expect that where the money comes through us, the

federal government will provide us with that per-pupil amount.

The

only other thing we have is the language and cultural fund. We are

providing some money through the Sullivan commission implementation.

When a band and a school district have an agreement in place, that

money is available to them, because we want it to be used in the school

system one way or another.

MS. EDWARDS : Could I

clarify that with the minister? The language and cultural funding is

totally separate from tuition funding. We're not talking about language

and culture here; we're talking about the fiscal framework that Is now

carried over into block funding. As I understand it, 10 percent of that

block is collected totally from local property owners; then 90 percent

is collected from general revenue. The provincial government normally

collects the equivalent of the 90 percent, or at least shares that....

Ninety percent is paid from the provincial government coffers, from

wherever you got it, to the local school board. Under the master

tuition agreement, the provincial government has agreed to pay 90

percent of that block for every native student who goes to a school

district without a local tuition contract. Is that correct?

HON. MR. BRUMMET : Mr. Chairman, there's a bit of confusion there. If the block allocates $5,000 per pupil for that district — I'm just using a round number —

then we pay $5,000 per pupil to that school district, whether it's a

native student or otherwise. The 90-10 is in the tax relief program.

With the extension of the homeowner grant, local taxes from the

municipality used to go the school board for the supplementary and

their local share. Now all of that residential taxation will come to

Victoria, but the total of that residential taxation net of the

homeowner grant constitutes about 10 percent of the district operating

budgets. So the other 90 percent comes from other provincial sources.

But we provide 100 percent of the $5,000 to the district, and certainly

with the federal government, the agreement has always been....

one time, if there were 4,000 native students in this province, we took

the provincial average cost, and they paid us the provincial average

cost times the total native enrolment. Then we distributed through the

fiscal framework, so one district got more and one got less. People

always focused on the ones that got less than the provincial average,

but no one was too concerned about the ones that got twice as much as

the provincial average. I know that in the last few years since I've

been minister, we always had to top up what we got from the federal

government by $4 million to $5 million to meet the costs of the school

district.

[4:15]

Then when the MTA was renegotiated and resigned two or three years

ago, the federal government said they didn't like us giving somebody

less and somebody more. They suggested that they would give us the

costs per pupil in that district, and so I agreed. Then they found out

that by doing that, they were picking up the $4 million or $5 million

that we had been picking up, and then they wanted me to rescind on my

agreement. But they worked so hard to convince me.... I did a little

bit of homework on this before I negotiated, so we gained from it. That

was the case in point: the amount for that district.

The

money that we get presumably will carry on on that basis. If it's

$5,000 in Windermere and $6,000 in Nechako, the federal government will

provide us with the money for that district, we will provide that 100

percent to the district, and the other is a taxation measure. Of the

total education bill across the prov-

[ Page 9557 ]

ince,

about 10 percent of it will be paid for from residential taxation; the

other 90 percent will be paid for from other sources of revenue that

the province gets. But it has nothing to do with 90 percent to them or

something of that nature. It's 100 percent of their costs.

MR. RABBITT : I request leave to make an introduction, Mr. Chairman.

Leave granted.

MR. RABBITT : I apologize to the member across the way.

the precincts and touring the beautiful grounds, we have 64 students

from Hope Secondary School. They joined us today for part of question

period and have been enjoying the tour through the building. I would

like to commend two of the teachers, Mr. Don Dale and Mr. Wayne Leckie,

and the four chaperones who have accompanied them, and give a special

word for those teachers and chaperones who make the special effort to

get the rural students down here to Victoria to see how this House

operates. I would ask all the members here to join me in giving them a

warm welcome.

MS. EDWARDS : To continue with this

questioning, I would like to ask the minister if he is now saying that

all the costs of native education in B.C. are covered by the master

tuition agreement— all the costs that the provincial government pays

for in the 90 percent that the minister claims has nothing to do with

anything. I believe the still shareable amount, as it used to be

called, is 90 percent. Is it fair to say that the federal government

now gives you a full 90 percent of the average cost of every native

student in the province?

HON. MR. BRUMMET : I'm trying to explain it as briefly as I can. Remember that $5,259 per-pupil figure that we bandied about so much —

the provincial average? That works out to a different figure in each

district. That's the operating cost. That is what the federal

government gives us— the operating cost per status native student. That's what they give us or directly to the school district — the cost in each district.

The royal commission money, the computer money and all of the other money that we put in —

they do not contribute to that. So I can honestly answer that we do not

get from the federal government all that it costs for the native

education in this province. We get only the operating cost per status

student in those districts, and I make that distinction because there

are a number of students that are not status, so they don't count them.

We don't get the money for them, but they still come into our schools,

and many of them are classed as native education students.

guess that's about as plain as I can make it. We get only the operating

amount in that district, and, of course, we guarantee 100 percent of

that operating amount to the district, and provide it to the district

whichever way the money goes. Any extra expenditures on education are

provincial.

MS. EDWARDS : I would say the minister

has said that the province is prepared to absorb some of the costs of

native education through the fiscal framework when there is no local

tuition contract. From what the minister said, I gather that's the

case. I have certainly spoken to Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Independent School

Society. Their correspondence with the minister has said very clearly

that the province is prepared to absorb some of the costs according to

the fiscal framework.

That being the case, Mr. Minister, I

just wanted to clarify. If there is a local contract drawn, the master

tuition agreement money goes to the band or the area council and the

band makes a contract with the local school board, and then there is no

provincial contribution at all.

You look puzzled, Mr.

Minister. I can't understand why you would be puzzled by that. Is there

still a provincial contribution? Because there is a local school board

contribution in the sense that the 10 percent that is strictly from a

local area is picked up by local area taxpayers.

The

minister is suggesting there is no 90:10 division, but he keeps

mentioning it. That is, the division is strictly local, what used to be

called "non-shareable." When there is a local tuition contract, the

provincial government is no longer involved in the transfer of any

money, and the federal government pays for what would be 90 percent of

the block.

I don't know how a referendum would go on after

that, Mr. Minister, but maybe you could clarify for me that if there is

a local tuition contract, then the provincial government at the current

time would pay no costs toward native education.

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

Mr. Chairman, I'll try again. The member keeps bringing in that 10

percent. That's only where the money comes from: 10 percent from

residential taxation.

MS. EDWARDS : That's right.

HON. MR. BRUMMET : You've got it. The 100 percent is what is paid for the students' education in that district.

Perhaps

I can do it this way. Let's try and do it in simple arithmetic. Let's

say the district consists of 1,000 students, and the cost is $5,000 per

student. The district would get 1,000 times $5,000 for the 1,000

students. If 100 of those students are native students, then they would

get 100 times $5,000 through the federal system, and they would get 900

times $5,000 from us, which, if you add it up, works out to 1,000 times

$5,000.

Then the province, above and beyond that, puts in the royal commission money, the computer money, the other money — to which the federal government contributes nothing. So we're adding more money.

[ Page 9558 ]

don't know whether I'll ever get through to that member that we pay

$5,000 to the district when the cost is $5,000. We get from across this

province about 10 percent of the money from residential taxation. That

comes into the province. It's added to the 90 percent that we get from

the other sources. That 100 percent of the $5,000 is sent out there.

don't know where you get that the local taxpayers are paying something

towards native education, and we're not sharing in it, or some

confusion that you've developed in your own mind. If you assumed that

there was no residential taxation, then it would be easier to

understand.

You seem to feel that somehow or other, on top

of what we send there, 10 percent comes from residential. It doesn't.

The 10 percent from residential is part of the total. I don't know.

We'll try it again, I guess, if you didn't get it that time.

MS. A. HAGEN :

I think this might be the subject of a letter that my colleague and I

could draft. I think my colleague has been trying to get whether the

$5,000 came from the federal government entirely, and whether the tax

rate for the local residents is adjusted. Is that then a part of local

revenue and doesn't get into the 10 percent?

Anyway, I

don't want to ask the minister to necessarily answer that. We will

draft a letter, or have a chat with the deputy minister and get it

sorted out. I think both of us are still not quite certain whether

we've got the answer clarified.

I want to turn now, Mr.

Chairman, to another issue. It does, in fact, pick up on some of the

discussion that we've been having this afternoon around what makes our

schools work. What makes them work are highly qualified teachers, who

are qualified to teach in a wide range of teaching environments,

whether in New Aiyansh, the Kootenays or the lower mainland. How are we

doing around both the staffing that we have and the projections for the

future? Again looking for some common ground, the minister and I would

agree that what we should be looking for and wanting to attract and to

retain within our school system are the brightest and best of our

high-school graduates who are choosing this profession as a profession

where they will have a tremendous amount of job satisfaction and will

contribute, as we know teachers do, to the life and quality of our

province through the lives of children.

I'm going to state

quite baldly that perhaps the greatest challenge we face in the next

five to ten years is the challenge of having available— in a system that is under very significant process of change, revitalization and transformation —

enough teachers with the kind of training that we would want them to

have for the job we're asking them to do. Looking at some of the

information I have, it's not as comprehensive as I would have liked for

these estimates, because I had very short notice, as did the minister;

I didn't think that we were going ahead with these estimates today. I

want to put on the table some of the information I have that would

suggest to me that we are heading for a very severe crisis in teacher

supply within the province.

In the past we have had similar

crises and have gone to other jurisdictions in Canada or indeed across

the world to attract teachers to British Columbia. But this time around

I don't think we are going to be alone in the crisis. I for one have

made it abundantly clear that I don't like the idea of having to deal

with teacher shortages by robbing other jurisdictions that have as

great a need as we do for these very important people within our system.

Let's

just look at some of the figures. I would note that I rely for these

figures on material that comes from the ministry, so these are not from

some obscure source; they're figures that the minister provides to all

of us in British Columbia through the reports that he makes to us

annually. If we look at the pattern of students qualifying for initial

certification— that is, teachers who are then qualified as new young graduates to come into the system —

this is the pattern from 1980 through 1988-89, the year just

prior to this school year. Starting in 1980 there were 1,683 graduates

coming out of our three universities. With one exception, in '82-83

when the number was 1,500, the decline has been evident ever since. We

dropped to a low of 1,128 graduates in 1985-86, then began to climb in

a very modest way to a figure of 1,293 graduates in the last school

year.

[4:30]

Just to make the case and to juxtapose those 1,293 graduates against

the number of teachers who left the profession in 1988-89, just over

2,100 teachers left the profession in that year, while 1,293 — let's say 1,300 for ease —

teachers graduated, so right away we've got an 800-teacher shortfall,

just assuming we're staying even. But we have bottomed out in declining

enrolment, that spectre that we all faced through the eighties as the

number of children in school declined. The enrolment in our school

system has begun to climb, and it is projected to climb something like

10 percent over the next four or five years. Again I'm indebted to the

enrolment projections by head count which come from the ministry's

statistical report. We have more youngsters in the system.

want to add some other components to the picture that we're dealing

with. As the minister has noted, the mandate for schools has increased.

It has increased in that there are many children in the system now who

were not in the system three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago.

Many of those students are youngsters who have special learning needs.

They have disabilities — often of quite great proportions — so

that the number of people we need to have in the system, like teachers,

aides and assistants, has increased. I have no idea what the quantity

of teachers might be for those special needs, but the mandate is larger

than it was when we had 1,600 or 1,700 graduates. The number of

students has increased in absolute head count, and it has increased in

the kind of student we have and therefore in the number of teachers we

need to work with those students.

[ Page 9559 ]

Furthermore, the mandate has been expanded, and that means more teachers in the system. For example — just to mention one mandate element —

the minister has included in the government's mandate an

acknowledgement that elementary counsellors are an important and

integral part of the staffing component of a school. And there is a

recognition of that. With that recognition comes some funding, and with

that funding comes the opportunity for school districts that may not

have employed such professionals to now consider whether they should be

included within the system.

Complicating this even further

is the fact that people who graduate into teaching don't necessarily

stay within the system. They leave. There has been some tracking of the

loss of teachers as they enter the system. Twenty percent of educators

who are brand-new into teaching, I am told, leave within the first

year. And as many as 44 percent of those teachers move out of the

system in the first five years. Those teachers in some instances are on

leave. And I would think a very considerable number of them may be on

maternity leave, because a large number of people in the profession are

women entering the profession during their childbearing years. A

significant number of those teachers, I would imagine, may be on

leave — perhaps for a short-term maternity leave, perhaps for a

longer term before they chose to come back into the profession, or

perhaps with no intention of coming back into the profession at all.

There is a fairly significant attrition rate with teachers new to the profession. In addition, we have older teachers —

and by "older," without any qualification, I am looking at teachers in

the 40 to 60 age range. There is a fairly significant attrition rate

with teachers of that age as well. Some of them take early retirement;

some of them decide for whatever reason on a mid-career change.

The issue, Mr. Minister — who I note is smiling over this issue, and I don't know why —

seems to me a fairly significant and serious one. The issue is that we

are not graduating as many students as we were and that we do not have

a retention rate that would give us cause for comfort, neither at the

beginning level of teachers' careers nor in mid-career.

Now

I know the minister has provided within royal commission funds some

dollars for some change in the resources available to universities for

more students to graduate. I know, too, that we now have students

graduating from some of the colleges — an excellent move — so that students are able to get teacher training close to home.

But

I am not satisfied that the measures announced are going to come even

close to providing for our needs over the next period. In this context,

I haven't even mentioned the issue of retraining, which all of us would

agree is a very important component of the implementation of the Royal

Commission on Education. Retraining may take place within the context

of teachers continuing to be involved in full-time teaching and having

leave from their duties for that retraining. It will also, I believe,

involve teachers being out of the system for periods to take more

comprehensive retraining to keep abreast of the methods and

technologies they want and need for the royal commission implementation.

So the combination of loss of teachers through the period of restraint — when teachers graduated who were not employed and never did come back into the system —

with a relatively low number of teachers being trained up until the

present and with an attrition rate that is fairly serious.... What are

the minister's comments about how he sees his ministry working with

education institutions? How does he see them planning to ensure that we

are training an adequate number of the brightest and best of our

students to be teachers in the 1990s in B.C.?

HON. MR. BRUMMET : I think the member could have condensed all that into:

"Are we facing a potential teacher shortage, and what are you doing about

it?" But it's impressive, I guess, to go through statistics that we

are well aware of, are way ahead of and are doing something about. On April

12 we put out a press release in response to a comment by the B.C. Teachers'

Federation leader saying we are facing a teacher shortage and we haven't

listened and we haven't done anything about it. So I responded with some

answers. If the member didn't get a copy of that press release, I would

be delighted to send one.

recognized that during the recession, when this province had 50,000

pupils fewer than now, some of the people who had just graduated

couldn't get teaching jobs. We also recognized that in future we would

need more teachers. But it was difficult to get people to go into

teacher training when their friends had got their certificates and

couldn't get jobs.

You may recall that we went into what we

estimated was a proper time-frame, a three-year early retirement

program, where by removing the penalties for retiring early, we

encouraged those teachers who wanted to leave to do so after age 55.

That opened up several hundred positions for those young people who had

teaching certificates. Once again their friends could say: "Hey, if we

take teacher training, there is a possibility of a job." At the same

time, we were saying: "Teaching is a great profession, and we will be

needing more teachers in the future, so please enrol." And it has been

working.

While people use statistics to go back to 1981 and

all through that, we were well aware that we could be facing a teacher

shortage. So with the early retirement program now under the royal

commission implementation, we have put up some money, and there are

several hundred additional teachers in training because of that.

I might point out, if we want to play statistics, that since 1985, 3,882.4 teachers have been added to the teaching force — I've

got the ministry looking for the 0.4. Seriously, those are part-time

teachers and that. But say that 3,882 teachers were added to the

teaching force, while a 24,268 student increase showed up. That means

we added one teacher to the system for every 5.25 students. That's how

statistics work. In effect, one teacher was added to the system for

every five students added to the system.

[ Page 9560 ]

The

teacher-pupil ratio went down by about 2 during that interval, say from

just over 18 to just over 16. That ratio of 2 represents, in this

present enrolment, something like 1,800 teachers in this province. So

we have managed to bring down the pupil-teacher ratio, and boards have

hired teachers at a greater rate than they have added students. There

are now 1,600 teachers in training, and we are doing many things to

encourage more teachers to go into training. I'm talking about 1,600

potential graduates per year, and we're targeting for up to 1,800.

have also accepted the view from the Sullivan report that we need to

increase the recognition and status of teachers. Some of that is done

during Education Week. Teachers get a good reception from the public

when they let the rest of the public know what's going on — those who

don't have students in school. We have the parent advisory committees.

There are a lot of things going on, but as far as teacher enhancement

is concerned, we put out a recognition of excellence in teaching— 110

teachers in the province. We tried to do it last year, but it bogged

down for lack of cooperation. But this year we're going ahead with it,

so 110 teachers will each get $2,000, which might help them with their

courses. But more than anything, because they will be spread throughout

the province, I think it will recognize and get some publicity for

excellence in teaching— and most of the teaching force in this province is excellent and committed and dedicated. I've said that many times.

We've

got the loan forgiveness program, because the shortages always show up

in the remote areas, and the student growth seems to concentrate in the

big areas. The teachers leave and come to the large centres, where

there are jobs because of increased enrolment, but they leave a space

in some of the rural areas. So we have said that one-tenth of the loan

that it takes you to get through education training will be forgiven

each year that you stay in a rural district.

So a lot of

things have been done to increase the teacher supply, and I think we

are winning the war. If we add the colleges that are now going to the

third- and fourth-year program, I am sure that many people in those

areas may end up going for teacher training in their third or fourth

year, which they could not have done if they had had to leave home and

family and come down to Vancouver to go to SFU or UBC, or to Victoria

to go to UVic. I think that besides the direct efforts, the indirect

efforts are going to help.

[4:45]

I'll tell you something that would really help to get teachers in:

if the opposition and the BCTF started talking about the satisfying

side of teaching and the rewarding experience of having students, and

that teaching is great and wonderful. And it is, when people get the

satisfaction of seeing students learn. If some of that would come out,

instead of the constant negative carping about how awful it is to be a

teacher in this province....

Interjection.

HON. MR. BRUMMET : Yes, it's going on all the time. I think that would help a great deal to encourage people to come into teaching.

I'll

tell you something else. The new directions from the Sullivan report,

the flexibility in the curriculum and the autonomy that requires the

classroom teacher to make the decisions.... This is to be an educated

professional, who will be making the decision of what resources the

student should learn from, and who will guide that learning activity.

That educated professional will be making many decisions about whether

the students should be grouped or individualized, and where they should

move on. Those are the professional decisions that encourage people to

stay in teaching.

What you decide matters; it makes your

life much more worthwhile. I think that if people start getting into

the guidance of learning activities, and combining preparation,

teaching and evaluation assessment as an integrated operation, it may

take off some of the pressure people feel now, where they have to

prepare a lesson and hope that everybody will listen to it and absorb

it. They know in their heart of hearts that it is virtually an

impossible task, but they have been committed and are dedicated to

doing it as well as they can.

The member also mentions

retraining. The changes in the system are evolutionary, therefore you

don't have to shut down, retrain and start up. Retraining is an

evolutionary process. That critic might be interested in knowing that

the ministry....

Interjection.

HON. MR. BRUMMET : The education critic; you're just a normal critic — a natural critic.

lot of in-service has been going on during the year. This summer the

ministry, with other groups, is sponsoring courses on the new

curriculum and on the new approaches to it. Out of the 30,000 teachers

in this province, some 12,000 teachers are taking part of their summer

to — if you like — retrain, upgrade and to get that. There's

a lot of material going out. There are teachers who are doing the

program one place.... They're going out and acting as consultants by

talking to the teachers in a district about how they did it, and how

they think it can be done.

There is a constant retraining

program going on. Please don't try to leave the impression that the

only way you can retrain is to shut down the system, and then when

you're retrained, you reopen the system. I'm exaggerating, but that was

the impression I got: that we are going to create a shortage of

teachers by retraining. No, the retraining is an integral part of

continuing teaching.

HON. MR. REYNOLDS : Mr. Chairman, I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. REYNOLDS : I would like all members in the House to welcome 50 students from the

[ Page 9561 ]

Hillside

Middle School in the great community of West Vancouver, with their

teacher, Mr. Herrin. I'm sure they are appreciating this great debate

that's going on between the Minister of Education and the opposition.

MS. A. HAGEN :

Mr. Chairman, I would like the minister to answer three very direct

questions on the issue of whether there are going to be sufficient

teachers in the next period of time to staff our schools, remembering

that everyone — from Mr. Sullivan to this humble servant of the people — has some concerns about that.

How many teachers does the minister expect he needs to have available in the system — on an annualized basis — for

the next couple of years to replace teachers who are retiring, taking

leave or voluntarily choosing to leave the profession? How many

teachers does the minister expect to have trained by all of the

training institutions within the province? How many does he expect to

have graduating in the next couple of years to meet that need?

HON. MR. BRUMMET :

The short answer, Mr Chairman, is yes, there will be enough teachers,

because we are taking the measures I talked about to ensure that there

are.

I've mentioned in my previous comments that there are some 1,600 now — it's gone up from about 1,200 —

per year that we expect to graduate, if we can get a little cooperation

from people who will encourage people to go into teaching, instead of

telling them how awful it is. I think we can build that up. Our target

is at least 1,800 and hopefully 2,000 per year We think that will meet

the needs for the retirement, for the other people, and with more

professional autonomy I expect that fewer people will be dropping out,

because what they do will matter more. There will be more job

satis