Alberta Hansard — 13 June 1988, Evening sitting (20:00) (Legislature 21, Session 3)

19880613

Alberta — Debates (Hansard)

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1677 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ALBERTA Title: Monday, June 13, 1988 8:00 pm Date: 88/06/13 [The House resumed at 8 p.m.] [Mr. Speaker in the Chair] head: GOVERNMENT BILLS AND ORDERS (Second Reading) Bill 27 School Act [Adjourned debate June 13: Mr. McEachern] MR. McEACHERN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise, then, to continue discussion of second reading of Bill 27, a very impor tant piece of legislation.

The School Act of Alberta is being changed by this Act I was, if I remember right, when we ad journed debate at 5:30 talking about the rights of students com pared to the rights of parents, and I have a few more remarks I want to make in that regard.

Of course, if the rights of students and the rights of parents coincide, then it's easy, I think, for all of us to say, "Well, that's great, and we'll proceed in the direction that would be what par ents want." In the vast majority of cases I think there's not much doubt that most parents just want a good public education system, and that's what's probably best for most students, so there's not really a conflict.

But this Bill goes so far as to say that parents have a right to alternative kinds of education from the public system if they wish, that they have the right to private schools, or they have the right to home schools if they can turn up seven students from . . . MR. SPEAKER: Forgive me, hon. member. Perhaps hon. members might quieten down just a tad. I know you might have interesting dinner conversation, but the dinner hour is past. Edmonton-Kingsway, please. MR. McEACHERN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I think the Bill actually comes down on the side of the parents' having the right to decide totally.

While maybe that's the right position to be at eventually, maybe that is correct, maybe that does fit with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I would be interested if the minister would explain to us which sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms say that specifi cally, because I don't think it's quite that cut and dried or quite that specific.

Of course, I can think of a simple example where we take away parents' rights in favour of looking after the children prop erly in other fields; for instance, in Social Services it's quite ac ceptable to take away children from a home where they've been abused or subjected to incest. Now, I'm not suggesting that that really is a major consideration in terms of this Bill, but it does just establish the principle that there are times when we abrogate the parents' so-called right, to look after the children's right to decency and to a future free from those kinds of problems. So I want to say, Mr.

Speaker, that it's not necessarily all that easy to know where to draw the line in some other situations as well. I mean, are children really the chattels of the parents? Are they really in some way owned by the parents, and therefore the par ents have the right to determine exactly what kind of an educa tion system those children should partake in? I can raise some important questions, I think, in that regard.

I believe some of the Mennonite communities have in the past and maybe still are running schools which do not have qualified teachers in them, because they prefer to isolate their children from the larger community and raise them in a manner they thought was important. So we have to decide: are we going to allow somebody to do that? Now, I know the Bill basically says that schools have to have qualified staff, but I'm wondering if that really is the case totally.

Now, it might not be acceptable to have a school which is so narrow in its definition of what educa tion is that it wants to have its own specialized teachers not edu cated in a public system like the Faculty of Education at the university. On the other side of the argument -- and I think it's an im portant question -- suppose you have a school set up on a reser vation where natives feel they have the need for input into the education of their children but they don't have enough qualified staff educated at the University of Alberta with a four-year de gree.

To what extent do you allow them to use staff that is not fully qualified? I would submit Mr. Speaker, that you do have to have the qualified staff in charge, but there may be some ways of having assistants or guest speakers, certainly some of the elders, that could be used as resource people to come into the school. This could become an affirmative program. So I'm not saying that the concept of having different kinds of schools is a bad thing.

What I worry about is that if we just establish the right for any group of parents to have their own school, what would we do if a group of parents decided they wanted to set up a school for the worship of the devil, for ex ample? Obviously, at some point you'd have to say, "Well, no, you can't set up that kind of a school, whether you can find somebody that was educated at the U of A and has a bachelor of education degree to teach it or not." So I would like the minister to address that problem in some detail. I would like to raise one or two other aspects of that problem as well.

At what stage do you soften the basic requirements for affirmative action programs? At what stage do you insist on the standards to be met? If the parents or the private school people have a basic right to that school, at what stage does the minister stand up and say, "You can't do that." I think the minister owes us some discussion and explanation on that point. I have visited with people from private schools, a couple of them within my own riding, and I find that they run very impor tant programs for them in their view and for perpetrating their view of the world.

One of the reasons they want to do that is because they find the public school system to be far too big and far too uninterested in the individual. By the time you get to a school with 1,000 or 18,000 students in it, it becomes very hard for anybody to feel that they personally are important in that school. I know that the teachers -- and I taught for many years, and I know that my colleagues and I tried to make each student feel that they were important, but when you are faced with 30 or 35 kids every class, it's pretty hard, Mr. Speaker.

The single most important reason why people like to set up smaller schools is not just necessarily for the religious content itself but the fact that the individual can get the love and care that should go with a good education and should be part of a good education. I actually admire very much some of the things that were being done in that regard by a couple of the schools in my riding

1678 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 that I've had some contact with, have talked to, gone to their graduation exercises, and so on.

So I can understand the need and the desire on the part of parents to do that for their kids, but at the same time you've got to look to the standards and whether or not those students coming out of those schools, when they do have to, say, at grade 9 graduate out of that school or even grade 12, and go on to the next public system, whether it be university for the grade 12 student or whether it be grade 10 into the public system from junior high, you have to know that those students have the same chance as everybody else.

If the school was not able to maintain that standard, then you wonder if the parents are really doing their children a favour by isolating themselves from the larger community. We are becoming such a varied community in terms of our ethnic groups and different cultural groups and linguistic groups in our society that I'm not sure it pays to isolate students down into a small and narrow view of the world when, in fact, ultimately they're going to have face that whole world anyway.

I think of one of the religious groups that, although they don't seem to worry too much about having their own school, nonetheless they tell their own own children that they're not to vote in elections, that elections are dealing with this world and they really should wait until the next world to worry about how things are going to be and sort of give up on this one, I suppose. So to what kind of degree are you going to give the right to par ents to isolate their children from the larger world that we live in? Mr.

Speaker, I don't think that the minister has really dealt with the rights of the child versus the rights of the parents. I don't see that those two things are always coincidental; they may often be in conflict. I would remind the minister that we all fund the general education system. It seems to me that the route we should go is to see to it that we have a really flourishing pub lic system, be that the separate school or the public school sys tem. In fact, as you know, in some cases the Catholic system, which is the separate here, is the public system in other jurisdictions.

So the thing about those two parts of the public system is that they are always open to new students, that they can't really close their door and say, "We won't take this student." I think that because of the funding problems that this government has generated, there may be some problems in that area, but ulti mately every student has the right to go to a school, and it's up to the public system to provide the necessary educational facility.

So if we were to fund the public system really well and allow within that system a great deal of diversity and a great deal of right for the parents, the students, and the teachers to have a lot of say in what it is they're teaching and what their school is all about and the directions they want to go, then I don't think very many people would want to break away from a system like that and move their children into a much narrower, smaller system.

Now, a smaller school has some advantages in the sense that the teachers, the staff, and the parents can have more involvement and there can be more love and caring which goes with the education, which is very important. But at the same time, you narrow down the opportunities because obvi ously a bigger school can put forward a much larger curriculum, a much greater variety of things which the student can learn from compared to a small school which doesn't have the kind of funding. I guess I would ask the question: how many public dollars should go into some of these narrowly defined private schools?

Should a private school that is getting a large part of its funding from public dollars have the right to close their doors and say, "No, this other kid who doesn't happen to belong to the same religion can't come here," for example? Now, Mr. Speaker, if the minister is going to allow public dollars to be spent in a school, and if it's convenient for families that live nearby and they're prepared to send their children to that school, it seems to me that if their main funding is going to be public funding, then they need to open their doors and not say that they won't take that student into their school.

So those are the kinds of things that I look at in terms of this problem of private schools versus public schools. Now, I'd like to say that one of the reasons we're having so much desire on the part of parents to set up their own system is because they feel that the public systems are not flexible enough, or they feel they're too big and impersonal.

Those are the two, I think, basic reasons, and I think that as long as this government continues to underfund education, as they have in the past, and leave the school boards to raise a large portion of the money by property taxes, and as long as dollars are tight and classes are 30 to 35 students in most classes, we're going to have that problem. I would remind the minister that a couple of years back the Edmonton public school system did a survey of parents in the city, and they found that two-thirds of the parents wanted a better education system than they had.

Even if they were asked to pay more taxes to pay for it, they said, "Yes, we still want it." That's a very fundamentally important point, Mr. Speaker, and this government has not, I don't think, built the kind of education system that the people of Alberta really need or want so that we can keep them all in one system.

If you continue to underfund the public system and continue to have schools so crowded that teachers can't make the students feel like they're an important part of that system -- I think all you need to do is look at the graduations of the various high schools and some of the bigger schools and how many kids that graduate don't bother to come to the graduation do. Now, I know a lot of students do and have a great time. There's a lot of good feeling, and they feel good about their three years in the school and so on and feel good about some of their teachers.

There's a large number of students who do that, and there's a large number of teachers working very, very hard to make sure that students feel that way. But you have to admit that at most graduation dos there is a large percentage who just stay away because they don't really feel part of it enough to bother to be there. So our education system is not doing the job, and as it does not do the job, you get more and more parents looking for alternatives. That's why they look for alternatives, because they say this system somehow is failing. Mr.

Speaker, what I fear is a dispersing of our efforts in too many directions. I used to wonder if the Conservative Party in this province was purposely setting out to do in the public sys tem so they could build some kind of an elitist private system. I watched for a number of years, and I remember Grant Notley and I talking about this over a number of years in the mid 70s and through to the early '80s.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that, no, that's not what's going on; I think they just don't know what direction they're going or what they want to do, and that they put people in charge of the education system, like the for mer minister, who don't know about education and make all kinds of assertions and push people around a lot and create a lot of resentment that this minister has had a hard time overcoming, and that they didn't really have a plan to do in the public educa tion system.

They didn't really have a plan to build an expen sive private system for the wealthy, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen by accident if they continued to treat it the way

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1679 they were. Well, this Bill gives me some encouragement to believe that they won't continue to move in the direction that they seemed to be moving over the last four or five years under the previous minister. But it doesn't preclude that we'll end up dispersing our efforts in so many different directions, into home schools and into private schools, and having the public and separate sys tems fighting over dollars to such an extent that we do not have a first-rate public system.

We are still in danger of that, and I think the minister has to look at her Bill rather carefully and think about the directions of education for the next X number of years and try to build a vision for the 21st century: a unified, good public education system that has everybody as part of it, with enough flexibility in it so that some of those parents and different groups that want something special for their children within that system can find it within that system. This Bill still requires a great deal of debate and some changes. Mr.

Speaker, at Committee of the Whole, of course, we will be putting forward some amendments. It depends to a great extent on the arguments raised by the minister and the re action to some of our amendments whether or not we'll be sup porting this Bill at third reading. Before I wind up my comments, I wanted to talk a little bit about funding equity, which the minister touched on.

I'd like to say to the minister that in the system in the province -- although the rules under the BNA Act were a bit difficult in a legal sort of sense to follow, nonetheless the practice had grown up that the dollars for the parents of each student followed the student into the system. About two years ago the minister changed that and defined a resident student so that a student belonged to one sys tem or the other by whether or not he was Catholic, and the par ents had no choice about where their tax dollars would go.

That created a fight between the public and separate systems, and I don't blame either side for getting really alarmed at where that could lead. The first inkling I got of it was one of my con stituents getting this letter at home saying that we now have to sign this saying whether our kids are Catholic or not, and isn't this an invasion of privacy, and so on. But then you talk to the school board, and you find out they've got a very good reason for asking that question. So you started a kerfuffle in this province about funding that needn't have been started.

That's not to say that we didn't need to look at the system of funding and see if some changes were needed, but the minister did not need to start a fight between the public and separate systems of the degree that she did and then didn't deal with it in Bill 59 and threw out some alternatives. I'm not sure if she still has this thing figured out in a way that's going to satisfy all parties. It's not an easy problem, and I won't claim off the top of my head to have an easy solution for her.

But I do think that she created the problem, or at least a large part of it, herself and now doesn't know quite what to do with it and hasn't really come to full terms with it. One of the problems that needs to be looked at again, par ticularly now in this day and age when the rural communities are losing so much of their population and losing a big part of their tax base, is that the minister is going to have to find more ways of equalizing opportunities of keeping schools open in the rural areas even though the numbers of people and students are dwindling. Mr.

Speaker, what we need is a well-funded public education system, and by public education system I mean both public and separate schools, because they have the right as public systems in this country according to the BNA Act. We need in those schools to allow a great variety of alternatives within the system so that we don't push people out of the system and then face the problem about whether or not they should be allowed private schools, so that we don't end up dispersing our efforts in too many different directions and not having a good, cohesive pub lic system that meets the needs of most people.

What we need is a system that encourages individuality and acceptance of dif ferences for the various cultural and ethnic groups and linguistic groups within our society. What we need is to teach them to co-operate and live together and plan and build together.

We need a system in which parents and students and teachers all feel more empowered than they do at this stage and not so much reliance on the minister deciding and settling every possible dis pute and running a system that in effect is underfunded, allow ing people to become restless with the system as it is and hence look for alternatives outside the system. Mr. Speaker, I would like to have a response from the minis ter on some of those ideas. MR. SPEAKER: Thank you. MR. WRIGHT: Mr.

Speaker, I'm sure there's a lot more good than bad in this School Act, and it's been the result of several years of hard work by some dedicated and intelligent people. That's been especially apparent in the changes that have hap pened since the Bill last year, and any of us who have looked into it to any extent, such as I have -- not to any great extent, but to some extent -- realize the thinking that's gone on of a fairly nonpartisan nature, as far as I can see, in order to give better education. Dealing with the principle or principles, really, that one finds in this Act, there is one

section -- I daren't use that word, dare I? But there's a principle here that runs through the Act -- it hap pens to be embodied in a section, but I needn't refer to that -- that is remarkable, and it says, in effect, Mr. Speaker, that all the rights and benefits in the Act are subject to the test of reasonableness. I don't know another statute that says that, and I would really appreciate on a matter of principle some comment in her winding up from the minister concerning that matter of principle.

It's as if we said that the rules of the road contained in the Highway Traffic Act were there insofar as they were reasonable. I was just saying for the benefit of the minister that I was impressed by this new principle. I think I'm adversely impressed by the new principle of reasonableness, that the rights and benefits are there subject to limitations of reasonableness. I'm not aware of any other statute that that occurs in, and I think that the minister will have to justify that at some point because it does set all the rights and privileges in the Act at some doubt.

I notice, too, that a number of matters will have their meat, as is common in legislation such as this, in the regulations. I do ask the minister to file the regulations or not bring the Act in until she has, because it's not fair to ask us to buy a pig in a poke like that when we're being asked to deal with any matter important, or unimportant for that matter, the meat of which is in the regulations which we don't see. For example, Mr. Speaker, there is a commendable attempt to comply with

section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in this legislation, which merely repeats almost verbatim the words of that

section with regard to French education. So the meat of it will be in the regulations, presumably. I do remind the minister, who prob ably needs no reminding, that the 10th recommendation of the committee of this government on regulations in November of 1974 was that:

1680 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 wherever possible, a set of proposed regulations should accom pany new Bills as they are presented to the Legislature for consideration. I do think that's important where the regulations are important, as often they are. This isn't quite one of those Acts where the Act is just a shell and the real legislation is in the regulation; nonetheless, there are parts which are governed by the regula tions, and I'm sure that 90 percent of the regulations that were passed under the old Act will carry forward into this. But there are some very important ones that won't.

In what I thought, Mr. Speaker, was a really excellent paper, called Equity in Education [Financing], put out by the depart ment, proposals were made to redress the imbalance of assess ment between poor and rich school assessment districts. The difference in the tax bases of different school districts is quite astonishing. Some have $100,000 per pupil, I guess -- yes -- others less than $10,000. It's a tremendous spread.

What is fair, if every child in the province is going to have an equal start, is that as much as possible each child carries the same dollar into the system provided by the government on his or her head. Then there can be the local assessment of school districts so that the particular school district can have the precise sort of educa tion it chooses by paying more or less money in addition to what comes in from the centre. But it is so important that the districts start off from the same point. In that paper, Equity in Education [Financing], as I'm sure most of us know, there were some options given.

I found the option that used the corporate assessment to equalize that start ing point to be most attractive. If I'm not mistaken, that has been drawn back from in this Bill, Mr. Speaker. I wish it were not so, but perhaps I don't appreciate some of the force of some of the objections which were made to that option 4.

I know there were many objections made by people who were sitting on a lot of school assessment and would lose their advantage, but it is proper that they should lose their advantage in order that oth ers less advantaged would be brought up so that all children would have an equal amount to carry into the system, all the more important because the proportion of the education dollar funded from the centre has been dropping. The government is criticized for this, I think correctly to a degree.

But it must be admitted that there cannot be a completely open end to the es calation of costs imposed by the local authorities which they just expect the government to pick up a constant proportion of. Having said that, I submit that the proportion currently being paid by the government is too low and remind the government of its promise when it was elected in 1971 to get back to the . . . It was 90 percent under Social Credit.

I don't put all that magic in precise proportions, but the importance of the equalized as sessment, of course, increases in exact proportion to the propor tion of it, to what comes from the government. One of the principles the minister gave us was access to quality education and also flexibility. She was referring under flexibility to the right of parents to educate their children how they please, providing they get a reasonable minimum of educa tion. That means the right to have private schools. We agree with that right It is one of the basic rights of parents, I suppose you can say.

However, we have strong doubts as to the extent that public money should fund private education. It is perhaps too harsh an idea to say that under no circumstances should pri vate education be funded with public money. On the other hand, 75 percent strikes us as being an unduly high proportion. Where the parents choose to educate their children outside the system, I defend their right to do that. I deny their right to de mand public money to do it. I suppose one has to compromise in these matters, as in so many others, and allow some kind of a right, particularly when it has now become the custom.

It is perhaps too late to turn back, but 75 percent does strike me as being an indefensibly high proportion of the tax dollar to spend to support private education, however good, because to the extent that you subtract from the public dollar to support private education, however good, you weaken the public system. So that is one of the prin ciples of the Bill which is in itself completely unobjectionable, but the accredited schools, of course, carry with them the right to receive public money, and one has to have some debate about the correct level, if any, of public money going to private schools.

Equally, I suppose, one should question the inclusion within public or separate systems of what are private schools, which we do see in some of the systems, Mr. Speaker, entirely funded with public money. Nonetheless, I agree with that principle of flexibility and the right to experiment and so on, I suppose per haps a good compromise is to permit those sorts of experiments at local option within the public system, as in fact does occur. On matters of principles of the Bill that's all I have to say at this time, Mr. Speaker, but I think I've hit the high spots. MR. SPEAKER: Thank you. Call for the question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Question. MR. SPEAKER: Calgary-Mountain View. MR. HAWKESWORTH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The minis ter had many fine words this afternoon in introducing Bill 27, the new School Act, for second reading.

I certainly hope and trust that, by and large, the Bill bears out her high expectations for this School Act I know that certainly there are important principles to be reflected in any education legislation before the Legislature, but I also have, as has been expressed by others this afternoon and this evening, some concerns about both the prin ciples, not only those that were expressed this afternoon but some that appear not to have been expressed. As well, I have some concerns about how those principles might be imple mented through the kind of structure of the Bill in front of us this evening.

I think it also raises a number of difficulties which I hope we can correct sometime between now and the point at which the Bill is finally enacted into law. I think there are going to be a number of difficulties over the long term that this Bill will bring to light if, in fact, it's allowed to be implemented as it is before us. For example, the minister spoke about the importance of flexibility, and that's a point I think all legislation should have, flexibility to some extent. But the minister in her remarks this afternoon referred to the sections regarding private schools or home schooling arrangements.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I think the history of public education in this country is that we have expected there to be a public system in place. We've expected parents and students to be compulsory in their attendance at those schools. The overriding direction for education has been provided by provincial departments of Education, and we've emphasized over the years standards of education in the kinds of programs that have been offered. That, by and large, has served this country and this province well over the years, and I would be very concerned if we were going to

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1681 abandon those principles for the sake of flexibility. That's what concerns me about some of the emphasis in the provisions of the Bill. We've established in this province two public systems, Catholic and protestant. Over the years there's been a control exercised through the Department of Education on the content of curriculum. With professional organizations and school boards and the department itself standards of teacher certifica tion along with the efforts of the universities have also been an important factor in providing quality of education to our young people.

The principles of sound public administration and man agement of finances, the monitoring of student performance, and so on have all been important principles that we have always followed in Alberta over the years. So I'm very concerned, Mr. Speaker, if in the name of flexibility we abandon those principles.

At committee reading I suppose we'll have an opportunity to pursue the individual sections of the Act and question the minis ter a little more closely on how she envisions these principles to work, given these provisions in the Act, but it seems to me that if we give flexibility the first priority or the most important of the principles, we may in fact lose in other areas and other prin ciples that have served this educational system of ours in Al berta well over the years.

So while I, as I say, congratulate the minister on these principles she's outlined, I have some con cerns about how some of them are going to operate in practice. I would congratulate the minister, though, and I think it's important to do it at this stage. She's gotten some letters from me in the past few months about the major concerns, the major fears, that were aroused by Bill 59 when it was tabled last year. It certainly sparked more public interest in the School Act than we've probably seen in this province for a generation or two.

So I don't know; maybe that was the teacher in the minister coming out as a way of educating a lot of the public about what is in our School Act and getting them to sit up and take notice and become very concerned about the legislation governing schools in the province. But that certainly was the effect of it. As a result of that input from people from all over the province we see a number of changes reflected in the Bill in front of us. So certainly I would like to at least congratulate her for being willing to listen and incorporating many of those changes. Some of them -- and I just list them, Mr. Speaker.

Catholic education in the province: people involved in the Catholic edu cation system of Alberta were concerned about proposals for dividing property for taxation purposes. They were concerned about their freedom and right to provide certain religious programs. Those kinds of concerns were brought to the atten tion of the minister. Parents of children with learning dis- abilities -- very concerned about the clause regarding un- educable, that label, as it might apply to certain children in the province.

The concept of corporate pooling, where corporate taxation would be centralized and redistributed by the Depart ment of Education or by the minister. Those who run private or alternative schools had concerns about Bill 59. As well as French language education in the province. There's quite a list. It seems to be that many if not most of these groups have had the minister listen to their concerns and, to some extent, respond and address those. I think there are two, though, in particular that I would like to raise with the minister this evening, and I will get to those in a moment.

I'd like to make a couple of positive comments at this point of review of the Bill; that is, to identify a couple of areas where I think the minister has moved in the right direction in ways that she didn't have to to respond to any particular interest group. First of all, I think the presence of the

preamble in the legisla tion outlines the general basic direction in which the province and the education system is headed, I think that's important to identify. I've got some concerns, as others have already ex pressed some before me, about the content of some of those and believe that improvements could be made in the

preamble, but generally I think it was important to include that. I'd also like to say to the minister that the whole

section re garding conflict of interest and pecuniary interest is a very im portant issue for those who are elected trustees at the local level, as it is for all local officials. I speak from some personal experi ence in that regard. I looked at the wording of the provision, and it bears some close resemblance to the wording contained in the Municipal Government Act but I think there have been a few important changes made in it as well to make it a little more clear as to the intent of some of the details of that provision. I think that is an improvement and I'm pleased to see it contained in the Act.

There's some reference made for certain kinds of programs, whether it be special education programs, work experience programs, early childhood services programs. I'm pleased to see that these are specifically identified. Many of the other pro visions of the Bill, of course, carry on the provisions of the pre sent School Act, and there are a number of minor details that are changed in a number of those. But basically much of what's in this Act also carries on what we already have as legislation in the province.

Now, I mentioned just a moment or two ago that there were two particular areas arising from the concerns brought to the minister's attention that in particular I don't think have been explained at this stage of the Bill to my satisfaction. I'd like to take this opportunity to raise them with the minister. She re ferred in her comments this afternoon to the removal of

section 59(2) of the current School Act. She said that she was doing that for constitutional reasons. Well, I'd just like to bring to the minister's attention a concern that I have specifically in the city of Calgary. I would like to raise that as affecting particularly a group of people in Calgary that may . . . I'm not going to say that they are threatened entirely by the removal of this provi sion, Mr. Speaker. But I'd like to raise it with the minister, in hopes that at the time we come throughout the different stages of reading of the Bill, she can respond to those concerns.

Over the course of the last 10 or 12 years the Calgary board of education has been trying to grapple with what would be called an alternative schools policy within the board, programs offered by the board of education. In 1976 that policy was adopted by the Calgary board of education, and immediately there was a number of schools that fell under those provisions and qualified for support. They were the Calgary Hebrew school, the I. L. Peretz school. Then in 1979 the Plains Indian cultural survival school came under the alternative schools policy, as well as the Logos Christian education school in that year.

Between the years of 1980 and 1983 there were another three alternative proposals brought to the board: the National Ballet school of Toronto, which was rejected; the transcendental education group, which was rejected, and one out of three that was approved, the German-English school, but that one never got off the ground. So in that time there were, I guess, three or four schools that came under the umbrella of the alternative schools policy. The board of education in Calgary voted to terminate some of those contracts in 1983 and by June 1984 the Logos school

1682 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 no longer operated. The Plains Indian cultural survival school was spared and still continues as an alternative program under the Calgary board of education. MR. SPEAKER: With due respect, hon. member, the examples are of mutual interest to both us from previous existences, but we're getting in such long, convoluted detail with respect to this principle that you are addressing, and perhaps you could shorten the examples and come back to the principle. You have very little time left, actually, on your second reading debate. MR. HAWKESWORTH: Okay; I appreciate that comment, Mr.

Speaker. As a result of this change in policy of the board the two Jewish schools became affiliated under the Calgary Jewish acad emy with the Calgary separate board of education. Because of

section 59(2) in the existing Act, which refers to people who are "neither a Protestant nor a Roman Catholic," members of the Jewish community who signed this contract between the Calgary separate board and the school were able to transfer their property assessment to the separate school board as a way of providing support to that system and as a way of helping defer the cost which the board had undertaken in undertaking to bring this school under their umbrella.

Now, what concerns me is that by removing this provision in the existing Act, it leaves a question in my mind as to: what is the status of those individuals in the Calgary area who may have transferred their property tax for assessment purposes to the Calgary separate board of education? I take it from the minis ter's comments this afternoon that there may be some transition provisions made.

But over the long run I have concerns that the ability of those individuals who are of a faith that is neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic may not have the freedom that they have under the existing Act to direct their taxation as they wish, especially given the circumstances of this school which the Calgary Catholic board took in. It's allowed them to con tinue offering that program; they would like to continue, I believe, to carry on that status and that arrangement with the Catholic board.

But there's a question in my mind whether the new School Act will take full account of their concerns and whether their rights and freedoms which they presently enjoy will be protected under Bill 27. That's an important principle, which I would hope the minister, under the principle of flexibility, might be willing to consider continuing to provide in the new Act. I am also, as I said earlier, pleased that she's made some changes in dropping the uneducable clause in Bill 59 and instead set out a process whereby children of special needs can qualify for a special education program.

However, in looking through the Act, I'm concerned that some boards in the future might not fully appreciate the direction or the intent of the legislation and might not establish a special education program for children with special needs. I think if the minister would look at perhaps only one small amendment to those provisions that would en sure that boards could not use the loophole that might exist within those provisions to get out of the responsibility of provid ing special education programs, it would be a marked improve ment of this Bill. There's an ambiguity, Mr.

Speaker, in which one of the pro visions has to do with resident students. Then, for those who have a special need, a special education program can be set up. Finally, there's a provision for a special needs tribunal for par ents or a school board who then might refer that student and their needs to the tribunal to make a determination for a special needs plan. In this continuum that the Act provides, it's not clear what is a special needs plan as opposed to a special educa tion program.

It concerns me that it might be possible that a board could say to an individual parent that a child would not receive a program under the resident program, but the Bill in front of us remains silent as to what a parent might expect from the special education program provision. So I'd just like to say to the minister that this is an important area that parents would like to have clarified. I think she's aware of their concerns. It may be that it was a simple oversight that the small amendments and changes had not been made at the time the Bill was drafted and tabled in the Legislature.

I would be very interested and pleased to hear from her that she was going to respond to those concerns that have been brought to her attention about parents, especially those in rural areas where an individual board might not want to offer a special edu cation program to a special needs child. If she can ease that am biguity, I know she would make a lot of parents in this province who have those children especially happy. Mr. Speaker, those are some overviews of the points and principles that I would like to raise throughout the reading of the Bill as we make our way to approval in this Legislature.

There are certainly more details that could be expressed, but I would simply say that the principles espoused by the minister are fine principles. We all agree with the principles themselves. How they get translated and implemented is really the key. I think there's a fair degree of disagreement over that; I guess it's to be expected, as the minister said this afternoon. I look forward to that debate in the days ahead.

I know that the minister, who has listened carefully in the last few months to the overwhelming concerns that have been brought to her attention -- I hope she hasn't finished listening -- as a result of some of these com ments made at second reading will go back to the drafting board and incorporate some of those in amendments that she might bring forward later in Committee of the Whole. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. MR. SPEAKER: Would the minister sum up now? Ponoka-Rimbey, followed by St. Albert. MR. JONSON: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I would just like to make a few comments during second reading of Bill 27.

First of all, I think the minister has every right to feel some personal satisfac tion in the introduction of Bill 27, because I think it has a great deal of potential for improving the educational system of the province. I'd like to just briefly comment on the process that's been involved in the Bill coming to this point in its process of going through the Legislature. There has been reference, Mr. Speaker, to the four years it took to get a new School Act, and perhaps that's one of the problems that there was in the whole process of developing the Act.

I think there was some space of time be tween the original study and the public hearings and the publica tion of Partners in Education and the actual development of Bill 59. [Mr. Musgreave in the Chair] Bill 59, that much-maligned piece of legislation, actually did capture a number of the principles that were developed in the Partners in Education paper, such things as the need to recog nize greater parental involvement, the establishment of school

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1683 councils -- that was in Bill 59 and is in Bill 27 -- the need for the possibility of greater flexibility in programming at the school board level. That was very much emphasized in the initial proc ess and is provided for in Bill 27. And I could go on with a number of other items.

Actually, Bill 59 was flawed, perhaps, but really in three or four key areas: those concerning the balance in the funding ar rangements between separate and public school boards; the un fortunate use of the term "uneducable", which caused a great deal of concern; and the long list of concerns related to the gen eral theme of local autonomy.

I feel that in Bill 27 those key areas of criticism of the introductory Bill, which was Bill 59, have been very well adjusted for, and the objections that were presented in great numbers and by large numbers of people across the province and in various organizations have been ad dressed and have been met. In Bill 27 there are four or five things that I would just like to comment on. They are for the most

part items that have not been dealt with by previous speakers, but I think they deserve to have some attention drawn to them. First of all, Mr. Speaker, in the early part of Bill 27 we have the statements of roles and responsibilities for various par ticipants in the educational system, certainly a new concept for a School Act and one which I think is innovative and has the pos sibility of pointing directions to the individuals involved in the system and developing a sense of ownership and pride and responsibility as far as the delivery of education is concerned.

The statements outlining those items for teachers, principals, and students are well presented, in my view, and we will see if they bring the response that is hoped for. I would add, though, Mr. Speaker, that I would have preferred to have had a

section for parents, perhaps also for school boards. But perhaps when they see the high ideals set out for students and teachers and principals, those two very important groups within the educa tional system will respond accordingly. A second area of Bill 27 that I think is very important is the effort that has been made in the Bill to define and separate the various terms that deal with teachers' contracts of employment. There is a definition of a temporary contract an interim con tract and probationary contracts. I think a very important change from the previous School Act Mr.

Speaker, is that which adds an additional probationary year to the contract or the initial years of teaching of a new teacher. This is something the school trustees of the province have long advocated, and it was good to see in the process of developing Bill 27 some trade-offs and some agreement between two of the major stakeholder groups, the Alberta Teachers' Association and the Alberta School Trustees' Association, over that and other issues in this particular

section of the Act. I'm also glad to see, Mr. Speaker, the improvement by way of natural justice in the whole process governing the transfer of teachers in the province. That's certainly an improvement; not ideal, but certainly an improvement over the previous situation. Mr. Speaker, one area that certainly has always concerned practising teachers and school administrators is the whole area of school attendance.

The provision for an attendance board to review the particularly difficult cases of nonattendance in school and the fact that this attendance board takes a constructive ap proach to bringing to bear the various agencies and services of government as well as the participants, the parent and the stu dent with the board of education and the teaching staff, is in my view a very constructive way to approach some of the chronic and very difficult types of nonattendance problems we have in our schools.

It will certainly only be used in a few cases, be cause I think schools and school boards are working hard to de velop constructive attendance policies within their own jurisdictions. Mr. Speaker, there's been some reference during second reading to the whole issue of private schools.

Although I sup pose second reading is not always an opportunity for various points of view to be expressed and various stances and group policies to be expressed, if you look at what is achieved in Bill 27, I think it is really quite good from the point of view that it has clarified and, in my view, simplified the whole area of juris diction over what were before four categories of private schools and what was before in existence but not properly recognized -- the machinery was not in place to police it so to speak -- and that is the whole area of home schooling.

We have now two categories of private schools, accredited and registered. We have a statement making it clear that there will be policies and regulations governing home education, and I think overall, given the situation that existed for many years in this province, this is quite an improvement by way of clarification in this particular area. There seems to be also, Mr. Speaker, some overall concern regarding the mention of fees in Bill 27. It's only practical to have it recognized in a school Act that boards of education have the right to charge fees.

I really think that given the point of view that's been expressed about fees, those that expressed those points of view should react favourably to the statement on fees in the Act because there is an appeal process -- in other words, an avenue to appeal -- if there's a situation where the basic education of a student is going to somehow be denied by the charging of excessive fees.

On the other hand, it is only re alistic that there be the provision for the charging of fees, be cause the appetite of the public, of parents and students in this province, for co-curricular and extracurricular programs and for specialized programs to meet unique community needs is far beyond what the general taxpayer of this province can be ex pected to cover entirely, be if from property tax or from the gen eral revenues of the province. I think that realistically there has to be that provision.

I believe school boards will act reasonably in this regard and the fees charged will be for constructive pur poses in the schools for which they are charged. Finally, Mr. Speaker, there's been the overall reference -- although it's not really part of this Act, I guess it's an opportu nity to talk about the whole area of funding.

Although the School Act has never to my knowledge specifically outlined the amounts of funding and so forth for education in this province, I do concur with some of the members opposite in that I would like to certainly see it possible for the proportion of provincial funding increased to that 75 or 80 percent of the overall costs of offering the basic program of education in the schools of this province. I hope that sometime in the not too distant future that will be a possibility.

However, when we're also talking about funding, I would like to once again commend the minister for the balance that has been worked out in this Act between the relative amounts of access to funding that separate and public school boards have. I think it's a fair and reasonable solution to the problem and one that given the co-operation of all parties involved, should serve the province well long into the future. Finally, on this particular last point Mr.

Speaker, I do see the need to further work on the whole area of equity in educational funding for some of our isolated rural areas, sparsely populated areas, school jurisdictions with low assessment basis and par ticularly high costs of offering their school programs. I know

1684 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 that the minister has previously indicated a concern in that area and will be working on that particular problem. So overall, Mr. Speaker, I once again commend the minister for her efforts on Bill 27, and J would urge passage of Bill 27 through the various stages of the Legislature. MR. ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Member for St. Albert. MR. STRONG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a pleasure for me to rise this evening and speak to Bill 27, the new School Act, introduced today by the Minister of Education.

I think I would like to initiate my comments in congratulating the minister for listening -- for listening, Mr. Speaker, because of all the ineq uities that were in the former School Act, which was Bill 59. I think what the minister has done is an excellent job in listening to those concerns that were voiced by parents, educators, school boards, superintendents of schools, and all those others involved in education.

It's nice to see that we have some of our Conser vative cabinet members that do listen to people's concerns and make the appropriate amendments in some of the legislation we see before us in this Assembly. AN HON. MEMBER: Not like some ministers. MR. STRONG: Right. Not like some members and some other cabinet ministers, Mr. Speaker.

If we look at the principles of Bill 27 as we see it in front of us, some of those principles are that we want to assure for every child in the province of Alberta a quality education; in other words, the best education that we as government, legislators, or parents can provide to our children. In addition, one of the prin ciples in the legislation is also equity in funding for school dis tricts. That is also there. Mr. Speaker, one of the major concerns that I have and that has been expressed to me by many of the constituents I repre sent in St. Albert is education funding.

I believe that impacts seriously on the principles that are contained in Bill 27, the School Act. Through the Chair, I'd like to ask the minister ex actly how, with a lack of funding in education, the minister can meet the commitment that's expressed in the principle of Bill 27. How can those principles be achieved if that funding isn't there? If we look at the constituency I represent, and that's St. Al bert, what we see in St. Albert is that almost 40 percent of the property tax bill my constituents pay is now going to fund education.

I don't think that's fair, and I don't think it lives up to the commitment that was granted in the past by the Conserva tive Party or the Conservative government here in the province of Alberta of getting education funding by the province up to that 85 percent level that was committed to back in 1971. Be cause, Mr. Speaker, what we see is that commitment not only not being fulfilled by this government but a further cutback in achieving that 85 percent level.

We just cannot meet the princi ples as espoused by this minister in this Bill without getting that funding for education up to that 85 percent level that was prom ised by this government. I'd like to remind the minister that because of this lack of funding in education, what it's created in our school systems is overcrowding. That overcrowding is evident, again, in St. Al bert. Paul Kane high school in St. Albert is currently 500 stu dents overenrolled. St. Albert high in St. Albert is currently 300 overenrolled. That's almost 800 overenrolled in two high schools in St. Albert.

I had the pleasure a number of months ago of turning the sod for the new high school in St Albert, which is Bellrose. Certainly I was there with the minister. That is an excellent step to eliminate that overcrowding in those high schools, but this should have been done quite a number of years ago. That's what I speak to when I say: how can we meet the commitment that's espoused in the principle of Bill 27, that new School Act, if we as government don't commit the funding to education that it deserves? In addition, Mr.

Speaker, what this lack of funding also has created is many of the students coming home in the community and asking their parents not only through those additional prop erty taxes but also for a commitment of their money when it comes to shop supplies, when it comes to book rental fees, when it comes to home economics classes where those students are asked for additional funds to provide some of the materials they need in those classes to do the projects they have slated so they indeed can learn in all those various areas the education system provides.

I think that's very unfair too, because how can a par ent who doesn't have access to the money required continue to provide that money to their children in that school system for these additional fees? What do they do, Mr. Speaker? Certainly I as a parent and as a member of this Legislative Assembly can stand here and say that if my taxes have to go up on a provincial basis to provide that continuing education, the best education we can give our future, which is our children, then I am quite pre pared to do that. That same principle has been expressed to me by many of the residents of the community I represent.

So I think if that minister is going to continue to espouse principles that certainly all of us can hold up and say are correct and right and excellent, then certainly that minister also has to recognize that in order for us to provide for and meet the principles as espoused by the minister in introducing Bill 27, we have to take a serious look at where we're funding education in the province of Alberta as a government. Mr.

Speaker, I've traveled somewhat to many of the different schools in my community and had the pleasure of traveling to the city of Calgary to visit at the University of Calgary the dean of the faculty of Fine Arts -- almost an hour's discussion with him in conjunction with a number of other people. Again, what was expressed to us was the fact that we have all these brick and mortar edifices, first-class facilities second to none, but the problem is funding.

That dean indicated to us that a budget they had had of $7,000 to pay for some of those supplies and some of those things they need in that faculty had been cut over the last four or five years to $300 for supplies. Now, Mr. Speaker, I ask you and all members of this Assembly: how can we in this As sembly, how can this government meet the commitment to the principles as laid out in Bill 27 if we don't provide adequate funding?

It's fine to build all these facilities, but if all we're looking at as Albertans and as legislators is a fine brick building with lots of glass, adequate heating systems, and lots of shrubbery, we also have to understand that the education process must go on within those facilities. That requires a teaching staff and ade quate budgets to put forth the education that we hold in high esteem in the province of Alberta. That, Mr. Speaker, is number one in the Bill again, a principle to provide the best education we can for our children.

Now, how can we meet that require ment and obtain that principle if we don't have that funding? Another area I'm a little concerned with, Mr. Speaker, is the area of high tech. We've heard this government get up on nu merous occasions and say that we as Albertans have to compete

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1685 in worldwide markets, that there is perhaps an ability for us to compete in the high-tech areas, that a lot of money has been spent through various other departments in trying to achieve this goal. But I'll come right back to the principles as espoused in Bill 27 and again ask the minister or any of these Tories on the front bench: how can we meet the commitment to provide that high-tech education to our children when we're cutting back on education budgets? Now, I don't know how that is possible. I don't know how it's possible at all.

Certainly we as Albertans, if we are going to be involved in high tech, have to have a work force that is extremely educated, very highly educated. But as always, it seems what we're dealing with in this Legislature is illusion and not reality. Certainly I'm aware that we spend an inordinate amount of dollars on education, yet every nickel we spend provides our children and all of us as Albertans a better opportunity to compete, a better opportunity to earn a better liv ing if we're educated rather than not educated. And certainly that takes money; it takes funding in an education system again. Otherwise, Mr.

Speaker, we will not be able to meet that com mitment to those principles that were laid out by the minister in issuing the principles, or what the minister thought were the principles, in Bill 27. Another area we can look at, Mr. Speaker, is community schools. Again, if we're to provide that education to all our children and meet the principles as the minister laid out, what are we doing in community schools?

Now, we went through budget estimates here, we went through a lot of discussion, yet how are we going to be able to meet the commitment to those principles when we're not providing the funding for our com munity schools? Another area I've looked at is special education programs within the school system, Mr. Speaker. How can we meet the ideals and principles laid out in Bill 27 if we are not going to provide adequate funding to special education programs?

I think it's fine for the minister to say that while we provide X number of dollars to those school districts, it's up to those school districts to pay out those moneys, use those moneys where they see fit. When it becomes a question of providing a basic education for as many students as they can as opposed to setting up funding for special education, unfortunately that spe cial education has taken a backseat to some of the other pro grams that are offered to all students in high schools, junior high schools, elementary schools, or our universities or other types of postsecondary educational facilities.

I'd like to ask the minister exactly how we are going to meet that commitment to these principles if we don't fund those systems and those programs within the school system adequately. Because if we don't, there's no way we can obtain or meet or match the principles as espoused by the minister in second reading of Bill 27. Mr. Speaker, just for the interest of the minister and some of the parents and some of the other Members of the Legislative Assembly, I can say that my son has a learning disability.

If it wasn't for the dollars that were provided a few years ago here in special education programs, my son would have suffered a serious, debilitating -- almost injury within the school system if that education and opportunity had not been provided for him through the special education programs they had set up. And I was fortunate, Mr. Speaker, fortunate that my son could attend those classes, because the number of spaces provided in those areas four years ago, five years ago was very limited. And there is still a demand for spaces like that.

I would suspect if there's a demand for them in the constituency I represent, St. Albert, cer tainly there's a demand right across the province of Alberta in many of the other school districts. Now, if we don't meet the funding requirements of educa tion, how can we have a School Act that cites all the fancy prin ciples and the fine, nice words but fails to do the job in the edu cation system we have come to expect and Albertans have come to demand, and that's a decent education for their children? There's no way we can do that.

So again I'll stress to the minis ter that if the minister's going to meet the requirements and meet those principles that were laid out for Bill 27, a new School Act, then certainly it's back to the drawing board to take a look at funding for education in the province of Alberta. Mr.

Speaker, I said it's not just good enough for the minister to almost shirk the minister's responsibilities by turning around and saying, "Well, we provide X number of dollars to those school districts," because in citing a 2 percent increase in educa tion costs and education budgets, that falls far short of what even inflation is in the province of Alberta. Again, if we look at a strike in northern Alberta, the school district there, as far as I'm concerned that strike was caused by a lack of funding pro vided for education by government.

Because it's very difficult for any school district to sit down and negotiate fairly with their employees when they don't have the money they get from this government to pay those marginal increases those teachers were asking for in northern Alberta not that long ago, Mr. Speaker.

Again what we're looking at is if we expect to meet the princi ples laid out in Bill 27, certainly we as a province and as a gov ernment have to provide those moneys to that education system so that process can work in the best interests of those it was in tended for -- and that's the kids; that's the students and the children, our children, our future -- in those facilities. [interjections] Mr. Speaker, I wish you'd call to order some of these here to my left these backbenchers sitting over in the comer that are trying to get my goat and disturb me.

It's fine for them to sit back and laugh and make snide comments about what I'm talk ing about but I'd like them to get up and make some original comments of their own rather than always just gum flapping and lollipopping. If they're not articulate enough, maybe I could get up and take their time. I think the minister has made an attempt, certainly a very valid attempt, to right many of the wrongs that were perpetrated in Bill 59. Again I'd like to congratulate the minister specifi cally in one circumstance, and that again is in my constituency of St.

Albert where the separate and the public school boards are reversed, where the Catholic system is the public system. I be lieve there are four other jurisdictions in the province of Alberta where that is the case. I think certainly when you look at what Bill 59 tried to do to what we call the public system in St. Al bert, which is the Catholic system, it tried to take away some of their tradition and history as being one of the first school dis tricts set up in the province of Alberta. Certainly I sympathize with their position and said I'd represent that position in the Legislature.

I congratulate the minister for making that change in Bill 59 and creating some fairness in Bill 27 which has been introduced before us for second reading. I think, Mr. Speaker, that many of these issues are very im portant, and I would certainly hope the minister would go back to her colleagues in caucus and fight for more funding for edu cation so we as Albertans can get the best education possible for our children, and that's all our children in the province of Alberta. Mr. Speaker, I thank you.

1686 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 MR. GIBEAULT: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to make a few com ments on second reading of Bill 27 this evening. In my con stituency, which is a suburban one in the southeast comer of Mill Woods in Edmonton, we've got many excellent schools, perhaps some of the most modem ones in the province. Those that we have we're very proud of. But I have some concern.

I don't really feel Bill 27 addresses the larger concern the Ed monton public school board has raised, because they are receiv ing expressions of concern from parents in suburban areas like Mill Woods and in districts like those represented by my col leagues Edmonton-Glengarry and Edmonton-Calder. MR. ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please. I wonder if the Members of the Legislative Assembly would mind giving priority to the member who has the floor and allow him to de bate without this chatter going on in the background. MR. GIBEAULT: So what I'm referring to here, Mr.

Speaker, is whether or not we're providing -- or we should be providing, perhaps, in our School Act -- some provision to ensure that dis tricts have an equitable level of support for new facilities in rela tion to the number of students they educate. The Edmonton public school board educates some 15 percent of the students in the province, yet they don't get 15 percent of the capital financ ing that's available.

We're pleased that this year we're going to be looking at the beginning of construction and a new school in the Daly Grove community, but I would be remiss in my responsibilities representing my constituents if I didn't point out that there are several areas of unmet need yet. The whole neigh bourhood of Bisset, a highly developed urbanized area of the city of Edmonton, still has no elementary school, Mr. Speaker, and in a whole area east of 66th Street which has some 30,000 residents, we still have not a single public junior high school.

We've talked to the school board officials about this, and that is what they've told us. They said, "We'd be able to provide these kinds of facilities if the provincial authorities would give us the kind of capital resources in proportion to the students we are educating, and that simply just isn't happening now." So there's some reference in the Bill to the School Buildings Board, Mr.

Speaker, but in what I've read of it, I don't see that it provides for that important concept of equity that is so important to parents in suburban districts like mine, and not only mine but, as I mentioned, those in the north side of Edmonton, suburban areas, and I'm sure that similar districts in Calgary and other high-growth areas apply the same. Now, one of the other important areas here is the whole area of transportation, I guess we could say, because that's very im portant, Mr. Speaker.

In some of the districts in my con stituency where there are no schools, like the ones I've just mentioned in Weinlos and Bisset and many of the areas that don't have a junior high school, many parents have got to bus their kids out of Mill Woods entirely to schools in south-central Edmonton -- Ottewell and others -- and many of them have to take several buses. The school board is not in a position to pro vide the yellow bus direct service from the neighbourhoods to the school involved, so they have to take the city bus, and that often involves several transfers and a substantial waste of . . . MRS. CRIPPS: Mr.

Speaker . . . MR. ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Does the hon. minister have a point of order? MRS. CRIPPS: Yes. According to 734, the second reading of the Bill is the principle of the Bill. We've heard speaker after speaker go on about all kinds of things and occasionally mention the principle. But that's not on the principle of the Bill. MR. GIBEAULT: Mr. Speaker, that's exactly my point. Why isn't it in this Bill? Surely access to the school system -- and transportation is a part of that -- has got to be part of the School Act. I just don't believe it's adequately dealt with in this Bill.

So that's another area of concern to many of my constituents in suburban Edmonton and the Edmonton-Mill Woods area: that transportation is not properly supported and authorized in terms of the new School Act. One of the other concerns we have, Mr. Speaker -- and I say all of these comments in the context that certainly Bill 27 is an improvement over Bill 59 in many respects. We want to ac knowledge that, particularly the elimination of that very repug nant clause about uneducable students. There are other im provements as well, and we appreciate that.

But certainly we want to make this the School Act that will provide the environ ment for education of our students for several years to come. So there are some provisions there that I think could be sig nificantly improved. One of them is that the Act does not really deal with the whole issue of user fees, and that is becoming in creasingly a significant factor for many parents. I know one parent for example, who's got two high school students in the Mill Woods constituency at the J.

Percy Page high school, and between bus pass, locker fees, book rentals, and the various fees, that adds up there: over $100 a pop for each of his two students. So that's $200, at least, before he even gets the stu dents into the school. And then there are various other field trips and related expenses. It really adds up to a significant amount. We were talking just earlier last week about the Premier and his alleged commitment to the family and so on. Well, Mr.

Speaker, if we want to be pro-family, how about doing some thing in the School Act here that talks about user fees and the increasing burden that is becoming on families? You know, the reason a lot of people don't have larger families anymore is be cause it's so costly to try to raise children, and a part of that is all the costs that are involved in terms of educating their children. They've got all these fees they have to pay when they register them at the beginning of the year, and they've got to provide additional clothes and supplies and so on.

If we want to really talk about something we could do to support families, Mr. Speaker, how about looking at a provision in this School Act that doesn't have parents having to fork out hundreds of dollars before their students even get into the door at the beginning of the year? Another provision, Mr. Speaker. What about the whole area of learning resources: what kind of learning resources we're going to have and to what extent they'll be provided and in what manner they're going to be provided? There's virtually no men tion of that in the School Act, Mr. Speaker. Why is that?

Is it because just recently the Minister of Education decided to trash the regional film centres because she doesn't seem to believe in them, she doesn't seem to want to give them the priority the teachers in rural Alberta everywhere outside of Edmonton and Calgary have given them, and have supported them? The school boards have supported them by increasing allocations year after year because they provide a very valuable service to the teachers and the students in rural Alberta. They're not mentioned here. They have no legislative basis, no authority, so it makes it easy

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1687 for the minister to look at her budget in a difficult year and say, "Well, let's scratch that item." And by trying to save less than a million dollars in a very shortsighted way, it compromises the integrity of one of the best learning resources delivery systems in North America, bar none. Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Education and many members of her government like to talk about how Alberta is number one, and I'll be the first to admit that the network of regional film centres in the province was, in fact, one of the best in North America, bar none.

And why she has decided to eliminate their financial support and, I guess, a concomitant provision here -- they're not even provided for in the School Act -- indicates to me a disturbing lack of understanding about the importance of having good quality learning resources for the students of the province of Alberta, particularly in the rural areas. Another area I want to make some comment about is that in the School Act we don't have any reference to anything that talks about an intercultural or multicultural education policy, Mr. Speaker.

Now, that was recommended by the Ghitter report some years ago, and still we haven't got one. We've got some school districts who understand the multicultural reality that we're living in now and want to address that. They've imple mented policies in this regard in spite of a lack of leadership and direction from the provincial government. I would be interested to hear what the minister has to say about that and how much longer the educators of this province are going to have to wait for that, because many of them have indeed been waiting a long time.

We just had again this reference to this hatemonger re cently in his court decision, and surely that must convey to the minister, if nothing else does, the urgency of having a com prehensive policy for multicultural and intercultural education in the province of Alberta. Mr. Speaker, those are some of my comments about the Bill that is before us, and I would appreciate hearing some of the minister's responses to them. MR. ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Member for Edmonton-Highlands. MS BARRETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to add my comments to the second reading of Bill 27.

I was just looking at the comments of the minister, and I see that she was very excited in her presentation of the principles that she be lieves are supported by this Bill, and I note that she referred to certain sections in those comments, Mr. Speaker. I would like to point out that I'm not so sure I'm as excited as the minister is about the provisions of this Bill. For instance, one of the things that comes to mind right away is the direct reference to establishing the ward system for the election of school board trustees, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly have no personal objection to a ward system; it can often make a great deal of sense, especially in larger metropolitan centres. However, I do object to the minister having the power to impose a ward system where it is not wanted or where the people by and large have not asked for it. I wonder about the concept of a Bill in which the minister is granted that sort of power but a Bill which doesn't also include the option of directing a school board itself to conduct a plebiscite to test the waters, so to speak. It's not that the minister herself is necessarily bad-intentioned.

I don't believe she is, but I'm not sure that I could say that about other ministers in the same government, and I don't know that this minister is always going to occupy that position. No of fence to her -- she's a nice woman -- but I hope that in a few years it's going to be a New Democrat occupying that position. AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, heaven help us. MS BARRETT: Oh, I've elicited the comments from the peanut gallery, I see. That's very pleasing. I like to wake you up at 20 to 10 at night here, Mr. Speaker.

In any event, I think it's always wise to allow for a check and balance within legislation so that no minister gets carried away with the, I guess, monopolization of power, basically. Now, Mr. Speaker, there's one thing that I think should be in this Bill but isn't in this Bill -- and it is a substantive, principled issue -- and that is reference to financing. There are references to financing, but they have to do with equity financing between districts and divisions.

My concern is that there's no written commitment here for the Alberta government under its present administration to increase to the level of provincial funding for education we used to enjoy in Alberta. The reason, of course, I'm concerned is because I know that certain areas, certain school boards, are finding it increasingly difficult to raise the additional money they require by way of, you know, operating bingos or whatever other sort of gambling activity or goods- selling activity they can find.

I'm not convinced that the present level of funding is adequate at all, quite frankly, hovering around the 60 to 63 percent mark. The government itself commissioned a study some five years ago, the results of which recommended the provincial govern ment increase its level of financing of education to 85 percent. I believe that's very close to the level of funding the province had committed historically up until the Lougheed Conservatives took over.

It's not very often I want to give right-handed com pliments to the former members of the Social Credit govern ment, but I guess in this instance I have no choice, because they were the ones that had established a fairly high level of funding and prevented the need for communities and boards and individ ual schools, parents and children, to go like beggars from door to door selling chocolate bars or whatever or conducting bingos. I know it's been argued in this Assembly that that's good for the community: it gets them involved in education.

I, too, like to see people involved in education, whether or not they have children, in fact; I think it's a very good idea. But I think you have to ask yourself how far one individual, family, neighbour hood, city, or province can go in the direct fund-raising neces sary to maintain a good level of operation. As an example, I'd like to point out that about two weeks ago I visited the Eastglen junior high school in the riding of Edmonton-Highlands. I had a grand time. I went to every sin gle classroom while they were in progress; the principal took me around. It was very instructive.

For instance, when I was at the computer teaching class I noticed that they have Mac computers -- that is, Apple Macintosh computers -- but they have five- and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. Now, that seemed incongruous to me, although I confess I don't know all that much about com puters -- I operate a few of them when I'm not actually in this Chamber -- and I thought they were incompatible. And sure enough they are; that is, the five-and-a-quarter with the Macs.

I said, "Why is that?" He said, "Well, we haven't got enough money to bring our old equipment up to snuff with our new equipment, and that's the way we have to do it." Then I had a look at the way they had them plugged into electrical outlets that just weren't designed to take all those computers, and yet the school hasn't got the money, really, to upgrade its facilities. I was distressed to learn that the public health nurse who used to

1688 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 come at least one day a week, and at one time one and a half days a week, is now coming at a rate of one half day a week. And although that's not directly the responsibility of the minis ter, it seems to me that if we take a larger view of education, we would come up with principles that are more clearly set out and more clearly defined than those we find in Bill 27. As everybody knows, staffing has become a serious problem in our schools.

It is not that an individual teacher might not for one or two years be able to tolerate a very high student-to- teacher ratio; it's that the ongoing effect throughout the grades to the children is detrimental, Mr. Speaker, and in fact we've had that trend established and continuing now for about the last seven years. MR. ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please, hon. mem bers. It's very difficult for Hansard to pick up the debate of the hon. member when there are several conversations going on at the same time.

So in respect for our proceedings, I would ask hon. members if they must insist on speaking, to do so in a low voice. Hon. member. MS BARRETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, the student/teacher ratio, as everybody knows, has increased dramatically over the last several years, and it's my contention and the contention of professionals that this will be to the detriment of the students in the long run.

As everybody knows, having an educated work force is tantamount to having a very productive work force that can keep us on the edge of technological development, keep us on the edge of re search and related developments, and keep us on the edge of all the markets in the world that we're trying to obtain or retain.

I always think it's sort of, you know, penny-wise and pound-foolish to shortchange the funding in your education sys tem when you know that in the long run it is that very system itself which constitutes the greatest factor in the country's op portunities not only for prosperity but for intellectual, social, creative, and spiritual development. All of those things, I believe, are shortchanged when we don't take that view. And I don't really see that view being adopted, although I do credit the minister with having come in with substantial improvements over Bill 59.

I recall one letter I wrote about Bill 59 shortly af ter it was introduced, to a person who wrote in and said: "Jeez, can you really believe this Bill? You don't really support this do you, Pam?" And I wrote out and said, "As far as I can see, nobody outside the Getty cabinet supports this Bill." So I give the minister credit for having come back with a better Bill, but I alert her to the fact that there's an awful lot on the plate aside from school financing, which I believe is a fun damental principle which should be embraced by a Bill, consid ering how long we've waited for a new Bill.

I think it would be good to have the commitment to restoring the funding for community schools, and making a direct com mitment, following on the minister's observations that commu nity schools in a way are unfair to those who haven't gotten that designation, to allow all schools to have a special fund which they can use to keep their doors open in the evenings and on the weekends, and to facilitate community development.

As you know, community development has also taken a beating under what's been called -- euphemistically, I might add -- financial restraint of the Conservative government over the last six years, Mr. Speaker. If it's not being done through one area, it needs to be picked up through another, but you don't give the other area the resources, then one has to ask: is it being done at all? I think this is a prime opportunity for the minister to state in the

preamble of this Bill that the government's commitment is to establishing, basically, community school designation for all schools which apply, and I assume that all schools would apply if they knew that was their future.

The reason I think they would is because right now I see schools taking part of their an nual budget and instead of hiring an extra teacher to accommo date the additional demands and also to help reduce the student/ teacher ratio, what they're doing is designating one salary to a community liaison officer who is dedicated to working with children who present problems in the classroom and who very often represent problems that are reflective of their family lives.

These can range from children who are in abusive homes to those who are in very low-income homes in which the stress factor runs very high to those who simply aren't being fed prop erly at home for whatever reason, whether it's lack of income or parents who themselves might not be very literate or very func tional when it comes to making sure their children's diet might need to be balanced.

I'm not arguing that that's commonly the case, particularly the latter, but I am arguing that it's commonly the case that low-income parents who don't have two nickels to rub together have no choice but to send their kids to school with a diet that is insufficient to meet the demands of rapidly growing little bodies in which there are rapidly growing little brains just anxious to get learning but who are set back in their attempts to learn because they really are physically not as well as they can or should be.

I'd also, I guess, like to see a commitment from the minister to really tackling illiteracy here in Alberta. I know the minister has talked about equity in education and equality of access, and it's true her Bill constitutes a substantial improvement over its predecessor, Bill 59. But the fact of the matter is: we still have a high amount of illiteracy in Canada and in Alberta.

I would argue that additional commitments and funding for the training of those who are illiterate, whether completely illiterate or func tional illiterates -- of which it is estimated that there are some 60,000 or more in Alberta -- would be a welcome signal from the minister and from the government that they believe and un derstand that being literate is a vital factor in being a society which values learning, which values the instrument of language, which values the abilities that are built upon those skills, and which values the chances we can have in an ever more competi tive international economic environment.

It is true that the most literate group of people in Alberta and in Canada tend to be those who most recently left high school, but with the continual underfunding of education in Alberta, I fear the trend will actually be reversed and before long we will see that those who more recently left high school are starting to constitute a greater and greater part of Albertans who are illiterate. One of the most important factors contributing to illiteracy is the desire to leave school, and one has to ask what it is that is not being satisfied within the system that leads people to want out early, Mr. Speaker.

If it is the case, as I believe it is, that our schools' ability to keep pace with a rapidly changing envi ronment is diminishing in the face of reduced funding, then I think we've found the essence of the problem. The question then is: are we committed enough to answer that problem? I can speak safely on behalf of the New Democrat caucus in say ing yes, we are. There isn't a member in our caucus who would not set as a top priority moving towards -- and I do mean incremental and directly planned -- the 85 percent funding target

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1689 even within the first year of our government, Mr. Speaker, be cause we understand the importance of education to the overall scheme of our society and economy. So I regret the lack of ref erences in that regard. I also would point out that I think the minister's Bill which is currently before us for second reading fails to acknowledge the importance of multiculturalism in education. I'm not going to say the K word, Mr.

Speaker, but I've been very disturbed for the last 10 days about a certain Alberta Court of Appeal decision which has sent a cloud of regret, I believe, throughout the entire province. The issue is not race specific in my view; the issue is one which needs to be ever increasingly broadly addressed through as many channels as we possibly can. [Mr. Speaker in the Chair] I do not argue that the only solution is the addition of money.

I do, however, argue that the adoption of some of the recom mendations of the Ghitter report are insufficient to meet the challenge we are now facing by certain quarters in our society. And to that end I would argue that the Bill itself should embrace a commitment to develop the intercultural education foundation fund, Mr.

Speaker, because that fund and the programming commitment that could, with the political will, go with it may go a long way in preventing the need for this Legislature 10 and 20 years from now having to contemplate public education cam paigns or special committees of the Legislature or other commit tees which have to look at how it is that we promote a genuine sense of tolerance and respect for one another and for all groups, whether identified by socioeconomic stratification, race, relig ious affiliation, what have you. In some instances, Mr. Speaker -- I joke about it, but it could be in terms of height.

We have to look at this from a very broad perspective, and I believe the Bill fails inasmuch as it doesn't undertake a grasping commitment to developing interculturally sensitive education throughout the province on a systematic basis. The minister may argue that over the course of the last few years her department has gone through and vetted all curricula for, shall we say, intercultural insensitivity. That's a good start.

The native education project is a program that I most wholehear tedly endorse, but I find no reason that there couldn't be a stronger commitment in this Bill, given how long we've waited for it, to a greater commitment to that thrust in education. I be lieve all Albertans would benefit from it, Mr. Speaker. I point out that there are associations in Alberta such as the Alberta As sociation for Multicultural Education, which can be called upon for no end of recommendations when it comes to developing a policy or policy orientation or set of policies that would facilitate the government in this regard. Mr.

Speaker, I think the minister has gone a long way in sat isfying the concerns that had divided the public education sys tem subscribers from the separate education system subscribers, and I give credit to her in that regard. I had worried for some time under the condition of Bill 59 that I was watching yet an other instance of rather crudely devised Machiavellian technique administered by a Conservative government. As I've often said to the minister, I think she's on the wrong side of the House, and I think she ought to cross over on this side now that she's fixed that part of Bill 59, Mr. Speaker.

It was certainly a very conten tious part. So I would also congratulate the minister on recog nizing that the noneducable clause -- and I realize that I stand with some Conservatives in this regard -- was an unacceptable clause, and I'm glad that she listened to Albertans. I hope now, though, that she will listen to the rest of the con cerns of Albertans that were not incorporated into Bill 27, and that is, make a commitment and use her clout within cabinet to get the commitment for more adequate provincial financing for the education system, knowing that it will still come, Mr. Speaker, from other sources.

But one has to ask: at what ex pense? Are we wearing out our teachers, our parents, our volun teers, and our students as they go out either begging for or lob bying for funding when, in fact, the equitable basis upon which funding can and should be distributed is through the progressive income-tax-based tax system from which the Alberta govern ment derives several billion dollars in a year?

If there are in stances in which the Alberta government believes that it is inap propriate to spend that portion of its revenues on a nonequitable basis or on a basis which forces the other partner into collecting more and more of their operational revenues, I would urge that it not be in the fundamental areas of education and health care. They are fundamental, I guess, and sort of a cornerstone of an advanced industrial democracy, a future which I hope this gov ernment is not planning to very quickly abandon. And on that note, Mr.

Speaker, I think you can probably guess that we will have a number of more detailed concerns ex pressed in committee stage of this Bill, which I look forward to, but in the meantime urge the minister to listen to the concerns that have been raised by those who have argued strenuously against the cutting of community school budgets, those who have had to pay user fees whether they can or cannot afford them, those who have watched their property taxes and school user fees and volunteer fees and all the rest of it rise as the fi nancial commitment from the Alberta government has decreased. And finally, Mr.

Speaker, in the wake of recent events I en courage the minister to listen carefully to those who argue that there is one way, one surefire way, that we can make sure that in 10 and 20 years from now we don't have to have a debate about intolerance, lack of understanding, lack of respect, and possibly even what amounts to hatemongering. Use the education system to make the best of all Albertans, use the education system to the honour of all members of this Assembly and to the honour of all children, those who have been through our education sys tem and those who will in the future. AN HON. MEMBER: Question. MR.

SPEAKER: A call for the question. The Member for Vegreville. MR. FOX: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just a few comments, if I might, on the new School Act in second reading. I would like to join other members of the Assembly in commending the oft praised Minister of Education for her initiatives on this Bill. It is an improvement over the previous School Act, Bill 59, and I think that's got to be noted. I, as an elected member, had a number of concerns brought to my attention by Albertans who were very anxious about some provisions in Bill 59.

Certainly the one expressed most often was the clauses dealing with whether or not a person would be considered noneducable. And I think the way in which the new Bill deals with that sensitive area demonstrates very clearly that the minister and her staff have not only listened but they've re sponded to those concerns, and I'm encouraged by that. I notice also that the matter of corporate pooling of funds has been rejected by the minister, and I think that's indicative of

1690 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 how debate on principles germane to

an Act like this crosses party lines in some ways. Because I was at a meeting with a number of trustees from our part of Alberta and some other members of this Assembly; both Conservative and Liberal were at that meeting as well. This issue of corporate pooling was a contentious one, certainly amongst some members of the minis ter's own caucus. So, you know, there are debates that will go on at length on these things, and I think they're important debates. In terms of rural education I think a number of the changes proposed in the Act are good in that regard.

But, I think, from talking to parents and teachers and students in rural Alberta, the two concerns I hear expressed most often deal with -- well, first, with funding. And I'd be a lot more secure in my expressing support for the principles of this Bill in second reading if I had a clear indication of what the minister's intentions were vis-à-vis funding for rural education, a commitment to, you know . . . It says here that special funding to balance inequities will be a pri ority in future increases through the school foundation program.

That vague commitment isn't enough to make me or the people I represent feel secure, because there's no doubt that funding is becoming a very serious problem in a number of rural jurisdictions. It's got to do with a couple of things, I suppose. The minis ter and I have had some disagreement about who funds what and what the percentages are, but the minister maintains that the government's commitment to funding education has increased and that it's increased at a rate that exceeds the rate of inflation in education.

That may be true, but the point I try and make is that the government's share of the total cost of education has been declining and that that deficiency has to be made up by the local taxpayer. It's also no secret, Mr. Speaker, that people in rural Alberta are having a very difficult time making ends meet. It's unacceptable to me for this government to suggest that rural ratepayers ought to assume a greater and greater share of the provincial government's responsibility to provide basic quality education for children out in rural Alberta.

This problem is exacerbated by declining enrollment, and members who represent rural areas will know what I'm talking about. The school boards there not only have to cope with shift ing enrollment -- in the county of Beaver, for example, where there's a shift from the centre and east side of the county to the west side of the county towards Tofield, that creates challenges for them in terms of providing programs and keeping schools open and keeping options open for kids -- but some counties are confronting a dramatic decline in enrollment. The county of Two Hills is an example.

It has seen their student enrollment decline from something in the neighbourhood of about 1,500 pupils some 10 or 12 years ago down to just under 900 in this year. That creates a real challenge for the trustees and the teach ers in that school division to provide the kind of quality pro grams that parents demand and that students deserve in order to give them a fair shake at opportunities in the future. So this funding is an important issue, and I'm just not sure what the minister's intentions are in any sort of concrete way.

Parts of the Bill that make provisions for user fees I guess worry me in more than one way. Because I worry that we might find this government proposing in the future, Mr.

Speaker, that in the case of a school like Lavoy community school -- which was in danger of closing this year and I gather has been given a bit of a reprieve, hopefully for several years but at least for the next year -- if parents want to continue sending their children to a school like Lavoy in order to gain the benefits of a more inti mate educational environment, they may be forced by this gov ernment to absorb some additional and as yet unenunciated or undefined user fees for that kind of thing. I'm not sure.

I don't have any assurance to the contrary, so how can I confidently support all of the principles of this Bill? And it's no secret Mr. Speaker, that rural depopulation is a persistent theme of this government.

Indeed, the minister's own documents here that chart directions for educational programs, Directions to 1990, Alberta Education's Four Year Plan, state on page 5 that "there will be continuing migration from the rural areas to the urban centres." Alberta's rural population will de cline from 23 percent in 1981 to no less than 14 percent in the year 2001, if I might quote figures from their policy document Caring & Responsibility, this blueprint for the future. That amounts to 93,000 Albertans, Mr. Speaker, and it seems to sur face again and again in government documents and doesn't raise concern.

But it raises grave concern with me and members of my caucus, because that paints a very bleak picture for people living in rural Alberta and certainly a bleak picture for small rural communities that are doing their very best to exist. I sub mit that when decisions are made about funding, special con sideration has got to be given for the challenges confronted by rural school divisions. How can we ensure some sort of equal ized opportunity for students in rural areas to make sure that they have as much chance to succeed as their confreres in large urban centres? I think, Mr.

Speaker, I would raise another issue that isn't totally within the purview of this Bill, but certainly there's inter action between the School Act and the County Act in terms of jurisdiction for rural education. I hear a growing concern in the country for the makeup of school boards. There is, I think, con siderable support amongst rural ratepayers now for a position advanced by the Alberta Teachers' Association that proposes that everyone who serves as a school trustee ought to be elected as a school trustee.

You know the situation currently: if you're elected as a county councillor, you serve as school trustee. And in some ways you have double power in that regard, because being a member of the county council, you have the ultimate fiscal power over the school board. So you look at a school board like the county of Minburn. The town of Vegreville, with almost half of the money contrib uted in terms of taxes towards schools, in terms of having al most half the students in the county of Minburn, ends up with only two of, I think, 14 trustees on the school board.

And those two trustees don't have the ultimate power when it comes to making funding decisions. The decisions made by the school board can be ratified or, indeed, overturned by the county coun cil. So we have a school board that would make decisions about supplementary requisition, that decision would be conveyed to a municipal jurisdiction like the town of Vegreville, and the town of Vegreville would have no choice but to raise taxes in that same degree. But as far as the county of Minburn, they don't have to do that.

They can make their own decisions about whether or not they raise the mill rate, and the minister is well aware of some problems that that has caused. The county decided on, I think, three successive years not to increase the supplementary requisi tion. They went through a general assessment that caused peo ple's taxes to increase generally, so they were a little bit gun-shy and reluctant to pick up the slack in terms of this government's declining commitment to paying their share of the total cost of education.

So we've ended up with quite a desperate situation in the county of Minburn that I know the minister's aware of

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1691 and has been attempting to alleviate, where the board is faced with quite a substantial deficit. They're trying to cope with that deficit by . . . DR. WEST: A point of of order, Mr. Speaker, under Standing Order 23. At the present time there's an investigation going on in the county of Minburn in the school board, and I wonder if he's not talking about a subject that is counterindicated under 23(g)(ii): that is before any quasi-judicial, administrative or investigative body constituted by the Assembly or by or under the authority of

an Act of the Legislature. MR. FOX: The evaluation system going on in the county of Minburn, as directed by the minister herself -- I don't think that constitutes a quasi-judicial body in those terms. But I will wrap up my remarks just by reiterating my concern for funding for rural education, because I think it's something we can all agree on, that we want to provide absolutely the best possible opportunity for children in Alberta to succeed.

We want to make sure that they've got a chance to develop their skills and their aptitudes and abilities, and I believe that over the last few years their opportunity to do that in some parts of rural Alberta has been jeopardized. I think that we as members in this Assembly ought to be doing all we can to address that inequity. I leave that concern with the minister and hope it's something we have a chance to talk about in more depth at future opportunities. MR. SPEAKER: Call for second reading? Call for the question? SOME HON. MEMBERS: Question. MR. SPEAKER: May the minister make some summation of some sort?

Hon. minister, closing the debate. MRS. BETKOWSKI: Mr. Speaker, I will resist the temptation of going into some of the issues which will more appropriately be dealt with in Committee of the Whole, but I did wish to re¬ tum to some of the principles that have been discussed around tonight. I'm reminded of a young student who said to me that he didn't mind school; it was simply the principal of the thing.

But with respect to the principle of equity and the fear on the part of some members of the opposition who have spoken that although they support the principle, they fear that it may not be met, I want to remind all hon. members that this is the first time that the principle of equity has been embodied in school legisla tion. And it is in fact a very strong commitment, a message from this government that we believe and, further, that the prov ince will meet the inequities that exist, and that clearly is a clear commitment.

When members talk about the panacea which they perceive that an 85/15 formula or a 90/10 or 80/20 or whatever is the result -- when they see that as a fine solution for all of the difficulties, several questions arise. Firstly is one of who is go ing to be the advocate on that side of the House for the controls that would be required in order for the province to fund 85/15 funding. And the Member for Edmonton-Strathcona addressed this issue very plainly when he said that the province cannot simply let go of the purse strings and fund whatever the school boards fund and . . . MR.

SPEAKER: Perhaps we could have order in the House. Thank you. MRS. BETKOWSKI: . . . to the degree of 85 percent. Secondly, I think it's important to say that the ability of school boards to supplement what the province provides, what ever that figure is -- the 15, the 20, whatever -- is where the inequity exists. And members of the opposition, despite the fact that some of them have indicated that they've read and under stood the issues that were identified in the options paper, I ques tion whether they did; at least their expressions here today have not addressed that issue.

I believe the issue of equity can be met. I also believe that it is not necessarily a matter of only dollars but rather must in volve creative solutions, solutions which are not based on yesterday's abilities to meet challenges but rather on tomor row's. Addressing of that issue by this government is a commit ment that we make, and anybody who says that the province cannot in fact meet those inequities underestimates our commit ment to it. The principle of flexibility has caused a good deal of discus sion here today, and I guess in particular by the hon.

Member for Calgary-Buffalo, who I can only assume does not support, nor do his Liberal colleagues support, the principle of flexibility which we have embodied as one of the five. Because this mem ber and this caucus would argue that there should not be public funding for private schools, that there should not be alterative programs. And those who would purport to save public educa tion do it a great disservice when they attempt to define and therefore limit what is public education in this province. My faith in the public system is strongly based.

I believe that in fact the public system will respond to the needs of all in order that people will not opt into a private system. Certainly that is what we are encouraging. Our faith is in the public system. I do want to correct a few misleading facts which the mem ber has put before this Assembly. When he says, for example, that private school enrollment has been increasing over the past several years, I can tell him that in fact it has dropped over the last three.

When he indicates that school councils could poten tially be a delegation of all school board authority, he hasn't, obviously, read the Act, because in fact that couldn't happen. But secondly, those are school councils and a school board which may well be delegating some of its authority because it's duly elected by the people of the area to do so. As well, encouraging the growth of private schools is done by provinces funding education.

That is simply not borne out in fact across Canada, where some of those provinces which sim ply do not fund private education have in fact seen a far greater growth than we have experienced in Alberta. The question of flexibility is a fundamentally important one. And who agrees with those principles? Well, certainly the Su preme Court of Canada does, and as a province we believe that when the supreme court of the land has adjudicated on the mat ter of freedom of choice within the overall jurisdiction of educa tion being with the province, we must respond. And we have responded in Bill 27.

There were also a couple of points that I just want to address, and those are the limitations in the Charter. The Member for Edmonton-Strathcona asked wherein there ever was another statute which spoke to limitations. I refer him to

section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Finally, I want to just speak to the Member for Calgary- Mountain View and his arguments that the principle of flexibil ity should not mean that the principle of accountability is

1692 ALBERTA HANSARD June 13, 1988 dropped. I agree with him; there is certainly a balance. But I don't understand, therefore, his argument that the principle of flexibility should be hyperextended to the degree that it has been in the instance that he cited with respect to the Jewish schools in Calgary, where we had category 1 registered private schools being given full funding from the province plus a designation of taxes. I think that in fact accountability has been lost and an inconsistency has been created by those, and I'd welcome dis cussing the matter with the member when he's happy to do so.

Finally, I can tell and assure the hon. Member for Edmonton-Highlands that I am on the right side of the House and that I am proud to serve this Premier with this caucus and this cabinet, and there is nowhere else I'd rather be. And in closing, I would like to say I look forward to the committee study and to move, Mr. Speaker, second reading of Bill 27. [Motion carried; Bill 27 read a second time] Bill 22 Labour Relations Code [Adjourned debate on amendment to motion for second reading, June 10: Mr. Ewasiuk] MR. SPEAKER: Call for the question? Member for St. Albert, on the amendment MR. STRONG: Thank you, Mr.

Speaker. It's a pleasure for me to rise this evening and speak to the amendment placed before the Assembly by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Norwood, that amendment being that this Assembly decline to give a second reading to Bill 22, the Labour Relations Code, because the House believes . . . MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. We don't need to have it read to the House. Thank you. Please, just on with the debate. MR. STRONG: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to read it into the record. MR. SPEAKER: Order, thank you, hon. member. Please, just go on with the debate. MS BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

For the pur poses of clarity when it comes to the reading of Hansard on a given day, there is no rule that says that a member cannot repeat the amendment to which she or he is speaking. I think that given the brevity of the amendment, Mr. Speaker, the Member for St. Albert certainly has a right to read it and remind people, and not only that, be on the record as having stated which amendment, for the purposes of clarity. MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. However, in the process of the last week the Chair has directed more than one member not to read the motion or the amendment, the sub- amendment.

That is indeed what the Chair has directed, and the Chair looks forward to what the hon. member has to say about the amendment. MS BARRETT: Then refer to what the amendment . . . MR. SPEAKER: It's not a challenge. Thank you, hon. member. Is this a new point of order? MR. McEACHERN: No, I think it's a little different aspect to it. I would . . . MR. SPEAKER: I'm sorry, hon. member. St. Albert, please. MR. STRONG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Basically, what the amendment says, Mr. Speaker, is that: the Bill should be consonant in all its particulars with the pro visions of the . . . Charter of Rights.

I guess I'll begin my remarks, Mr. Speaker, by asking the minister whether any work was done through the Attorney Gen eral's department in seeing that all the provisions of the legisla tion that we have before us was researched and, indeed, in com pliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I think, Mr.

Speaker, what I'll do is I'll go back to the final report of the Labour Legislation Review Committee where it says in the gen eral policies that were supported by the participants on page 85 that: Albertans support the system of free collective bargaining as the best mechanism for determining terms and conditions of employment, where employees voluntarily choose to act in concert through a bargaining agent. And, Mr.

Speaker, I'll ask the minister: in all those proc esses of free collective bargaining did the minister bother to take the time to check with legal counsel, check with the Attorney General to see that all the provisions of his Bill, the Bill that we have before us, Bill 22, the new Labour Relations Code, indeed do comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? It's very important that that does happen.

Is there any area where the minister has got any information to say that these particular pro visions he's got in his legislation do conflict with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, again, from the Attorney General or any other legal authority that indicated to this government or this minister that indeed it falls into the amendment proposed by the hon. Leader of the Opposition in any area? I think, Mr. Speaker, we can go on that: . . . mechanisms such as extensive use of compulsory arbitra¬ tion are not considered appropriate.

That is, are there any areas in the arbitration processes that are contained in the legislation that we have before us that are in conflict of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada? I think that's what I'd ask the minister. We can go on further, Mr. Speaker, under General Policies Supported by Participants, in

section B, item (iii), where it says: Albertans support the principle that ongoing or direct govern ment involvement in the employee-employer relationship must be minimized. Mr. Speaker, I'll again ask the Minister of Labour has the min ister got any legal authority, including the Attorney General, to go through Bill 22 to see that it indeed does not violate any of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that Canadians and Al bertans have come to enjoy over the years? Is there any inter ference there of people's rights?

It says: Employees and employers are best able to determine the nature of their relationship in the context of the market environment of the particular enterprise. Well, Mr. Speaker, the minister has placed in some areas of the legislation certainly what I view and many of my constituents view as things that do interfere, things that create an unbalanced

June 13, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 1693 market environment, and certainly things that they believe are in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And that's exactly what the amendment states. It states that all the legisla tion should be consonant in all its particulars with the . . . Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mr. Speaker, we feel that this Bill fails in many of those regards, specifically when it interferes with things that are best dealt with between employees and employers. It goes on further to say, Mr. Speaker: Albertans support a limited role for labour relations solutions imposed through judicial

interpretation of . . . [the] law. Certainly I can support that, but again, in the legislation that we have before us, does that statement "in the legislation" conflict with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that Canadians and Albertans have come to enjoy? Because I believe, in some of the areas, that it certainly does.

If the minister has checked it and referred it to the Attorney General or a labour relations practitioner or legal counsel to get a determination, then cer tainly that determination should have been placed before us in this Legislative Assembly by the Minister of Labour to see that it does indeed comply in all manners and methods with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in this country. It says: The capacity to resolve disputes arising in the labour relations system is best left with an informed and credible quasi-judicial tribunal such as the Labour Relations Board.

Again, what I'd like to ask the minister is: did the minister check with Mr. Andy Sims, who is the chairman of the Labour Relations Board, to get his determination as to whether or not any, all, or some aspects of the legislation that we have before us is in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada? Again, Mr. Speaker, that's exactly what the amend ment proposes. I'll go on further: Those most directly affected by the labour relations system, employers and employees, must be able to understand and di rectly participate in the resolution of disputes. Mr.

Speaker, we've been through this in some of the areas of the legislation before. That input is totally denied in many areas of what the minister has put before us in Bill 22. Employees are not always able to have input, specifically union members and unions, where they are denied that input in some areas where this legislation seeks to take away rights and freedoms that should be enjoyed by all working Albertans.

I think that's ex actly what the amendment speaks to: we see an interference here, and what we are asking this minister and this government for is to be assured that this government and this minister have done their homework and indeed checked with legal authority -- got a determination from legal authority -- in order to determine whether or not all provisions of the legislation that we see be fore us are indeed in full compliance with that Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In addition to that, Mr.

Speaker, we see a number of major concerns that were spoken to by many individuals who appeared before the public hearings that

Document details

Collection	Alberta — Debates (Hansard)
Citation	19880613
Type	hansard
Volume / chapter	L21 S3 19880613 2000 01 han.pdf
Language	en
Format	json
Source	PROVINCIAL
Identifier	6ec6f74ef3e21ed42b9e020009bc941294acc2d0

Source file is stored in the law ingest library (json).