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HALIFAX, MONDAY, MAY 3, 2004

COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE ON SUPPLY

3:30 P.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Russell MacKinnon

MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, would you please call the Estimates of the Minister of Education.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister, would you like to start with some opening comments while we're waiting for staff.

HON. JAMES MUIR: If they want to start, by the time they get the question out, staff will be here.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Liberal caucus has 52 minutes remaining in its hour.

The honourable member for Kings West.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: The first question that I have for the minister today is about - one of the areas that is often brought to my attention, when people hear or take a look at statistical information from the Department of Education - the actual graduation rate that we currently have in the province, especially when we take a look at the graduation rate and we see a figure of 80 per cent. Taking a first glance at that, that is what I would call a disturbing statistic, that of the percentage of students who are in Grade 9, three years later or four years later, we only have an 80 per cent graduation rate.

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I was wondering if the minister would make some comments on that particular rate that we have in the province, and what, in particular, is being initiated to hopefully improve upon that graduation rate?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, that's an interesting question. In 2002-03, the actual graduation rate was closer to 82 per cent. I guess it reflects something. The percentage of graduation by females was about 88 per cent and by males, a little bit less than that, around 76 per cent. I think there are a number of reasons for those, and I think you could probably speculate on them as well as I have. To be quite frank, there are some people who would see other opportunities and would be prepared to leave school to pursue them. There would obviously be some students, I expect, who - not a significant number - actually move out of the school district and actually could be continuing on with their education some other place. There are some people, probably, for whom what is offered in school is not all that appropriate. I think you have to keep in mind, too, that these numbers do include the entire school population.

I think it's probably better now than it has been in my memory. That doesn't mean, obviously, that the number we would be looking for had three figures in it, three whole figures, 100 per cent. We're never going to reach that. I think that the variety of the courses and the variety of opportunities that are available in schools now, certainly there's a greater number of courses offered to students than there had been before, and that is a good thing. I think that the calibre of teaching, classroom instruction, that goes on now is probably - our teachers, the young people who came in, get better and better.

So I think teaching is better and will continue to improve and, therefore, I think that's probably going to be a factor. As well, I think the recognition that not all students are going to go on and pursue a university career means that there will be different approaches used in the classroom. One of the things I'm very concerned about and hope that we will be addressing as a department, indeed, I've spoken with the School Boards Association, as well as the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, and more recently, this morning, I had a visitor in my office and we were talking about this, and that is, in some ways, I think there's a gap in service that occurred when vocational schools were shut down.

I know in my hometown of Truro, when I was at the high school there, the vocational school was next door. There was a steady exchange between the students, which worked very well. We have a marvellous community college system in our province now which continues to evolve and develop and get better and better, but what happened was, when the community college system was put in, the bulk of the vocational system was pulled out. There was no transition, and I think that's a problem. It's one that the department recognizes, and we are turning our minds to it. It will not be an immediate thing, but we're certainly aware of it. I can tell you, as well, and I think you know, when the school boards did their series of hearings around the province last Fall, that was either the number one or the number two concern. I think something will happen, because everybody is concerned about it.

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MR. GLAVINE: Certainly, I'm pleased to hear that whole area of vocational training in our schools may, in fact, be one of the ways in which our students can be retained in the school and have higher graduation rates. Really, we're looking at, over a six-year profile, in 1997-98 we were at a 79 per cent graduation rate, so, therefore, just the 1 per cent, still at 20 per cent, one in every five Nova Scotians was not graduating in an age when we know that education is so important to futures, and we also know that there are some students whose needs in the public schools do cause great strain in order to be delivered.

I would like to just follow up and ask the minister, at this stage, would we be looking at models like we see at Memorial High School, where you have a high school and a vocational school that work in concert, or are we going to move into more apprenticeship training? I'm wondering, what are the kinds of areas, because I think it's an area that some of our public school dollars are definitely going to have to go towards in the future.

MR. MUIR: Memorial was probably, I think, in Nova Scotia, the only school that went to that particular model, that I can remember, in which the vocational program and the regular or non-vocational program were housed, physically, in the same building. As I said there were other situations, like the one with which I'm most familiar, where the vocational school was across the driveway. You didn't even have to cross the street, there was a driveway running between the high school and the vocational school, and that worked very well.

In the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board, the school board and the new schools that they have provided there, have incorporated in the design physical facilities for the OPP program, which is a good thing, but that's only part of it. We see, Mr. Chairman, probably more co-op programs, where students are attending the academic courses part of the time and perhaps working in business or industry in areas where that is possible. I think that had a different name a number of years ago. If I remember, one of the names it was called was distributive education and for those metro members, you perhaps remember the big program they had in Dartmouth High and Prince Andrew High, for the students over there. That program disappeared.

The other thing, it's been mentioned, that we're talking about with our skills development division is the idea of early apprenticeship, rather than beginning an apprenticeship program in particular trades when you were still registered in school. I think there are a number of things that are possible. Do we have a defined plan at this particular time? No, we have the OPP programs in a lot of places which do fulfill a certain role, but they don't substitute for the old vocational school.

MR. GLAVINE: I want to come back to an area I know that was talked about on Friday, and that is testing in particular, I wanted to pick up a little bit on the literacy test. When I speak with a number of people across the education community I hear them say that perhaps we have the other end of the spectrum here, opposite of the Grade 12 provincial

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exam, which certainly was a challenging exam, that perhaps the literacy test, in other words, was a bit easy in trying to perhaps show that things are all well. We have the Learning for Life Program in effect in Nova Scotia. We know that it impacts down the road, since it's a relatively new program. We did give a grammar book to every Grade 4 student, and all of a sudden everything is right with the world.

I have a lot of concerns about the literacy test, when you consider that only 11 out of the 60 outcomes, that are part of the curriculum, certainly at the Grade 5 level, are actually measured on that particular test. I wonder, in fact, how accurately it is indeed measuring the state of literacy at the halfway point, in our student's education. Just to frame the question, Mr. Minister, how accurately does that test reflect the ability of our students with literacy at about the halfway point in their education?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, it does reflect Grade 5 and the member is absolutely right, it's written fairly early in Grade 6 and therefore would recognize that. I think it reflects it pretty well. Again, that test was made up by teachers. You may be right about the number of outcomes that are measured. I didn't get into that detail on that. It was made up by teachers working in the province and they indeed felt that those were the most important things to measure. We're pretty confident that the working group that was involved in the construction of this particular instrument was very competent, and I'm quite prepared to accept its judgment on that.

MR. GLAVINE: I guess I'll stick with this topic of the testing in our schools for a couple of more questions. I certainly, I guess perhaps, take a little different perspective. I believe that the testing of true value in our schools is how we stack up in a national forum. I believe that whether it's at Grade 3 or Grade 12, how we are measuring up to other jurisdictions across Canada is the all-important question. I firmly believe that we can't just take a look at whether we're measuring the outcomes and what the level is in Nova Scotia. We are now certainly in a position where we have a lot of mobility and our students at the end of the day do have to compete on a national stage. I'm wondering if our time, our energy resources, in fact, should be directed toward national testing only and perhaps we have a review of our provincial and other areas of testing?

[3:45 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I'm very pleased to hear the comments from the honourable member. He recognizes, I think, the value of testing and bringing our Nova Scotia students into an Atlantic and national and international comparison, of course is where the department is trying to move and has moved the past number of years. So you will not get any disagreement, I don't think, from folks in the Department of Education that this is a good thing.

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I can tell you that in the national Language Arts assessment, the last one that was done including Nova Scotia, we were better than the other Atlantic Provinces; we were not quite as good as some of the other jurisdictions in the country. In terms of our mathematics assessment, again, ahead of the other Atlantic Provinces; not as good as some of the others. One of the reasons for going to these provincial examinations is to address the concerns which you will have articulated. We've recognized for some time that we are competing globally, whether within this province or outside of this province. I want to say that if you take a look at the graduates of the Nova Scotia public school systems, we have some truly outstanding Canadian and world leaders, not to mention those who have made their mark here in Nova Scotia.

The danger in generalizing, saying that we don't do as well as Alberta or, I guess, the collective, this is not in any way to take away or not recognize the tremendous contributions and achievements of Nova Scotians. You take a look in the sciences. Some of our people have really - the people who have been trained here and gone to school here, are as good as anybody, anyplace. I will say in terms of the national testing, yes.

The other thing which is, I think, important to point out, Mr. Chairman, is despite the fact that our national results are not quite at the halfway mark, I think this what the honourable member is alluding to and we will get there. We're making progress. We have the commitment of everybody, I think, in the province to go that way. When you take a look at our international assessments, we do very well. We rank very well internationally.

MR. GLAVINE: Following along this line of testing and the provincial exams. I guess the results, with a little bit of a longitudinal vantage point there of four or five years, when we take a look at the extremely low results for physics, chemistry, English and English communications, which I referenced on Friday as one other of the poor provincial results, I am wondering, what is the direction that the department is committed to? This is certainly, in terms of budget, a cost item, looking after the formulation, the administration and so on, of our provincial exams. We know a number of provinces now have moved away from provincial exams; they are a 30 per cent component. We certainly have a number of reasons why perhaps the results aren't as good as they could be.

I am simply wondering, what is the future pathway that perhaps our exams are going to be taking in light of cost factors, and universities telling us that they don't really need the exams as part of the their entry statistical base? This really starts to point toward whether or not they indeed should be there.

MR. MUIR: I think the issues are a number of things and it comes down to what a test is used for. First of all, it enables students to show what they've learned, to show what they can do. I think that's important. It also enables teachers to use them as a diagnostic tool to try to determine what the strengths and weaknesses of students are and perhaps to adjust their instruction appropriately.

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The idea of consistency, and we went through this on Friday and we who were involved in that debate - I guess there were about four of us that day - did more or less agree that what a grade might mean in the school from which you came might not have the same meaning as the school next to you.

Thus, when we have provincial examinations, it means that we have a standardized curriculum across the province because the exam does reflect what students are supposed to learn. It also enables us to compare. For example, if we think that Alberta is doing a little bit better than us - indeed, they have on a couple of subject areas - then we can take a look at what students in Alberta are required to learn and how well they are learning it and we have our own documents to compare with. I think, more or less, my understanding of it is that in Canada, if a student is taking Grade 12 chemistry, it is generally a theme of intended learning outcomes of things that students are expected to learn in Grade 12 chemistry, whether they're in British Columbia, Nunavut or Nova Scotia.

You mentioned provincial exams - we have chemistry, English and French, two English exams, a physics exam and that's been joined by mathematics this year - and the success rate in those exams continues to grow each year. That's the important thing, that they set a standard, they set a bar and it's an objective measure. You can see if you're going up or going down. I think that is very important for our students and for our teachers to have that objective feedback.

I suspect that the areas where these exams are written, when we get into chemistry and physics and the advanced math in Grade 12 and those things, rightly or wrongly, those aren't general education courses anymore. The idea of general education, that isn't what they're intended for. They're intended, really, as a prerequisite for going on and studying that material further. Therefore, the object measure is probably quite helpful.

MR. GLAVINE: This may be a little bit too specific in some ways, but I think it's telling when in the history of the English 12 communications, the minister's talking about improvement being made. Well, we've never had a passing average on that provincial exam to date.

If, in my class, I went through a set of exams and over a couple of years less than 50 per cent were passing, there's time for change, there's time for remediation, renew the course, get the outcomes and the exam in greater sync. To me, something must be happening there and I'm wondering if the minister could report. I think exams in this province are a troublesome area for a whole number of reasons. I hope maybe at some time to be able to expand on that, but I find that troubling. I'm just wondering what specifically is being done to bring the exams more in line with what outcomes here should be measured?

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MR. MUIR: I think I would have to disagree with the honourable member in his assumption. Again, the information that I have and comes into the department, these tests are made up by teachers. Nobody really says that the tests don't measure what students are supposed to learn.

One can argue and say they shouldn't have to learn those things and that's a different argument. I'm not prepared to debate that today, but the fact is that I think you're going to see those things go up because the literacy program, although you write a Grade 12 exam, literacy is the thing that we have for 13 years in school. I was very encouraged by the results of the Grade 6 literacy assessment simply because it means that at least at that point in time, the great majority of students are meeting objectives.

Additionally - and I expect somewhat in relation to the feedback that we're getting from these standardized exams - the province has committed a lot of human and financial resources to literacy programs. As the honourable member knows, you don't get immediate payback on that, but over the course of years I would suggest that you're going to see those results grow significantly.

MR. GLAVINE: To move in another direction here for awhile, we know that we are now hearing from all of our school boards. I know two in particular that keep raising the funding formula for the education in their regions, in their district school boards. With just seven boards now to actually deal with, compared to the old 23-board system, we've had another five years and I think three during the previous administration, to deal with our larger boards.

Certainly, again, there are a number of issues surrounding the funding. I was wondering if the minister could comment on what the time line is for doing some corrective measures to the present formula in view of the fact that there are some major issues?

MR. MUIR: I thank you for that rather leading question. Clearly his preamble indicates that there is a problem with formula and we know that there's dissatisfaction in some areas with the formula. We have announced a review and that review is going to be led by Bill Hogg who most people in this House know. For the honourable member's information, he was the former Deputy Minister of Finance and a very well-respected Nova Scotian.

The timeline, he is just about to start that project. This, by the way, was an agreement that the government had made with the school boards that we would review the funding formula on a regular basis. We expect to have his review and recommendations back in November and hopefully, that will be in time for us. I expect there will be some changes recommended, there's no question about that, to address allocation and to put a transitional program in place. This is a scheduled review. I look forward to Mr. Hogg's report.

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MR. GLAVINE: As a follow-up question, we know that transportation and property services are two of the areas of funding that there is a great discrepancy amongst the boards. If we eliminate transportation and property services, we now have the funding primarily for programs, a number of students in our boards across the province, and we can see, if we eliminate transportation and property services, a difference between the Strait board and the Halifax Regional School Board of over $1,000 per student in funding and I think about $800 for AVRSB.

[4:00 p.m.]

Those are incredibly large figures. We had Dr. Gunn from AVRSB talk about being short about $35 million since amalgamation started and we know that each year they are short. They are talking about this year needing a 4 per cent increase just to maintain and we know that by now, of course, about 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent is the increase that the board is receiving. I'm wondering if the minister in the short-term would be willing to address any shortfalls of the Halifax Regional School Board and AVRSB come September? They simply are in dire straits.

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, the funding formula is very complex and, indeed, it was simply you could look at equity by removing transportation and, you know, I'm sure there would have been significant adjustments made. There is a lot more to it, school size and a whole variety of things, and the honourable member knows that, you know, the enrolments, school sizes, class sizes and geography play a certain degree, but I think the honourable member asked if we would pick up shortfalls for the Halifax Regional School Board and for the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board, but he forgot to mention the Chignecto-Central School Board and the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board and all of the other school boards.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not so sure whether that was a real question. Well, perhaps it was and it just doesn't seem to me to be how you could pick out two boards and say they've got a problem and you're going to fix them and ignore the others.

MR. GLAVINE: What I'm saying in my previous statement is that those are the two boards that I believe are having certainly the most significant difficulties when it comes to dealing with their finances based on the amount they're given from the province, plus the municipal grants, and in Halifax's case, supplementary funding. We are hearing now, certainly in the last two or three school years, the constraints that they have had to operate under. We can say all school boards are underfunded, but I'm talking about the two that are having the most difficult and ongoing challenges with meeting their financial commitments. So I would like a comment in regard to those two.

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MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I really have to dispute that assumption by the honourable member. (Interruption) I would sooner it wasn't, I will tell you that, but the Chignecto-Central School Board, which happens to be the one for the community in which I reside, has for quite some time now been publicizing that they need more money and I would suggest to a far greater extent than either in the Annapolis board or the Halifax Regional School Board. For example, the Halifax Regional School Board just got an extra $20 million and it's inappropriate to try to link supplemental funding with mandatory municipal contributions.

MR. GLAVINE: Well, I guess the minister has admitted that not just Halifax and the AVRSB, but also Chignecto-Central is in difficult times and, in fact, perhaps as we learned on budget day, education was not just in second place, it was buried in a number two spot in terms of the considerations in this year's budget. Knowing what some of the boards are being faced with, then I would still like to know if in light of the fact the funding formula doesn't seem to be working, if we have some real difficulties come the next school year, is the minister willing to address those?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, the government clearly will address school board funding as it is able to. I know that boards would like more money. Universities would like more money and community colleges would like more money and everybody would like more money. Are they entirely comfortable with the funding they're receiving? The answer is probably no. Is the province entirely comfortable with the amount of money that they're given? The answer is probably no, but the fact is that the money for public schooling goes up each year. The number of students goes down. Yet the funding is increasing.

The programs and services that are being offered by the public school system, I think probably improve year over year and that's a reflection, Mr. Chairman, on the management of the school boards. They do a very good job of managing within their budgets and, you know, I would like to be able to stand up and say, yes, I will take the money out of my pocket, but I'm not sure whether my friend who does the roads would be prepared to give me some of his budget, or my friend who does the health would be prepared to give me some of his budget, because they both at the Cabinet Table made an awful ruckus about being underfunded. So I just want to tell you that there were at least three of us saying we were underfunded at the Cabinet Table.

MR. CHAIRMAN: An interesting comment.

MR. GLAVINE: Another area of funding that we are starting to hear, certainly some commentary about, is the amount that the municipalities are having to put into education. I take a look at the 2002-03 statistical picture and if we take a look at Halifax, for example, $884 million put up by the municipality, $218 million by the province. Now, that to me is certainly above, you know, that 90/10 recommended formula, or is that just a rough guideline for municipal funding? I think it's a direction where the province seems to be again downloading a little bit more onto the municipalities. I'm wondering what the actual current

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level of funding guideline the Department of Education uses towards the portion that the municipalities have to pick up?

MR. MUIR: The rate for a municipal contribution is 0.351 per 100, Mr. Chairman, and that particular number has gone down twice in the last five years. So in effect the reduction rate is probably close to 10 per cent over the last five years, but I was a bit confused by the honourable member's numbers at the beginning because the numbers were too big and, anyway, I want to tell you that the amount of money that will be collected through that process in 2004-05 is based on the assessment value and it's roughly $147.5 million. Now, I think he used the figure of $200-some million and that's why I was a bit confused. So you must have been referring to something different than I was.

I can tell you that in 1996-97, Mr. Chairman, that the municipalities contributed slightly over 18 per cent of the cost of public education. In 2003-04, the per cent contributed by the municipalities was down to about 16.2 per cent, which was roughly about a 1.8 actual percentage on top, but if you take two over 18, it was about a 9 per cent decrease.

MR. GLAVINE: Well, I'm not really concerned about the decrease, Mr. Minister. Could you tell me - I'm just using one regional school board as an example, what percentage of the current funding level is provided by the municipality for educating the Halifax Regional School Board?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to ask the honourable member to clarify that question. I think we said that we were asking municipalities to contribute 16.22 per cent this year to the cost of education, so board by board would be the same thing, wouldn't it? (Interruption)

MR. GLAVINE: I was basing it on information from 2002-03, where the municipal grants for Halifax Regional School Board were $84 million. The province contributing $218 million and the Government of Canada, $2 million and other revenues for just as rough figures, for a total of $310 million for education. What I'm getting at here is the percentage, therefore to me, is much higher than what the guideline seems to be that is used for funding by municipalities?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I think the honourable member was referring to the Halifax Regional School Board budget not just the municipal contribution. What happens is that the budget is set and the money that is collected in the area flows to the school boards and then it's topped up by the provincial government. I think if you understand, and let's take the Municipality of Halifax where their assessment went up, I think, by $180 million, or something like that, the increase in assessment over the last year, well, you have to understand that most municipalities in this province don't have an assessment of $180 million let alone an increase in it. The money that does flow in assessment, that's the mandatory municipal contribution rate and that is used for education.

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MR. GLAVINE: Mr. Minister, the other area in terms of budgets, generally, I know we can get caught up in specifics, but I know one of the real big concerns that school boards have had for the past number of years is the timing of when they do get their budgets. I know that this year the minister at a meeting at Avonview, promised the school board, AVRSB, that they would get their budgetary figures in January. We know that they were already using monies for the 2004-05 school year, when they actually received the dollar figure that they would have. Planning, certainly in regard to staffing, I know the number of extra hours that went in just in this past week because of that delay. I'm simply wondering why this process can't become more efficient and expedited in the best interest of all in the systems?

[4:15 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member raises a good point, but I can tell you the process may have its flaws, but this government, whether it's in health or in anything else, is tied into the provincial budget process. This government did make a commitment, I think, and has been able to keep it to get the budget together in the Spring. I can remember times when government for one reason or another were not able to really budgets together until the Fall and that didn't work very well. Our department does have regular communication with all of the school boards. We're able to help them with forecasting in preparation with budgets. The Department of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations does too, and the value of the assessment is not totally finalized yet because there are properties under appeal and things like this.

The process is filled with a lot of consultation among representatives from the department and school board representatives. I can say that probably the process works better now because we have better sources of information, better predictability and better ways to analyze situations as well as to make money flow than it has in the past. This is not to say in any way, Mr. Chairman, that we don't continue to try to improve what we do in Halifax in co-operation with our school board partners, but we have come a long way.

MR. GLAVINE: On Friday the minister said that this year there would be a reduction of 97 teachers across the province, and in taking a look at the requirements for the coming school year when both Primary and Grade 1 will have class sizes of 25, and combined classes with a maximum of 20. I know that provincial involvements are dropping, but is that not such a significant decline especially in light of the very marginal decline over a six-year period, when the province in the 1997-98 school year had 9,729 teachers, this year 9,630, and 9,592 in 2002-03. In fact that seems like a very substantial number of teachers to be reducing the workforce by, and my own personal take is that perhaps it is more than just a decline in enrolment, when we have a 97-figure reduction. In fact, is this one of the cost-saving measures that the province is looking at in this particular school year?

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MR. MUIR: The funding for school boards is in some ways population-driven, and when the student population does go down - and obviously some other things have to go too. I'll remind the honourable member that school boards are adjusted annually based on student population and if the population is decreasing, then there is a formula for taking away teaching positions. The data that is used to make that determination is a year old, so that effectively a school board would have a year to transition it. So the data that is going to be used for the 2004-05 school year is the data from 2003-04. Effectively, most boards would have fewer students in that year and that smaller number is not the one that's used to determine teaching positions.

MR. GLAVINE: Looking at the projected enrolment for the next school year, we will be down by 3,000 teachers - sorry, 3,000 students, 3,000 teachers would really cause a problem, and we're reducing by almost 100 teachers in the workforce, but yet we're reducing class size, moving it into Grade 1 next year. There definitely doesn't seem to be a proper balance here with the declining enrolment, teacher losses, but yet the requirement of several more teachers at the Grade 1 level. I feel that I need a little bit more of an explanation.

MR. MUIR: The position that the government accepted when it started this Learning for Life initiative was that the early years were really the most formative to get people off to a good start in school. If you were talking about the most effective, most appropriate or whatever you want to call it, when you're talking about smaller class sizes, government felt that in Primary, Grade 1, it was really in the primary grades where you could have the greatest effect. The honourable member would know that students come to school, all the way from somebody, I suppose being able to read, maybe at a Grade 6 level, to some who can't do that.

There is a wide variety and, therefore, smaller class sizes, more individual help for the Primary grade is what we went on. That's what the Learning for Life commitment was, to put more resources in the very first years of school so that students could get off to a better start. We all know that for students who get off to a bad start, it is very difficult for them to fully recover.

MR. GLAVINE: The next area that I was wanting to ask a question about was with the pension funds. Just very quickly, why is that figure actually included in the Education budget? It's a little bit of a complexity to me, in that, why would it be there when we're talking about the operational dollars for education for the province?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The time has elapsed for the Liberal caucus. I will allow the minister a short snapper.

MR. MUIR: I will just say, administratively it's easier for us to pay that money - it all goes into education - than it is to allow the boards to pay it. That's the reason.

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MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Halifax Atlantic.

MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: I have a few questions which partly come out of my own experience as a parent, and I hope that's acceptable. (Interruptions) One of the things which I think is a great concern for a number of parents in the school system and throughout the school system actually is the fact that it's very difficult to educate a child who is not in the first place safe. There are a number of incidents where at the individual school level there seems not to be an adequately strong board protocol surrounding various things which may concern traffic safety. There seems not to be a consistent approach towards whether or not individual schools within boards permit cars on or off school grounds, which can lead to a number of difficulties.

There are problems with emergency plans, which, although they have apparently been vetted, just don't hold water. They really do need to be dealt with at the school board level. There are, in fact, schools - I'm aware of at least one school - at which the children are under the age of seven years old, they're, by definition, pre-literate, most of the children there, and there is no telephone in the building and no school secretary. I'm wondering what are, at the provincial level, the policies surrounding the dictates on safety concerns, for the boards to be addressing at the board level?

MR. MUIR: I thank the honourable member for that question. It's interesting to hear the parent perspective coming out. I want to tell you that having had four children pass through public school, the issue of safety, I think, is one that concerns every parent. You spoke about safety in a number of areas. First of all, one of the things you talked about was traffic on school grounds. I expect that that would be both a board and a school policy. I have to go back and I have to think of this in my own home community, trying to get the answer to that. I know that in a couple of schools, cars are allowed on the school property, and in others they aren't.

However, I can think of one area where they are, there's sort of a drop-off area in the yard. At some of the older elementary schools, like the ones they have in Truro, they don't have sufficient room, so children are dropped off on the street. We're sort of fortunate there, because in the older communities where you literally had town schools or community schools, then quite often the schools were not built on the main streets, they were built on another street, although two of the elementary schools in Truro were on the old Highway No. 2.

I can indeed remember one of the greatest scares I ever got in my life was, I ran across that street, I saw one car coming and I didn't see the second one, and that car ran over my raincoat when I was about five years old. I can still remember that. I want to tell you I'm very careful about crossing streets right now.

[Page 236]

It's an interesting thing, it's a very good question. It's primarily a concern of the board. The issue of safety, we've accepted the recommendations put forward by the provincial Student Education Council to try to end bullying, and we've done that from the provincial thing. But the actual schoolyard safety to which you referred, that would be a matter for school boards to deal with. I can tell you that there are guidelines for busing, where students attend school via the school bus. I do know that the boards do consider safety very carefully, when making decisions whether to bus students or not bus them, if they lie inside that area where they're not required to bus them. The boards are aware of that.

More specific concerns, I would usually direct parents to schools boards. I know as an MLA this year, I've had a couple of concerns brought to me by parents about their children, having to do, really, with busing and where the bus pickup was and all of that type of thing. We've addressed that with the board, and I know that whatever resolution came, it may not have been ideal but the board did work with these people to try to solve the problem. That's not to say that sometimes people don't come with unrealistic expectations, and the board would deal with those as well.

MS. RAYMOND: It sounds as though at the moment there are not provincial policies concerning these various issues. They do concern not only traffic, which may be on or off school grounds, but they do also concern, as I said, communications, the existence or non-existence of a telephone, liability issues seem to be interpreted very differently, literally from school to school within a given board. I'm wondering whether the province has looked at addressing the issue of some standard guidelines, that either there will be cars on school grounds or not on school grounds, there will or will not be a telephone in every school facility, emergency plans will or will not be reviewed at the board level. Has the province looked at this as a whole?

I think it's very difficult to ask, in the same way it's difficult sometimes for a board to demand of the individual school that it reach the correct solution when, you know, perhaps the problem has been solved many, many times and I'm quite sure that the problems that I have seen within my constituency are a long way from unique within the province. So does the department have any intention of addressing the development of policies even if it's as minimal as ensuring there's a safety audit of every school, ensuring that each board does have one?

[4:30 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, all schools and all public premises are subject to the normal audits, for example, fire and safety audits. The honourable member knows Halifax Atlantic better than I do although I'm not totally unfamiliar with some of the school situations out there, having been out there. All of the occupational health and safety guidelines have to be followed and schools aren't exempt in those. As far as I know - I defer to my colleagues - have we ever done anything about a provincial (Interruption) I'm not aware of that, but if

[Page 237]

somebody, if the School Boards Association or the Home and School Association, or something like that, if that was a major concern, I know in my constituency I think it would be dealt with by the School Advisory Council, perhaps through the board.

I think it would probably be more effective to be dealt with locally than a provincial responsibility, but we have had a couple of provincial things, as I said, you know, the bullying program had provincial guidelines. Also the school code of conduct is a provincial guideline, but really many of those front-line operational things we feel are best handled by the respective boards. I think now with the mandatory school advisory councils in all schools that issues like that will be perhaps more effectively analyzed and probably a little bit more quickly resolved.

MS. RAYMOND: I hope that that is, in fact, turning out to be the case. I think it's a more widespread problem in Halifax Atlantic and I would suggest that perhaps the Department of Education could consider setting the parameters for those investigations per school board. (Interruptions)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The honourable member for Halifax Atlantic has the floor. Maybe others could consider some vocal hibernation.

MS. RAYMOND: I have another question actually which surrounds the use of cumulative cards. Is there a provincial policy concerning disclosure of those, student and parent access to cumulative files, and is there also any kind of protocol for, what shall I say, the archiving of those things during a certain or active period? I know, as you have said, it's very difficult for a student who has gotten off to a bad start to improve, but I would suggest that over the course of 13 years perhaps many do. I'm wondering if there is, in fact, a provincial level policy saying that cumulative cards are retired from active service and require special dispensation to be accessed in the future, and also what kind of policy surrounds student and parent access to those files?

MR. MUIR: There is a committee made up of school board officials and Department of Education officials that has to do with records management. I haven't heard the term "cumulative card" for quite awhile and about the actual access guidelines, what they are, if there are provincial guidelines; I'm going to have to take that question under advisement and respond to you.

MS. RAYMOND: Just another question actually. I'm not able to tell from the library funding, I know that you have, in fact, upped library funding and I would certainly applaud that. What portion of that is, in fact, dedicated to ensuring the library is staffed? I would say that there are a number of learning centres and so on which really consist of not much more than providing a quiet sanctuary for children who are having more difficulty in which to do their work and that's a function that used to be fulfilled by the school library. Is there a dedicated portion of this funding to library staffing and is there any commitment at the

[Page 238]

provincial level that each school will have a staff librarian at any point during the next 10, 15, 20, 25 years?

MR. MUIR: The money that was allocated was for regional libraries and my understanding is that there is a formula for the distribution of that money. There is a library formula review committee, or something, that brought in a report last year which recommended significant enhancements to the funding for libraries and I'm really pleased and I thank you for your endorsement of government's decision to make more money available to public libraries. I think that's pretty important because it's really the single agency in society that does cater to everybody. It does cater to everybody so when you give money to libraries, you're giving money to everybody. (Interruption) Bookmobiles, yes.

For school libraries, that's an operational funding. That would be a school board matter. It was raised the other day whether there would be full-time school librarians. I think it may be a desirable thing, but I can't foresee in the future you will find that. I mentioned last week that, I think it was in Redcliff Middle School, a week ago today actually, which is a middle school just outside of the Village of Bible Hill and physically located in the constituency of my good friend, the member for Colchester North, although it does draw students from south and north, as well as from Truro-Bible Hill, and if you were to go in that school and had seen what that group of teachers, parents and administrators had done for Literacy Week, I think that the issue of whether you have a formal teacher librarian would be diminished at the elementary school.

MS. RAYMOND: So I would understand from that then that there is no provincial plan for ensuring that school libraries are staffed and if volunteers are available, then that's great and, if not . . .

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, we address all aspects of school funding and review it regularly and I want to tell you that the issue the honourable member is addressing does come up. You know, another school - I'm just picking schools that I've seen and I'm sure there are lots of examples around the province - for example, I know Cavalier Drive has an elementary school out in the Sackville area I've not been to it, but the literacy program is there. The language arts program that we have gives classroom teachers in every subject area the primary responsibility for helping students develop skills and critical literacy research and evaluation. Again, I have to say, the elementary classrooms, if you see the literacy resources that are in your typical elementary classroom these days, I mean elementary classrooms are filled with books today and in some of the roles that I had earlier, it used to take me into a lot of those classrooms and, you know, you could see the progressive emphasis on literacy. Really, people would get quite a treat.

[Page 239]

MS. RAYMOND: I guess the only other question that I would have is, and I'm hoping that you can tell me a little bit more, Mr. Minister, about the federal program for enhancing the number of French-speaking graduates of schools at the provincial level. What is the status of the federal-provincial agreement there?

MR. MUIR: We have a number of those protocols, Mr. Chairman, and they are reviewed annually and, indeed, I think I just signed off on some of them. (Interruption)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Whoever has the cell phone, would you be kind enough to turn it off.

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I sincerely apologize for that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We'll presume that staff is calling down with some information.

MR. MUIR: Yes, they're calling down with information is what it was and not only did it ring, I never have the thing on ring, it's always on vibrate. So I'm doubly embarrassed about that. Anyway, the issue of libraries you're referring to, it is reviewed regularly. I mentioned libraries, but also libraries are part of the French grants too.

It's all encompassing. We do sign those protocols on a regular basis and we have staff in our department that works with federal officials to do that. As the honourable member would be aware, we have recently reorganized and a lot of the curriculum development work is now going out to the board and we think that is going to be a more efficient and more effective use of resources.

The French language grants budgeted this year are a little over $4 million. We pass that on to boards.

MS. RAYMOND: Thank you, Mr. Minister. I'm going to hand over the rest of my time if I may to my colleague, the member for Sackville-Cobequid.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Mr. Chairman, I want to start with thanking the committee here for indulging some questions to the minister from me. As a parent of two young children, I haven't had a lot of interaction with the school system since my daughter just started Primary this year. I'm sure after a few more years, hopefully down the road if I'm still here, my questioning might be a little more thorough. I hope you can bear with me, being new to going through some of these books and figures, but I do have some questions and maybe some quick answers from the minister on what they entail.

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First of all, I'd like to go to the Supplement to the Public Accounts, Page 48. Some of the lines that drew some interest to me, maybe the minister could enlighten me on some of the lines there. One would be the New Ireland Press of $50,000 and the Oxford University Press of over $807,000. I wonder if the minister could just briefly tell me what those figures entail, especially the larger one of over $800,000.

MR. MUIR: The $50,000 to the New Ireland Press was for learning materials and educational resale supplies and it went to the Nova Scotia Book Bureau. The Oxford University Press of $808,000, that was learning materials, educational research supplies, subscriptions, various divisions. Learning materials would include textbooks, primarily.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I was sure there would probably be a large number of textbooks for $807,000.

I'll continue with the same book, Page 46. One of the concerns that has been brought up to me by a lot of the younger residents in my community is tuition and the cost of going to school and continuing their education. A big part of this is the cost and where do they come up with the money for this. A lot of them do look towards their parents for assistance and go to the financial institutions throughout the community and get loans. But another part is student loans. So I'm just wondering, on Page 46, we have a line item here and I wonder if the minister could briefly tell me about the claims for loss of student loans of $2.5 million. I wonder, could he go into detail a little bit on what that entails, that line there?

[4:45 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: What happened was that the Nova Scotia Government guaranteed Nova Scotia Student Loans for the Royal Bank. In other words, we were the guarantor of those loans. What has happened is that the loans have gone into default and therefore we, as the guarantor, have to pay the bank and we put them out for collection.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So, trying to learn as much as I can about this whole process, I was looking back to previous years trying to find this line and I was unable to find this line, claims for loss of student loans. Was it under some other heading before? Is this the first year that we claimed it under this title?

MR. MUIR: It was the first year that it was claimed here. When the arrangement was first made, the government paid a 10 per cent risk premium. The process was changed so that the government became the guarantor.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I just want to change books for a minute so I'll be under Supplementary Detail, Page 6.11. What drew my attention here was under School Capital-Amortization, especially under the line Buses. Looking at last year's estimates of $4.1 million, the forecast of 2003-04 is $2.6 million. This year it seems like

[Page 241]

there's been a cut of $1.5 million - sorry, a cut from $4.1 million to about $3.1 million. I wonder if you could just explain what pertains to buses in that line and the reason for the reduction of almost $1 million on that line.

MR. MUIR: That represents the amortization of the school buses. With the change in the accounting rules, when they moved to GAAP, government was able to change the amortization rate and that difference reflects the change in the move to GAAP principles.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So, for next year, do you foresee a change or is that going to be kind of a constant number that we're dealing with for the next few years, the $3.1 million?

MR. MUIR: We've been getting better prices on the buses each year fortunately. One of the things, just for the information of members of the House, buses are purchased through an Atlantic Provinces' consortium so we join with Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and that's helped with the unit prices for buses, which has been a very good thing.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I'm wondering, with us purchasing these buses and getting a better deal, it's great that we're looking at consolidating purchases with other provinces. Do we actually lease them back to Stock Transportation or do we lease them back to the bus companies and do we have revenue coming in for those buses that they use?

MR. MUIR: Those who are in private transportation, no, they do their own thing. We do provide the board with a grant to offset some of the capital costs that the private carrier would incur.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you, Mr. Minister, for clearing that up a little bit. In the same book, I want to go to Page 6.6. During the campaign, a lot of questions were asked about class sizes and resources in the schools. What I heard was, yes, they are concerned to a point on the number of students in each classroom, but what a lot of the teachers especially were saying to me there seemed to be a little bit of increase in the special needs of children, integrating them more in the public schools, which is I think a great opportunity for them to learn and grow. A lot of concerns were with resources, so I'm wondering, under Public Schools, on Page 6.6, under Learning Resources and Technology, there has been quite a cut of about $1.5 million, could you inform me of what programs fall under that, and the reason for such a large cut to what I think is an important part of the school system, getting resources and technology into the classroom?

MR. MUIR: Thank you, Madam Chairman, and let me welcome you. If you were there for the last question, I didn't notice, and if you weren't, welcome.

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We are continuing to invest in the priority areas of reading, writing and math. The technology initiative of the Department of Education has been a good one. It has done well. It has given high-speed Internet access to every school, community college, campus, university, and library in Nova Scotia, and that's part of what those technology funds were. It started like so many things, as a partnership between the federal and the provincial governments and this was a three-year partnership. We've continued to invest in technology for schools on a provincial level, after this phase concluded. The funding that was made available has covered hardware and software, professional development and technical support.

The province is very close to achieving its target of one computer for every five students in public school classrooms. It was a difficult budget year and we made a difficult decision to reduce the funding to the technology initiative. In some cases what this will mean is that where they had perhaps a regular hardware replacement cycle, they might have to delay some purchases. We know that there will be an effect, but we made the decision when we had to make some decisions about where school boards could make - I won't say the easiest adjustments, but adjustments that might have the least effect on students, and that was an area that we picked.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Madam Chairman, like the minister said, it's a good program and it's working, and since becoming involved with this occupation I've realized the need for technology, the need for computers, but one of the things that I know is that Special Education Programs or the students who are integrated into the school system really rely on these technologies and the resources, especially computers and technology like that. I also know that the ambition to have one computer in every classroom is great, but within a couple of years those computers are outdated and you need to replace these computers; I'm sure the computers we have in there now from years ago are probably at the point where they need replacing. To have such a large cut, how do you think that's going to affect the outcome of the computer systems, if we want to talk about computers in the classrooms and for our students to get the best education, especially from the technology point, especially when with a lot of the jobs that are out there now, you need to have great technology background?

MR. MUIR: Well, there's no question, Madam Chairman, the fact that this was a budget item that could not be increased this year will slow us down. On the other hand, school boards, we'll work with them to really identify their priority areas and see that the money is allocated to hardware and software and professional development and the technical support where it is most needed, there is a considerable portion of this money which goes to professional development. I think one of the things, we're talking about professional development - primarily professional development of teachers, excluding people like myself - a lot of teachers are becoming more and more competent in the use of technology and I think that some of the in-service dollars are not as crucial as they were in earlier years. There are very few new people coming into the schools who have come through higher education who would not have been using technology as part of their course of studies preparing their work.

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MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Madam Chairman, as the minister said, it was a budget item and they had to make a decision, but I think it was a bad decision on their part to do this. I think that we're going to have to live with the consequences and hopefully we can restore that funding and continue the excellent education that our kids can get from being exposed to technology in our schools. I think it's important to get them at the earliest age. For instance, my kids - I have a two-and-a-half-year-old and a five-year-old - it's amazing what they know at their age, and I think it's important that we continue to ensure the funding is there for the future.

I'm going to continue with the same book and go to Page 6.3. In my community - I've said this in the past and I guess I'll say it again - we're lucky that we don't have the P3 schools. I've said it in other debates, and my community has I think nine schools; we have a high school that has been there for over 30 years. I say we're lucky we're not caught up in this P3 and the large fees that we see being charged for the use of the facility - and I know it wasn't the minister's government that brought those in, it was the Third Party. We have concerns in our community because our schools are older and we're going to see problems arise in the future as we saw already a few years ago with contamination near one of our junior highs from an oil leak, and the amount of money it costs to fix that. One of the things was that it displaced these students and they had to go to a high school which was forced to go on split shifts.

It's not the first time Sackville High's been on split shifts. When I was going through high school, my first two years were on split shifts before Millwood High School was built. And that wasn't the last, recently Sir John A. Macdonald had some air quality problems and Sackville High School opened their arms and took these students in and gave them a place to get their education. So I have concerns about the line item Facilities - Repairs and Renovations to Schools. We see that there's quite a bit of a cut here and my concern is what happens if something occurs in my schools in my community? What was the reason for such a decrease in this facility section in the budget?

MR. MUIR: Thank you, honourable member, for the question. He began with the statement about P3 schools and access for community groups and so on, and I just want to clarify that it's a case perhaps of putting all of the developers into the same group, and that's not the case. I know that Ashford is quite comfortable in working with community groups in allowing about the same access that you're going to get in the public system. I want to make that point.

The issue of Sackville High School, and I just want to tell the honourable member that the government did give Sackville High School, I think it was a grant of $250,000, which was a supplemental grant over and above the regular budget to deal with the problem that they had there. I think that was a good thing.

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[5:00 p.m.]

Clearly, in the budget process, we were looking to see how we could most effectively use the dollars that we had. The decision was to reduce that. Hopefully, Madam Chairman, that will not prove to be something that we cannot live with.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Madam Chairman, we needed a floor 15 years ago when I was there, and it's a great floor. But during the hurricane, after the floor was in place, we did have damage to the roof. A lot of community groups use the gym, and had to seek other spots to do their functions. One of them was the Cobequid Christmas, which is a great fundraiser for Cobequid centre. We thought the repairs would be done in a timely manner, and they were forced to go elsewhere.

My concern is, has the government left the potential for further repairs to maybe not be done in the next couple of years, and do you feel that there's sufficient funding in case there's another Juan or in case there's another contamination of, say, oil or air quality? If that happens right now, with a cut of over $2 million - that's a lot of money - do you think you can absorb another Juan?

MR. MUIR: Well, there were a number of things in that question. I think the additions and alterations - it's fair to point out - is only one part of the property services budget. Natural disasters are a problem. I guess I can say, if we coped with them this year, hopefully we will never have to cope with them again, but if they come, then we will deal with them. Schools do have some insurance, and I believe a number of the repairs to schools - they were able to put in insurance claims and get some help on that. In addition, when we had that major thing, I know my colleagues, the Minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Act, and the Minister of Transportation and Public Works, we were able to, fortunately, recoup some of that significant damage claim from the federal government. Hopefully, we will never have to do that again.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I would have to agree with you, Mr. Minister. We might not agree on a lot of things, but, definitely, I don't think any of us want to go through that again. I think government is playing a type of Russian roulette with cuts like $2 million to the facility funding. We've seen it, year after year, with different areas in the province. I think it was the wrong way to go about it, especially with the aging schools, especially in my community, but they're all over the province. I just want to end with that. I'm going to share the rest of my time with my colleague, the member for Halifax Chebucto.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Mr. Minister, I noticed that a number of my colleagues and a number of the other members have asked you to add and subtract and multiply and divide in their focus on various line items, adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing

[Page 245]

is, of course, arithmetic. Arithmetic, along with geometry and calculus and combinatorial, make up a discipline known as mathematics. So it's mathematics that I would like to focus on just at the beginning. I'm sure that the minister saw and no doubt enjoyed the column in today's Daily News that focused on the problem of the recent math exam for high school students in Nova Scotia.

Now, I want to point out to the minister that I have some direct family knowledge of this issue. My son, who is in Grade 11 at St. Patrick's High School, is enrolled in the Grade 12 advanced math course, although he is only in Grade 11. I want to point out that he wrote this exam that has been so controversial. I want to put on record, with the minister and with everyone else who might be within hearing distance, that he got a grade of 95. (Applause)

Now his grade was the highest grade in his high school, in St. Patrick's High School. I want to mention this, primarily because, of course, I'm extremely proud of the boy and I want not to miss any opportunity to say that in public. That's the first reason I mentioned it. But there's another reason I mention it. I mention it because I want the minister to know that when I'm raising this issue, I'm not raising it because my son, who is at that level, suffered a problem. He didn't suffer a problem and, therefore, when I raise this, this is not an instance of special pleading. My son happens to be particularly adept at mathematics. He's adept at a lot of things, but that's one of his definite strengths.

I want the minister to understand that there is a big constituency out there of students and their parents who are concerned about this math exam. They're concerned and, I think, on quite legitimate grounds that peculiar things occurred. I know the minister is familiar with this in detail, but I'm just going to remind him that the problem seems to be that at least a good portion of what was on that exam, in many of the schools, seems not to have been covered in the curriculum beforehand. It seems, as well, that the instructions to the teachers that apparently allowed them some leeway to omit some of the questions from the exam, if they felt they hadn't been covered in the curriculum, also limited the teachers as to the extent to which they can do that.

The result is that we find what I think can only be characterized as extraordinarily large numbers of students who came out of that exam feeling that it had been amazingly difficult. In the end, when they received their results, they found that their instinct at the time of the exam was confirmed. So we find, province-wide, that there are a large number of students who are in the position of having what clearly are abnormally low grades in their mathematics, when these are the very students who are looking to their high school transcripts to form a basis for their applications to university and perhaps for scholarships.

Let's remember that many of these students are students who are in the academic stream, and who will be among the brightest of the students. It was, therefore, an extra disappointment to them that they encountered this set of circumstances. I've had letters from students in high school who have written this exam and who have found themselves in this

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squeeze, and I have to tell you, Mr. Minister, they're extremely disappointed with how this matter has been handled, out of the Department of Education.

They regard that as the locus of responsibility for this problem. They think that the department - and I think correctly - is responsible for setting the exams and for deciding how it is that they're going to administer the grading afterwards. So, the students have not failed to point the finger at the department. I have to say that I join them in their disappointment in how this matter has been dealt with by the department.

Mr. Minister, I'm sure it has not escaped your attention, what a complete rout there was of members of your Party in metro in last summer's provincial election. I have to tell you that no small part of that had to do with the widespread perception in metro that your government has not done enough for education. Indeed, your predecessor in the portfolio, the former member for Halifax Citadel, probably lost her seat in part because of that. I think that you would want to think long and hard about instances like this one in looking towards the next election. I heard you say, in response to a question, not so long ago, that one of the most frightening experiences you had ever had was with respect to some traffic when you were around five or six.

I suggest that one of the most frightening experiences you might next encounter is going to be the next provincial election, unless you and your Party pay a lot more attention to the needs of education at all levels. The example that I started out with today, this question of the math exam, is only one part of that, but the responsibility for delivering a high-quality education system is one that is taken extremely seriously in my constituency and I think in all the constituencies in the area that I know best, which is in the metro area. Education is valued here. Indeed, the Voluntary Planning task force told your government that in 1999-2000, that this is a fundamental value of Nova Scotians. We see it as the way forward in terms of turning around the economy here; indeed, we see it as the only way forward. That will bear political consequences for you.

Now, I don't have a question about the high school math exam, unless it is what, if anything, are you prepared to do about it? But I want to turn next to another aspect of what I think is a problematic encounter that students and parents and their families have had with the education system in metro, and that is the French immersion experience. Again, during your predecessor's time, there was a serious problem with the École Beaufort situation. In the last year or so, in your time, there has been a serious problem with French immersion at the high school level - again I'm talking about the metro area.

Now, my son, about whom I spoke in such glowing terms earlier, was enrolled in French immersion from Primary and Grade 1, all the way through, until this year when he decided that he could no longer continue in French immersion, because he wanted to take the advanced courses in science and mathematics; they simply weren't available. His older sister, who graduated last year from high school, did French immersion all the way through.

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My family, along with many families in metro, value French immersion. We see it as extremely important, we see it as developing flexibility, we see it as reaching out to another part of the Canadian community, we see it as an acknowledgement of the multi-lingual reality of the world, we look to it to be a tough course and challenging for our students, and we have respect for it, but, Mr. Minister, there's been very little to indicate that your department reciprocates the feelings that the parents have in this area, who want to see French immersion emerge as a vibrant, as a dynamic, as an integral part of the programs that are offered in the school system.

I know that not all of the problem is in your department. Many of the parents have had terrible experiences dealing with the Halifax Regional School Board over French immersion. The degree of frustration over this has been enormous. What I'm hoping is that you and the staff in your department will try to do your best to lean upon the Halifax Regional School Board, and other school boards, if they're not doing what it is that they ought to do with respect to French immersion. It took us enormous efforts, it took families enormous efforts to get your predecessor in the portfolio to move, to engage with the school board over the École Beaufort issue.

I'm hoping that your department, under your administration will move somewhat more aggressively with all the school boards, as they need it, to try to promote French immersion. I will just explain to you, if I may, what the particular current problem is with respect to high school French immersion in metro. You'll know that for many years, on the Halifax side of the harbour, the French immersion has been located at St. Patrick's High School. That's meant that students in the areas that would normally be serviced by the Halifax West High School and by the J.L. Ilsley High School have all come in to St. Patrick's High School in order to do French immersion at the high school level.

[5:15 p.m.]

Now, one of the advantages of that has been that the program has been of a sufficient size, in terms of the students and, therefore, of the teachers that it attracts, that it was able to offer a decent array of courses. Now what the school board has decided is it's going to take that grouping of students and divide them into their three high school families, thereby reducing the size of the students. The reduction, although technically only a reduction at St. Pat's, the product is that there are now three groups of students at the high school level doing French immersion, and they're all tiny. Each of the student groupings is too small to support, really, an adequate range, a varied range, a good range of courses that will continue to attract the students.

So you get situations where students are simply dropping out of French immersion when they get to the high school level, or they drop out after Grade 10. That is not beneficial. The whole idea is that students should study their French all the way through, they should be in French immersion all the way through, and yet this is counterproductive. It's

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understandable that with a brand new high school, out at Halifax West, that there might be some reason for putting students out there. Indeed, that perhaps makes sense. But if the program were to be split in two at this point, that might be acceptable - to split it in three was the mistake. Splitting it in three crossed a line; splitting it in three ended up creating a situation which was really untenable.

The case has been put in detail to the school board by the parents, time and again. Canadian Parents for French have been involved, and the local grouping has been involved. There has been an attempt to try to attract the attention of the school board that has been extremely frustrating. Now, you know that they define French immersion as something they call a program, and because it's a program they feel they can move it around from school to school. The most dramatic terminology I heard for how the French immersion students are treated came from a parent who spoke during the École Beaufort fiasco, who said that her children had been treated like stocking stuffers by the school board. They were just sort of moved around from place to place, put here, put there, and that in their experience they had found their children, when you add up their elementary and their junior high experience, had been put in several different schools over the course of their experience. This is not desirable.

Mr. Minister, I have to say that these two examples I raised are extremely problematic, and the signals that are sent to parents who are looking for a high quality of education are not responsive to that. I assure you, parents and the students are looking for a high quality of education out of our system; that is their chief demand. They don't want it just to be adequate, they certainly don't want it to be at the low level, and when we see the results of interprovincial comparisons, they're appalled and they're dismayed. They look at it and they can only reach the conclusion that they're not getting, in exchange for their taxes with or without a 10 per cent cut, what they're paying for.

We get a flight of students to private schools - for those who can afford it; we get students and families who simply drop out of the more intense programs, like French immersion, because they're discouraged; and then we have the outrage of the families who are finding it difficult to get some positive response to their concerns out of the school board and sometimes out of your department.

Mr. Minister, I know, unfortunately, I have a limited amount of time to raise some issues with you, but I want to turn, if I may, now to one more. Maybe there could be a little good news here about this one. It has to do with the new high school that's projected for the Halifax peninsula and I'm wondering, Mr. Minister, can you bring us up to date as to what the current state of play is?

As I understand it, the preferred site, that is to say the Bell Road site where the community college is now located, has been identified by a committee on behalf of the school board. I'm wondering, can you let me know how soon you think that that building or site, whichever it is, might be available? I'm wondering, can you let us know what population size

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you think that high school might be? I'm wondering if you can tell us anything about any plans that there might be to make that a high school that has attractions about it - and I'm concerned, for example, about the size of the facilities like the gymnasium and the auditorium. I'm concerned about the details of this and I assure you the parents who are watching from the peninsula are concerned about all these items as well.

No one is opposed to the merging of the two high schools; this is a very good idea. I have to tell you I have heard not a word in opposition however dedicated families were to the predecessor high schools on the Halifax peninsula, QEH and St. Pat's, Mr. Minister, I've heard not a word in criticism of the merger, what people are concerned about is that the new building be one that will serve the needs of the high school community on the peninsula well. Mr. Minister, I wonder if you can comment.

MR. MUIR: I thank the honourable member for those observations, but I do think I must stick up for we who come from rural Nova Scotia. In his beginning, when he got into combinatorics, which happens to be the subject my son is studying, and you talked about education being important in the City of Halifax and talked about these things, I want to tell you, Madam Chairman, that education is important in my constituency of Truro-Bible Hill; I think it's important in Hants West; I think it's important down in Queens County; and I think it's probably important in Kings County, too.

What I'm trying to say, Madam Chairman, is that I know that the honourable member is filled with good intentions, but being a rural member I want to tell you - and I expect this will come up at your caucus tomorrow morning where your rural people are going to have a few words to you about your unintentional, I'm sure, slight of education once you get out of Halifax Chebucto, or Halifax Citadel - that there is no community, and I mean that you have to go back in history, as this honourable member would know, where did Dalhousie come from? It came from a gentleman from Pictou County, as the honourable member for Pictou West would be delighted to bring you in some information on Mr. MacCulloch. Just remember where you came from is what I'm saying.

Now, let's get to the point of the Halifax peninsula's new high school. As the honourable member would know - and by the way I just want to make this observation in the for-what-it's-worth category, I'm really pleased to hear you say that there is no opposition to putting St. Pat's and QEH together, because I was on a school survey team here some number of years ago and we were going to put that in a report and there were people who were trying to figure out how we were going to get out of town if we wrote that. So that is a major shift, and it is a good thing by the way. The school will have a critical mass to serve the needs of those students.

The preferred site has been given down there on Bell Road where the community college is. The issue with that site is it has to be assessed to make sure - well, first of all, I suppose such things as contamination, and we really don't have a whole lot of subsidence in

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Halifax, but you do know that that has been an issue in other parts; indeed your colleague, the member from New Waterford, who represents New Waterford and Dominion, has run into that.

Now, I want to tell you that it will be built to current design standards and for areas of the province that have been fortunate enough to have new schools, there are such things as community enhancements. Quite candidly, I expect that the facility that the people who are served by this new school, the facility that they want will exceed the standards being provided by the department, and they will probably do the same thing that other communities have done right around the province, including the community of the good member for Pictou East, for Hants, and wherever these new schools - certainly the member for Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley and your colleague, the member for Pictou West, and all of these areas where there have been new schools, the community gets together and says we know the standard is this, but we're quite prepared to co-operate and to financially participate to change the design so that we can get what we think best meets our needs. So I'm pretty confident that will happen in your area as well.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Preston.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: I just have a couple of brief questions and I'm going to share my time with my colleagues here momentarily. I was talking about funding the other day for student funding in the different areas and I wonder had the minister received any additional information on that since I asked the question? As you will recall, there appears to be a discrepancy in funding in the Halifax Regional Municipality because of supplementary funding, less funding. Did you manage to get any additional information on it since I asked you the question the other day?

MR. MUIR: Madam Chairman, I apologize if I didn't make myself clear. There is absolutely no relationship between supplemental funding and the way boards are funded by formula.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Kings West.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Madam Chairman, I just want to go back for a moment, and we were talking about the pension funding and so on and I had asked, at the end, in terms of it being in the Education budget, and I understand the comment that was made, but certainly, I feel that when you have 5 per cent of the Education budget taken up with pension dollars and it helps top the $1 billion mark for funding in the province, I guess I would like to see it elsewhere and I would like to see the budget directly towards education. That being said, I do want to just ask the minister, what is the current state of the unfunded liability portion and the health and state of the Teachers' Pension Fund in the province?

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MR. MUIR: I thank the honourable member for raising that question and I just want to go into a little bit of history again, just a preamble. There was a time some years ago where the Teachers' Pension Fund was really in dreadful shape, and the reason it was in dreadful shape was neither of the partners, which would be the province and the teachers themselves, participated at a rate that they should have been participating for a number of years. The fact was that there was a management committee which consisted of representatives from the teaching profession and representatives of government and for one reason or another - I guess we could say, let's call it small "p" politics as opposed to big "P" politics - neither side wanted to raise the contributions, you know, it was one of those things.

I also just want to make the comment, Madam Chairman, that this was a Canadian phenomenon, Nova Scotia was right in with the rest of us. However, the Teachers' Pension Fund, there was an amount of money put into it by government and I think pension contributions were increased on both sides, I'm not entirely sure. That was in 1993 where they finally dealt with this issue and, indeed, it should have been dealt with before then, but the assets of the Teachers' Pension Fund right now are about $3.8 billion. The Teachers' Pension Fund is funded at about 76.8 per cent and this is down from about 86.5 per cent and, of course, the stock market hasn't been all that good the last little while. I commented on this the other day that it wasn't that long ago that the stock market was so good that the Public Service Pension Plan, the people got a pension holiday because there was legislation that capped the total at 110 per cent and because it was over that - actually it wasn't a rebate, they just didn't collect it.

[5:30 p.m.]

MR. GLAVINE: Just to follow up then, when we look at a 76 per cent funding currently - everybody of course hoping and anticipating that perhaps the markets will rebound and things will improve - in light of the fact that we have 2,800 teachers between the ages of 50 and 55, and many who will retire right at 55, is there enough concern here that in fact there's a good chance the government will have to come up with some additional funding to keep the pension healthy?

MR. MUIR: That's an interesting question, Madam Chairman, you know, it's one of those things you hope it never comes to that. If there was to be money put into the fund, it would be a decision of the partners and I don't think the government would put in money unless the partners put in money, this is a shared responsibility. You may wish to ask some more detailed questions to my colleague, the Minister of Finance, because it is the Department of Finance that does have the administrative responsibility for the Nova Scotia Teachers' Pension Fund.

MR. GLAVINE: Just to relate to that statistic that I just used about the aging of the Nova Scotia teachers - and we've all known this for awhile, profiles have been done and so forth, but the reality is now upon us - I would like to link it to another area and that is teacher

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education. My own view here is that we are missing a golden opportunity to realign our teacher education program and the value that can be gained from that group of teachers, in fact almost one-third of our teaching force is about to exit in the next five to eight years, and I'm wondering, is there any consideration to going back to a one-year program, or 16- or 18-month program, an internship with teachers, especially mentor teachers, from that aging group before they exit the system? We're all talking about succession rights and so forth and I know in the two schools that I'm most familiar with there is a tremendous amount of experience that could be passed on and I would like to hear the minister, if he has any comments in that area linking what is about to happen in the province.

MR. MUIR: The honourable member would know that teacher education was reviewed some number of years ago and it was something called the Shapiro Report which, as some members in this House would know, I had some personal difficulty with and I thought it made probably not some real good recommendations and, as a matter of fact, I could probably be a little bit stronger than that were we not on the floor of this House.

Having said that, one of the things that resulted from that was the decision to go to a two-year course of study for teacher education, and I'm talking two years in terms of credits. The thing was when that report, done by department people with representatives from the Department of Education too, came up with that recommendation - and you've heard me say on the floor of this House that our teacher education requirements I think in our province are probably the most detailed that we have in the country, or we have the highest standards I guess for teacher education programs - however, when those guidelines were brought in the Nova Scotia Teachers College was still in existence and had a four-year program, and at that time it was possible to get a Bachelor of Teaching, or a TC5, in four years of study. Also at that time the Université Sainte-Anne had a four-year program which led to a TC5.

So what happened was that they looked at the two years and somebody - I don't know who it was - eventually said well, it has to be four plus two and that was not the intention because I don't think those recommendations would ever have been made if there was not that other option. You see there was still the opportunity there for four years but, you know, things got away - and I could put some fingers on governments, it wasn't this one, but it was another one and I just think there were some bad decisions made, to be quite frank, some bad decisions made there and we're trying to deal with it.

Now, our department has gone to all the universities and asked them if they would like to put a proposal forward for maybe a 16- or an 18-month program or something like that, which would be more concentrated. You have mentioned the wealth of experience that is out there, some of our senior teachers who would be just tremendous role models for young people, and I know in the teacher training programs - well, I don't think they call them internships now, but whatever they call them - there is the opportunity to, you know, they're very fortunate, there are just some superior people out there for them to interact with.

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Another proposal that had been made some number of years ago was that you would go one year and then you would actually do like the medical-type internship. You would then spend a year in school, one year of study, and then go on out for a year and do that. I don't know, I haven't heard of that model being brought to the forefront recently. It is still out there and if somebody wishes to propose it, then certainly.

I commented in here the other day that I would like to see a common standard for teacher education right across the country. We're fairly close here in Atlantic Canada but, you know, the other provinces are different than us. I can remember when, if a person from Nova Scotia went to Ontario to teach, you had to go to Summer school. That was automatic if you went there to get licensed because you had to take history of Ontario education or something like that. Now if people are endorsed from Ontario and come to Nova Scotia, I think for the most part the get a bridging certificate, because there is something that we require of them that is not required up there.

We're moving more towards national standards in education. You talked about the tests and our ability to compete nationally and I did raise the issue of a common teacher certification standard in training at the Atlantic Ministers of Education and I also raised it, although it wasn't a formal agenda item, at the national meeting. So I guess what I'm saying is, yes, I agree with you. I think there are some other models that need to be explored, but I am somewhat perplexed with the great discrepancy we have across the country.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you, Mr. Minister, and I'm certainly pleased to hear that there is some opportunity for taking a look at how we will proceed, but I can't let this opportunity go past and I know I'm playing here to your hand - how deeply do you regret having seen the Nova Scotia Teachers College close its doors, because it also speaks to teacher education.

MR. MUIR: It's probably not really appropriate for me to go on at too much length, Madam Chairman. I think most members know that I was at that facility in an administrative role for six years and I was deeply saddened to see it go. The people to whom I spoke around the province, those particularly at the elementary and junior high level, virtually unanimously supported its ability to produce teachers who could deal with the curriculum here in Nova Scotia. The decision was made for political reasons, not for educational reasons, and that probably was the tough thing. There was tremendous support from the profession out there, and although I was not in the House at the time, I used to get copies of petitions in my role, which was a bit awkward because I was a direct government employee at that time. They always kept me informed of what was going on. I don't think it was a real good decision. It didn't have the best interests of the province.

The other thing about that, as you would well know, is that the province, through the Department of Education, in many ways the college was in Truro and they had more autonomy than, for example, the curriculum division of the department or something like that because it's located in the Trade Mart. If there were new initiatives in education, then the

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Teachers College people got them. You can probably remember back, you're old enough to remember, that we really didn't have a bureaucracy in the Department of Education when I was going to elementary school; it was the teacher, the school. I tend to think, not only in education, we sometimes tend to complicate things and if we have good teachers then everything is going to turn out pretty well. The curriculum development division of the Department of Education was in the old Normal School. Joe McCarthy wrote the math books and Cliff Dunphy wrote the geography books and somebody else participated in a history book or something like that.

That particular resource and the numbers of teachers that attended that campus for upgrading and for familiarization with new initiatives and for personal development was great. That's what it was there for my colleague, the member for Halifax Chebucto was talking about another matter but was talking about the need to concentrate. The people who are doing that job now, they're doing a good job. They were in the business anyway and we weren't really competitive, we were working together. Really in terms of the elementary teachers, I can't comment a whole lot on that now. Things have changed since I was there. Mount Saint Vincent does elementary and I'm told they do it very well. St. F.X. does elementary and I'm told they do they do it very well. I know a little bit about St. F.X., I did spend three years there. The Université Sainte-Anne does their French program pretty well and Acadia, more of a secondary program, and I'm told that they do it very well. The issue of missing the Teachers College - I thought it was not a well-thought-out decision or if it was well-thought-out, the logic was faulty.

MR. GLAVINE: I just wanted the minister to have that sort of on the record because I believe, generally, a review of the length of teacher education - and I'm not about to take on any deficiencies in the current model of universities, but like the minister, I feel very strongly that the province is in a net deficiency in terms of teacher training as a result of the loss of that institution. I certainly would like to see a review of the early elementary years. Those are the key five, six years of a child's education and I feel very strongly about a more intensive period of training in the classroom, rather than the current university model that we do have.

Just to move on to another area. As I take a look at some of these statistical profiles of teachers, students, schools and so on, one of the ones that I found a bit disturbing, especially in light of the difficulties on the front line, if we take a look at the last six years in the province, our student enrolment moved from 162,000 down to 150,000 students. Yet, during that period of time the full-time equivalent of administrators moved upward from 727 to 766. I particularly have some very big difficulties with that. I'm wondering, was there an explanation beyond what I can certainly come up with?

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[5:45 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: That's an interesting observation from the honourable member. I think one of the explanations for that is and we'd have to really look into it and that type of information is available because the department publishes in their annual report the number that are principals, vice-principals and supervisors. I think a lot of it may have been in response to public pressure. At one time schools used to share principals or you had a part-time, or you had a teaching principal, and the feeling by most was that where possible a full-time administrator was best. I think a number of boards looked at the role of the educational leader as being one that required more time than had been allocated, so where they were able to do so, they did up the administrative resources. As I said to the honourable member, I know that the actual numbers are available. Again, that's kind of a speculative answer on my part. I don't know the actual answer to that.

MR. GLAVINE: A little bit tied into that and perhaps even more disconcerting is that in just a two-year period, just a two-year profile of 2000 to 2003 school years, when we saw the total teacher complement in the province move downward from 9,752 to 9,592, the number of system consultants moved from 35 to 66. At the same time I pick up a statistic from the same book and it says there are 100 classrooms in metro, with 35 to 40 students in them, and actually 18 with 40 plus. I think the public out there, when you take a look at this and dig down on it, there are some real huge disconnects with those kinds of statistics. I was wondering if the minister again, could provide an explanation?

MR. MUIR: The honourable member, I believe, has raised a very good point.

MR. GLAVINE: As you know, Mr. Minister, the group that certainly have a very difficult time with the budget are university students. When we take a look at the debt burden of students, the tuition equation, we certainly know that they did not perhaps get their just dollars from this budget. I hear university presidents talking about needing $22 million in order to meet the challenges that they currently have on the operational side, and only getting in reality $2 million. What kind of hope can you offer our university community as they move forward with exceptional challenges?

MR. MUIR: I thank the honourable member for that question. The university community does have significant challenges. The overall funding this year has gone up 1.5 per cent, which is certainly not in keeping with the cost of doing business. We understand that. However, the major deficit that universities experienced happened around 1993, anyway I'm not going to get into the history of that, but our government has been consistently increasing the amount of money that's available for higher education. I think too the government has invested more heavily in the community college sector at this time which again is higher education money.

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We're trying to and, indeed, are sitting down at the same table with the university people trying to develop a memorandum of understanding to see if we could guarantee them funding over a three-year period which would stabilize - it certainly helps them in their planning and hopefully would bring an end to unpredictable tuition increases. I don't think, unless Santa Claus comes to town or something like that, Nova Scotia is really in a position to talk about tuition freezes. It hasn't worked in other areas - British Columbia had one and when it came off, I think the tuition went up $1,000 or something like that in one fell swoop.

I can remember some great number of years ago when the Province of Newfoundland did away with university tuition altogether and I believe that little enterprise lasted for one year. It didn't work.

We keep trying to negotiate with the federal government. Their contribution really has not increased. At one time we used to get funding for higher education from the federal government and the Grade 12 year of public school counted as higher education and the province used to be funded for Grade 12. All of those things have changed over the course of time and I guess it would be really great for us if we could have Grade 12 students once again recognized as higher education.

The honourable member has raised in the earlier question about teacher education, the length of university programs seems to increase all the time. I remember when you used to be able to become a lawyer in about five years and now I think it takes you seven. The only program I think that's gone backwards was the engineering school. Teacher education has added a year, the nurses have added years, medicine has added years. All of these things, as we become more specialized and more competent in what we're assigned to do, it costs more money to do it.

Universities are subject to cost pressures. They also have a real problem with infrastructure and one of the things that Premier Hamm did at the Council of Atlantic Premiers was to talk with his colleagues about an infrastructure proposal to the federal government that would generate approximately $300 million to put into infrastructure in higher education here in Atlantic Canada. So we continue to do those types of things, we're very fortunate that the university community in Nova Scotia understands and they work as closely with us as they can.

Every once in a while, you know good friends, good neighbours and family, you have a disagreement about something, but by and large, we're going in the same direction and they know that if we had more money, we would have given it to them. They understand that. They froze tuition in Ontario this year and what did they do? Because they did that, they had to do away with many of the commitments they made to the public schools. There's x number of dollars, it's a real juggling act. I don't know, maybe the offshore will really come in for us or something like that. To be realistic, it doesn't matter what section of government or Public Service you're talking about, we have to manage very, very carefully. Thank you.

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MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The honourable member for Cole Harbour-Eastern Passage on an introduction.

MR. KEVIN DEVEAUX: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I wanted a chance to introduce, in the Speaker's Gallery, some members representing the Injured Workers Associations in Nova Scotia who are here today to listen to some of the words of the Minister of Environment and Labour at the World Trade and Convention Centre and had some meetings with him. They're here today also to hopefully talk to some of the members of the Legislature about Bill No. 20. Here today is Mary Lloyd from the Pictou County Injured Workers Association; June Labrador and Wally Peters from the mainland Injured Workers Association; Ms. Kellock from the association; and Jimmy Lyle from the Cape Breton Injured Workers Association. I wonder if you could give them a round of applause. (Applause)

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. We certainly welcome them and I'm sure they'll have a good time listening to all the questions and answers.

MR. GLAVINE: Mr. Minister, just to continue on the education of our teachers. One of the areas that I've been hearing about and I think is a growing concern in the province is that in our three faculties of education, they are now just offering a couple of courses in special education. The specialty of graduating as a special education teacher seems to have gone through a new phase here.

I wonder if the need to put students in private schools and provide tuition agreements and so on, if there isn't a great connect with the fact that we have less people, we have lots of resource teachers and they have different kinds of training and backgrounds - not to take anything from them - but we seem to have less people who can deal with the real disabilities of our students in terms of a corrective and remedial process. I'm wondering if that is also a concern to the department.

MR. MUIR: The numbers of courses, I'm looking around for help on this one, I think it may be two courses that every teacher has to take in a teacher education program, called special education or whatever or some appropriate designation.

I guess you have to think of every teacher as a special education teacher these days because with integration there would be very few teachers that don't have students with quite a variety of ability levels in a classroom. My understanding is that we're talking about methods courses per se. I know that was the case when I was at the Teachers College and that was done at St. F.X. when I was there so I assume it's done at other places as well. The methods courses that students would take, part of those courses would be directed towards particular techniques to use with students who have special needs.

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I think the honourable member may be saying that it may not be sufficient and I assume that the individual faculties would be looking at that. Acadia University at one time had special education for the province. They still have it at the master's level. Mount Saint Vincent may have a program that would approximate it as an undergraduate, a non-education degree and then you would go into education to flush it out.

MR. GLAVINE: I'm going to share my time with my colleague in a few moments. However, just to finish off on a couple of short questions, the member for Sackville-Cobequid raised the budgetary item on facilities, repairs and renovations to schools. That is quite a significant drop this year. I'm just wondering, in fact, are there some contingency monies should that million dollars see itself used in a very quick fashion?

MR. MUIR: There have been a number of cases that have happened. There is no contingency money. I wish perhaps there was, but the province has always responded, and it has been difficult, when things like that have come up. The honourable member probably remembers the challenging situation of the Robb joists a few years ago where, I don't know how many schools had to have their roof structures beefed up because there was some inherent flaw that turned out in these joists that were used in every school that was built for a particular period of time. No contingency, but we have been able to respond when there has been a need.

[6:00 p.m.]

MR. GLAVINE: Another budgetary line that kind of took my interest here on Page 6.5 was Education Funding Accountability which from 2003-04 is projected to rise to $1.416 million, an increase of 138 per cent and truly I'm wondering what, in fact, would drive that area of the budget to that kind of an extent? That's on Page 6.5, Education Funding Accountability and, you know, it raises the question about whether questions are being raised about funding accountability. So if I could get a comment from the minister on that, please.

MR. MUIR: What that is, there is an SAP system that is being put into the school system and that's simply a transfer of money from public education to (Interruption) We're doing work on behalf of the boards now. The allocation is not reduced. The money is just transferred because we're doing the work. Just before the honourable member rises, just for a little clarity, if the honourable member, in response to his last question, looks on Page 6.9, you will find that amount where it was transferred.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton West.

MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I would draw to the minister's attention Page 6.8 of the Supplementary Detail for the Estimates. With regard to the Youth Secretariat, I notice the budget for last year, for the fiscal year ending, is about $1.8 million

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and the projected estimate for the upcoming fiscal year is only $239,000. Why the significant decrease in the budget for the Youth Secretariat?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, could I ask him to give me the pages again because the number (Interruptions) I think I have the answer to it now, thank you. PEP has been moved to the Department of Economic Development.

MR. MACKINNON: Can the minister confirm if the amount of money that's displaced from this budget has been picked up equally with the Department of Economic Development?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, he's going to have to ask that question of the Minister of Economic Development. I know that the money has gone from our budget, it had been transferred there, but I kind of look at my colleague, are you going to nod? You will have to ask him.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, the minister is in the room. I don't know, member, if you would like to direct that question to him or not, but if you do, I would allow that.

MR. MACKINNON: The minister is shaking his head no. I notice on Page 47 of the Supplement to the Public Accounts, there's a line item there for Maritime Life Assurance Company, $1.896 million. Would the minister please indicate what that's for?

MR. MUIR: That was the amount of just about $1.9 million. It's lease payments and operating services for the Northeast Kings Education Centre.

MR. MACKINNON: Would the minister be kind enough to provide a copy of that contract to members of the committee?

MR. MUIR: You know I certainly have no objection to that and if there is no legal reason why we cannot do it, certainly I will make it available.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, obviously one of the issues of concern for the minister and I'm sure the Department of Education, and particularly for the Minister of Finance, is the issue of insurance costs. Can the minister please confirm as to what the total budgetary line item was for the Department of Education on insurance premiums paid to different insurance companies or an insurance company for the province?

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, that insurance money would be part of the operational dollars which would flow to school boards. So if you're thinking, you know, Facility insurance, I suspect we can get the numbers from the business plans or the reports of school boards, but it's not something that we do. The type of insurance, as you know, the Department of Transportation and Public Works insures sort of the government enterprises,

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so whatever we do with insurance is normally a flow through and the other type of insurance, of course, that we would have, is sort of - but I think that comes under the Department of Finance, doesn't it - employee benefits, where the Department of Education employees would have normal medical benefits and things like that, it would be insurable too.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, would the minister be kind enough to indicate how much his department spent on leasing the rental of office space and the like in the past fiscal year and how much is he contemplating for the future year?

MR. MUIR: Could I give clarification on that. For example, the Department of Education operates out of the Trade Mart and we would be quite happy to provide that information. (Interruption) Kempt Road, we have, and that is a line on the budget there, I think that was $593,000, or something like that. The media services is out there. We also have the facility on the other side of the water, the Book Bureau. So we, let me see, here we have, I can tell you right now, the provincial library which is on Kempt Road, we pay $480,363 plus taxes of $28,822. Our estimate for 2004-05 for that facility is $544,312. We pay some rent to the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board for, well, it's in lieu of something else and we paid $53,235 this year plus $3,194 in taxes. We expect next year to pay $53,232.

The regional office in Sydney, the landlord there is a numbered company, 3005790 Nova Scotia, and to be quite frank, I don't know who that is. (Interruption) I suppose we could find out. The rent is $100,847 and the taxes are $6,051. We're predicting next year that we would be paying them $104,182.

The Trade Mart in Halifax, that's owned by Halifax Developments. Our rent this year was $1,071,087 and the tax bill was $66,683. Next year our estimate is $1,043,523. I guess we've just signed a new five-year lease for the Trade Mart Building and this must reflect that. So those basically would be the expenses.

MR. MACKINNON: How much per square foot is the department paying for that leasehold?

MR. MUIR: For the Trade Mart, I would have to get that actually. The deputy believes it's around $17 gross, or something like that, but we can provide that information.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, how many persons does the department employ or use from Communications Nova Scotia as part of the staff? How many communications officers does the minister's department employ?

MR. MUIR: We have three communications officers who belong to Communications Nova Scotia.

[Page 261]

MR. MACKINNON: Am I to interpret that the minister is saying he has three plus one? Is that what the minister is saying?

MR. CHAIRMAN: That would make four, I believe, Minister, is that the question?

MR. MUIR: No, he asked how many people belong to - we have three communications officers who belong to Communications Nova Scotia. In addition, there is a secretary, but there is a contract person for skills who is not an employee of Communications Nova Scotia.

MR. MACKINNON: So that is three plus one, that's four, basic math. Even under new math, that's still four. So the minister is saying that he has four communications officers, three with one title and one with a different title. I notice the line item here, it shows on Page 46 of the Supplement to the Public Accounts that the minister's department is spending upwards of, well, in round figures, close to $0.75 million on communications. Is that for educational brochures or is it to try to promote the department on what a great job it's doing, or what's the situation here?

MR. MUIR: A variety of things, Mr. Chairman: Advertising services, various divisions, were close to $101,000; Creative Services, and that's publishing and so on, putting various publications together; the Media/Monitoring Service, which is sort of done by every department, was $11,664; Publication Services, which was printing and publishing various documents from the department, would include, I suspect, things like curriculum guides that are being developed by the province and the salary line would be the $205,000 line.

MR. MACKINNON: Well, I'm looking on that same page at a rather unusual item, there may be a logical explanation. There is a line item for Charm Diamond Centre, if the minister would be kind enough, I know there has been some speculation about diamonds in the media lately, but I wonder if perhaps the minister would be kind enough to clarify what this one is for?

[6:15 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: I would be very tempted, Mr. Chairman, to give a rather off-the-hand, but it might be taken (Interruption) The fact is that Charm has the contract for the provision of the Lieutenant Governor's medals.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, how much did the minister's department spend on hotels and motels last year?

MR. MUIR: You're talking about including the money that was provided when we had in-services and brought people in? Okay. (Interruption) I have checked with staff, Mr. Chairman, and if the honourable member would be patient, we could provide it. Other than

[Page 262]

that, we can table it, but we do have the numbers and we're going to have to put them together.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to go back to Page 6.8 of the Estimates, the Supplementary Detail, and I will just jump back and forth between these two booklets. With regard to the labour force development, no, the apprenticeship training and skills development, I do apologize, the Labour Market Partnerships - I had an older book there - the estimate was for $677,000 and it jumped up to about $923,000 and the estimate for about $1.1 million coming up. Does that mean that the department is forging ahead with more of these labour educational partnerships? Is it just an increase in funding with the same number of participants or what's the situation?

MR. CHAIRMAN: While we're waiting for the minister, I would like to inform you that you have just about six minutes left in turn and then we'll recognize the caucus of the NDP. At that time we will continue with the estimates.

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, that represented a transfer of positions from labour market development to Labour Market Partnerships. So there should be an in/out some place for that.

MR. MACKINNON: Can the minister indicate how much money he receives from the federal government for this particular program?

MR. MUIR: We will have to get that information for you.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, on Page 46, back to the Supplement, there's a line item here for the Department of Community Services, $73,984.58. I raise that because I know that the Department of Community Services has these educational training programs that will allow individuals on social assistance, in particular, in many cases, single mothers, to be able to go to an educational institution, perhaps a post-secondary or a community college or what have you, to be able to receive an upgrade in their educational background, so as to open up the windows of opportunity in the marketplace.

However, the Department of Community Services, in recent years, I believe since this government has come to power, has put a cap on the number of years that it will fund an individual going to university, from three years down to two years. Now, the reality is that an individual who goes for two years in a three-year program and is funded, the third year is out the window because that individual is still on social assistance and is without a degree or some type of certificate or diploma to move on with his or her life.

First of all, could the minister explain what this is for, and what type of collaborative effort is his department engaging in to ensure that this educational retraining program is effectively utilized? It would appear to me from the number of calls I've been receiving that

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it's, in many ways, a waste of money. I often hear the old saying that education is not a burden, so if you get two years out of three, that's better than what you had when you started, but the fact of the matter is if you don't have a degree, if you don't have a diploma or a certificate, so you could move on with your life, you're stuck in that never-ending spiral of dependency. Could the minister enlighten us on that issue?

MR. MUIR: Turning to the first question, Mr. Chairman, the line item that had to do with the $74,000 for equipment purchases, what this is is primarily for students who are in higher education, if they need computers or special equipment to enable them to succeed in a particular educational environment, that's what that's for, goes to the rehabilitation division. The second part of your question, I think, probably, I would not really feel comfortable in answering that, because I believe that would perhaps be more appropriately directed to my colleague, the Minister of Community Services.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, two pages in, same booklet, Page 48, there's another line item there, $2.78 million for The Canadian Life Assurance Co. Would the minister be able to tell us what that's for?

MR. MUIR: That would be school rentals, that would be the financing of schools, the P3 schools.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Honourable member, your time has elapsed or will in 15 seconds - carry on, you certainly have the right.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Minister, thank you for answering my questions, and I will await the undertaking on responses.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Pictou West. The time is 6:25 p.m., you have one hour in turn, and if you would like, you can share your turn with another member of your caucus. The finishing time tonight, for the estimates, will be 7:31 p.m. You have the floor.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Mr. Chairman, if my voice holds out here, I'm going to go on for part of that hour and I will probably share it with my colleague, before the hour is up. First of all, I want to comment on the minister's earlier comments about the Nova Scotia Teachers College. Having been a graduate of that institution myself, I was certainly very saddened by the loss of that institution. I didn't think it was the right way to go then, and it's still not the right way to go. I know it was a fine institution, and it graduated many quality teachers who still continue doing a good job in this province.

My first question, then, is related to, perhaps, my experience as a teacher and as a substitute teacher in particular. I had the opportunity in the 1970s and 1980s to teach and to substitute teach during the latter part of that time. My first question to the minister is around

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substitute teachers. I know there's a problem today in getting enough quality substitute teachers. There's a shortage, certainly. I know there have been some boards that have had permission to hire non-teachers to fill in from time to time, and there's also a policy, I think, where retired teachers can teach up to 21 days as a substitute, even after they've retired, without a penalty.

I can recall in the days when I was substituting, there was a pay scale in place. I believe your licensed salary was divided, for each day, by 261, and it seemed fair, it was a good incentive to keep substitutes there. Sometime in the 1990s that changed, as you would know. I'm wondering if that may be a disincentive, there are certainly substitute teachers who maybe have said it's not worth my while, I'm only getting a day a week or maybe three days in two weeks or whatever, and it's just not enough financial incentive for substitutes to stay on board.

Mr. Minister, can you give us an update on the substitute situation in the province, and is there any indication that you might consider going back to that old pay scale?

MR. MUIR: The salary for substitute teachers, of course, is part of the agreement between the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and the government. Some number of years ago, I believe it was the Nova Scotia Teachers Union in a lot of bargaining, it was one of those tight years, to be quite frank, and somebody may correct me, I suppose the honourable member for Kings West might because I think he would have been there in those days, when it came down to the crunch, the decision was made, with the limited resources that were available, that there would be more going to the people who were full time in the system rather than the substitutes. If somebody wants to disagree with me on that I'd change but I see some nods, so I think that may have been the situation.

I don't think the situation with substitutes has changed much since my time in the field. There have always been shortages of math teachers, physics teachers, French teachers and chemistry teachers, particularly those things, however, I'm told that it's been particularly acute in some of the rural areas this past year, including such things as tech ed teachers. There's always been a shortage of tech ed teachers, as well, in terms of substitutes. It's a good thing, I think, that some of the retired teachers agree to go in for those 20 days, but part of it is that when you get into the retirement thing, you like to have some sort of a predictable schedule. A good many people retire now because they decide they want to retire, as opposed to somebody saying you have to go. A number of those people have made the decision, thank you very much, I've done my 35 years, and we're going to allow some of the young people to come in.

The department and, I think, the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and the Nova Scotia School Boards Association all go out and try to get people to go into teacher education who have the background in those areas where there are shortages. One of the unfortunate things, perhaps, is that quite often if a person has a real strong background in physics there might be

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other people besides the people in education coming to look for those folks. We're in a competitive market, and all teachers get paid the same.

MR. PARKER: That's true, all the substitute teachers are getting paid the same, but certainly teachers, in general, are getting paid according to their licence. It seemed like when there was the pay scale of 1/261, there wasn't a shortage of substitutes. Now since the pay scale went back to $100 a day, $110 a day and now I think it's around $125 a day, there's great difficulty in finding substitute teachers. I think it's partly because of the pay scale that's out there - it's just not adequate.

[6:30 p.m.]

Another related problem with some substitute teachers has been the difficulty of getting employment on a more permanent basis. I've talked to a few in my riding who have come to see me over the years, they're good teachers, they're qualified, they want to teach in Nova Scotia, but they're getting one day a week or maybe three or four days in a month. If they're lucky, they get a short term, maybe for a couple of months straight, but their services are not being utilized. Some of them have been there for years - like 3, 4, 5, 10 years and they're still not getting the permanent jobs. They've tried, they've applied over and over for positions - what looks promising, in the end someone else gets the job. Eventually some of them give up or leave the profession and go on to work somewhere else in the province at another type of job. Maybe they leave to go to another province or another country to get a job in the teaching field.

So, I'm just wondering if there's any thought or some method or some way that those substitute teachers that are good teachers, but just not getting the full-time employment - is there any way to address that situation?

MR. MUIR: That's a very tough question. That situation has existed since the time that we've got the number of teachers up, at least numerically, to meet the number of openings. I can't give an answer to that. I get people coming into my office too - I'm sure all MLAs do - and say, I've been substituting for five years and I'm unable to get a full-time position. The boards do the hiring, it's an issue for boards to try to match qualifications and experience with the openings. I don't know. I can remember there used to be teachers who were fairly rigid in the geography where they would accept a job. Of course, if you have a partner, that makes the mobility all the more difficult.

However, this year, if it's any encouragement to those people, there are 508 teachers that are projected to retire and about 93 will be removed because of the enrolment decline, but there's clearly over 400 potential openings for teachers in the province next year.

[Page 266]

MR. PARKER: Certainly it is a serious problem, the issue of long-term substitutes that just can't seem to get employment in this province. Like I said, they either move on to another field of endeavour or they move out of province. It's a loss, really, to Nova Scotia. There are some good quality teachers that are being lost to the system here in this province.

I want to move on to another question, Mr. Chairman. It revolves around school board funding. I saw your announcement in the local paper here on the weekend that Mr. Bill Hogg, I guess, is going to be hired to study the whole issue of school board funding and as you know, that has been a concern in our neck of the woods. Both you and I have been apprised of this situation on a number of occasions and I'm sure you're going to continue to hear about it. The Chignecto-Central Regional School Board, in particular, I'm talking about so I'm glad to see that there's some action being taken here on your department's behalf to at least look at the issue and see if some fairness can be brought to the whole issue of school board funding.

School boards are different around the province - some are big, some are small. When your geography is large, you have much more cost for busing. Some school boards have larger declining enrolments than others. There's other pressures around the cost of new schools - they're more expensive for air quality control, there's a problem with square footage, some boards have excess square footage, some don't have enough. There are a lot of factors.

This is positive to hear that you've taken that initiative, but I'm wondering, in light of that, what are the factors, what type of criteria will you be looking at, who will you be talking to to get input and when is Mr. Hogg's job going to start?

MR. MUIR: I think the honourable member and a number of us in the House, including his colleague, the member for Hants East, we do understand that there has been a rather active lobby. You may actually be subject to it a little bit more than the rest of us - I don't know.

Anyway, you're right. Bill Hogg has been appointed and we were delighted, as I've said, to get him to do this. He will be consulting with the school board and departmental officials to try to determine the most appropriate criteria. The key for this review is really fairness for all involved, including the province and that it has to be a very transparent process. As you know, the honourable member is talking about differences among the school boards and the geography of Nova Scotia - that has to be a part of it. What we're looking for is equity. Some wise person has said there's nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals. I think Mr. Hogg will have that as a principle when he begins his deliberation.

As for the timeline, we hope to have the report by November.

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MR. PARKER: I assume he would be starting his position right away, or getting right down to the meat and potatoes of it shortly, I would hope anyway. But by November, then, you'll have a report to act upon and see if the formula is unfair. It does seem in the Chignecto-Central board's position, I know they've been facing a large possible deficit, they're struggling with that right now. Certainly geography stands out as one of the big differences between that board and some others, declining enrolments that are affecting busing costs and so on.

I don't think you mentioned the exact criteria. I've mentioned three or four of them, but are there any others that perhaps I'm overlooking? Or, what other factors will be considered in a study?

MR. MUIR: Your first question, Mr. Hogg has already met with the deputy and he will be meeting with the gentleman on my left - I'm not entirely sure what his title is, but he runs the administration area, the Corporate Services unit in the department.

The criteria will be developed in consultation with the affected people. You've mentioned those, Mr. Hogg will be meeting with them, they're going to have to come up with criteria. I can't give them to you because they're going to come from the consultative process.

MR. PARKER: Just one further question on that then. If the report comes in by November of this year, would there be any changes in this particular school board budget year, or the government's budget year before the end of next March? Or, would it be the following year before any recommendations might be implemented?

MR. MUIR: There is no provision for anything in the 2004-05 year. We do recognize that to go forward, when we get the initial report from Mr. Hogg, it will also go back out to partners for their review and comment.

We don't think we can probably get that formula fully in place for 2005-06, but we are expecting to have a transition plan in place so that where there are real severe needs, they won't have to live with them another year. But the full thing, I don't know whether it will be possible to roll it out in time for the budget process next year or not - probably not.

MR. PARKER: Mr. Chairman, well we'll wait with good hope that the equity issue will be addressed so that every student in the Province of Nova Scotia will have the chance for a quality education, and all boards will have a chance, maybe under a fluctuating funding formula, to be treated fairly.

I want to turn to another question now, Mr. Chairman. In the Estimates Book, in major capital improvements, there's certainly less money being slotted for that. Recently the Auditor General had recommended that capital improvements are going to catch up to us,

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things like roofs and mouldy schools - we all want healthy schools, for sure, but major capital improvements are cut in your budget. I just want to know why that is. I know there's more money for building brand new buildings, but there's far less money here for major capital improvements. Why is that?

MR. MUIR: Could he give us a line item for that? There are two or three lines that talk about that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Certainly, Mr. Minister. Honourable member, could you provide the information requested by the minister?

MR. PARKER: I'm not sure if I have line by line, but in the Estimates book itself, Page 6.7, Public Schools, Operating Costs are down considerably from last year and the year before. On Page 6.9 Operating Costs under Skills and Learning, that's down also. Maybe I just can't find it here, but I saw it somewhere, major capital improvements have been cut. On Page 6.13, it mentions Net Program Expenses, there's certainly less for Operating Costs than in previous years. I may not have the exact line, but major capital improvements are down. If I find it here, I'll let you know the exact page.

MR. MUIR: I believe I know the money to which the honourable member is referring. It was a reduction of about $1.5 million - sorry, $2 million in the sort of major renovation repair, that's what you're speaking of, non-capital, things that couldn't be capitalized. That was a decision that was not very easy for us to do, but it came down to do you take money out of the classrooms or do you take it out of that. It's one of those decisions, you kind of hold your nose and do it.

[6:45 p.m.]

MR. PARKER: Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate because there are some major capital expenditures out there that need to be addressed. When a board has to make a decision between a teacher or a new roof, it's usually the roof that will lose out. We'll leave it at that; it's unfortunate the money is not there to pay for these major renovations.

I want to move on to teaching assistants. It seems like over the last number of years, even though we're having declining enrolments, there seems to be more and more special needs children. I don't know whether that's because there's better diagnostic testing and they're being found, or whether there are more children being born in that way, or just what, but it's a combination of reasons, and even with the declining enrolments the number of special needs children is up. So that puts a demand on boards to hire teaching assistants to look after them. Some of them are learning disabilities, like ADD, cerebral palsy, or just other disabilities, and some of them are severe behavioural problems, some of them are physical challenges.

[Page 269]

It just seems there's more and more pressure on the schools from parents who want their child looked after, and there's a problem in getting enough TAs to address the situation. A few years ago there was a report that came out - I forget the name of it - it had recommended that inclusion was the right thing to do and that there should be more money, I think it was around $20 million, put into the system to look after special needs children. Some of that, every year, should be allocated to look after these children. What's the department's stand right now on special needs children and providing enough money for TAs to look after them?

MR. MUIR: Let me welcome, I believe it is, the fourth chairman today. There's not much staying power among those chairmen we have.

The issue the honourable member raises is a very serious one. I know that at least I've heard more from Chignecto-Central than the other boards, but that may be because I live there, too. The numbers of program assistants have gone up and up and I think we now have about 1,700 program assistants, whereas five years ago we wouldn't have had half that many. In terms of special education funding, it seems to be that more and more of that money is going for that individual person to help a single student in a classroom.

Having said that, the province commits considerable money to special education, but the boards also contribute money over and above that. One of the other things that has been a difficulty - and it's a good thing I guess - and at one time we didn't have very many of these program assistants or teaching assistants, and depending on which board or maybe even which school you go to you're going to get a different name for a person who has the same responsibilities. Some of the boards, maybe them all now, whereas people did not need any particular qualification to do that job, now they have to go to community college - they are trained people.

Of course the more people are trained, the more it costs to employ them. It's not only that we have a greater number, we have a more highly-trained workforce, and the costs reflect that. So the students benefit. I kind of look at the TA situation, as I understand it, it's kind of like some of the other people, my colleague who does transportation, we just aren't going to be able to afford to fix all the roads that need it, and certainly there will always be a demand for teacher assistants, and I expect it will continue to be greater than the supply or the resource that enables teacher assistants to be hired.

MR. PARKER: It certainly is a challenge out there, there's no question about that. It's a bigger and bigger challenge every year because more children are being identified or maybe more children are living than in the past, but certainly the costs are way up for this special field. I'd mentioned earlier this study that was done a couple of years ago, and $20-plus million was recommended at that time for special education that should go into the system right away. I'm sorry I don't have the name of that study, but it was all around inclusion in the classroom and it seemed like the right thing to do. Does the department have

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any plans to follow the recommendations of that study and actually put more money into the special needs education?

MR. MUIR: Yes, the department's acting on all 34 of the recommendations that were in that special education report. Our ability to respond as fully as we would like to respond, and boards would like us to respond, is limited. But we do give, this year, I think it's $48 million in targeted funding for special education. In addition, we put in more, $2.5 million through Learning for Life to increase professional support services to help students with special needs. If you remember the budget line, we had another $1 million for the struggling readers program. We've invested money into the Reading Recovery program and now every school board in the province has a Reading Recovery program. As I think I commented in here, the boards around the province recognized that HRM was the last board without a Reading Recovery program. Basically they allowed the money that was available last year to be totally channelled to HRM, or at least to the Halifax Regional School Board.

I guess, we give what we can; we'd like to give more. If we had a graph of the expenditure increases over the course of time, the government's commitment to this cannot be challenged. It's like other things, there is a reasonable commitment and then there is a commitment that everybody would like to have which, in some ways, is just not possible.

MR. PARKER: I'm going to close my portion here. I do thank the minister for his answers and I'm going to share my time with the member for Dartmouth East.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Dartmouth East.

MS. JOAN MASSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to say that a few short years ago I didn't expect that I'd be standing here facing the Minister of Education. My history is really as a community activist and volunteer within my school system. I started out helping out in the classrooms when my oldest son, who's now 23, started out in school. I did all the things that the other moms were doing, like the ice cream socials to raise money for books for the library, running the Spring Fair and then getting into the Home and School Association. I became president and I have seen, first-hand, what this government and the government before it have done to our education system in this province. As one current school board member said to me the other day - and I'll probably get called out of order on this - she said if you cut anything else, it's criminal. This is from somebody who cares deeply about the children and youth in the system.

I continue to hear stories from parents, even though I'm not on the school board anymore, about the issues their children face in the system. I have to agree that the cuts can't continue at this level. We eventually have to start investing in education in this province.

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I'm just wondering if you could answer a few questions for me. I was looking through this document - A Special Education Report from the Halifax Regional School Board, dated November 4, 2003 - and one of the numbers in there I can't believe, I must be reading it incorrectly. It says when this data was collected in April/May, 2003, 708 students were identified as waiting for service through a resource/learning centre. I know when I was on the school board, one of the staff members at one time told me - and I'll table that if you want to have a look at it - that at any given day, if I called down there, there would be over 200 or 300 kids waiting to get into some sort of resource program.

If you can answer that question for me - I may be looking at those figures in the wrong light perhaps, but I can certainly pass this on over to you - I'd like to get an answer to that question, if those figures are true or if they're out of whack.

MR. MUIR: I thank the honourable member for the question. I'm delighted to see a parent/activist join in this debate. However, I do want to begin by making one thing perfectly clear - there have been no cuts in Education; there have been no cuts in Health; and there have been no cuts in Community Services.

I'm not saying particular line items might not have been adjusted, but please don't use the word "cuts". It's total misrepresentation. Now, having said that, let's get to your question. That is a report compiled by the Halifax Regional School Board, and we'd be pleased to take a look at it if you would like us to do that. They would know if those numbers are accurate, I don't doubt them. Clearly, although we've put lots of money into special education, it's not enough. There's still that problem of waiting lists for people to get diagnosed and don't forget that one of the things that happens is that a change of life, and I expect if you were to look at some of those things you may find they're going back to the very early years, because the health system picks up some of that intervention until you get to school and then the school system must pick it up too. So I guess what I would be really interested in is does that go away or lessen? Or that may not have been in that document.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister. Would the honourable member for Dartmouth East relinquish a moment of her time for an introduction?

MS. MASSEY: Certainly.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: My thanks to the member for Dartmouth East for allowing me to make an introduction. I would like to draw the attention of all the members of the House to the presence in the west gallery of 10 members of the 15^th Halifax Cubs, along with several of their leaders and parents - Bruce Wilson, James Caven, Peter Doig and Dan O'Connor. I wonder if the Cubs could rise and be welcomed by the members of the House. Stand up, please. (Applause)

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MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome to all viewers in the gallery today.

MS. MASSEY: The honourable minister has just said that they've put a lot of money into special needs. I'm not going to argue the point that $1 million is not a lot of money. However, I'll throw out an example, the Halifax Regional School Board - and I hope you won't berate me as you did some other MLAs in here earlier today when we talk about something that is close to us or that we have dealt with on a personal level, because I believe the people I represent want me to talk about things in my neighbourhood, in my constituency and the things that I have more information on. I'd like to have all the information on every school board across the province but, unfortunately, I don't have all that information.

[7:00 p.m.]

I will, however, say that the government does provide approximately $17 million for special needs resources within the Halifax Regional School Board. Unfortunately, it costs the Halifax Regional School Board approximately $40 million to provide the services that they are providing today to these children - and this is not the level of service that they want to provide; they want to provide even more service than this. Some of the programs that they're offering the students with special needs, some of the students' needs are autism, attention deficit disorder, various learning disabilities, speech problems, and there are physical limitations. This requires a lot of resources. I know the school is trying to do the best they can with moving certain resources to certain schools and, even though we say these special needs' students are integrated into the system, there are schools that provide more of these resources because you just can't put the same amount of resources into every school in every school board. The money just isn't there.

So we are creating schools that have more children with special needs in them and I do believe that is then creating a certain kind of a domino effect within those schools. I know when you're saying the budget has not been cut you're saying to me that you have increased, for example, funding across Nova Scotia for special needs in the order of $3 million; however, I know that you know when the SEIRC Report came out in 2001 it called for an immediate injection of $20 million for special education implementation in this province and that money has not come forward. Another report that has not received the funding that it needs was the BLAC Report in 1993 and I know you've invested $500,000 this year, but that still leaves around $3.5 million to implement that.

I would like to know, in your opinion, what is going to happen to the students, not just in the Halifax Regional School Board, but across this province who need these resources and if a report was done and a lot of work went into this report and a lot of public consultation with teachers, staff, everybody who deals with education, and they're saying you need an influx of $20 million there, what is going to happen to these children in our school system? What can you do for these children? Are you going to work out a long-range plan? Maybe this year you don't have the money, but I would like to hear if there's some sort of a

[Page 273]

plan for the future for these children who need these services and then, again, I go back to the 708 students - and I'm just hoping that number is incorrect in some way.

MR. MUIR: The issue of funding students whose needs are special is a real problem and I thank the honourable member for bringing it up. Clearly the Halifax Regional School Board has about 40 per cent of the school population, and then when you look at numbers, clearly their need is greater than other boards; however, proportionately it probably is not. The recommendation, I believe you said, was for $20 million and, to be perfectly candid, we would like to be able to put that $20 million in that, but budget making is a balancing process and, you know, we have put more money in. We, to be quite frank, didn't have an additional $20 million to put in, as much as we would have liked to have been able to do that.

On the other hand, you had mentioned the amount of money that the Halifax Regional School Board was spending on special education. Our commitment is about $48 million in targeted money - and that doesn't count the things for the Learning for Life initiatives and all of those things which we believe are quite positive things, but you know there is somewhere across the province between $93 million and $95 spent on special education. So I guess it doesn't make it any better, but what I'm trying to say is everybody appreciates what the Halifax Regional School Board does, but I think people have to understand that other boards are making that commitment, too, to the tune of what they can. Everybody recognizes and would support the position that you've put forth and I want to tell you that our government does and we are contributing as we can.

MS. MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, it is true that the Halifax Regional School Board is the lowest per-pupil funded board in Nova Scotia at $4,935 per student. In 1996 it did become the largest school system in Nova Scotia with 57,000 students and Nova Scotia is one of the lowest-funded boards in Canada. Another document that I was reading today is called the Blueprint for Improvement that the Halifax Regional School Board has put out and it's quite an interesting document. When the new superintendent of the board went out and consulted with staff and other people within education - and the parents - the feeling they got back, from what I can get out of this document, is that people feel that students are getting a good education, but they're not sure if it's good enough.

We know that the teachers are out there doing whatever they can. They're doing the best they can with the resources that we're giving them, but the feeling I guess that parents have out there is they're not sure if their children are getting the education that's going to work best for them. Another thing that they felt was that it's working for those in the middle, but that we haven't really mastered an approach to educating the full range of students that we come across in our system - and those would be students with exceptional qualities or special needs.

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So I'm wondering if you were thinking about bringing back the funding review group to look at some sort of a very long-range plan, and certainly I understand where you're coming from to a certain extent if you're saying there's so much money here and we have to look at where we're putting it, but I'm just wondering, yes or no, if you're thinking of bringing that funding review group back.

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, the department consults with boards every year to try to determine what types of pressures they're going to face. For example, one of the real things that costs a lot of money in Nova Scotia is how much is it going to cost for fuel for the schools next year and, believe it or not, those who sit down and do this thing to try to predict some sort of price on the cost of fuel. You know, we have a very good education system here in Nova Scotia. Could it be better? Sure, it can. I think everybody who is involved at any level in education in the province is trying to go up, I don't think anybody is trying to stay flat or trying to go backwards. I just don't know anybody that is, and some of the initiatives that the department has taken in terms of accountability so we can compare ourselves to other jurisdictions, or the achievement of our students with other jurisdictions and across our own province, I think the public wants those things, these accountability measures, and they may be uncomfortable a little bit, but people do want them.

You've raised the issue of a review of how boards are funded. Now, you mentioned Halifax having the lowest per-pupil funding, and one of the things with Halifax, HRM, and the type of funding is you just can't look at the per-pupil number because I think it's 30 per cent of the Halifax students are bused and 90 per cent are bused in the Strait or some place and your schools are larger, so you know the larger the school, presumably the more cost-effective an operation is. However, the department has engaged a gentleman by the name of Bill Hogg to review the funding formula for schools and he will be commencing very, very soon. School boards will be consulted in the development of the criteria for his study.

I expect to have a preliminary report back by November, which will then go out to the partners for their review, with a final report, hopefully, very early in the new year of 2005. I don't think we're going to be able to get whatever is recommended and agreed upon necessarily fully enhanced or fully in place in 2005-06, but we expect to have transition funds if there are things we really have to deal with. You know change probably is going to have to take place over time, so we have to have a transition plan to see that we end up where we want to be, a stable change, change over time.

MS. MASSEY: You just mentioned Mr. Hogg coming on in some type of capacity there. Is he going to be looking at the facilities or is he just looking at strictly educational, or is he looking at all of that in relation to education and our facilities? - because I want to talk about deferred maintenance.

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MR. MUIR: He will be looking at really everything that affects the cost of an educational system and those things that you mentioned. Really one of his main challenges is going to be to make recommendations about how money should be allocated. I think most of the things that you've mentioned are already considered in a formula. I know certainly they used to be, but it's really the allocation, how money can be allocated. One of the things that he won't be able to do, which I expect that we would like to be able to react to is that most of these reports that we get always say, and you mentioned the term $20 million, or you mentioned something else for the BLAC Report and the library report and all of these things come with a price tag and they're looking at where optimally we would like to be, but he won't be involved in that, he's going to be more concerned with the allocation of the money that is available.

MS. MASSEY: We will speak about the deferred maintenance a bit. I know all the boards across the province are in dire straits when it comes to repairing or making renovations to their facilities, and a lot of things just aren't getting done. We're not replacing windows; there are safety standards to be brought in line with stairways, this sort of thing, elevators; painting is not being done in the schools, and if there's any painting being done at all, it's in the front lobby so that people, when they enter the school, they would have some sort of a feeling that they're in a nice place, but the classrooms are just, you know it's ridiculous, the state of our classrooms and this is where our students have to sit all day long, in this kind of an environment where nothing is being fixed, the grounds are a mess - if not for the parents, we wouldn't have any playgrounds in this province right now.

These are the kinds of things that are just being thrown aside - and not thrown aside, the boards want to do these things. They want to replace the floors; they want to get rid of the mould; they want to fix their roofs; and they want to make safety upgrades to the gyms. There are schools that have bristol board up in their windows because they can't afford curtains. I mean we've got our teachers trying to go in to teach in these places. We have special needs' kids. We've got everybody walking into these facilities and I know you mentioned earlier that if there's a pot of money, we want to protect the classroom, and yes we've done that and a lot of the money that we've taken out to protect the classroom has been from our maintenance budgets, and that's where it first started coming from, I believe, if I've got my history right, that's where we took it from, and every year the maintenance budgets, or the capital construction, or one of these, whatever you want to call it, is cut and cut and cut.

What's happening is we are now moving into a period where we are going to have sick buildings, and that means we're going to have sick staff. I hear from teachers who are ill and they have to take time off work because they've got some unknown problem, they're sneezing, coughing, headaches, this sort of thing. They're fine over the summer when they're off for a few months because they're out in the fresh air and they're in their own homes, which are healthier. So I believe we do have sick schools on our hands.

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[7:15 p.m.]

It's hard to prove these things. I think we are in a crisis situation here. I believe the province did a facility review, it wasn't too many years ago, and came up with a list of all the things that needed to be fixed in these buildings. I don't know if it's worth asking you again, because I think you have just said there is just so much money and we've decided where we're going to spend it, and you point to funding formulas and I'm just going to have to say those funding formulas don't work and we need to look at a new way of funding the education system.

I would like to talk about the fundraising that schools are doing, and I think probably all of us saw in the paper not too many days ago that our little board here, the Halifax Regional School Board, raised over $16 million last year. I have to wonder, if the parents in our communities were not out there raising this kind of money I don't know where we would be now. We're in a bad state of affairs when we've got to send our kids out selling chocolate bars, selling this, selling that - and believe me I know, I've done it and been there first-hand and been involved with it all, but that can only go so far and I think we're stretching everything to the limit with this fundraising. It does take time, I know first-hand it takes time out of the classroom. The teachers are involved in this fundraising and I will tell you another thing it does - it makes have and have-not schools because, believe me, there are schools, and you can look at that list that was in the paper, that are making a heck of a lot of money, more money fundraising than other schools.

We've got to find some way to bring our school system into some sort of a level playing field. We've got the P3 schools, we've got the user fees now coming on-line - well, we're not going to have user fees, or are we, because the boards are going to be allowed to charge for things that they're going to incur costs on. They're going to have to charge for equipment that's lost or damaged; they're going to have to charge for, well they can charge I guess for electricity, the lighting, whatever; and the janitors aren't going to come in there and work for free on the weekend, they're going to have to be paid for four hours minimum.

Some of the things that these fundraising groups that operate out of our schools are purchasing - it used to be the fun stuff that they purchased, like let's go on a school trip, great, everybody can get behind that - now we're fundraising to buy library books and not all the schools can fundraise at the same level and some schools have more library books than others. That's just one example. I remember when I first started out fundraising in my son's school, it was just when we were starting to get computers in the school and there was a big argument among parents - should we, the parents, be going out and buying computers for the school, because if we go out and buy them, is the board going to buy them for us if they know we can buy them? Are we going to be down at the bottom of the list when it comes around again full circle? That's the way it works in the school boards. There's just a little list of names and the schools and, you know you might wait four years, five years, six years, whatever, to get computers.

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So a lot of the fundraising money goes directly into the classroom and I'm talking classroom supplies that the teachers have control over this money, and like I said before, we would not have a playground today if it was not for these groups of parents fundraising, and thank God we have communities that back our children up.

I would like to go on and talk a little bit about the combination that we have when we look at education and the relation of education to our health care system. Recently the Dartmouth Community Health Board did its yearly review, and even as far back as 2002 they were making the connection between issues that our youth are facing as far as accessing nutritional information and parental support in the school system. They face a lot of issues, the inability to find employment when they do get out of school. Not everybody makes it to post-secondary education, some of our youth have Grade 10, and they're coming out, they're trying to work for minimum wage, and they're working excessive hours. They have a hard time accessing transportation; they can't afford it. Children and families have a lack of accessible facilities. There's a lack of community centres; there's a lack of playgrounds in our communities. There is a decline, and sometimes almost an absence, of physical education in the school system.

You can't separate these health issues from education in Nova Scotia and we're going to see this impacting on our children in the future. Certainly our university funding is just one example of that. However, there are some good ideas coming out from the various school boards and one of the things I wanted to mention to you - and I'm sure you probably heard of it - was the subsidized bus passes that the Halifax Regional School Board just did recently.

This was a little pilot project that they did, to try to help some high-risk students from not dropping out of school. Actually, my colleague, the member for Halifax Needham, initiated this pilot project. I think it's a fantastic idea. It has kept some high-risk students in school. It was just a five-month pilot project. Now this little project was a small investment, but it had a big outcome. If this has kept x amount of students in school for another year, this is something we need to back up. This province needs to back this up. It's $51 a month, and it helped these students who lived 2.4 to 3.6 kilometres from school. It helped them get to school.

I know the board is looking at this, and I'm sure they want to expand it. I'm not sure if they're going to be able to afford it in their budget. I'll table this, but I want to get a copy of it back. This is really heartbreaking, when you read the report that they put out, the subsidized bus pass pilot evaluation report. Who received subsidized bus passes? It was high-risk students, and many of them faced a number of challenges to succeed at school, including academic, financial and health issues. Many of the students were part of single-family households, where a single income or income from social assistance was insufficient to afford a monthly pass or to support the $2.50 return ride to and from school every day.

[Page 278]

I was recently at a youth convention, and one of the youth had mentioned during the convention that he (Interruptions) This youth goes to Cole Harbour District High School and he lives in Eastern Passage. Fine, there's a library at Cole Harbour District High School but there's a library next door. In order for him to get home, he has to get on that bus that the board provides to get home to Eastern Passage. So if he wants to go to the library, which he considers a better library, which is next door in Cole Harbour Place, he would have to have the money to be able to go there and then make his own way home. He doesn't have that money. This is just one example of how our kids and our youth are facing these issues.

They had interviews with a few of the older high school students when they were going through this pilot process. It revealed that students were often using money from part-time jobs for transit to and from school. There were reasons for requesting subsidized bus passes: income, one youth was caring for his ill grandparent, single parents on social assistance with mental health issues, a parent on disability with siblings, there was one single parent with six kids at home. The list goes on. It's heartbreaking to know that there are things like that that are keeping our students from getting an education.

When we're looking at funding, that's just another example of something that when you're making a funding formula you have to look at all these other issues that impact our students and the way they learn or if they can even get to school to learn. I'm going to ask a question. Did you know about that, and I'm sure you did, but is there any way you can offer the board - and it would be through their transportation budget - and other boards, too, because I'm sure this would be a great thing for the other boards to do, offer them some funding to be able to provide that service?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has expired for the NDP caucus.

The honourable member for Kings West.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: I would have to say that maybe this is one of the greatest acts of kindness I've seen since I entered the House, that is the member for Dartmouth East realizing the minister is fading a little bit, so she spoke for 20 minutes or so and gave him a little break here. Then again, of course, they've already decided how they're voting on the budget, so I guess that could be another factor, as well. Anyway.

I would like to ask the minister to finish off this evening with the possibility of the amendment to the Education Act that will permit schools and school boards not to charge for the use of facilities of children up to the age of 21, basically school children. I'm wondering if this goes through during this Spring session of the Legislature, is there a provision in the budget to accommodate the expenses that indeed will be incurred when schools are given, free of charge, to children in this province?

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MR. MUIR: I think what you're going to find is that the situation is not a whole lot different than it was in many of the constituencies, and there were members in here who spoke of - I think your colleague, the member for Cape Breton West was one - who spoke of how schools used to operate. There is still provision there. The board is not really being asked to subsidize anything except rent. So if they have to pay a janitor and the janitor has to come in to do that, then the group would be asked to pay that expense, but they won't be paying a rent charge. There are really not too many places you're going to find that, regardless of who it is, somebody absorbs the cost for a non-school group.

MR. GLAVINE: But the amendment said that indeed it would be free of charge to children and to groups under the age of 21. It doesn't speak about any kinds of riders, such as the minister is talking about in regard to janitorial fees.

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I think I have to disagree with the honourable member on that. I wish probably that it wasn't so, but I do believe that there is provision for recovery of out-of-pocket expenses.

MR. GLAVINE: I guess probably a final question, looking at the timeline here, that could possibly lead into tomorrow. I'm wondering how the $1 million in the budget for literacy support will be implemented. I know this is of interest to boards as they hear about these additional dollars. What is the guidance that will be given from the ministry?

[7:30 p.m.]

MR. MUIR: I thank the honourable member for posing that question, because it does direct members' attention to one of the things that we were very pleased we were able to do in the budget, which was to provide some money to help students who didn't do as well as perhaps we would have liked to have seen them do on a literacy test. What happens is that the money will follow the student from Grade 6 to Grade 7. The money will be given out in consultation with school advisory committees. We will not be, necessarily, dictating how it is to be spent, but it would be in consultation with the folks at the school.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The time seems to be drawing to a close. I will refer back to the member for Dartmouth East, perhaps the answer to her question can be addressed tomorrow, at another time.

The time has expired.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee do now rise, report progress and beg leave to sit again on a future date.

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MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is carried.

[7:31 p.m. The committee rose.]