ORDERS OF THE DAY

Hon. Jim Ernst (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the Minister of Justice (Mrs. Vodrey), that Madam Speaker do now leave the Chair and the House resolve itself into a Committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.

Motion agreed to, and the House resolved itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty, with the honourable member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson) in the Chair for the Department of Education and Training; and the honourable member for St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau) in the Chair for the Department of Health.

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Mr. Deputy Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order this afternoon. This section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training.

When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 1.(b)(1) on page 34 of the Estimates book. The honourable minister was going to complete her response. Would she like to continue today?

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, perhaps we could just proceed with the round of today’s questionings.

Ms. Becky Barrett (Wellington): Mr. Chair, I understand we are in the policy area, and I have a question on the boundaries issue.

Mrs. McIntosh: Just for clarification, I believe we are still in Executive Support for the minister’s office, but we have been wandering a little bit.

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Ms. Barrett: Well, I will ask my question and if it is too far afield, then we can deal with it later on in the Estimates.

As the minister knows, I represent a constituency, a portion of which has a particular concern about the recommendation on boundary changes and both the original Norrie commission and the second Norrie commission and that is the Brooklands School, the Brooklands area that currently resides within the St. James-Assiniboia School Division and under both the original and revised boundary map would go into the new southwest division. The residents were overwhelmingly in favour of remaining with the--I am sorry, they would go into the northwest quadrant. Excuse me. The residents were overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the St. James School Division whether that was in a southwest quadrant or some other configuration. We held public meetings and a survey, and it was a very clear indication.

I am wondering if the minister has any response on that particular issue, if she is prepared to make any changes or what the current situation is on the Brooklands School, Brooklands area problem.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the member raises concerns which have been brought to my attention. The member was good enough to accompany the people from that area, which is in her constituency, to my office at one point to discuss these concerns.

They are currently under study, the two major ones being, as pointed out, the tax effects for that area and the new governance, meaning perhaps a new approach to the way in which schooling is delivered.

Both of those are areas of concern that, having been identified to us, are part of our discussions and will be taken into consideration as we come to conclusions on the Norrie commission.

I am not able at this point to indicate what the exact outcome will be, because that has not yet been determined. I have indicated that I expect to have information on the government’s intention with regard to the Norrie recommendations this spring. But the exact date I am still not able to provide, simply because the area is so complex and requires so much examination.

Ms. Barrett: I am glad the minister talked about the taxes. That was another major anomaly in the original report. I am not sure what the minister means by new governance. Is that in response to my concern about the location of the school?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, it is. If the governance of that particular area is altered, if it is a new governing body, then obviously there would be some adjustments to the way in which education is delivered to reflect that new governance. That is the subject of concern expressed by people from that particular area in terms of, will we then have to be like Winnipeg 1 or will we be able to stay like St. James or will we have to be like Fort Garry or will we have to be like Charleswood?

Those kinds of questions are questions that are based upon a new, amalgamated board that might make decisions that would be different from decisions currently made by the board that governs them.

Ms. Barrett: The residents of Brooklands were very concerned about being in a situation that was comfortable for them and wanted to remain in the St. James area. However, the ultimate, basic concern that they have is that they remain within the school division that encompasses what is now the St. James School Division. That is the concern, and I am assuming, I am hoping that when the minister talks about governance that she is talking about which division that community will reside in.

Mrs. McIntosh: We are talking about the same thing and maybe just describing it a little differently.

The Brooklands people, in indicating that they do not wish to lose their current, connections maybe is not the right word, had expressed concern that in the large amalgamation recommended by Norrie that the influence that they might experience could be predominantly one of the other divisions other than St. James, depending upon who becomes elected to the new board and who then would be governing.

So I think we are talking about the same thing. You have indicated they wish to remain wherever St. James goes. They contend that, as well, but they then ask the additional question, what guarantee do we have that we will still have that influence? So it is just an expansion on the primary concern.

Ms. Barrett: I would suggest, carrying along with that influence concern, that it is not just the residents of Brooklands that have shared that concern. This is a concern shared by many, many of the schools and parents and teachers throughout the city. Concern about the fact that the four quadrants, as recommended by Norrie, has enormous potential for losing the positives of the ability of local communities to retain their flavour.

That is broader than just Brooklands, but again, just to reiterate that, for Brooklands they want to have local influence, but I would suggest that they want to have local influence within the St. James context, and would, I am sure, probably like to see a smaller school division than the quadrant that is being proposed. But if that quadrant is what actually happens, they want to be south of that line, not north of that line. I think the minister and I are in understanding of that.

I would like to ask the minister, if I may, what rationale was given to her, if she has asked the question of the Norrie commission, why they did not make this very small, in the context of all the other changes, change as was overwhelmingly recommended by the residents in that community.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Norrie did not offer any definitive rationale for why he chose to retain Brooklands in the configuration that he had originally proposed. He rather indicated that no one had been able to convince him as to why he should change his mind on that. I should say, where the commission should change its mind because it is not Mr. Norrie alone, but it was more that no one had been able to show him, to his satisfaction, why he should change his mind on that particular issue.

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Ms. Barrett: The minister stated that there was no definitive rationale offered by the commission. Was a rationale requested of the commission by the minister for this decision?

Mrs. McIntosh: We had several goals that we asked the commission to satisfy as they did their work.

We had those goals of further educational excellence, facilitating effective and efficient program delivery and development in the public school system facilitating the goals of education for the province and ensuring that education reflects principles such as equity, openness, responsiveness, choice, accountability, those types of goals, ensuring flexibility in student movement between and among divisions and fostering partnerships with communities, parents, governments, labour, business, industry, and that there be ability for local people to influence and feel that their views counted with the governing structure.

The Norrie commission felt, with the larger division that they had recommended for the Brooklands area, that those goals would be met and stayed with that decision after the second round. Although I know that the people from Brooklands had made presentation to him and they had made presentation to me, which I had forwarded to the commission for their information and consideration, I believe the information presented to me was similar to what the commission got from other sources.

The commission, aside from a very few minor adjustments in parts of the province, stayed by its original position feeling that they had met those tests.

Ms. Barrett: When the minister stated that she had forwarded the concerns expressed by the residents of Brooklands, did she forward those verbally to the commission, or did she forward the papers that were presented?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I did not discuss in depth with Mr. Norrie or the commission other than to give to him, as information material that I had received, recommendations or suggestions on the boundary conclusions that they would come to, for two reasons.

I did not want to be in any way politically interfering with their work. Their work was to be independent of government, and therefore I was careful not to in any way give direction or attempt to steer their own decision making. Any information that I did receive or reports that were given to me directly I did forward or pass on the concerns in a manner such as this. I have received concerns from this particular community. They state such and such. I am presenting you with this information, so that you will know this concern exists and ask you to examine it as information that is put before the commission. Beyond that, I was very careful not to intrude.

In terms of the final position paper that came to us at Christmas time, they indicated the variations that they had made from their original report and provided rationale for those and then indicated that the rest of their report they were going to leave unchanged. There were literally hundreds of small areas and decisions that presenters had asked them to examine. They did not provide rationale for each of those decisions because there were hundreds of them. They did give us their final conclusions, and of course we as government have all of the submissions that were presented to the commission, plus others, and we have gone through those at this point.

Ms. Barrett: A comment: I would suggest to the minister that when she said there were hundreds of, quote, small areas of decisions and changes requested, that in this particular case--leaving aside even the request to remain in the St. James area--the tax implications for the residents of Brooklands is not a small area.

It impacts on a fairly small number of people, but it is an enormously out-of-line kind of decision, and I would suggest, I just want to put on the record, that this is not a small area, and I do not think the minister meant that--so if you want to respond, but I have a question, too.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I recognize the member is still asking her question. I will make this brief comment, and then if she could be permitted to resume her question.

I just indicate that by a small area I meant small geographical area as opposed to a big geographical area. I was not talking about the issue but rather the geographical size, so, sorry to interrupt, but thank you.

Ms. Barrett: Thank you, and I appreciate the clarification on that.

The minister basically has said that with the exception of the rationale for the few fairly minor changes that were undertaken, were agreed to by the second Norrie commission, basically the rationale for not dealing with the other changes that were suggested was that the commission had not been convinced that these changes were acceptable.

I am wondering if the minister has given any thought to asking the commission for the rationale for saying that, for example, Brooklands should remain in northwest rather than southwest. I know there are hundreds of these, but it seems to me that the minister is losing some valuable information if she does not get the background on why the decisions were made not to amend these, the first recommendations.

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Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for her question. As we continue to move towards our own conclusions, any questions that we felt were unanswered or new points that were brought to our attention or things such as decisions on whether the balance between taxation and communities’ interests and programming, et cetera, are meeting our tests as government, those decisions will now have to be made by us.

Mr. Norrie and the members of the commission are on notice, so to speak, and are most willing to be available to answer any questions that we may have if we go through these issue by issue and are having difficulty with our own conclusions. They are certainly available for detailed questions on any particular aspect of their report.

What we are doing right now is in the process of doing our own process now. For the year or longer that the Norrie commission was operating, we made every effort, as I said, not to interfere, to take a hands-off approach. That final report now being in our hands, it is time for us to go through our own process of examination and discovery and conclusion, and that is what we have been doing now for the last three months. We are nearing the end of our deliberations, but we have not yet arrived at our final conclusion because of the magnitude of the task.

Certainly there may well be a point when we feel we need to contact the commission again to seek clarification on a particular point. What was your reasoning here? Why did you do this? Why did you do that? It may just be that the facts as presented by Norrie and our own examination of them will lead us to conclusions that do not require us to have to reconnect with the Norrie commission. It may be that we so strongly agree or so strongly disagree, there is no fuzziness, that we do not need to connect on a particular issue. Where there is an area that appears to be unclear, or a rationale that we are not able to apply his perspective or his measurements against, then we may well wish to contact him, and they are available on the commission for that.

Ms. Barrett: A comment and then a request: I think that, in effect, by not asking the commission to give at least a brief rationale for response to the request for change that came through, other than that they were not convinced, which is a fairly general rationale, the government misses an opportunity and has not availed itself of the thought processes that the commission went through when it decided to make two or three small changes and decided not to make hundreds of other changes. I think you have missed the possibility of some information, the benefit of their considerations, and the rationale for that. That is my comment.

My request is that the minister--and I apologize to the minister that I did not bring with me my notes from the meeting that we had, but my distinct recollection is that the minister said to the group, I understand your concerns, you have made a very valid point, and I will be sure to share your concerns with the commission.

Now the minister has said that she transferred them. My sense was, and again it is not anything that can be quantified, I had the distinct impression, and I may have been misinterpreting it that the minister would act in this regard as more than a conduit, and would share with the commission your concerns with that. Now the minister said it would have been inappropriate.

Since the commission has made its second report and the government is responsible now for making the decisions, I am asking that the minister go back to the commission and say in this regard, and I would be willing to be prepared to say any of the others, if it takes a while longer to do it, get the information, but at the very least to go back and ask the commission for the rationale for not making that change in boundary for the Brooklands School and the tax implications. I would like to ask the minister to make that commitment.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, just for clarification, because I maybe did not phrase my initial response in a clear enough fashion. When I indicated that the Norrie commission had said that they had not been persuaded to change their original decisions, that no one had convinced them that they should change, by that what they were indicating was that their original rationale, the rationale they had presented in their original decision, they felt, still was the prevailing rationale. So it is not that there was an absence of rationale, rather that their rationale was still the same as in the original decision and that they had not been convinced that their original rationale was not the best rationale.

So, essentially, they came back saying, we believe the conclusions we came to in the first instance in this area were the right conclusions for the same reasons that we originally made them, and we have not been convinced that any of the positions presented to us had higher credibility than those which we originally made. So it was not an absence of rationale. It was rather that they were standing by the original rationale.

I indicate, as well, the passing on of concerns to the Norrie commission, that I had several divisions come to me during the course of the study to express their own perspective and their own identified needs. Each time that occurred, particularly when it was specifically asked of me as in the situation you have described with Brooklands where they said, we really want to make sure that Norrie knows that we are worried about these things, I did pass on to the commission those expressed concerns without asking the commission to examine my thinking as minister, but rather these citizens of Manitoba have come to me with a concern. They are very worried about this and this, and they want to make sure that you know of their concerns so that you can consider it in your deliberations. As minister, I am passing this to you for your consideration.

I did not put them forward as an advocate, per se, but rather to ensure that their concerns were, in fact, put before the commission for consideration, and I hope that was in keeping with what the people were expecting me to do. I felt that was being of service to ensure that as minister I drew to the Norrie commission’s attention particular concerns without giving direction because that I felt would have been inappropriate.

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You had asked a question, your main question actually here, about whether we would go back now and ask the Norrie commission to go through some of these concerns. I think at this stage the people who need to go through those concerns are no longer the members of the Norrie commission but rather the members of government because those concerns have now been put on our table for us to decide. So what is important at this stage is how government will react to all this information.

We have not just the Norrie commission report but other items for examination, including the material that the Norrie commission itself received. To go back to the commission at this point on Brooklands would mean that we should also go back on those other areas that have expressed similar intensity of concern, perhaps a different issue but with the same depth of feeling that some other areas have experienced, and I believe that at this stage we would be taking Norrie for the third time over ground that he has already covered, and having asked him to do the thoughtful second look--he has done that and given us what he concluded--we now have to as government do our own examination and come to our own conclusions and make the decision.

I will assure the member though that the points that Brooklands raised to the commission I am fully aware of, and those are things that government will examine when we do our decision making.

Ms. Barrett: I am heartened by the minister’s statement that she is aware of the concerns. I just think that not knowing what some of the other hundreds of concerns are, I cannot speak to them.

I just will make this final point. I do not want to belabour the point, but I do think that the tax implications in the first and second Norrie commission report are so startling that if I had received this report, I think I would have wanted to find out from the commission why they felt that the issues you spoke about, the parameters of the study--one of the words you used was equity, and I would hope that the minister and the government will look at all of the decisions that Norrie made by omission and by commission, because there are hundreds of decisions Norrie made between the first report and the second report by omission and very few by commission.

I hope that the government will look at all of those, and speaking quite parochially, most particularly the equity and community-of-interest--which is another principle--issues for the Brooklands’ residents as they make their final decision.

Again, I would be interested myself in knowing why the commission felt that this tax implication was furthering the principle of equity. So I am just asking the minister. I am putting it on the record, and I am sure the minister will take a very serious look at these issues. That is the conclusion of my concerns about this area.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member very much. I have had some fairly extensive dialogue with Mr. Norrie and the commission members about the overall thinking that they put forward, but I note her concerns and the sincerity with which she puts them forward and thank her for her comments, and we will keep them in mind when we are doing our own discussions.

Mr. Gary Kowalski (The Maples): I have a question about the boundary review. In last year’s Estimates I asked some questions in regard to the situation at Seven Oaks School Division, inequity of representation in the wards there as a result of the board of revision not operating while the Norrie report was going on. Now, since those Estimates, they have had another election and the inequity has continued. You have 17,000 people in one ward being represented by three trustees and 15,000 people in another ward being represented by five trustees. Although trustees, of course, work for the benefit of the entire division, there are certain directions that that board might tend to take because of the balance of representation there.

So now that the Norrie commission is finished, what is the situation with the board of revisions, and what will happen in the three years time till the next civic election? Will this inequity continue once again or can something be done?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the member raises a valid point. The Board of Reference, as it is called, I know what you are talking about and people refer to this as a lot of things. Technically it is called the Board of Reference, but the Board of Reference will be reconstituted. The decision to sort of pause the work of the Board of Reference until a decision was made on boundaries was made at the time this whole process was begun, and you will see very shortly that the Board of Reference will be reconstituted in conjunction with an announcement of decisions on what we are going to do with the Norrie report.

So sometime this spring then, you should see that Board of Reference reconstituted and the backlog of situations such as you described dealt with as swiftly as possible.

Mr. Kowalski: You know, in my community, I have been approached by a number of people that wanted to present to the minister according to the act. I think it requires 25 people to request the minister to look at the electoral quotient, and I persuaded them to hold off because it would be a waste of money and effort if there is going to be a change in the Seven Oaks School Division as a result of the Norrie report.

Now, what I am looking for is, before the next civic election, are we going to see changes or should these people come forward to the minister and correct this inequity now?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the Board of Reference will definitely be reconstituted well before the next civic election, and it should be reconstituted sometime this spring. I do not have a definite date because I do not know the exact date at which our final conclusions will be made but, as soon as we come to a decision on the boundaries as recommended by the Norrie commission, as soon as we make our determination as to how we intend to officially respond to his report, the Board of Reference will be reconstituted so that they can begin again making adjustments as requested by the people, if they deem they are feasible requests, to vary boundaries in one way or another.

Mr. Kowalski: I have just one last question. I want to make sure I understand correctly. First of all, the government will move on the Norrie report before it puts forward the Board of Reference.

Is my understanding correct, because I do not want to put the Board of Reference through all the work of changing the representation only to find out a year later that we no longer have a Seven Oaks School Board.

Is my understanding correct that first the government will move on its decisions out of the Norrie report, and then the Board of Reference will be reconstituted?

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Mrs. McIntosh: The indication of what we intend to do with Norrie and the reconstitution of the Board of Reference should occur more or less simultaneously, and maybe this might help. If we make changes to boundaries because of the Norrie commission, then the Board of Reference will maybe have need to vary those boundaries slightly, and they will need to be in place.

If we make no changes because of the Norrie report, then the Board of Reference will still have some issues they need to deal with because people over the last year or so maybe have decided they would like to see some adjustments. As well, the Board of Reference will have other items with which it will deal that do not connect directly to what government decides to do about the Norrie commission, and they will be wanting to proceed on some of those requests, as well.

I do not know if that clarifies the issue for you. Okay, good. Thanks.

Mr. Gerard Jennissen (Flin Flon): Mr. Chair, I regret that I was not here earlier for the Education Estimates, so I am maybe lacking some of the context, and I hope the minister will forgive me. I am trying to reflect as much as possible in my questions--and I do not have that many of them--the kind of direct and practical questions that northerners ask.

As I travelled around, I think their biggest concern seemed to be that--well, they felt it was a made-in-the-south solution, and they were a little bit puzzled about the rationale. I guess their biggest concern was how do we keep the local autonomy solid. I am thinking of places like Snow Lake that have operated independently for many, many years, and I presume Leaf Rapids and Lynn Lake, as well, certainly, a smaller town like Snow Lake. I have talked to several of the trustees, and if they could ask you the question, the question would be how do we safeguard that autonomy, that independence, that sensitivity we have always had right at the grassroots level if we were to be part of a larger amalgamated district.

(Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, it is a good question the member has asked. We talk about communities of interest. We have received presentations, and the member is, I am sure, aware of the specific concerns put forward by Leaf Rapids and places like that.

Again, I do not want to be in a position to defend or condemn the Norrie report. The Norrie report has given us a blueprint that the commission believed would be right for Manitoba. It is our job now as government to examine those recommendations to see if we agree with them or not, and as we go through that process which we have been going through now for about three months ourselves, some of the questions that we ask ourselves are those very questions that you have just put forward at the table.

I think at this point the things that Norrie recommended are now on our table as one of a series of pieces of information, albeit a fairly major study, and I could maybe just indicate to you that the commission attempted to look at a whole wide variety of goals and objectives, and the issues themselves become a balance of taxation, the communities of interest, the local autonomy, the question that you just raised and administrative issues including things such as schools of choice and transportation and so on.

We will need as government to look at all of those recommendations Norrie made, many of which we have already accepted. I believe we have accepted some 21 of those recommendations already. Those recommendations do not have anything to do with where lines are drawn, but schools of choice, those types of things; we have already indicated that we accept. Where the lines are drawn is of great concern to all constituencies and we are aware of those more remote locations where geographical distances are more vast than in more populated sections. We will be considering their concerns as we make our deliberations as government.

Mr. Jennissen: Madam Minister, I would like to just reflect what one trustee said to me in Snow Lake. She was a lady and she said she had been involved with the school board for many, many years, and Snow Lake has an honourable tradition of having many women school board members.

But she said in the amalgamation process if the headquarters--I guess you could call it--where the superintendent resides would be, let us say, Flin Flon or The Pas, that would be a distance of either 200 or 220 kilometres. It would be virtually impossible for her to travel alone that kind of a distance, specifically in the winter when the roads are bad. It is dangerous. That would be a four- or five-hour drive at the best of times and basically would disenfranchise those people, and that was a major concern they had, apart from the fact they would lose enormous blocks of time.

I wonder if you would respond to that, as well.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, this issue has been raised in several of the rural divisions, the matter of distance and the ease or lack of ease with which trustees could attend meetings, for example. While I think Mr. Norrie indicated he felt that a lot could be done with technology, the point I think that people are making and the one that you have just made is that is not always going to be what people wish to occur. The concerns that have been expressed about winter driving over long distances have been presented from several divisions.

I could appreciate that in the North where, notwithstanding what the winter has been like in Winnipeg this year, normally the winters up North are longer and roads usually not as passable as they might be in the more southern parts of the province, and we are aware of those concerns. As I indicated before, we have those in our discussion packages, so to speak, on this particular issue.

Mr. Jennissen: Well, given then that we are running into problems with geographic distances, also lack of local autonomy and sensitivity, if we were to go ahead with the amalgamation, and if added to that there seems to be no likelihood of saving any money, what then would be the rationale for proceeding in the North with amalgamation?

Mrs. McIntosh: Those are the kinds of questions that we, too, are asking, and that is not to discount anything that the Norrie commission has put forward, because we also know that we have divisions like Frontier that work quite successfully, in my opinion, and we have divisions such as the Francophone division where the geographical configuration is unique, and it is a little different from the way the geography of most divisions occur.

So we examine all the pieces of information on the table before us with an open mind. We have said, though, that our goals of improved quality and delivery, et cetera, of education and either the cost-savings or prevention of escalation of costs will be two things that we would like to see addressed. We have never been afraid of change. I think that is fairly obvious to almost any observer. However, change for the sake of change is not something that we believe in. Change has to be for a purpose.

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Some of the recommendations that Norrie has made blended very well with some of the things that we are doing in New Directions, and I again refer to schools of choice, for an example. Many of those things could affect arriving at our desired goals and outcomes by permeating rather than eliminating boundaries in certain instances. So we are asking ourselves those kinds of questions.

I guess I can indicate in the North, Norrie indicated that Churchill may benefit more directly, for example, by joining Frontier School Division rather than his recommended Northern Lights division. He indicated in his conclusions that he felt it was important for smaller units to be linked together with larger units in order to access the benefits of the educational support professional development move into personnel type issues.

That was his indication after he reviewed supplementary information. I know that Leaf Rapids, for example, as I indicated earlier, had some very distinct perspectives on this issue, but Norrie maintains that there are possible advantages of amalgamation such as those that I just outlined that were indicated in his second report.

He indicates the pooling of the best educational practice and resources and possible efficiencies and broadening the tax base in sparsely populated areas would be positive benefits of the type of amalgamation he recommends, and indeed they would be. The question then becomes, there are indeed possible benefits. Are they greater than the possible disadvantages? Which outweighs the other?

So while I recognize and appreciate the concerns that have been brought forward about disadvantages, I also indicate there could be some advantages. Our task now is the very difficult decision of trying to determine which outweighs the other. We are being very careful in our analysis on those sensitive issues.

Mr. Jennissen: I thank the minister for that comment, and it is true that it, on the surface, makes a lot of sense to do professional development in a larger chunk or unit. In fact, we did this in 1990. I was the chairperson of the northern Manitoba professional development committee, and we did it without amalgamation. We can do it even without amalgamation.

I guess the sentiment in the North appears to be, why fix it if it ain’t broke? I am happy that the minister said that change for the sake of change tends to be quite useless and why fix things if they are not broke. I think the North is rather adamant that we have another good look at things. They have worked fairly well for us, and we do not want to jump into something that is going to jeopardize a system we think has been working very well. That is not to say that some minor things do not need fixing or changing. You mentioned Churchill, for example, joining Frontier. I think that is by and large a positive move.

There are also systems out that have worked extremely well, I mean at the forefront of education, and I think they are very tense now about possible changes associated with amalgamation that could, in fact, be negative. Their biggest overriding concern is if you cannot save money with it, why are we doing it? With that, Madam Minister, I would like to turn it over to one or the other of my learned colleagues.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for Flin Flon for his comments. I appreciate the reflection on his constituency’s concerns and thank him for bringing them forward for my attention.

Mr. Tim Sale (Crescentwood): I want to say at the outset I am encouraged by the minister’s thoughtful responses in terms of the struggle that they are going through inside the department to try and sort out costs and benefits in the areas of boundary issues.

Reflecting back on the time that I spent in the department in the mid- and late-’80s, these issues were very much on the table at that time, as well. The work that we did during the time when the Honourable Mr. Derkach was minister did not indicate to us that there was much to be saved, in rural Manitoba, in particular, and I want to first ask the minister just to perhaps reflect again on the virtues of providing incentives to get the behaviour that we want rather than forcing amalgamation on rural divisions.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

I refer particularly to an experiment that was undertaken in the Beautiful Plains area where Beautiful Plains acted as the host for a co-operative buildings and maintenance project in which remote-sensing equipment was installed in schools to monitor school security, heating plants, et cetera, over periods when schools were closed, provided good security, reduced costs, and, in fact, I believe it was, if I was not mistaken, the deputy minister will probably remind me, I think it was Johnson Controls that sponsored that one and indicated that savings would exceed, in fact, guaranteed that savings would exceed the costs of the equipment that was installed.

My question to the minister is whether she could give some indication of the approach of the department, whether it would be an incentive-based approach to such shared services where divisions were allowed to retain at least some reasonable proportion of the savings that they developed by virtue of innovative busing or building maintenance or shared services agreements of various kinds. Would she consider that approach rather than forcing an amalgamation?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, a little diversion at first. We had talked yesterday a little bit about the information coming in from school divisions and so on where they say we are assuming that there will be costs or cost savings depending upon certain assumptions. Those have been very interesting and very helpful, and the variable factor there, of course, would be whether or not the assumptions will, in fact, become reality.

So any possible savings could be based again on those kinds of assumptions, but we are very receptive to the idea of trying to have incentives for school divisions where they can come together and effect cost savings to try to ensure that they benefit in some direct way for having been diligent enough to achieve cost savings. Now, exactly how, I am not able to say at this point, but the concept the member raises is one that we are receptive to.

I have been impressed lately by the degree of co-operation we are starting to see with divisions. There always have been some divisions that have worked together to do certain things, and the member, I think, is probably aware of South Winnipeg Tech School, which is one of my favourite examples because it is one he can touch, where three school divisions have come together to do something jointly for the benefit of all at one-third the cost for each one.

Those types of things have been happening over the years in Manitoba, but of late there has been renewed vigour, shall we say, in this approach, and I think probably for a couple of reasons. One, school boards are very intent on trying to save costs because the funding is tight. We are all very aware of the 2 percent reduction and rising costs and those kinds of things, so school divisions are being super diligent in looking for cost-effectiveness. I think, as well, because someone has said this to me, they are hoping that, if they can show that they can achieve a certain measure of cost savings, the intent of the commission to be more cost-effective and have improved delivery and so on can be shown to occur without amalgamation.

So I take your question as more than a question and rather a suggestion in it, as well, which has merit in it.

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Mr. Sale: Mr. Chairperson, I thank the minister for that response. I will confess to a little frustration that this proposal was put forward in 1988 in a draft education finance review. Though it was never published, in fact, much of it became the basis of the new funding system, which was announced in 1989-90 or ’90-91, I am not sure of the actual year, but in that, in one of the sections on promoting effectiveness and efficiency, it was strongly suggested that we look for an incentive framework.

It is now seven or eight years later, and I know my colleagues or former colleagues in the department are very capable of designing the technical details of such a program. I hope the minister will move in that direction because it has always been my view at least that it is better to provide support for the behaviours you want than to try and punish the behaviours you do not want. In the long run we get a lot further that way.

I would ask the minister if she could comment also on what I think is a broad trend, both in urban and rural Manitoba, and that is a growing sense of--I am not sure what adjectives would be most appropriate, but anomie, isolation, disempowerment, the feelings on the part of communities, that they can only impact on their community’s quality of life with almost superhuman efforts. I refer, for example, to a small community in western Manitoba, in the Birtle Valley, that has made enormous efforts using the Internet in a very creative way, advertising in eastern and western press, having a committee called Birtle into the Future.

Against all the kinds of trends of communities of under a thousand in Manitoba, where there are no major natural resources other than the agricultural community, this community has attracted a few new businesses, small businesses. There are no houses for sale in town right now. They have an excellent quality of life in lots of ways in that small community, but it takes herculean efforts on their part to keep it that way.

My sense is that governments in their headlong pursuit of cost cutting sometimes find themselves doing things which undercut the very base that enables communities to be contributors to the economy that the government is so concerned about. I tell the minister that I was at a rally this fall, this winter rather, in Birtle in which they are very concerned about the proposed cuts to rural hospitals, as are most small towns in rural Manitoba. They said, just very straight out, we are not talking about health care here. We are talking about the survival of our town, because if we do not have a decent--it does not have to be big and it does not have to be huge high tech, but it has to be decent--acute care facility, we simply will not keep older people in this town who begin to have health problems, and we certainly will not attract new people to it.

When we take school division headquarters and jobs out of struggling communities, we have to take into account a bigger economic picture than just the Department of Education’s bottom line. The communities have a bottom line, too. I am sure the minister is aware of that, but I would be interested in her response as to whether that forms an active part of the decision making or whether the decision making is largely focussed only on the Estimates and needs of the Department of Education.

Mrs. McIntosh: I agree with the member in this respect, that small towns to be vital must have certain things in them. I disagree in another sense in terms of the generic part of the question that the rural communities are having difficulty being successful.

It may be true for some, but we have just had our Rural Development Forum. I do not know if the member had an opportunity to be free for that or not, but some of the exciting things going on in rural Manitoba towns are just incredible. My parents were born and raised in Cartwright, Manitoba, a little, small community that has only some few hundred people. Cartwright, to me, has been the same from the time I was a little girl till now, just a lovely, tiny, little prairie town. Yet it, as well, now has a window and door factory and trailer factory. We see pasta plants coming up in various places where wheat is grown and a whole wide variety of things, very exciting things, and a lot of them having been done through inspiration or assistance and support of some kind provided by the provincial government.

I agree with the comments that the communities must have certain things in them to be vital. I believe that rural Manitobans are revitalizing and invigorating themselves in splendid ways right across the province. Having said that, just so that I have my perspective on that on the record, as well, I do indicate that I appreciate what he is saying. You lose a school board office or you lose a community school, you change the town. I think that is very true. We are working to attempt to improve the opportunities for those kinds of things to exist and remain existing in towns through a number of vehicles.

In terms of allowing communities, whether or not they have buildings, to have meaningful interaction, we have advisory councils. We have set up regional consortia. In our DET Council, we have localized community college governments. We have included communities in school plans and are working towards the interactive television network in the decentralization initiative and so on.

If I could just backtrack for a moment to the topic we were discussing before your most recent question. The member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) had also made the point, if it is not going to save us any money, why do it in relation to a boundaries review? I concur that one of the things that we had hoped we might be able to see is also the study of boundaries that would be either cost savings or some vehicles that would stop the escalation of costs. I appreciate that. I really appreciate it because we do not have a lot of money, but I do not want the whole boundaries review thing to turn into a cost exercise, because I think the major intent of it was to look at how we can best service the children of Manitoba. We certainly would prefer to do it at lesser costs, but I think that, if we talk more about a best benefit to children approach, we probably would include a wise use of money in that, but I always get a little nervous when we get off that as our focus.

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I am not saying that the member was off that as focus, not at all, because costs are a component. I just really wanted to indicate that as we examine each of the components of the review, one of which is cost, that I want to keep refocusing back on best benefit to children. I do not mean to imply by that at any stretch of the imagination that that is not the first interest of the members opposite either. I just think for anybody reviewing the record that they should know that we are keeping that as our first focus.

I do not know if I answered your question completely or well but, if you wanted to add another, I will do my best.

Mr. Sale: I have one final question. I appreciate the discussion. The minister I think responded fairly to the various issues that I raised. My concern was simply, if I can just summarize it, and I do not need further response, that when you make decisions about health or education in a rural context, you are not simply making decisions about health and education, you are making decisions about the viability of the communities involved.

I hope that when that discussion is going on that that is a very lively understanding on the part of government and that they recognize that sometimes the requirement to have a vibrant community may take precedence over the requirement to save small amounts of dollars. If the issue is truly educational improvement then I do not think those communities will fight changes if they can see the improvement. But if we are simply saving a few dollars or even a modest amount of money at the cost of community viability, then I think they have every right to fight that. So that was my point. I think the minister did reflect at least in part on that.

I wanted to just conclude with another sort of broad observation, and that is that even in the time that I worked in the department, and the minister will remember that she and I were school trustees at about the same time in the ’70s, we were beginning to see--

Mrs. McIntosh: We were very young.

Mr. Sale: When we were very young, yes. The minister said, when we were very young. We are I think about of an age. This is true.

We were beginning to see the trend then but it has accelerated enormously even since the beginning of the 1990s, and that is that increasingly educational quality and educational delivery are transparent to the structural arrangements for education. We began to think about distance delivery in its origins in the late ’60s and early ’70s. We think now it is possible on the Internet. We think what is possible in terms of computer technology that allows divisions to maximize efficiency of bus routes, for example, building maintenance.

Increasingly, best practice is the issue and not the structural arrangements around best practice. So it seems to me that the department, if it wants to enhance education, and I take it that it does and always has and I hope always will want to enhance education, should focus on identifying and making really readily available best practice, being, in effect, the discoverer of lighthouses, and then the sharing of the map to those lighthouses, so that we become much more flexible in how we learn from each other.

We promote that kind of learning which in many ways seems to be better done, I hesitate to say this, but it is better done in some ways in some of the emerging industry sectors who, for example, a company like Hewlett Packard that made a decision 10 years ago to go to open standards, so that they shared all their trade secrets, in effect. They shared their code and said, write programs for us. They became the kind of promoters of openness and sharing because they believed it was in their corporate best interests. The record shows that it probably was, in that company’s case.

Could the minister comment on steps that her department is taking to identify and make accessible really widely best practice. Would she agree with my comment that the real future of innovation is in identifying and disseminating best practice, not focusing on structural arrangements?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I indicate that I agree with the member on both counts on the points that he has made. I think that he has philosophically touched a very important point that cannot be ignored, must be looked at and must be utilized where possible. I am trying to recall the statistics off the top of my head and I cannot recall them exactly. It is not directly tied to what the member said, but it kind of is a little piece of information that validates the point that he made, and that is that a certain percentage of our economy has been agricultural for a long time, a very high percentage, closer to the 50 than the zero percent. That economy has been agricultural in the 40 percentile, somewhere in there, for generations and generations, and predictions for the future show that coming down to a one digit percentage in terms of an agricultural economy.

Everything is becoming the dissemination of information and that type of thing, which I believe the member is aware of the trend and probably has some sense of the statistical data there. That has tremendous implications for everything that people do as they prepare for life.

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But the dissemination of best practices to me has to include the reality of that kind of change in the world, and if we can get cross-fertilization via best curricula materials, if we can look at utilizing our best teachers in such a way that they can disseminate information readily to more than just one location. I am thinking of an interesting example in Miami, Manitoba, which is another little town that you sometimes go past on your way to Cartwright, a very small community. They have a student there receiving calculus as a course in that school taught by a teacher through interactive TV in another community. Ordinarily that student would not be able to avail himself of that course, being the only one in that small school wanting to take that course, and I think that is a reality that is now not only possible but beginning to happen.

Costs are factors, and we have to be aware of costs, but if we have access to technology that we can begin to work with and we can try to work through various agencies to bring costs down, to lobby for educational rates which we are beginning to see happen, we are beginning to see companies and other areas acknowledging there should be educational rates for some of these technologies. I do agree with the member.

I feel that Norrie, in coming forward with his conclusions, also made some commentary on flows of people in and out of communities, and he had compiled some data showing population drifts away from certain small communities into other ones. That information was valuable because I think we all know as the people drift out so does the money, so does the vitality of the town. Part of what boundaries could and should be all about is trying to help stem that flow and keep communities vibrant.

One of the ways to do it, of course, is have the presence of a school. I do not want to get into a big, long philosophical discussion. That is not true, I do want to get into a big, long philosophical discussion, but I realize it is probably not proper. I am always intrigued and I used to have this debate often with some of my own constituents when we were having to close some school buildings in my constituency, and they would say you are closing our school, and I would come back and say, no, we are not closing your school, we are closing the building in which your school is housed.

To me a school has always been the thing that it was at the beginning of time, that interaction of learning between a master and an apprentice, and I still think that that is what a school is. When I say keep a school in a town, the building is important. I am not negating it in a small town where there is only one building that houses the school. The thing that is really important is the school itself which is that environment of learning. We want to keep that alive.

My deputy has passed me a note here, and I think it addresses what the department is doing in regard to your specific question, and it covers off some of the distance ed stuff, too. Provincial wide professional development strategy, the secretariat which is trying to blur the department, so to speak, and co-ordinate the services rather than have a social worker from Family Services dealing with a child, and then have someone from Education dealing with the child, and 15 people deal with this child until the child is so confused. We need to try to get rid of some of this overlapping that traditionally has occurred as governments grow and grow.

We are striving now to try to see that we are seeing the child as a whole, that maybe we have got various government departments working with that child, but that child is not chopped up into four different compartments; the child is a whole human being.

First Year via Distance Education (FYDE) program: We hope to get university programs into local areas. These are some of the ways of reaching out, but they are all focused on one central thing, which is try to empower communities so that they can be independent, so that they can access services of learning without having to move away and leave their home and their base and their community in which they live and lose their lifestyle.

Mr. Sale: Briefly, Mr. Chairperson, my frustration with the minister’s answer is that I do not see anymore the kind of thorough attempt to identify and share best practices. I see, again, structural arrangements. We are going to deliver first to university or we are going to have distance ed here, there and everywhere and the calculus example, it is a good example except that the calculus was being taught out of Souris, I believe, in 1986-87; it is hardly a new example. But when I was in the Northwest Territories in 1989-90-91, they were using Manitoba’s online calculus instruction to teach kids in very remote communities up in Baffin Island. It is a good program. I am not saying it is not good, but it is not new.

The program that everyone that I have talked to spoke highly of and apparently just is not done anymore, or at least if it is done, it must be on a very low scale, is to identify the best teachers, the best programs, to free them up from their classes, to give them five months or six months or three months or whatever to package, to travel, to promote, to do that linking, networking, interacting thing rather than again focusing on what the minister was really describing to me, which are, I do not mean this pejoratively, but institutional arrangements, the structures for doing things. They are important, but it is the content that is the real issue.

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More and more our world makes structures less relevant. We do not need to be hampered by boundaries in order to deliver the wonderful programs that individual teachers have developed in various schools across the province and to make those known and shared. Boundaries are irrelevant to that issue.

So as long as we spend time focusing on the structures, we do not spend that time trying to identify the really skilled and gifted people who are making a big difference in kids’ lives all over Manitoba. That is my frustration with the minister’s answers on this question. I thank her for continuing to try and respond.

Mrs. McIntosh: I realize I have had the time pointed out to me, so I will just give a very brief response and maybe come back when we begin again with a fuller response, because what you are saying is not out of line with what we are thinking and saying, as well.

We are doing that, for example, with division exams. In terms of using master teachers and training the trainer kind of thing, we have done a fair bit of work in terms of the training the trainer type of methodology. We are sharing the division exams on a databank, sharing them with others.

I think, when we take a look at our master teachers--teachers have always been involved in curriculum preparation--we are now constantly selecting master teachers to be on curricula development along with masters in the area of curricula. For example, we may say that we are going to do some curriculum preparation in biology, and this is slightly different from the way it used to be done, although there are similarities, but we will look for the master biologist and the master teacher to put together for that development and that sharing.

An Honourable Member: But that is what we have always done.

Mrs. McIntosh: Well, no it is not really what we have always done. Before, we would accept people who were presented to us by an outside group. We did not go out and search out the masters. We were given names of people from another organization and we would utilize those names. Sometimes those names were people who were available and wanting to do the work, not necessarily who might have been considered the true masters of biology, for example, or of pedagogy involving the teaching of biology. It is a slightly different, similar but different approach.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. The honourable minister might wish to finish her answer when we resume again tomorrow.

The time being 4:30 p.m., it has been agreed that the committee would rise at 4:30. Committee rise.