Chair /
Président
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex L)
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines L)
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex L)
Mrs Leona Dombrowsky (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington
L)
Mr Bert Johnson (Perth-Middlesex PC)
Mr Morley Kells (Etobicoke-Lakeshore PC)
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie ND)
Mr Joseph Spina (Brampton Centre / -Centre PC)
Mr Bob Wood (London West / -Ouest PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay / -Timmins-Baie James
ND)
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East / -Est PC)
Ms Marilyn Mushinski (Scarborough Centre / -Centre
PC)
Clerk / Greffier
Mr Douglas Arnott
Staff / Personnel
Mr David Pond, research officer, Research and Information
Services
The committee met at 1003 in room 228.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair (Mr James J.
Bradley): Seeing that all parties are represented, I'll
call the meeting to order.
The first order of business
on the agenda is a report of the subcommittee on committee
business dated Thursday, April 20, 2000. You see that on your
attachment. It considered the selection of intended appointments
for the committee and agreed to recommend that "the following
intended appointees from the certificate received on April 14,
2000 be selected for review." You can read what that is.
Would someone like to move
the report of the subcommittee?
Mr Bob Wood (London
West): So moved.
The Chair:
All in favour? Carried.
INTENDED APPOINTMENTS
KATHERINE QUINSEY
Review of intended
appointment, selected by official opposition party: Katherine
Quinsey, intended appointee as member, Ontario Graduate
Scholarship Selection Board.
The Chair:
Under our appointments review, we have a half hour review of
intended appointments for the following: From the certificate
received on March 24, 2000, we have at 10 am-it is a little past
now-Dr Katherine Quinsey, intended appointee as member, Ontario
Graduate Scholarship Selection Board.
Dr Quinsey, you could come
forward if you wish and join us at the table. Welcome to the
committee. The procedure we follow is that, should you wish to
make an initial statement or any initial remarks to the
committee, we would be happy to hear those remarks, and then each
of the three political parties has an allocation of time to
question you and hear your answers. So welcome to the committee,
and if you have an initial statement, we're happy to hear it.
Dr Katherine
Quinsey: Thank you. I would just like to note that my
name is Katherine, not Kathleen, and that should be entered into
the record.
The Chair:
There's a typo on there.
Dr Quinsey:
I would like to make an initial statement addressing my
qualifications for the position, some of which will be apparent
to you from my curriculum vitae. I've been a member of an OCGS
selection panel and I've also chaired an OGS selection panel as
well. I've acted as chair of the graduate studies committee of my
department and I've been department chair for the last two years.
So I have very extensive experience in the OGS selection process
at a number of levels, probably at all levels except that of the
board itself. Also, I have extensive experience in reviewing
dossiers for awards and for appointments just in the general
course of my work as department chair.
I have sat on the awards
selection committee of our graduate studies and research faculty
and that involves, of course, reviewing applications from
different disciplines for NSERC and SSHRC grants and, of course,
I'm involved in appointments in promotion and tenure review
continually. I have a great deal of experience in the review
process and particularly in the OGS review process.
The Chair:
Thank you very much. We'll commence with the official opposition
and Mr Crozier will be first.
Mr Bruce Crozier
(Essex): Dr Quinsey, welcome. I was pleased when your
name first came forward to see, of course, that you're from the
University of Windsor, which we are very proud of in the
Windsor-Essex area. It's without doubt that you come very well
qualified. It's not our intent this morning other than to say
that you are very well qualified and, quite frankly, we will
support your appointment. But we'd like to have you here today,
from our point of view, to just ask a few questions about how you
feel about the Ontario graduate scholarship program.
Dr Quinsey:
Certainly.
Mr Crozier:
You have experience, as you've pointed out, and your curriculum
vitae also points out, on selection panels. We'd like to have you
outline for us what you see as some of the strengths and
weaknesses of the Ontario graduate scholarship program. Some of
the areas that you might comment on would be eligibility
requirements, application process, the number and value of the
awards and perhaps the structure and organization of the
selection board; either any or all of those or some of your
own.
Dr Quinsey:
I think I'll start certainly with my very emphatic support for
the program itself. I think the Ontario graduate scholarship
program has certain strengths that are actually quite different
from those of SSHRC and NSERC. For one thing, it funds a very
broad range of students, so
it's supporting education in general rather than a specific
research agenda.
One of the things I found
most interesting in my work on the panels was that I was
evaluating students from fourth year honour students, at the very
beginning of their fourth year, right through to people in the
mid-doctoral range. This program can support all of those people.
It was actually quite easy to rank people highly from across that
range. So that worked very well.
I also like the way it is
distributed across disciplines equally. As a humanities person,
of course, I have strong feelings about that. Also, across
universities it's very carefully calibrated so that there is
support through the regions for students from different
universities, so you don't just get the main focus on the big
urban areas. Again, coming from Windsor, I certainly see the
advantage of that. From my own department we have sent some
extremely fine students, I would say the best two in 20 years,
over the last two years out on Ontario graduate scholarships.
Another advantage of the
program, I think, is that the system of assessment is very fair.
You have a balance of the departmental ranking and the faculty
recommendations, which are from people who know the students
quite well. That's balanced against the set-up of what is
effectively-I won't call it a blind committee-a committee that's
working independently to establish ranking so you have the right
combination of knowledge and impartiality in assessing the
students. It's a system that essentially works very, very
well.
I can't really speak to
weaknesses because I don't have any experience on the board,
obviously, but I would certainly put in a plug at this point for
increased funding. The funding structure has not changed
effectively in nine years and expenses, both cost-of-living and
tuition, have definitely changed. So it seems to me that the
program does need to be made a bit more competitive.
1010
Mr Crozier:
It's a pity we don't have more time, because you've hit on a
couple of issues that we'd like to expand on. My colleague Mrs
Dombrowsky has some questions too.
Mrs Leona Dombrowsky
(Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington): Thank you, Dr
Quinsey, for being here this morning to address our questions.
There has been a strong emphasis in recent government funding
announcements in the area of science and technology. I am sure
you are aware that, for example, 75% of the recent SuperBuild
fund awards have been in that area. I was wondering if you would
be able to comment on that pattern.
Dr Quinsey:
How long do you have?
Mr Crozier:
You can take as much time as that guy will give you.
Dr Quinsey:
I could comment quite emphatically, but I will keep it fairly
brief. As I said earlier, one of the advantages of the OGS
program is that it does address a range of disciplines equally
and I think that is extremely important today. Also, there are
two kinds of student. I come from a department which has a
terminal MA program; only 15% of our students go on to the
doctorate. Many of them go into a wide range of other
careers.
Actually, if I were to go
around the room today and ask what the educational background of
each person was, I would be prepared to bet that the majority
were in humanities, because if you were in sciences you would
probably be working in a much narrower range of fields.
Humanities graduates are enormously versatile, and our employment
records, which we keep very careful track of in our department,
show that. We are also training students in computing in the
humanities and in publishing, and part of our departmental
mission is to combine cutting-edge academics with the actual
applied skills. We don't shrink from that at all. Where
humanities disciplines are going in their actual cutting-edge
work is out of the ivory tower. That is really changing in this
day and age. If funding is cut back, you don't get faculty who
are on top of that, as the new faculty are, and you don't get the
support for that kind of development both in terms of curriculum
and in terms of research.
That's generally about
humanities funding. Obviously, the OGS program is about training
investment in the brightest. Some will probably address this
point, but I'll raise it now. We are in the midst, of course, of
a faculty hiring crisis, and we want the best and the brightest
out there. Those are the people who will be developing the new
face of academia and the new face of humanities in the 21st
century, if you'll forgive the expression.
Mr Crozier:
How much time do we have?
The Chair:
You still have time. You have until 18 minutes after.
Mr Crozier:
You mentioned that we're reaching an academic crisis. Obviously
you're more familiar with the University of Windsor-sorry, did
you have another question?
Mrs
Dombrowsky: No, it's OK. Go ahead.
Mr Crozier:
Can you give us some idea of what that crisis is? There is going
to be a shortage and that's going to have an effect on
availability of the students and the graduates.
Dr Quinsey:
Certainly we're looking at a vastly increased enrolment. It may
not be equally across the various regions. In terms of loss of
faculty, very much so. We have certainly been cut by one third
over the 1990s. I came to a department of 22 people; we are now
at 14. We are in the process of hiring new people to make up that
complement. If you have very good people you can do a very good
program, but it does limit what you can do otherwise. So there is
definitely a crisis, because we are very typical of not only arts
departments but also science departments, especially in the core
academic sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology.
Computer science obviously has had special support so I don't
include it in this comment.
Mrs
Dombrowsky: If I could perhaps return to the
conversation we were having about the focus, I certainly
appreciate your comments about the importance of humanities, as a
student of the humanities myself. I am curious to understand, with regard to the program
that you participate in, is there any pressure to consider other
regimens more than the humanities? Have you received a sense that
it is not as important to continue to nurture and encourage
students or graduates in the area of the humanities?
Dr Quinsey:
Do you mean at the university level or in the culture at
large?
Mrs
Dombrowsky: Well, let's say at the university level.
Dr Quinsey:
The university level is interesting because Windsor does have a
strong tradition in the humanities. The English department has
been extremely well regarded. We have a nationally known creative
writing program and also a very strong academic program, so we
haven't really felt that as a department. I think overall there
has been a tendency to follow the more publicly perceived line of
supporting certainly automotive research and engineering, which I
think is in itself valuable given our location, but it should not
be done at the expense of the humanities. That is an ongoing
debate. I don't know if that's answering your question.
Mrs
Dombrowsky: Actually, it's very encouraging to hear you
and to understand that there would be someone with your
perspective sitting on this board.
Dr Quinsey:
I think it is very important to have spokespeople. Our dean has
been an extremely strong spokesperson. That makes all the
difference, reallly.
Mr Gilles Bisson
(Timmins-James Bay): Thank you very much, Katherine, for
coming here this morning. I want to say at the outset that we
support your candidacy. I think it's fairly apparent, given your
background, your experience and your commitment to this
particular endeavour, that you'll do a fine job for the people of
Ontario who apply. I want to say upfront that we support
this.
I just have one little
question. I should know the answer to this, but I want to ask it
anyway. Where does the funding actually come from? I know this is
$14 million a year that's given by way of bursaries to students.
Is it provincial dollars, or is that gotten from various
contributors outside the-
Dr Quinsey:
I think the committee probably knows that better than I do. I
believe it's provincial dollars.
Mr Bisson:
Maybe the researcher, Mr Pond-because I was looking through the
document. It doesn't say where the money comes from.
Mr David
Pond: For the OGS?
Mr Bisson:
Yes.
Mr Pond:
From the ministry.
Mr Bisson:
It's $14.5 million, roughly?
Mr Pond:
Yes.
Mr Bisson:
Okay. And that's in addition, obviously, to other programs that
are out there.
I heard you make a comment
earlier to one of the opposition members in regard to trying to
promote the best and the brightest. I understand what you mean by
that. I'm not going to take you to task, but I would remind you
there are a lot of people in our secondary system who sometimes
don't have the highest grade and end up being the best graduates.
We always have to remember that it's not necessarily the grade at
the end of high school that determines who is going to be the
best contributor to society in the long run. If we had that goal,
two thirds of the Tory caucus would never have made it because
I'm sure, as in our caucus, a number of people didn't have the
top grades when they went to school, with the exception of Mrs
Mushinski. We know she's the brightest light over there.
I want to thank you very much
for coming forward.
Dr Quinsey:
I could certainly speak to that if you are framing it as a
question, because my own opinion is extremely similar.
Mr Bisson: I
meant to wake up Mrs Mushinski this morning.
Dr Quinsey:
I would like to address that, because that's actually part of the
assessment process of the OGS. If it were done simply in terms of
grade point average, there would be no need for panels; you would
do a straight mathematical figuring. But most of my work is
involved in qualitative assessment, so that someone might not
necessarily have the highest grade point average but there have
been extenuating circumstances or whatever.
There's another thing, and
someone else may ask this. I'm quite interested at the board
level in looking at the distribution across gender lines and
other issues that I understand the board has looked at in the
past: how the whole process works out in terms of the diversity
of people who are given awards.
Mr Bisson: I
just have a question. If you don't have the answer-
Dr Quinsey:
Probably not.
Mr Bisson:
You raised another issue. Maybe the researcher, Mr Pond-I assume
that when these types of dollars are made available for
bursaries, there is this criterion of trying to make sure that
you capture different parts of the province and capture gender
lines. Are there criteria like that, do you know?
Dr Quinsey:
Yes, there is a formula for that.
Mr Bisson:
That's what I thought.
Dr Quinsey:
Universities that have not received that many awards will be
given an advantage in the selection round.
Mr Bisson:
That's what I thought. Okay.
The Chair:
We go to the government caucus.
Mr Wood:
We'll waive our time.
The Chair:
If I may, then, have some of the government caucus time to ask a
question?
Mr Bisson:
No, you're the Chair.
The Chair: I
can't exercise as the Chair?
Mr Wood: Not
on our time.
The Chair:
Well, I'll exercise on other time, if there's no objection. I
just had a question that would help us from-remember last week?
Look, there's no press here; you're not scoring any political
points here.
Mr Bisson:
Chair, if you want, there's time in the NDP caucus. We'll give
you the time.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
I mentioned last week to a
similar appointee that one of the great advantages for all of us
is we learn an awful lot about the various agencies to which
people are appointed when you come forward. It isn't always
people simply looking to find something wrong with the intended
appointee. The individual who was with us last week mentioned
perhaps an improvement that could be made in the program. I'm
trying to recall what it was. Maybe somebody who was here will
help me out with this. That was that you have to apply each year,
that there's not some continuity or certainty. That person's
recommendation was that the continuity or the certainty of a
multi-year scholarship would be an advantage. Would you comment
on that?
Dr Quinsey:
I actually read the Hansard account from last week, so I'm
familiar with her comments. It's on the Web.
I think there are different
needs for different students. There's certainly a case for that
with the PhD students because that is a large commitment, so
multi-year funding is clearly very appropriate for them. It might
be less appropriate for the master's students unless they are
very much in a two-year program. That is something that the board
could certainly look at. Definitely, applying every year is a bit
of an administrative headache for the student and also there is
the lack of certainty around funding. Students also find various
reasons for not applying or feeling they're ineligible.
Another thing I'd like to see
addressed is possibly the eligibility issue. I know we had a
very, very bright student this year who did not apply for a
second year of funding because she thought she was going to
finish partway through the year. We told her, as faculty, "You
should apply even if you turn down the award, because it's there
on your CV forever." There's all this kind of informational thing
that needs to be worked out with students, but certainly
multi-year funding is something that the board should look
at.
The Chair:
Thank you very much. As I say, for members of the committee,
because we do change in complexion in the committee from time to
time, one of the things again we learn from intended appointees
is, are there potential changes that could be helpful? I know
that at the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities they
are probably reading these Hansards and also noting that, and
perhaps as a result of the appearance of you and previous
applicants before the committee, they may take into consideration
the possibility of some positive changes to many of the programs.
So I thank you very much for that particular comment.
Mr Crozier:
Chair, I would like to jump in and take the opportunity that we
move that we concur with the appointment of Dr Quinsey.
The Chair: I
know that's not parochial at all.
First of all, I have to say
thank you very much for appearing before the committee. We
enjoyed having you here and we wish you well.
Dr Quinsey:
Thank you.
The Chair:
And now, Mr Crozier, would you like to-
Mr Crozier:
I would just move that we concur with the appointment of Dr
Quinsey to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Selection Board.
The Chair:
Any comment, debate? If not, I'll put the motion. All in favour?
Opposed? The motion is carried. Thank you very much.
Mr Bisson:
For the record, it was unanimous.
The Chair:
Yes, for the record it is always nice to note that it was a
unanimous vote of the committee.
Any other business to come
before the committee? If not, I will entertain a motion of
adjournment.
Mr Wood: So
moved.
The Chair: I
can always count on Mr Wood for a motion. Thank you, Mr Wood. All
in favour? Motion carried.
