HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)
Mr. Chuck Porter (Vice-Chair)
Mr. Keith Bain
Mr. Graham Steele
Mr. David Wilson (Sackville-Cobequid)
Mr. Keith Colwell
Mr. Leo Glavine
Ms. Diana Whalen
WITNESSES
Nova Scotia Community College
Dr. Joan McArthur-Blair, President
Mr. Robert Shedden, Vice President, Administrative Services
Mr. Jamie Hilts, Vice President, Academic
In Attendance:
Ms. Darlene Henry
Legislative Committee Clerk
Ms. Sherri Mitchell
Committees Office
Mr. Jacques Lapointe
Auditor General
Mr. Terry Spicer
Assistant Auditor General
Mr. Gordon Hebb
Chief Legislative Counsel
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HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2009
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
9:00 A.M.
CHAIR
Ms. Maureen MacDonald
VICE-CHAIR
Mr. Chuck Porter
MADAM CHAIR: Good morning. I'd like to call the committee to order, please. I apologize for the delay in getting underway. Before we begin the proceedings as we had planned, I'd like to explain to our members and our guests that we do have a procedural problem. The procedural issue is whether or not a member of Cabinet can sit as part of the Public Accounts Committee.
My decision, as Chair of this Committee, is that no, a member of Cabinet cannot sit as a member of this committee and I will indicate the thinking on this. There are three components to my decision. First, in the rules of our Legislature, Rule (5A) says, "With the exception of the Attorney General, who shall serve as Chairman of the Law Amendments Committee, no Minister shall be appointed to a Standing Committee established for the purpose of considering matters normally assigned to or within the purview of that Minister or that Minister's Department."
Now this committee has a mandate to examine every government department and therefore, that eliminates the ability of a member of Executive Council to participate in the proceedings of this committee. That's the first reasoning that I would have.
The second reasoning I would have is the precedent and the practice of this committee. For the 11 years that I've been a member of this Legislature, no minister has sat as a member of this standing committee. Minutes from November 3, 1993, indicate that by consensus, the Parties of the day had agreed that ministers and Party Leaders would volunteer to withdraw from membership on this committee. Those members who have chosen to withdraw from the committee will be replaced by other members of their caucuses.
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It was further agreed that the structural change in membership would be formulated on a future date. From the past 11 years on, there has been no participation of ministers and I would assume that was because it was agreed at that time.
[9:15 a.m.]
The final piece of information on which I make my decision is that after the 2006 election, when committees were reconstituted, the striking committee made up of all members of this House, of all Parties represented in this House, met and agreed that because of the reduced numbers of members on the government backbench to serve on committees, the rules would be relaxed and that Cabinet Ministers, indeed, could sit on all of the standing committees of this House, with the exception of the Public Accounts Committee. That is a decision that was reached by consensus, that is the practice that we have been using and therefore, I think it is regrettable that we're in a situation now where we have to use valuable time for our witnesses here today on an important topic to deal with this procedural matter.
At any rate, that is the dilemma we have, that is my thinking on this but I'm certainly open to hear from the members with respect to any concerns that you may have around that. So, is there any discussion? Mr. Bain.
MR. KEITH BAIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate your bringing this forward. You make reference in Rule 5A to the membership of committees and a minister or a member of Cabinet can't be present but today, when you look at our witnesses - the person who is in attendance, our witnesses have nothing to do with his portfolio.
I can understand when the Auditor General is giving his report, all departments of government are covered at that time but today's witnesses who are presenting to us have nothing to do with the Cabinet Minister who is in attendance.
I would like to, if I could, ask you to ask our legal counsel to give us an opinion on this.
MADAM CHAIR: Before we have any more discussion with respect to a legal opinion, I'd like to hear from the members with respect to this matter. Is there anybody else who would like to make a comment?
Mr. Hebb, would you like to make a comment?
MR. GORDON HEBB: I'll make a few comments. I believe there are three points and I'll try to address each of them. The provision in the rule respecting ministers sitting on committees - certainly my understanding of how that rule has been interpreted is that a minister can't sit on a committee while the committee is considering that minister's portfolios.
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There's a bit of a quandary there with - if it were interpreted in a broader way, a minister wouldn't be able to sit on a committee even if the committee were considering other portfolios that had nothing to do with that particular minister. My understanding is that it has been read in the narrower sense.
As far as the precedents go, from 1993, I certainly haven't been in attendance at all the meetings and can't speak to that in particular but I do recall attending one meeting, which would have been in 1994 or later, where I believe a Minister of the Crown sat at Public Accounts and an objection was raised. I don't believe the minister actually left the meeting, but that would require some research to see if that's the case.
I can't make any comment on the striking committee - I don't participate there and so I don't know what agreement. I don't know if that's some guidance but that's - really, I have nothing further to add.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. So we've heard from Legislative Counsel. There isn't a clear rule to rely on. It is, I think, subject to examining and weighing the practice as well as the interpretation of the rule. What we've heard from Legislative Counsel is that the rule can certainly be interpreted to take meaning that a minister will not sit on any committee that in its mandate could examine the minister's department, which is a broader way of looking at that rule and it's the way that I interpret that rule. As the chair of the committee, I would basically say that is my ruling - that ministers do not sit on the Public Accounts Committee, haven't sat on the Public Accounts Committee for the past 11 years and should not be sitting here today.
I want to be clear, this is not anything personal with respect to the minister who has been here today. He has been a valuable member of this committee and we were all very sad to see you leave this committee.
At any rate, what we're concerned about here and we need to be clear about this, is the principle, the principle of the integrity of the Public Accounts Committee in the Province of Nova Scotia. In keeping with the best practices of Public Accounts Committees that are being developed across the country - I sit on the committee that's developing the national standards - Public Accounts Committees are being encouraged to have Ministers of the Crown absolved from participation in these processes, for this particular committee. I think we would be taking a very huge step backward if we were to move away from that principle.
We are a leader in the country with respect to having our committee constituted of members of the Legislature who are not members of Executive Council, examining the expenditures of government and the choices made by Executive Council. For that reason I really feel fairly strongly that we uphold the principle of the best practices of how a Public Accounts Committee should operate; it would be a huge step backward for us. With that, I
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would respectfully request that the minister absent himself from this Chamber today. Thank you.
I'd like now to call the meeting to order and we will begin in the usual manner which is - for members who are here today for the first time - we will have introductions from the members, from the Auditor General and staff and yourselves, to introduce yourselves. I would ask you not to move your microphones around - they've been calibrated for the purpose of Legislative TV. A small red light will come before you speak - sometimes that's hard to see, but if you just sort of notice. I will try to identify who is going to be speaking if the member asking questions hasn't done that. So without further ado, Mr. Steele.
[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much and welcome to our witnesses. Before we start, there's just one other little point of procedure I want to point out. It's normally not the practice, in fact, it's against our practice to have props on the floor of the Legislature. With the indulgence of members, we will make an exception for this time only. Is that okay? Yes, agreed, thank you very much.
So with that, Dr. McArthur-Blair, we would ask if you would like to make an opening statement.
DR. JOAN MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Yes, I would. It's our pleasure to be here this morning before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I think the college brings to you this morning what has been an extraordinarily good-news story of partnership between governments in all aspects, industries of Nova Scotia and the college over the last years that the master plan has been in place.
The standing committee invited us to speak regarding the master plan and that's exactly what I'm going to refer to. I'm going to be speaking from a document that was sent to you, it is a PowerPoint, and it says Nova Scotia Community College Master Plan on the front. There are a couple of things that I wanted to say before we get to how the master plan was actually utilized and I will, Madam Chair, hold myself to five minutes.
I think the mission statement of the college is worth spending a moment on. The mission statement of the college is not created by the college, but it is embedded in the Community Colleges Act and it is, "Building Nova Scotia's economy and quality of life through education and innovation." We hold this mission very dear because it is both about building economies and ensuring that Nova Scotians have a quality of life. It is both about education and being on the cutting edge of education and research, and we guide our work through our mission statement.
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A couple of years ago we put a new strategic plan in place and created a new vision and that vision is, education without boundaries. We believe that flexibility, the capacity to train, to retrain, to never have to cycle back in education, is a critical aspect for the future of Nova Scotia and education in general around the world, and we're guiding our work through that vision.
I want to draw your attention to the capital cost breakdown of the $123 million build- out of the college. I want to thank the members of this committee, I want to both thank them and apologize for bringing props to the Legislature floor. We thought that not all of you would have spent time on the 13 campuses of the Nova Scotia Community College; many of you are familiar with Waterfront but not other places. What you see before you is the transformation of the $123 million build-out of the college.
Before I refer to every campus, I want to tell you that every one of these renovations, through the guidance of the man on my left, the Vice-President of Administrative Services, was on time and on budget from beginning to end. I think that is a powerful stewardship thing that the college undertook, both for myself and the previous president, to utilize the money provided to us by the taxpayers of Nova Scotia well.
If you look at the Phase I build-out - and the build-out of the Nova Scotia Community College under the master plan is in two phases - Phase I, Akerley, we spent $5 million at Akerley, particularly on the interior of Akerley, undertaking a new culinary centre and upgrading labs and so on; AVC Middleton, slightly over $800,000, and AVC Lawrencetown, $475,000, and people would know Middleton and Lawrencetown as the centre of the college's research and geographic science and also the centre for geographic science.
Burridge, $850,000; Cumberland, slightly over $500,000; Kingstec - and you'll see the picture of Kingstec either in front or behind me - a massive renovation which tore the front off the building, an extraordinarily old building with a deteriorating infrastructure, we spent a considerable amount of money renovating it. Lunenburg, upgrade of labs and so on; Marconi, also an upgrade of labs, the interior of the building; Pictou Campus, also a building that was in very bad shape, we also tore the front off of Pictou Campus and made it an entirely different building.
I might pause here and say I think that this is one of the innovative things that the college undertook. We took buildings, many of which had been built in the 1960s and 1970s - not a particularly lovely period of architecture, if I might say - and turned them into state-of-the-art community college buildings. This was a powerful undertaking, to make our labs, our classrooms and our buildings look like the education the rest of the country had in community college education.
The Shelburne Campus, slightly under $500,000; the Strait Area Campus, over $2 million, and the Strait Area Campus - people would know that the Strait Area Campus is the
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home of the School of Fisheries and the Nautical Institute - has some extraordinarily high-tech undertakings.
[9:30 a.m.]
The Truro Campus, again we had to take the face off of one of our buildings and renovate it, also renovated the insides of our labs and classrooms. The Waterfront Campus, which is probably the one you're most familiar with, $49 million to build a brand-new building on the waterfront. I think everyone is proud of that building and the environmental stewardship that building has brought.
You'll notice a little item there called transition. During all of this we have been, of course, putting all of our hearts and minds to the service of learners and we have people who have a home - I was going to say they didn't have a home - but they don't have a home inside of campus. We have several leased spaces around metro where we hold our administrative services.
Phase II, Akerley, we built a new Transportation Centre at Akerley, a state-of-the-art Transportation Centre. It's not often talked about in Nova Scotia but transportation trades is one of the most profound skill shortages in the province.
The Waterfront Campus Centre for the Built Environment, which is currently under construction, I want to tell you is, so far, on time and on budget. We will open in September 2010, a $24 million state-of-the-art building unlike anything in the country, in terms of its green-living lab capacity to undertake education in the built environment. So that's the capital cost piece.
If you go to the next page you see the operating numbers of students' growth, where we were prior to the master plan and how many students that we grew, 2,060 students. I want to kind of skip over that page because I think the enrolment changes on the next page are perhaps of more clarity and interest to people. You can see where we were in 2002 and where we are in 2008. We have responded directly to the needs of Nova Scotia's economy by growing rapidly, trades technology, health and human services. These are the two largest demand areas.
If you move to the next page it shows the growth by economic region. Nova Scotia Community College serves the province, we are 13 campuses strong. We take our commitment to rural Nova Scotia and metro Nova Scotia very, very seriously and we grow across.
MADAM CHAIR: Order. Can I ask you to maybe wrap up the opening statement quickly.
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DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Sorry, I will. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'll just skip to the next page. It shows enrolment growth and actual growth, by the master plan. We have exceeded expectations placed on us by the province by a considerable number of students, almost 500 students, and we have done that through financial stewardship.
So I will stop my comments there. I will return to where I began. I think this has been a powerful partnership between industry, the province and the college. Thank you, Madam Chair.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Hopefully, we'll have an opportunity to ask you more questions and you'll have an opportunity to bring out the content that you were hoping to have in your opening statement.
Mr. Steele, the opening round of questions is going to be 25 minutes per caucus - not the opening, we'll have one round, unless members of the committee want to extend this session. So 25 minutes per caucus. Mr. Steele.
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Thank you very much and welcome to all of our guests. I want to say right off the top that we agree, the Nova Scotia Community College is a good-news story. In a recent speech to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce the NDP Leader said it was ". . . one of the most important parts of our economic infrastructure." I certainly concur with that.
It seems that every time I run into somebody associated with the community college, I learn some wonderful new aspect of the work that's going on at the community college. Recently, in my capacity as Environment Critic for the NDP, I've had occasion to talk to a number of people about things to do with renovations and the environment. They have two people in widely different contexts, from outside the college, who have both praised in the highest terms the environmental engineering technology course, which is a new course for the community college and is another example of how the college is responding to emerging needs.
A few weeks ago I attended the annual dinner of the Offshore/Onshore Technologies Association of Nova Scotia and had the good fortune to run into Sterling Feener there. I learned something that I didn't know before and that is that the Nova Scotia Community College is training the world, that they are coming to Nova Scotia, that companies are sending people from all over the world here to Nova Scotia to be trained in offshore technology. I never knew that before and it's a wonderful sign of how we are not only a leader in Canada but a leader in the world.
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Now, a lot of people say that and they are exaggerating. The community college, when they say they are a world leader, they are not exaggerating.
I also would mention, Dr. McArthur-Blair, that I know you were on the Rex Murphy show on the CBC recently and it's wonderful for us to hear a Nova Scotia voice talking to the country knowledgeably about what is going on with the labour force, with training, with education and I congratulate you for really presenting yourself and Nova Scotia and the community college extremely well to the whole country.
Really, things changed significantly under the leadership of Ray Ivany and the team which he built around him, which included Bob Shedden. I had the good fortune in the past to work with Bob at another organization, where I was the general counsel and he was the director of finance, so I know that Bob is a gentleman, an excellent leader in terms of finance. So when you say, Dr. McArthur-Blair, that you want to compliment him for leading that, I can understand why that would happen, because you have a very fine person in charge of your finance and administration.
I understand Mr. Hilts is relatively new to Nova Scotia, I welcome him to Nova Scotia. He's just another Prairie boy who has come to settle in Nova Scotia, just like me. And, Dr. McArthur-Blair, you have carried on the tradition started by Ray Ivany and, with the team that you have around you, are taking it even further and I congratulate you all for that.
What I want to spend all or most of my time on this morning has to do with the issue of waiting times. Now, there are two dimensions to waiting times and one is by program and one is by geographic location or, in other words, by campus. I want to start by talking about waiting times by program.
I have in front of me - and I'm sorry that I don't have copies but I'll certainly get copies made for others later - a detailed list of waiting times at the Nova Scotia Community College, as of February 18, 2009. It's listed by program and by campus, so it's just slightly over a month old. What it shows is that waiting times vary quite considerably by program and also by campus. I want to explore with you exactly what the issues are around waiting times.
Now, before I get into the details of this, I want to give you an opportunity to answer a more open-ended question, which is, what are the challenges of waiting times that you are aware of and what is it that the community college is doing about them?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: First let me say that I think in 2002, prior to me coming here, when we started the master plan, really the building of a community college in Nova Scotia, even though by the Act the college was there before that, I don't think anyone ever
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imagined there would be 10,500 full-time students and almost 15,000 part-time students. So our growth has been so fast and so exponential.
I think that the wait times are a profound issue for the college. The college believes that everybody who has the capacity, we should be able to accommodate them. We also want to be strategic. We do not want to find ourselves in the position of having greater capacity than those people who need advanced skills in Nova Scotia. So currently we do have wait lists in many programs; no big surprise to the people on this committee, those programs are in trades, particularly electrical, construction, those kinds of trades, they are in health, but right across even in some of our arts programs we have wait lists. The college is doing everything it can with its primary partners - the Skills and Learning Branch in Labour and Workforce Development and, of course, the Department of Education which is our primary partner - to begin to build a long-term plan to reduce the wait lists.
At this time of year it is very hard for us to predict what September will bring. We have put in place for students many options to try to help them. One is first, second and third options, so they can apply for multiple programs. We also help them consider moving geographically around the province - some people are able to be mobile, some are not. I was talking to a young woman, for example, from metro who took her electrical program in Shelburne, so we try to help people be as mobile as possible - for some people that's possible and some it's not. Within the constraints we have we're doing everything we can to make sure people aren't sitting on wait lists. We're also working very diligently with our partner, the Department of Education, to begin to look at those wait lists and the fact that the college does need to continue to grow to serve the economy of Nova Scotia.
MR. STEELE: It's apparent to me looking at the list that in some cases and some programs there's an issue about where the places are available and you alluded to that a bit in your answer. Let me give some specific examples. For the carpentry diploma there is a wait list at five of your campuses, but there are openings at the Burridge and Cumberland Campuses. Another example might be plumbing, for which there is a waiting list everywhere except for the Shelburne Campus and so on, and I could pick out other examples like that. What capacity, if any, does the college have to make the places available where they are needed, rather than having the current situation where there are some campuses where the program is full and other places where there are still openings? How much capacity, if any, do you have to fix that problem?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: The college is very flexible in terms of moving programs around the province. That said, we also have a responsibility to local communities that need people living in that community with advanced skills, so we weigh those two responsibilities very, very seriously. Every local community needs plumbers, so you don't just do that work by population demographic, so we undertake to weigh that back and forth.
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I'm going to let Jamie speak about the ways in which we work with students to encourage them, for example, to go to Shelburne, or to another campus when there is an opportunity. We also have to realize that these are February stats and by the time we get to the summertime, those programs will be filled and most of them will be filled with students from their local area.
MR. JAMIE HILTS: Thank you, Joan. I think there are a couple of things that Joan has already touched on, but specifically we do realize that as we move across the province as a whole within the college that we do see programs within campus by campus that do have a higher demand. Certainly, right now, some of the trades programs, and specifically carpentry and plumbing are two of them.
A couple of things that we need to be cognizant of all of the time is that we do have limited space, limited resources within each of the individual campuses and we need to make sure that we can do everything we can to accommodate students, not just within one particular area but within the five different schools that exist within the college. So for us to address situations like plumbing, like carpentry, a couple of things that we're trying to do is work with the learners to help them maybe adjust to a transition or move from the metro region into a Shelburne, into a Burridge, into a Strait Area program. What we want to be able to do is help with the learners to identify the fact that there are spaces available for the programs of their choice at other locations besides the communities that they live in.
We do recognize and appreciate the fact that learners would like to be able to take the program of their choice in their home communities, but when space has become a premium we need to do everything that we can to help them make that adjustment. The benefit of that is actually twofold. One for the learner, that he or she might be able to actually access the program of their choice sooner than having to wait for an opening at a later time, and the value to that community is there's a potential that upon graduation those learners who have access to that program actually might stay in that community. So I think, again, there's a need for us to be very diligent and very cognizant of assisting these learners to be able to look at opportunities throughout Nova Scotia as a whole and not just within one particular area of their choosing.
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I might add, just before we move to another question, the college in the last 24 months in particular has been working very hard on what we call our flexibility agenda, to ensure that communities have the programs that they need. As part of that, and specifically related to wait lists, we are rotating programs. What that means is that in a smaller community we will take a practical nursing program, a trades program into that community and let it stay there for two years and then remove it from that community and move it to a different community. This is allowing people to take the education they need in the community in which they live and it has been very successful and the response has been very powerful.
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[9:45 a.m.]
This is quite unique to us, a lot of people from across the country are beginning to ask us about our rotating programs and how we're doing that, because many jurisdictions across the country have both urban and rural in their catchment area and we've been very successful. We piloted it a couple of years ago and now we're adding more and more programs to that suite.
MR. STEELE: So I started by talking about programs where there's a mismatch between how many places there are and where those places are located. I now want to look at another aspect of this waiting-list-by-program issue. In a program like the electrical construction and industrial certificate, there is a waiting list at every single campus at which that program is offered, so clearly there's not enough space to match the demand. What is the community college doing to deal with that issue, where clearly more space is needed?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I'm going to let Jamie respond to electrical specifically. I started off talking about the partnership between government, industry and the college. Wait lists for us are also viewed through the lens of what industry needs. Electrical is an interesting example and Jamie is probably going to talk more about this. Industry is saying it needs so many electrical people in Nova Scotia, we have this huge demand on the wait list that actually outweighs what the industry is saying the economy needs. So we're trying to help those students kind of think about maybe aircraft engineering instead and we're trying to work with some of those students to think about second and third choices.
We also have a responsibility, as you know, 92 per cent of our graduates are employed at the time they leave the college and we need to ensure that we're not just providing advanced skill education, but we're actually docking that advanced skill education up to the needs of Nova Scotia's economy. So electrical is an interesting one that we have a lot of discussion about inside the college. Jamie, is there anything you want to add?
MR. HILTS: Yes, two or three things with that one. I think there are a couple of areas that we have to be aware of. Number one is that we need to make sure we can match the demand of the learners with the demand of industry, something that I think Joan has already touched on, that this isn't just a blip on the radar screen so to speak, but there are going to be some long-term strategies behind this that the application or participation rate of our learners reaches out one, two, three, four years so that any kind of action we do take has a far-reaching benefit to the industry as well as to the learners.
The second thing with that is we want to make sure the number of graduates that we actually do graduate every year do find gainful employment. What we don't want to do is create an enormous glut on the market, regardless of what particular trade or vocation that learners do graduate from. So, again, there's a bit of a strategy behind ensuring that the demands match up.
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I think third is that the college has to take into account the fact that we have a variety of factors that play into it. We need to ensure that campus by campus we actually have the space, that we have the instructors, that we have the necessary materials and other resources to be able to deliver the program in a quality way. Again, it's a case where what we don't want to do is see the demand that's there and do a knee-jerk reaction to put an extra section on when we can't, with a high level of confidence, ensure the necessary rigour and quality will take place program by program. With that being said, I think it's a case for us where at times we need to make sure that we can keep at a level pace with the demands and make sure, again, that we have the quality along with the quantity as well.
MR. STEELE: Okay, it sounds to me like for that particular example, the electrical example, the community college may be of the view that the number of spaces fits the future demand. I'm wondering whether there are any programs for which you believe there will be future demand but, because of physical, financial or other constraints, you are simply not today in a position to meet that anticipated future demand.
MADAM CHAIR: Dr. McArthur-Blair.
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: There's no question in my mind that the college needs to continue to grow. We are not meeting the demand in health care, we are not meeting the demand in some trades, we are not meeting the demand in some of the arts programs. There is no question in my mind that the college needs to continue to grow; 10,500 full-time students, 15,000 part-time students is not large enough. We believe that we need to grow approximately 2,000 more students in order to meet the economy of Nova Scotia and also satisfy the need that is before us in terms of wait lists.
So we are, as I said earlier, currently working with the Department of Education, trying to develop a plan that will satisfy those needs.
MR. STEELE: How much money does that involve?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: When we look at student enrolment, for every student that we take in - it depends on the year, so if I did it this year or next and so on, but it is a considerable amount of money. In order to add 2,000 students over the next five years to the college, that would be a considerable investment by the taxpayers of Nova Scotia.
I think one of the things that we haven't touched on is that the return on investment for the college is about 16 per cent, both to the individual who contributes to the college through their tuition and also to the taxpayers of Nova Scotia in terms of the enhancement of the economy. So currently - and I say this with some hesitation because the math is not exactly this simple - it costs us about $8,000 from taxpayers to deliver a program.
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Now, I say that with some hesitation to the committee because some of those are the demands of curriculum, changes to those things, it depends on the delivery mode. There are many things that influence that, so to simply answer that it takes this amount of money is not a simple answer and we work through a very complex budget every year with the Department of Education. So, committee member, I'm not trying to hedge your question, but I also don't want to give a blithe answer that it's going to take x amount of money because there are many variables in that.
MR. STEELE: I want to turn now to the dimension of waiting lists by campus. Just to give you an example, as I cast my eye down the columns here, it's evident to me that some of the campuses are more constrained than others in terms of waiting lists. For example, you take the Marconi Campus, just in the School of Trades & Technology, it has one, two, three, four, five programs with a waiting list, whereas there are other campuses with virtually no waiting list. What kind of a problem do we have here in Nova Scotia, about a mismatch between the program and geographic location or, to put it another way, some campuses that are essentially full and other campuses that are something considerably less than full?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I don't think it's a mismatch. I think that there are economic pressures, and this is the art and science of education and I'll give you a really specific example. Burridge Campus, a very viable campus, has some wait-listed programs, some not-wait-listed programs. I have no authority to assume that this will happen, but there is rumour that a new company will come to Burridge related to the aerospace industry, producing some hundreds of jobs. We have already made a commitment to ensure that education will happen.
Outside of metro, every time a company comes or a company leaves, our whole world changes. We pay an enormous amount of attention to those kinds of economic shifts. Every time a new wine industry opens in the Valley, the pressure on our horticulture program will shift. So we pay a lot of attention to those shifts in the economy.
So you're right, there's tremendous pressure currently on Marconi. We have tremendous space pressures at the Marconi Campus and last year we needed practical nurses in that area. We took what was quite a large cafeteria, divided it in half and put classrooms and labs in that place. So we're always digging inside of our buildings, trying to utilize and steward our space.
This is the first year in the history of the college where we've had September starts, October starts, November starts, March 23rd starts, February starts, in order to utilize our buildings to the absolute max that we can. So you're right, there are tremendous pressures, geographic pressures, but those geographic pressures also shift and they shift very quickly.
Every time we have an industry that lays people off in an area, Pictou or in the Valley, suddenly we have tremendous pressure on that local campus to help people train and retrain.
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So we can't assume that there is a mismatch. In fact, it's a constantly revolving pressure and it changes by campus, by region, almost overnight, related to the ways in which the economy changes.
But you're right, right now we have tremendous pressure on the Marconi Campus in terms of space, in terms of our capacity to meet the demand in Cape Breton coming at the Marconi Campus, and we think that will continue for the year.
MR. STEELE: Now, in the couple of minutes left to me, I just want to raise one more aspect of waiting lists, and that has to do with waiting lists by school. The community college has the School of Trades & Technology, the School of Access, the School of Applied Arts and New Media, the School of Business, the School of Health and Human Services. As I look at these figures, I can't help but notice that some schools have open spaces in virtually every program in every campus whereas, for example, in the School of Trades & Technology it's much more mixed.
Normally when I would see something like this I would say, well, how many of these programs really are so under-subscribed that maybe it's not a good use of the community college's resources . . .
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Could I ask you to repeat that question, sorry.
MR. STEELE: I was saying that when I look at the fact that in some of the schools there are openings in virtually every course on every campus, the natural question it leads me to is whether some courses are so under-subscribed that perhaps it's not the best use of the community college's resources, which might be better placed in other courses where there's a waiting list.
What steps does the community college take to re-evaluate which courses to offer and where, at any given time?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: We re-evaluate our programs on a constant basis, and I'm going to ask Jamie to actually walk you through the ways in which we do that. We open and close sections and programs every single year.
I want to go back to the time of year as well. You may see on your list there are many openings in some of the arts and new media programs. There is a tremendous need in Nova Scotia for IT workers. Young people, in particular, are still back in the tech bust, we can't seem to encourage them to come. So we can't just say we're going to get out of IT because we're just filling those programs and that's what we are, we're just filling them, we don't have enormous wait lists, because the industry still has a desperate need over here.
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The other arts programs, many of them are portfolio-based so they aren't actually admitting yet, they're still in the admission process. So sometimes those statistics are interesting, but we revolve every year. For example, the auto collision program in Cape Breton wasn't filling, we closed that program, added a program that was needed in that community. So I'm going to ask Jamie to walk you through the actual logistics of how we do that.
MADAM CHAIR: Order. Actually, Mr. Hilts, I'm sorry, you're not going to have an opportunity at this moment to do that. The time has expired for the NDP round of questions.
I recognize Mr. Glavine for the Liberal caucus. You have 25 minutes, until 10:24 a.m.
MR. LEO GLAVINE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to the community college, all of you, for being here this morning and giving us really an update on what I consider to be one of the most dynamic institutions in the province and is a real leader in many ways. I certainly applaud the strategic plan because I think it really embodies the philosophy and approach of where the community college is going in dealing with flexibility for students, the portfolio learning, also the prior learning assessment, all of these pieces, I think, are very needed.
[10:00 a.m.]
The other thing that I want to compliment President McArthur-Blair on is the fact that while we have a world-class facility in the Waterfront Campus and more to come, you have not overlooked the other 12 locations across the province. Next door to my riding is the Annapolis riding where Stephen McNeil is the MLA and we were both very concerned when we came to Province House in 2003, as we looked down the road, whether we'd have a campus in Middleton, the numbers were going down dramatically. So I applaud your work on the revival of that campus and engaging the business community and this whole concept of a partnership I've been able to see work out over the last three or four years. Just to see the work being done there and the progressive approach certainly has been heartening to the community, to the instructors and to the future of the college.
I was just wondering if you could comment briefly, are all the 13 campuses doing well and maybe, what are a few of the challenges that you are facing?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: All 13 campuses are doing very well. I said this earlier, but I wanted to return to it, for small rural campuses they can experience almost instantaneous change, where something happens in the community and suddenly we have this huge influx of students or conversely we have an outflow of people from a community. Our smaller rural campuses are very subject to the economies that are going on right there locally, but every one of the 13 campuses is strong, there's not a single campus in the suite that didn't have wait lists last year, which kind of answers that question in practical terms. We don't like
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that they have wait lists, but it answers the viability question. So all campuses are strong, all campuses are doing well. Every single campus we try to anchor with a specialty - the Annapolis Valley, of course, with geographic science - and we try to anchor every campus with a specialty that holds it strong over time.
MR. GLAVINE: There's no question that obviously the wait-list conundrum, I guess, perhaps in many ways a good problem to be addressing, but moving forward to probably accommodate, as the plan says, 12,400 learners in the next five years, doesn't really answer a young lady like Victoria Rees, who has a B.Sc. honours and is an applicant for medical lab technology. She recently said: I'm so frustrated. I can see 150 jobs advertised in the health industry right now, but there's a two-year waiting list just to get into training at the Nova Scotia Community College. I'm just wondering, while you see and read this each month and so on of the year, is government responding adequately to that wait-list issue, or how do you see the role there currently?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Well, I think, no news to this committee, we don't know what our budget will be next year. We are working with the Department of Education to build another long-term plan and that long-term plan is very important to the college not just because it reduces wait lists, but it allows us to say to an employer who has a need, we can build your program and we'll have it in place by next September because we know in a multi-year fashion where we're going. So we're in the midst of that work.
I think if you look at the results of the master plan, the $123 million build-out and our growth to 10,400 full-time learners, it has been an extraordinary multi-party partnership. We're in the midst of this consideration now of growing again - it is the college's greatest hope that we do enter into yet another long-term growth plan, so that we're clear in how we can help that young woman. The college is doing everything it can in order to accommodate people in the meantime, so we are in the midst of working on that as hard as we possibly can.
MR. GLAVINE: We know that here in Nova Scotia, a decade or so ago, we had fallen behind in responding to labour force requirements and demands. I know we've made up a lot of ground and I'm sure you meet with colleagues across the country. I'm just wondering, how do you see us being viewed from other parts of the country and where we now place in terms of developing the next generation of a workforce?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I think the people of Nova Scotia should be very proud of what they've created in this college. People come to us when they're looking for innovation, they come to us when they're looking for ideas on applied research. We are Canada's portfolio college; it differentiates us from the rest of the country. We are viewed across the country as one of the college leaders. I want to take a moment in front of this committee to say that doesn't take a president to do that work - it takes 1,800 enormously committed educators to do that work and I have an opportunity to work with some of the most extraordinary people in the world. We have a board governance model designed out of
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the Community College Act that is, I think, second to none in the world and that allows us to do our work extraordinarily well, so we are viewed.
Colleagues across the country are also struggling with wait lists, also struggling with the impending skill shortage. Just because we're in the midst of an economic downturn, the skill shortage has not gone away. Currently the need in the labour force far exceeds the community colleges' system across the country to provide the advance skills, so there's not a single college in the country that isn't facing the same kind of wait list that we have and also the same kind of skills shortage issue we have.
MR. GLAVINE: Every MLA who has come to this Chamber here has in one fashion or another entered into the debate around out-migration of young Nova Scotians and many who come from our university and college communities, maybe not quite as many from the college. I'm wondering if you could just outline a little bit of that view and vision you have that will actually help to get more graduates from the college immediately working in Nova Scotia - staying here to apply their skills, their trades, their expertise and some of the creativity that they can bring to jobs? Truly, that is the way our economy will be furthered, with the greater number that we retain here and can take from applied research to actual creation of more jobs with product development and using the applied research that I know is going on just next door in Annapolis. So I'm just wondering if you could comment on that, please?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: We follow our graduates one year after convocation. We ask them where they are, what they're doing, where they're working - 92 per cent of our graduates are employed. Of that 92 per cent, 93 per cent are employed in the Province of Nova Scotia one year after leaving the college. We're very careful at the college to ensure that the work we're doing docks to the Nova Scotia economy. Out-migration for college graduates is not a profound issue. Now we don't track them 10 years later and so on, so they may 10 years later decide to leave the province - we don't track them. We want to track them within our sphere of influence, did we provide them with education that could allow them to get a job here? We're able to do that, we're able to track them, there isn't an enormous out-migration.
We also track what employers think of our grads - 94 per cent of employers are satisfied with our graduates, and 96 per cent of our students are satisfied with the education that they have received. We track those stats and we are very cognizant of where we're going. We don't find that out-migration is such a profound issue for the college graduates in Nova Scotia.
Last year - this kind of goes back to an earlier question about why 13 strong and why we hold to having 13 strong campuses across the province - some 76 per cent of our graduates are working in the county in which they went to the campus or the county next
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door. So you look at the mobility of the labour force, they really want to receive education in their community and work in their community and we try to accommodate that.
MR. GLAVINE: It has been stated, of course, that the college and its partners - government and industry - will face skilled employee shortages. Recently, Bruce Colborne, Construction Supervisor with HRM, said, "Our looming shortage is so serious that HRM will have to hire professionals from outside of Nova Scotia to fill the retirements and replacements required."
I'm wondering if you share that view, but also how you see the community college and the percentage, or how far the community college can respond to that development and likely to see it escalate as we come out of the recessionary period?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I think returning also to the wait list issue, this is why ensuring those 2,000 people get a seat in the next few years is important because people need workers. I have spoken to other employers across the province, they are also recruiting out of province in order to meet their needs. I think there is tremendous work that the college is currently undertaking that we're going to move forward in the next year and two years. One is flexibility; our flexibility agenda so people can work and learn, and other kinds of flexibility in terms of time, use and so on, models like the Dexter model that most people would be familiar with where Dexter actually hires people, sends them to us, the military is beginning to look for their civilian force doing some of the same kinds of things and some of their enlisted people as well.
Employers are looking at innovative ways in which to hire people, send them to us and then they've captured those employees. We're working with employers to do early recruiting to ensure that they have a chance to get that employee they're looking for, so we're doing a whole variety of things. We're also working extensively with communities that haven't historically attached to college education and ensuring that young people actually think about post-secondary education.
We're part of the O2 initiative, which I think is a very powerful education force in Grades 11 and 12, that helps young people look at what options are before them. We do a program called Parents as Career Coaches, where we help parents look at how to help their kids think about what they might want to do. We're a little bit a victim of our own success - it has been a huge success, parents have been very interested in it. We are doing many things to encourage people to come.
We are doing access transition for people, we're doing specific access programs for specific occupations to help people get prerequisites that they need. We have a huge number of programs running that help people make those kinds of transitions.
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MR. GLAVINE: Thank you. Maybe this is an area for Mr. Shedden. In the January federal budget, there was the knowledge infrastructure fund. I'm wondering, is that your area where you would make a proposal to perhaps be able to get some of that funding to come to the Nova Scotia Community College? Are there any details around that at this stage and is the college looking at trying to tap in to that particular fund?
MR. ROBERT SHEDDEN: Absolutely. During the process of putting together what you see in front of you in the master plan, we did a condition assessment of all of our buildings and that helped us to try to identify those areas where we could get the biggest impact for the dollars we spent of the $123 million. It also has allowed us to develop a very detailed deferred maintenance list. What we are in the process of doing now is actually reviewing that list and looking at those areas where we have the greatest need. Those will be issues then that we will put forward as proposals, where some of that money could be spent if indeed it would be made available to us. There is a process that is underway right now that would include all of the educational institutions in the province, where that type of information is being put together and we're part of that process.
[10:15 a.m.]
MR. GLAVINE: Just to move to another area where I know at the MLA office level, we get calls from students who are on campuses around the province, but because their home is in my riding they tend to call this time of year in particular and a lot, of course, has to do with how an individual uses their student loan and the funding they have available and so on. I'm just wondering overall, do you still see some financial barriers to access to the community college? I know you did a swim in Greece a year and a half, two years ago, to draw awareness to access and to the finances students require to go to the college. I'm just wondering, do you still see some of those barriers there?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I think if I roughly divide the college into thirds; a third of the people who attend education have no issues attending, their family can help them and so on; a third of people who are able to access financial assistance in a way that can help them; and a group of people who have profound poverty issues. Every one of our campuses runs a food bank - they are highly utilized, supported by other students, the student associations run them. Issues of poverty for students, it is a profound issue, everything from building a strong foundation, we've been working five years now to build a strong foundation that provides bursaries and scholarships to ensuring our students' success. Workers know every possible nook and cranny of the ways in which people can access money in order to stay in school.
I think that student poverty, when I spend time talking to students, it always comes up as an issue, it is an issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the annual income for the Valley is now only something like $17,000. So if you think about those kinds of stats, there are definitely issues with people coming to school without enough money and you're right,
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this time of year we see a greater draw down on the food bank, we see a greater number of students seeking secondary bursaries, emergency funds. We have emergency funds on every campus as well to try to help people and we have daycare on every campus. We do everything we can to help people who come to school without enough money who really have that dream, but it is a profound issue, for sure.
MR. GLAVINE: Thank you very much. Yes, I'm very aware of that, so I just wanted to have kind of the pan-Canadian-Nova Scotia perspective because I know in my area that it is very real. Before I pass it over to my colleague from Preston, just one further question. What about the credentials of a student at the Nova Scotia Community College who may be in a two-year program and they leave after one year? Is there easy portability across the country with the work that the student has done or if they leave and have an unfinished program, but they have some credits, maybe a half-year context. I was just wondering if you could give me a view of that or do we have almost all students stay, finish their program and that's not an issue? Maybe another part, of course - are all the programs as they're certified, are the doors automatically opened across the country for students?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I'm going to let Jamie speak to this, but I would like to be able to say to this committee that we have an absolutely seamless education system in our country and we don't. For the most part, community colleges are much better than some other organizations in terms of transferring between each other. So community colleges work very hard to take the first students into second year. It's not a perfect and seamless system at this time.
The Atlantic community colleges, we have an agreement that we absolutely will transfer mid year, at the end of first year, it doesn't matter when they're coming, that we will transfer students automatically. But no, at this time we do not have a perfect, seamless transfer system in education in our country.
MR. GLAVINE: Thank you.
MADAM CHAIR: I recognize the member for Preston.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you very much. It is really a pleasure to see you here today and at the outset, I really want to say that I'm really pleased with the work that you've been doing and the change in direction that the community college has made. I think in the long term, it is going to do a lot to help our economy and really the base of our economy is education.
I just want to ask a few questions around quality of training in the trades. This is an issue I brought up before. I've had some complaints, I've a few constituents that their families have gone through a training program and basically were told when they went to work that they were unemployable. I don't know if that was the individual who was
[Page 21]
unemployable or if it was the training that made them unemployable, whatever the case may be.
You've done some studies of the industry - what type of studies have you done to industry to see how effective your training is? I'm a former employer and I've employed people for many, many years, hired people from community colleges with various levels of success with that. How do you interact with the employers now to ensure that the training you provide in each course - and I know it's very difficult because there's so many courses you're offering - are really addressing the issues of specific employers in the province?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I'm going to start and then I'm going to give it to Jamie. We've had this discussion before. We have an arm's length agency go to employers and seek information from them about their satisfaction with our graduates. As I said before, 94 per cent of the employers came back satisfied with our graduates.
We have program advisory committees, we have industry councils and we work diligently with those councils to ensure that our curriculum is matching their needs. As I have before, I want to extend to you an invitation to come to the college and spend some time with Jamie and have him walk through with you specifically - if I remember right, you had a specific interest in millwright - and to come to the college, understand what we're doing now in millwright and how we've answered some of your previous questions.
MR. HILTS: I think just to add to what Joan has already mentioned is that there's a variety of internal processes that we do have that we do engage on a regular basis to ensure quality, everything from program advisory committees, through program reviews, curriculum reviews, grad follow-ups. I think with that being done, though, there is still a need for us to have a level of comfort and confidence that any of our programs would meet the scrutiny and the rigour of industry, business, both within Nova Scotia and beyond. Because of that, it is a case for us where we have looked at and examined the various processes that we do have, to see what we can do to be, I think, more accountable to business and industry and make sure that when we do send a student into industry, into business, into the workforce, that we stand behind it.
Now that being said, again it takes time to go through the review process, to make sure our curriculum outcomes match up with the needs of industry and business, making sure that we're relevant, that we're not in a learning environment that is 10 years old, that our learners are learning the outcomes needed for today and the future, not for yesterday and behind. I think we've come a long way. I think in the sake of how old NSCC is as an institution and the number of programs that we've got, we do an exceptionally good job. We have an exceptionally good curriculum, we have exceptionally good facilities, exceptionally good faculty and staff. We've also got exceptionally good students. We just need to make sure we can keep all four of those cornerstones of education always at the forefront of the core business that we do.
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MADAM CHAIR: Order, thank you very much. The time has expired for the Liberal caucus. I recognize Mr. Bain for the PC caucus. You have 25 minutes, until 10:49 a.m.
MR. BAIN: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and good morning. It is certainly very interesting to hear the positive things that are happening within our community college system. I want to also mention that I had the opportunity recently to visit the Marconi Campus and saw the changes that were made with the implementation of the labs. I realize that space is limited within Marconi and I think the work that was done is certainly a testament that you want to better utilize the facility that is there. I also want to mention as well the Strait Area Campus, of course, and the Nautical Institute and the benefits to the industry.
You mentioned about the O2 program in our public school system and I'd like to talk about the trades at the vocational component of Memorial High School as well. What does that vocational training at Memorial do for the students who are going to move on to the community college, to Marconi Campus or whatever community college? Are any of those trades that they take at Memorial credits or anything towards some of the programs?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I would have to go look back and look at specifically the advanced standing we provide for each program for Memorial. We have an extraordinarily good relationship with Memorial, and the college and Memorial have been working together for years. I can't answer the question of exactly how many credits of advanced standing without going to look it up but that has been a very positive relationship. We have many students who come from Memorial to the college to enhance their skill base and it has been a very good relationship.
I think O2 has gone a long way to helping young people have the opportunity to experiment with things they might want to do, not just in trades but in hospitality, in math, and all kinds of things across the province.
MR. BAIN: I think I find, too, that the majority of those who take the trades component at Memorial High School will be going to community college anyway, to enhance their training. Certainly I think Memorial is as much a success story as anything else, too.
It would be interesting to know what you think might be the ideal balance in Nova Scotia, in terms of student enrolment in universities, as compared to community colleges. Do you see a balance that should be there, just because you know what's happening out there, right? There are demands for trades and everything else so what would you think is a fair balance between universities and community colleges?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: When we look at the national stats currently, when we look at advanced skills as one of the foundations of our country, the number of college graduates needed to sustain the economy currently is about a 6 to 1 ratio. So there's no
[Page 23]
question that we need to encourage young people to think about advanced skill education, in terms of entering the economy.
I'm not sure that there's an answer to your question. I think in the same way that many, many bright minds couldn't predict the economy that we're currently experiencing, I'm not sure that long-term you can equivocally say you should have this percentage in college and this percentage in university. I think the key is that education in Nova Scotia, we have two extraordinarily powerful pillars now in Nova Scotia with the university and the college system. We've done tremendous work together over the last three years, in terms of transfer between our institutions, working in partnership in everything from articulation to research. I think the most important thing is the way those two powerful systems work together to answer the economic need.
I don't think that there's a simple answer to this many people in college and that many people in university. I think the answer really is, are we producing enough people with advanced education to meet Nova Scotia's economic need. We know right now that it's not the case, that we need more young people to choose post-secondary education than they currently are. We need to make sure that young people know that post-secondary education makes a difference over a lifetime of earning and a lifetime of happiness. I think those are kind of the important things we need to focus on. I don't think there's a simple ratio that you can answer that with.
MR. BAIN: Okay, and thank you for that. How do you determine which programs you're going to develop and which ones you're going to discontinue? I know you've spoken to that already but, for instance, in February, the aviation training program was launched. How did that program come on stream? How did you determine that this was what we're going to do?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I'm going to let Jamie talk about how programs are developed. The aviation program, the AME program, was in existence prior to February, we've had it for a number of years, but I'll let Jamie walk you through exactly how we decide with industry a new program is needed.
[10:30 a.m.]
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Hilts.
MR. HILTS: What we look for is some of the trends, whether it's provincially, regionally, nationally, internationally, in terms of understanding the data for labour needs. In various cases such as the aviation industry and aerospace, to look at what is taking place on an international or global perspective within that particular area. From that, then we get a sense of what will be taking place again over one year, three year, five year trends and begin to do some forecasting with the best available data that we have to make some of the
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best informed decisions that we can. Once we have a good idea of what that looks like, we then set about the process of ensuring that we can align a program with the specific needs of an industry or of a particular business. If we use the example of aviation, it is to make sure that we have the programs and outcomes within our program that line up with that particular need. When that whole process is done, what the end product is will be a program which meets and has a relevancy to industry.
We certainly go forth with an intent that we have a high level of accountability to the industry, to the program, to the learners. We make sure that there's a level of fiscal responsibility as well, so that we're running a program which meets those particular needs for the learner, as well as for the college, as well as then upon completion that the learners will enter into the workplace and have gainful employment. It's a process which is not done in a very quick response, in some cases it could take us anywhere from six months to 18 months to go through it and have as much detail completed as what we need to make the best informed decision. One of the things we want to make sure of is that we don't continually go through - while it's good to do an exercise in quality control, we don't want to continually reinvent ourselves every year because our program is not meeting the particular needs. We want to ensure that we do have a quality that goes along with the quantity.
MR. BAIN: So it's very evident that any course that's being offered is well thought out before it is being offered. It would be interesting to note the tuition at the community college - how does that compare to colleges in other provinces?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: We don't have the highest tuition in the country and we don't have the lowest. We are somewhere slightly above halfway, I think. I hesitated slightly in answering this because, of course, this is the time of year that all tuitions change. Currently we are slightly above the middle of the pack - we're not the highest in the country and we're not the lowest. I think our tuition currently is reasonable given the economic climate of Nova Scotia, although we do raise tuition on an ongoing basis in order to have cutting edge education and we take that decision very seriously.
MR. BAIN: What percentage of your revenue comes from tuition?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Bob?
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Shedden.
MR. SHEDDEN: It's approximately 13 per cent.
MR. BAIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to share the rest of my time with my colleague.
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MADAM CHAIR: I recognize Mr. Porter for the PC caucus. You have until 10:49 a.m.
MR. CHUCK PORTER: Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a few questions and again, thanks for being here. It seems to be a pretty positive thing that has been going on in the world of Nova Scotia Community College over the years. Coming from a time when the old vocational school was a place that I attended a couple of years back, how much difference - we've seen a lot of changes? I still talk to people who call it vocational school, probably they're my age perhaps, but that's okay, too, they have an understanding, but I don't think they really do have an understanding of how much difference there really is now. I see nine or 10 different props, we referred to them earlier this morning and I'm glad they're here, they're very nice. How many different schools do we have? This isn't all of them, we have more than 10, is it 13?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: That's right.
MR. PORTER: And who are we missing today and we have no pictures, is that why they're not here or this is all you could fit?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: This is all we could fit.
MR. PORTER: So, of all the schools and there have been a lot of changes certainly over the years - you talked about 92 per cent being employed. That was summarized, in the first year you did that survey to find out the 92 per cent were employed?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: We do it every year, it's part of our balance score card approach to our accountability. We follow our graduates every year.
MR. PORTER: But only for one year post?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Only for one year post, yes.
MR. PORTER: And then 93 per cent of them were in Nova Scotia. You have that number, again, that's still only within that one year post-graduate that 93 per cent are still in Nova Scotia? Did I hear you clearly earlier there?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: That's right.
MR. PORTER: Is there anything or any plan to follow that so that we know? Over the last couple of years we've heard a lot about out-migration. I was part of that in the early 1980s, it happened then and the majority of all of us came home. We were out there a couple of years, it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, some of us made a little money, some of
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us didn't. Again, they came back, I guess, is the point that I'm getting to - we came home. We found jobs, we did our thing, et cetera.
Is there any plan right now in what you're doing - one year is great, but is there anything, any data anywhere that does say, you know what, 93 per cent of the 92 per cent are employed in Nova Scotia after one year? My question first would be, is there any data to say that they're still around, how long they stayed, or better yet, why would they leave Nova Scotia if they had a job in Nova Scotia? Do we see that from your graduates?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Currently we don't have the intention of doing a longitudinal study of our graduates, but interestingly enough - first let me say, it's nice to have one of our alumni in the House - we have in the last year begun to undertake alumni activities, to begin to track where our graduates are. This is very new to us as a college - we had no alumni association historically at the college - so this will allow us to do some of that work, to begin to track where our alumni are, what they're doing, what they're engaged in, where they went over their career, what they did educationally and so on. That's going to take us a few years to get our feet under us to be able to develop that kind of work, but we started in that direction, but it will take us a while yet before we do that.
MR. PORTER: Obviously there is some value in doing that though, again, as you attempt to promote and sell your colleges across Nova Scotia as opposed to maybe the university field. I would see that as a feather in the cap of those people who are probably asking that question, students. I'm sure when they look at that 92 per cent, they're probably quite hopeful as opposed to - I don't know what the numbers are coming out of university going to work. I know in talking to young people coming out, they're still scratching their heads wondering why they went the direction they did perhaps and what the numbers are. Do you guys have that in comparison with that number? It may have been asked earlier, I know I've been in and out.
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I can't give you that number in comparison off the top of my head.
MR. PORTER: The new Dartmouth campus obviously has had many dollars invested and spent there; it's a beautiful place. Did the enrolment go up there in that specific college? Did we see an increase in the enrolled numbers there?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Yes. Each one of these infrastructure pieces, whether it was the large infrastructure piece at the Waterfront - our enrolment has steadily increased every single year through the master plan. Most years 400 to 500 students, last year it was almost 458 students or something like that. Every year our enrolment has increased quite dramatically. So every time we do a new infrastructure piece, it allows us to increase the capacity of the Centre for the Built Environment, which I think is here, the new building - that will again increase our capacity in trades and technology.
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MR. PORTER: So you increased numbers by 400 to 500 or it went to that high? What's the total at that school?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: When we started the master plan in 2002, our numbers at that time - just let me look this up so I have the accurate number for you - 2001-02, we were 7,600 full-time students and this year we were 10,505 full-time students. That growth tracks the master plan work, so we have grown that number over the years. You can look on this chart that has the growth at NSCC enrolment on it and you can look at the numbers we have grown every year and that's province-wide, that number.
MR. PORTER: Do you know what the percentage of that is in comparison to all students coming out of, say, Grade 12, looking for post-secondary? What percentage does that make up, any idea?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I would have to, Madam Chair, come back to you. We'd have to go and get that stat, the percentage of students entering the different streams of post-secondary education.
MR. PORTER: That's fine, I was just kind of curious as to whether or not it was something . . .
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: I will say this, that I believe for Nova Scotia's economy, it's still not high enough. The number of people who are immediately transferring to post-secondary education, looking at advanced education is still not high enough in Nova Scotia.
MR. PORTER: In saying that then, what is high enough? You obviously have a number in mind you would like to meet or see and feel that it is appropriately high enough. What do you think that is, Dr. Blair?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: You're speaking to an educator here, so I think that I'll give you my bias. I think if you look at the future of the world, advanced education - whether it's college or university - is the gateway to that world. I think that every young person who is capable should experience either college or university to set them on their path for life. I think it's something that is becoming more and more an absolute requirement in order to undertake work in the modern world.
I'm always concerned when I talk to people who are 30 who come to the college and say, I left high school and didn't know what I wanted to do and so I've been doing stuff for 10 years and suddenly they're 30 and their whole world is being turned on at the college. It makes me sad that we weren't able to capture their mind earlier, so it's always a concern to me. I think your answer is 100 per cent - I know we'll never get there, but I think the answer is 100 per cent.
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MR. PORTER: As an educator I think that's a fine number, I wouldn't disagree with you at all, I think that's important. We hear an awful lot about the people who are returning, all of us probably see them in our offices, they've recently been put out of work and now are sitting back wondering, what am I going to do next? Yes, I might have EI for a year or something, but if there are no real short-term hopes that they're going back to where they left - I'm talking to a lot of people that are starting to consider, what am I going to do? They are looking at some of the potential courses that are out there. I know the CCA course appears to be something that's fairly popular right now. I spoke again the other night, as a matter of fact, with a young lady who is now again - although she's temporarily employed, she is considering changing her course of a career just because there appears to be some guarantee I guess, to some degree, of long-term employment in this field.
A couple of weeks back, we heard from a witness - somewhere to the 400 short in Nova Scotia. How are we accommodating that through your system at the Nova Scotia Community College and do we have an adequate number of seats there?
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: The answer is, unfortunately, we don't have enough seats at the Nova Scotia Community College; we need to continue to grow in health. That said, last Spring and summer we increased health enrolment dramatically, some 280 seats in practical nursing and continuing care. The college responded to a tremendous shortfall in a very short period of time - in an eight week period of time, we put sections in right across the province. We're still not meeting the needs in health, we need to continue to grow in health and we're doing everything we can to do that.
MR. PORTER: Right and you said across the province, 280, so does every community college then in Nova Scotia offer a health-related field? Like the LPN, I guess we call it these days, or the CCA?
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Hilts.
MR. HILTS: Throughout the 13 campuses, we do offer a program in health. It may not be the practical nursing; that's offered on six campuses. We certainly are trying to rotate through the 13 campuses, the CCA program. As Joan has already mentioned, that is a program we put a lot of energy into ensuring that we do have that offering. There are a couple of things that limit us to being able to offer the program. We need to ensure we have the right earned number of clinical spaces for our learners, as well as the necessary resources such as instructors and so forth. We have grown it quite substantially and I think we will again continue to see our growth within the course offering or program offering both within the CCA program as well as the practical nursing program this year and in the years ahead.
MR. PORTER: I do know that locally where I'm from in Hants and specifically, Windsor, Dykeland Lodge, I believe, used to hold the CCA course; maybe they continually will do that. Is there some relationship there between them and the school, just as an
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example? Maybe there are other nursing home facilities that are doing the training, but I guess what I'm wondering is if I go take that CCA course at Dykeland, am I as qualified and recognized as if I went to NSCC?
[10:45 a.m.]
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: The college has several partnerships with providers across the province and we are providing those programs on those sites, so they are their programs, but they get the NSCC credential. If it is an NSCC program on a private provider site, they are equally as qualified.
MR. PORTER: Do they have to attend the campus as well at some point to quantify their credentials?
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Hilts.
MR. HILTS: No, upon completion of their program, they would be recognized the same as a student coming out of the CCA program within the college program.
MR. PORTER: Interesting. Any idea how many other facilities around the province are doing that with your school?
MR. HILTS: Off the top of my head, I'm sorry, I couldn't answer that.
MR. PORTER: But there would be I'm assuming others, other than Dykeland, that would be doing that? Other nursing facilities.
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Yes, there are several others.
MR. PORTER: You said a couple of minutes ago that the seats in the health care industry, you'd like to have more. Any idea what the wait list is to get into that program at the college?
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Hilts.
MR. HILTS: It depends on which program. Right now, certainly one of the biggest demand areas that we have within the college would be the medical lab technology program which is anywhere from a two to three year wait list based on what we currently have. We will attempt ways to reduce that waiting list within that program over the next year to two years. We've also seen a demand as well within the practical nursing area and again, we are looking at ways that we mitigate that by more sections in different campuses across the province.
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Those are a couple of the areas of programming where we already do have programs, but we're also seeing within Nova Scotia the need for additional programs within the allied health cluster or area. I think the direction we would like to take as an institution is to work with the Department of Health, Ministry of Health, to look at the specific programs related to the health field to ensure that we have programs to meet the needs, besides those ones I've already mentioned. I think working with the universities within Nova Scotia as well to ensure that we can match up with that whole health field to ensure we have the programming mix to meet the needs of Nova Scotia and the Maritimes.
MR. PORTER: I think it's important to note too that coming from the old vocational school sort of world, it has taken a lot of people quite a while, I think, and maybe like I said, they still may not totally understand the huge difference in the two or even that there's a relationship. They think because the old vocational school went away that we no longer are maybe training people or have the ability to train people the same way. We always hear, you have to bring that trade school back, but we very much have it back and it has never really been lost.
It's impressive to see how well the Nova Scotia Community College is doing, the recognition of students that are attending there, their credentials are phenomenal, they're looked at as high quality as anyone else. I think that's very important in this day and age, certainly in our province as we move toward and through a bit of a rough economic time. I'm sure that we'll come out on a positive point having students who are being employed in this province at the 92 per cent, 93 per cent ratio, those are great numbers, those are very good numbers in comparison. When I think about the number of university kids I'm talking to, I wouldn't think that the numbers are quite as high when they talk about being employed once they have their degree. They tend to wonder what they're going back to maybe specialize in again.
I know my time is almost up, so I thank you very much for being here today, it's great to have you here.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. The time has expired for the questioning portion of our meeting. I would invite Dr. McArthur-Blair to make some closing comments, if you wish.
DR. MCARTHUR-BLAIR: Perhaps the only closing comment I wanted to make is that I wanted to return to where I began. The college's success has been a success of partnership. The college doesn't do anything by itself, I mean we're in the business of creating extraordinary educational experiences for Nova Scotians and ensuring that our work is excellent.
We do that work in partnership with industry and government and I think that I wanted to end on that note of how important the sustaining of that incredible partnership is
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over time. The success of education isn't something that lives inside an institution - it really is that partnership particularly between government and institutions and the ways in which we utilize what is given us and the stewardship that we attend.
I also wanted to add that the college has undertaken in the last 18 months or so to steward its own business in a very interesting way. We feel that we have an obligation in the province, as one of the academic institutions in the province, to green ourselves, green our buildings and steward ourselves to a sustainable future because we think we have influence on 25,000 people a year and if those 25,000 people a year can leave us with an understanding of the environment in which they reside, we can make a profound difference for the province.
So I'll leave you with one last little bit of information about the college - the college has reduced its own footprint last year by 540 tons. To do that, we did some very simple things; we changed our lighting, we did some things inside the institution. I think as an indicator of the seriousness the college takes with the money that is given to the college, we believe in stewardship, we want to do our work well, we want to finish our renovations on time, on budget. We want to make sure that every person who leaves the college has what they need to build their dream for the future. We take this stewardship very seriously and we want to thank many members on this committee who have worked with the college directly in their roles, to make a difference for their constituencies and made a difference for the college. So thank you, Madam Chair, I'll end there.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much on behalf of the committee. We're very pleased that you were here with us this morning and we thank you for your indulgence at the beginning of the meeting around some of our procedural matters.
We have a couple of items so before we deal with those, or we'll be getting ready to deal with those, you are free to leave at this stage. Thank you again.
Committee business - we have the report of the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedures. You have before you the recommendations from the committee for future witnesses. We're recommending that we bring before us the Department of Labour and Workforce Development. As well, we have the Auditor General's upcoming report which has been scheduled, the Department of Community Services and the Capital District Health Authority and the South Shore District Health Authority. These are topics that we're recommending for approval to the full committee.
The first thing I would ask for is that we approve these topics. So moved by Mr. Colwell. Is there any further discussion?
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
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So these items will be discussed.
There are just a couple of things I want to let the committee know. We referred some other matters to a couple of the other standing committees and if you read the transcript from the subcommittee, you will see that other matters that were brought forward by the various caucuses have been sent to committees that we felt were more appropriate to deal with them. I think pretty much that's it.
I'd like to let members know that two of the caucuses aren't available on April 1st and April 8th, so there will be no Public Accounts Committee meetings scheduled for April 1st or April 8th. We'll be resuming our next meeting date on the 15th and one of these topics will be scheduled.
So the other matter we have before us, I received a letter from a member of the committee, Mr. Steele, with respect to calling the Department of Economic and Rural Development with respect to the minister's discretionary grant fund. Mr. Steele, would you like to speak to this?
MR. STEELE: Thank you. The letter that I wrote to you earlier this week has been copied to the committee and is self-explanatory. So what I would like to do is take the idea in that letter and turn it into the form of a motion which would read as follows:
Moved that the Public Accounts Committee add to its agenda an appearance by officials of the Department of Economic and Rural Development to discuss the minister's discretionary fund, with specific reference to a discretionary grant awarded to a company called Addington Publishing; that the department be required to disclose its complete file to the Public Accounts Committee in advance of the hearing and that an opportunity to appear be offered to the owners of Addington Publishing, provided that they too disclose their complete file to the Public Accounts Committee in advance of the hearing.
Now in discussions with at least one of my colleagues from the other Parties here, it has been indicated to me that time is being requested to decide whether or not to approve this, so having read the motion I would propose that this motion be referred to the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedures for further consideration.
MADAM CHAIR: That motion is in order. Is there any discussion on the motion? Mr. Colwell and Mr. Porter.
MR. COLWELL: I would agree with the motion to defer it to the subcommittee.
MR. PORTER: I was just going to say that our caucus will not be supporting that motion, but certainly we'll have some discussion at the subcommittee. It appears as though
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we'll have the necessary vote to get it to the subcommittee, so we'll carry it on there, Madam Chair.
MADAM CHAIR: So we'll have the vote on the motion. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: I have something as well, Madam Chair.
MADAM CHAIR: Before we deal with that, coming out of subcommittee there are two other matters I want to just briefly go over. This committee had approved bringing the Department of Finance in front of us regarding the SAP program. In the process of attempting to get this scheduled and witnesses, what we found was it's a very complex program of government and we, as a subcommittee, felt that if we had a briefing of the subcommittee we would be better positioned to identify the appropriate witnesses to bring in to give us the information we required, as well as the information we want prior to that hearing. This has been approved, not scheduled, we're working on it and I would ask the subcommittee members if you could remain to speak with the clerk about your availability for a briefing on SAP, so we can move this forward.
We had also approved the topic of the Sydney tar ponds in Sydney, but at subcommittee the Liberal caucus informed us that they don't feel it's necessary to follow through with that. So at this time, there are no plans to go to Cape Breton to review further the Sydney tar ponds project. Those are the additional items from the subcommittee. Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: Thank you. I want to speak a bit, Madam Chair, with regard to your ruling this morning. In your ruling, you said that there had never been a precedent for a minister or Party Leader to be a member of this committee. A quick survey of transcripts reveals two occasions when a minister or a Leader did attend and was allowed to stay.
On June 3, 1998, this question was raised and at that time the chairman was Mr. Epstein, and I want to quote just a little bit here. He says, " . . . I couldn't find anywhere, and nor could the Clerk, that it had ever been formally adopted as one of the Rules of the House. So, therefore, it is a guideline, it has no higher status than a guideline."
At that time, the member for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour - Mr. Dexter, I believe - said, "In this case, the government Party would virtually go unrepresented if ministers were not allowed to serve on committees. Certainly, that doesn't make any sense and wouldn't make
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for a proper functioning of the committee." Ultimately the chairman decided at that time that a Cabinet Minister was allowed to sit.
On the second occasion, October 8, 2003, Mr. Danny Graham, the then Leader of the Liberal Party, attended a Public Accounts Committee meeting. An objection was raised at that time to his presence there. The Chair of the day, the member for Halifax Fairview, noted the agreement about Cabinet Ministers and Party Leaders was simply "helpful guidance to the committee." He said, and I'll quote again, "I don't want committee members to think that, in any sense, these are unbreakable rules which we have to follow no matter what the circumstances."
Ms. Whalen at the time pointed out the presence of Mr. Graham didn't put the committee in jeopardy in any way but that it was recognition that we're in a minority government situation. The vote was held and Mr. Graham was also permitted to remain at that time.
So, Madam Chair, I would ask that you reconsider your ruling at the beginning of this meeting this morning. Mr. Hebb is here and I would ask that maybe you question him on those comments.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. I will take the information you've provided under advisement and will give you my thoughts on that at our next meeting. Thank you very much.
Is there anything further?
We stand adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:01 a.m.]
