HALIFAX, MONDAY, APRIL 8, 2019

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON SUPPLY

5:08 P.M.

CHAIR

Brendan Maguire

THE CHAIR: Order. Welcome to the Subcommittee on Supply. We are back with the Department of Justice.

I was informed by the Progressive Conservative Party that they had 33 minutes left, but they are going to pass it over to the New Democratic Party.

With that, we will start with the honourable member for Dartmouth South.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Thank you, minister, for being back, and to all of your able and intelligent colleagues who help you answer these questions that we put forward.

We talked a lot on Friday about challenges in the justice system, some systemic issues, but I think I mentioned that today I would like to get into that a little bit further.

After visiting Nova Scotia in 2016, a UN working group raised concerns about systemic discrimination faced by people of African descent, and that included the police practice of street checks.

The report from the group states: “The working group is particularly concerned about the overrepresentation of African Canadians in the criminal justice system which may be attributed to racial bias at all levels of the system, from racial profiling to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the imposition of pre-trial incarceration, and disparities in sentencing.” We have been told, and I know, this is on the department’s radar.

I believe the minister mentioned the last day that this was an issue the department was taking seriously but now, in the last few weeks, the Human Rights Commission’s report has overwhelmingly confirmed that street checks are an instance of systemic racism. They confirmed something that the community already knew: they damage and disrupt the lives of African Nova Scotians and other racialized people. We’ve been saying this for a couple of years. The Johnson Commission raised this 16 years ago, and now this report is very clear: whether it is ultimately banned or regulated, there should be an immediate stop to the practice of street checks.

I want to ask the minister: Will he agree to implement a ban this sitting?

HON. MARK FUREY: Allow me to speak briefly to the Wortley report. I think the findings - I’ve said this publicly - are alarming and unacceptable. We all acknowledge and recognize that. The extent of the report and the lived experiences that formed part of that report are real; I certainly recognize that. At the same time, the content of the report is quite significant.

We’ve continued, quite literally every day, to speak about the go-forward around the findings of the Wortley report. I’m certainly much closer to a decision than I was last week when we spoke on a number of occasions about street checks. I continue to engage individuals to best understand all of the implications and am much closer to making a decision. What the timing of that decision will be relative to a moratorium, a ban, or regulation, will be in the very near future and, if at all possible, within the timelines of this sitting of the Legislature.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: I appreciate that response and that’s new information. We hadn’t heard before that you were contemplating action before the end of this sitting, so I thank you for that response.

Notwithstanding the fact that there’s a lot of information in it, my reading of the Wortley report was clear, which was that he recommended two possible alternatives. One would be heavy regulation of the practice, and the other would be an outright ban. In the section where he talks about heavy regulation, he says pretty much off the top that if you choose this option then you should strongly consider an immediate moratorium. What the report establishes is just how pernicious the practice is.

Given that you’re taking time to digest now, we have four sitting days - we think - left of this session, so four days is a reasonable time period. Beyond that, will the minister agree to implement either A or B or an immediate moratorium in that period?

MARK FUREY: I would only repeat what I’ve said, because I continue to gather additional information over and above the Wortley report. I have taken first steps in providing a directive to the law enforcement community. There were indications, whether they’re perceived or real, that there was a quota system involved in street checks or traffic stops. As you would know, the definition that’s being used varies from whom you speak with. That’s a challenge as we continue this discussion and land on a decision.

I’m confident, but circumstances could impact the timeline. I’m very hopeful that I will be able to make a decision prior to the closure of this sitting of the Legislature.

[5:15 p.m.]

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Chair, I’ll eagerly await that decision. While I appreciate that there may have been an informal quota system, I think the announcement that came out of the department following the Wortley report was met with some cynicism. A far as we understand, there is no formal quota system, nor is there a performance management tool that centres around street checks per se. For the department to announce that they are ceasing, they are not allowing practices that already don’t formally exist and aren’t allowed, while I appreciate that there may have been the impulse to do something, which I say I think was met with some cynicism, can the minister speak to that at all?

MARK FUREY: I can tell you from 32 years of policing experience that there is a real concern. I spoke today with members of our law enforcement community on this very subject, there is a perception that statistics do form part of both quotas and performance evaluation and whether it’s acknowledged or not, perceived or real - if it’s perceived and women and men wearing the uniform go to work with the belief, perceived or real, that there’s a number attached to their performance, we end up with a situation where we have quantity and not quality.

I can tell you from 32 years of policing, both as a front-line officer and as a supervisor/manager, there were expectations that although no formal policy may exist, the belief and perception and feeling of our women and men in uniform is that there was and that their performance was judged on that. That’s unacceptable. The directive that I issued, now over a week ago, was intended to address that immediacy and that if they did exist, perceived or real, policy or not, formally or informally, that practice was to cease.

The other piece that I spoke about relative to the directive is there were two elements. There was the issue of training, as well as my desire to engage all stakeholders, including members of the community, with the expectations that I would have a feedback document or action plan to address short-, mid-, and long-term strategies in response to the recommendations that Dr. Wortley advanced.

The most important element of this discussion, to me, is around training and familiarity by our front-line law enforcement officers, women and men who are engaging Nova Scotians, and in these specific circumstances African Nova Scotians, in a manner that is alarming and unacceptable. If we cannot, if we don’t address training and familiarity of the authorities that the law enforcement community have, but more important in my view the limitations of that authority, then we’ve failed all Nova Scotians and would never be able to achieve the intended outcomes of Dr. Wortley’s report regardless of which option we may choose to advance.

At the same time that I am reviewing the report, I am also looking at opportunities where we can be immediate in responding appropriately, specifically to training. Believe me, this avenue, this approach that I’ve taken is very challenging. This is not a discussion or subject to be taken lightly. As many have said to me, the findings of the Dr. Wortley report, we didn’t need a report to draw that conclusion. The report has certainly brought attention to the subject matter.

We have an opportunity to effect change. As I’m conscious of all the pressures and the expectations, I want to ensure that I’m taking the right time, doing the right analysis, not only of the information contained in Dr. Wortley’s report, but I’m also reading the report of Justice Tulloch out of Ontario, who has advanced recommendations and suggestions on how we can best provide oversight, whether there’s a ban or a very strict regulation. It’s taken considerable time, but I want to ensure that we get this right this time.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: I guess I have a couple of responses to that. I think for one, as you said, for many people this report didn’t contain any surprises except for - I’ve heard from some people that some of the words of the officers were startling to community members to say the least, but the statistics were not because those statistics are lived. While I appreciate that you’re taking time with the Wortley report and with Judge Tulloch’s report, I think there are also a lot of community resources here that have and continue to be experts in this area. We’ve had a lot of consultation. We’ve asked people to relive their own traumatic experiences frequently in order to come to a resolution on this issue. I think it’s our position, while of course processes need to be determined within the department, that that consultation piece, while it may be welcomed, it might not be necessary. We’ve had a lot of consultation.

I agree, I’m sure working with the police force perhaps, but you pointed to the issue of authority and so I have a kind of ambi-question. The first part is, I guess, back to my initial question: What is the practical implication of directing the police not to do something that is already not a formal policy? What happens when you do that?

Even if the experience in your career as an officer was that there were quota systems and there was performance management, I haven’t seen that, or that hasn’t been drawn to my attention in a formal way. I appreciate the statement that it ought not to be accepted, but I’m really curious about the formal implications, the practical implications of that, because it seems to me that if it has never existed on paper in the first place, it could continue to be ignored just as easily.

My second question, which I’d like to get into, is: What are the legal underpinnings of the practice of street checks to begin with? The DPAD committee has taken the position that street checks are illegal, that they’re contrary to the Charter, and that even if they’re not contrary to the Charter, they’re discriminatory in practice and therefore contrary to the human rights code. I don’t see anything or haven’t been pointed to anything in any of the instruments that govern the way that police operate that gives them the authority to stop and record people’s information when they’re not under suspicion.

I know that’s two different questions, but I would appreciate comments on either of those, both of those.

MARK FUREY: Before I answer both of those questions, I want to go back to your earlier comment where you suggested that further consultation is not necessary. I’m not suggesting for a minute there’s any need for further consultation; the findings are clear: African Nova Scotians are stopped disproportionately six times more than Caucasian males. I’ll continue to repeat it: it’s alarming and it’s unacceptable, so we have to effect change. I’m committed to that, and I don’t want anyone to leave this room thinking we’re talking about further consultation.

We’re talking about action, but that will be informed by information that’s readily available to us and information that I’ve sought. I am continuing to read outside of these present circumstances in Nova Scotia, because this is relevant beyond the boundaries of HRM both within the province and across the country.

Your first question was around the implications or the reasons for the directive that I issued. In the absence of a formal policy and my belief in issuing the directive that I did, first and foremost, was to identify the seriousness of this issue that if there is a policy, perceived or real, it’s unacceptable and it must cease. If there is no policy and that practice continues, it’s important that front-line officers hear and that we all repeat that this behaviour is alarming and unacceptable. I think everybody in this room will agree with that.

The other element of that for me is we can talk about change, and I would say in fairness many have for many years and there’s been no change. If we don’t engage through multiple mediums, the front-line officers, their supervisors and managers, to re-educate, to retrain, to familiarize themselves with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with their own department code of ethics, with their organization’s missions, visions, and values, and remind them on a regular basis of the critical importance of that, we’re talking about respectful, professional interaction with all Nova Scotians. This is driven by an abuse of those authorities or the limitation of those authorities specific to our African Nova Scotian community.

Those are the reasons I issued the directive and, in addition to that, a need including all stakeholders, and that means the community as well, to provide feedback. I cannot make those decisions independent of that broad input. I’m not talking about consultation; I’m actually talking about feedback. Provide me what you believe to be the best avenues and mediums to implement the recommendations, whether we ban or whether we regulate. That was the third element. I believe that the opportunity is there to address short-term demands, and there are other recommendations that will require a longer period of time. That was the reason and intent behind the directive that I’ve issued.

As for the legality of the street checks, I have to speak first to the definition because there are different interpretations when we use the term “street check.” Dr. Wortley identified that confusion in his report and in his findings, and Justice Tulloch identified the same concerns in his review of the circumstances in Ontario. For the benefit of the people here today at this table, street check in the community is all-encompassing. It’s pedestrian, it’s vehicle operator, it’s passenger, and any other interaction with individuals as they go about their day-to-day activities when police engage for the purpose of gathering intelligence or information.

[5:30 p.m.]

When you talk about street check and the law enforcement community, it can be two actions. It can be a uniformed officer’s engagement with a pedestrian or an individual on the street, which facilitates a discussion between two people, or for intelligence purposes, observation of law enforcement where there is no engagement with the individual, but information is documented and stored in a data bank.

When you talk about traffic stops or road stops, it is law enforcement engaging vehicles where they’ve observed an infraction, or they stop for purposes of engaging the operator or occupants of that vehicle. In Nova Scotia - in regulation in provincial legislation - police have the authority and responsibility, from a public safety perspective, to stop vehicle operators for the purposes of requesting their driver’s licence, registration, and insurance. That’s to maintain public safety, to ensure that the operator is licensed, that the vehicle is registered, and that there is appropriate insurance for purposes of liability.

This is where traffic stops become challenging and confusing and appropriate in some cases and inappropriate in others. When I talk about authority of law enforcement, it’s acknowledged but, more importantly, the limitations of their authority, which is not clearly understood, even by the law enforcement community.

Street checks, in my experience, are deemed to be legal unless the authority applied by the officer is abused. At that time, it’s a breach of the Human Rights Act. There has been much discussion in the courts around the authority to stop, the search and seizure, specific to a vehicle and its occupants. Those circumstances vary, and I’ll use a couple of examples to elaborate.

A uniformed officer can stop a motor vehicle and engage the driver - that’s the person who is in charge of the vehicle. If the passenger is the registered owner - create a hypothetical situation - the passenger has consumed an amount of alcohol, a friend is the designated driver, and in production of those papers, the officer realizes the passenger is the registered owner, the police officer has the authority then to engage that passenger, but if there are two passengers in the back seat, the officer is limited in any contact, any authority they have to engage those two passengers. The engagement should be with the driver and with the registered owner of the vehicle, in that example.

That could change if there is an aroma of cannabis coming from the vehicle. That immediately gives the officer the authority to search all occupants and the vehicle itself, including the trunk.

This is where much of the misunderstanding comes into play. A lot of those decisions are made roadside based on observations that an officer may make. That’s where it’s critically important that they understand their authority or, more importantly, the limitations of their authority.

If a law enforcement officer engages a vehicle and the operator is the registered owner, the limitations of that officer’s authority, barring any other information or observations, is restricted to interaction with the driver. If any one of the passengers knows the officer or chooses to engage the officer, the officer is free to engage in discussion and be respectful and professional roadside. Those are the circumstances I talk about when I talk about the authority of the officer roadside and the limitations of their authority.

That, for me, rolls into the legality of street checks. Those circumstances have presented themselves in our public court systems in circumstances of trial, whether it be the Motor Vehicle Act or the Criminal Code, for minor offences, minor traffic offences, and/or serious Criminal Code offences. No court, in spite of all of the evidence that is presented relative to the authority or the limitation of authority of the officer, has deemed a traffic stop illegal.

We all know when you cross that line, when you breach that authority, then it is a violation of an individual’s rights. I explain that in response to your question, because I go back to extensive reading and thought and discussion on this subject. If we don’t engage front-line officers, with all the other information we know and nobody’s denying the findings, but we have to find a solution, and to me the most key element to that is the engagement of front-line officers, that retraining, that familiarity, that understanding of both authority and limitations of authority.

That’s a long answer to your question, but my point is in common law no court has deemed a traffic stop, a pedestrian stop, or a street check illegal. There have been situations where evidence is not admissible because of an officer overstepping their limits or not recognizing the limitations of their authority or searching and/or seizing without authority. There have been circumstances where evidence is inadmissible, but to your question, no court has ever deemed street checks or traffic stops illegal.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Although I think, as we’ve identified and as you’ve spoken about as well, this is a systemic issue. Traffic stops, obviously, are the easiest example because a court will always defer to public safety in the operation of a motor vehicle. I think DPAD’s position, which was very brilliantly articulated by Dr. Wright at the release of that report - to which I could not do justice in the way that he does - is that they are, in fact, illegal.

There’s a Venn diagram of understandings of what this is, as you identified, between the experts and then the real experts, the community. I think the overlapping piece is stopping people because of the colour of their skin and asking them for information and recording it in a database. I think whether or not a court has found it to be illegal yet, if you look at the governing instruments such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or our own Nova Scotia Human Rights Act, it ought to be clear.

I think as much was said by Dr. Wortley that, in fact, it is clear that it is illegal and whether or not you want to say it’s illegal, it’s unconscionable in that we are living in a province that has systems that are still deeply imbedded with racist thought and behaviour that has been there for hundreds of years. I think this is the opportunity to show leadership. Whether or not a court has found that, we can find that; we can take notice of that fact.

I’ll try to finish up my time. It’s going to elapse in one minute, but I’m hoping that my colleague will just give me the benefit of finishing my last question. We will see; he and the Chair can discuss it when the time turns over.

The minister mentioned after the release of the Wortley report that street checks, when used correctly, were a valuable policing tool. That seems directly contrary to what Dr. Wortley said in that report, which is that he saw little or no evidence that street checks had any impact on local crime rates. I’m wondering if you still think that that’s the case and, if not, if you could share that. Given that you said you’ll take action in the next few days, we’d love a sign that it will be meaningful action and an action that the community is looking for.

THE CHAIR: Order. The time for the NDP has elapsed. We will now go to the Progressive Conservative Party for one hour.

The honourable member for Dartmouth East.

TIM HALMAN: Mr. Chair, I have no problem giving 10 minutes to the NDP if we want to switch it back and then if they return that, it should be good.

THE CHAIR: Back to the NDP for 10 minutes.

The honourable member for Dartmouth South.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re the model of collaboration over here today, but I appreciate my colleague giving us just a little bit of time to finish up here. I put my question.

MARK FUREY: Mr. Chair, just a couple of points around this specific question. I believe when used properly - and I want to be careful with the terminology, because I don’t like the language “street checks,” although that’s the phrase being used - this process is a valuable tool for police when used appropriately within the authority that they have, because that in itself drives community relations. If you read into the Wortley report and you read into Justice Tulloch’s report, there are significant elements of community policing, community relations.

The challenge we face in any interaction that the police have with citizens, you can measure statistics of the numbers of convictions and the value of drugs seized and how many charges were laid in a month or a year specific to any offence. That all comes through the enforcement that officers apply in the course of their duties. What we can’t measure, what we’ve never been able to measure, is the preventive element of respectful, professional contact and how that influences people and influences relationships. I say that based on my own experience in a previous career. Over the course of 32 years and the value of building relationships, and the only way you can do that is to engage people, but it has to be respectful and it has to be professional.

When I speak about it being a valuable tool when used appropriately, those are the circumstances I’m talking about. Dr. Wortley states that there’s little to no impact on crime statistics as a result of street checks. It is the front-end application of police interaction with the public that we can’t measure and, for me, that’s a critical element of what our law enforcement community is discharged to do and within their authority when they engage individuals. Whether it’s a street check with a pedestrian or a vehicle stop with the driver, I believe that when applied appropriately it is a valuable tool for public safety.

[5:45 p.m.]

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Chair, with respect, I do think we measure it. I think one of the things that Dr. Wortley was charged with was measuring the impact of street checks. Just so we’re sharing a definition, I think the key and most important factor that we’re talking about in this conversation is the recording of information. While no one, including Dr. Wortley or the community, argues that front-line police have a job to protect public safety, the question is: What happens when people are stopped, and their information is recorded?

As I’ve said now a couple of times, there are serious Charter issues, there’s a sense of whether or not people believe that they are able to resist, there’s the Know Your Rights campaign that one of my colleagues raised in the Chamber this morning. Many people aren’t aware that they aren’t required to give information to law enforcement.

Mr. Wortley said that that practice does not have an impact on local crime rates, which it would seem to me is the way we measure the impact of policing. Just to clarify, if we’re using the definition of street checks not as community engagement, not as police interacting with the community, but as police stopping people or observing people without enough suspicion to place them under arrest or to compel information, asking them for information without them understanding explicitly that they are not needing to give them that information and then recording that in a database. That’s the definition I’m working off of.

Just to refresh the members’ memories, the challenge with that is that nobody knows where that information goes now that is recorded in the database. There are all kinds of reciprocal arrangements. It’s been shown to cause people trouble in getting work; it’s been known to show up on vulnerable sector checks, crossing borders, the recording of information that is ascertained when someone has not done anything wrong and there is no demonstrable reason to think that someone’s done anything wrong. Is that a valuable policing tool?

MARK FUREY: What you’ve just explained is basically what I’ve been saying. When police abuse their authority or don’t recognize and acknowledge the limitation of their authority, that’s unacceptable; it’s alarming that those circumstances are happening. Banning in those circumstances, for anyone to think that an outright ban is going to resolve that issue does not understand the complexities of that issue. That behaviour will continue if it goes unchecked, so I absolutely agree with you. As you relay those circumstances, that is alarming and unacceptable. They have crossed the line of the authority that they are given when they use street checks for that purpose. Nobody disagrees with what you’re saying.

Dr. Wortley identified that this would be a difficult decision to land on, whether you ban or whether you regulate. Justice Tulloch said in his report that it’s going to be a fine balancing act. The only way that we are going to effect change is by getting to the front-line officers. They need to understand the authority that they have; they need to understand the limitations of their authority so those very behaviours that you’ve outlined, cease. It’s simply unacceptable. I’m not disputing anything you’re saying. What I’m saying is if officers apply that contact, call it whatever you want. If they work within their authority and they are engaging people in a respectful, professional manner, that inherently produces strong relationships.

One of the underlying contributing factors to the mistrust that exists between the African Nova Scotian community and our law enforcement community are those very behaviours. I believe we have an opportunity at this time to effect change. The status quo is unacceptable, and it’s going to take a concerted effort on the part of all of us to work towards a solution.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: I guess we disagree here, but I’m not able to get to the disagreement, so I will leave it at that. I will reiterate that my understanding from the community, from legal instruments, and from the Wortley report is that street checks are not a valuable policing tool, and that they are discriminatory.

I don’t think the term “street checks” includes respectful, voluntary engagement with the community. I think we’re talking about a different thing. With that, I will thank the minister for his answers, I will thank the PC caucus for giving me some extra time, and I’ll hand it back over to the PC caucus.

THE CHAIR: The honourable member for Sackville-Beaver Bank for one hour.

BRAD JOHNS: I do have some questions in a moment in regard to the Maintenance Enforcement Program, but I’d be somewhat remiss after listening to some of the minister’s comments regarding police checks to not make a comment.

I want to tell a little story that I thought was really interesting. My assistant and I have been friends since Primary. We actually attended the same school in the Middle Sackville-Lucasville area, and we’ve been friends since Primary. I consider him probably one of my best friends. I thought it was interesting because when I successfully got elected, I asked him if he would work with me as my constituency coordinator, and he did. We’re the exact same age, the only difference being the colour of our skin. Other than that, he has a wife - I had a wife, two children - he has two children. We’re both 50 and we hang out quite a bit.

What amazed me when I got this job was that one of the things that he mentioned to me numerous times was that he had been pulled over in the past and felt that it was unjustified, and he felt that he was being racially profiled. I kind of felt, you’ve got to be kidding me.

What I find interesting is that since I’ve been elected, he has been pulled over twice - once by HRP and once by RCMP - and I haven’t been pulled over at all. He and I have had some really great discussions about a number of things. I’ve said to him, there are certain things in this world I’ll never understand, that because of the colour of my skin, in some ways I’ll never understand some of the things that he goes through.

I remember the fear, the anxiety, and the anger that he was expressing to me one time after getting pulled over. He had his wife and two kids in the car, and the kids were scared. I guess I just want to make one comment. Back in about 2005, I had the opportunity to be the chair of the Halifax Regional Police Commission. At that time this was not a topic that we heard anything about. Since then this is something that has certainly grown. I think we need to have leadership from the province, we need to have leadership from the minister. Just because something is not illegal doesn’t mean that it is not unethical, immoral, or wrong, and I think we need to have leadership from the top that comes out and identifies that this is wrong.

I think my colleague has talked in the House in regard to supporting a formal moratorium on this, and I’d certainly support that as well.

I am encouraged because I am hearing that there may be a statement coming from the minister’s office relatively soon on this, but I don’t think the status quo in regard to this is acceptable. It gets me upset when I think back to how upset my friend was because he felt he was being profiled and street checked. I listen to the things he says to me, and I’ll tell you, it’s a different world sometimes, I think, between what he lives in and what I live in.

I understand the complexities of it; I understand that when you are talking about this narrow edge of the knife or the sword, I get what you are talking about. I don’t think anything less than a full moratorium - I don’t think it is fair to the constituents I represent and the people I call friends.

MARK FUREY: Mr. Chair, I’ll just comment on a couple of points that my colleague has advanced, and I am going to go back to some of the line of questioning from the member for Dartmouth South around where a policy exists or not, perceived or real, because it’s a segue into my response to my colleague’s question.

In the consultation that Dr. Wortley did, you can’t pick and choose what you want from the report. You have to read it holistically, and you have to understand it and each element impacts the other, but I want to be specific to Page 81 of the report. In his consultation with the law enforcement community, the law enforcement community told him that there is, formally or informally, an expectation of quota used in purposes of performance appraisals.

You can either accept the input of the law enforcement community who are telling Dr. Wortley - who are telling all of us - that that practice, formally or informally, does exist. That was troubling to me, and I know from my own experience what those expectations are. If you want to talk about leadership, it was important to first address that and make it clear to our law enforcement leaders that if those practices exist, they must cease.

The second element to your question or your comments goes back to what Dr. Wortley identified. He said that the decision was going to be difficult; he said the decision would be complex. That wasn’t lost on me, and I can tell you from the discussions I’ve had and the material I’ve been reading, both Dr. Wortley’s report and Justice Tulloch’s report, and others, this is a very difficult process where we want to land on the right solution.

To your point, and I’ve already stated it, the status quo is unacceptable, so I agree with you. I have to tell you as well, Dr. Wortley identified in his report that to ban street checks would be a strong message to the community, but he also identified that banning street checks may not change the interaction between the law enforcement officer and the citizen. That’s not lost on me. It would unreasonable; it would be unconscionable for me to make a knee-jerk reaction on such a critical subject that, quite frankly, everybody has ignored for too many years. I want to assure my colleague that the leadership I apply to this and the decisions that we make will be informed, they will be thorough, and they will be a result of an exhaustive analysis of the implications of any decision we make to ensure that we find a solution and we effect change.

[6:00 p.m.]

The second element to my direction that I think is critical to the solution is the training element and how important it is that we engage front-line officers and refresh them so that they understand the authority they have and - I can’t repeat this enough - the limitations of their authority as they administer their duties on a day-to-day basis. I have seen the outcomes of respectful and professional interaction between the police and the community, and it reaps tremendous benefits. Can we data that? Can we analyze that? Can we determine the costs or the savings associated to that? It’s next to impossible. Can we count speeding tickets? Can we count street checks? Can we identify with quantity and not quality? That’s easy.

When it comes to making a decision, when it comes to demonstrating leadership on this subject, I have said publicly that I’m committed to effecting change. I also want to reiterate that that decision will be informed, it will be made based on all of the information we have, and it will most certainly be made to ensure the status quo does not remain and that change is real for those who have this lived experience, unfortunately six times more apparent in our African Nova Scotian community than it is in the general population. That is alarming, and that is unacceptable. I don’t know how many times I can repeat that.

Many of the points my colleague has made I agree with. Literally each day, as recently as this afternoon in another discussion on street checks coming into the Legislature, I’m informed more with every discussion. This has not been an easy journey, knowing that this has been around for far too long. I simply want to assure my colleague that, to the best of my ability, we’ll demonstrate the leadership that I believe is required to effect change. I will include and ensure that the broader community - all of the stakeholders in the justice system and in our community - are engaged as we work towards a solution, as we work towards an action plan that will address each and every one of the recommendations, whether we go with an outright ban or whether we go with a highly regulated model that would be applied with the expectation and desire to effect change.

BRAD JOHNS: Just a couple of other points - from my experience, there are many tools in a tool box that officers have which enable them to do their job. Reviewing and removing or stopping one particular aspect or one particular tool is not going to totally inhibit police from doing their job. I think it’s recognizing that maybe one tool is not a good tool to be using and removing it from the box.

I’m going to move on here to MEP, but I want to leave with one thing. I think that we all try to represent our communities the best that we can, regardless of Party. When issues like this come forward, or a report like the Wortley report, I think that they supersede partisan politics. I would hope that all Parties can work together with the community to try to come up with ways to address this particular issue and other issues that are similar. I’ll leave it at that and move on, if I can, to my comments on MEP.

I’m curious to know, currently, how many people in the province are registered in the MEP?

MARK FUREY: I want to take my colleague back to his previous comments before I answer his question. It has been my intention and my objective to apply a rational, objective response to street checks and certainly to ensure politics remain out of the discussion.

I said earlier that this is not an easy discussion. This is not an easy matter to address. It’s probably the most challenging single topic that I have experienced in my six years in government. It takes a lot of energy and a big commitment to find that solution. It would have been easy, quite frankly, for me to come out and effect a ban, but I took the time to read Dr. Wortley’s report. He stated that a ban would be symbolic to the community, but it may not effect the change that’s necessary when a law enforcement officer engages a citizen.

I have to say respectfully, both Opposition Party Leaders said a ban was immediately necessary. Respectfully, I disagree with them. We need time. We needed time to ensure that we land in the right space, that we find a solution that truly effects change.

I appreciate the comments of my colleague. I absolutely agree with him that politics should not form part of the discussion. I ask that he and his Party work with me and us in the Department of Justice and in government to ensure that we land in the right place. It is absolutely necessary.

The behaviours and evidence that Dr. Wortley has identified are alarming and unacceptable. I will repeat that every opportunity I get. I will also say that we are in a moment in time where we, collectively, can effect change. I’m committed to that. We’ll get there.

Specific to the number of families in the Maintenance Enforcement Program, there’s about 15,000.

BRAD JOHNS: Can you tell me, of the 15,000, what the average participant that is in arrears would be? Is there a number of people who are behind? Do you keep statistics that show people who are payers and payees? Do you keep statistics on how many of those payers would be in arrears?

MARK FUREY: Yes, we keep data on levels of compliance. In the last year, we have seen a 16 per cent decrease in arrears. The total dollar value of outstanding arrears has gone from $60 to just under $58 million, I think somewhere in the area of $57.8 million.

We have seen an increase of 9 per cent in active cases that are in full compliance. The short answer is we keep the data, and we’re able to track it on a regular basis.

BRAD JOHNS: I have a fundamental belief when it comes to the Maintenance Enforcement Program. I do fundamentally believe that those payments are for children of separated couples. I find it really frustrating sometimes when I hear from residents and people that I know whose ex-spouse - the payer - is significantly in arrears or doesn’t pay. They’re required to pay a certain amount month after month, and they’re short by half or short by $50, or at Christmastime, they’re a little short there.

I find it really frustrating that the government does not step in and start to garnish or hold licences. Can you tell me exactly what we are able to do as a province, and what are the steps that somebody goes through before they are garnished?

MARK FUREY: Specific to my colleague’s question, first and foremost, there is an amicable approach to getting payers to abide by the court conditions imposed on them. The Maintenance Enforcement Program works with payers in a very productive way to ensure that payments are met. There are a number of arrangements and agreements that lead to that where compliance is up. Enforcement action is up this past year by 29 per cent. That’s what I call the soft approach to compliance.

There are a number of other steps that are taken where the province and the federal government has authority. On matter of the issuance of driver’s licences, when there are arrears, driver’s licences are revoked. That in itself is an incentive to pay. When you match that with the soft approach, there is greater attentiveness on the part of the payer to comply. That’s part of the increase in compliance that we’re seeing.

As an example with the federal government, we see passports being revoked when there are arrears that exist. That federal licence suspension is up about 80 per cent. The provincial motor vehicle licence suspension is up 60 per cent over last year. Those are contributing factors to the outcomes.

[6:15 p.m.]

One of the other key elements to the success we’re seeing in maintenance enforcement is the investment we have made in the workplace. In the 2017-18 fiscal year, we funded six additional positions for the New Waterford worksite. We recognize that there was significant pressure on the employees there. When I first came into this portfolio, the very first thing I did was ask for a briefing on maintenance enforcement. Within days, I travelled to New Waterford to meet with the team. It was clear and evident that they were under a lot of pressure to find solutions. That investment of six resources, based on their input and their identified needs, is another element that has been applied and utilized and a contributing factor in the outcomes that we’re seeing relative to compliance and an increase in enforcement.

We’re in the process now, I would say within days, of going live with about a $1.2 million investment in a piece of technology where payers and payees will be able to go on their mobile device for purposes of payment and processing. That’s a significant shift in how we manage this work. It’s an element that will further reduce the pressures on our team at the New Waterford site and allow them more time to deal with those most serious cases where we aren’t seeing a similar level of compliance. A number of factors, including some of the administrative authorities we have in partnership with the federal government, are contributing to enhancing and improving the Maintenance Enforcement Program.

I have said this since I came into the portfolio. It was an issue that I advanced in the Fall of 2008 with the then Leader of the Official Opposition, now Premier McNeil. I’ll tell you a little bit of a story. He showed up at my house unannounced on a Friday night in the Fall of 2008 and sat in my living room for a couple of hours. He didn’t ask me to run for the Liberal Party; he asked me if I had ever considered extending my time in public service. We talked about that for about six months.

In the discussions I had with him he asked me, from your experience in policing, what could we do in government that would change people’s lives? There were three areas that jumped out. There was an absolute need to respond to victims and survivors of sexual assault. There was an absolute need to respond to victims and survivors of domestic violence. There was an absolute need to address the Maintenance Enforcement Program and the monies owed to children, to your earlier comment.

I saw this first-hand in policing, much like my colleague would see it in education. Maintenance enforcement and the availability of those entitled monies is the difference between surviving and thriving. Maintenance enforcement and the payment of those entitled monies for the benefit of children is the difference between living in poverty and living out of poverty. Little did I know that 10 years later, the Premier would ask me, as the Minister of Justice, to lead those initiatives.

This is a priority for our government, it’s a priority for the Premier, it’s a priority for me, and it’s a priority for our department to ensure we see these types of continued increases going forward.

BRAD JOHNS: Very few people know this, but I’m somebody who typically puts my money where my mouth is in regard to some stuff.

Two years ago, I actually had a homeless woman live and stay with me. I got a call when I was on council about someone who was sleeping in her car in a Sobeys parking lot. I went down and found room and let her stay with me. That was in November, and I let her stay with me until March so that she wouldn’t be staying in her car. She didn’t have her kids at the time, but I have learned so much.

The difference between being late on a child support payment or not paying a child support payment - when my mortgage or my car or anything like that is due, I have to make those payments. Somebody who is relying on the MEP can’t go to their landlord and say, my partner didn’t pay me again. To me, there is no soft approach. I think that this province is too soft in their approach sometimes in regard to this. This is about kids.

I can tell you of numerous people I know who have called into the MEP. You can phone in and get the list of payments that the payer has or has not made over the last three, four, or five years, and I have seen those lists. To me, anybody who is not making their court-ordered payments - if there is a reason why they cannot do that, then you go back through the system, back to court. There is a method to go back there. If you are court mandated to make payments for children in this province, you should be making those payments. There is no such thing as a soft approach. I can tell you numerous times where it’s not even a three-strike-and-you’re-out policy. There are people who, time and time again, are habitually late, who are habitually not making payments.

Those payments, which we have both agreed are for children are the difference, in some cases, between somebody living in an apartment or living out of a car in a Sobeys parking lot.

I recognize that, last year, there was money in the budget to look at trying to improve the MEP. I am glad to see that your statistics are saying that it is helping. I can still tell you about numerous people who have come to me whose spouses are not in compliance. I would really encourage the department to look at not a soft approach but a much harder, stronger approach when dealing with people who are in arrears when it comes to maintenance enforcement.

MARK FUREY: That’s an interesting perspective to apply. It would be consistent with a tough-on-crime approach, and we have seen how that has gone over the past 15 years.

There is absolutely a need to address the outstanding arrears. Nobody is disputing that. I think where my colleague and I differ is on the approach to addressing that level of arrears. The data speaks for itself. There has been significant improvement this past year alone when we talk about maintenance enforcement and the monies that are back in the hands of families and benefiting children directly.

We have seen significant improvements to the Maintenance Enforcement Program because of the amicable approach. My colleague might conclude that that’s too soft, but it is recognizing significant outcomes that are important to the program and inherently important to recipients.

Is there more work to do? Absolutely. We’ll continue to work in that effort to find those outcomes and to change the circumstances.

The technology, the mobile app that I spoke about in my earlier comments, will further enhance that. I’m confident we’ll continue to see a decrease in outstanding arrears. As I said, arrears have gone down 16 per cent lower this year than it was last year. That’s a pretty significant improvement based on the strategies that we have taken. Licence suspensions, whether they’re provincial or federal, are averaging up about 60 per cent to 80 per cent. That’s significant progress from where we were just a year ago.

I would be remiss if I did not speak to the commitment and the dedication of the team in maintenance enforcement in the New Waterford site who continue to improve the service delivery model that they are providing to Nova Scotians. Is it perfect? Not at all. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Are we committed to that? Absolutely. Will we continue in this direction? That’s the intention.

I’m confident about the work of our team in maintenance enforcement and the priorities that the Premier places on this very subject. This is near and dear to his heart. He has given me clear directions captured in my mandate letter. This is a priority of our government. We’ll continue to apply the strategies that we are, and we will continue with the input from the team in New Waterford, on their ideas and their vision on how we can improve the delivery of the Maintenance Enforcement Program. I’m quite pleased with the outcomes, and I look forward to similar progress over the next fiscal year.

BRAD JOHNS: Mr. Chair, that concludes our questions.

THE CHAIR: That concludes the time for the Progressive Conservatives. We’ll now turn it over to the NDP for one hour.

The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre.

TAMMY MARTIN: The NDP has concluded.

THE CHAIR: The NDP has completed also. We will now ask the minister for his closing comments.

MARK FUREY: How much time do we have left?

THE CHAIR: You have lots of time.

MARK FUREY: I’ll be brief. I do appreciate and value this opportunity and the discussions we have had. Although this is Budget Estimates, we might have had two questions specific to budget where we actually had to refer to numbers. I simply want to share with my colleagues how much I respect the approach that they have taken on some very topical, serious issues and discussions and how valuable that is for me and our team as we continue to work towards solutions.

I know we all have the same intention, the same objective. We may differ sometimes on how we get there, but I believe there is a collective will to find solutions that are in the best interest of Nova Scotians. I simply want to ask my colleagues, both in the NDP and in the Progressive Conservative Party, that my comments be communicated to your peers and how much I appreciate this engagement.

These discussions don’t have to be limited to this environment. We can engage one another at any time on matters that are topical to you as members for your constituency or as members of the Opposition. I certainly welcome those opportunities.

THE CHAIR: Shall Resolution E13 stand?

Resolution E13 stands.

Resolution E23 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $2,615,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Human Rights Commission, pursuant to the Estimate.

Resolution E27 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $357,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Nova Scotia Police Complaints Commissioner, pursuant to the Estimate.

Resolution E32 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $715,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, pursuant to the Estimate.

Resolution E34 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $24,593,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect to the Public Prosecution Service, pursuant to the Estimate.

[6:30 p.m.]

THE CHAIR: Shall the resolutions carry?

The resolutions are carried.

We’ll now take a short recess and then turn the meeting over to the Department of Labour and Advanced Education.

[6:31 p.m. The subcommittee recessed.]

[6:38 p.m. The subcommittee reconvened.]

THE CHAIR: Order. I would like to call the Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply to order. We have the Department of Labour and Advanced Education, and I welcome the minister.

Resolution E14 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $396,209,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Labour and Advanced Education, pursuant to the Estimate.

THE CHAIR: I will now invite the minister to make some opening comments and, if he wishes, to introduce the members of his staff.

The honourable Minister of Labour and Advanced Education.

HON. LABI KOUSOULIS: Mr. Chair, it’s a pleasure to speak to you today about the important work of the dedicated team at the Department of Labour and Advanced Education and our programs and plans for 2019-20, as outlined in the budget.

There are several members of the team with me here today, and I would like to introduce them now. Joining me at the table are Duff Montgomerie, the Deputy Minister of Labour and Advanced Education; and Laurie Bennett, the Director of Finance. Several members of the LAE senior leadership team and Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency are also with us today, representing the many branches of our department: Higher Education, Skills and Learning, Safety, Labour Services, and Corporate Policy and Services. The Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency also plays an important role in the department’s work and mandate.

LAE’s vision is to provide a fair, equitable, safe, productive, and inclusive environment in which to learn, work, and live. We do this by investing in people, programs, and partnerships that support that vision. We want all Nova Scotians to believe in a better future for themselves as individuals and for our province as a whole. We want them to see themselves here today and in the future. We know that right here is the place to build a bright future.

I would now like to turn my attention to the department’s budget for 2019-20 and the priorities outlined within. LAE includes two budget sheets, one for the funding we provide annually to universities and one for the remainder of the department. I’ll walk first through our corporate budget.

LAE’s Budget Estimate for the upcoming 2019-20 fiscal year is $396.209 million. This Budget Estimate for LAE is up approximately $6.8 million from 2018-19. This is largely due to planned salary increases at NSCC and within our department, and increased federal government funding for labour market and apprenticeship programs.

For example, in 2018-19, the department received an additional $1.5 million in funding under our LMDA with the federal government, which will allow for the provision of skills training for those in seasonal tourism and fishing sectors. We’re working with our partners in the Tourism Human Resource Council and the Fisheries Sector Council to implement new initiatives that will allow these individuals to increase their employability, essential skills, and technical skills.

These increases are offset by the windup of the Post-Secondary Institution Strategic Investments Fund, or SIF. The department has 521 full-time equivalent positions of which nearly 255 are paid by the federal government and WCB.

Included in our budget this year are some changes in student assistance, a critically important program managed by our higher education team. You might recall several enhancements we have made over the last few years to the program to support students who choose to study here and then stay here after they graduate.

We have increased the student assistance non-repayable grant and established a minimum income level of $25,000 before graduates have to begin making loan payments. We have expanded the loan forgiveness program to support more of our graduates. We have increased the amount of assistance available to students from $180 to $200 weekly to keep up with the costs of post-secondary education. We have made it easier for graduates to live and work in Nova Scotia by eliminating interest on student loans for qualified students.

We have also given eligible Nova Scotia students studying in Nova Scotia universities an extra year to complete their studies and still qualify for loan forgiveness, regardless of the amount owing. This is in addition to the Nova Scotia bursary program, which automatically deducts $1,283 from every Nova Scotian student’s university tuition based on full-time study, and a $3.7 million graduate scholarship program that is set up to help our universities attract top graduate students to study and do research.

We want to encourage even more young people to pursue their post-secondary education right here in Nova Scotia. In this year’s budget, we’re removing the debt threshold of $28,960 that students had to exceed to be eligible for forgiveness. We are gradually phasing out up-front grants for Nova Scotia students studying out of province in programs that are available here.

Assistance to universities for 2019-20 is $427.782 million. This is up $2.5 million over last year. There are several highlights to note in this year’s budget for our Higher Education Branch. The highlights include a $3.6 million increase in the operating grants to universities as we prepare to enter another multi-year MOU; $470,000 to advance the work of the provincial Sexual Violence Prevention Committee; $600,000 to continue to fund the pilot we began last year to provide a suite of e-mental health tools to university and NSCC students; $1.68 million to continue the work of the innovation team; and $800,000 in continuing funding for sandboxes, which foster entrepreneurship and experiential learning for post-secondary students.

[6:45 p.m.]

I’ll also mention here that government has provided universities with $3.6 million in 2018-19 to help with deferred maintenance costs. This budget will support the department and its dedicated staff in delivering on important initiatives, programs, and priorities in 2019-20.

I would like to talk a bit about these now. The department plays a key role in delivering on the province’s youth mandate. In addition to providing programs and services to help support the youth in our province, we also coordinate government’s work on a youth file across all departments. We are seeing positive results on our objective to reverse out-migration numbers and attract and retain more of our young people. Our hard work is paying off. For the third straight year, more young people came to Nova Scotia than left. Youth aged 25 to 34 were the biggest source of migration from other provinces. With three years of positive numbers under our belts, we are well on our way in addressing the three-decades-long youth out-migration trend.

I am thrilled to see so many youth succeeding early in their careers, and that’s why we continue to support programs that connect our young people to the workforce. Youth engagement will remain a top priority as we continue to work on the important and complex challenge of increasing youth employment, especially among those in under-represented groups. A prosperous economic future depends on us supporting the next generation of workers, and we’re working hard to ensure we connect youth with jobs in our province.

I would now like to talk a little bit about universities. Nova Scotia is known internationally for our excellent post-secondary sector. Each year, our 10 universities grant certificates, diplomas, and degrees to more than 10,000 people. They also provide research and development opportunities that drive innovation; attract world-class talent to teach, research, and mentor our youth; support inclusive economic growth that has helped for engagement, employment, and talent; and make our communities and our societies stronger and more vibrant. They play a key role in our work to attract and retain young people to our province.

We have worked very closely with our universities over the past several years to ensure that they are on more sustainable footing prior to the upcoming 2019 MOU. Over the last three years, we have increased base funding to Acadia University, Cape Breton University, St. Francis Xavier, and the University of Kings College. Our 2019-20 budget provides a $3.6 million increase in funding to all our universities through our annualized operating grant. This increase is equivalent to 1 per cent of the total operating grant. This not only protects the sustainability of our post-secondary sector but also helps make a university education more accessible and more affordable for Nova Scotians.

The upcoming budget also includes new funding to support important initiatives like sexual violence prevention and mental health supports for students and innovation. Ensuring our students are safe and supported is a priority. In December 2017, government accepted the 10 recommendations put forward in the Changing the Culture of Acceptance report. Since that time, the new provincial Sexual Violence Prevention Committee has been formed. That brings together government, universities, the NSCC, student groups, community-based organizations with expertise in sexual violence prevention, and the RCMP. I would like to point out that government is represented by staff from LAE and the Departments of Health and Wellness, Justice, and Community Services. The committee is co-chaired by LAE and the President of NSCAD, who was also the Chair of the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents when the committee was initially set up.

The committee’s mandate is to share expertise and resources in the area of sexual violence prevention on university and college campuses and to develop the best practices to guide the development of stand-alone sexual violence policies for our post-secondary institutions. The committee’s work also involves making recommendations to enhance survivor-centric responses to sexual violence on campuses.

This year’s budget includes $470,000 to advance this important work. Sexual violence is a complex social issue, and making progress on this means changing the culture in which sexual violence happens. That will take a concerted effort from all of us. This is important work.

Our students deserve the opportunity to learn in an environment free from the fear of sexual violence. This committee helps us hold one another accountable for making sure we get there. We will work together to identify and implement best practices so that students studying at a Nova Scotia institution are safe.

This year’s budget also includes $600,000 in new permanent funding that will support the pilot we began last year. The pilot provides technology-based mental health interventions to university and community college students in Nova Scotia. This is a program we worked on closely with student groups to develop and deliver. It has been reviewed and endorsed by experts in adolescent mental health. It does not take the place of in-person health care, but it can bridge the gap and, in some cases, provide an earlier intervention for students.

Mr. Chair, 7 Cups is an online counselling platform that connects students with professional counsellors and trained listeners one on one in an online chat. So far, St. F.X., NSCAD, and Acadia have been set up, and there have already been more than 750 conversations.

Good2Talk Nova Scotia is another in the suite of tools, a program run through Kids Help Phone with a great track record in other jurisdictions. By calling Good2Talk, students can receive information and referrals about services and support for mental health, addictions, and well-being on and off campus. They can also speak anonymously with a professional counsellor right away. To date, Good2Talk Nova Scotia has taken more than 120 calls from Nova Scotia post-secondary students. As part of this program, 94 faculty members in our institutions have received simulation training that allows them to better recognize students at risk of crisis, motivate them to seek help, and put them in touch with the services on campus or in the community. Also, 41 faculty have received training in LGBTQ sensitivity.

With the help of stakeholders and experts, we will closely monitor the effectiveness of these tools on an ongoing basis and consider changes in ongoing improvement to ensure we continue to provide strong mental health supports to students at this critical stage in their lives.

Before I leave the university file, I want to touch briefly on two other investments included in the assistance to universities line. First, the post-secondary innovation team will receive $1.68 million. The team was created back in 2015 as a partnership between the provincial and federal governments and post-secondary institutions to promote innovation and advance the One Nova Scotia Commission’s goals. The team oversees a number of working groups in areas of student recruitment and retention, social equity, cultural innovation, experiential learning, entrepreneurship, and health innovation. This funding will continue to advance the innovation team’s important work to strengthen post-secondary education in Nova Scotia and make stronger connections between government, industry, universities, and the NSCC.

I would also like to highlight a recent success story: sandboxes. Our 10 sandboxes bring together students, faculty, mentors, and external advisers to give the students the opportunity to explore entrepreneurship and take good ideas to the stage where they can be considered launching a business. Since the program’s launch in 2014, more than 17,000 post-secondary students have participated in sandbox activities. More than 2,000 high school students also made their way in. Even more impressive are the 242 new business start-ups and social enterprises born in our sandboxes in just five years.

This level of interest from one end of the province to the other proves that our young people are entrepreneurial and want to fine-tune those instincts to start their own business here, to bring entrepreneurial thinking here and fresh ideas to an employment opportunity. With ongoing funding of $800,000 in this budget, sandboxes will continue to make entrepreneurship and experiential learning a great option for students in our universities and at NSCC.

Apprenticeship is also important to the growth of our industries and economy and is a great way Nova Scotians can ready themselves for a rewarding career in our province. Over the past year, the Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency has made progress in raising the profile of apprenticeship as a viable career option and in adding tools to ensure that certification requirements are met in workplaces. The agency works diligently to have an industry-led apprenticeship system that builds and maintains a highly skilled and diverse workforce. They are repositioning the value of apprenticeship and the skilled trades in the minds of youth, parents, and educators.

In 2018-19, the agency worked diligently on strategies and programs with their partners to support our priority to keep Nova Scotian youth home, attract new youth to the province, and increase apprenticeship opportunities for women, Indigenous people, and other groups that are currently under-represented in the apprenticeship system.

In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the number of apprentices increased by more than 7 per cent, which is the largest increase in the last 15 years. Employers are key to a successful apprenticeship system. The agency continued their efforts to recruit and enhance the number of previously unengaged employers participating in the apprenticeship system, which resulted in 211 new employers in 2017-18.

A diverse and inclusive workforce will benefit us all by providing a better understanding of customer needs, greater innovation and creativity, increased productivity, and opportunities for employees to learn and grow from each other. This is why we expanded the Apprenticeship START program to help more businesses hire apprentices from under-represented groups as well as those who work in rural communities. This program has supported over 715 employers who have hired 950 apprentices through the START program. Of the 950 apprentices, 33 are from under-represented groups and 9 per cent are women.

By ensuring equitable access to training and employment in a skilled trade, we can create a workforce that is truly representative of the cultural landscape of Nova Scotia. We are building a stronger Nova Scotia by investing in programs that connect people with good jobs here in the province and helping to make post-secondary studies more accessible.

Ensuring our workplaces meet minimum employment standards is critical to the department’s mandate to create fair, equitable, productive, and inclusive workplaces. Our labour standards team responds to complaints whenever an individual has concerns that these minimum standards are not being met. Maintaining good labour relations is also key to ensuring our workplaces are healthy. Our team provides objective and neutral conciliation and mediation services to employers and unions across the province. They have successfully resolved more than 93 per cent of conciliation matters filed with the branch, and these are matters that the public never hears about.

When our employees are injured in our workplace, they need to know that there is support, professional legal advice that can assist them with the workers’ safety and insurance system. This is the important work of the Workers’ Advisers Program. We are committed to ensuring that injured workers are well represented and treated fairly.

Nova Scotia needs to have confidence in our Labour Board. The board is an impartial and independent adjudicative tribunal that hears, resolves, and adjudicates appeals under labour standards and occupational health and safety legislation, labour-relation matters, and matters relating to many other areas impacting our workplace.

This past year, we have made some important changes to the Labour Standards Code. Changes have been made to provide leave to victims of domestic violence. The leave will provide support for those seeking safety from their abuser and allow victims the time they need to address the complex situation of domestic violence without the added stress and fear of losing their job.

We have also made changes to the Labour Standards Code to provide employees with enhanced leaves to better support and care for their families. Effective January 1, 2019, working parents and parents to be can now access protected pregnancy and parental leaves with no eligibility period. The LAE also made amendments to align the pregnancy and parental leave with the federal 18-month parental leave option.

We want all Nova Scotians to have equal opportunities when it comes to finding a good job in our province. Our Skills and Learning Branch has made real progress in achieving our goal of providing services that Nova Scotians and businesses need, regardless of their location or circumstances. Over the past several years, the employment services system has truly been transformed, and it will continue to evolve to meet the needs of Nova Scotians. Nova Scotia Works centres are the heart of this work. These centres offer an expanded and consistent suite of services to Nova Scotians with improved employment services for specialized populations and a greater focus on youth and businesses. Since September 2016, more than 40,000 Nova Scotians have received employment services at one of the 49 Nova Scotia Works centres across the province.

[7:00 p.m.]

The department will continue to support adult Nova Scotians to receive their high school diplomas, helping them to connect to higher education and better job opportunities. Since 2001, 8,746 Nova Scotians received their adult high school diploma through the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning. We have also helped more than 8,000 Nova Scotians receive their GED certificate between 2011 and 2017. These credentials lead to better jobs, better economic and health outcomes, and ultimately better lives. A prosperous economic future depends on us supporting the next generation of workers, and we’re working hard to ensure we connect youth with jobs in our province.

The Graduate to Opportunity program continues to help young people land their first jobs. It provides salary contributions to employers to offset the cost of hiring a recent post-secondary graduate. Since the program was launched, Nova Scotia businesses have created full-time opportunities for more than 800 new graduates here in the province. Of those graduates, more than 120 were supported by the Graduate to Opportunity program diversity bonus. This supports employers who hire female graduates in a non-traditional occupation; graduates who self-identify as a person with a disability, racially visible, or Aboriginal; or international graduates. These graduates are launching their careers here in Nova Scotia.

Following on the success of the Graduate to Opportunity, we launched Innovate to Opportunity in 2017-18. This program is focused on helping well-educated recent grads to get great jobs here in Nova Scotia and helping businesses to invest in innovation. The program is helping recent graduates with advanced degrees to start their careers in Nova Scotia. It’s helping small- and medium-sized enterprises hire these recent grads to help their organizations become more innovative and develop and increase exports. We know that many companies want to put jobs in place for new graduates but may be cautious about taking a risk. Innovate to Opportunity is helping to reduce their business risk, all while helping companies attract, develop, and retain new talent that will help them grow and succeed.

We know that making space for innovation, entrepreneurial skills, and youth in organizations strengthens our economy and provides more opportunities for youth to work here at home. Last year, more than 1,000 post-secondary students participated in work placements through the Co-op Education Incentive program and Student Summer Skills Incentive program. Between January 2018 and January 2019, the province hired approximately 320 students through co-op intern, apprenticeship, and summer student competitions. These programs and others like it are part of government’s strategy to train our youth, keep them home, and support the economic growth of our province.

I would now like to discuss workplace and technical safety. There is significant work under way to improve workplace and technical safety here in Nova Scotia. As a province, our approach has shifted to focus on education, promotion, and awareness as opposed to enforcement alone. These efforts have resulted in improved reporting of incidents by employers, an overall reduction in the number of administrative penalties issued, and less frequent appeals to the Labour Board. Where required, enforcement is still taken. This year, we proceeded with seven prosecutions. We all need to do better. Changing safety culture and improving safety in the workplace, business, and residences across this province takes partnership and collaboration and can only be achieved by working together.

Changes to the Workers’ Compensation Act introduced last year mean those in the front-line and emergency response occupations no longer have to prove that a diagnosis of PTSD is work related. Last fall, we updated the Workers’ Compensation Act regulations to make it easier for front-line emergency response workers with PTSD to access Workers’ Compensation benefits. The updated regulations clarify who is eligible for presumption and who can diagnose PTSD. Eligible workers are police, paid and volunteer firefighters, paramedics, nurses, correctional officers - including youth workers in correctional facilities - continuing care assistants, emergency response dispatchers, and sheriffs.

We value the work so many Nova Scotians do to keep this province safe and to care for us when we need them most, and we recognize that sometimes they need help too. WCB of Nova Scotia has taken a leadership role in streamlining access to benefits related to mental health. WCB has established a dedicated team of caseworkers to better meet the needs of those with psychological workplace injuries, including PTSD. Those caseworkers receive ongoing education from mental health clinicians. Over the next year, WCB will also develop an evidence-based PTSD prevention program in collaboration with first responders. Making benefits more accessible is an important step in supporting those who have dedicated their lives to making ours safer and better.

We are working with other provinces to take concrete steps to make it easier for businesses to work across our borders. We led the development of and signed the National Occupational Health and Safety Reconciliation Agreement with respect to recognizing common safety standards. The standards include eye and face protection, foot protection, hearing protection, head protection, first aid kit contents, and personal flotation devices. We also developed an Atlantic Regional MOU on mutual recognition that includes personal protective equipment and safety training. Both of these initiatives will support safety for those who come to our province to work or work with a Nova Scotia company that is doing work outside our province.

The safety of our workers and workplaces is always top of mind for us. We will continue to work hard to promote a safety culture and hold workplaces that do not comply to account.

Thank you for giving this time to talk about some of the work under way at the Department of Labour and Advanced Education. In the year ahead, we will continue to focus on the things that make a difference to the lives of Nova Scotians.

THE CHAIR: We’ll now begin with the Progressive Conservative Party for one hour.

The honourable member for Northside-Westmount.

EDDIE ORRELL: I thank the minister for those opening comments. If I could, I’ll start off with the boring budget stuff, and then we’ll get into some fancier, more-detailed questions later. We’ll do the line items first, if you’re okay with that, to get that out of the way. It shouldn’t take that long.

In the Budget Book on Page 16.7, the Higher Education forecast came in at $44 million. From what I’m told, it’s 23 per cent under the original estimate for 2018-19. Most of that seems attributable to much lower student assistance than estimated. Why is it so much lower - $33 million forecast versus $47 million estimate - in that budget line?

LABI KOUSOULIS: As people would be familiar with, a few years ago, we brought in student relief in terms of forgiving loans. As we started to forgive loans, we had a substantial decrease in bad debts, because once the loans were forgiven, there were no more loans to be repaid by the students.

The amount that is there, which amounted to a difference of about $15 million, is the bad debt that has accumulated over the last two or three years because that was put in under the old formula. Going forward, we’ll be adjusting that. If we’re going to be forgiving the loans for the students who graduate, then we don’t need to budget an amount that large for bad debt because there won’t be any bad debt when the loan is forgiven.

EDDIE ORRELL: That debt was written off, basically, or is that just the forecasted estimate?

LABI KOUSOULIS: It wasn’t written off. We anticipated that we would have that much in bad debt, but we had a lot less in bad debt. Because we had a lot less in bad debt, that’s where we get the drop in that amount by $15 million. The first amount there is what we anticipated we would be writing off. The amount we actually wrote off was significantly less because of the change to the student assistance formula.

EDDIE ORRELL: The estimate this year of $46.3 million, which is lower than last year’s, is the amount that you’re expecting you won’t have to write off this year? I’m assuming that’s why it’s different this year. It’s only $1 million lower this year compared to last year.

LABI KOUSOULIS: Because we are now forgiving the loans, the anticipated amount of bad debt will be significantly less because it would only apply to students who don’t repay their loans and don’t graduate. They fall into the debt forgiveness. You’ll have to forgive me, but I missed the nuance of your last question, so I don’t think I quite answered it.

EDDIE ORRELL: I just said the estimate was $46 million this year compared to $47 million last year. That’s a difference of $1 million. The year before it was a difference of $15 million or $16 million approximately. Do you assume that, because of writing the debt off or because you are not going to have as much bad debt, the difference is only going to be $1 million this year, compared to $15 million last year?

This program was just brought in place over the last year or two. Those people who were graduating or will be graduating, the numbers aren’t going to be that great yet, so why such a disparity in the difference?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Where we have that $1 million difference, we have been forgiving loans over the last couple of years, but we were only forgiving the loans that met the federal full debt cap, which was about $28,000. We were forgiving the loan amounts above $28,000.

This year’s budget eliminates that requirement. That amount you are seeing as a difference - we were still forgiving loans, but now going into the future, we are going to be forgiving loans at a larger rate. We are going to be capturing the students who might not have had four full years of federal assistance and never met that $28,560 threshold for federal debt.

EDDIE ORRELL: Is that why the overall estimate goes from $57.515 million to $55.33 million? Is that why the difference in the estimate is that much lower this year, because of the student loan portion of it?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Yes, the member is correct. There is also another aspect to that. If you go to the line above, Universities and Colleges, there was a savings of approximately $1.7 million, which was the SIF program, federal government money available as loans to our universities and institutions. That program has now expired. We are hoping that we will have a future SIF program, as well, but that expiring amounted to a $1.756 million drop.

EDDIE ORRELL: One little thing that troubles me in the Estimates, and the talks that we have had so far is that you are going to eliminate the grants that were given to students who study outside the province for programs that are available here in the province. I have a problem with certain aspects of that because we do have a lot of people who study medicine outside our province. It could be in Toronto, it could be in Newfoundland and Labrador, or it could be in a foreign country.

We don’t have enough med students staying here in the province now. We’re short a lot of doctors. To eliminate that section of grants to students who study outside the province, I think, is doing a real disservice to our students who have to leave because they either can’t get into a university here in the province - because it’s only Dal, and Dal only takes so many people - or would have to wait a significant amount of time, and we would lose them to another profession, another province, or another university.

I am just wondering if that is something that has been thought about in eliminating those grants to students who study outside. I understand if it’s a science degree, and you want to study in New Brunswick. That’s your choice to make. For people who don’t necessarily have that choice or make the choice to get their degree quicker and want to come back and provide service to us, I’m just hoping that might be reconsidered. If that was something that wasn’t considered, can we look at that and/or make a special circumstance for people who need that type of assistance?

[7:15 p.m.]

LABI KOUSOULIS: I did receive some clarification on this. We’ll separate the two aspects. There’s the up-front grant, and there is loan forgiveness. Loan forgiveness is only available to undergrad or your first program, and it is non-professional. The up-front grant, the 40 per cent, would apply to all aspects across all degrees. If the degree is available in the province, and you choose to go outside of the province, then it would not be granted.

The example you gave is if we had a doctor who perhaps wasn’t accepted to Dal Medical School and was accepted to another medical school, would we look at that? Currently, they would not be captured, but that would be something that we could look at as an enhancement because there would be validity to that. We have, in the past year, added a lot more capacity to the Dal Medical School, 25 seats, and we assisted with some funding with that.

As well, those doctors who would be going out of province would also have the opportunity, if they did come back to work in Nova Scotia, to earn loan forgiveness in terms of their total loans, which is a program that the Department of Health and Wellness has to attract doctors to the province.

EDDIE ORRELL: Another thing I was just reminded of is that dental hygienists are the same way. Nova Scotia takes a limited amount, and a lot of students go to Ottawa to be dental hygienists. We would never fill the need for the dental hygienists just in the ones we have trained here in Nova Scotia alone. That’s my concern.

If you look at some of the students who have studied abroad and come back here and work in the province, they do get small loan forgiveness from the province from Health and Wellness, but it’s not enough to cover the vast debt that they have. That student loan that they can get through the province to help them when they’re abroad is huge, and most of them would give you a return-to-service agreement if they were able to keep that and get some of that up front, because some of them just can’t do without it.

I have talked to some of the students studying abroad who have had to drop out because they just didn’t have the money. The banks wouldn’t give them a student loan. They weren’t qualified because they were out of the country. Some of that stuff, with a return-to-service or an agreement to pay it back if they didn’t come back, would be huge for a lot of those students. If that’s something that we could look into and maybe make a special circumstance for hygienists - not people who want to leave because they just don’t want to study in Nova Scotia, but people who want to get their degree and get here as quickly as they can and become productive members - it would be great if you could do that.

I’ll move to Page 17.3, Grants to Universities. There’s a line that says Special Payments. Those special payments have gone down by about 30 per cent from last year’s budget. What’s included in those special payments, and why is there such a significant drop in this year’s budget compared to last year’s budget?

LABI KOUSOULIS: The drop there is back to the Strategic Investment Fund. That reflects the $10.994 million lower investment from the SIF.

EDDIE ORRELL: What are those special payments? What is included in that?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Under Special Payments is university student bursaries and graduate scholarships. It’s also Research Nova Scotia as well as SIF funding.

EDDIE ORRELL: I see that the salary and employee benefits have increased by 3.7 per cent in this year’s budget. Where are those increases concentrated? Is it a specific department? Is it a specific group of people? Is it raises? Is there any way we can indicate why that cost is up?

LABI KOUSOULIS: In the collective bargaining agreement, the pay increase this year was 2 per cent, so that would amount to 2 per cent of the increase. There were five new FTEs added into the department. As well, when people get a pay raise, they don’t only get the negotiated pay raise with the government, they also get their step increases.

Within every position that an individual is in, they might have seven or eight step increases that come per year. Although the general pay raise would be 2 per cent, which is negotiated in the contract, individuals also get their step increases which could be another 1 per cent or 2 per cent. That would make up the total of the 3-plus per cent pay increase across the board in the department.

EDDIE ORRELL: I’ll go now to Page 16.2 and the Operating Costs line item. The forecast is a full 47 per cent below what the estimate was. Why would there be such a difference in the operating costs compared to the estimate in that year?

LABI KOUSOULIS: That’s the same question as your initial one. The $15 million bad debt is reflected there. That was the bad debt that we never had to write off because we were forgiving our student loans. That’s why it’s a drop in $15 million.

EDDIE ORRELL: We talked about up above. It was only $11 million in the difference not $15 million. Anyway, that’s fine.

On Page 16.3, the budget for the Offices of the Minister and Deputy Minister is down 13 per cent. How did you come to those cost savings? Did you take a pay cut, Duff? (Laughter)

LABI KOUSOULIS: I don’t think Duff is going to take a pay cut, but we did have one FTE that was moved out of the department and into policy. It was just moving from the operating unit of the deputy’s area into the overall department.

I will point out that earlier when we were talking about the difference in the loan forgiveness, the $15 million in the line above was the SIF money, which is the federal government loans. They lend money to universities for capital improvements, for building buildings. It’s a loan program, but it is done through the department.

EDDIE ORRELL: Basically, I have about two more questions left on the actual budget. The budget for Administration in the Corporate Policy and Services Branches is down almost 40 per cent. Where were these savings realized?

LABI KOUSOULIS: That savings is due to us transferring a position and money over to the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage to support the MacPhee Centre, the high school centre in Dartmouth which helps our youth.

EDDIE ORRELL: The forecast of spending last year was about 60 per cent below what the estimate spending was. Is there a particular reason why there would be such a difference, 60 per cent?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Just to make sure I’m looking at the same line, the 2018-19 estimate was $4.134 million, and the actual spend was $3.97 million, which is a difference of about $160,000. That’s the part that I was talking about, the funds removed to CCH. I believe the $160,000 amounts to about a 3 per cent reduction. I’m not sure if we’re looking at the same line. I don’t see anything jumping out that’s a 60 per cent reduction.

EDDIE ORRELL: I’m having a hard time finding it myself now. Maybe we’ll go back to that. I had it here, and I don’t know where it went. Anyway, we’ll go back to that. Sorry about that.

Just one last question on the actual budget itself: on Page 16.6, the Apprenticeship Agency went from 50 to 54 staff, and there was an increase in budget of approximately $1 million. Is that just for the staffing? Why was there such a dramatic increase in staff?

LABI KOUSOULIS: That reflects the four FTEs where the department overall did jump up, and it was in the Apprenticeship Agency. The dollar amount increase is money that we’re receiving. As I said in my opening speech, most of the funding that we get on the labour side of things comes through agreements with the federal government. That’s money the federal government has given our department to target women in under-represented trades and in under-represented labour professions so that we can help increase those numbers.

EDDIE ORRELL: When I look at that line, the forecast for 2018-19 was only 46.8 staff. You estimated 50, and you only used 47, we’ll say. Next year, you’re talking about needing 54. Can you explain?

LABI KOUSOULIS: The 50 staff that was estimated would be what the department has approval for. What you see there on the forecast is that they actually directly spent 46.8 FTEs or money to those staff individuals. The reason that you would have an under amount is, there could be somebody on a maternity leave, and you’re holding the position, and sometimes you’re also paying the top-up on EI. It could be that a person retired or has left the position, and it has just been vacant as we try to fill it over a six-month period. Those are generally why we have vacancies, which across the whole Public Service tend to run about 5 per cent. If you look at this amount, it’s running at approximately 6 per cent.

I don’t have the exact details of the three-person underspend. I know from my time at the PSC, that’s generally why we always had it. It was vacancies. When someone leaves a position, it rarely took less than two or three months to fill it for the more entry-level positions, but for more senior leadership positions it could take eight or twelve months. Any other time we hold the positions as well as for parental leaves.

[7:30 p.m.]

EDDIE ORRELL: That’s the question I get asked: if the job was done with less, now you’re going to need more. I like the answer that we work short so we can’t leave it that way. I did that one year in Budget Estimates. I asked the minister at the time about 45 minutes worth of questions, and he wouldn’t answer it that way, so thank you. I appreciate that.

Under the business plan, I look at part of it that says we’re going to deliver consistent, timely, inclusive, and accessible Nova Scotia Works Employment Assistance Services so that Nova Scotians can better understand, prepare for, and fill the needs of the province’s job market, so that employers can find, hire, manage, develop, and retain the talent they need.

What is the cost of the Nova Scotia Works program, because they’re doing more with not less, but approximately the same? In Cape Breton, for example, we have a lot of foreign students going to CBU. Those students are being attached to that Nova Scotia Works program, so they’re working twice as hard with the same numbers. Is there a place in the budget where I can see what their budget is and the cost to that increase in numbers?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Under Nova Scotia Works, the dollar amount that we’re investing in 2019-20 is $23.180 million. I’m not sure if it’s broken down anywhere in the budget as a line item. It’s actually under our total program money which also captures all the funding coming from the federal government, so it’s not broken out. The amount broken out for Nova Scotia Works is $23.180 million, and our spend last year was $23.334 million.

EDDIE ORRELL: On another line it says that you’re going to work collaboratively with the Minister and Ministerial Assistant of Youth to ensure a horizontal government approach. There’s been some talk of a youth secretariat for the province that would work very well in that situation. I’m just wondering, is there any consideration given to someone who would be just a youth-oriented, youth-secretariat type of person to help with that to guide youth employment and youth needs within the province?

LABI KOUSOULIS: For everyone’s information, the Minister of Youth is the Premier, but our department is leading the file for youth opportunities, youth engagement, and for youth attachment to the job market here in Nova Scotia.

Within that mandate, we work collaboratively with other departments, as well, and pull them into the discussion to move the youth agenda forward. It’s a very important aspect of our government. When you go back to the 2013 election, that’s where the Graduate to Opportunity was discussed. We saw the need to actually attach our youth to get that first job, because that’s the hardest one to get.

EDDIE ORRELL: Under the Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency, we talk about the apprenticeship board and I guess I want to know: Can you give me what the makeup of that board is, the breakdown of the people on the board? I guess the big thing is the distribution of those board members throughout the province. Is it equally distributed through all the areas of the province, and what is the makeup of that board?

LABI KOUSOULIS: There are quite a few names here. I’m going to do this as briefly as possible, because I can provide this to you.

As I look at it, they’re broken down in terms of their position, the location where the member is from: Portapique, Dartmouth, Halifax, Mahone Bay, Grand Lake, Halifax-Dartmouth, Lower Sackville, Hubbards, Millbrook, Dartmouth, North Sydney, Debert, Halifax, and Halifax. We can get you a copy of the board breakdown.

EDDIE ORRELL: It seems like there is a less proportionate number of people east of Truro compared to the metro area and the other parts of the province. It’s just that I know apprentices in Cape Breton have a difficult time sometimes in finding someone to work under a Red Seal apprentice. With just one person on that agency, it seems like they’re on the road a lot, they’re doing a lot of travelling. It would seem like a lot of extra work for one person, compared to maybe having someone on the western side of the Island compared to the eastern side of the Island. Those two could work together and form the regular board. If I could have that and discuss that later, that would be great.

The other question I have is about compliance officers for the Department of Labour and Advanced Education. From what I can understand, there are four in the province. There is one who does a lot of administration work, so there are three who do the work of compliance in the whole province.

From my understanding, there are none in Cape Breton. People on job sites in Cape Breton are concerned that they’re required to work in this way, but some people are not working that way and there are no compliance officers in Cape Breton. Is there a reason why there are no compliance officers there, or is it something that’s being looked into?

LABI KOUSOULIS: The area we’re talking about is the apprenticeship officer. Their job is to actually make sure that the apprentices are working in the manner that they’re collecting their hours and doing the work they need to do to get certification.

You are correct, we don’t have an individual in Cape Breton. What does happen is the supervisor of the department travels to Cape Breton once a month and spends a few days on the ground to work with the people who have apprentices in the area.

EDDIE ORRELL: There is also a problem with the compliance officers - not just the apprentices - for general labour, inspections, and so on, from what I understand. Is that the case, and is there someone to look into that?

LABI KOUSOULIS: We actually do have a full complement in Cape Breton in the Sydney office. I’ve been to the office there and met the staff that was on-site who were not in the field. There are seven officers and there are two technical safety officers, as well as two engineers and, in that office, two of the individuals are full time, dedicated on Donkin mine.

EDDIE ORRELL: Under Supports for Mental Health, it says that the Department of Labour and Advanced Education will continue to support the Healthy Minds Nova Scotia suite of mental health products which was launched in October 2018. How much financial support is being devoted to this initiative with the universities; where in the line items is that located?

LABI KOUSOULIS: That amount will be in the MOU. That would come under Assistance to Universities. It is targeted to e-mental health, and it is $600,000. It remains the same over the MOU that is currently being negotiated, but that amount has been negotiated and fixed. It’s a great initiative, that actually started at Acadia University where the student representatives funded it themselves. There are different suites available to them. How it was described to me is when you first come to university, there is high anxiety even going to a class that might have 200 or 300 students in it, which is new from high school. They have the supports available very early on so that your simple anxiety doesn’t escalate to something a lot more.

What was very encouraging to me and why I made this a priority moving forward over the last couple of years is at Acadia University, when they launched this a few years ago, they actually had a dramatic decrease on the wait-list for mental health supports in the area from our health system. When you compare that data to other universities where the wait-list was higher and the students were part of it, essentially I looked at it as an ounce of prevention being a pound of cure, but before we earmarked the money to it, we did turn to professionals. We wanted to actually have it peer reviewed, make sure that it was the best use of our investment, and make sure that there wasn’t another solution that actually could yield better results. When it was peer reviewed it was for this amount of investment and the amount of return was much higher than what the cost was, so we moved ahead with funding it.

EDDIE ORRELL: I read that there’s $600,000 to tech-based interventions. I believe in your opening statement you said that there are professional consultations for people with mental health that call in this tech base. What type of professionals are we talking about there? Are we talking psychologists, psychiatrists, or just crisis-trained people? Where is this tech base out of; is it somewhere here in the province or is it located outside the province?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I don’t have that specific information here, but I can get it and provide it to the member. It’s a very detailed question. We’ve done our test pilots and we funded it for one year, so we are entering into the long-term aspect of it. I wouldn’t want to misspeak as to what the qualifications are of the persons supporting, so we’ll put that information together and get it for you.

EDDIE ORRELL: Where is this - I guess it’s a call centre - located? Is it here in the province? Is it with Nova Scotia professionals or is it professionals outside of the province?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I’ll speak to one aspect of the program as we get clarification from staff on the call centre part of it. There are multiple tools that are available. The tool that I talked to, which is peer to peer, is IT based. When an individual at a university is seeking help, most times they are actually talking to other university students who have gone through training and are able to help that individual. Those students have had training that if the matter needs to be escalated, they know where to direct the individual.

[7:45 p.m.]

There are several IT components, and we’ll get where they are based out of, but the primary IT component is peer to peer. I’m not sure where the software comes from or who developed it, but in terms of the individuals helping others, it’s students helping students at their own institutions.

EDDIE ORRELL: In your opening comments you said they were professional consultations, but they are not, they are peer to peer.

LABI KOUSOULIS: One aspect is peer to peer, but there is also what I spoke about where you can call in, and that’s the one that I’ll get more information on.

As I had said, there were multiple suites of e-tools, so the one e-tool that I just spoke about, which I am very familiar with, is the peer-to-peer one. As it gets escalated from there, that would be where I talked about the call-in centres. That is what I will get more information on in terms of where the professionals are located and what their actual accreditation is, whether they’re psychiatrists or psychologists.

EDDIE ORRELL: The reason I’m asking is that the mental health system in our health care system could use something like that. If we could transfer something like that as a starting point, it would be a good thing.

If we knew the details on that and for the sake of $600,000 for all our universities - I don’t know what the numbers are for who uses that program, but maybe you can get me the numbers, as well, to see how many people are actually using that tech-based system and what the results of some of the outcomes might be. If that’s the case, we might be able to extrapolate some of that into our health care system and help alleviate some of the problems we are having there.

One question I have, and it’s a little bit of a local question, is the talk about moving the Nova Scotia Community College Marconi Campus to the downtown. There has been a study undertaken to help revitalize the downtown area, and a draft report has been completed by the consultant. When will that report be made public?

LABI KOUSOULIS: The report will be public after we make the announcement of where the site is. We are negotiating with, I believe, two or three locations in Sydney, but I’m not sure if we short-listed from three to two; I know we started with three. Once we have the site negotiated and we’ve acquired the site, at that point we would release the report.

At this point, we are not releasing the report just in terms of it having sensitive information that, prior to the site selection, we wouldn’t want released.

EDDIE ORRELL: Can the minister tell me what partners have been engaged in this relocation project? Is it downtown business development, the government, local businesspeople? Can you tell me what partners are engaged in that relocation process?

LABI KOUSOULIS: At this point, for the site selection and negotiation on purchasing the site, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal is the lead, because they take care of government’s transactions in terms of lands. LAE is involved, as well as senior leadership from the NSCC. We are all involved in the site selection, and in terms of negotiating any contracts, that would be in TIR.

EDDIE ORRELL: One other question I have is the harmonized technical safety legislation for the Atlantic region is being planned for the Spring of 2019, which we are into now, with supporting regulatory harmonization by December 2020. Can you tell me at what stage that is? Is it completed and just not announced yet, or does it still have some time to go?

LABI KOUSOULIS: We have signed off on the national OH&S one. The technical safety, which is the specific one that you’re asking for, that’s still in progress, so we haven’t come to an agreement with our other Atlantic Provinces yet.

EDDIE ORRELL: I do see here that there’s an initiative to increase the number of nurse practitioner seats at Dal, which is a good thing. We could use that to help alleviate some of our health care woes, I hope. Can you tell me why this increase is only temporary if we’re going to be short these numbers over the next couple of years? How temporary is it going to be; is it going to be one year, two years, five years? Is this increase only temporary, or is going to be something that we’re going to be able to maintain?

LABI KOUSOULIS: What we’re seeing there is for the next two years we’ve added in each year 25 additional seats. That was the indication the Department of Health and Wellness gave us of the extra amount of nurse practitioners they would need in the short term to meet the demand for the province.

They do monitor that amount on a regular basis, but if it does change, they would bump it up again. At this point they felt that the 50 nurse practitioners over the next two years would bring us up to the point that the regular amount going through the programs would meet the demand for Nova Scotia.

EDDIE ORRELL: They’re telling you that they need 50 more to bring us up to complement and that 50 will be covered in the increase to the Dal numbers. How much is that going to be costing? What’s the investment? Are these 50 nurse practitioners going to be guaranteed to be working here in our province?

LABI KOUSOULIS: The investment for the extra seats that have been identified by the Department of Health and Wellness is $1.6 million.

EDDIE ORRELL: Are they going to be guaranteed to remain in the province and work in the province, or are we training people to leave? Is there a return of service agreement attached to those numbers?

LABI KOUSOULIS: We’ve recruited nurses who are already working, so these are nurses who are upgrading their skills. Although we don’t have them sign a contract to stay, they’re already living in Nova Scotia and working in Nova Scotia, so we anticipate they will stay in Nova Scotia as nurse practitioners.

EDDIE ORRELL: The reason I ask that is, to date, I know there are some nurse practitioners in Cape Breton who haven’t been hired by the Nova Scotia Health Authority. They are people who had worked in the system, went back, took the upgrades, but they’re still working as nurses; we haven’t hired them as nurse practitioners. That’s why I want to know if we’re going to use them as nurse practitioners. If we’re going to train them as nurse practitioners, I hope we’re going to use them as that. They can be one of the sources to help alleviate some of the strain on our system if we use them properly and if we’re able to keep them in the areas that they’re working now. That’s the reason I asked that question.

We talked about student loan forgiveness already; I appreciate that. With the Nova Scotia Works programs, we’re going to develop a diversity and inclusion plan that incorporates accessibility so that the system meets the employment service needs of Nova Scotians. Have we been looking into the cost of that? People with disabilities usually take more interventions, usually higher costs. What are the numbers of people with visible disabilities who are going through the Nova Scotia Works program? Are we getting the numbers that we were getting before we amalgamated the services?

LABI KOUSOULIS: When we first amalgamed the work centres, we did measure that. There was an increase, but we don’t have that exact amount here right now - or perhaps we do. I’ll get you that amount in one second.

While that amount is coming, and talking about the nurse practitioners, it would be concerning if there are ones in Cape Breton who are not working, because they are part of the solution in terms of primary health care. If you know of any, I’d be more than happy to pass on information through government in terms of getting them to maximize their skills, because that is a skill set that helps meet the needs of Nova Scotians.

I have a regional breakdown. The individuals who are designated are visible minorities, persons with disabilities, immigrants, African Nova Scotians, Aboriginals, and Francophonie.

Actually, pre-transformation, the amount of individuals in Cape Breton went from 19 per cent of the people they helped, up to 22 per cent; in the Northern Zone it went from 20 per cent to 21 per cent; in the Central Zone it went from 28 per cent of the individuals helped, up to 34 per cent; and in the SS/V Zone it went from 29 per cent of the individuals, up to 37 per cent. We’ve seen improvements in all zones and, in some zones, significant improvements in terms of the individuals being helped.

EDDIE ORRELL: You might have said this in your opening statement; I might have missed it. We talked about the Sandbox Project being expanded. Do we know exactly how many of the projects have resulted in business start-ups or incorporated businesses within the province, and where is that breakdown?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I would say there have been 270 companies that have started from the Sandbox, but the intent of the Sandbox wasn’t to actually have a company start. This came back from visiting - when the Premier and all the university presidents and the president of NSCC visited Waterloo and actually saw what an entrepreneurial climate looks like. As we know, Waterloo was the leader in Canada.

The intent of the Sandbox is to match young people with people who are well along in their careers. The fact that 270 companies have been started from it is a great by-product, but the value is in the individuals having a mentorship program. I think the value is in individuals seeing an entrepreneurial career path, which is starting their own business as opposed to going to work for someone else. I think that the more entrepreneurial the province is, the more we will see declining unemployment, and we will see greater job opportunities and higher paying jobs as well.

[8:00 p.m.]

EDDIE ORRELL: How much are we investing in Sandbox this year compared to last year, and how many more are we going to have? I think you might have said that in your opening statement, but I missed it.

LABI KOUSOULIS: The dollar amount is $800,000. We’ve been funding it the last couple of years, but now we’re annualizing it and putting it right into the MOU. There are 10 sandboxes across the province.

EDDIE ORRELL: The Research Nova Scotia monies that were moved over last year, what is that investment this year and where can I find that in the budget?

LABI KOUSOULIS: In our budget to Research Nova Scotia, you will see two amounts; one is $2 million that goes directly into research grants, and the other is $175,000 that goes to operations. The other aspect of that fund comes from the Department of Health and Wellness. The Health and Wellness dollar amount as well as the $2 million from the Department of Labour and Advanced Education would have been the aggregate amount that was going into the previous Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation.

The Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation has been rolled up into the new Research Nova Scotia, but the dollar amount that was going into research annually will continue to do so through the two departments. What you have now with Research Nova Scotia, the new board, is you have two amounts that government provided them, which is provided in a fund type of amount. They don’t spend all the money in year one. The money is transferred over and, as they get viable research opportunities, they start dwindling the fund down. We have made two investments in that amount over and above the annualized $5 million approximately that used to go to the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation. The annualized, two lump-sum funds were initially $20 million and then $25 million, for a total of $45 million. If memory serves me correctly, I believe they’re approximately halfway through that amount of funding.

EDDIE ORRELL: I’m hoping it will be a quick one then. In the Budget Address, the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board said that the Graduate to Opportunity program, since 2015, has funded close to 800 full-time positions with 500 different employers. We’ve had time now for people to go through the 2015, 2016, and 2017 part of it where their first year, I think, is 25 per cent, and the second year is 12.5 per cent. How many of those positions after the second year have remained with the initial company they started with; have all those 800 funded full-time positions been used; and how many have stayed in that position since the program started?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I can provide you a breakdown. I actually did provide it to your counterpart during Question Period one day. There were 1,111 positions approved, and 810 graduates were hired into those positions. Sometimes the company can make an application, but if they don’t find the right fit, although there’s an approval in place, they don’t hire anyone, and we only pay out after an individual is hired and they’ve been paid. Out of the 810 graduates hired, the retention rate after two years of them working and staying with the companies is 609, which works out to about 75 per cent.

I’d say it’s pretty successful if 75 per cent of the individuals are staying past the two-year amount. I can table a copy of that for the member.

EDDIE ORRELL: Mr. Chair, thank you to the minister for those answers.

THE CHAIR: Just to make things less complicated, do you want to use the two minutes?

EDDIE ORRELL: No, I’ll just let my counterpart take over.

THE CHAIR: We will now move to the New Democratic Party caucus for 60 minutes.

The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre.

TAMMY MARTIN: A couple of weeks ago we chatted, and I talked to the minister about presumptive coverage with firefighters and introduced a bill to expand the coverage. At the time, the minister talked about changing the Act in order to include presumptive coverage.

I, too, think the WCB Act needs to be completely overhauled, but why does that have to happen before presumptive coverage comes into play? To that end, I don’t see why we have to wait, because people need the coverage now. Why can’t we cover these people now, do whatever else we need to do, and then cover them then?

LABI KOUSOULIS: In terms of the coverage that we’re going to be bringing in for our first responders - firefighters and others - the push from the Fire Service Association was because there was a federal fund put together which allows for a lump-sum payout if a firefighter has certain types of cancers and might perish from those cancers.

That is what the rush was on the side of the firefighters. If we can get this in place, then Nova Scotia can match up with the federal government in terms of providing this death benefit. As we dig into the death benefit more, the death benefit is there for our firefighters regardless of what the coverage is for Workers’ Compensation in Nova Scotia.

In terms of the legislation coming in, the reason we’re waiting until the Fall is because there’s a lot of due diligence done in legislation and a lot of times when a piece of legislation comes in very quickly, items can be missed on it. You also have to go through your lawyers and go through past legislation to make sure that legislation is not conflicting now with past and to make sure that we didn’t trigger anything that might jeopardize any lump-sum benefits that the federal government has in place and actually have a negative effect on our firefighters.

I had indicated last Fall that this was an area we were looking at, and why I had indicated it is because when we brought in the PTSD coverage for firefighters, there was a real gap and the gap was from firefighters who aren’t covered by the Workers’ Compensation Board. We know that approximately a bit over half of our firefighters in Nova Scotia currently have coverage that is not through the Workers’ Compensation Board. More alarming to me is that a much higher percentage of volunteer firefighters do not have coverage under Workers’ Compensation nor any other type of insurance.

In terms of our due diligence, it’s not only to capture the cancers, but it’s to capture the firefighters to make sure that they do have the coverage, whether it is through WCB or through their own municipal insurance policies. More importantly, it’s also to capture that large group who’s missed right now, which is our volunteer firefighters. They’re doing the exact same work and getting exposed to the exact same chemicals or types of contaminants as firefighters. They’re also developing these diseases. It’s just a matter of making it right, making it wholesome.

As well, we’re also looking at all the cancers in terms of making sure we don’t miss any, because we don’t want to be doing legislation over and over again. I had met with firefighters approximately a year ago after PTSD was brought in and told them this is an area we were looking at and we will be moving forward with it. I am very hopeful, and I think we can meet the timeline of having it done in the Fall legislative sitting.

TAMMY MARTIN: To clarify, then, does the minister expect to have the legislation passed to include all firefighters this Fall session?

LABI KOUSOULIS: That’s exactly what we’re looking at now. It’s like, how do we capture all firefighters? That’s what we have all the lawyers working on. I asked the simple question: If we’re going to legislate it, whether they’re with WCB or not, do we have the authority to say that this is the minimum coverage our first responders have to have? That’s what I’m waiting on to get the answer back.

I believe no other province in Canada has actually done this, but in many other provinces, their firefighters automatically have to be covered by their own provincial WCB. Here in Nova Scotia, the way we’re set up - WCB for municipalities - the municipalities are able to opt out. When PTSD coverage came in, although HRM has an agreement that they will not offer anything less than WCB, they have not gone a step of offering PTSD coverage to their first responders. I’m hoping they will change that.

I’m having discussions in terms of these are very important positions and they do a great public service. We have to make sure that they’re getting all the supports they can.

TAMMY MARTIN: I completely agree. They do a wonderful service.

I’d like to talk to the minister now about minimum wage and the fact that Nova Scotia is the only province that has a two-tiered minimum-wage system. The minister mentioned in Question Period that there are costs associated with bringing on new employees because they’re inexperienced, et cetera.

I’m wondering if the minister can talk about any efforts that the department has made to bridge those income gaps or losses so that all employees could be paid the same. I believe that when we pay people a living wage and pay everybody equitably, then workforce productivity goes up and the sick time and the breaks and all of those things go down.

LABI KOUSOULIS: From day one, minimum wage is one you want to get right, because you want to make sure people are getting paid a fair wage, but you also want to make sure there are no negative consequences and you don’t move too fast and have individuals with their hours reduced or laid off from positions as well.

In terms of our inexperienced-worker rate, which I believe is a 60 cent or 75 cent difference - 50 cents different - when you actually look at that over the first three-month period that an individual would be hired, it amounts to approximately $250, if they’re working full time, that they would earn as a lower amount.

Most provinces have a couple of different tiers of minimum wage. I believe that is the right tool, because I think that, realistically speaking, you can’t just set one minimum wage and have it work across the board. Ontario has a $3 differential for individuals 18 and under. Other provinces have a tip differential - Quebec has one, and I believe Alberta had one, but they did recently rescind it. I’m not sure which other provinces have one. Tip earners would be paid - I believe in Quebec it’s about $1 less than non-tip earners. At the same time, they would also get tip protection, which a lot of individuals in the industry have said would be a lot more valuable than a $1 pay increase for them, because of the large amounts of tip payouts that some restaurant owners take from their employees.

In terms of the inexperienced 50 cent wage difference, the question that you had asked in Question Period, maybe we do have to tighten it up. I look at it as you’re first hired, it’s your first job, you’re going to get paid a lower amount. Hopefully it’s because you’re 16 years old and living at home, so it’s a different work environment. The intent of it is not to capture a 30-year-old who’s on multiple jobs and an employer, who’s just being dishonest frankly, is going to ding you for the 50 cents. That’s not the intent of it.

[8:15 p.m.]

In terms of if we have to look at a different model that might capture youth or might capture a difference or might capture that you can only apply it once to an individual’s career in the first block of hours they work - those are all things that we have discussed in the department in terms of how to make it work and get it right. That’s the intent of it: it’s your first job, you’re being paid 50 cents less, but when you’re later on in your career and you have a few jobs on your resumé, that should not be the case that you don’t have the expertise to earn the minimum wage.

TAMMY MARTIN: Is it right that, say, as an 18-year-old single mom going out to work for the first time and trying to provide for my family, I should expect 50 cents less or, as you said, a 30-year-old who, for whatever reason, has had several jobs but all different and still providing for a young family? Is it right that those people should expect a two-tiered minimum-wage scheme in Nova Scotia?

LABI KOUSOULIS: This is the minimum wage we’ve had under our government, under your government, under the Progressive Conservative government. I’m not saying if it’s right or wrong. What I’m saying is that there’s a merit to an individual who has no skills that when they’re hired, an employer can recoup 50 cents an hour for only the first three months that that individual is working.

As I had indicated - and I’m not supporting or not supporting these when I talk about what other provinces do - those other provinces have other ways of having more than one minimum wage. We’re not the only province that does have this. In terms of if it’s right that an 18-year-old or under, like Ontario has, gets paid $3 less, I’d have to see data on it. In terms of all decisions around minimum wage, it’s easy for it to become an emotional decision, but what we always try to do is make it a decision that is based on fact and that is going to allow for people to thrive and to reach full employment.

As well, we don’t want to shock small businesses. I think the increase that was done by the board was the right increase, because I had complaints from workers and from business owners. I find when both sides are not happy with you, you probably struck a pretty good middle ground. That means you hit the proper amount for you to move forward and allow the businesses to not go bankrupt, because that would have a very negative effect, but to allow the workers to keep earning a wage that is more in line with what the low-income cut-off is, which is what was guided by that increase.

TAMMY MARTIN: Keeping on with minimum wage, as the minister is aware, we believe that the minimum wage should be higher, and we also believe that it puts spending power back into the pockets of the residents of Nova Scotia. It improves the economy. It stimulates the economy. If people are making more money, data typically shows and supports that they will spend more money, that they won’t save it.

Just last year, the Premier said that the Premier had historical data that proved that low-wage workers in Nova Scotia lost purchasing power when minimum wages didn’t increase significantly in keeping up with other jurisdictions across the country. Do you have any information or data that you could table to support that?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I don’t have specific data like that on hand, but I can check with the department and see what we do have.

As we know, the minimum wage is set by a board that is made up of labour representatives and employer representatives. The last half-dozen years or so, they’ve been coming in with increases that are about 10 to 15 cents every year, which is in line with inflation, because that’s what the legislation lays out.

Without having had the opportunity to change the legislation, I asked them, within the parameters of the legislation, let’s look at this differently. I said, look at the data and come back to me with an increase or whatever it could be. I don’t know where it is going to land, but whatever you come back with, it has to work for Nova Scotians, and it has to work for our province. I gave ideas - I said to look at what other provinces are doing, don’t leave any tool that you have to yourself unturned, and look at the data.

One aspect I do know, and it’s very well documented, is that your Party believes in a $15 minimum wage. I think that would be very detrimental to people because the data says it is. The only province that has the $15 minimum wage now is Alberta, and the makeup of their economy over history was one where there were very few jobs earning even $15 an hour.

In terms of having that minimum wage, it almost became anecdotal, because there are very well-documented examples in Alberta that getting a job at Tim Hortons pays you $19 an hour, so the $15 an hour for Alberta doesn’t reflect the makeup of their labour force.

I followed Ontario very closely, and actually, what formulated my thoughts when I spoke with the board is, I was at a Labour Ministers’ meeting, and I spent quite a bit of time talking to the Ontario Labour Minister. I asked where he came up with $15, why they landed on that amount. He said that what they did is looked at all the municipalities in the province, and in all except two, you were required to make $15 an hour to not be living in poverty.

As he said this, I thought, well, that makes sense. It makes sense for Ontario as to why they would go there. They had used a bit of a different formula. They used one where it wasn’t like one income earner; it was like two income earners meant that you needed to earn a certain amount to be able to afford your rent in Toronto, TTC passes, and so on and so forth. It was a solution that was geared toward Ontario.

Having known that, I tracked what happened in Ontario. The first jump they took, with the $3 from $11 to $14, which was now about a year and a bit ago - they did not have a reduction in minimum-wage earners, which was good data, but they had a significant reduction in the hours those minimum-wage earners were given.

That, to me, is the unintended consequence: I don’t lose my job, but I lose a lot of my hours, and once I lose my hours, that $3 pay raise evaporates because the businesses could not handle that pay increase. That is one thing I was very conscious of.

When I worked with our board, I said that we have to look at this from both sides. We can’t shock our local business community, but at the same time, if they are paying lower than what they should be paying, they don’t get a free ride. We have to bring them up.

I thought the board did excellent work. They came back with the 25 cents, which was going to be a bit over the inflation increase every year, but they added an extra rider on it, which was 35 cents, which over the three years was $1.05. That would bring up our minimum to the LICO standard, which is the Low-Income Cut-off for what you need to earn.

Two years from today we will be at the $12.65 minimum wage which, based on what other provinces are projecting, puts us in the top one-third in the country in terms of what our minimum wage is versus the other provinces. It’s not to say another province might not jump ahead and do another leapfrog with us, but at that point we will take a look at it again.

TAMMY MARTIN: Unfortunately, what the minister says - you know, there is good data, and that’s probably very true, but we also have data that minimum wage is not providing a living wage for so many Nova Scotians that their needs are going unmet. If you go to work in Nova Scotia and you make less than $15 an hour, you are giving something up. You are giving up electricity, or you might be giving up food. You might not be buying the best food. There are severe circumstances, and I’ll say that instead of being proactive, we’re being reactive.

We’re paying somebody less than how they can afford to live, and then they have health concerns. They may have to reach out to the Department of Community Services. There are so many unintended consequences for a low wage.

I would just like to ask the minister: Should that be the fate of somebody who works full time in Nova Scotia, that they have to choose between food and oil?

LABI KOUSOULIS: If you look at the minimum wage increase, the 55 cents, that amounts to about $1,100 a year of a pay raise for a person earning minimum wage who works full time. Over the three years, that’s going to be approximately $3,000 as a pay raise. I have many constituents I talk to who are in that income level, and many of them say that will be a significant difference for them.

I think the bigger challenge - and this is one that we need to look at, and it’s one where our department does a lot of work with Nova Scotians - is when you look at minimum wage, that’s an unskilled-labour rate. What we should be having our conversation around is, let’s give our workforce the skills they need so that they’re not even in the minimum-wage type of environment, that they’re earning more than minimum wage, that they’re marketable for jobs that are $18-plus an hour, where it’s not just a matter of putting food on a table and being able to buy a bus pass and pay your rent, where you’re now putting away money for your kids’ education and for your RSP. We also have individuals who at retirement - we have in the Province of Nova Scotia 12,000 subsidized apartments. That’s because people at retirement haven’t earned enough and don’t earn enough under CPP or through their pension. That’s another cost to it.

I think that - and this comes to many aspects of what the department does in terms of making university accessible - eliminating apprenticeship fees, making sure the 8,000 people I spoke about in my opening speech, who got their high school equivalency, that people are reaching their full potential so that they’re not minimum-wage earners.

In terms of that, minimum wage does have a role to play. This is one that we’re constantly discussing because, in my view, there are certain large organizations that do pay minimum wage or slightly above it that could afford to pay a lot more. At the same time, we have some organizations or a lot of smaller organizations that fill a community need, that without having a minimum-wage worker there, they wouldn’t operate, and we’d lose the benefit of having those.

In terms of my view on it - and I have actually even asked the staff to look into it - can we have a two-tiered minimum wage? Let’s go after the large multinationals for more and go from there, because I think it could really work, but in terms of it, no other jurisdiction does it and there are a lot of factors involved in it.

I think the approach we took with minimum wage is the right approach, because it’s based on data. The Nova Scotia solution in two years, when we hit $12.55, an individual working full time earning that is above the low-income cut-off rate for the province.

TAMMY MARTIN: I’d like to talk briefly about two final points before I pass it over to my colleague. The first is about the labour standards. Do you keep data on the types of violations? How many violations would you have on labour standards per year? What type of violations are they? Do you follow data to try to explain why you have them? Is there a certain amount of money in your budget that is allotted for any fines or anything like that?

[8:30 p.m.]

LABI KOUSOULIS: Can I ask you to specify? On labour standards, are we talking safety, are we talking about not following apprenticeship rules? We have different compliance officers for many different types of areas. It could be under trades, or it could be health and safety. If you wanted all of them, I ask staff to put together some data on it. If you’re thinking of one specific part, I’ll see if I can extrapolate that information now.

TAMMY MARTIN: I know that’s a loaded question, so I would be happy to wait and have that data provided, and also, if there is a line item in your budget that allows for specific penalties or fines.

LABI KOUSOULIS: While staff gets that information, I’ll talk about the penalties or fines. I’ll talk about it from the occupational health and safety point. The previous model for safety was a punitive one where if a company messes up, you fine them. The culture changed. I don’t remember what year it changed, but in the last decade, it’s changed, and now the occupational health and safety officers work with the companies.

I’ll give you a quick little story. I had a very large developer here in the city telling me he was on his job site and they were looking at something with his general contractor. They weren’t quite sure how they should work with it from a safety perspective. The developer said to me his foreman said to him, well, I’m going to call the Department of Labour and Advanced Education and ask. He was just kind of shocked. He said, no, don’t call them. I’ve got a working relationship with them. I’ll call, I’ll ask the question, I’ll get the answer, and we’ll be compliant.

His mindset from developing for the last 20 or 30 years was that if the Department of Labour and Advanced Education is coming in, we’re coming in with a stick and we’re going to whack you.

What it has changed to is, when we’re coming in, we’re coming in and working as partners, because a lot of safety aspects can’t be covered in the book. You have to work for the individual job site. You have to work for the case that is in front of you.

In terms of a dollar amount that we’re fining, I think it would be nominal across the province, but if you looked at the data, and as I get feedback on the data, the amount of incidents and harm happening on a job to the workforce is steadily declining. The culture is changing. The way safety is viewed is changing. The way the department works with the private sector has changed as well.

We’ll endeavour to get you the breakdown, and what the dollar amount of fines is as well.

TAMMY MARTIN: Assuming that there still are some violations, what is the procedure if it’s reported or if an employee calls - let’s say it’s an OH&S - is each and every incident followed up with an investigation?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Complaints can come in various different ways. They can come in anonymously through our 1-800 labour number. They can come in in a more formal manner.

When we get complaints, we reach out to the employer and we start discussing with them to see what - I guess you’d just have a conversation at first, the start of an investigation. At that point, it either amounts to it being a misunderstanding and it’s cleared up, or it could be that it’s something more serious that could get to punitive action.

Punitive action is not our goal. Our goal is to always have the companies be in compliance, and that’s where we do go in that collaborative manner that I had spoken about earlier in terms of working with the employer to make sure that they are following all the safety and what they have to pay their employees.

A couple of quick examples I could give that were in the news are the coffee shop employees who weren’t being paid in Nova Scotia. As soon as we got complaints, our officers were on the scene. Also, as you’d be aware, the shut down of the call centre in Cape Breton, as soon as we got complaints back in the Fall, we froze their bank account. When we saw that they were not paying their employees, it made us a little nervous to know what was going on.

We have the authority within the department, much like Revenue Canada, to seize funds out of a bank account, and that was the first step we took. The funds that were seized ended up in a bankruptcy procedure, so we never collected on it, but it allowed for that money, wherever it lands in terms of the creditors, not to have been pulled out by the company and who knows where it went.

TAMMY MARTIN: That’s good to know; thank you for that.

My final question is about the Donkin mine, with the wall cavings and methane sparks that all happened in March. Over the last little while there have been several different complaints and worries. We also understand it’s been suggested that some staff not stay on there because they don’t feel it is safe, and maybe some of the same staff are those pushing for a union.

We have been told that anybody who is pushing to have the Donkin mine unionized would be pushed out. What has the department done to investigate and/or solve these safety issues? Does the minister not agree that, like in every other mine across North America, as far as I know, having a union in place would work for the betterment of everybody involved?

LABI KOUSOULIS: As the Labour and Advanced Education Minister, I am neutral in these matters, so whether a workforce should or should not be unionized is a matter for the workers who work there.

The laws are in place for how certification happens, so that is completely up to the workers. I have no opinion on whether they should be certified or whether it is good for them, or whether they should not be certified or whether that is good for them.

In terms specifically of the Donkin mine - and I’ve communicated this many times - earlier I spoke about how we have two dedicated staff in Cape Breton on the Donkin mine. They do announced and unannounced inspections. They work with the mine on an ongoing basis. Their priority, and from the feedback I get from them, the mine’s priority, is worker safety.

There is a lot at risk to the mine to have any accident at the mine, because it results in a shutdown. We have already shut the mine down on two occasions. One was a generator not working, and the other one was the partial roof collapses that you mentioned before. Those are very costly to the company. The company doesn’t want shutdowns, because they are still paying costs but not generating revenue. I believe on a daily basis, when that mine is shut down, they are losing about a quarter-million dollars, because they still have their costs but no revenue coming in. In terms of punitive, it’s quite heavy-handed.

I’ve spoken with senior leadership at the mine. They have, I believe, approximately 15 mines across North America. What they have communicated to me, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, is that safety in all their mines is top priority, because any workplace accident is bad for business.

If one mine has any type of workplace accident, then all the mines are put in jeopardy, because it is a reflection on the organization. If we saw an accident happen at one of their mines elsewhere, we would probably ramp up our investigations or start looking at what happened there and if there is a possibility it could happen here.

The scientists have gone into the mine and looked at the roof collapse. Just one second, I want to make sure I can say this, that it’s a matter of public record, before I do.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to release anything that wasn’t public. In terms of what they’ve done at the mine now, they’ve reconfigured the way they’re mining to allow for a much stronger type of roof. The way they were mining allowed for pieces of the roof to be collapsing, and now what they’re doing is looking at a different way so that the roof is much stronger, and hopefully, that will never happen again.

TAMMY MARTIN: A quarter-million dollars is nothing compared to a life that is lost. We do not want to see anything like Westray again, and I would urge the minister to consider an automatic certification in the Donkin mine.

I’d like to now pass it over to my colleague.

THE CHAIR: Just to be clear, we’re wrapping up with this department tonight? Your House Leader said it was up to both of you.

LENORE ZANN: Hopefully, yes. We should be.

THE CHAIR: The honourable member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River.

LENORE ZANN: We’re going to move on to Advanced Education, if that’s okay. Just to put on a different hat here, the operating grant to universities is being basically advertised as a 1 per cent increase. When you take into consideration inflation and the cost of living, it is an effective cut. Would you agree with that?

LABI KOUSOULIS: Inflation is measured by CPI, which is the cost of goods. Although a university would have some of those items in their expenses, primarily a university has a different makeup than CPI, so I wouldn’t comment as to what would amount to a university’s inflationary amount.

The 1 per cent is a real increase in their funding. I would say, based on the feedback I receive from the universities - as well, we shouldn’t forget the fact that there’s another 1 per cent in terms of sandboxes, sexual violence funding, and e-mental health funding - so there’s 2 per cent more in the upcoming MOU that will be going to universities. I wouldn’t say that’s any type of cut.

LENORE ZANN: There still seems to be a lack of protections for international students. I know that the students have been asking, and we’ve also been lobbying for providing MSI coverage on day one of a student attending university. We’re seeing a lot of incredibly aggressive tuition fee proposals, as well, that seems to be coming down the pipes.

For instance, at Dal, international students are looking at an $8,000 to $10,000 increase over the next four years, and the university’s own reports list the 1 per cent funding increase from government as a direct contributor to that decision. What are you looking at trying to do to try to help international students? Is there anything in particular? It’s not in this budget.

LABI KOUSOULIS: Government doesn’t run universities. We provide assistance to universities, but they have their own boards. They make their own decisions in terms of tuition. The part that we regulate is the 3 per cent increase, which would be for the Nova Scotia students. That is because Nova Scotia students are the ones whose families are paying into tax revenues of the province, so that’s what we’re concerned with. That’s where we also provide funding for our Nova Scotia students of a $1,283 bursary off the tuition for every Nova Scotia student.

[8:45 p.m.]

That’s the area that we’re very prescriptive in. If we started getting prescriptive in other areas, it also becomes a tipping point that we’re pretty much almost running the universities and taking them over. The universities are all independent. They all have their own mix of students. They have their own mix of needs. They have their own ways that they market and attract students.

In terms of international students, we have more international students in Nova Scotia than any other province. If Dalhousie was looking at an increase - I know currently, many students I’ve talked to - even when I’ve looked at programs between Dalhousie and the University of Toronto, we are very low in terms of what we’re charging our international students.

I had an opportunity to speak to a few students and ask them why they came to Nova Scotia, and they said it was the cheapest rates they could find anywhere they looked. They looked in England, they looked across Canada, they looked across the United States, and they said they wanted a high-quality institution, which they got, and they said this was the best rate they could find as well.

When it comes to international students, the universities set that rate. We don’t get involved in the day-to-day operations and day-to-day dollar amounts of the universities and what they’re going to set.

LENORE ZANN: As you mentioned, Dal’s international student population has grown by 226 per cent. That’s a lot, but the university has received no increase in government support for these students. Dal is saying that although international students add to the diversity and richness of the campus, it also puts a larger strain on the support in teaching systems than for domestic students. Do you agree with Dalhousie’s assessment of that issue?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I would have to see the full context of it, but what I can say is, when you look at what we’re charging our university students, we’re actually the seventh-least-expensive province in all of Canada. In terms of our increases on tuition on international students, we are actually lagging the rest of Canada. They have higher percentage tuition increases versus Nova Scotia.

The data that you just shared - and I don’t have it in front of me, but I’ll take it as fact - where Dalhousie’s international students have increased by 226 per cent, that alone just tells you that it’s a good offering, it’s affordable, and that’s why university students are coming.

In terms of the rate that international students pay, it’s generally about double the rate of a Nova Scotia student or a Canadian student, and that’s to reflect the full cost of education. When you look at the assistance that the province gives to universities, it runs about 40 per cent of a university’s funding. That is the subsidy that Nova Scotia or Canadian students get attending that university. If they’re paying about $7,000 in tuition, the real cost of that tuition is probably about $13,000 to $14,000. Nova Scotia students have the added benefit of getting a $1,283 bursary off that tuition, but the international student pays the full ride. Dalhousie, or any other institution in Canada, has to set that amount, because they know what their cost structure is.

In terms of having a student whose family has never paid into our tax base receive funding from the government, I just don’t see how we would defend that or move that forward. When the students come, they should bear the cost of the education. Even when they do bear the cost of the education, our data shows that it’s still one of the least expensive options that they can receive anywhere in the world for their post-secondary.

LENORE ZANN: However, does the minister think that it’s appropriate to fund our public services on the backs of youth we’re trying to recruit to actually stay here after graduation?

LABI KOUSOULIS: In terms of our investments in youth, I spoke in my opening remarks about how we have made significant investments in making university attainable for low-income Nova Scotians. We have provided the benefit for our graduates to have full loan forgiveness. Our youth programs have resulted in lower youth unemployment. It’s not only the first time since the late 1980s that we’ve had any year of youth net influx into the province, but we just had three years in a row.

When I look at the macro data, our approach is working. I can’t pinpoint one item, because it’s not like we’re in a baseball game and we hit a home run, but I’d say we hit a lot of bunts and got onto base quite a bit. If somebody asked why we’re retaining youth now and we weren’t before, I’d say, well, we have Graduate to Opportunity. We have Innovate to Opportunity. We have changes in the hiring that was done at the government, where up until 2014, you couldn’t get a job in the Government of Nova Scotia unless you had two years’ experience, which wiped every single graduate out of our colleges and universities. That was changed, and we now have upwards of 2,000 new youth in the Public Service.

We have other programs to keep our youth here. We funded Sandboxes. We fund Volta Labs and COVE. We’ve put $45 million of new money into research.

All of these items are opportunities for our youth. When you look at the macro data, they’re staying here. In terms of if we’re supporting our youth, youth unemployment is down. Overall unemployment is down. The funding we’re giving to universities is higher. I would say that we’re supporting our youth and our universities quite a bit.

LENORE ZANN: I wasn’t talking about just Nova Scotian youth. I meant international students. As I said before, there’s going to be an $8,000 to $10,000 increase in their tuition over the next four years, and the universities are saying that it’s because that 1 per cent increase isn’t exactly enough. It’s a direct contributor to their decision to have to raise those tuition fees.

Here we are trying to recruit these international students to stay, because obviously we need immigrants, but I know a number of them - my nephew is dating one of them, from Serbia - and they’re looking at it and saying that they don’t know if they can come back. They’re only in first year university at Dal. Does that not concern you, that they’re going up so high, between $8,000 and $10,000 over the next four years?

LABI KOUSOULIS: As I mentioned earlier, the international students I talked to, when they pick why they came here, not only do they talk about the quality of universities, but they tell me that this was the least expensive option to them.

When you look at the supports to universities I was talking about, when I talked about the $45 million that was put into research, many of the recipients of that money are international students. I’ve met them at various announcements, and I would say a high percentage of them are international students. When you look at Graduate to Opportunity and Innovate to Opportunity, international students can apply for those. The changes made to our immigration stream for graduates out of our universities applies to international students to stay here and work.

When we give funding to universities, when the funding goes there, a lot of it goes into buildings. In the last few years we’ve had funding to support buildings on campuses right across the province. That not only supports our local students but international students.

I will go down to the bottom line: when it comes to setting the tuition rate of an international student, that’s up to the institution. They need to look at their market to know who they are competing with, what they are charging, and what am I charging? If I do have an increase, are they going to be competitive?

Dalhousie, as you say, has increased their international students by 226 per cent in the last period of time. They have to make their own business decisions based on what data they have out there and what their competition’s doing, to keep attracting these students to their institutions.

LENORE ZANN: I understand that it’s up to the universities to charge whatever they want to charge, but there was supposed to be a one-time reset button that was hit a few years ago, and it seems like it is being reset every year now. Universities are saying it’s because that 1 per cent is not enough, especially when it goes with the cost of inflation and the cost of living.

I know that the minister is quite fond of blaming the NDP for all of this, but again, the NDP hasn’t been in power for six, almost seven years now.

Is there any appetite in giving the universities more funding so they can actually help with tuition fees and not raise the tuition fees as high as they are doing?

LABI KOUSOULIS: If we go back to the university funding, you’re looking at a 1 per cent increase and thinking that’s all we are funding, but that’s just the increase that is in the MOU. There are still other monies that are funded.

If we go back to the last three NDP budgets, the amount given to universities was $387 million, then it went to $380 million, and then it went to $336 million in 2013-14. When we came into government, our first budget was 2014-15 and we were at $336 million. When we talked about helping universities more and increasing their funding, it went to $370 million; the next year it was $375 million; the next year it was $441 million; last year it went to $475 million; and this year it is $430 million.

Outside of the MOU, we provided more funding to St. F.X., $3.95 million a year; Kings is $2.2 million a year - and these are all added to the base funding; Sainte-Anne is $250,000 a year; and CBU, for their art gallery and Beaton Institute, is $700,000 a year. In this budget there is a one-time payment for deferred maintenance of $3.6 million, so that amounts to approximately $5.5 million or so.

If you go to last year in terms of monies that we have put into universities, we put additional investment into the Research Nova Scotia Trust at $20 million; an $11 million investment into the Saint Mary’s Entrepreneurship, Discovery and Innovation Hub; for the Dalhousie Art Centre renovation, we provided $10 million to Dalhousie; and we provided $1.5 million for the innovation team.

That year, outside of the MOU, was an increase of $43 million. If you go back to 2016-17, we had an increase in the Research Nova Scotia Trust of $25 million; federal funding for the SIF program of $19.7 million; Dalhousie’s Ocean Frontier Institute is $4.5 million; St. F.X.’s Mulroney Institute is $4 million; various investments in research and innovation infrastructure is $4.3 million; and the Acadia operating funding was annualized that year at $3.5 million.

If you are going to look at the MOU, you are only actually analyzing funding to universities on one single aspect, which doesn’t capture the total picture.

If you want a comfort level as to where our funding has gone, when we came into government, funding to universities was $336 million. As of today, it sits at $430 million, which is an increase of about $100 million, which is about 25 per cent, so in five or six years we’ve actually been averaging about 5 per cent to 6 per cent of an increase.

It hasn’t all gone into operating, but Dalhousie’s Arts Centre was crumbling, and they needed that investment. Saint Mary’s was bursting at the seams in terms of the investment they needed for their new Entrepreneurship Centre. Four universities needed bump-ups to their base funding. That’s not part of the 1 per cent - the $4 million I mentioned, the $2.2 million, the other $4 million, and the other $1.7 million for CBU, but those are now in the base funding of the MOU, and not only do they get that bump-up but they get 1 per cent on top of that every year.

In terms of universities, what I can say is that they are a priority for our government. We value them. They do exceptional work, and they bring us diversified people from all around the globe. The supports I’m talking about here not only benefit the Nova Scotian students but international students as well, because they can participate in those buildings, they participate in the infrastructure on campus, they participate in the research funding, and they participate in opportunities for wage subsidization as well.

[9:00 p.m.]

LENORE ZANN: Thank you for that laundry list. I had actually asked another question, but that’s okay. My time is short, so I’m going to ask you a couple more questions, please, and maybe you can try to answer them in a shorter fashion.

How much was allocated to the loan-forgiveness budget last year and this year, and as of the end of the last fiscal year, had that been drawn down completely? How much was left?

LABI KOUSOULIS: We’re just getting that exact number. I will mention the loan-forgiveness amount.

Every year, we allocate a certain amount of dollars that it is anticipated will not be collected from people who can’t keep up with their student loans. We had an underspend in the area of $15 million because of loan forgiveness. Since we were forgiving the loans, we had no bad debt associated with those loans, so we did have $15 million that was never put toward bad debt and never will be. Those loans were written off, so we have nothing to attribute it to. That was one of the benefits of loan forgiveness: it gets rid of your bad debt.

I don’t have that exact amount, but I think for time’s sake I’ll endeavour to get it to you.

LENORE ZANN: Yes, please do. You mentioned in Question Period last week that students who take longer than five years to complete their studies will be eligible to have the most expensive five years of their loans forgiven. Is this a new policy, and how is this policy being advertised?

LABI KOUSOULIS: From your previous question, $8.5 million last year and $9.5 million this year.

About student loans, previously the student loan program had a forgiveness component, but it was based on maximizing your federal loan, which all students do. The gap I saw was, well, what happens to a student who is in their last year of studies and they have to get one year of student loan? Why aren’t they getting any forgiveness? They never would, because they wouldn’t reach that federal threshold of $28,000.

That’s the change now: no matter what your student loan is, it’s forgiven upon graduation. The key is to graduate, because we do want our youth to graduate with their degrees. The part I spoke about, for clarification - students when they graduate in the future will apply to the department, and though each case is different, the essence of the program is that you have five years of forgiveness, but it might take you longer than that to get your degree. It might take you six or seven, who knows? It’s not certain if you’ll take student loans for every one of the years or not, or if some will be higher and some will be lower.

Upon graduation, your five years of highest student loans in Nova Scotia will be forgiven. You might have six years of student loans, you might have seven, or you might have five. We want that incentive there for students to finish their degree, because we do know they get benefit from taking their degree.

In terms of advertising, I’ve advertised personally in all the local university papers about the loan forgiveness, but we have been talking about this everywhere we go. I met with some high school students, and I told them, regardless of your income situation, whether you have the money or not, you should apply for a student loan, because if you qualify for it, your Nova Scotia portion can be fully forgiven. We’ve been out pushing this, because it’s a great program and it helps those who need it the most.

LENORE ZANN: This budget cuts grants to the Nova Scotians who are studying out of province who used to be eligible for them. Can you explain, first of all, what cost savings does government anticipate as a result of this change? When does it come into effect? Is it coming into effect for the next school year? Do you believe that that’s enough time for students who may be choosing a program that they can now no longer afford?

LABI KOUSOULIS: The effect comes into place in August of this year, but whatever students are out of province currently will be phased out, so they’ll be able to finish their program and still receive the bursary. After three years, when it maxes out, it will be a cost savings of $2.07 million. You can still go to another province to take your university, but in order to have the bursary forgiven up front, that’s where the Nova Scotia university comes into play.

It’s only applicable to programs that are offered in Nova Scotia. If your program is not offered in Nova Scotia, you still receive the bursary.

The reason we’re doing it is very simple. One extra student at university, that money goes right to the bottom line, because all their costs are fixed. Subsidizing our students to go to other provinces to help their universities doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when we’re trying to keep as much funding flowing to our universities.

THE CHAIR: The time has elapsed for the NDP caucus. We now have approximately nine minutes left.

The NDP have indicated that they’re not going past tonight, so the Progressive Conservative caucus has said that they will allow you to use up the last nine minutes. What I’m saying is, use eight and leave the minister a minute. Is that good?

LENORE ZANN: I’m just going to finish my question. I was almost at the end of it anyway. I actually have two questions.

You said that if a student had applied for one of those programs but was not admitted to a comparable program in Nova Scotia and subsequently elected to leave the province to attend a similar program where they did receive an offer, will they still be eligible for the grants? Is that clear?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I’m not sure if I’m qualified. I’ll try to answer it. If a student is taking undergrad science, Bachelor of Arts - because this is for undergrad students - Bachelor of Science, commerce degree, then going out of province doesn’t make a lot of sense. They would not be eligible for the up-front bursary.

If they’re taking a program that we don’t have here - and I can’t think of one offhand (Interruption) Forestry. If an individual wants to take forestry and we don’t offer it in Nova Scotia, when they go to another province to take forestry, they do get their up-front bursary from it.

LENORE ZANN: Tell me if this is true. If a student applied but was not admitted to a comparable program in Nova Scotia, and then subsequently elected to leave the province to attend a similar program where they did get accepted and receive an offer to be a student there, is it true that they will no longer be eligible for those grants?

LABI KOUSOULIS: I’ll check with student loans on that one. It might take a bit longer.

That is correct. If you applied to a program here and you were not accepted, but you were accepted in another province, then the bursary amount would not apply to you.

LENORE ZANN: How will you determine if there are comparable programs in Nova Scotia?

LABI KOUSOULIS: In terms of if it’s provided here or not?

LENORE ZANN: If they’re comparable.

LABI KOUSOULIS: When a student is applying for it and saying the program is not offered in Nova Scotia, they’ll have to provide information from the program they’re taking to show that no university has it here.

LENORE ZANN: I believe it was mentioned in the Budget Speech that there was $500,000 - something like that - going toward universities for helping with sexual violence prevention, but we’re understanding and hearing from students that there has been a lack of movement on the Sexual Violence Prevention Committee. Has any money been allocated to improve services and supports for survivors of sexual violence on campus?

LABI KOUSOULIS: In terms of the funding for sexual violence, the last MOU started to deal with sexual violence on campuses. The last MOU stated that by the end of the MOU every university had to have a standalone policy. This is actually the first year of funding so the funding, in terms of allocating it, will be going to prevention to supports after sexual violence could have occurred. That’s essentially where it’s allocated. This is the start of the funding, so I think it’s premature to say that it’s not enough when we’re just starting out in it, but we will be tracking it. We will be tracking the measurables, as well, to ensure we are allocating enough and that we are seeing a significant reduction.

LENORE ZANN: I didn’t say it wasn’t enough. I just said that students are saying that there’s been a lack of movement on the committee. I heard in your response that that money will go towards improving both prevention and also supports for survivors of sexual violence on campus. Is that correct?

LABI KOUSOULIS: You are correct. A big part of it is the educational part so that we don’t actually have sexual violence committed. I know from reading the report that focused in on changing the culture, talking about consent, what is consent, understanding it from both possibly being the person, the victim, or being the perpetrator. It also talked about bystander training. A lot of it will happen at the start of the school year as students come to campus. Educating them, having them understand what these are, what you do, how you support the individual after something happened, what resources are available, and the funding also allows for resources to be on campus as well.

I don’t have an exact breakdown of where the funding will go, because the upcoming year will be the first year the funding will be available. It’s the group as well as the universities that know where they earmark the money. Each university is different.

THE CHAIR: That will give us the one minute we need to wrap up. Are we good with that?

LENORE ZANN: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Shall Resolution E14 stand?

Resolution E14 stands.

Resolution E15 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $427,782,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of Assistance to Universities, Department of Labour and Advanced Education, pursuant to the Estimate.

THE CHAIR: Shall Resolution E15 carry?

Resolution E15 is carried.

I thank the minister and his department. Everybody drive safely.

[The subcommittee adjourned at 9:14 p.m.]