MR. CHAIRMAN: The Department of Environment and Labour.
Are there any further interventions from the Opposition with regard to the Department of Environment and Labour? If not, the minister can wrap up, if he wishes, a closing statement. We will give the minister an opportunity. I don't know if his staff is coming down with him or not, but the minister does want to make a closing statement.
The honourable Minister of Environment and Labour.
HON. DAVID MORSE: Mr. Chairman, things usually go better when I have my glasses on. I want to start by saying that I have certainly enjoyed a lively debate on some of the department's policies and, in fact, at times, there was even some mention of the budget. I certainly appreciated the comments and suggestions and observations of the members opposite. As in everything I do, I tried to do my best. I can assure you I have tried to answer the questions of the members opposite to the best of my ability. My staff has been tremendously helpful in trying to brief me on a department that would have actually comprised about two and one-half departments in the former Liberal Government, and that is all since January 18th. So there has been a steep learning curve and I would like to put it on the record that any good answers that have been judged to have been given, is a tribute entirely to the staff and that I take responsibility for any deficiencies.
It was particularly pleasing to be able to supply some good news to the member for Timberlea-Prospect and I hope, all Nova Scotians. I know he was pleased to see that we are taking action in regard to the New Era Farms situation. Monitoring and compliance was one of the themes I touched on during my Budget Address. I can assure the members of this House that under my watch the enforcement and regulations will be more stringent and they will be carried out with vigour. We will strive to provide due diligence to the best of our abilities.
The past year has been a very challenging one for the new Department of Environment and Labour. The amalgamation and restructuring of the department has resulted in some significant changes. Since amalgamation of the department, the number of divisions and the agencies which were integrated to form this new department has been reduced from 19 to 12. That has meant job competitions between former colleagues and that is always a difficult situation and I am very proud of the professionalism of my staff. It has meant that staff now have new supervisors. We have seen retirements, as well. During this past year, two of the department's senior managers retired.
Mr. Chairman, the department has made these difficult decisions and the estimates clearly show the substantial benefits of the redirecting of our resources to the front-line service provision. We have seen old divisions replace new ones. I would like to just take a minute to remind people of our new structure. The structure of the department truly reflects our role as a regulatory agency responsible for ensuring compliance and enforcement of legislation and regulations pertaining to public safety, occupational health and safety. I want to again thank the honourable member for Cape Breton Centre for allowing me the opportunity to share with Nova Scotians in a very real manner the decisive action of my department, led by the deputy, in dealing with the difficult situation at Amherst Fabricators. I think it was certainly the right decision to ramp-up the investigative team and put some of our more senior people on the scene to complement the existing inspector.
We also have Labour Standards, Environmental Protection, something that is near and dear to all of us; Pension Regulation Division, something that we often don't think about until we come close to retirement; Financial Institutions Division and the Alcohol and Gaming Authority. We are also responsible for environmental and natural areas management, mediation and conciliation services to promote effective workplace relationships, advice, assistance and representation to assist injured workers. I know that that is an area that is near and dear to the Chairman's heart. It, perhaps, reflects back on some of his professional background.
Our new divisions are: Conciliation Services, where staff provide a variety of services and programs to encourage harmonious labour practices, including impartial conciliation, mediation and preventive mediation; Occupational Health and Safety, where staff promotes health and safety conditions in the workplace through research, education and enforcement of legislation; Staff and Labour Standards responds to public inquiries and complaints concerning application of a Labour Standards Code and that would be for non-union situations, Mr. Chairman. They facilitate settlements of complaints where appropriate and investigate and ensure compliance in the case of violations of the Labour Standards Code.
In offices across our province, environmental monitoring and compliance staff - formerly known as the regional offices - are responsible for processing applications, inspection and monitoring of approvals, enforcement activities and response to public issues and complaints. The Solid Waste-Resource Management branch of the division is
responsible for a number of initiatives, including recycling, composting, disposal bans and the Nova Scotia Solid Waste-Resource Management Strategy. That, of course, is the strategy that ultimately led to the great accomplishment that occurred last year where we were the first province in the country and, as I understand it, the first jurisdiction in North America to divert more than 50 per cent of our solid waste and turn garbage into a resource. It is a commendable achievement.
The environmental and natural areas management division is responsible for air and water management, ecological monitoring, standard setting and provision of specialized technical and engineering expertise. Staff also handle environmental education and awareness, administration of the environmental assessment regulations, promotion of environmental industries and technology within the province and abroad - as was the case with the visit that was arranged with the Irish Minister of the Environment just this past month - management and protection of wilderness areas, nature reserves, heritage rivers, the Margaree and the Clyde, and the inventory and evaluation of natural areas throughout this beautiful province. Our policy people provide information, policy analysis and advice to my deputy minister and senior management of the department. They promote effective planning, implementation and evaluation of the departments programs and services.
Information and Business Services staff are also key. People in that division provide information on labour, environment and other departmental issues to the public through a variety of avenues like Library Services, the Environmental Registry, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Web site and on-line data bases.
Financial institutions, formerly with Business and Consumer Services, regulate the operations of credit unions.
MR. MICHEL SAMSON: On a point of order Mr. Chairman. What we see happening here is an absolute disgrace. As you well know, the estimates is a cherished tradition of this House which is an opportunity for the members of the Opposition to question the government on the expenditures of the money of the taxpayers of the Province of Nova Scotia. What the minister is repeating here are statements he had ample opportunity to give in his opening comments, which I should point out took nearly one hour in length. Closing comments have traditionally been a wrap-up to make a few points of clarification and to sit down. What we are getting here is again another explanation of his department. He had an opportunity to do that in his opening comments. What we are seeing here is an abuse of process by this government that claims to be open and accountable and the minister is intentionally dragging out the time of the Opposition. It is an absolute disgrace. I would ask the chairman to request the minister to respect the traditions of this House, wrap up his comments and to allow the Opposition to do what we have been sent here to do on behalf of Nova Scotians.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order. I appreciate the honourable member's point of order. It is a point of order. I believe the honourable member can speak for an hour. It is unheard of in this House that it has happened. I would suggest that the minister understand that I will be listening very carefully to what he is saying. I am not expecting him, if he does use an hour, that he will not be saying things that are just a regurgitation of what was given in his original speech. He can speak for up to an hour, but I will be watching him very carefully as to what he will be saying. Everything has to be relevant and it cannot be a repetition of what was said before.
MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your guidance and I was actually going to speak to the honourable member for Richmond's concern as I was wrapping this up. There were some things that should have been covered in estimates and this is part of the reason for my summation.
Financial institutions formerly with Business and Consumer Services regulate the operations of credit unions, trust and loan companies and insurance companies . . .
MR. SAMSON: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. The minister has clearly indicated that he feels that there are a number of items which were not addressed during the estimates debate. I am curious if that is the minister's position, will the minister entertain a question on his estimates?
AN HON. MEMBER: Use your hour.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, it is the minister's time to speak. He can take a question in the middle or (Interruption) I appreciate that, honourable member for Richmond. So, this is the minister's hour. Will the minister entertain a question from the honourable member for Richmond?
MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member for Richmond had a chance to ask many questions before and I feel that I am being somewhat encouraged to draw my remarks to a close. So out of respect to the honourable member for Richmond, perhaps I should continue on and if time permits at the conclusion then maybe we can take that under consideration. Again, I apologize, I am going to have to start that sentence again because twice it has been interrupted in mid-sentence.
[2:30 p.m.]
Financial institutions formerly with Business and Consumer Services regulate the operations of credit unions, trust and loan companies and insurance companies, agents, brokers and adjustors in the province. The division also provides a complaint and enquiry service to the public relating to financial institutions and the insurance industry and collects and verifies the insurance premium tax.
Formerly with the Department of Finance, our Pension Regulation Division safeguards benefits promised under pension plans registered under the Act by monitoring funding and ensuring minimum benefit standards are provided. The division also facilitates the extension of pension plan coverage for Nova Scotia employees. A former government agency, the Alcohol and Gaming Authority, is now a department division. That is the licensing authority for liquor, gaming and amusements and regulates liquor, gaming and amusements activity for which licenses have been issued. Common functions such as policy, information and business services, library and communications have been consolidated. These changes have been made to provide quality service, fairness to all people and regions, value for money and accountability to all Nova Scotians.
You might notice when I describe the department's new functions that I always refer to the staff who are asked to carry out these duties. I can tell you that I have some very good people in my department, capable staff who deserve to be recognized, congratulated and appreciated as they work through tough times on often difficult issues. There is an inspector in Bridgewater who goes out on the weekend to smooth over an environmental concern. There is the Occupational Health and Safety Division hygienist who helps the worker looking for answers to his or her health concerns. There are the senior staff members who work tirelessly to support me and the department. Here in the Chamber today I would like to say a few words about three staff members, that is not at exclusion of the others because everybody here has helped me so much during my brief time as minister.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Richmond.
MR. SAMSON: Mr. Chairman, I rise on a point of personal privilege as an elected member of this House. This minister clearly stated that he wanted this opportunity to discuss issues that were raised in estimates and to be able to provide clarification. For him to go through and to name all of his staff one by one and which one went out on the weekend and which one has a pick-up and which one drives a Dodge is a complete abuse of the process of this House. As you have said yourself, Mr. Chairman, it is unprecedented in this Chamber that a minister would stand on closing comments and intentionally drag out time, taking time away from not only the members of the Opposition, but I would submit to you, Mr. Chairman, the people of Nova Scotia to know exactly where their hard-earned tax dollars are going. For this minister to continue this is unprecedented and I would say, goes against the Rules of this House and that you, as Chairman, have the ability to rule this minister out of order. This is an abuse of process and what is taking place is an absolute shame and the minister should be ruled out of order immediately.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order. Let me be clear. The minister has an opportunity when acknowledging a final statement to speak. He can speak for an hour. My comment about it being unprecedented is that in my short time here and in talking to some other people who have been here longer, it is something that they have not seen. That does not mean it is against the rules. He is following the rules. Therefore, it is not a violation of the privileges
of the members. It is not a violation of order, though I have made it clear to the minister that I will be listening very carefully if he does intend to go for an hour.
MR. MORSE: Here in the Chamber there are three people who I would like to mention. One is my Director of Communications, Steve Warburton. He is a young man and last week the Opposition honoured me by being first off in this hallowed Chamber even though I believe that my budget may be the smallest one. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I want to make this clear to the minister. It is a normal part of discussion in this House that there will be banter and other members are allowed to speak. If it gets to the point where the minister is unable to be heard or the minister or another member speaking in debate is unable to carry on, then that is something I will intervene in. The minister has been looking at me as to why I am not intervening in the heckling, because I do not think the heckling is at a stage that is inappropriate for this House. The minister will carry on with his speech and at some stage that I think the heckling has gotten to a point where order in the House is an issue, I will intervene. Until that time the minister will continue with his speech or finish speaking.
MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, Steve Warburton spent his last weekend rushing to prepare this material for me and it took time away from his wife and three small children. I know that everybody in this House has done that, but this is staff. I just want to express my appreciation to him. Last night, as I mentioned earlier in the day, I was in the garage at the office on Terminal Road. I was getting in my car. It was about 11:45 p.m. and somebody called out. It was my Director of Occupational Health and Safety. He was there at 11:45 p.m. That is not the first time I have seen Jim Leblanc in the office well after hours.
Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my Deputy Minister, Kevin McNamara, he is a fine gentleman. He typically starts his days at 6:30 a.m., Mr. Chairman, and he is rarely out before 7:00 p.m. in the evening. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge his conscientiousness and his support to me. New issues in this department come up daily, right alongside complex problems that take years to sort. Faced with these challenges, our staff persevere with determination and diplomacy.
Before I end my closing remarks, I would like to personally thank those 454 employees of our department. It is my privilege to work with them. Now I would like to take a few minutes to address a matter that, somehow, was more or less missed by the Opposition in the estimates. My understanding of estimates is that these have to do with numbers. There were a lot of good policy questions and I appreciated their comments and I hope that I can always learn from them. During my opening remarks I sparked some response because I went into some detail about the Workers' Compensation Board. The reason I did that, Mr. Chairman, is its budget is almost tenfold that of the department's budget. I wanted to make sure that I have some of that on the record because I think Nova Scotians have a right to know that the minister responsible is aware of what is going on with these agencies.
So given that this was not gone into in great detail, I would like to just touch on a few of the numbers that were not covered from the Department of Environment and Labour and, in fact, there is another very important board that reports to me that I know the member for Richmond feels passionately about and that, of course, is the Resource Recovery Fund Board. The Resource Recovery Fund Board was established in 1996 as a non-profit organization to develop locally based opportunities for managing solid waste resources in Nova Scotia. The RRFB currently has nine directors who are charged with overseeing the operations of the company. It operates under an agreement with the minister.
The agreement requires the Resource Recovery Fund Board to develop and implement industry stewardship programs. We have seen that this year with the milk cartons, with the sharps. We are now working on paint, to fund municipal or regional diversion programs, to develop and operate a deposit refund system for beverage containers, develop education and awareness of source reduction, reuse, recycling and composting and promote the development of value-added manufacturing in the province. A minimum of 50 per cent of the net revenue from the Resource Recovery Fund must be provided to municipalities, based on their diversion rates. In other words, we reward their successes.
Last year, the fiscal year ended 2000-01, net revenue from the Resource Recovery Fund Board was $9.1 million. One-half of this total went directly to the municipalities through diversion credits. Municipalities will actually receive 74 per cent of the total net revenues from the Resource Recovery Fund in fiscal year 2000-01 through diversion credits, education fundings, regional committees and municipally approved program funding, approximately $6.8 million, Mr. Chairman. Over the past four years, municipalities have received over $22 million from the Resource Recovery Fund and over one-half of this was in the form of direct payments through diversion credits. In the past 10 years, municipalities have received $7.5 million in funding directly from the Department of Environment and Labour for solid waste studies and designs. Additional annual funding benefits to municipalities from stewardship programs is estimated to be almost $4 million a year. These benefits do not include the economic gain resulting from the creation of over 1,000 private and public sector jobs in the waste diversion industry since the release of the strategy in 1996.
As a further breakdown of some of these numbers and, again, I refer to the fact that this is estimates and I think it is important to make sure that we deal with numbers when we are in estimates, at least for part of the time: Net revenues are $9.156 million; the diversion credit, that is to the municipalities, is $4.578 million, then there is restricted funding from the remaining 50 per cent; $535,000 went to the department to defray the costs of the solid waste programs; in education awareness, some went directly to the municipalities and some were part of a provincial program, $500,000 to one and $605,000 to the other; regional committees, what this is about is the funding of a staff person.
MR. MICHEL SAMSON: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman. The estimates of the Province of Nova Scotia are public information. For the minister to stand in this House and to read line items by line items, which are clearly public information and to recite numbers is not adding to this debate. It is not a point of clarification. It is a mere opening of the book and reading line by line. That, I would say, is out of order. It is not what the minister said he would do in his wrap-up comments. It is, once again, another example of the abuse of the process here in this House and this has gone far enough. This farce should be put to an end, I would ask that the minister be ruled out of order and that we move on to the estimates of the Department of Education.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Though I may sympathize with the member for Richmond with regard to his concern for what is normally the process in this House, the Rules do allow this member to continue for one hour and that is the rule. Therefore, the Minister of Environment and Labour has the floor.
MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, there was also $2.708 million worth of approved programs that was divided equally between the municipal programs, which is adopt-a- highway - that is where the municipalities can get the cost of supplies to provide to volunteers to clean up a highway - and also, the value-added program, which is working with industry. That is one where we are not going to use the full $1.354 million and that money is turned over to the municipalities. So it is more than 74 per cent.
It should also be pointed out that since the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission now provides its returnable bottles through the Resource Recovery Fund Board, that adds another $2.5 million.
The member for Richmond, last year in estimates, had a lot of questions about what was going to happen with that $535,000 that went to the department. I would like to answer his questions from last year. The major areas of focus will be implementation and enforcement of the Solid Waste-Resource Management Regulations; approvals for all landfills, transfer stations, composting facilities, recycling plants and recycling industries; education and awareness activities related to solid waste resource management, including the Nova Scotia Youth Corps activities; assistance to municipalities related to administration of the regulations; research and development programs related to solid waste resource management, to assist municipal governments in finding cost-effective, environmentally responsible ways of handling solid waste; development of voluntary and mandatory industry stewardship programs.
On the water strategy, I would just like to give a few details of where some of that money is going to be invested for the benefit of Nova Scotians. The total allocation for waste water strategy is over $850,000, consisting of $200,000 from the water fee credit program, the balance of the funds approved is an adjustment to our budget specifically for the following purposes: it will enable the department to hire additional staff, with specialized
professional expertise in hydrogeology, water science, and technical expertise in water and waste water treatment; as well as to engage specialized external expertise, as required. This will increase our capacity to assist municipalities, community groups and individuals to develop environmentally-sound, cost-effective solutions to water and waste water problems, the need for which has been brought up many times by all members of this House, including the Opposition.
MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. Obviously, what the minister is doing here is filibustering the budgetary process, in the first degree. It is unprecedented. I believe all senior members of the House would readily agree, anyone who has sat here for any period of time. I am just wondering what is the methodology of the minister, since every point that he has raised so far are points that have already been raised during deliberations. As I said, his opening speech for an hour covered it, the questions, the deliberations - is this going to be a new precedent that is going to be set by this government, in terms of budgetary deliberations? If it is, please state so, because such an abuse of process, as I have stated, is unprecedented and lends little to the credibility of these deliberations on very pressing matters here in the Province of Nova Scotia.
MR. CHAIRMAN: As I have said before, the rules do allow for this, so it is not a point of order. I appreciate the member's intervention. If the honourable Minister of Environment and Labour wants to respond to your query, he can do so or he can continue. He has 24 minutes left.
MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, the funding will be allocated as follows: $400,000 is allocated to the Resource Management and Environmental Protection Division, and this will allow for the hiring of a water planner, a water standard specialist, an ambient monitoring specialist, a specialist in water and waste water treatment, and also funding for analytical services. The balance is allocated to the Environmental Monitoring and Compliance Division. This will provide for the hiring of four hydrogeologists, one for each region or other professional water specialists, water technicians, analysis and contracting of additional professional services.
Mr. Chairman, there has been a lot of talk about water, the need for water. I think the first person to do that was, in fact, myself a little over a year ago, when I got up and spoke on health. I got a good deal of heckling at the time, people thought it was funny that one would talk about good, clean drinking water as a major determinant of health, but that was pre-Walkerton. We have all learned something from that, and I am not going to stand here and say that I could have conceived of the Walkerton tragedy at that time. I just think it shows that we should be vigilant.
Mr. Chairman, there is a lot of detail in here, which I am not going to go into, because it breaks down the estimates into minutiae. Pertinent information, where have the cuts come from in the department? This has been in the management, the reduction in directors from
19 to 12. If you would favour me just for a moment, there are a couple of things that I think Nova Scotians would like to know about the difficult decisions and what it looks like within the department.
In the variances, salaries, under Administration, Savings, Office of the Minister and the Deputy Minister, $361,000 - this is the former cost; Business Services Labour, $534,000, and Research Labour; Legal Services and Labour, $38,000; Office of the Minister and the Deputy Minister of Environment, $223,000; Media and Public Relations, $62,000; Legal Services, $35,000, for $1,254,000.
Now under the restructured administration, the Office of the Minister and the deputy now drops to $249,000; Legal Services are at $71,000, for a total of $320,000. Now Communications is contracted out to Service Nova Scotia, and that does appear elsewhere in the minutes. I can identify where to find it, but my sense is that the Opposition is not looking for this today.
The variance is a saving of $933,000, just in the Office of the Minister. One and a half fewer ministers, the same with the deputies, the secretaries. Operating and, again, in Administration, we saved $313,000; Travel was down by $24,000; Professional Service went up by $48,000; Supplies and Services are down by $216,000; Other Miscellaneous is down $120,000.
I think Nova Scotians want to know that we are focusing on front-line service delivery. Difficult decisions within the department, difficult for the staff, this would not have been a lot of fun in the last year, but ultimately we . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.
The honourable member for Richmond.
MR. MICHEL SAMSON: Mr. Chairman, on a point of personal privilege. I would like to refer the Chairman to Resolution No. 1625, which was tabled on Monday, May 1, 2000, by the Hon. David Morse. It says:
"Whereas the operations of this House of Assembly cost approximately $1,125 per hour to run when we are in session;
Whereas while it is the Opposition's perfect right to filibuster, these tactics not only eat up time but also hard-earned taxpayers' dollars;
Whereas last Thursday and again on Friday, nearly two hours worth of time and tax dollars were wasted each day by the Opposition on standing votes for which, for both votes on Friday, very few Opposition members even bothered to remain in the House;
Therefore be it resolved that the members of the Opposition Parties explain how diverting $1,125 per hour from health, education and community services is good for Nova Scotia.".
Mr. Chairman, I would submit to you that what the minister is doing right here at a cost of $1,125 per hour, based on this resolution, makes him a clear hypocrite to all Nova Scotians.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. First of all that is not a point of personal privilege and as much as I am chagrined to say this, the use of the word hypocrite is unparliamentary in that circumstance and I would ask the honourable member to withdraw that as well please.
MR. SAMSON: I will withdraw that comment . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
MR. SAMSON: Mr. Chairman, but clearly Nova Scotians will judge for themselves . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I appreciate it is not a point of personal privilege or a point of order. The Minister of Environment and Labour has 16 minutes remaining.
MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I was winding down, but actually I had that number down here - to conclude my remarks I was going to make reference to that. Once again, this is estimates. Estimates is about numbers, scrutiny. We have some very able legislators here in this Chamber and they have had ample opportunity to ask some of these pertinent questions as to how did we shape our budget? Explain the numbers. They have brought up concerns that are real to them and to the best of my abilities as I said earlier, I have tried to answer their concerns. I would hope that Nova Scotians would expect a certain amount of attention to the details of the budget during estimates. I would say that I felt there was not a lot of attention to this. The reason that I have taken this time is to make a point. I am hoping that Nova Scotians agree that when we debate estimates there should be a consciousness always of the numbers.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that I feel that I made my point. I would hope that next year if you so honour me again as to calling me in the Chamber, and I hope - I am first assuming that I am still in this position at that time - that there will be many questions about numbers because that is what this exercise is about. I hope this few minutes at $1,125 per hour would encourage a greater scrutiny of our finances. With that, I want to thank you for your indulgence.
[3:00 p.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E6 stand?
Resolution E6 stands.
Resolution E23 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $27,072,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect to the Department of Environment and Labour, pursuant to the Estimate.
Resolution E25 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $1,055,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Nova Scotia Police Securities Commission, pursuant to the Estimate.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The resolutions are carried.
Order, please. We will move on to the Department of Education.
The honourable Minister of Education.
HON. JANE PURVES: Mr. Chairman, would you please call Resolution E4.
Resolution E4 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $888,437,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Education, pursuant to the Estimate.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you want to start with your opening statement?
MISS PURVES: Yes. Mr. Chairman, I would like to tell the House that some of my staff have been encouraging me to read for an hour and I would like to inform them that I will not be doing that. There are some points about the budget that I would like to outline in my opening remarks and they are key issues that came up last year and initiatives that are in the budget. Also, our consultation process this year and something about our vision for the future. I will also attempt to answer some of the questions that you and the public may have about the budget.
As I have said several times, I recognize that this budget will not fulfill everyone's wishes but we think it is workable and fair. We have continued our commitment to Nova Scotia's children and youth with some modest yet meaningful investments and I am proud of that. When we have our provincial budget balanced we will do more, until then we will keep moving forward. Moving forward means a lot more than the numbers in an Estimates Book. The funding represented by these numbers is important but so is the vision they support. Our vision for all areas of the educational system is based on quality, accountability
and standards. We are not saying that these are missing from the current system but Nova Scotians have told us that they need to be strengthened. They need to be strengthened so we can assure taxpayers that their money is being spent wisely and that they are getting results for their investment. Such results include a high literacy rate and a workforce that meets the needs of new sectors like the offshore, IT and biotech industries.
To increase quality standards and accountability in our education system we will begin an ambitious multi-year agenda of education renewal in the coming months. Our agenda of renewal will contain some initiatives that will be small in terms of funding but significant by their impact. Others will require more funding and will lead to fundamental changes in how we run the education system. I would like to make clear that renewal is not about cutting costs. It is about designing an education system that meets the needs of Nova Scotians in the 21st Century. Renewal will move us all closer to our goal of an education system which is second to none in the world and I do not believe that goal is out of reach. Before I discuss this year's budget, I want to discuss my department's financial performance over the past year. Total expenditures, including assistance to universities, are forecasted to be about $13.6 million overbudget representing a 1.3 per cent overexpenditure. I would like to take a moment to address why this is so.
First, there is a $10.5 million overexpenditure in higher education for a reserve against future student loan losses. Second, there is a $1.4 million overexpenditure relating to additional funding for the Nova Scotia Community College, funding relief to the colleges' computer expenses so it could reallocate funds to the virtual campus in coming years. These overexpenditures did not occur as a result of unplanned or out of control spending. Last year as resources became identified government-wide additional funds were allocated to the priorities of government and there were a number of offsetting over and underexpenditures.
As a result of the considerable and understandable public interest in school board funding, I want to address what would appear to be an underexpenditure in Formula Grants to School Boards. While the budget estimate showed $616.7 million, the forecast shows only $609.3 million spent.
Members might conclude that school boards had not received their anticipated funding, but that is not true. School boards received the funding that was agreed to last May because the Department of Finance assumed responsibility for $15.6 million of ERP or early retirement payments previously directed from this account. The effect of this was to free up resources within the existing estimate. In fact, boards received additional assistance beyond their estimated formula funding to cover unexpected costs of fuel, energy and snow removal this year. The government will not bail out overexpenditures, but when there are additional resources available and pressures totally beyond the board's control, assistance will be provided. That is the responsible thing to do.
Again, I would like to address an overexpenditure last year in assistance to universities. This overexpenditure was primarily the result of a $2.3 million funding promised to St. F.X. University made in 1990. This ensures that the promise will be kept and fulfills all outstanding government commitments to university capital funding.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a few key points about this year's budget. This budget shows an overall increase of $29.6 million over last year's. The main areas of increase include a $2.2 million increase in Finance and Administration, a $19.7 million increase in school amortization and a $5.6 million increase in the budget for community colleges. In this budget we have increased Public Education Funding by $13 million and funding to school boards by $16 million. I know there has been some discussion, and possibly misunderstanding, about the $13 million increase versus the $16 million increase.
I know the members opposite will have questions about this, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to clarify in my opening statement and then answer questions as well later. Overall, the public education envelope has increased by $13 million, but under grants to school boards, because the Department of Finance assumed funding for the ERP, this freed up $15.6 million in the budget and leaving this funding in the budget, plus including the municipal share of the increase, we were able to increase new funding to school boards by $16 million. Since the funding for the ERP was in last year's budget, the budget line for grants to school boards does not show a $16 million increase on paper, but Finance did remove the expenditure and left in the money. So it is as if someone paid your mortgage, your overall monthly paycheque would not increase, but your disposable income would and you would have more money for other things and that is what happens here. The funding is there and we made sure it went to school boards.
The total now is $766.3 million. Last year's formula funding was $750.2 million. The increase is $16.1 million and in doing so, we increased every board's funding this year. Six of the seven boards have taken their budgets and are prepared to implement them. One board, Cape Breton-Victoria, is having difficulty implementing its budget. The board has communicated this to me. We acknowledge the difficulties that a declining enrollment places on a board and we hope to have the matter resolved by the end of April. So even though there are some issues still outstanding, I am, again, pleased to be able to say that all school boards received more funding.
I am also very pleased with the process that led up to Budget Day. Consultation was a key focus of this year's budget process. This year we restructured that process. We have an education consultative forum that was established to be the main communications vehicle between the department and the school boards. It was the work of this committee, which started meeting last September, that led to the formulation of the 2001-02 Education budget. This group started by identifying cost pressures on the system. They formulated a series of recommendations on the funding needs to support the school system and these figures and recommendations form the basis of my presentation to Cabinet during the budget process.
In addition to the consultative process that the department has, I have met with elected school board officials. I feel, as elected officials, they deserve my attention and consideration of their concerns and ideas. I would like to acknowledge that the Nova Scotia School Boards Association under the leadership of Lavinia Parrish-Zwicker has facilitated these open lines of communication and I thank her for that. Certainly the ideas and discussions from the educational consultative forum and my meetings with elected officials intersect and that is what happened with this budget. Again, we could not please everyone, but I don't think anyone could criticize the process.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to say a few words about enrollment decline. Between September 1999 and September 2000, enrollment declined by 2,279. Obviously, provincially, there are fewer and fewer students in our schools every year. This has been happening for 30 years and it is projected to continue to happen. For example, in 1996 there were 162,029 students in the system. By 1999 there were 154,482. That is a loss of more than 7,500 students over a four year period. That is a huge drop.
This year, for the first time, we determined the cost of losing 2,279 students to the system and we reallocated that funding. We discussed with superintendents what would be a reasonable adjustment for having fewer students. It was determined that each board's funding would be adjusted downward based on their actual student enrollments and through this process, in consultation with the boards, it was determined that $1,100 should be reallocated for each lost student and this totals approximately $2.5 million. Since the average cost to educate a student is about $4,950 a year, we were still leaving the remaining $3,850 per student with the school boards. So we are trying to make the process reasonable and slow. School boards do manage their budgets. They are responsible for dealing with cost pressures and decisions have been made easier as each and every board received an increase in funding this year.
I would also like to speak for a moment about the pupil/teacher ratio. We all realize that that ratio does not refer to each and every student in a classroom, but it is an international measure that all educators use. In 1996, when the government at the time amalgamated the school boards, the pupil/teacher ratio was 17.5 to one. Last year it was 16.5 to one and this year we expect there to be a slight improvement in that.
In addition to an increase in overall funding to school boards, Mr. Chairman, we made meaningful increases in a number of other areas. Special education is one of those areas where we increased funding. In this budget there is $3 million more to support students with special needs and, yes, parents of special education children have told us they want more money for programs and services. The school boards actually asked us for $6 million, but $3 million is all we could afford this year. We recognize the reality of the pressure and, again, when our provincial budget is balanced, we will be able to do more and I look forward to that day. Right now I am awaiting the final report of the Special Education Implementation Review Committee.
I would like to say also, Mr. Chairman, that it is my hope that some of the funding that we have supplied to the boards this year will go to employing professionals, whether teachers or speech language pathologists, or others, to meet the needs of our special education students.
Another area where we have increased funding, not quite so substantially, is our active young readers and assessment. This year we will expand the Active Young Readers Program to Grade 4 to Grade 6 with new funding of approximately $658,000. This will bring the total expenditure for this program to $1.2 million. Last year we introduced the program in Grade Primary to Grade 3 and put approximately 100 new books in every Primary to Grade 3 classroom in the province. The additional funds provided this year will support training, board leadership, regional workshops for school teams on literacy education and provide follow-up leadership to workshops for team leaders. Promoting literacy and life-long learning are this government's highest priorities. I personally believe the ability to read and write well is the greatest gift anyone can receive. In Nova Scotia this is our goal and our Active Young Readers Program supports that.
It is also one of our goals to have students and their parents know their level of achievement. This year we will spend $250,000 for enhanced assessment programs which include a Grade 6 literacy assessment to build on the work done in the Active Young Readers Program. For the first time we will share the results with individual students and their parents.
MR. MICHEL SAMSON: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. I believe we have lost quorum in the House. I would ask you to do a count of the members here to make sure we still have quorum.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, honourable member. We have a quorum.
The honourable Minister of Education.
MISS PURVES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I was saying, we will share these results with individual students and parents and identify specific areas where more work is needed.
In the coming years we will introduce another literacy assessment in Grade 9 and follow that with the current Grade 12 assessment to ensure that students' progress is assessed at key points in their public school career. It is one thing to test our students and inform their parents of their achievement levels, we believe that we need to go further. We must provide strategies for those students who fail to meet our literacy standards. In the coming years we will be putting more resources to help teachers identify challenges for students and develop the strategies that will help them succeed. Through these efforts we want to ensure that every
child has a level of literacy that will enable him or her to enter the workforce or pursue post-secondary opportunities.
Just as we are committed to providing opportunities to public school children, we are also committed to those Nova Scotians no longer in the system and who need assistance to have a better life with more options. In another addition to our budget we allocated $1 million to the new Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning. The federal government, through HRDC, will also be contributing $1.5 million to this new initiative. I believe members are somewhat familiar with this initiative announced last year, so I will not go into details at this time.
For a moment on safe schools, Mr. Chairman. Nova Scotians want a safe school environment. To this end we have allocated $1 million in new funding to assist school boards with occupational health and safety issues such as clean water. We want boards to have funds to do the water testing and any follow-up remediation.
In addition I will be introducing a provincial school code of conduct. A committee spent a year reviewing policies in other jurisdictions and they presented me with their report in late 2000. The committee is not recommending a zero tolerance policy. They recommend a flexible policy where the consequences fit the deed. That said, I can assure you that we will not tolerate violent behaviour or the use of drugs. That is what we promised and that is what we will do. We sent the report to school boards and principals a month ago and when we hear back from them I will announce a new code that clearly indicates what is and isn't an acceptable behaviour.
As well, to further support safe and tolerant schools, we will be bringing forward a provincial racial equity policy in the coming months. This policy will address a recommendation of the Black Report on Education. It will focus on curriculum, assessment and instructional practices in public schools. It will respect each student's first language, culture and traditions and it will support learning environments that reflect principles of racial equity. In this budget we are providing $100,000 to implement the policy through professional development and training for our teachers.
We are also continuing with our commitment to ensure high school students learn about our rich history. The additional $75,000 budget to support this initiative will provide workshops, learning resources, teaching materials, as well as a summer institute for those teachers piloting the course.
The year we will also implement a youth pathways and transition program with $200,000 in funding. This program will focus students on the general skills they need to succeed in life and work. Students will start a career portfolio in junior high that will let them track their progress in acquiring the basic skills needed for employment, based on the Conference Board of Canada's employability skills profile. In addition to the career portfolio
we will also begin providing students with the option of connecting high school courses to specific programs at the Nova Scotia Community College. In some cases students may even gain credits toward specific college programs. Each school board has already signed agreements with the college in support of that program.
Strengthening the link between the public school system and the Nova Scotia Community College is a goal of this government, and so is increasing capacity at the NSCC. There is no doubt that the community college has a key role to play in closing the skills gap. There are a lot of new, highly skilled jobs in such new sectors as the offshore, but we need more highly skilled workers to take advantage of them. Unfortunately the college can't meet the demand it has created through its own success. So, to help the NSCC increase capacity we have provided an extra $2 million to create 200 new seats. In addition we have provided the college with funding of $1.98 million to address salary increases. Finally, some $417,000 in other funding has been incorporated into the college's base budget.
All of these increases, along with $8 million associated with federal recoveries are identified in the Supplementary Details. Also, I alluded earlier to an extra $1 million in funding to the college in the 2000-01 year. This funding will allow the college to reallocate resources this fiscal year to support the virtual campus project. It is very important that people be able to go to college or university or both and get recognition for the credits they have already earned. Other provinces make it easier to transfer credits between colleges and university and this is an issue I am interested in addressing also.
Mr. Chairman, as members opposite have pointed out, I have not been able to bring forward a debt reduction program for post-secondary students. This is one area where I hope our new advisory board on colleges and universities can help and I will be asking this board to bring forth recommendations for a replacement to the Student Loan Remission Program to help deal with the level of debt many of our post-secondary students find themselves in.
For universities, this fiscal year we increased formula funding by $4.8 million. Again, the universities were looking for more and we weren't able to provide it but we struck a balance that we believe is fair. As well, we have been unable to tackle the capital challenges facing universities in this budget. We have asked universities through the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents to bring us a plan for how to deal with the existing pressures of deferred maintenance in our universities. I believe actually that within the last couple of weeks we have received that plan and that staff are going over it. We have asked them to identify additional funding sources and the government's role in assisting them with this huge challenge.
Another area I would like to touch on before questions is the issue of Acadian and French education. Again, for the record we value and support French first and second language education. Partly because it reflects the diversity of the Nova Scotian population and partly because it is simply the right thing to do. While I hesitate to make funding
comparisons on the basis of language, this government clearly rejects the claim that Acadian and French-speaking Nova Scotians are short-changed in education funding. When compared to the average for the rest of the province in the appropriate sector, CSAP, the College de l'Acadie and the Université Sainte-Anne all have higher funding rates per student than their provincial counterparts.
This year we expect to spend a total of $36.4 million on French language programs for CSAP, the college, and the Université Sainte-Anne, French special projects and departmental activities. In addition there will be approximately $33 million through formula funding provided to boards to teach core French to anglophone students. This does not include other provincial funding provided to boards for French immersion. Total anticipated federal recoveries from the OLEP, Official Languages and Education Program agreements are anticipated to be $5.8 million, resulting in total provincial funding of approximately $63.6 million on French first language and core French education.
I know there is some issue concerning where we were allocating federal funding for French language programs. The federal government has reviewed our funding under the Official Languages and Education Program, all the field work has been done and we are still waiting for a final report. Indications during the review are that Nova Scotia has done nothing wrong in its allocation of funding. I am confident the final report will show we fully supported French language programs in this province.
Mr. Chairman, the other area I wish to mention is capital projects. The increase in the budget for school amortization reflects the government's decision to account for all of the P3 schools on a tangible capital asset basis. It reflects a full year of amortization for the eight schools completed last year including Boularderie, Central Kings, Canso, Fanning, Digby, Musquodoboit, Plymouth, Sackville Heights and Yarmouth. It reflects amortization of the renovations to be completed in 2001-02 and amortization of the seven schools to be completed this year; Elmsdale, Clare, Argyle, Sainte Anne du Ruisseau, Pomquet, Chedabucto Place and Whycocomagh.
This year we will continue with our school construction program approved in June 2000 and complete construction of seven schools this year and start four more. The seven to be completed I have already listed but the four to be started are St. Anthony-Daniel in Sydney, East Pictou High in Pictou County, South Colchester High in Brookfield and Halifax North Mainland.
Certainly we have a challenge in keeping our buildings maintained. There is no doubt about that. We have recommendations from the new school capital construction review committee that we will be considering over the next several weeks. Any capital construction plan we develop will take into account preventive maintenance. We will be taking a long-term approach that focuses first and foremost on the health and safety of children and teachers. Our approach will give separate consideration to new schools, additions to existing
schools and repairs and maintenance, and establish priorities for projects within these three categories. As I have said, this budget does not fulfill everyone's wishes but I believe it is fair and I believe it takes all sectors into consideration.
I referred earlier to our Canadian history course and I would like to read a quote from an immigrant who arrived in Canada in the 1800's, not a famous person just an immigrant. The quote is "This certainly is a country where the virtue of patience will not languish for want of exercise. All around one sees a multiplicity of things that should be done and the ways and means to accomplish them so few and so small." So there is much to be done. This government is trying to undertake important things in education while being fiscally responsible. I would be more than pleased to take questions members may have if I may have a few moments to bring the staff in.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order please. Would the honourable minister wish to introduce her staff?
MISS PURVES: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I believe I have to read these resolutions as well, a minor point.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Usually at the conclusion of consideration of the estimates.
MISS PURVES: Yes, okay, I thought so.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce to the House, I believe they have met him before, Deputy Minister, Dennis Cochrane and Financial Director, Darrell Youden.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome gentlemen.
The honourable member for Halifax Needham.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I would like to begin first by complimenting the minister on having a mind of her own in the matter of what estimates are all about and exercising, I think, very good judgment and very fair judgment with respect to deviating from the advice she may have gotten about using time. The time we spend here, the 40 hours we spend here on the floor in this Chamber looking at five departments is very important. We do this work not because it gives us any great pleasure, we do it because it is our job. We do it on behalf of the people of Nova Scotia who are not in a position to come here themselves and ask questions about how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. They indeed recognize, I think, that quite often the tools and the resources that are available to the Opposition in holding government accountable for the allocation of public dollars do not in any way approximate the tools and resources that are available to government and government members. Therefore, in the spirit of common decency and fairness it seems to me that we need to operate with some understanding of why
this is an important procedure and that sadly was missing I think in the prior exhibition we had here simply in eating up the member's time. I just wanted to say this.
I am sure that the minister must feel a lot different this year than she did this time last year when we were dealing with Education budgets. I do not want to put her through having to relive last year's budget. I think it is important that we situate what we are doing today in a context. The context is one where last year we saw this government take a very different approach in many respects to education in Nova Scotia. I certainly am grateful to see that there is some attempt to mitigate some of the damage that was done in last year's Education budget.
[3:30 p.m.]
I would like to begin by reading a little piece that appeared in the Kentville Advertiser and I will table this when I finish. I believe it is an editorial, it basically says the history of cuts to have a lasting effect. It begins by saying, The provincial government has as good as promised that the school boards of Nova Scotia will not have to deal with the financial pressures that they faced last year. Nor will they be forced to cope with the public concern. Kings North MLA, Mark Parent, told a parents group in Wolfville last week that clearly a mistake was made in 2000 when province-wide turmoil took place over cutbacks in the level of education funding. Parent's comment is no more than the truth indeed.
The editors of the Kentville Advertiser go on to write, Talk to any principal about what resulted from last spring's cuts. He or she can provide a list over a page long of the practical implications. In some ways the damage could be deemed obscure when superior teaching practices have to be abandoned. But there is no mistaking the increased stress on teachers and in some schools a doubling in the number of suspensions this year over last. Fewer staff members to cope with more troubled students have sad but predictable results. Did we see it coming? You bet we did.
Mr. Chairman, I think when I look at the business plan of the government in education, the goals are laid out. I would like to start in the public education and training system with the first goal laid out by this government. The previous minister made the comment that he understood that estimates were about numbers. I think the minister indicated that estimates are not strictly about numbers and I could not agree with her more. She indicated that they were about vision and that this government's vision for education is
quality, accountability and standards. I think budgets, actually, and the estimates process are about people, and I think they are about the choices and the priorities that government set, where is the government going to take the ship of state, and where are they going to take the development of people, and the ability of people to enjoy all of the wonderful things this province could have and should have to offer. In no other area than the public education area is that more true.
The minister has said that funding this year to school boards is being increased by $16 million, I believe is what she said, although it appears from the budget itself that it is $13 million, but I accept her explanation of why it is actually $16 million. I would like to ask more questions about this. My first question to this minister is, it is my understanding that school boards, in fact, were looking for something more like $35 million, something approximating $35 million, just to stand still, just to meet the kinds of increases in operating that one would anticipate. I think that most of us, if you use the household as the analogy, will recognize that because of inflation and the increases, for example, for fuel costs or whatever, we can all anticipate that rarely does the amount of operating of our households actually go down on an annual basis, generally there is some accumulation of cost.
My understanding is that school boards, just to maintain the status quo, in fact, required approximately $35 million, and if, in fact, what they are receiving from this government is $16 million, then there will be a shortfall of approximately $19 million. This is going to result in a reduction in services, and where salaries constitute probably 80 per cent or more of the operating costs of the school boards, then I think we can probably anticipate teacher layoffs to some extent, a loss of teaching positions in the province, and a loss of support staff in various ways.
I would like the minister to indicate what the department's understanding is of the shortfall between what the boards were asking for and what the government has provided, and then what the implications of this are going to be in terms of teaching staff, in terms of other staff and in terms of programs.
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, our understanding, from our discussions with the school boards, is that their ask would be about $5 million more than what we gave them. This would include that $3 million for special education - I mentioned they asked for $6 million and we gave them $3 million - and it would include somewhat more than we gave them for energy costs and some regulatory increases.
The biggest lump sum that we were not able to help the boards with at all is the deferred maintenance issue. Their ask there was about $27 million, and we were not able to do anything about that at this point. It is a huge problem in the school system, and it is an even huger problem government-wide, I would say, but I think the member is aware of that.
My honest estimation is that school boards will be able to manage. For instance, next winter, we don't know what it is going to be like, we could have a repeat of this winter but it might not be like that at all. This year we were able to help them during the year because we recognized that cost, and gave them more money. I think that overall they will be able to manage. I have said, and have no issue with admitting again, that the board that is going to have the most problems is Cape Breton-Victoria because it is the board that has seen the steepest enrolment decline.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I would like to ask the minister if she could expand a bit more on what in the world the government is proposing to do with respect to the deferred maintenance. How much longer can we continue to put off the maintaining of our schools? As the minister, I am sure, will readily admit, this is an incredible problem, because not to deal with it means that down the road the costs just accumulate, they get entirely out of hand, in terms of doing any kind of renovations. Then there are the health costs, there are the costs to children, the increased amount of asthmas, for example, and viral and respiratory kinds of problems that are being fairly well documented by the medical community.
I understand that absenteeism and the need for substitute teaching has been a serious problem in some of the boards. Some of this is related to the stress that is occurring in the classrooms, because of the lack of support services to classroom teachers, but also teaching in sick buildings and working in environments that are less than optimal. I know that I had an opportunity in January and February to tour all of the schools in my constituency. Many of these schools go back to probably the 1940's when they were built, and then the rest of them, I think, were probably built in the late 1950's and early 1960's. These schools are in desperate need of maintenance. I know that a number of the classroom teachers that I look forward to seeing when I go into those schools were out on extended sick leave. These are very dedicated teachers, and it was very shocking, really, to find out that a number of them were quite seriously ill.
What is the plan? Where is the plan to deal with deferred maintenance in the boards? We can't continue to put this off year after year. The impact that it has, in fact, costs us money somewhere along the line.
MISS PURVES: The member for Halifax Needham is absolutely right. Our plan is obviously, where the buildings and the situation in a community warrants, new schools are being built. When there is an emergency situation, such as there was at Central Kings last year, we do a retrofit. For instance, we spent $1 million there. The additions, our plan for alterations and renovations is going to be a little different than in previous years, in that we plan to allocate certain budgets that you can use each year for some of these situations so that the incentive is not there for boards to allow schools to deteriorate to the extent where they have to get a new one. In other words, we want boards to spend the money they have for maintenance on maintenance and then we're going to have a priority plan to go in and do parts of buildings rather than waiting another 10 years until the whole thing is absolutely falling down around people's ears. There are schools where a wing can be refurbished, or rebuilt, or torn down and the school can be made perfectly habitable.
Again, it is going to be a long process because the accumulated problem is huge and the member is absolutely right. When we have more money we will do more, but we will be putting money into alterations, renovations and trying to fix up the worst part of the old buildings first and again seek to maintain the rest so the whole thing isn't falling down.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I would like to ask the minister where in the budget is the line item that allocates dollars for the kinds of emergencies that occur such as happened in the Valley and how much has been set aside? I imagine we have seen every year that there have been schools around the province that have encountered these situations, Halifax West is a very good example and the Central Kings is another example. We have a school, I believe, out in the Cole Harbour area in that situation. So, there must be monies allocated somewhere in the budget for emergencies and how much?
MISS PURVES: For the additions, alterations and renovations the budget is about $19 million. The remains of the capital budget are there in the supplementary estimates, but the capital budget for the department is now with the capital budget of the province. It is not in the Education budget anymore. Therefore, it is not in these estimates.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I am just trying to ascertain what this means, that money that's allocated for these kinds of emergencies in schools isn't in the Education budget. Where would it appear then? I guess to be quite frank, I am trying to find out if there is one of these little slush funds someplace that can be used for various little problems and little projects that come up. I think it would be quite good for the Opposition to know about where this money is and what other purposes it might be available for.
MISS PURVES: Because we're not in P3 anymore, that we've gone back to the traditional method of building schools, the capital budget is with Transportation and Public Works but we have lines in our budget, for instance, for carrying the amortization of new buildings and new schools in our budget, the capital budget does not exist in these estimates anymore.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Perhaps to be helpful could the Minister of Education disclose the page that the particular item is on. I think she's trying to determine where she can find that information.
MISS PURVES: It is in Real Property Services in Transportation and Public Works.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you very much. Well, I'll have a chance maybe to look at that a bit later. I think it is really important, this is a government that has said they want to be transparent and accountable. This is a government that has said that they wanted to put the debt and the spending by the previous government that was hidden off the books, they wanted to put that back on to the books so that people in the Province of Nova Scotia would know precisely what they were getting for their tax dollar. It is important that we know where money is being placed and whether or not there are monies that are being allocated as discretionary spending in other places in the budget. It seems to me that it is very important that we acknowledge first of all the critical situation that many schools are in with respect to deferred maintenance and the fact there will be problems and that we not try to
squirrel away money that we intend to spend in our school system elsewhere. That defeats the whole purpose of trying to be open and transparent I think.
I mentioned earlier that I had spent some time touring the schools in my own constituency. I don't know if the minister had an opportunity, I don't know if her staff keeps a clipping file for her on different newspaper articles and what have you. I suspect that news coverage of schools in Nova Scotia is brought to her attention. Back in early January the Globe and Mail did a feature, Sean Fine who is the education reporter for the Globe and Mail, did a feature on the state of schools in the country actually. In doing this feature, a four part series, he chose a school that is in my riding, Saint Joseph's A. MacKay. It is an inner-city school and I want to read a bit from this article which I will table when I've finished using it.
I want to read this little piece that the principal in this school, whose name is Tom Smith, said in terms of what it means to be an inner-city school because people often don't understand. They make certain assumptions about what this means. I'll probably have this for a few minutes. Mr. Smith wants to be clear on what an inner-city school means; it does not say that we're a violent school. It does not say that our kids are not being parented in healthy families. It simply says that our children don't have the same resources as other families in the school system and it means all of the things that poverty brings.
This is a school that is actually quite an old school. This is a school that, until the strike, had two janitors working in the school full time. The reporter describes this school as a school - because of the numbers of children and the wear and tear on the school, there are 335 kids in this elementary school in North End Halifax - that takes a fair amount of wear and tear and requires a lot of care and attention. It is a school that's more than 50 years old, could use a paint job but probably could use more than a paint job in terms of the maintenance. It is interesting if you read this article, what this article is really about is the lack of personnel in this school and the lack of supports and what has occurred to the quality of education as a result of not having enough person power.
Without exception, every school I visited in my constituency told me the same thing, with all due respect to the new books they received under the Young Reader Program which they were very pleased to get, they said this isn't the most immediate problem in this school. The most immediate problem is that we have students who have behavioural problems and we don't have the resources to deal with those kids. We have special needs children and we don't have the resources for those kids. What we need in our classrooms is an infusion of people. The vice principal says that in a particular class that she has there are five children who have behavioural problems and they need at least an hour a day of one-on-one or two-on-one outside the classroom with a resource teacher but instead they're getting an hour or so maybe twice a week. These children are being lost in the system. The attempt to build a foundation of early literacy skills, while very important, will not assist these particular
children who are missing out on those programs and who have found themselves in a classroom struggling for time and attention.
I am curious about the directions that the minister has provided to school boards. Last year the minister told school boards that she wanted the cuts to be made in administration and outside the classroom. We all know that the cuts that were made in fact very much affected the classroom. The cuts were made to resource programming, to library assistants, to librarians, to teaching assistants, to EPAs, to student support workers, to guidance counsellors, it goes on and on. I am wondering what directions are being given to boards with respect to how money is being spent this year and maybe it would be helpful if the minister would tell me what she understands to be administration.
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, to answer the last part first, I would say administration is usually people at central office working for the board, often with various titles. In point of fact, the boards last year were able to achieve some reductions in administration in terms of people at central office and that is one of the things we were after. We made equivalent reductions in the Department of Education. We wanted less travel, fewer conferences and so on to do with administration and the least harm to what actually goes on in the school.
[4:00 p.m.]
In terms of some of the issues that the honourable member for Halifax Needham mentions with children with behavioural problems and other special needs, one of the results of some of the situations in the mid 90's when health care costs were exploding and education received less increase than it might have otherwise had, was that a lot of resource teachers either left or were taken out of the system, often times replaced by teacher's assistants or teacher's aides or other staff who frankly didn't cost as much. In retrospect, I think most of the board members would agree with me, this trend was probably a mistake in terms of, well simply because as valuable as the teacher assistants are, in many cases they aren't trained teachers. They aren't resource teachers, they aren't psychologists, they aren't speech language pathologists and they are not able to do some of the remedial work that these kids need. I think that most of them would agree with me and it is my hope that as we begin to be able to provide more funding for special needs children that the resources will be directed towards those professionals who can do the most good for these kids.
That being said, I think we would all agree that when we have a situation as we do with so many special needs children in our classes, and we have a combination of a health and education issue like we do, that not only is this expensive to address but it is difficult to manage expectations, very difficult to manage expectations. We will be providing more money, that is not the issue. It is just recognizing that there may be areas where we either don't have the teaching methods to succeed yet or a disease is not yet manageable in the education system, we are still going to have problems with individual cases, try as we do to
not have these problems, they will exist, but there will be more money. There is more money this year and there will be more money in the coming years. I hope that money will be spent on people who can do the most good for these kids.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I guess that's true. It is really a question of having the right combination of skills. That's not really what I am looking for in terms of a concept. I think there's a blend of different kinds of professions and semi-professions probably that are required in our school system. I know that some educational program assistants get pretty exercised, and I think with good reason, when sometimes they are understood as workers who only deal with personal hygiene, helping students get their coats on and off and things like this. Nurses have the same problem I think when they are understood to give back rubs and change bed pans and not seen to have other skills.
I think the educational program assistants, the roles and the jobs they have performed, their duties and responsibilities, have changed over the years and they have been subjected to probably different demands and more complicated expectations themselves, not only the personal safety and hygiene of students, but they do educational upgrading, training, and have become more involved in implementing maybe a speech or a physiotherapy program that has been designed by a speech pathologist. They work under the guidance of health professionals in some cases and what have you. So I think it is really important that the department give some very clear signal to workers like the educational program assistants about what their place, what their future, in the provision of education is going to be and whether or not we are returning to an education system that is more limited, I think, in the number of people, and job categories that are represented in the classrooms, where we have licensed teachers and a lack of any other kind of resources available in the classroom and then special professions like speech therapists, which would be more located maybe in a children's hospital, or outside the education system.
I know that is something that is of great concern to parents and to many teachers, especially if you consider what the waiting lists are often like to get a child with developmental or speech issues, cognitive, neurological issues to be assessed, let's say at the children's hospital, the waiting lists are extraordinary and then to have a program designed and not to have people in the classroom setting in addition to a teacher who is able to assist in implementing this program is a real problem.
So I guess I would like to hear from the minister some reassurance for educational program assistants, for example, of what their place is in the education system and whether or not they will continue to have and play an important role or is this something that we are now going to see a move from which I think is one of the things that was the result last year of the cuts and certainly in one of the schools in my area, and I know in other areas as well, it would appear that if students did not have a need for medication and a very specific diagnosis in terms of a medical diagnosis, they often were unable to receive additional
support with an educational program assistant even if there was an acknowledged developmental delay that required some additional supports.
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, one of the issues with the educational program assistants or teacher assistants that probably in the system we have to come to grips with in the next few years is the fact that, yes, they are necessary components of a system, necessary people in the system, but at the present time, even though any individual teacher assistant may have some medical training, or may have teacher training, or may have some training, there are no standard qualifications beyond a high school education required of an educational program assistant so that in some cases, depending on the individual, they may be very well able to help a student almost as well as a teacher could, but in other cases they may not. If we are to think of these persons as para-professionals, we are going to have to look at providing some training beyond just a high school graduation and that is one part of it.
The other issue, and it is a more difficult emotional one and I hope the member appreciates what I am trying to get at here, but when teacher assistants and EPAs were first introduced into the system, they were meant to be teacher assistants. They were meant to help the teacher manage and run the class and over time, for whatever reason, a lot of parents have seen their children become very attached to these program assistants, almost to being one of the family; sometimes to a point of a dependency that was never intended that it happen in the system. This has created issues that really don't have anything so much to do with education as they do with the need of the child or the parent to have this person help them in their lives and this is a difficult issue because we are all human beings in Education and every other area of government, but our job is to try to educate children and sometimes these personal attachments can actually be detrimental.
So, yes, we need to establish some standards. Whether it happens this year or next year or the year after, it is going to have to come. Yes, there is a place in the system for these people, but I personally would like to see them as much as possible be these assistants to the teachers so that they can help all kids and that we find ways of providing other support services, perhaps medical services, to those parents and children who have become so dependent upon these workers.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I want to thank the minister. I think I understand what she is saying and I certainly appreciate the last part of your comment. I think that probably what occurs is the result of not having the supports available to families, especially if they have a child who has special needs, in other areas and that certainly means that people will look for those supports wherever they can find them and if it is in the school system, then it is obvious that the attachment will certainly develop in that way.
I want to talk a bit about testing, the whole idea of testing for the literacy rate, and I want to say that I try to read the literature on this. There is literature on both sides of this issue that I would like to say is helpful in assisting me formulate an opinion, but it has not been all that helpful because it tends to have extremely opposing viewpoints. I am still struggling to find some balance there between the idea that testing is just about the worst thing that you could ever consider doing in the school system and testing as a panacea for everything that is going to solve all of the problems that people have identified as areas that need to be worked on and dealt with in the school system.
Certainly on the negative side is the whole question of teaching to the tests and, therefore, not really teaching in a way that develops the childrens' real potential and what that will mean. There are also questions around what releasing the results will do in terms of stigmatizing the students or schools, or school boards, or areas that the results don't look so good for.
There is also a question of whether or not tests are all that accurate when you are dealing with more disadvantaged communities or populations where standardized tests have failed various cultural groups. There is a big class component in there and so on, so that, these are certainly the arguments on one side. The arguments on the other side are that if you do these tests you have some evidence of where you need to target resources. You then have evidence that you can do some planning around. It introduces an element of accountability that will result in better quality teaching and that you can raise the standard of your education as a result.
It is my understanding that the testing we currently do is now being looked at as being extended across the province, that we actually test by board, not by school, that the results are captured by board, not by school and that these results are not made public, but what is being proposed here, is some change. We are proposing to make the test results public. I would like the minister to tell us a bit more about her plan for the testing, for the release of data, or the results of testing, and what purpose this is going to serve, and what the department's response will be with respect to tests? The areas where the test results demonstrate lower levels of literacy, does this mean they will receive additional resources and supports? I think at this stage we need to know what the response will be to test results because that becomes part of how the tests themselves are planned for. So could the minister tell us about her plans for the testing and the using of the results from those tests?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, in the case of the Grade 6 testing, the one we are calling a literacy check, we test now but the results are more or less a system check as opposed to individual results that go to parents. What we are talking about is changing the test somewhat to be a literacy check, not a curriculum test of that year, but kind of a check to see how they are doing so far in their progress in their school career and then giving parents the test results. We are not talking about posting the results in the school or publishing them in the paper for individuals, but to let parents know how their kids are doing.
One of the reasons for doing this is precisely as the member said. I mean, parents do want to know how their kids are doing. They don't want to all of a sudden realize one day - and I have had parents tell me this - oh my God, he cannot read, and she never knew. Nobody ever told her, she never noticed. I know these are isolated cases, but it does happen. I think the pendulum may have swung a bit too far - I know other Education Ministers agree with me - in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of not testing. We are just trying to swing the pendulum back a bit.
We are not talking about going back to the good old days of what schools were like when I was in them and we are not talking standardized exams such as the old provincial exams used to be, which were not based on the curriculum kids were being taught. They were based on a standard from the centre and teachers did indeed teach to those old provincials. The exams that we have in the later grades now are based on the curriculum that the kids are being taught, so they are not what educators would refer to as standardized tests. The old provincials were standardized. We would prefer to call them common because it makes it seem as if standardized are imported from Hong Kong and thrown on the school system or something and that is not the case, they are based on the curriculum that is being taught in the Atlantic Provinces.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I would like to talk a little bit more about this because this, I think, is really an important issue. I think it is important for parents to know how their kids are doing in school and how the public education system is serving their children, but I guess I still need to be convinced that applying a test is the best way to do that and that the financial allocation that we will be putting into designing and administering and then evaluating, assessing and distributing the results is worth it, it actually will do something positive for the education system and for the education of our kids. I guess that is sort of my question. I want to feel reassured that that is a good use of public dollars, given that there is a limited amount of public dollars and, given that teachers feel under stress and pressure and they feel the need for more human resources in the school system and, given that parents often feel under pressure to fundraise for things they feel are necessary in the school system. I think it is really important to know that we are doing more than just reassuring some small group of parents. I have no idea how widespread this is, this sentiment that children are not really learning anything in school and somehow we have to prove it by quantifying this kind of standardized test that, in fact, schools are places of learning.
So that is my question, how do we know that this is the best tool and is a good use of our resources to establish that kids are actually learning something in the school system and getting something out of the school? I guess underneath my question is a little bit of cynicism, as somebody who has practised social work for a long time and has seen the social work profession go off onto what I used to call flavour of the month; a new therapy would come out, everybody thought they had to learn how to do it and try it, without any real evidence that it was going to do what was needed and expected and that would actually be
very useful in the long term. How do we know that literacy testing will improve the quality of education and give people faith in the quality of education, that that is the best tool?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the testing for literacy in itself, of course, will do absolutely nothing. I mean, you could test all you like and if you are not prepared to do anything about the results, then it does not help anything. If you don't test or measure somehow in some kind of quantitative and qualitative way, then you have no idea of knowing what you are doing. The issue of the literacy testing and doing it in Grade 6 is partly because at that level you have time to make some adjustments with the children. If you wait until Grade 10 or you wait until Grade 12, it gets harder and harder. We know from trying to educate adults who haven't got their high school education or less than high school, how hard it is to help and how expensive it is. But it is not really the expense, it is just almost impossible for people to become very fluent in reading and writing and other skills to help them live well or get a job.
So what we plan to do, certainly, is do the testing, see where the kids are and then, obviously, put the supports in place which will have to come so that we are able to help those kids who aren't doing as well before it is too late. I know there are a lot of children in the system now who are just kind of biding their time and perhaps feel a bit hopeless about not being able to achieve what their peers are achieving. It will be very important to be able to achieve success with more of these kids who later are the ones who tend to become the dropouts and not do as well.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The member for Halifax Needham, you have approximately one and a half minutes.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you very much, Madam Minister, that does help me. As somebody who is a non-teacher in the public school system, I don't know all of the rationale for some of these things and it is a complicated literature sometimes when you get into it.
I think about the comments that one of the teachers, again, in my constituency, made about the level of literacy certainly in the school he teaches in. It is a constant struggle, especially in this day and age when television and video, the medium of video has really overtaken so much of the kind of reading that children used to do and that parents used to do with their children. So I can certainly appreciate that reading is very important.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I would like to thank the member for Halifax Needham for her questions. The time is 4:29 p.m.
The honourable Leader of the Liberal Party.
MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to rise and ask the Minister of Education a few questions. There is no doubt that last year on April 11th, when the budget was tabled, I am sure all of us remember what kind of budget was tabled and it was certainly devastating to public education across the province. Members of the committee will remember at that time school boards were facing a shortfall of $53.3 million. Unfortunately, with this budget, we still don't know exactly how far-reaching the budget is going to go. We know for a fact that the school boards have said that they need $35 million just to maintain the status quo. At the same time, we know that the government has provided school boards roughly $13 million. We know, again, there is a shortfall of close to $23 million. I hope in the next few days we will be able to get some answers from the minister in terms of how public education will be affected; how the school board's budgets are going to be affected; if teachers, support staff, are going to be losing their jobs.
[4:30 p.m.]
At the same time, there are concerns with the universities. We know in this budget the capital fund that universities have been getting has been cut by this government. At the same time, we see community colleges getting some additional funding. I know the Collège de l'Acadie, Mr. Chairman, last year, was cut $500,000. This year they are getting roughly an additional $200,000. So there is still a shortfall of $300,000. At the same time, we have to talk about post-secondary students. We know that the student loans, the deal with the Royal Bank has been extended. There are certainly some concerns there. Libraries, at the same time, have concerns.
So, Mr. Chairman, I will try to go in different areas, time permitting. I know my colleagues certainly have questions as well, but I am sure in the next few days we will probably have the opportunity to ask the minister some questions and seek some answers.
Maybe I could start off with the Supplementary Detail, Madam Minister. On Page 8.1, in the preamble, it talks about - and I am at the third paragraph, "This budget supports a number of new public school initiatives including: expanding the successful Active Young Readers program to continue promoting reading skills; . . ."
I am just wondering, could the minister inform members of the cost of this program last year and what is the anticipated cost for the upcoming year, please?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the total cost is now $1.158 million. Last year it was $500,000 and this year it will be $658,000.
MR. GAUDET: So just for clarification, did the minister indicate that last year's cost for the Active Young Readers program was $500,000 and this year we have $658,000 additional going into the program? Could we know how much funding each school board is actually investing in the Active Young Readers program? Do we know that?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, that funding is allocated centrally from us. The books come through us so it is not in their profile sheets. That is something we supply above and beyond what is in their profile sheets.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, as I understand, the funding for this program directly comes from the department apart from the school boards' profile sheets. I know the honourable member for Halifax Needham just talked about some testing and on that same page, Page 8.1, we are talking about, " . . . promoting reading skills; improving assessment and evaluation of student literacy; . . ." Again, I am wondering what is the cost of implementing improved assessment or testing for student literacy. Maybe we could start with that one. How much money is spent in testing students?
MISS PURVES: On the literacy testing, that will add about $240,000 to the budget this year. That is not all the testing that is done throughout the system, but it is the one we are referring to here.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I understand from the minister that the funding used to do the evaluation or the testing on students is covered by the department. Maybe she could shake her head. She did. Thank you.
Maybe the minister could indicate what grade levels will be tested and how frequently will these grades be tested in the upcoming year?
MISS PURVES: The Grade 6 reading and writing assessment will be done once a year in the spring. We are also going to be doing a new Grade 5 math assessment and beginning a Grade 12 math assessment. Those are not the literacy testing. The literacy testing in Grade 6 will be done once in the spring.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, again, back to the minister. With regard to these - and I think when I came in the minister was talking about this - it is great to do all kinds of testing with our students in the public system. I guess the question that I would have is, how will the results of these tests be used? It is great to test but at the same time, once we have the results it is great for the system to use them. Maybe the minister could indicate to members of the committee exactly how these test results will be used.
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the test results will be reported to parents and obviously, the teachers will know, the schools will know. They are intended as a diagnostic. They are intended to judge how well the students are doing in their cumulative learning up
to that stage. When we get the results and we are able to see which kids are at risk and which need the most help, we intend to provide that help before they get too old and lost in the system. We prefer, if we can find out when they are younger if they need the help, to give it to them then.
MR. GAUDET: I want to go to the Estimates Book on Page 8.4 under Communications. Maybe we could start off by the minister indicating to the committee how many people she has who are involved with her communication in the department, please?
MISS PURVES: There are four people in communications, there are three communications people and one secretary.
MR. GAUDET: On Page 8.4, I am looking under the budget line, Salaries and Benefits. Under estimates for 2000-01 we have $282,000 for that section in that department. Then I am looking at the estimates for 2001-02, it has been reduced down to $33,000. Could the minister indicate why the funding has dropped so significantly, please?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, communications staff have been - throughout government I believe - mostly transferred back to Communications Nova Scotia, who re-bill us.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, these three individuals who are involved with communications with the department, their salaries would now be located with Communications Nova Scotia. Is that correct?
MISS PURVES: Yes, Mr. Chairman. The salaries are paid by Communications Nova Scotia but they bill us and we pay Communications Nova Scotia back out of our operating costs.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, on that same page there is a budget line indicating, Less: Chargeable to Other Departments. In 2000-01 the estimate was for $75,000. I am looking at the forecast, it was down to $23,000, what actually was paid out last year? Then, for 2001-02 there is nothing listed there. I guess my question would be focused on the $75,000. That $75,000 was budgeted for communications with what other departments? The Department of Education's staff was responsible to do some communications with someone else I understand. Is that how I read this?
MISS PURVES: Yes, Mr. Chairman. There was a person in another department who was transferred over to the Department of Education for some months before he left, so that shows the difference between the forecast and the estimate. The person will not be there next year so he is not included; that salary is not included in the estimate for next year.
MR. GAUDET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I want to thank the minister. On Page 8.5, regarding Educational Industry Marketing, The footnote states: "Now included in the Department of Economic Development; . . ." I guess my question would be, why has Educational Industry Marketing been transferred over to the Department of Economic Development? It seems to me to be a natural fit to be located within the Department of Education. Maybe the minister could indicate why this service has now been transferred over to the Department of Economic Development?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, this was something that we announced last year that we would be doing. The honourable member is right, it is not a bad fit at the Department of Education but, as it turns out, over in the Department of Economic Development this function receives a much higher priority than it probably did in the department. We are trying to centralize in government all the marketing functions. I maintain contact with the main person in that department and she finds that being in the Department of Economic Development is of some advantage to her. She still continues on the kinds of work that I am sure the former minister is familiar with.
MR. GAUDET: I guess that was my next question. In terms of what kind of relationship exists between the Department of Education staff in the new section of the Educational Industry Marketing? What is the process that allows the section to continue searching and promoting the Nova Scotia universities - not just universities, we have some international high school students who are attending the public education system. I guess maybe my question would be what kind of organization is in place to allow the Department of Education staff to more or less have some kind of relationship with the office? I know when this section was within the Department of Education, the success we had - and I know from contact from university presidents, from school board representatives with the Department of Education staff, those discussions continue year-round - I am just wondering, now that this section is outside the Department of Education, in the Department of Economic Development, what kind of success are we having now that it is has been transferred?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, without going into details of particular deals, as the member is aware, these may take years to come to fruition but the relationship is very co-operative. We have people coming to Nova Scotia interested in our universities or community colleges. I still meet with them if that is required, in terms of the diplomatic protocol. We are continuing to work with Economic Development and Dr. Brown at Mount Saint Vincent and the community college on the Campeche projects, of which the member would be familiar. A good example would be when the Commonwealth Education Ministers met here in Halifax last fall. The Education Industry Marketing people were there, people from our department were there, people from the universities were there. We all worked together to try to sell Nova Scotia.
Although there are no big money deals per se out of that yet, there may well be. I see this more as the marketing expertise is there but Education still provides the product, we still provide the product. We have good people who can sell it. We still go on trade missions when required and it is a pretty good fit.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, maybe the minister could indicate to us, I know the City of Halifax has a partnership with Campeche in Mexico. I know we have quite a few Mexican students attending high school here in the city. I know Dalhousie University, well, all the universities, have different protocol agreements with different parts of the world. I am just wondering if the minister has numbers available to her as to how many international students we presently have attending our universities or presently attending high school? I don't know if there is any international students attending community colleges or private schools. My question would be, could the minister provide us with some numbers to indicate to us how many international students are currently studying here in Nova Scotia?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, I think the number in the public school system would be around 175, but we could certainly get back to the member with that information. I do not have the information on the universities and the community colleges at my fingertips, but we can do our best to get that from the universities and supply it to him.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, going back to the Supplementary Detail on Page 8.5, Finance and Administration. Under the budget line for Financial Management, we see that the forecast for 2000-01 was $770,000; and I am looking at the estimate for 2001-02, it has gone up to $2,674,000. I am sure the minister has heard time and time again that there is too much money spent in administration. Maybe there is a reason for this huge increase. I am just wondering, could the minister indicate to the committee why the cost for financial management within the department has gone from $770,000 to almost an extra $2 million?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, there are a number of items in there but the main big item is $1.9 million for rent, lease of premises in the Trade Mart Building and Kempt Road. These lease costs used to be covered through the Department of Transportation and Public Works. The costs for all leasing and rentals for departments has been transferred back to each department, so it is showing in our books now instead of over at TPW. Presumably there is a corresponding decrease over there.
There is also $177,000 for the operating costs of the Truro Residential Centre. We took over two buildings on that campus; one, to provide a francophone school in Truro, and the other one, we are, for the time being at least, keeping open and we have to pay the operating costs. There are a number of other items in there as well, but those are the biggest ones.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I am just wondering, I know the Trade Mart, where the office of the minister is located, has been significantly renovated. Could the minister indicate to us, two questions, how much money is actually being paid per year for the Trade Mart rent; and the second part to the question is, how long is this contract for?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the rent-lease costs for the Trade Mart offices is $1.146 million a year, and I believe it goes on for another five years.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, moving to Page 8.7, Supplementary Detail, looking at Higher Education and Adult Learning, going down to Career and Transition Services, for that budget line the forecast for 2000-01, we have $1,020,000; then I am looking at the estimate for 2001-02, it is down to $53,000. I think this type of service would certainly be the one you would want to maintain, rather than reduce the expenditure by close to 90 per cent, 95 per cent. Could the minister indicate or explain why there has been a significant drop here?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the bulk of that department was actually transferred over to the Nova Scotia Community College, which was doing that kind of work anyway. It is a good fit for them, and some of our people were actually operating out of the college, in any case. What we kept there, the remaining expense for next year's estimate is the cost of running the GED Program, which we are going to continue to offer.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, in the past we have had the Education Funding Formula Review Work Group who basically had staff representatives from different school boards, along with staff from the Department of Education. I am just wondering if the minister could inform the committee in terms of what groups were consulted in the preparation of this budget?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, we go from a rather unpronounceable acronym to two other acronyms. We have the Education Consultative Forum, ECF, and the Education Funding Committee, EFC. One group is composed of the finance directors, program directors and so on, and all the school boards and department officials and program people. The Education Consultative Forum is essentially the superintendents and the CEO of the Southwest Regional School Board and the deputy minister and the chief financial officer. There are two different groups there in terms of staff, who meet and consult and trade ideas
and, as well, I have been meeting separately with school board chairs, both with and without staff present.
MR. GAUDET: Maybe the minister could indicate to us, in 1992, when the Education Funding Formula Review Work Group was appointed, this was established by the minister. I know they have met ever since. The last report was prepared in April 1999. Their task was to review and make recommendations to the minister. As I pointed out earlier, we had representatives from the different school boards, representatives from the department
looking at the upcoming costs, and in the end, making recommendations, not telling the minister what was going to be in the budget.
I am just wondering, in regard to this group, does this group continue to exist, or has this group been dismantled by the Education Consultative Forum? My question is simply, does this group still exist or have they basically been disbanded, because we have two different groups that are now working with the minister's office in helping her look at possible recommendations for the upcoming budget?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the old Education Funding Formula Review Work Group does not exist anymore, it was replaced by these two committees. The same people are involved, precisely the same people, but they agreed to split into two groups. They thought the other group was a bit unwieldy. The group composed of financial officers, program people and so on is the bigger group, and their task, collectively, although they meet separately every five to six weeks, is to do exactly the same thing as the other group did. They identify the cost pressures, they recommend the allocations among boards and they make recommendations about the future, including how the funding formula should work.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, as I indicated earlier, the budget was tabled last week. I read in the media the President of the Nova Scotia School Boards Association commented that school boards around the province needed roughly, I believe, $35 million to maintain the status quo. The fact that the department is providing the school boards with roughly a 2 per cent increase, somewhere around $13 million, there is a shortfall of $23 million. Could the minister indicate to the members of the committee if that is the case, that school boards, in order to maintain the status quo, need $35 million?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, according to the figures we have and that we have been working with from the Education Consultative Forum, the ask, as I explained earlier to the member for Halifax Needham, that we were unable to provide to the boards, the biggest one was money for deferred maintenance. That was about $27 million they wanted for deferred maintenance. We did not provide that. They also asked for, I believe, $6 million for children with special needs, and we gave them $3 million. They asked for slightly higher amounts for fuel and some other costs than we gave them. Certainly, if we have a winter like this year's again next year, and we had the funds, as we did this year, we would be prepared to help them out with unexpected costs like that.
[5:00 p.m.]
We feel that although we didn't fully fund everything they asked for, we did address every category. The one that we did not, because we could not address at this time, was deferred maintenance. I know that is a disappointment to them.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, just reading some reports and talking with a few of the school boards around the province, school boards are in the process of looking at these numbers, analyzing these numbers to indicate to the school board members exactly what areas they are going to have to do without or even areas where they may have to cut back. I don't think I want to go into those details just yet, but coming back to the Supplementary Detail, Page 8.9, Public Education Funding, we are seeing that under the Formula, Grants to School Boards, the Forecast for 2000-01 shows that school boards received $609,000 last year; they will be receiving an additional $10 million for the coming fiscal year.
I am wondering could the minister please explain what is covered under this expenditure, if it is just money given out? At the same time, could we get a breakdown of how much each school board around the province will receive?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, we can certainly table the amount each school board will be receiving. Would the member like me to read that out as well? Okay. I will table that. The Public Education Funding is the one that gets a bit tricky, in terms of what is in there, but there is a lot in there. I am not clear on some of that question, could you re-ask the other part of the question?
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I certainly welcome the minister's undertaking to table that information at some point. I want to go back, where the minister indicated to the House earlier, that everyone needs to be accountable, from her office right down through the whole system. We are providing school boards with roughly an additional $10 million. I am wondering if the department is telling school boards in what area this new funding needs to be spent? If so, could the minister indicate that to the committee?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, some of the money we have put in certain areas where we would like the boards to spend it. For example, special education, we would like that spent in that area. We put in money for fuel that we hope will be spent on fuel. This year, the superintendents and the financial officers were very strong in asking that we not mandate this, that we not micro-manage what they do with their money and that is what we expect them to do. It has been a good, co-operative process so far. So we are hoping that money is spent in certain areas, but we are not mandating it.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, this morning I heard the Superintendent of the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board indicating that their board will be receiving just slightly over $1 million. Is the minister indicating that we are providing some extra funding to school boards and basically we are not indicating to them how this funding should be spent, what areas this funding should be spent on and that is strictly left to the different school boards?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the only restricted funding being provided to the boards is in special education, learning disabilities, capital bus purchase and the textbook credit allocation and the rest can be spent as the individual boards need. The member for Clare knows that the boards are not all the same and their needs vary, to some degree.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, the $10 million figure represents roughly an increase of 1.6 per cent to the school boards' budget. Again, we have been hearing, especially since the budget was tabled last week, the school boards are now in the process of looking at these numbers very carefully. I guess my question is, the fact that we know the boards certainly need more, want more, how will school boards be able to operate without incurring a significant or very serious deficit?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, this past year, in which we were able to help the boards with their deficit so they weren't working with an accumulated deficit, actually was quite a good year, in spite of the difficulties. I think all the boards together - maybe their anticipated deficit was going to be about $4 million - and most of that money was related to higher than normal fuel costs and snowplowing costs. We think the school boards will be able to manage this. Each of them did get more money and they weren't working on years and years of accumulated deficits.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I think last year, and I am sure the minister probably knows more than the rest of us, in order for the school boards to have met their targets last year, many teachers and support staff lost their jobs. If the school boards don't get additional funding as they have requested, could the minister indicate to us how many teachers and support staff will be losing their jobs this year in order to allow school boards to balance their budgets?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, well, overall, the boards are getting another $16.1 million in funding. It is up to them to manage that funding and I am not going to speculate on what any individual board may or may not choose to do. We all make choices about what our priorities are and the boards wish to do that.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, speaking of choices, it is going to be tough choices because there is no doubt that this budget will impact on school boards throughout the province. The President of the Nova Scotia School Boards Association, as I have indicated, has said that right now they are looking at a shortfall of $23 million. Maybe it is a little too early in terms of what decisions will be made, but I am sure school boards are facing tough decisions, tough choices certainly, in the next few days or in the weeks ahead. I am sure that these decisions will impact on classrooms, will impact on teachers, on support staff, on larger class sizes, on reduced services to students, on possible school closures and in other related areas.
I want to go to the famous blue book again. Mr. Chairman, when this Party was campaigning in 1999, they made 243 promises to Nova Scotians. I am looking on Page 25, and I am sure the minister is aware of this one, that her Party, the Tory Party, promised to establish a long-term funding basis for our schools. We know what happened last year after the budget came down, school boards were faced with massive cuts. We know that the school boards, the public, the students, everyone else joined in with the outcry and we know, in the end, that the government came back with some additional money.
My question would be, when do you think your Party will be in a position to deliver on this promise to provide school boards with some long-term funding, that they know where they are going, they know they can plan ahead, especially from what happened last year? Again, we don't know what is going to happen this year. We know that the school boards are currently reviewing these numbers. There has been talk from school boards around the province that they are looking at laying off some staff, teachers included. So my question to the minister is, when do you think that your Party will be in a position to provide some direction in regards to this promise?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, this year, the Education Consultative Forum has agreed to look at the funding formula again. It is a difficult one to come to grips with, but these people have been meeting since last September, quite often. I think that they would agree that the consultation process worked this year, that we are going to continue with that and we are going to be coming up with a funding formula that the boards will live with. We don't have it now. It might take two years, but they are going to be working on it.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I think the minister said it quite clearly. This year, they took the time to consult. Last year, there was very little consultation done with the different school boards around the province. It was an in-house budget, very little discussion took place with the different school boards around the province and we know what happened. I am glad that the minister and her staff took the time this year and met with the different boards around the province and listened to what their concerns are. There is no doubt that it is, certainly, a step in the right direction and I congratulate the minister for having taken the time this year to do that.
Madam Minister, looking again on that very same page of the blue book, we are talking about reviewing funding formulas to protect schools in areas of declining enrolments from detrimental and untimely reductions in the teaching staff. I guess my question would be, especially with what has been happening here in Halifax for the last several months, what is the minister prepared to do to meet that commitment, in light of the present review hearings being conducted by the Halifax Regional School Board seeking closure of a number of schools due to that very same item, declining enrolments. I am sure the Halifax Regional School Board is not the only school board in this province being faced with declining enrolments. I think the minister indicated this earlier, that we are looking at, I believe, around 2,400 students less for next year. So, many communities and, I am sure, a number of school
boards are being faced with declining enrolments. Is the department looking at this commitment they promised Nova Scotians they would be looking at?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, yes, the member for Clare is right. All school boards are facing declining enrolment. There isn't a board that isn't facing the same problem. It varies from board to board, it varies from area to area within the board. There are pockets of increased enrolment. I think the key words in that blue book promise are "detrimental" and "untimely." At this point, all the boards have recognized, even though they may not like the fact, that they are going to have to cope with declining enrolment, that gradually the money is going to have to shift to where the students are, as opposed to just where the institutions are. The issue is really doing this slowly enough so that it is not untimely and it isn't detrimental because the boards and the communities know what is going on and have time to adjust.
Obviously, if you just all of a sudden decide, oops, we have to fix this and expect it to be done overnight, it is going to be detrimental and untimely. Ultimately, if you continue to provide services according to old standards, you could conceivably - well, you wouldn't, but - conceivably end up in a situation where you had all kinds of schools but no kids. You can't expect areas that are growing to have huge amounts less per student funding than areas that are declining. On the other hand, if you can manage the decline well, if there can be transition funds and if the boards are co-operating, it is a matter of managing it. If the boards are willing, they can do it.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I think in terms of managing, the school boards are probably going way beyond the call of duty when it comes to managing with what little choices they sometimes have. Quite often they probably have to resort to the last resort and that is to close schools and to move those students to neighbouring communities. Again, I would encourage the minister to certainly revisit this promise they made. I hope in the future that communities that are faced with closing the school within their community or, at the same time, receiving some additional funding - maybe in some situations it may be difficult. The numbers are going down - I am looking at Advocate Harbour in Cumberland County, where you have a limited number of students, so, of course, you have to provide those students with the programs they need in order to graduate with the credits they need. Again, I certainly would encourage the minister to, at some point, review the Party's own policy on that matter.
I would like to move to Page 8.11 in the Supplementary Detail, looking at Capital Grants, Bus Purchases. We see for the 1999-2000 budget line that there was roughly $4.6 million allocated for purchasing buses and for the fiscal years 2000-01, 2001-02, these itemized headings have disappeared. So the single-line item here, Capital Grants, appears without any subheadings. Why have the subheadings been eliminated?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the Capital Grant, the bus purchases and so on, are being carried centrally over at the Department of Transportation and Public Works. We will carry amortization costs in our budget and we do. On Page 8.10 you can see that we have schools and buses amortization, we do carry that. So, we still are buying buses and we are still building schools but the accounting methods have changed.
MR. GAUDET: The accounting process has changed, so now the Department of Transportation and Public Works is responsible to do the ordering but, at the same time, the amortization costs are still listed as a budget item within the department. I guess my question would be, how many new buses is your department buying this year? Let's start off with that one. When I am looking at the 1999-2000, $4.6 million was spent on buses; now I am looking at the amortization cost of roughly $3.6 million, so the number has gone down. Could the minister indicate to us how many new buses are being bought this year?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, whatever number of buses that we can get for $4.058 million.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, are we looking at providing school boards with the same numbers of buses we provided them with last year? Is that the same number from the year before or are we looking at providing school boards with less school buses? Maybe the minister could clarify exactly what the issue is regarding school buses.
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, we would have to supply that information after looking at the Department of Transportation and Public Works, and we will do that.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, could you indicate how much time I have left?
MR. CHAIRMAN: The member has approximately five and a half minutes.
MR. GAUDET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to move to school construction. On June 11, 2000, the government announced it would construct 16 new schools, then Whycocomagh was added, so we are looking at building 17 new schools. Last fall, the government announced they were going ahead with 7 schools that were to be built this year. We were looking at building two schools in Argyle, one in Clare, one in Guysborough, one in Pomquet, one in Elmsdale and one in Whycocomagh. The question I have been hearing from the other communities that have been expecting to hear from government is, when will construction start on the schools in their communities? Could the minister indicate to us when the 10 other communities will hear a commitment from this government?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, East Pictou Rural High School, Halifax West High School - or whatever it will be called - St. Anthony Daniel School, South Colchester High School, they are in the site and initial planning process and are due in the 2002-03 fiscal year. In the 2003-04 fiscal year, we are looking at Sydney Elementary School and West Pictou. In
the 2004-05 fiscal year, Amherst Elementary School, Cumberland Elementary School, Rankin P-12 and Shelburne Regional High School.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, would the minister engage in tabling that list for those communities?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, I will be pleased to table that list.
MR. GAUDET: I have a few questions regarding the new school that is being planned for the Clare area. My first question is, can the minister tell me when construction will start on the new school that is being planned for the St. Bernard community?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, actually, I can't be precise about when construction will start. It will start this construction season. I think the member is aware that we had a problem with the original site in St. Bernard and that we had to move across the street, sort of, and we are looking at that site now. We are looking at beginning construction this spring, but I can't give him a precise date. Obviously, the school will not be ready in the fall, as we had originally intended. We will be looking at other arrangements for some of the students in the meantime until that school is constructed.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I understand the department's staff are currently looking at the site across the street. I am glad to hear that the construction will be starting in the upcoming construction season, this spring. In regard to that new construction, could the minister indicate when she anticipates this new school will be ready for staff and students? Are we looking at this year, next year, when approximately?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, it is very likely that would be September 2002. It could be ready a little bit sooner, but it doesn't need to be ready in the summer because there won't be any students going to it. That is the anticipated ETA.
[5:30 p.m.]
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the minister for her answer. Madam Minister, I have been asked by a number of parents and students who are currently attending the English section of the Clare District High School in Meteghan River - there have been some discussions with the CSAP, there have been discussions with the Tri-County District School Board, along with the Southwest Regional School Board - where will the students following English programs attend this coming September?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, this is not the best of situations but the board is looking at, perhaps, a number of options. Some of the kids who live near Yarmouth may be going to Yarmouth. The board is also looking to see if it can find a site in Ste. Anne where they might go temporarily, they are also looking at who would be going to Weymouth for a
short period of time, one year. They are looking at a lot of options. We do have to live up to that court ruling, in terms of the homogeneous school.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The member's time has expired.
The honourable member for Halifax Needham.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Madam Minister, in the hour that I had a chance to look at my notes in some of the other discussions we were having earlier, I went to the budget books to look for the $19 million in the Department of Transportation and Public Works. I couldn't find it, so I just want to flag this; it would be really helpful. I am not all that familiar with the Department of Transportation and Public Works budget, so perhaps before we finish today, to have an actual page, line item, that would be very helpful.
I know the minister has had correspondence, so have I, from CASLE, Citizens For A Safe Learning Environment. This group is very concerned about occupational health and safety issues in our province's schools, have developed a significant amount of expertise in the area, and have written the federal government as well as the provincial government looking for a resolution to some of the mould and the serious health problems that are resulting from the deterioration of our schools. Fairly recently, I guess, they asked the minister for the department's plan to address some of the major problems. I am wondering if you have had an opportunity to review some of their information and respond to them?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, to the best of my knowledge, CASLE is dealing with some people in Facilities, perhaps Charles Clattenburg or Paul MacLellan. I have met some people involved with CASLE, but, I think on these issues she may have been dealing with Facilities because I do not recall any recent correspondence with this group.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I am going to move to a few questions about the code of conduct. I understand that a work group had put a fair amount of effort into looking at developing this code of conduct and that a decision has been made to move away from the zero tolerance policy on violence in the schools and that the policy is now in a final consultative process with principals and no doubt their staff, throughout the various school boards. I think this would appear to be a process that is a very good one, that allows for a lot of input and opportunity to reflect on what it means.
I notice that in the budget there are resources allocated for the implementation of the code of conduct, approximately $100,000. I have a number of questions around this. What has the department assessed the implementation of the code of conduct at? It seems to me, as we go through this budget, there are never enough resources to actually carry out any of the policies of the department. There is always a shortfall. My question is, what is required to implement the code of conduct? To what extent will that $100,000 meet what is required and how exactly will that $100,000 then be spent in implementing the code of conduct?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, the $100,000 that we will be spending between September and the end of the fiscal year will mostly be for teacher professional development, almost exclusively for teacher professional development. There are other costs that will be attached to implementing this code. That was one of the issues the committee made quite clear. Obviously, there are going to be costs associated with this beyond teacher professional development, but in terms of what we need for this year, that $100,000 will do it, I believe. I would be glad to table the department's estimate of further implementation. If we have such a thing, I would be glad to provide the member with that estimate.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: That would be very helpful to look at. I think $100,000 looks like a lot of money but if you are getting into implementing a standardized set of requirements from one end of the province to the other, it probably will turn out to be a much more expensive proposition than this amount of money would ever begin to address. So I think it would be useful if we knew what it is we are committing to here in terms of the allocation of resources, not only in the short term but in the longer term as well, which brings me to the issue of the supply of teachers in our school system.
I was quite interested back in the early part of March to learn that at least one school board in the province, the Strait Regional School Board, was having difficulty attracting young, newly-minted teachers to the region and was looking for assistance from the department. I have a report out of the Port Hawkesbury Reporter, which I will table after I read a little piece from it that says, We are asking the Department of Education to take action in collaboration with universities to provide teacher training in Nova Scotia and to provide initiatives for graduating teachers to remain in Nova Scotia to work in the public school system.
This statement was made by board vice-chairperson, Mary Jess MacDonald. Specifically, they were having difficulty in certain fields - French, science and math. There were vacancies of retired teachers. They were unfilled because they couldn't find teachers. I know in discussions with various people in the field of education, they tell me there are certain areas, French for example, getting French teachers, there are some shortages. There are also concerns that we are not training teachers here in Nova Scotia, that many of the young people are going to university in Maine, for example, to take teacher education and similar to the job fairs we have seen attracting our nurses away from Nova Scotia into other jurisdictions, there are similar kinds of programs attracting our teachers away from Nova Scotia and into other jurisdictions.
What action is the department taking with respect to this? Is there an allocation of additional resources to address what appears to be a problem? How widespread is this problem that this particular board is having and to what extent is this a problem in other boards?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, we do have a committee on teacher supply which has been studying this issue for awhile. The problem that the Strait Regional School Board is encountering is partly to do with our inability or unwillingness, or perhaps whatever it is, to do early recruiting, it is a problem for the boards partly because we give them their budgets late, traditionally, although this year it is earlier than normal. We need to work on that issue because we need to be recruiting our own teachers here before other provinces, or even countries come and recruit them. The issue has peculiarly to do with French, science and math, that is where the biggest shortage in teachers is going to be. It is not going to be in English, social studies and so on. We already know those are where the looming shortages are and we don't have a fully developed strategy yet, but we are considering some things.
We are considering, and I would say studying, whether this would be effective or not, but we are considering perhaps bursaries or helping students with their loans who may be taking certain specialities and who may commit to stay in Nova Scotia, that idea. We are looking at what sharing we may be able to do in certain of the anglophone boards with the CSAP. We are hoping with encouragement that one of the universities that offers teacher education may want to get into a 14 month program whereby a person with a previous degree could qualify as a teacher within 14 months. There are a number of strategies we could pursue that would not cost the province a fortune and where we would be able to target the needs that we are going to have.
I heard on the radio this morning that the Province of New Brunswick is experiencing a big problem with having enough French teachers and you can bet that if they are having a big problem we are going to have one, although we are lucky that a lot of our Acadian teachers would prefer to stay here. Even so, it is a big national issue and we are going to have our share of it and that's the truth.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the minister. I don't have the information here before me but it has been some time since I have looked at it as well. I think the Université Sainte-Anne was proposing to expand their teacher education program and they, in fact, had gone through the process, I am not sure exactly what the process is, but as far as I can remember they had gone through a process where they had submitted a request to probably the Maritime Council on Higher Education. I believe they were unable to secure the permission to expand and, if my memory serves me right, there was a feeling that they had actually been blocked by Nova Scotia's representative on the council. I am wondering if this is something that will be reassessed and, hopefully, reversed if this is the situation. Can you elaborate on that?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, yes, the member for Halifax Needham remembers the issue quite well. That was indeed the case. It was the Shapiro Report that recommended that course of action when teacher education was rationalized in Nova Scotia. The Université Sainte-Anne and its president strongly feel that part of the reason they are losing their numbers in terms of people entering the system is because they don't have that integrated
program and they have asked several times for the return of that program. It seems to us that they have a pretty good case, so we are looking at that again and I am personally leaning towards allowing the Université Sainte-Anne to have that five year integrated program. It remains to be seen whether that is the only reason they are not getting the numbers, but it could help in this problem with not having enough teachers for French.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: That is great to hear. I couldn't quite remember all of the aspects of that issue but the name of the report sort of brings it all back. You made reference to boards being able to do better planning for their needs in terms of new teachers and being able to get out there into the field and recruit. I think this is clearly an important issue.
One of the other pieces of this that I have had some interest around understanding a little better is the whole - well, let's put it sort of fair and square, the Auditor General was critical of the Halifax Regional School Board in terms of the information on which they made decisions. I noticed that Dr. Jim Gunn, Superintendent of the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board, had been talking about how long it took - I expect that what he didn't say, but probably should have said, was how long it took after amalgamation to try to integrate some kind of information system so that the flow between inside the boards and then between the board and the department would be more consistent and would, therefore, be able to give people the ability to plan and to actually track on a monthly basis, if not on a weekly basis, where any given board would be financially in a whole variety of areas.
I know there is an allocation in this year's Education budget to boards for information technology. I am assuming the reason for that allocation is to improve the efficiency of information that will allow for good financial planning and monitoring. In some ways I would like to know whether or not the criticism of the Halifax Regional School Board was a fair criticism given the amalgamation that occurred, the integration of so many systems that were so different, the lack of resources that were given to boards to actually do that, and the fact that on an annual basis the provincial budgets were coming in so late, and what we might anticipate for those boards, therefore, in the future. How is this going to be rectified?
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, there is money set aside for better data management and I believe that money shows in the Department of Finance because I believe we are talking about computer systems also for the health boards. I am not quite sure what line it is, but there is about $4 million in there for Education as well, to help with that area.
Now, the other area though of letting boards know their budgets early enough is a real issue. This year they knew earlier than last year what their budgets were likely to be. I am not sure if we are going to be able to do much better than we did this year. We are certainly going to try but because of the nature of how the government works, unless Education knows its budget relative to Health and Environment and everything else, it is very difficult for us to say for certain. We can say you are going to get a minimum of such and such, but it is very
difficult to say how much more they are going to get. That is really the nub of the problem because they are able to maintain but it prevents them from going out and saying, well, I know I have this extra $2 million so I am going to recruit the best and the brightest from Mount Saint Vincent, or whatever. They can't do that because they don't know they have that extra.
That is perhaps something we can help them with if we were able to reserve a fund, like a minimum number of hires we could do, and perhaps the department could do some hiring, centrally, but that could be problematic. We have discussed that with them and they weren't keen on it, but it would have been one way to snap up some of these people. Then, again, people probably want to know where they are going to be working. They might not want just Nova Scotia. They might want to be in Kentville or Halifax or Sydney or wherever. So it is problematic. We can get budgets a little bit earlier, but whether it is early enough for them to hire the best and the brightest, I am not sure.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I want to talk a little bit about the current process that is going on with respect to the review of some of the smaller feeder schools in the HRM area. I know we have had some debate in the last week and a half we have been here around these schools. Neighbourhood schools aren't often only about education. They are generally also about community and the quality of community life. When schools come up for review, especially in the face of impending closures, it always sort of engenders a lot of emotion. People are very upset and understandably so. These are services and resources in communities that are very important in communities.
I know that this process is laid out in the Education Act and is the responsibility of the various boards around the province, but I guess my concern is that in some cases maybe those communities that are least able to organize strong public opposition or to amass the tools and the information to make a strong case to have their schools considered in these processes sometimes aren't there. So disadvantaged communities can often be very disadvantaged in these processes I think and it is often the children in those communities who most need a smaller school environment. Kids from some of these communities in a larger school can get lost.
I had the opportunity to do a forum with youth from the North End of Halifax, young adults, I shouldn't say youth, actually it was young adults. They were young people who would be in their early 20's. Many of them were in university or in community college. I did this back in January. A lot of young people came out to this forum at the North Branch Library and in the course of the discussion they talked about how difficult it was for them to make the transition from their small neighbourhood school into a larger school. One of the things that really jumped out at me was the high achievers at the elementary level. Young people who were at the top of their class in the local small elementary school, or junior high school, when they got into the larger feeder high school they often went to the bottom of the class. These were the highest achievers, young people who were the top of their class and
all of a sudden became the bottom in their class. The kids who were behind them were nowhere on the map. They were the kids who didn't walk across the stage at the end of the year to graduate and they talked about what a struggle it was for them to get up in the morning and go to school with a sense of pride and self-esteem and who they were, where they were from, all of this kind of stuff.
It was very difficult to listen to because the pain that they had experienced as young people was very apparent. So I am very concerned about it. It caused me to see education and the role of small community schools in an entirely different light. It wasn't about convenience. I hear people say, oh, you know. This is just about convenience. This is about the moms who don't want to have to walk or drive their kids and drop them off or see them walk too far or whatever. I don't think it is about that, for a lot of young people, in their own words, it wasn't about convenience. It was about achievement. It was about self-esteem and these kinds of things.
I want to ask the minister, I know that we can't keep every neighbourhood school open forever in the face of declining enrolments and the need to allocate our dollars wisely, but how and where can we get that mix and that balance from the Department of Education to ensure that there is fairness in the way that educational opportunities will be there for children from very diverse communities and diverse backgrounds and income backgrounds and racial backgrounds? This to me is a very important issue and I think is at the crux of some of the conflict that we are seeing now around the closing of the small neighbourhood schools. I am not sure you will have time in this short time, but this is a big question.
MISS PURVES: Mr. Chairman, I am sure we will come back to that later. Usually when people talk about small schools, they automatically think small rural schools. The member brings up a very good point. Technology can work in some instances, providing courses that mean you get the extra teachers without actually having to supply a live body. There are all kinds of little things that you can do to try to keep schools open but, in the end, you will have to close some because of declining enrolment. Certainly, what one would hope and one monitors is where these schools are closing. Is it all in certain socio-economic areas or not?
That is a very important question. I know of at least one school that caused a lot of controversy that wasn't from one of those areas, remember Tower Road School? But I understand where the pressure is coming from this time. I know the school board doesn't really want to do that. Can you imagine presiding over school closures, how much fun that would be? But they feel with that much excess capacity, they have to do something about it. The issue is much bigger than just this one. It is, do you get better results academically and otherwise from kids educated in small schools than you do from the bigger ones? That is something that I don't think we statistically have the answer to. But that is the important question, not whether you are upsetting someone or what. It is what are the results for the kids. That is really what we should be looking at. I am not sure we know the answer to that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. At this time, the committee will recess until 6:30.
[6:00 p.m. The committee recessed.]
[6:30 p.m. The committee reconvened.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I call the committee back to order. The member for Halifax Needham has 13 minutes.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I have a copy of an article that appeared in The Chronicle-Herald on January 30th by JoAnne Sherwood, the education reporter. It said that shortly there would be an announcement of a debt reduction program as early as the spring to replace the Loan Remission Program that was scrapped last year, saving approximately $10,000.
I note that, in Manitoba for example, the NDP Government in that province has introduced a $6 million bursary program which will go a long way to assisting students in that program deal with the heavy debt loads that they have to carry. This is an issue that is so important to students and their families in Nova Scotia. The increases in tuition and the increased costs of living expenses associated with going to post-secondary education, if it is at a community college or a university or a private institution, has meant that students in Nova Scotia probably carry the heaviest debt loads in the country and if there is any group of students who require a program that will assist them, it is certainly students in Nova Scotia.
I was very disappointed not to see any sort of immediate recognition of the situation and I want to ask the minister what and when can we expect to see some assistance for students in Nova Scotia and, although I am sure she won't be making the announcement here today on the floor, what are some of the options that are being examined in terms of debt relief and reduction for students?
MISS PURVES: There is no need to restate the issue that we have here in Nova Scotia. It is the one area in the university area that we were unable to address this year. The money was not there. We are going to be developing something over the course of this coming year that we would like to be able to implement for next year. That will depend on the state of the province's finances. I don't believe there is anything within our budget now that we can reallocate because things are fairly tight.
We have been looking at a bursary program. We are also going to be looking again at tax credits for students who would stay in Nova Scotia. The last time we wanted to have a look at this it was put on hold at the Department of Finance while they reviewed all their present tax credits to see how well they were working or not working. That is the kind of assistance that we would prefer. We want to help students from here who want to live here,
so some form of targeted help to those with the highest debt who are actually going to stay and help us improve our economy would be the preferred route to go.
At least in Nova Scotia we are lucky in the post-secondary student side, we are lucky to have the institutions that we have. We have about 50 per cent of our students taking some form of public student assistance and about 20 per cent of that 50 per cent are the ones with the highest debt loads and that we have to be concerned about in any form of program. I wouldn't want the impression to be that every student who attends university ends up in the kind of situation needing that, but there is a percentage that does need that kind of help and we will be working on that. No, I don't have a date but it is a real issue. We were just not able to get that through along with the other things this year. That is all there is to it, really. The money wasn't there.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I know that we always have to bring balance to public expenditures but I think that expectations were raised by statements that the minister made earlier in the year. We look at the budget lines and we see that an overexpenditure in the department this year occurred because of rising student debt and clearly part of that is that students are carrying these heavy debt loads.
The Loan Remission Program of $10 million - I incorrectly said $10,000 - was scrapped and let's face it, the people who are applying for student loans so that they can go to a community college or a university are generally students who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds or middle income backgrounds. Their means are modest which is why they have to turn to some lending source for assistance to get through the programs that they are going into.
The various student organizations in the province have worked very hard to educate all members here. They have produced many documents, they are a bright group of young people who are very reasonable in the approach that they have taken. They have examined a number of options, they have looked at what is available elsewhere, they have been very patient, they have laid out that Nova Scotia is the only province now in all of Canada that does not have a bursary or a loan remission program of some kind.
I think it is a real shame that we would put our students in this situation. I, before I was elected, taught at Dalhousie and I know how difficult it is for some students. I have seen students who have had to leave quite close to the completion of their degrees for financial reasons and that is really unacceptable. It is one thing if students do not have the grades, the aptitude, the capacity to do a particular program and they realize this and they go off and pursue alternative forms of training or whatever may be available to them, but when a young person or a not so young person cannot complete their chosen field of study for no other reason but financial reasons, then I think we have done a great disservice to that individual as a society. This is a responsibility that government really has to rise to address, especially at this time when it is clear that advanced training is pretty well a given requirement to be
able to secure employment in an environment that is very competitive, an environment that really demands training beyond a high school level. The minister can count on members in this caucus to come back to this question on probably more than one occasion, because it is something that we see as a priority.
I haven't done extensive research on what kinds of plans are available elsewhere, in terms of student loans and student bursaries, but I know that in many of the OECD countries there is no tuition for programs, for example, and in some places they tie repayment of university education or community college education entirely to income after a program is completed. I think that, for example, in New Zealand, a young person can go into a training program of their choice, they don't pay a tuition, they get some kind of a living allowance to assist them with the program; the amount of money it costs is sort of kept track of; they get employment afterwards, and over the life of their employment, 2 per cent of their gross earnings are essentially taxed back in some kind of way. The amount of administration that is required to monitor this situation is minimal, compared to the layers of bureaucracy that we sometimes have in our somewhat more means-tested . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Today's time for consideration of the estimates has expired.
The honourable Government House Leader.
HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, I move the committee do now rise and report considerable progress and beg leave to sit again on a future day.
MR. CHAIRMAN: [The motion is carried.]
[6:43 p.m. CWH on Supply rose.]
