CONTENTS
Wednesday 15 July 1992
Ministry of Education
Hon Tony Silipo, minister
Ray Chénier, assistant deputy minister, French-language education division
Carola Lane, assistant deputy minister, regional services division
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES
*Chair / Président: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)
*Bisson, Giles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)
Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC)
*Eddy, Ron (Brant-Haldimand L)
*Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
*Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)
*O'Connor, Larry (Durham-York ND)
*Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview ND)
Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)
Sorbara, Gregory S. (York Centre L)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants:
*Beer, Charles (York North/-Nord L) for Mr Sorbara
*Ward, Brad (Brantford ND) for Mr Frankford
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes: O'Neill, Yvonne (Ottawa-Rideau L)
*In attendance / présents
Clerk / Greffier: Carrozza, Franco
The committee met at 1546 in committee room 2.
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
The Chair (Mr Cameron Jackson): I'd like to call to order the standing committee on estimates. We reconvene today to complete the estimates of the Ministry of Education, hopefully. We have four hours remaining. I believe, Minister, you have brought with you some additional responses, which are always appreciated, and I thank your staff for that. Perhaps you would like to speak to them very briefly; I believe the clerk has already circulated them.
Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Education): Thank you, Mr Chair. We have circulated three different pieces of information, and these are all in response to questions or comments made yesterday. The first deals with the information we were able to gather on the status of physical education and some information about student participation rates in physical education. We don't have any more information in terms of statistics than what we have managed to provide, but we have provided what we do have.
The second deals with some information on the ministry's initiative for children at risk and provides some information on the integrated services for children and youth and some initiatives going on there in which we are involved with other ministries, as I indicated yesterday, particularly with the Ministry of Community and Social Services and an interministerial group working away at some of those issues.
The third is some information on the science scholarships I talked a little bit about yesterday, the Bondar scholarships that I think members also have some information on.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister. Perhaps we could begin with Mrs Marland.
Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Minister, at the outset I would like to give you the apologies of the critic for your ministry. Ms Dianne Cunningham has had to leave for London because of the sudden death of a very close friend, so I'm sitting in on her behalf at short notice. I hope I can present you with some relevant questions in Ms Cunningham's absence. You probably wonder if I'm going to ask you about St James school, I bet, since I asked you in the House yesterday. Maybe I should do that.
The Chair: Do you expect another answer?
Mrs Marland: In fairness, it gives both of us a little more time to talk about St James school, as an example. You will recall that St James school is an elementary school in the Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board. Have you visited that school yet?
Hon Mr Silipo: No, I haven't.
Mrs Marland: You're the third -- no, actually the fourth Minister of Education I have invited to come to visit St James school, and I was really hoping that perhaps you might be an exception to your predecessors, not only in your government but in the previous government, because you would have to see this school to understand why it's been such a priority for the Dufferin-Peel board, at the top of its list for capital allocations for some years now, and why for seven years I've been asking the ministers to come and visit it and pleading for the necessary funds for the renovations.
This school is a small school, and they have had to use what was a gymnasium for classrooms. So although phys ed is a compulsory subject for elementary school children, this school does not have a facility to provide physical education programming in the context I think your ministry guidelines probably require.
The reason I've wanted the ministers to come and visit the school is just to see at first hand exactly how bad it is in terms of the facility. Being a previous board chairman and a trustee before you were elected as chairman of your school board, I think you would share with me the concern I had as a previous trustee when I saw this school.
I don't know how much you could hear of what I said in the House about the fact that they can't even plan concerts or plays or those kinds of performances, which are all very much part of a school in terms of the school spirit and the participation of youngsters in an elementary school in those kinds of activities. They can't do that in this school, because the best they've got in terms of space is two portables joined together. If you can picture two portables joined together, you immediately can picture how high the ceiling is, so that doesn't provide any height for games with balls or those kinds of phys ed activities; but also they don't even have the proper ventilation or the proper floor. When it comes to, as I say, doing concerts or school plays, graduations, all the things other kids enjoy in new schools or even old schools that were built with facilities they're still allowed to use, this school is totally deprived.
The reason I'm concerned about it is that it's been deprived for a very long time. It has a number of portables on it. The speech pathologists see their students in the principal's office, so when the speech pathologist is in the school, the principal has to move out of his office. The staff room is used for the French teacher. I could go on and on and give you details about how the lack of accommodation in that school affects the ability of the principal and the staff to give those children the full programming to which they're entitled.
I must also tell you that the principal and the staff of that school are very special professionals. They are so dedicated to doing the best they can for these students, and they exceed the normal requirements of their teaching responsibilities in order to give the children the best they can under very bad circumstances.
I've always described this school like this: If you went to northern Ontario and saw a summer school set up in a camp somewhere, that's probably a good comparison to the kind of facilities the staff and students in this school endure. And at Christmas or graduation or other times when they need a stage and an auditorium, the students have to be bused to a local church where they can use the church hall with a stage, and of course they can only afford to have buses to do that maybe two or three times a year.
These children are deprived of an opportunity to learn in 1992 in a facility comparable to what you, as Minister of Education, would want for all the students in Ontario. It's not just been a temporary situation, as I said. It's gone on for a very long time, more than the seven years I'm aware of.
Your ministry has allocated them $798,000. The request was for $2.5 million. When I started asking for the money that was needed seven years ago, it actually was $1 million. That's an indication about what's happened with costs in seven years. Now they need $2.5 million to remedy the substandard facilities in this school. Although you've come up with $798,000, which permits them to spend a million, that means they've got to put $200,000 on the property taxpayers' shoulders in the region of Peel, or debenture it, which is almost worse because they'd have the cost of the interest for ever on the loan.
The board is now scrambling around trying to decide how much of the work that's needed for St James it can do for the $1 million it's allowed to spend, when it really needs the $2.5 million. Yesterday, you said in response to my question that the board knows -- because I also asked you the question about the capital allocation problem; capital allocations are usually announced in April and here we are in the middle of July and the school boards still don't know what the capital allocations are for this year. You said in answer to that: "But they do know. What they don't know is for 1995-96." Perhaps you could use this opportunity to explain why it is the boards are telling me they don't know what their capital allocations are and they can't plan for it, if you're telling me, "Yes, they do know; they just don't know beyond three years."
When they're responsible for incurring the tremendous debt that capital works incur for a board, I can understand that they don't want to make any decisions about expenditures unless they know for sure what they're getting from the province. This is all causing a great deal of concern to all the boards, not only the Dufferin-Peel separate school board but the Peel board as well.
Hon Mr Silipo: Let me start by saying that the comment I made in the Legislature -- unless I'm incorrect, and I certainly invite my officials to correct me -- still applies with respect to boards knowing their capital allocation. If that's an issue that still is perplexing, we would need to take a look and see why that sense is out there that people don't know what their allocation is.
The only unknown, as far as I can tell, is the question of the 1995-96 allocations, because of the three-year projected announcements that have been made now for a number of years. That process of announcing capital allocations three years ahead of time is exactly in order to allow school boards to make the appropriate plans for their capital building ahead of time.
I wonder whether, in the information you may be getting from the board, the reference to not knowing is really a question of not knowing yet this year for 1995-96. But, as I say, if there's something there that we aren't clear about, I'm sure we could sort that out.
That's my understanding very clearly. As I say, I look to my officials for correction of that if I'm misstating the matter. I see people telling me that what I'm saying is correct. I think that issue is there in that way. Mrs Marland, we would be quite happy to pursue that with you even outside this context and see what assistance we could provide in getting this sorted out.
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In terms of the specific issue of St James school, and first of all the amounts we've allocated through the Jobs Ontario Capital, again I have to presume from the criteria and the nature of the decisions and the allocations made that even though the amount of money we've allocated may, from what you've said, not be the total amount the board might want or might be saying is necessary to do all the work that's necessary, knowing a little bit about the criteria used and the process, two things would be true.
First of all, the sense in the ministry would be that the renovations are ones that could proceed now, at least within the two-year time frame that's envisioned for those allocations to be out there, for those funds to be flowed to school boards. That would start as of this fall. I don't have at my fingertips the details of how that amount is flowing to the school board for St James school, but that is something we can easily make available to you.
The second is that the amount of money approved and allocated would have had to be for a specific project. In doing that there would have had to be, it seems to me, a determination made from within the total needs of that school of some things that could be done, as I say, over this time period, within those funds that were allocated. While it may not resolve all the problems that particular school has, it should be able to resolve some of them to the extent that our allocation plus the board's contribution might address. I'd be quite happy to pursue that issue either here or elsewhere with you in terms of your comment that the board is now scrambling to decide how best to use this money or look at raising its portion of it.
The broader issue you raise in terms of the costs of doing renovations of this kind and the fact that by the time a decision is made and funds are allocated, the project obviously costs a lot more than was originally envisioned, is one of the issues that obviously keeps coming up in this whole question of capital. That's why we have decided it's time to take a look at the way we fund capital projects. We need to look seriously at this question of debenturing. There are perhaps other options but that's certainly one of them.
No one likes the idea of simply adding to the debts out there, or in this case to the debts school boards would have, to build or rebuild schools or do major renovations to schools. Part of the equation that has to be looked at is that by doing that you would in fact be able to get the renovations done faster by borrowing some of the funds and obviously provide the facilities to the students for their use much earlier, and also to do them at a point when the costs would be less than doing them later down the line.
On the other hand, any time you get into borrowing through debentures or other ways, then you are amortizing the costs over a period of time so it ends up costing to do that as well. Those are the kinds of things that need to be looked at.
As you may recall, in the budget the Treasurer indicated this was an area, not just in education but in other areas of capital, that we wanted to take a look at. In education, I can tell you that over the course of the summer and the fall we will be having discussions with school boards and others around this issue and then trying to get some advice and feedback around some of these ideas to see if people might be prepared to contemplate different ways of allocating the capital dollars we allocate.
The last thing is that clearly, as I said, I haven't visited St James school, but from your description of it --
Mrs Marland: Would you come and visit St James school?
Hon Mr Silipo: I'd be happy to try to come to see it. What I was going to say was that from your description of it, it sounds like a few schools I have visited, so I think I'm conscious of that need that's out there. We do have a number of schools that are not up to par in terms of the kinds of facilities we would like to see. I think that's why we are trying to look at what other means we have of assisting some building and rebuilding of our facilities at a faster rate than is happening now.
Mrs Marland: Could I ask you about looking after students with special needs? Were you a trustee when Bill 82 was introduced?
Hon Mr Silipo: Yes.
Mrs Marland: So you're very familiar with the mandate of Bill 82. Being familiar with the mandate of Bill 82, how do you feel, now that you're Minister of Education -- we all recognize there isn't a money tree at Queen's Park, so we have to prioritize. We can either spend X amount of money for a large number of kids who have regular, normal learning patterns or we can spend the same amount of money on a small number of young people who have great difficulty learning.
What really breaks my heart are the calls I get that I absolutely have no remedy for, and they're from the families of children with special needs, the families who have never, ever asked for help. They've looked after their developmentally disabled youngsters for 10, sometimes 20 years in their homes, and the children have had access to some programs, not all they've needed by any means, and then -- as I say, they're very courageous families who have felt they never wanted to ask the government for help.
Then two things can happen. One is that the parents develop health problems of their own. I'm not talking about aged parents; I'm talking about middle-aged parents. Maybe that student or that child who is a student needs extra help other than -- I'm not talking about the services through the Ministry of Community and Social Services; I'm talking about help through your ministry.
Right now I have two families whose children have major problems. I'm talking about children who can't walk or speak, still use diapers and so forth, and they're 21. One was 21 this June and one is 21 next June, the two in particular I'm thinking about, and they're out of school because we have this arbitrary age that when they're 21 we no longer look after them.
I happen to think we have a tremendous obligation to look after them, and because they're coming out of the Education ministry, I don't think that whoever the government is -- this has nothing to do with who is the government is or who the ministers are; it's just simply a moral, social responsibility that I believe we have.
I have pleaded on behalf of families like this for the last seven years in these same circumstances. After 21 years it's the first time they've ever asked for help and we say: "Well, it's not Education's responsibility any more now. Maybe it's Health; maybe it's Comsoc." The truth is that there's no money in Health or Comsoc, so these families now struggle with children who technically at 21 are young adults, but they're children, and as children they still have some learning curve. They still have some potential for growth and development, albeit very different than children without their problems.
I'm just wondering how, as Minister of Education, you feel about that, and would you be willing to extend the responsibility where there are very special circumstances within individual families, like one case: The mother has cancer and both grandparents are ill and there's nowhere for this youngster to go this September.
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Hon Mr Silipo: First of all, let me say that I hope that in those kinds of particular individual situations some accommodation could always be found. We run up against those kinds of situations from time to time and sometimes we're able to be of some help.
Mrs Marland: What would you suggest they do?
Hon Mr Silipo: I think that in discussions with the school board, and with some help we may be able to provide through the regional offices, sometimes some solutions can be found for those individual circumstances. I'd be happy to pursue that with you.
On the broader issue of what we do with respect to the needs of students who are aged 21, we are looking at that issue. We have put that as one of the issues we are looking at in the consultation paper we have out on the integration of students with special needs. That's an issue that as we look at the feedback and the discussion that will flow from that consultation paper, I expect we will have to grapple with and try to see if there aren't better solutions than the present system to deal with the needs of young people over 21 who continue, as you say, to have needs, who may be 21 by age but still require --
Mrs Marland: The birthday doesn't change anything.
Hon Mr Silipo: Exactly.
Mrs Marland: The birthday doesn't change anything with the individuals, nor does it change anything with our social, moral obligation to look after them. Yet suddenly it's 21 and it's a relief because, "It's out of my ministry," and there's nowhere for them to go. Yet we have money to spend on all kinds of educational programs for kids who don't have special needs. Those normal kids will survive in society. To tell you the truth, they'll survive in society even if they don't go to school, normal kids. These kids will not survive without our support.
I think Mr Beer has a supplementary on mine, which is fine.
Mr Charles Beer (York North): I apologize for being late, but I think this is an area that we all have difficulty with and have examples of in our ridings. I think it does speak to a broader issue, which again we've all -- the former Conservative government at the time Bill 82 came in and our own. I can recall this very clearly as Minister of Community and Social Services. I simply want to link it back to the whole Children First proposal, because I think what Margaret has underlined is that we get caught because of ministerial structures, bureaucratic structures, in not being able to move. There may be perfectly logical reasons within structures why we don't move, but what we're all seeing at the end of the day is somebody who needs help and no way of really explaining to the family why that help can't be there.
You have passed out to us, following our discussion yesterday, several pages on integrated services for children and youth. The only point I want to make, Minister, is that unless there is real ministerial will around questions such as this, it won't happen, not because people don't want it to happen but when -- I relate this to long-term care -- we were trying to bring Health and Community and Social Services closer together there was a very clear sense that you were dealing with two cultures, the culture of the Ministry of Health and the culture of Community and Social Services where people simply responded and worked in very different ways.
I think in dealing with young people, whether we're talking about very young children or, as we move into this area, what happens to young people over the age of 18, we are caught in those different sorts of structures where I sense that what probably is going to be needed is not to create a new ministry, but some way of coordinating far more effectively the services and dollars available in different ministries but which, for a whole series of reasons, aren't getting to the people who need them. I don't think one can explain -- I've tried to do this -- to the parents of somebody who is just past his or her 18th birthday: "Look, we're sorry. You've been getting all these supports, and now suddenly they're gone."
It may not be the Ministry of Education that should be doing that, but we've got to work out a way. When you sit and talk to parents whose son or daughter has passed that age of 18, there's real terror that strikes that family because the services, by and large, simply aren't there. I just think that in terms of better coordinating those programs as they affect Education, Community and Social Services, Health and Tourism and Recreation, we really have to get on with that and make that work.
Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Chair, if I may, let me just say that I agree very much with the thrust of Mr Beer's comments, and I can tell him that the ministerial will is there. I was talking yesterday about the fact that as we are looking at some of these initiatives, we are not trying just to develop a better sense of how these issues should be addressed in the future but are also looking at taking some very specific examples and beginning to apply this different approach, this more integrated approach, between the ministries involved.
In our relationship with the school boards and others in the community that are providing these services to our young people, we expect to actually have some real concrete examples up and running that will show that this kind of cooperation can result in some changes and can result in some changes without the creation of yet another structure to do that.
Mrs Marland: So what do I say to these families that are in crisis today?
Hon Mr Silipo: I think, Mrs Marland, what you say to those families that are in crisis today is that within the present structures, we will provide whatever assistance we can. As I said, we have been able to provide some assistance on occasion, depending on the particular circumstances, to try to help sort out and look at what could be done. I guess the other thing you could say to them is that we're conscious that the present system creates barriers that shouldn't be there, and we're trying to remove them.
Mrs Marland: So do we contact your office only to be told that they were 21 on June 27 and they're no longer your responsibility?
Hon Mr Silipo: My approach to these kinds of issues has always been to direct my officials to work through the regional offices, with school boards and other agencies, to see what solutions can be found.
Mrs Marland: So you're suggesting that I give the name of this family and their circumstances to whom in your office?
Hon Mr Silipo: You can give them to any of the people who are here with me today.
Mrs Marland: Okay. I don't know everybody by name on your staff. How much more time do I have?
The Chair: I would like to move on. Mr O'Connor has some questions, and then I want to get back to Mr Beer, if I may.
Mrs Marland: Have I had 20 minutes?
The Chair: You've had half an hour, less a few minutes or so for Mr Beer. We'll just move on in the rotation. Mr O'Connor and then Mr Beer.
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I'm glad to see you here today, Minister. I know you've been the recipient of some letter campaigns, as I have. I remember different issues within my riding. I guess one example would be Holy Family school in Beaverton, and I look forward to the day when they see their permanent school. Another example, I guess, could be the Sunshine Club in Whitchurch-Stouffville, a bible study club that had concerns about use of the school during lunchtime programs. I guess that's something that may show up again from time to time as we go into different issues.
One issue that I'd like to talk to you about, and perhaps you can help me direct my constituents to the right area, is the after-hours use of schools by the Girl Guides and the Brownies and the Boy Scouts. As I'm sure you're aware, when I speak of Boy Scouts, I of course mean the Beavers, the Cubs, Boy Scouts and Adventurers and what not, and when I say Girl Guides, I mean the Sparks and the Brownies and the Girl Guides and the Pathfinders. One problem they're facing right now is trying to utilize the schools. I know that schools often are a focal point for many different activities within a community and when you come from small communities, for example the community in which I live, Sunderland, the gymnasium at the school is probably the largest meeting room for an activity that these local Boy Scouts could use.
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Right now a problem that's been brought to my attention by someone from the Boy Scouts in my area -- and I know quite a few of them because I was involved with the local Boy Scouts in the area -- relates to the fact of the cost that the school boards are trying to put on the local scouting troops for the use of the schools. Three hours of use for $45 doesn't seem like an awful lot of time, but when you consider the fund-raising -- and being on the group committee with the Boy Scouts, I did an awful lot of fund-raising: apple days and paper drives in the past, which are not quite as successful as they used to be. I think they've pretty well stopped with the advent of the blue box and now they're being recycled without the Boy Scouts collecting them. The Girl Guides have had their traditional Girl Guide cookie drives and what not, but fund-raising has always been something that is really hard work for these local community groups to try to raise the funds necessary, so when you consider that $45 for three hours' use of time, that means an awful lot of fund-raising.
In York region, it's been brought to my attention that for all the activities the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides like to use the schools for, the time totals up to $400,000 or near $400,000 for the year. Now $400,000 is an awful lot of work by a Beaver, polishing up an apple with a polishing cloth and standing outside of a supermarket and selling it. An awful lot of Girl Guide cookies need to be sold to raise that kind of money. I guess what I'd like perhaps is for you to offer me some direction that I might offer to them, where they should go and look for that, because in a lot of communities, all they have are the schools within them and that is a focal point for them, and it does represent an awful lot of apples. So if you could somehow offer me some assistance here, I'd appreciate it, Minister.
Hon Mr Silipo: I may not be able to offer you a lot in the way of assistance, because I think, as you know, the question of what boards do with respect to fees they charge for the use of schools is really something that remains within their jurisdiction. I'm not sure that we really want to seriously contemplate changing that.
Having said that, I guess we could certainly be looking at ways in which we can be encouraging boards to take more into account the fact that schools are the hub of the community and that they also have a responsibility to the residents of those communities to make the facilities available with as little in the way of additional fees to the taxes that people already pay as possible. But again, that's something I think we need to leave to the best judgement of the school boards, because they know best the actual costs of keeping the schools open beyond the hours of instruction and what that means in extra caretaking costs or any of those things.
My own experience has been that fees, when they're charged, are charged essentially and primarily to try to recover those costs when the schools are open beyond a certain time, and my sense would be that whatever fees are charged should be, quite frankly, limited to that aspect and certainly not go beyond that into an area of trying to raise funds through fees for the use of school space.
Obviously, on the other hand, I know that a number of boards have developed policies to deal with organizations that aren't able, for one reason or another, to either pay or pay to the extent possible. We know there is a variety of differences in boards from ones that charge very little, if anything, to ones that have increased their rates. That's an issue that I know is troublesome in the effect that it has on the community and on groups like the ones you've mentioned, and I think we need to keep looking at what, if anything, we can do to assist with that.
I think it's fair to say that's also something we perhaps are seeing more of in recent times than might have been the case in the past. I think it's part of the way school boards have looked at managing the kind of fiscal situation they have.
Mr O'Connor: I appreciate the response. I don't think it's a response that's going to be received welcomingly by some of the people in my area. I understand the local board does have the say over the use and cost of the facility. But when we look at that example, it is usually one of the lowest-cost outings for so many young people and children. Quite often, some of the sports activities exclude a lot of kids just because of the fact that they can't afford $100 or $200 initiation fees. Usually, when you talk about Brownies, Girl Guides and the scouting movement, their fees are very low and quite often are waived for children who can't afford to pay even the initiation fees, which are really quite low.
Hopefully, we can impress upon the local school boards the need these young people have. Quite often there are programs in rural parts of Ontario that run right after school and there's a late school bus, so the school boards try to accommodate them in some cases. Maybe school boards will take into account, when they're looking at the fees, that they're not, for the sake of trying to be fiscally responsible, eliminating a lot of children from special programs.
The Chair: Mr O'Connor, this may be of some assistance to you. In 1972 the Ministry of Education made a policy statement around the community use of schools. They created a framework, as I understand it, for municipal and school board participation.
In your jurisdiction, you may not have such an evolved animal operating to arbitrate these cost matters. We have it in our community -- I know several members do -- where services are traded between the municipality, such as the grass cutting around schools, in exchange for modest fees for groups that participate through the recreation department.
If that doesn't exist in your jurisdiction, it's an area you might be interested in pursuing. Certainly the Ministry of Education endorses those frameworks to cooperative ventures. But it sounds like you don't have that kind of a committee in your jurisdiction.
Mr O'Connor: I appreciate that suggestion. In the township of Brock, there isn't a rec department at this point in time.
The Chair: But your city council can create the framework. I'd suggest you contact the city council. Anyway, I just offered that as a suggestion.
Mr O'Connor: I appreciate that. We don't have any city councils within my riding, but in some of the other areas it would be applicable.
Mr Beer: I have a couple of things. I would like to start with one specific issue which my colleague will join me with, if that is all right. It deals with London-Middlesex, some conversations we've had with the chairs of two of the boards there.
There was a letter, which the minister may have seen, Wednesday of last week, from the Minister of Municipal Affairs, which was in response to, I gather, an article that had appeared in the London Free Press. I want to confirm one part of this. In his letter, Mr Cooke says, with respect to the London-Middlesex amalgamation or the proposed legislation: "The proposed London-Middlesex legislation will leave existing education matters virtually unchanged."
Is that your understanding, Minister? There does seem to be some concern that has been expressed. I might say, just for your own reference, when we were on that panel at the public school boards conference several weeks ago, I had people from the Middlesex board come and speak to me and raise a number of concerns. I think it would help if you might underline what the situation is.
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Hon Mr Silipo: Yes. We have done a fair amount of work between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs on this issue, because of the legislation that is now before the House. My clear understanding is that the provisions in the legislation before the House that deal with education are there to make the necessary changes to ensure that what exists now with respect to school board management and jurisdiction etc continues, and the changes to come to that, if any, would come as a result of discussions now going on between the two school boards and obviously involving the ministry officials.
Our sense is that when the report from the arbitrator with respect to the municipal boundaries issues around London-Middlesex came out, he made a recommendation with respect to how we should deal with the school board piece of that by having a joint committee process set up. We followed that advice and have set that up, essentially in the way he recommended. Those discussions are continuing and it's my hope that they will result in some recommendations that will come forward from the two boards. Until that happens and until process is complete, our intent is to maintain the status quo with respect to education.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): Mr Minister, there are certainly going to be some problems; maybe you expect that. I can understand why the ministry is looking at leaving the areas proposed to be annexed to the city of London, which represent 35% of the assessment of the county, to the city; I can understand them doing that. However, as you probably know, one of the most densely populated areas in the county, Lambeth, is at the northwest corner and is very near the schools in the south end of London. I rather suspect that the people in that area, once they become part of the city of London municipally, will demand the right -- and probably some of them go now -- to the London schools, especially secondary, rather than be transported to Dorchester.
Under section 56, school board boundaries, "The minister may alter the boundaries of the Middlesex County Board of Education and the Board of Education for the City of London to allow the Ministry of Education to implement any proposed boundary changes as a result of the public consultations." So I expect that could be part or in some way to ease the situation, I would hope, but it's public consultations. Your ministry people are having meetings with the London board of education and the Middlesex County Board of Education. The separate school board of course is joint, so there isn't the same problem.
Will those school boards have public hearings or will your ministry have public hearings -- public consultation, sorry; maybe they're not hearings -- in connection with the overall annexation hearings, or has that been determined?
Hon Mr Silipo: We haven't determined yet the nature of those discussions, but I would not want to proceed with any changes in the boundaries without some form of public consultation beyond the discussions that are happening. I can tell you very clearly that I will ensure that that happens, presumably in a format that's agreeable to everyone, and if not agreeable to them then we'll have to make some decisions about how best to do that.
Mr Eddy: Certainly the public will want to be heard, and I'm sure they'll let you know that if they haven't already, naturally.
Hon Mr Silipo: I think they have. You can rest assured that there will be ample discussion publicly in the areas affected by any changes contemplated before we make decisions.
Mr Eddy: Could I speak to another matter? I wanted to follow up on Mr O'Connor's point, because I think it's very important, and it's a situation that grieves me and has for many years. The reason the pioneers were so anxious to build schools was that they weren't building schools only: They were building community centres; it was the centre of community life. That all went down the drain, or a lot of it, when centralized boards of education were formed, the county boards, and mainly where they were urban-dominated boards, where the hinterlands were just added on to a large urban board.
You mentioned the cost. I appreciate your fact about the agreement, that the agreement extends to some facilities; mainly gym and outdoors in my opinion, but they're there. But it goes much further than that: It's gotten to the point that boards of education not only charge for the room and for the maintenance, they charge for a security force. I have attended social functions, like bazaars etc, and when you go to the washroom a security officer will go down to the door with you. He doesn't go in, of course, but he opens the door, you go in, he waits and then he escorts you back to the gym. The cost is prohibitive; it has absolutely been a loss for our community centres in many rural areas. It's really wrong, and I hope the local boards could be encouraged to change that. It's mainly where there is a large urban board and it has urban groups who pay for it, but in the rural areas it seems to be a little different. I had to add to what he said, because it's unfortunate.
Hon Mr Silipo: I note with great interest those comments, especially the ones about the use of security guards, because that perplexes me a little bit. We'll take a look at the situation.
Mr Eddy: You could smash something in there, or misuse the facilities perhaps.
Mr Beer: I'd like to turn to the question of teacher education, in particular the role of the Teacher Education Council, Ontario. This is one body which is perhaps better known to you and those in the ministry in terms of its function than it is to the broader public. I wonder if you could first outline what its role is in your opinion, what kinds of things you expect from it, how it's functioning. Then I'd like to just get into a couple of things.
Hon Mr Silipo: Broadly speaking, TECO, as it's known in ministry circles, exists as an advisory council to the minister and has a fairly broad mandate around providing us with advice on various ways to improve teacher education in the province. It's existed for a few years now. In addition to advising the Minister of Education, it obviously also advises the Minister of Colleges and Universities, so in that sense it's a dual reporting responsibility. It's made up of a cross-section of representatives, from school boards to administrators to trustees.
It's provided us with some interesting and I think useful advice over the last little while. The last set of recommendations they presented me with dealt with, among other things, a question of how to increase the number of visible-minority candidates in the faculties of education. Other areas they have looked at have been some specific measures we could take with respect to increasing the training provisions for improvement of French-language education, and so forth on a number of other things. I think their last report has been tabled as well, so they're all available to anyone who wants to look at them.
My sense is that it's provided us with some useful advice. I'm now in the process of looking at it and will want to look at some of those over the summer and into the fall as I try to find a bit more time, particularly on some of the most recent recommendations, because I think they provide some useful suggestions to us.
There have been some concerns expressed to me about the makeup of the council. Actually, the council itself has come up with some suggestions to me about how the composition could be expanded.
Mr Beer: Just for the record, are there 16 members?
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Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, there are 16. They've provided me with some suggestions about how the makeup could be expanded to include representation from visible minorities and other groups who presently are not represented in the makeup. Of course, concerns have been expressed to us about the nature of teacher education and the fact -- something I believe in very strongly -- that teacher education is at the heart of a number of improvements we are interested in bringing about. It's no accident that the whole question of teacher education therefore was the final piece of the restructuring initiatives discussions, one we are going to have to focus on in a very serious way to bring about some of the program improvements we want. I expect to be spending some time within the ministry on that area, looking at this issue and talking with people in the education community about a range of things we can be doing.
Mr Beer: Three particular things: Is the council involved in evaluating the teacher training institutes, the faculties of education that exist? Are they looking at course content? Third, are they looking at all at the question -- I think we touched on this briefly the other day -- of how teachers are evaluated or ought to be evaluated? Do you see them moving into those areas?
Hon Mr Silipo: The general answer is that I don't think they are looking at those areas, nor do I see that they will necessarily be looking at those. But I'd like to ask either Mr Chénier or Ms Lane if they want to expand upon that, and if we don't have that, we can certainly get some further information.
Mr Ray Chénier: Mr Harry Fisher did a study of the faculties of education; I believe it was completed about a year ago It was not really an evaluation of the faculties of education; it was more to find out about admission, how students were admitted and so on. There has not been a study of content and there has not been an evaluation, because it is very difficult to do, in the sense that we are the Ministry of Education who certify teachers, but the teachers are trained by faculties of universities who are totally free of "government interference." It makes the situation difficult and there's a lot of resistance to any type of evaluation.
The Chair: Would you speak into the microphone and introduce yourself for the purposes of Hansard.
Ms Carola Lane: Carola Lane, ADM, Education. As part of the restructuring initiatives, as the minister has indicated, we have a major focus on the whole area of teacher education. Although it's obviously extremely critical -- in fact, perhaps most critical -- it's one of the areas where we have been somewhat reticent in terms of getting discussion papers out. But at the request of the minister, we have been putting a priority on it at this point, and some of the issues you raise will certainly be addressed as part of that consultation paper we're hoping to have out towards the end of the summer.
Mr Beer: Thank you for that and I appreciate the comments. Sometimes we get caught with real jurisdictional areas -- and I think this is one -- but where there is very definitely a sense in the public at large; I suppose people don't necessarily know exactly what is happening or have concerns whether this is really meeting the needs we do have. There are other issues around in-service questions, but I've heard people suggest everything from: Is one year any longer sufficient in terms of "teacher training"? Does even the term "training" suggest a way of looking at the role of the teacher and that we need to be looking at other ways of educating those who are going to be teaching?
I don't have all the answers to that, but I was interested where, in a sense, that focus is going to lie in terms of the ministry.
If the Teacher Education Council, per se, is not doing that, then I take it that's being carried out from within the ministry itself within the other -- I forget the section or the division but --
Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, Mr Beer, it is, in effect, the last piece of the restructuring initiatives discussions. It's our sense that it will become clearer also, in terms of how to best approach that issue, when we have established, as we are anticipating doing over the summer and into the fall, the kind of framework that comes from pulling together the various program directions that we've discussed over the last couple of days.
Mr Beer: Can I then add one thing that you might look at? I know this isn't something new, but I think probably as members every year we get a certain number of young people who will come to see us and say: "I want to be a teacher. I've got a straight B average and I can't get in." I'm oversimplifying, but that has happened. One of the real problems is that, as we all know, simply because people have straight A's it doesn't mean they're necessarily the ones who are going to be the best teachers. In fact, some of the best teachers are those who may have had a somewhat mixed academic record but have a real empathy for kids and all of those things.
I know some school boards have done some innovative things. In York region, where I'm from, and Peel and others in some cases they've developed some programs to bring people who have been out doing other things and then they come in because they've been involved in the school system, they do a special program, they get into the classroom. I think that has worked out very well.
I would just say that I think it is one of the issues we've really got to come to grips with in terms of entry into faculties of education and, if there is a problem around the faculties because of the fact that we're dealing with a university, perhaps looking at some of these other innovative programs that have grown up, in looking at different ways by which people can become teachers. Again it's anecdotal, but I can certainly recall individuals who came to teaching later in life who were marvellous and wonderful and probably could never have gotten in back when they were 21, 22, 23, but through different things they'd done in their lives had reached a point in their mid-30s or 40s where that was something that they really wanted to do.
It's really part of, I guess, looking at what the mix of people is that we want to have within our educational system and how we set up structures that are going to be conducive to getting not only people who are intelligent and have the academic background to do the courses but more people with a real aptitude for teaching and who really understand that when the door closes and you're there with the 30 kids it's the relationship as a teacher that you create with the students that we all remember.
If you were to ask people in this room, "What do you remember from elementary and secondary school?" we would remember particular teachers. We might not even remember what the subject was, but we knew that within that classroom there was a real learning environment. That has come up so often that if we are about to have a solid review of what goes on in the training and educating of teachers, I would just put a plug for something that would allow greater flexibility in getting more people who I think are not getting into teaching and would really be excellent teachers.
Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Beer, I couldn't agree more. I can tell you that's the thrust that's very much on my agenda as Minister of Education, because I know also from direct experience that that's a valuable thing to do and an important thing to do.
I was smiling as you were talking about each of us remembering some teachers who have affected us in one way or another positively, hopefully more than negatively --
Mr Beer: Sometimes negatively.
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The Chair: They weren't all loved by the principal, as I recall, but they were loved by the students.
Hon Mr Silipo: I was recalling a few as you were mentioning that. I think in terms of the suggestion that you made it clearly is an area that we need to do some aggressive work in.
We know that what makes a good teacher is not just her academic abilities but that there are other factors that need to be looked at. This question of jurisdiction between the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and indeed the faculties of education: While it may add to the problems that we need to deal with in terms of coming up with the solutions, in my view it is not the ultimate obstacle. I think there are ways to bridge those differences. In the end I think we will be able to come up with a combination of things that build upon some of the things that are happening now in school boards that you've mentioned -- some joint projects that are under way between school boards and faculties of education that are aiming at dealing with these kinds of things. I think we can draw from some of those experiences. I know in the Toronto area that something like that has been going on for a few years and has been quite useful.
I can also tell you that I think the one thing that we don't have is a shortage of people who are interested in becoming teachers. There are many people who are out there with all sorts of experiences, not just young people coming out of university but indeed, as you mentioned, people who have been out in the workforce doing a variety of things.
I can recall just a few years ago when we were looking at this issue in the Toronto Board of Education and we invited to a meeting people who were employees of the board and were working in either a number of support positions or as instructors in a variety of programs, people who therefore had some teaching experience already in a variety of ways and were interested in looking at the prospects of becoming teachers. We had far more people show up than we ever expected. There were hundreds of people who expressed an interest. So that's there, and I think one of the things we do need to look at as well is what we do with respect to people who have some variety of training in teaching, whether it's training in other countries or some other kinds of teaching experiences, and what we can do in terms of assisting those individuals to become certified Ontario teachers in a way that doesn't necessarily have them have to go through the kind of normal or entire training process that we have in place now. I think those are all things that we need to look at.
As I say, I see that the question of teacher education is key to any of the improvements that we could ever contemplate around program. If we don't do that piece right, then all the rest of it falls off.
Mr Beer: I want to raise one other issue which affects teachers, but it doesn't deal directly with teacher education. It's really the other issue that comes forward, unfortunately, more these days, which is around violence in the schools and the impact on teachers.
I want to stress at the outset that I don't see this as just being a problem for large cities. It bothers me sometimes when it's put solely in those terms. Clearly there are problems around violence against teachers within large urban areas, but it happens elsewhere as well, at both the elementary and secondary level. I wonder if you could share with us what sorts of initiatives your officials are taking in working both with school boards and with teachers' organizations around the question of violence and what is happening there.
Hon Mr Silipo: Rather than my going into a very sort of broad statement on this, I wonder whether I can just invite my officials to make some comments on this and we can again provide you with a list of specific things that are under way, because I'm not sure how detailed an answer you would want, Mr Beer.
Ms Lane: The Ministry of Education is involved with the Safe School Task Force in conjunction with membership also from OTF and the various other affiliates of the teachers' federation. We are involved at this point in time attempting to generate some positive strategies that really look at dealing with students in a positive way and yet deal with the whole issue of violence in schools.
Also, within the context of curriculum development we're addressing the kinds of strategies that students should be developing in order to learn to deal with conflict situations and violent situations in a more positive way than perhaps they have in the past.
Mr Beer: I know there are some, especially at the elementary levels, very innovative programs dealing with very young children in how to handle conflict situations. I've seen some of them. They really are very innovative. Was it last week or two weeks ago where one school in the province announced that there will be a policeman assigned to that school? We say to ourselves, "Have we reached that point where that is necessary?" There I would assume that obviously the problem is larger than just the school. We mustn't get trapped in simply saying, "The education system's got to solve that."
Again we come back to how we bring in other parts of the community, whether it's in terms of health services around kids who perhaps -- and community and social services where we have a series of social and/or health problems which are then causing violent actions in the school. Through this safe school project, are you involving these other major players dealing with young people? Because I think if not, it's going to make it difficult to really have the kind of support system there that will allow this to work.
Ms Lane: There are linkages being made between the Safe School Task Force and the interministerial committee, which the various ministries are represented on. At this point in time the Safe School Task Force, although it has linkages with people in other ministries and agencies, those people do not sit on that particular committee. But the interministerial committee that is dealing with services for children and youth is very much focusing on the relationship among social, emotional, physical and mental wellbeing and the impact that has on young people and children as they relate to more cognitive learning.
Mr Beer: I'll just end that by saying that I think, again, it's a place where I believe there are some very valuable suggestions and recommendations in the Children First document around how we're going to get other players involved. I say that not only because I think that will work more effectively but also because the problem for the educational system, whether for you in the ministry or for the boards, is that your mandate is to educate children, and far too often what is happening is you're also being forced, as the only institution in the community, to do a whole series of other things which are necessary but perhaps which ought to be carried out and/or funded by other parts of either the governmental structure or society. I would simply lend my support to that direction.
The Chair: I'm going to ask, if I may, to the minister, if in his response to the issue of certification raised by Mr Beer, if he was as well -- sorry, I keep harping back to this issue of the race relations ADM -- but the degree to which you will be talking to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities with respect to enrolment of visible minorities, native university graduates to these programs.
This is a solution that Manitoba has been pursuing now for its fourth year, something the select committee on education put in its report three years ago, but we see no clear initiatives in that area which will assist school boards to hire additional teachers who can assist on the very sensitive issue of race relations. I think that was also part of Mr Beer's question. I'm looking to see if there are any current initiatives within your ministry or within the Ministry of Colleges and Universities that you're aware of that are addressing those concerns.
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Hon Mr Silipo: Both as a result of knowing that this issue is a concern and also more recently as a result of it being raised again through the report of Mr Lewis, we are, in conjunction with the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, looking broadly at this issue and specifically the recommendations that are before us from TECO around a process for designating a certain percentage of spots in the faculties of education for people from various minority groups; looking at that issue in terms of how to best apply that kind of approach. That's something in which we will be embarking on some very serious discussions with the faculties of education and trying to make some decisions; obviously not in time to affect this next year, but I would expect in time to affect the following year's enrolment. That's something where I think you'll see some concerted efforts on our part fairly soon.
Mrs Marland: I'm sitting here recalling that it's soon going to be 20 years since I was elected to a school board. It's almost discouraging and a little depressing to realize that some of the problems that we faced as trustees 20 years ago are not only still there for school boards as administrators of the system and the professional teaching staff who work within the system, but those problems in fact have escalated.
When we touch on the subject of violence in the schools today, that's something that is terribly real and I think terribly frightening. It's interesting, because I know the Chairman and the minister and I have all been trustees -- were you a trustee, Anthony? -- and Mr Perruzza also. How many hundreds of hours hours have we sat around boardrooms in this province and talked about discipline in the schools? And how many times have we heard each other saying that discipline is the responsibility, first of all, in the homes? Sure, the schools have our children whatever number of hours a day in a month, in a year, in a lifetime, but it's got to start in the homes. We've got to remember that we have to accept all comers in a public school system. We can't say, "We'll only take the well-behaved kids, the good kids or the kids who have respect for discipline." We have to take everybody and we have to deal with them as they come through our doors. We don't have a way of saying, "We take you, not you; we take you, not you."
In so many homes, for children the word "discipline" exists in many different forms. Either it doesn't exist at all or it exists to the extreme, through brutality, or it's haphazard at best because of our socioeconomic climate; both parents have to work. So we're not dealing with a home environment that used to exist when we're dealing with the subject of who is responsible for teaching our young people what the word "discipline" means. As the home environment is not within our control -- unfortunately, it isn't -- I think we, as legislators, have a responsibility to deal with that area which is within our control. I think we have a moral obligation to address, as far as humanly possible, the whole subject of discipline and the fact that it exists in a vacuum in our educational institutions today. When we talk about discipline, I'm using the word in my broadest interpretation of it; I'm using it in the context of everything that revolves around discipline. I'm talking about teaching young people to develop self-discipline. I'm talking about teaching young people to realize that within any environment we have to learn to control ourselves in order to deal with other people, and that means we have to learn somewhere to respect each other, whether we are at school, in our home or in our recreation environment as young people.
If these young people do not learn any aspect of discipline formally in school today, I would not want to estimate what percentage of young people would not learn anything about discipline at all. I think it would be a very high percentage and we would be even more discouraged if we looked at those potential figures.
I want to ask you, Minister, why do you think we have become so paranoid about fulfilling the responsibility that I see we hold for the teaching of discipline, the teaching of respect for human beings and the enforcement of those kinds of standards to which we all aspire for our young people? Recognizing, as I've said, that in a public school system we have to take all comers, I get tired of the people who tell me that the kids in private schools are better disciplined. Sure they are, because private schools can select who they take.
Our kids didn't go to a private school. Our kids went to a school where there were different standards of discipline in their homes than in those of some of their classmates. Admittedly, in our family I was at home until the youngest was 10 so I guess on that score our children were privileged, because they did have that experience at home. But my heart really aches for the kids who end up at odds with society as a whole because they've never had the advantage of learning either at home or at school what self-discipline and respect for other people are all about.
Now the train is going down this track so rapidly that we have a Safe School Task Force -- I'm not sure if that's the exact name -- established by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation. I know the chairman is a very capable young man by the name of Stu Auty, and I know the OSSTF developed that committee because there is a need. I don't think we can sit back one day longer and say, "We know there's a problem, and it is getting worse." I didn't know about the example Mr Beer just gave about a policeman now being assigned to a school in Ontario in 1992.
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If these things are all happening, and since it's compulsory for children to be in school until age 16 under the Education Act, when are we going to take responsibility, pick up the reins and say to those children who do not have the benefit of disciplined learning in their homes, "We are going to make an emphasis on teaching you that in the school"?
Along with that comes the question about how realistic we are with our children when they are in school. Are we fair to those children when we tell them they never have to have tests, examinations or benchmarks established where they have to be compared to anybody else because it's only important they give their own best in terms of their own development?
Are we fair when we let those children swim in this ocean, never having to touch shore with reality or put their feet down, until they leave school and we throw them out into society and they suddenly discover they can't behave in the real world the way they've been allowed to behave in school, in terms of discipline, because it's not acceptable?
Admittedly, they can do it until they're 18, before they're free from the Young Offenders Act. But suddenly they're out in the new world, so behaviour becomes a problem for them because they've never learned that a certain standard of behaviour is required to succeed in this world of employment, whether they're working on the assembly line, in a corporation or in any other kind of employment setting. They suddenly find out that in the real world there is competition. They have to be measured against their workmates in order to succeed. They have to have somebody better than them in order for them to have goals to achieve.
Yet we allow, and are allowing it more and more, children to go through our educational systems without any benchmark of where they're moving in terms of their academic success. We allow them to swim through this open water without ever saying to them -- I mean in real terms -- "That kind of behaviour will not be accepted in this school or in this school board jurisdiction. If this is how you're going to behave, because that's how you're allowed to behave at home and outside of this building, I'm sorry, it's not acceptable here. This is what we tolerate here."
How impossible is that? How do you feel about that, now that you're at the helm of this Titanic, after having been at the helm of the school board? You come from the same base of experience and concerns, I'm sure.
Hon Mr Silipo: It remains one of the most difficult and yet one of the most important issues for us to grapple with. As you were talking, I was thinking about the kind of discussion we got into yesterday, I believe, in this committee around the issue of the distinction between standards, objectives and benchmarks -- to use the word that you've used -- on the one hand and, on the other hand, the whole debate on the program side around teaching methodologies.
I shared with the committee my sense that part of the problem we have is that the line has become fudged. It's a question of standards, ones on which I believe we can get fairly wide agreement in terms of not being afraid to say that here are some things our young people should be able to do at various points in their academic career. We can leave that separate from the issue of the teaching methodology around how best to do that.
The approach we've seen in our school system over the last number of years around perhaps a less hierarchical teaching structure, to use that general term, has been translated either in people's minds or in reality, but I think more in people's minds, as an acceptance by the school system of a reduction or lowering of standards and expectations. I think we have to deal with that perception and that issue, and in my view the issue of violence is really a chunk of that, because the kinds of things we are seeing are in some measure, if not in large measure, an expression by young people of the frustrations they have. That doesn't justify it, but it maybe explains some of it.
When we come back to this issue of discipline and self-discipline in respect of peers that you've talked about and standards of behaviour, it is completely acceptable and desirable for us to be setting out very clearly within our schools the kinds of behaviour patterns that we believe are acceptable and are not acceptable. That doesn't conflict at all, in my view, with also continuing to encourage very innovative ways of teaching and learning practices that our young people should be exposed to.
I think we've got some of the structures already in place. I was just checking to see if I remember correctly that the provisions we have in our schools for codes of behaviour to be developed, involving students as well as teachers and others in the communities at secondary schools and even in elementary schools, is a provision that exists throughout the province.
It isn't that we can't write those things down and involve people in defining what they are, because that's happening. I think the question then comes back to how, through the experience of everyday teaching practices and through the kinds of experiences our young people have outside the classroom, which we know is also fairly significant, they continue to feel that they are in an environment which nurtures those principles of self-respect and self-discipline and respect for others. When we talk about the skills we need to equip our young people with to deal with and live in the kind of society we live in today, in terms of equipping them to become good and effective citizens of our society, those really are part and parcel of the kinds of basic skills that are there.
We need to start to see that those are indeed some of the key issues we need to address, not in a rigid, regimented type of approach but just in the way in which schools live on a day-to-day basis; that we can inculcate those kinds of values in people. We seem to be somewhat afraid sometimes to talk about such things as values which are generic and which cross religious lines. I think we need to try to state some of those things in very clear ways and not shy away from them.
Mrs Marland: Excuse me for watching the monitor, but I'm the next speaker so I will be leaving shortly.
You were chairman of the separate school board, were you not?
Hon Mr Silipo: Public board.
Mrs Marland: Oh, it was the public board. It's never a popular thing to say, but unless it's changed in the last five or six years, and I doubt that it has, it's fairly accurate to say that in the separate school board, for whatever reason, whether it's the curriculum or the emphasis that is put on the religion of that board -- parents have told me so many times that the standard of discipline is greater in the separate schools than in the public schools. That's not something said only five or six years ago; it's been said for a long time.
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That gives me a lot of concern, because it's the same animal-vegetable matter we take into these two school boards. They're young children who, outside of the board, are exposed to the same things, those things that we cannot control, like media violence. Is it 15 years ago that we had the Judy LaMarsh Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry and $4 million was spent to tell us what we pretty well knew? Those are things the Minister of Education cannot control. You can't control outside of the school day what those children are exposed to in their homes, on the street and in their recreational modes, whatever they are.
While we have them as a captive audience, I hope we can try to feed them with something counter to those terrible experiences children are exposed to now so that when they come into the school they know that what they've seen on television is not real life but a story, that it is acted; that all the violence they see in stories is just not acceptable in our publicly funded school systems, just as it's not acceptable for those children whose parents are wealthy enough to send them to private schools.
It's unfair that children in our society today who have parents who can afford to send them to private school -- I don't ever suggest that they have an academic advantage, because I've never had it proven to me that there was an academic advantage to going to private school, but there is the social advantage to being taught what is acceptable behaviour in terms of each other and their own development of self-discipline.
I think we have an obligation for those few hours a day to try to tell the children who come through our public school doors at any age what is acceptable and what is not, and I think that, more than anything else, is an area in which we are failing. I don't go along with this business that we have the worst school boards, and I don't go along the general overall criticism of the end product coming out of our schools in terms of their academic abilities, but I sure do go along with the criticism that we don't give them enough emphasis on what living with other people on this planet is all about. I think it's unforgivable that we fail in that area, because those children are disadvantaged when they go out into the workforce and try to succeed. They may be very clever, but they don't have the skills of dealing with people in human terms. A lot of them have never had that taught to them at home and we fail them if we don't teach it to them in school.
Hon Mr Silipo: Let me say again that I agree with the general thrust of your comments. When I was talking before about outside the classroom, I was referring not to things we can't control but to the kinds of experiences students have in extracurricular activities and the important role those things play in a young person's life as well in terms of their growing and learning experiences.
I guess the only other thing I would say is that I'm not sure one could generalize and say that when you compare separate schools to public schools, there is that result. I agree with you that the perception is there; I honestly don't know whether the reality bears the perception out or not. I agree with the overall sense you've expressed about the need for us, perhaps better than we are doing now within our school system, to look at these questions of discipline, I think in the way you've expressed it, in terms of acknowledging that we have a responsibility also through the school system to do what we can to encourage and nurture an environment in which our young people will live which respects not only their own abilities and what they can do, but respects their peers and recognizes that we are all members of a society and that that entails certain responsibilities as well as certain rights that obviously we grow with.
That kind of notion of citizenship and that overall responsibility is something that I see we perhaps can continue to put a bit more emphasis on. It has to be something that is integrated as much as possible into everything else we do within the school system and within the kinds of experiences that our young people go through in their school lives.
Mr O'Connor: Just a bit of a story, following Mrs Marland's analogy about discipline. My son, who is five years old, just finished graduating from junior kindergarten after going through toy library and play school and story time and what not. I think junior kindergarten's a super program. One day at supper time, he told me, "Dad, I had to sit in the thinking chair." I realized that the thinking chair was some form of discipline, so I asked him what it was about; he'd gotten into an argument, a bit of a scrap, with one of his classmates over a sandbox toy. So I asked him, "What did you do when you sat in the thinking chair?" He said, "I thought about it, Dad." I asked him, "What did you finally decide?" He said, "Next time, Dad, I'm going to be faster." I thought that's an honest answer. "What happens if you're not first, Patrick?" He said, "Well, Dad, next time, whoever gets there first gets to have it." So that teacher's method of discipline seemed to have worked, and maybe it reflects on some of the parenting of me and my spouse.
Further on junior kindergarten, I know there are some boards that are a little slow in moving in that direction. Having seen my son coming through the junior kindergarten program and learning how to share a little better, I think it's very important to have that chance for that interaction, communication and that social skill at an early age. I think it's a necessary program and I hope you're going to be encouraging boards that don't have a junior kindergarten program to continue with that pursuit. Perhaps you'd just like to comment on
it briefly.
Hon Mr Silipo: Very much so. It's unfortunate that Mrs Marland left us because I'm sure she would have brought us back to what's happening within her own jurisdiction in this area.
The Chair: She'll be right back, but I have a question for you.
Hon Mr Silipo: I'm sure it'll get covered by someone.
We continue to believe and I continue to believe very much that junior kindergarten is very valuable, a program that really provides a very useful headstart for our young people. It's something we need to continue to move on. We have legislation, as you know, in front of the House now that would make it clear that school boards will be required, as of September 1994, to provide junior kindergarten programs.
It's interesting to note that despite some of the reservations some school boards have expressed, the vast majority of boards are already offering the program and have done so for some time without legislation requiring them to do so. In some of the boards, where there are some concerns, we've indicated to them that we're quite open to looking at a variety of proposals they might want to put before us and discuss with us around ways other than the traditional method of delivering the program. That's something we're looking at.
I've said on more than one occasion that we already have one school board -- the Grey county board -- that has submitted such a proposal. There are discussions continuing between our officials and the school board around that issue. Overall, I know, Mr O'Connor, that the school board in your jurisdiction has some concerns about this, but that's something, as I say, that we're intent on proceeding with, while at the same time being open, as I've indicated, to some innovative ways of putting the program together that may be a little different from the traditional form of delivering the program.
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The Chair: On that point, if I might ask a quick question, I notice that on July 3 there was an article in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record which said that the Wellington county separate school board has indicated it feels it may even defy the legislation and suggested there may be costs associated with that. The article quotes the director as saying there'll be about $3,800 in grant money per classroom. I wonder, Minister, if in fact you've articulated in a memo through your regional offices or indicated what the penalties for non-compliance with this legislation might be at this time, or how would a director be able to suggest what cost might be associated with non-compliance? I was fascinated by the reference in this article.
Hon Mr Silipo: No, we haven't done that. I think we work on the assumption that school boards respect the laws of the province. Whether people agree or disagree with those laws, once they're in place, those laws are adhered to. I'm not sure I would want to put out a memo indicating what the consequences are if school boards defy the law, but I would certainly tell you that I will deal with those situations in ways that would start from the premise that the law is there, once it's adopted, to be respected.
The Chair: One other quick question, if I may: You're suggesting that if school boards came up with reasonable proposals and there was cooperation and so on, you'd consider them. As you know, your government has indicated a preference for the non-profit sector in day care. There are several day care centres in my jurisdiction with available space that are being run by early childhood educators and not by ECE graduates. These people are eminently qualified to teach in the system. Have you made any firm decision for your ministry that you would reject the proposal of working in cooperation with the private day care centres, which in my jurisdiction, incidentally, have early childhood educators and teachers running the current day care centres?
Would you object to proposals that involved, in part, cooperation between both elements of the day care sector, or are you predisposed to not working with that group, and would you impose on your school boards what the Minister of Community and Social Services has imposed on municipalities with respect to access for their children?
As you know, there are many children who are kindergarten age in this province who are attending full-time day care and receiving subsidies, and that's perfectly within the law. The advent of junior kindergarten creates almost a year-and-a-half access point for children to receive kindergarten services in a day care setting. That's both legal -- well, you understand the nature of my question here.
Hon Mr Silipo: I'm not sure we could envisage a situation in which there would be a role for private child care centres in a combination of efforts in terms of anything that we would be involved in in providing funding, or that school boards would be involved in in providing funding. I think we would have to be consistent with the policies we are applying. That isn't to say that school boards on their own could not look beyond, obviously, the provision of the junior kindergarten program, couldn't look at whatever links they wanted to make with anyone else, but I think we would have some problems with an approach that would involve, as part of the delivery of a junior kindergarten model, private child care.
As I say, I think it would not be consistent with some of the key principles we have, which are that while we certainly respect people's rights to have private child care, we are talking here, through the junior kindergarten provisions, about expanding in effect an aspect of school programs. In that sense I don't believe the private sector has that kind of a role to play in direct delivery service.
Are there pieces that could be looked at? I would have to see. I'm not sure to what extent you're suggesting that could or should be possible. But I think our departure point would have to be that we'd have grave reservations about that.
Mr Beer: On the same subject of junior kindergarten, I just want to note for the record that this program initiative had started with our government --
Hon Mr Silipo: Absolutely.
Mr Beer: -- and we continue to support that initiative. That being said, I would just like to underline and perhaps play back to you, Minister, the words you expressed somewhat earlier in terms of working with those boards that don't as yet have junior kindergarten programs. It is quite true that many do, and that some have had those programs for a long time.
There's no question in my mind in terms of what I have seen in a number of different boards, both rural and urban, where the introduction of a junior kindergarten program has had a very positive impact on making for a more equal playing field in terms of the access of young children to learning in, as I say, both rural and urban situations. But I'm also conscious, I think, that in a number of boards that don't have it, bringing that program in adds costs, and there are some other problems, which I don't think are insurmountable but where perhaps an overly rigid adherence to a legislated timetable may cause more problems and not really help us in meeting the goal.
I think that sometimes the best way in dealing with this is to work closely with the individual boards to see what the specific problems are and then to try to sort those out. That's not always easy to do, and I think this is a place where there are some boards that just don't believe in junior kindergarten. They just think pedagogically, and for a variety of social and other reasons, that we should not be doing that. I respect that view. It's not one that I share, but I think there are problems that boards have on the cost side, where legitimately the problem around the transfer payments is a real impediment. I think you have a responsibility to work very closely with them on that, and I would hope that you would do, as I say, what you have expressed before this committee.
Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Beer, I certainly intend to, and I think that again I would draw the same distinction that I believe you have, which is between those instances where school boards are having some real difficulties with the concept, and therefore are against the idea on that basis, and those boards that are having difficulties with the implementation because of financial or other reasons. Without getting into an elaborate response on that, I certainly would be, as we have indicated. I think our willingness and our working with boards like the Grey county board is a reflection of that interest in trying to look for solutions where there's an interest expressed in looking for alternative solutions to a problem that's there, and to some innovative ways of delivering the same objective.
We'll continue to do that with any and all boards that show that kind of interest. At the same time, we obviously need to continue to do our work with respect to making sure that funds continue to be present to provide both for the capital needs that are there, that will be there in some cases, and we continue to provide some additional dollars to school boards that are startup funds to help them set up the programs and get them going, and then obviously with respect to the funding formulas to sustain the programs.
There is funding available now. People may argue how adequate that may be, but there are additional funds available to assist school boards with this process of starting these programs up, but we'll continue to work in those specific instances where people are really interested in doing it.
The Chair: If there are no other questions at the moment, perhaps, Minister, you might take a brief moment to summarize and then we'll proceed to the votes. I believe we have unanimous consent to proceed through our votes. We anticipate being called to the House within the next five minutes.
Hon Mr Silipo: I think I can make my summary relatively brief. I want to say first of all that when I first heard the Ministry of Education was on the list for estimates, I wasn't quite sure what that meant, not having been in this place before. As we went through and tried to prepare, as you can see from the massive briefing books etc, I quickly came to the realization that what we would likely get into, and what I was actually hoping we would get into, would be the kinds of discussions we really had. Looking at estimates and budget lines is one thing, but what really is important is looking at the issues that those lines on the budget and the budget estimates reflect.
I want to thank the members of the committee, and you, Mr Chair, for the courtesy expressed to me and my officials, but also, more significantly, for the exchanges we've had. I found this quite enlightening and useful and a good reminder of the things we need to keep on our agenda at the Ministry of Education and that are very much on our agenda.
I really appreciated the frank exchanges we've had and I think in that sense I hope it reflects a spirit that will continue to be there, and that certainly I'm interested in continuing to nurture as Minister of Education between all members of the Legislature in terms of involving people in these discussions, encouraging this kind of back and forth and trying to continue to work together to the extent that we can to continue to improve the system of education in our province.
The Chair: On behalf of the committee, may I just simply say that we appreciate the fact that both you and your staff were very quick to come forward with the responses this committee requested. This has not been the pleasant experience we've enjoyed with other ministries. There are some we did almost two months ago and we're still waiting for their responses. So I think it's important that on behalf of this committee, we thank your staff for their very quick and immediate response to our questions. It is helpful to the process, but it also respects the work of the political process. I was very pleased to see that level of cooperation. I want to thank your deputy and all your staff and you, personally, for that on behalf of the entire committee.
I believe, since we have a consensus and we've given sufficient time to these estimates, that we'll proceed with the votes.
Votes 1301 to 1303, inclusive, agreed to.
The Chair: Shall the 1992-93 annual estimates of the Ministry of Education be reported to the House?
Agreed to.
The Chair: I should just like to say that since the House leaders have not indicated to us whether or not the House will be sitting next week, I believe we've not really given the Ministry of Housing adequate time for us to proceed. At best, we may not even complete part of those Housing estimates.
I believe it's appropriate that we break at this point in order to reconvene either during the summer recess, in accordance with this committee's letter of request to the House leaders, or when the House reconvenes on the first Tuesday following the return of the Legislature this fall. If there are no questions about that, then this committee stands adjourned until that time.
The committee adjourned at 1744.