Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

ONTARIO COUNCIL OF REGENTS FOR COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

COUNCIL OF GOVERNORS OF THE COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY OF ONTARIO

COUNCIL OF PRESIDENTS OF THE COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY OF ONTARIO

CONTENTS

Tuesday 27 September 1994

Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology / Conseil ontarien

des affaires collégiales

Council of Governors of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario

Bruce Hodgson, chair, Council of Governors

Charlene Valiquette, chair, board of governors, Centennial College

Helen Kohner-Friedman, chair, board of governors, Conestoga College

John MacDonald, chair, board of governors, Sir Sandford Fleming College

Tek Chin, chair, board of governors, Lambton College

Kenneth Moorehead, chair, board of governors, Canadore College

Council of Presidents of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario

John Saso, chair

John Tibbits, president, Conestoga College

Dan Corbett, president, St Lawrence College

Bob Gervais, president, Northern College

Mary Hofstetter, president, Sheridan College

Bruce Hill, president, Georgian College

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

*Chair / Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)

*Acting Chair / Président suppléant / Présidente suppléante: Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND

*Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)

*Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)

Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)

Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)

*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)

*Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)

*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)

*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)

Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:

Cunningham, Dianne (London North/-Nord PC) for Mr McLean

Martin, Tony (Sault Ste Marie ND) for Mr Ferguson

McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South/-Sud L) for Mr Curling

Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC) for Mrs Witmer

Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn

Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1004 in room 151.

ONTARIO COUNCIL OF REGENTS FOR COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): I call this morning's session of the standing committee on government agencies to order. We are continuing our agency review, that agency being the Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.

COUNCIL OF GOVERNORS OF THE COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY OF ONTARIO

The Chair: Our deputation this morning is led by Bruce Hodgson, the chair of the Council of Governors. Welcome, Mr Hodgson. We have a list of the other people who are with you, but we would appreciate you introducing them so we know who is sitting where.

Mr Bruce Hodgson: We're pleased to be here and pleased to have an opportunity to make this presentation. Before we start, we'll certainly introduce our panel. On my extreme left is Tek Chin, who's chair of the board of governors of Lambton College. Next to him is John MacDonald, chair of the board of governors of Sir Sandford Fleming College. Seated on my left is Helen Kohner-Friedman, chair of the board of governors of Conestoga College. On my immediate right is Charlene Valiquette, chair of the board of governors of Centennial College. Last but not least is Kenneth Moorehead, chair of the board of governors of Canadore College.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr Hodgson, you were advised that you have an hour to make your presentation, and that leaves an hour for the committee members to ask you questions. It still only comes down to 20 minutes per caucus. We use the stopwatch in this committee so we don't have any debates about people running over. We use that more for the members than the deputations, I might add. Please proceed.

Mr Hodgson: I can assure you that we won't be taking an hour. The presentation I timed was 23 minutes.

The Chair: That's excellent. There'll be more time for questions.

Mr Hodgson: Thank you. Ontario's 25 colleges of applied arts and technology, CAATs, provide career education and training to adults in 900 sites located in 240 communities across the province. The mandate of the colleges is to enhance the educational, social and economic wellbeing of individuals and communities across Ontario. Two new French-language colleges will begin serving the education and training needs of Ontario's francophone population in September 1995.

Research shows that Ontario's college system is highly respected by employers, graduates and the public for its accessible, high-quality programs and services. During their 28-year history, community colleges have indeed served the people of Ontario well and in ever-increasing numbers.

The Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario, ACAATO, is a non-profit voluntary association established by college governors and presidents to serve system needs for advocacy, research and planning, and human resource development. ACAATO is comprised of the Council of Governors and the Council of Presidents, together with 70 provincial operating committees representing the colleges' administrative functions. The ACAATO network facilitates the college system's planning and policy development to enhance operations at each college and province-wide.

The Council of Governors comprises chairs of boards of governors from all colleges. The council serves as a strategic planning forum for the college system. I am speaking to you today as chair of the Council of Governors. My colleagues and I have collaborated on this paper which represents our shared views regarding the mandate and performance of the Ontario Council of Regents.

Historically, the Council of Governors has enjoyed a cooperative relationship with the Council of Regents, as we strive to do with all stakeholders in Ontario's college system. Our association pursues close, productive ties with COR to achieve our common goal, that is, to help the Ontario college system best serve the career education and training needs of the individuals and communities in this province.

Some examples of initiatives in which COG and COR are cooperating are the governors' strategic planning committee, ACAATO's task force on economic development, COR's restructuring committee and the COG-COR governors orientation program. Staff at ACAATO and COR secretariats work closely together maintaining strong communication links and sharing research and addressing system issues.

Despite this strong history of mutual respect, the past few years have challenged COR relations with some college boards and with the Council of Governors. Concerns have been raised and repeated. Our constructive examination of these concerns may help the committee to understand the governors' perspective on the Council of Regents' mandate and roles.

Prior to discussing our views, we ask that you appreciate three factors today.

As my colleagues were requested to appear here as chairs of their college's board of governors, they will be speaking solely on behalf of their boards. Board chairs MacDonald, Kohner-Friedman and Chin are in their second elected term as chair. Ms Valiquette and Mr Moorehead are in their third terms. Their knowledge of college governance is therefore considerable and I am confident that you will find their individual points of view extremely valuable in your review.

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Representatives of Ontario's three francophone colleges have expressed disappointment that they were not invited by the standing committee on government agencies to appear with other board chairs on this panel. The Council of Regents has played a significant role in the establishment of the French-language colleges, and their governance representatives wish their views to be heard. A copy of the comments we have been asked to forward to you is attached.

The timing of these hearings prohibits full college board and Council of Governors discussion of the complete mandate of the Ontario Council of Regents. As you may know, external governors serve their colleges entirely on a volunteer basis. Boards do not usually meet during the summer months. Furthermore, there is a wide range of opinions regarding COR among governors across the province. Full consultation would be required on all aspects of the regents' role prior to a comprehensive report being presented. We will confine our comments to those areas in which there has been adequate discussion.

This paper will first provide a brief background on the Council of Regents and then examine each of COR's three responsibilities from the Council of Governors' perspective.

To appreciate the governors' views on the Council of Regents, it is helpful to provide a brief historical context for the relationship between COR and the colleges. Established when colleges were created, the Council of Regents played a major role in building the college system. From the early years until the mid-1980s, COR served as an operational body of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, approving programs, determining capital expansion and supervising collective bargaining. The council's role was intertwined with the ministry's and consequently critical to college operations.

Following the 1986 Pitman report recommending to the minister some revision of college system governance, the government amended regulations to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act to define the Council of Regents' current advisory and executive roles as follows:

(1) Advises the minister on long-range policy and planning issues of a system-wide nature;

(2) Appoints members to college boards;

(3) Administers collective bargaining on behalf of the boards.

The shift in COR's role and the mix of advisory and executive roles have caused confusion both inside and outside the college community. There appear to be three corporate head offices for Ontario's colleges: the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ontario Council of Regents, and the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario, or MET, COR and ACAATO.

The clarity of roles urged by Walter Pitman has not developed. To compound the confusion, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities' integration with the Ministry of Education and others in 1993 has resulted in a loss of profile for college issues in the government bureaucracy. The college community and the public are uncertain which office performs which function.

In its September 1993 strategic planning document Accepting the Challenge, the Council of Governors also recommended that the relative roles of the ministry, Council of Regents and ACAATO should be reviewed. A copy of this report is available to the committee.

Each of the Council of Regent's responsibilities will now be considered in more detail from the governors' perspective.

COR's policy advisory responsibility: The Council of Regents advises the Minister of Education and Training on long-range policy and planning issues of a system-wide nature. COR's policy advisory role is perceived to be a major contributing factor to long-range planning in the Ontario college system.

An example of this valuable contribution would be the Vision 2000 process, undertaken by the regents between 1988 and 1990 to review the mandate of Ontario's colleges of applied arts and technology. The consultative process around Vision 2000 involved all stakeholders and proved to be a worthwhile exercise for an education and training system entering its third decade.

The Vision 2000 report confirmed the colleges' mandate to serve the career education and training needs of Ontario and made 40 recommendations to enhance the colleges' capacity to meet these needs. The minister approved three of these recommendations: to establish the College Standards and Accreditation Council, CSAC; a prior learning assessment system, PLA: and a task force to examine advanced training.

At this point, the Council of Regents' role was expanded by the then Ministry of Colleges and Universities to include operational responsibilities for CSAC and PLA. COR was allocated the resources for implementing these operations. It has now become apparent that COR's expanded role into academic operations of the colleges has added to the confusion regarding the leadership of Ontario's college system in general and the role of the regents in particular. The tension between centralization and decentralization has increased. While the college system generally accepts the Council of Regents' role in advising the minister on policy, boards of governors have questioned the council's role in the colleges' academic operations.

College boards support the principles of college standards and prior learning assessment. However, several questions arise regarding the Council of Regents' role in operationalizing these two concepts.

Firstly, regarding CSAC, COR's new role in determining college curriculum requirements from the centre has been perceived to reduce the role and responsibility of colleges and their program advisory committees. By mandate established with the colleges 28 years ago, each college program requires that a community-based committee be established to advise the colleges on the skills and knowledge graduates require for career success. The Ministry of Education and Training approves program proposals based on program advisory committees' advice.

Program advisory committees, or PACs, provide vital links with each college's community and integrity to each program. Through these committees, over 10,000 representatives of employers in business, labour, government, social action and community organizations currently provide curriculum input to college boards, faculty and administration. These active groups ensure that college curricula remain relevant to the changing requirements of Ontario's workplaces. College boards support the existing program advisory system rather than further centralization of curriculum.

Regarding prior learning assessment, this system of recognizing college applicants' previous learning is midway through its three-year establishment phase. Boards have questioned, firstly, whether the implementation of PLA could not have been managed through the existing structures and resources at the ministry or ACAATO, and, secondly, whether PLA should continue as a COR responsibility following its implementation.

The issue of accountability has been a common concern among governors who perceive that COR has exceeded its advisory role with CSAC and PLA. Boards of governors are accountable through the Minister of Education and Training to the local community to ensure the implementation of academic policy. However, boards have been distanced from policy generation and evaluation with regard to CSAC and PLA. In effect, local boards are held accountable for academic policy made elsewhere and COR is not perceived to be accountable to the colleges for the policy it dictates. What performance indicators have been established to evaluate COR's policy and operations roles?

One final issue regarding the Council of Regents' policy role: While college boards and COR have different policy leadership roles, they share a common prerequisite: membership diversity. Both boards of governors and the Council of Regents require among their members a comprehensive range of skills, knowledge and backgrounds that enable members collectively to develop sound educational-administration policy.

Boards of governors have proven their collective capacity in policy leadership. In recent years, however, questions have been raised regarding the Council of Regents' membership:

(1) Is there the collective background knowledge about the college system at COR to recommend educational-administration policy?

(2) Is there the will among all COR members to act collectively respecting the broad policy leadership interests of the council above those of constituencies?

We acknowledge that over the past six months, council has attempted to address this first concern by adding new members with demonstrated policy leadership backgrounds. However, concern regarding the question of COR's will to pursue common goals remains.

The Council of Governors offers its assistance in the review of COR's policy and operational roles and in the identification of regent candidates with wide community-based background and board experience to serve the broader public interest.

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COR's appointment of governors responsibility:

The second mandate of the Council of Regents is executive in nature: the appointment of members to college boards of governors.

The Council of Governors' views on COR's role in the appointment of governors are well documented, as this topic has been widely discussed this year.

In January 1994 the Council of Regents issued a governance review discussion paper making recommendations on several governance issues including the number and constituency of governor appointments, elections, observer status, voting privileges, eligibility for chair's office, president's terms and conditions of employment, college councils, governor terms, quorum, conflict of interest, closed sessions, governors' training and per diems.

The Council of Governors established a full governor consultation process prior to submitting its system response in May. I am please to share the highlights of the governors' response with you. A copy of the complete document is available to your committee.

To begin, three common themes were identified throughout the college discussion process. These themes provide an accurate synthesis of governors' current views regarding the Council of Regents' governance review.

First, governors in Ontario's colleges disagree with the regents' view that there is a need for further regulation of board appointments to achieve board diversity and representativeness.

Second, governors are opposed to the movement towards further centralization of COR powers, as recommended in the review.

Third, governors view negatively the inherent criticism of current college governance contained in the regents' recommendations.

Regarding the regents' recommendation that external governors be appointed from constituencies, boards already have in place a system to identify a diverse board membership. The Council of Governors clearly prefers to maintain the current community-based model of board governance which has resulted in diverse board membership fully representative of community education and training interests. We agree with governance experts Professor Abe Konrad and Dr John Carver, who strongly support effective community-based governance models.

The majority of boards therefore supports the current board appointment process and is opposed to any expansion of the Council of Regents' role in board appointments. Several boards, however, have requested that the Council of Regents try to improve the current appointment process, which has been made difficult in some situations by poor communications. The Council of Governors has attempted to facilitate better communications around this process.

The Council of Governors met with the chair of the Council of Regents this spring to discuss the concerns of several boards regarding the appointment process. Suggestions for improving the process, particularly the quality of liaison communications, were exchanged. Subsequently, the Council of Governors conducted a brief survey of board chairs to determine their level of satisfaction with this past May and June appointment process. Responses indicate that board chairs were generally more satisfied with the appointment process this year than in earlier years, although concerns remain. A copy of the survey results is available to the committee.

The Council of Governors also recommends that the chair of COR's governance committee, which makes board appointments, should have a thorough knowledge of and sensitivity to the role and responsibilities of college governance and local communities.

We wish to make one final point on this compelling issue. The Council of Regents' responsibility for board appointments personally and directly affects each governor and therefore each board. College governors are community leaders who take their commitment to education and training very seriously.

When problems over rejected appointments arise between a board and COR, the governors' view of regents' entire relationship with the board can be negatively affected. Subsequently, several boards' difficulty with the appointment process can create a larger negative system relationship with the Council of Regents. As has been the case during 1994, the situation has escalated to other sectors of the college system, with unfortunate effects.

The current environment created by difficulties in some colleges' relations with COR, together with ongoing concerns regarding COR's role and with the impact of governance review, is not an environment of trust. Conflicts have arisen and relations have been damaged.

No one benefits from this environment. The public is confused, the college community is uncertain over credibility of leadership roles, and energy and resources which should be collectively directed towards meeting the challenges of providing accessible, high-quality education and training to increasing numbers of Ontarians are spent on relationship repair.

The Council of Governors remains committed, however, to respecting the mandated role of the Council of Regents and to building more productive relationships.

COR's collective bargaining responsibility:

The third function of the Council of Regents is executive responsibility for college bargaining on behalf of the boards of governors with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, OPSEU.

The relations surrounding collective bargaining in Ontario's colleges of applied arts and technology are difficult. Since 1979, three labour disruptions have closed the colleges. All parties are committed to the urgent need to improve relations as the basis for negotiation of collective agreements.

Regarding the Council of Regents' role in collective bargaining, governor opinion remains divided. In post-strike 1986, Walter Pitman called for local bargaining to reduce the climate of discontent. In 1992, again in a post-strike situation, the Council of Governors recommended that Jeffrey Gandz's 1988 Report on the Colleges Collective Bargaining Commission be revisited. Dr Gandz described the structure of Ontario's colleges as demonstrating "considerable centralized planning and control but with decentralized operating autonomy," page 158, and recommended the establishment of an employers' association. Governors have expressed doubts about such an association but have stated that perhaps it is time to develop new collective bargaining approaches.

The Council of Governors is unable to provide the committee with a consensus view on the matter of COR's role in collective bargaining. To do so would require extensive consultation across the college system. Clearly, given time constraints, this was not possible. The issues of centralization and decentralization are too complex and the stakes are too high to comment quickly. Furthermore, the current environment surrounding COR relationships might have a dysfunctional effect on any system discussion, regardless of the positive intentions of all stakeholders.

In conclusion, we would like to restate our commitment to working with all stakeholders in the college system to achieve our common goals. The Council of Regents has been an important partner in the development of Ontario's colleges. We hope that the outcome of the steering committee's review is an even stronger community college system for Ontario.

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The Chair: Thank you, Mr Hodgson. We have an hour and a half left, so I'm going to suggest that we do 15-minute segments. Is that acceptable?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): That makes sense.

The Chair: We will start with the government today. We started with the third party yesterday.

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, and I'd like to welcome the group here today.

I really have two points to raise. One is that you were talking about how much autonomy the colleges have in developing their own curriculum and generally managing their own affairs as opposed to what you might call interference from the Council of Regents.

It seems to me we're getting into a very complex picture these days. We've got the prior learning assessment, we've got large numbers of people coming in who are not straight out of high school, we're covering a very wide range of subjects in our courses and so on.

I'm just wondering how we ensure the transferability and the equivalence of courses in the different colleges, how we reconcile that need, the need for people to be able to move around and to know what the value of their particular qualifications is, with the question of allowing each college to be more independent in this field.

My other question is the issue of the composition of the board of governors. I don't know whether there has ever been any study done of what the composition of boards of governors has been, of whether all the different groups that we're specifying these days have been represented, of whether boards have largely consisted of people who, quite understandably, have the time and the background that puts them in a position to come forward and to be accepted, which might leave out certain categories of people, maybe some of those who are not quite so well-off in the socioeconomic strata or have found it more difficult to come forward for other reasons; and whether you don't feel there was some need for a little intervention there to make sure that all parts of the community are represented on those boards.

Mr Hodgson: I tried to foist off the answer to your first question to my associate here, but she refused to take it, and I'm not sure I feel qualified to give a good answer on it.

I do know that the programs the colleges have result from a very involved collaboration with the advisory committees, who in fact are the very persons that the graduates from the colleges will be working for; therefore, theoretically, that should provide the guidance to the program structure that is needed for the students to study. Added to that, of course, is the fact that after the colleges have determined a program that they feel the advisory committee has asked them to provide, that same request then goes to the Ministry of Education which, in turn, presumably does its own research and therefore not only addresses its feeling about the need for it but also, at least I presume, it would be searching to make sure the other colleges had followed similar program lines.

Ms Charlene Valiquette: Actually, Bruce, just to add to that -- I don't know whether I'll clarify, but I will add to it. I think it's important to recognize the role ACAATO plays in helping the colleges coordinate their activities. Over the years, certainly in the years I've been chair -- before that I can't honestly say I was that involved with ACAATO -- there's a very key role now being played in bringing all the colleges together in finding common solutions and common approaches to things, and I think the administration of each of the colleges works extremely well together towards that end.

My sense is that they welcome input and guidance on those issues. I don't think there's any question of a difference of opinion as to what needs to be done, but I think there is a sense that certainly those people have the expertise. ACAATO provides a mechanism to at least move us along that road, and then the Council of Regents can provide the sort of oversight guidance that can enhance that process even further, whatever the curriculum issue is.

Ms Helen Kohner-Friedman: If I could just add a comment to that, prior learning assessment, or PLA, is not something new, not something that was just suddenly determined by the Council of Regents that had to be there. We are living in a society where, as you suggest, there are increasing numbers of people with a diversity of skills and a diversity of backgrounds who are returning to the college system. It is in the interests of the individual colleges to accommodate these people and to fit them in, whereas before there might not have been any need to do this because there wasn't the demand.

What we're seeing, certainly in our community, are factories closing and workers having to come back into the system to retrain and acquire skills. Our college has recognized this from an early stage and, prior to the earlier initiatives of the Council of Regents, did have a program for that in place. I think you will find that the individual colleges where there is a need for this will work to accommodate these people, because it's in our interests to do so and it's in the interests of the communities to have people trained and back in the workforce at the earliest possible opportunity.

Ms Carter: I certainly agree that it's a good idea. I'm just wondering how the equivalencies are going to be worked out. It's obviously gotten much more complex than it used to be where a course was a course and it didn't vary with the person who took it. Obviously, if you're granted a course because you already have that knowledge from your background, it's not going to be exactly the same as what would have happened had that person taken the course. I'm just wondering how that's going to work out.

Ms Kohner-Friedman: Certainly at our college there are several different systems or entry points that can be determined for somebody coming in who seeks to take advantage of the PLA. While I don't have all the details at hand, I believe one of the processes is that you can take a challenge exam, which will set you at a certain level and determine whether you have the prerequisite knowledge to go ahead. Another system is a portfolio assessment where you work with a counsellor to put together a portfolio of what you've managed to accomplish in various areas, and that portfolio is assessed and credit is granted on the basis of the portfolio.

I believe there are several other methods. However, those are two I'm familiar with. Those are systems and they are in place and they are working.

Ms Valiquette: Ms Carter, I think your concerns are very valid ones. The system itself is realizing that we can't all be all things to all people because there just is not the resource to allow that to happen. I think what needs to be recognized is that regardless of the individual college agenda, collectively the system is realizing that reality and is working towards that end. I think that comes again to the recognition that there's a very valuable input role that someone at the Council of Regents level can provide, but does that necessarily translate to the very active involvement in curriculum level? I guess that's the question we're debating here.

The Chair: Ms Carter, you've used eight of the 15 minutes, and there are three other of your colleagues wishing --

Ms Carter: I did raise one other point.

The Chair: That's fine, and you also can come back on the next 15 minutes. Continue if you wish; I'm just advising you.

Ms Carter: I just wonder if there's any answer --

Mr Hodgson: On the matter of governance?

Ms Carter: Yes.

Mr Hodgson: I don't think the colleges ever objected to a little pushing to be more diversified in the makeup of its board of governors. Certainly -- I don't know how many years ago it would be -- it's taken some time to get gender equity on the college board of governors. That's a given and nobody pays much attention to it; it's just there.

Similarly, the governors and the colleges obviously recognize the diversity in the community and the need for some of the people representing these various community-based people, and they're coming on to our boards. Every board, I think, is achieving more and more representativeness than we've had in the past. I think we're on the right track there, but I think what we're saying in our presentation is that we don't need more directives issued to us. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing.

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I wanted to first of all, as Ms Carter did, congratulate you on doing an excellent job in some very challenging and difficult times. Certainly, we as a government are recognizing that we are into different times than we've ever been into before. The story of the community college system I think evolved out of some different times too.

I think the previous Conservative government saw that there was a need to put in place such an instrument as community colleges in the province to meet some of the needs it was recognizing at that time. And certainly we're aware of the changing demands of society and the changing economy we live in and the need for us to be responding in a more proactive, energetic, creative way to those challenges. You can hopefully understand and accept that that isn't a thing that's easily done, that it brings with it a tremendous need to respond and the consequent difficulties that arise as you try to make change, and with that some confusion, I guess.

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Today, I'd just like to say a couple of things and then perhaps ask you to respond. It's clear to us, from the discussion we had yesterday with Richard Johnston and the Council of Regents, that the pecking order is the ministry and then COR and then down to the community colleges. That, I don't think, has ever been challenged by anybody and continues to be the way things operate and will be the way things will happen, so there really isn't, in my mind, three head offices for community colleges; it continues to be the way it was established. Hopefully, as the situation we find ourselves in economically settles a bit, it will become more clear again where the lines are and how we can move so we can minimize the confusion and the communication problems that go on.

I just wanted to use, as an example of how that happens -- because in your presentation today I get a little confused in just where we are in all of this. Certainly Mr Johnston and the Council of Regents yesterday left no confusion in our mind as to the process. The question of governance is one that has become fairly high-profile, and there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about what exactly is happening at this point in time.

The ministry asked the Council of Regents to look into that whole question, and the council did that by putting in place a discussion process, a paper with some opinions it had that it took around the province and got some input on. It was in my community, and the board of governors at Sault College responded in a very energized and I think intelligent, challenging way. The Council of Regents then brought that back, looked at it and is in the process of sending forward to the ministry its response.

They did this consultation and they're going to share with the minister what they found, and then ultimately it's up to the minister to decide what to put in place. So we're all involved in that, and hopefully in the end something will come down that will reflect that there was this very real discussion, that the Council of Regents listened and that ultimately the ministry listened as we move forward with this.

I note by your comment on page 7 that responses to your survey indicate that board chairs are generally more satisfied. I also note from the statistics we got yesterday that there has been significant movement forward in the area, as you mentioned, of gender parity and that kind of thing. That didn't come without, I'm sure, some level of pull and push and tug and difficulty.

All of this causes that, and I think if we're going to get to a place where the college system continues to be helpful to this province as it moves into the next century and participates in a global economy, there will be confusion to some degree, there will be a pull and a tug, and hopefully a very courageous and energized discussion about all of that, but in the end the lines remain the same.

I just lay those comments out and ask if you have some comment at this point.

Mr John MacDonald: I'd just like to reflect a bit on your description of rules of responsibility. As a community volunteer member of our board, it's been my understanding that boards of governors are responsible to the Minister of Education, not to the Council of Regents. I think that line of responsibility has to be better understood.

We certainly have a wonderful relationship overall with the Council of Regents' executive responsibilities from the minister. But my understanding, and I sure stand to be corrected, is that we're responsible to the Minister of Education for the functioning of the college. Now, that doesn't usurp what you've said about working together; however, I just thought we might clarify that.

Mr Martin: And I find that helpful in terms of my coming to understand your understanding of it. I hope, as this discussion unfolds and as the system works together to try and improve those systems, we will come to greater understanding. Certainly there are mandated roles for COR by the ministry that gives it authority over the system in certain areas, and you pointed them out here, so it's not as clear-cut.

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): Let me extend a welcome as well to our governors, people who I think have long gone unrecognized for the valuable role they've played in our college system. It is important for committee members to recognize that we have before us volunteers who derive nothing more than a sense of satisfaction from knowing that they can continue to play an important role in post-secondary education in the province.

I appreciated all the comments you made in your written presentation. They are very well received. I don't think anybody here is bent on bringing some kind of recriminatory approach to the Council of Regents. Rather, we're looking for positive and constructive comments, and I think your comments fit that mode perfectly.

It is my opinion that the reason our community colleges have served us so well in the past is because they have been community-based. They have been able to assess and determine what their needs were and to organize the resources at their command in order to meet community needs. I appreciated your comments especially about what seems to be an inexorable movement towards centralization, particularly of policy, at the COR level.

I want to talk first, though, about the governance issue. My view of government is that it should be laying down guideposts and perhaps the occasional beacon. Your job is to make your approaches towards that. Now, sometimes you get the impression that our community college boards of governors are social-equity, intellectual Neanderthals and that the boards consist entirely of white males over the age of 57. I don't buy that. My understanding of human nature and of our boards is that they want to do the right thing. They understand that it is vital that our boards have representation from all segments of their community in order to properly meet community needs.

I think they recognize as well, and it's my view too, that membership from within groups in the community is an important consideration, but it's not the only consideration, obviously. Competency is critical. Boards perform an important function -- I don't think anybody would question that -- all the more reason for us to have competent people sitting on the boards. Can you tell me a bit about the composition of your boards at the present time and any response you might have to my comments?

Ms Valiquette: I can start. Coming from Centennial, which of course is based in Scarborough, we've probably got one of the more ethnically mixed catchment areas in the province and, as a result, our board reflects that ethnic mix. I think we have representation from just about all the cultures that attend the school. We've been successful in finding an aboriginal representative for the board this year. We've been attempting to find a handicapped representative for the board this year. We were not able to for this particular round of appointments, but that's our number one priority for the next round of appointments.

We were also at the same time, though, trying to balance the representation of the catchment area with the requirement that people, as you say, have the skills to understand that this is a big business we're running with limited resources. So we're trying to balance the perspective, those who can help the management perspective of how to use those resources wisely with the perspective of those who can help us understand what the educational requirements are of the people attending the colleges and the employers hiring our graduates.

I give credit to the Council of Regents' effort for delineating some of the principles, because certainly those are principles shared by Centennial, I believe by the college as whole. They do deserve credit for the principles; I don't think there's any disagreement on that. I think the colleges deserve a lot of credit, for the most part, for their efforts to succeed in those principles, and where there are exceptions I think they should be dealt with individually. But certainly we're quite proud of our record at Centennial on that count.

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Mr Tek Chin: As far as diversity of the board membership is concerned, from a Sarnia perspective -- Lambton College is situated at Sarnia -- we have quite a few board members from industry, so I really don't have too much of a problem with the principle of the diversity we need. No, I don't really have too much problem with that.

Ms Kohner-Friedman: If I could just add my comments, I must say I agree with Mr McGuinty's comments wholeheartedly. I think you'll find if you go across Ontario that the boards of the community colleges are reflective of their communities. Boards realize that is important and boards have been doing this for many years.

I'd like to just back up a second and deal with Mr McGuinty's comments that while membership in a particular constituent group is important, it isn't the sole overriding factor that should be looked at when determining what type of skills you need on your board. As Ms Valiquette has commented, we're running colleges which have huge budgets -- which are getting smaller by the day, but huge budgets -- and a variety of issues to deal with. What we as college governors need are certain skill sets that can be brought to the board that can help us with the issues we have to deal with.

As you say, I don't think membership in a particular constituent group should automatically qualify you for a seat on the board of governors. It's a difficult job to act as a governor, and the level of skill you bring and the background you bring is probably the most important thing you would want to look at in determining whether a person is a governor.

Mr McGuinty: You made a significant comment here as well about the move towards centralization. In fact there's something you said that I've noted, and I want to read it just to emphasize its importance: "However, boards have been distanced from policy generation and evaluation with regard to CSAC and prior learning assessment. In effect, local boards are held accountable for academic policy made elsewhere and COR is not perceived to be accountable to the colleges for the policy it dictates."

I know that has led to considerable frustration among our boards. It is critical that we have a good relationship between our boards and the council, and that there be clear divisions of accountability. That's in the broader public interest, not only in your interest. This is a big question and time doesn't really permit you to address it fully, but what would your recommendations be with respect to CSAC and prior learning assessment? How could we, assuming that now is the right time to do it, implement those initiatives and ensure that everybody knew who was accountable for what?

Mr Hodgson: I have to admit that I haven't given it a lot of thought, but I would be inclined to think that CSAC and PLA should become the responsibility of ACAATO, which is the umbrella group representing all the colleges, consisting of the governors and the Council of Presidents of the same group.

Mr Bradley: May I interject with a point of order? For the purpose of those who are watching this at home, and for the purpose of some who are not familiar with the college system, could we not use the acronyms? It loses a lot of people. We politicians always get caught using all these acronyms and then people wonder what we're talking about later on. So just for the benefit of the unwashed like me --

Mr Hodgson: I was speaking about the PLA or prior learning assessment, and CSAC, which is the College Standards and Accreditation Council. Those are two very important ones, of course mentioned in our report, that we feel should be a part of the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario. That may well be my personal opinion as opposed to a consensus of all the people involved in it, but that's where I would be inclined to put those two.

Mr McGuinty: Tell me something about the appointment of governors. Technically, I gather the ultimate decision-making power rests with the Council of Regents, but historically, de facto, the Council of Regents has accepted selections made. I gather the procedure has been to send two names or three names, whatever, and the Council of Regents has placed its faith in the board of governors, acting within a community, to use its good judgement in coming up with those names, deciding on whether or not those people would be suited to meeting the needs of their community and of the board in particular. I gather that has changed in recent years. How do we address this? Do you think COR should always be respecting a college board's choices? If not, when should they be saying, "These are the wrong people, from our perspective, and we're going to pick others"?

Ms Kohner-Friedman: If I could speak to that, I think what you have here is a bit of a jurisdictional issue. I think you're correct in the history you set out. What I would see as the important factor is, who is in the local communities, who is down in the trenches, so to speak? Does it not seem logical that the people who are in the communities, who are familiar with the communities, who are familiar with the employers and the training needs of the students in those communities, would have a better handle on the qualities necessary for a governor of the college? That would be my comment.

In terms of whether the college is always right, I don't know that you can say the college is always right, but I think there's a lot more credibility from the appointments that come up through the college system. We've mentioned in our report the program advisory committees, which are comprised of thousands of individuals across Ontario representing broad and diverse sectors. These people play an important part in the selection of governors as well. I would think it's the people who are in the communities and have knowledge of the communities who would have a better handle on what the needs are rather than people sitting in Toronto, so to speak.

Ms Valiquette: My perspective on this is that there is a process that has been established over the last few years that works well as long as there's trust between the parties. What's missing these days, from what I can see, is the trust. To the extent that there are differences of opinion with one or two colleges' choices, I think the system would prefer that those instances be dealt with through two-way communication between the Council of Regents and the particular college, with ACAATO playing a role. As a system we want to make sure we've got the right representation, but I think the process can work well if the parties are allowed to be trusted to do what everyone wants to do for the benefit of the system.

I'm not totally convinced it's the process that's wrong; I think the trust has disappeared, to some extent. And the solutions are perhaps not being problem-specific; they're trying to find a generic solution to more particular concerns. I would think there's more of a solution lying in communication and in liaison than there is in more centralization or imposed control.

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Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): Welcome to the committee. I'd just like to say as a former board member at Fanshawe, a hundred years ago it seems now, you should be very careful; this could happen to you. I got upset about things in life and got involved with our school board and now here.

But I really want to thank you all for the commitment you have to young people, to your community, and congratulate you on your perseverance and this very strong paper you wrote, which I had the privilege of reading last evening. Mr Hodgson, you're very calm in your presentation, but I read in this that the group is particularly disappointed, and I thought the word "trust" was appropriate.

Given that I'm the critic for the Progressive Conservative Party, it's been my privilege to visit most of the colleges. I did ask that this review take place before the committee, basically so we could find solutions and get some of the concerns in the open. I just hope that can happen as a result.

I have a couple of questions with regard to the Council of Regents governance review and your response to it. I think the two main points you made were that the governors are opposed to any movement towards further centralization of COR, and that you also disagreed with the regents' view that there is a need for further regulation of board appointments. Am I correct in those statements?

Mr Hodgson: Yes.

Mrs Cunningham: I'm assuming there's been a lot of time since you did that. In your opinion, because I haven't kept up on this, was the Council of Regents interested in your response and have you had any feedback from the Council of Regents with regard to your response?

Mr Hodgson: As you know, we submitted a response from the Council of Governors, and we really have had no feedback because the Council of Regents is preparing its report to the minister and we will not be privy to that report until after the minister has received it.

On the other hand, my personal observation is that the appointments that have gone forward and been approved by the Council of Regents this year would lead me to believe it does understand our feeling on some of these matters and is taking that into consideration. Certainly, as we mentioned in our report, when we did a survey of our presidents regarding the appointments for May-June of this year, in most cases the governors were reasonably satisfied with those appointments.

Mrs Cunningham: In your position as chair of the Council of Governors, would you pick up the phone and talk to the chair of the Council of Regents?

Mr Hodgson: Absolutely. I lunch with him and discuss matters with him, not frequently, but regularly, yes.

Mrs Cunningham: This isn't a court case or anything.

I'm on the phone all the time, and I don't care who's at the other end: It's amazing how people do want to talk to you; people are looking for solutions all the time. Isn't it wonderful, in this world, that people are like this? I mean, we hear all the bad stuff. That's why I was surprised when you said you haven't had any response. You're probably talking about anything in writing or whatever.

Mr Hodgson: The governors' response was pretty strong in the matter of the appointment of governors, and I would like to think that the Council of Regents has taken that into consideration, but I have no reason to think it has; I assume it has. I think that was a very, very strong presentation we made on that point.

Mrs Cunningham: I guess we'll find out. If I were them, I would have checked what I was going to say to the minister with you first, but I'm not them. That's the way I operate; other people operate differently. It would be nice to know that you had some support for what you were about to say from the people who represent, in many ways, the communities across this province in this democracy we all work in.

With regard to the relationship, because I think there has been obviously not a great relationship with the Council of Regents and the boards, what kinds of things has the Council of Regents done to improve that relationship? Because they were here yesterday and I don't think we pursued this line of questioning to any real extent, but it did come up.

Mr Martin: There was an example given of the Conestoga question and they sent somebody down there directly to work out a resolution that was --

Mrs Cunningham: Okay, well I'll ask about that one then, Tony, and see what we get from the Council of Governors. But we didn't ask them -- and there was no reason for me not doing it; these are just questions that have arisen from the discussion today, with regard to any steps that they may have taken to improve the relations. Have they had a meeting with you to discuss this lack of a good relationship or the concerns that you might have had?

Mr Hodgson: I would think that's an ongoing thing, but the Council of Regents -- I assumed this job as chair of ACAATO in April and I've only attended four or five meetings of the Council of Regents, but I've been very impressed with the volume of work that's going on and the work it's doing on behalf of the colleges. It surprised me that it was that much.

In addition to that, the problems that we've had or subjects that come up, like the college of applied arts and technology pension plan that happens to be an active process at the moment, they very quickly, the minute they determined there was some concern from the governors that they hadn't anticipated, put together a team that's been going out to every college in the system explaining what's going on and there to ask questions. On Friday, we're hosting a joint meeting and inviting specialists in pensions to come and answer the questions and concerns of the governors.

So I think the Council of Regents is doing a great deal more to improve relations with the governors and I feel much better about it than I did two or three years ago, when I first got involved with the college system.

Mrs Cunningham: Okay, but on page 1 it's very clear, where you state about, "Despite this strong history of mutual respect," it's been more challenging -- I'm looking at the very last paragraph. I think you're underlining that there are concerns about the Council of Regents' mandate and roles and it goes back to the recommendations of Pitman and others over the years. First of all, if I were the minister, it would be one of the first things I'd have to correct, because there are just too many grey areas and people have to clearly understand what their own job is.

As a former school board trustee, I had to clearly think about when I was getting into the administration of the day-to-day stuff, programs and what not of schools, and I think it's one of the responsibilities as well of not only your boards of governors but of the Council of Regents, getting into the work of the colleges themselves.

So clearly, maybe that's what we should be working on, the mandate and roles, but if anybody wants to speak to that, I'd be interested in hearing from anybody.

Mr MacDonald: If I might comment, I think you've captured one of the general issues that we are dealing with as governors. I think it has to do with seeing ourselves as policymakers, even at the board level, where operational issues come to the table and we have to resist the temptation sometimes of getting too far into the kitchen. I believe that the same opinion or the same vision of the Council of Regents' relationship with the boards might be consistent here, that, as has been referred to, there are many policy recommendations that the Council of Regents has made that we agree with, so let the operations at the college level look after that.

I do think that your issue about communicating with the colleges in the past little while has been a communication problem -- and Bruce has made reference to the fact that liaison, I think, in the past was not seen as such a high priority to the members of the Council of Regents as it has done in the most recent past. In our college's experience, at Sir Sandford, we've found that the liaison team's interest and integrity of the issues that have been brought to the table have been met with a higher degree of responsiveness. I believe the key in the change has been the liaison team work that Richard has responded to our concerns with.

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Ms Kohner-Friedman: Could I just add, in terms of communications, I think you've hit on several issues, and I'd like to speak to those.

On the governance review issue, when the Council of Regents came out with its governance paper, I think part of the reason for the strong response from the Council of Governors was that that paper they came out with did not attempt to incorporate or reflect any of the ideas that had previously been submitted to the Council of Regents by the Council of Governors. We had a paper commissioned by a governance expert on the issue of governance, and that was in no way reflected in their report. So I think part of the governors' strong response comes from that.

In addition, we would like an opportunity to see the Council of Regents' final report to the minister before it goes to the minister. I think we're stakeholders in the system and we are entitled to know what that report would be.

In terms of several other communications issues, I believe Mr Martin -- I don't know what you heard yesterday, but Mr Martin raised the issue of, at Conestoga a new liaison team was appointed. Just for the record, I'd like to state that it wasn't at the behest of the Council of Regents that a new liaison team was appointed. We had to send several strongly worded letters to the council saying that we didn't feel we were being fairly dealt with by the existing liaison team and we insisted in fact on having a new liaison team for our college, because communications had broken down to such an extent. So it was at the behest of the college that the new liaison team was appointed, and I don't know if that jibes with what you heard yesterday.

Another issue in terms of this colleges of applied arts and technology pension issue, which is being discussed at board level now, it wasn't until June that governors heard about this for the first time, and now we find that we have to make a decision and vote on it in a short matter of months. The communication on that issue has not been good either. The meeting that Mr Hodgson's referring to in Toronto was called on approximately two weeks' notice to all governors in the system, and I don't feel that's enough time to provide appropriate discussion of the issue. If you're going to call people from all across the province to sit in Toronto, to have a meeting on an important issue, you would want to certainly give enough lead time. Governors are volunteers and they're busy people.

Mrs Cunningham: I appreciate what you're saying because I think one of the disadvantages that we have, certainly as a committee, often is that people do need a lot of lead time, and because we often ourselves don't do that, we don't get people coming from across the province, and we don't always get the people that we really need. We make a better effort at it, and at least we're aware of it, but I think when you're getting people giving willingly of their time and you want the best, communication and timing is very important.

So we both agree at least on the report that's going to the minister, that you should have a look. I'm just saying I think if they were smart -- and I use that word widely -- that they'd be asking your opinion. And if anybody's looking at these Hansards, I really mean it. If you really want acceptance, you better ask the people who are representing their communities and that are there for the students, which gets me into the next issue. Do I have time?

The Chair: You have one minute left.

Mrs Cunningham: I could pose the question and they could be thinking about it.

The Chair: Plus you still have another round of 15 minutes.

Mrs Cunningham: I'm still going to make good use of one minute.

On the prior learning assessment, I enjoyed the fact, Ms Kohner-Friedman, that you said this is not new. I quite frankly get fed up with all of this. This is day-to-day work in the colleges, and so, when I've been looking at the budget, I've been quite critical of the Council of Regents' budget. I also have to say, maybe it isn't their fault. Nobody can decide what their mandate is, which is sort of basic, and you have to wonder why it hasn't been dealt with. Sometimes we never deal with the important things in life, and I think this is one of the real examples.

But the PLA initiative goes on. It started -- I'm trying to find the numbers here -- the 1991-92, and I'm respectful of people who are doing the work. I enjoyed the presentation yesterday. But I represent taxpayers, and to the taxpayers, a base budget of $671,000 for the Council of Regents in 1991-92 with additional programs at $1.5 million, then we go on, and we're up to $2.7 million. This is an administrative body. The public couldn't give a hoot about it. Students don't give a hoot. As far as they're concerned, and when we get in government and I care about what programs students get, this is going to be something that's going to have to be carefully justified.

But prior learning assessment goes from $139,700 up to $446,600 projected for 1994-95 and if you're telling me in this presentation today that maybe it could be handled within the system, then I'd like to hear what you really mean by that. Anybody?

Ms Valiquette: I think we've talked to some of that earlier. Prior learning assessment, in particular, I think the administration of the colleges, and I believe you've got the opportunity to talk to the presidents later today --

Mrs Cunningham: I'm looking forward to it.

Ms Valiquette: -- they will, I'm sure, give you much more information and a much better sense of what their plans might be, but I think each college is in a much better position to understand the prior learning assessment situation. They're certainly in a situation, through ACAATO, to talk to each other about how to customize and coordinate those activities. Quite honestly, being a financial person -- I think my bias shows -- when you look at the budgets of the colleges, I think they also feel the pressure of having to deliver the goods with the limited resources and being accountable for the bottom line that they then have to live with, so that they can become probably as creative as anybody in finding the best results with the limited resources available.

I think the sense in the system is that you wouldn't jeopardize quality -- and in fact might enhance quality more effectively -- by having the system deal with it through the system that ACAATO -- sorry, I'm using acronyms again, that the association provides, and just the collegiality of the college; people themselves.

The Chair: We now move to the government members.

Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): I'd like to go back to page 3 of your introduction where you say that there appear to be three corporate head offices for the Ontario colleges: the Ministry of Education and Training, which I think we all agree, the Council of Regents, which I think we all agree is part of the system, and then the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario, ACAATO.

My understanding of ACAATO is that it's a professional organization where you all belong to it, but it would be something similar -- I come out of industry -- to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, that it isn't really a governance body but it's indeed an association that you all belong to so that you can interact on a professional basis. Am I incorrect in that assumption?

Mr Hodgson: I guess there is some similarity, but the ACAATO organization has I forget now how many committees working on various system issues, but a tremendous number.

Mr Waters: But so does the CMA for industry, but it doesn't run the plants.

Mr Hodgson: No, but I'm not --

Mr Waters: It doesn't run Alcan; it doesn't run GM. It's all part of where they talk about their industry, but they don't run the organization.

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Mr Hodgson: No, but I'm not sure at all, Mr Waters, that you can compare them. I think there's a difference in the CMA function with industry and an ACAATO function with the colleges.

Mr Waters: Then would it be more like the physicians with their organization? In other words, a self-governance body.

Mr Hodgson: You may be right there. I'd have to think about it.

Mr Waters: Because I don't see that anywhere in the act, where it has that power, to be quite truthful. I see it very much as an association where you interact and you exchange ideas and plans and work together cooperatively, but I don't see it as a management. I see it maybe that the management of the different colleges are members of this but I don't see it necessarily being somebody that a college is responsible to. I think that the system is very clear that it's the ministry and then in certain aspects, as you've already pointed out just prior to that, the Council of Regents fits in there as well.

Ms Valiquette: Could I suggest, Mr Waters, that -- and perhaps it's a question of semantics. I don't think the suggestion of this document was that the association is an empowered body with a responsibility such as the Council of Regents has.

Mr Waters: Very clearly it does.

Ms Valiquette: What it was meant to infer was that the ministry has got the governmental responsibility. The Council of Regents, as we understood it, had the policy guideline responsibility. ACAATO, as an association -- and you're correct; it is an association -- is the vehicle which the system uses to make sure that operationally as a system we're translating that policy guideline or direction from the council or from the ministry into reality to the satisfaction of all concerned. So while it doesn't have the ability to dictate to any one of us what we want to do, it's certainly the coordinating mechanism with which we delineate our operational consistency.

Mr Waters: But that would then go back to Vision 2000, which pointed out some very clear problems. It says, "Vision 2000" -- this is in our background notes from our researcher -- "identified the following problems in the college system:

" -- a lack of system-wide standards, quality or planning;

" -- inadequate links with secondary schools and universities;

" -- complaints from employers about the quality of the education college graduates received."

Those are the first three listed. When I look at what's happening with the system as it's evolving now, what I see your job -- and then you have everyone else working on it. The Council of Regents is trying to bring this together at the present time, is it not?

"Lack of system-wide standards." I have a daughter who just got a nursing degree out of Georgian College and I would hope that degree that she got was as good out of Georgian as any other college, no better, no worse, and the education that she received for three years.

Ms Valiquette: And we would agree. I think if you look to the --

Mr Waters: But isn't that what the Council of Regents is working on, to make sure -- because there is a perception out there that indeed that is not necessarily so.

Ms Valiquette: I guess what we're trying to say, and perhaps collectively we can find better ways to say it, is that the Council of Regents is providing good guidance and should play the policy role with respect to helping us make that happen. But ACAATO has strengthened its ability and its focus over the last several years, certainly recently under Ms Homer's arrival, to focus on exactly the issues that you're talking about because the system has to start having the consistency of approach, the consistency of standards, the deliverabilities that in the past I think might have been justifiably a problem because each college was doing its own thing as opposed to realizing that they have to work collectively as a system. So I think ACAATO does play a very valuable role in translating what we do operationally into the most effective results.

Mr Waters: But I guess the perception out there historically, back in the mid-1980s or the late 1980s when the Liberal government of the day worked through the Vision 2000, was very much that this was not the case, and therefore the minister has directed the Council of Regents to make sure that is the case.

Ms Valiquette: I don't think you would find anyone disagreeing that the Council of Regents doesn't have a very valuable role to play in that. I think what we're talking of is the delineation of where curriculum or administration or whatever you want to call it starts and policy guideline stops. It's the question of who's in the best position to delineate the details of curriculum and the deliverabilities within a set of guidelines that everyone agrees on.

Mr Waters: I'm going to ask one very quick question and then I'll change the topic totally. I see a major change in the makeup of the colleges, especially going through the recession. I was wondering if you could give us any numbers, because I hear from the opposition and from other people that they refer quite often to "our young people." I think some of the realities of some of our colleges is that our young people are now 45 and 50 in there. I would like to know what those numbers are, if you have them. What is the percentage of adult students, not children or young persons, that is coming through the education system and continuing on, where indeed somebody's gone out and come back?

Mr Kenneth Moorehead: At Canadore, it's 33% mature students who fall into that category.

Ms Valiquette: I don't have the precise example for Centennial. Certainly the continuing education program is growing quickly, which would be the older, more mature returning student.

Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): Thank you for your presentation today. Having read through it and heard the comments made on the previous questions, I would just like to pose one question. I know society is definitely changing and the population demographics are changing. Looking specifically at people with disabilities -- and as you know, statistics show that more than 2.5 million people are actually identifying themselves as being disabled. The reason for that is a wide variety of reasons, some of them being medical reasons.

With technology, we've seen many people who in the past may not have survived injuries or illnesses now being able to survive due to improvements, yet there are also people becoming disabled due to accidents. There's a whole variety of reasons why this population is increasing, be it from drug use, and then the higher rate of children born with disabilities, accidents, environmental causes.

Having heard also the presentation from the Council of Regents yesterday and the report it released, it mentioned that in April 1993 cabinet approved the following amendment to regulation 770, and I'll quote from that. In (2.1) it says:

"In appointing members to a board of governors under clause (1)(a) [external members], the Council of Regents shall recognize the importance of ensuring gender balance and equitable representation of persons with disabilities and persons from the ethnic, racial and linguistic communities served by the colleges."

I've heard some comments and would certainly like to congratulate you on recognizing gender balance and ethnic representation. I realize that we've seen a real increase in that and a much better balance in terms of representation on various boards. My concern is the low representation still of the disabled population. I know one member mentioned the efforts that are being made in that area.

Could you just let me know what type of efforts are actually being undertaken in terms of identifying and recruiting members from these communities? What sort of action plan is under consideration, specifically in relation to recruiting and identifying members to the board of governors?

The second part of my question is just in terms of actual employees within the system, faculty who are actually disabled and so on. Do you have any statistical information within the college system regarding the number of disabled people working in the system requiring support services, as well as students attending the colleges who are disabled? I know right now we're seeing, with new technology -- in fact, we sometimes have new barriers for disabled people because of technology, which is a unique way of looking at it. I often look at the issue as global accessibility, when providing accessibility not only to disabled people but many things benefit other people as well.

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Just to give you an example, when you build a ramp it's not only an issue of accessibility for people in wheelchairs, but it also helps people who, for example, are bringing in heavy equipment. It's beneficial to many people.

Real-time captioning is not only beneficial to students who are deaf and/or hard of hearing, but it also is good for people who are learning English as a second language, for example, and it's beneficial in terms of upgrading literacy skills. Within the college system, computerized note taking can be a beneficial service to other students.

Can people make some comments specifically in terms of an action plan, as I mentioned, in terms of identifying and recruiting members of the disabled community, and are there statistics on students who are disabled and is there any review or study looking at support services offered to those students? I know it's a big question, but if people could comment on that.

Mr Hodgson: Thank you. That was a very long question. I can only speak probably for Mohawk College where I've just completed two years as chair of the college. We recruited a physically challenged lady who actually runs an organization in the Hamilton area seeking employment for handicapped people. She came on our board several years ago and is a tremendous asset to us. The college, of course, is totally accessible, as far as I know, for physically challenged people.

As far as the numbers, we have only one on our board, but then you get into the matter of the total community needs for a board member of that type. In our particular catchment area we have a strong aboriginal population, so we tend to seek out one or two members of an aboriginal group to represent us on the board.

As far as the numbers of handicapped people, physically challenged people on our staff, I can't give you an answer because I don't really know how many. I know there are some. Perhaps Helen next to me might be able to answer on her college makeup.

Ms Kohner-Friedman: I think what we should be focusing on in relation to your question is not whether the boards of governors should be recruiting people with disabilities, but are our colleges accessible to people, students with a variety of disabilities. I think the important thing here is getting the students in the door, being able to accommodate their needs.

At our college, all of our new buildings exceed standards under the building code and are completely accessible. That is something that the board has said, that any building that goes up on campus has to be completely accessible. We've redone all our signage to assist those people with disabilities. I think the making of the physical layout and classroom experience for the students is far more important than whether you have somebody on your board of governors who has a disability.

I think we have to recognize that, as you have so wisely pointed out, there are a variety of disabilities and you have to try to accommodate those on a client level, on a student level, and then work from that to determine their needs. I think those needs should take precedence over whether you have somebody with a disability sitting on your board of governors.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Kohner-Friedman.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Any time left?

The Chair: I'm sorry, there is no time. It's actually 16 minutes and 10 seconds. I'm sorry; there are two of you left who wanted to speak, I realize that.

Mr Bradley: Thank you, Madam Chair; you are doing an excellent job there.

My first question to you is regarding the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board -- as we would call it around here, OTAB, and no one would know what it meant -- but the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board has been established in this province and it has representation from labour and from business and there are a couple of other categories of representatives on it. One of the criticisms that some advanced was that the people from the community college system, perhaps from the university system -- but it'd be more relevant probably from the community college system and even from other parts of education -- were excluded. That's one issue.

The second issue, if I may get on a hobby horse a bit here myself, is that it is out of the control of the Legislative Assembly. Members acquiescently allowed a $2-billion budget to get entirely out of their control, be controlled by non-elected people. One of my real problems in our democracy in this province -- it's not a partisan issue; it's an issue as a representative -- is that we continue to turn more and more of the power of elected representatives over to courts, quasi-judicial bodies and agencies, boards and commissions.

My question is: Do you believe that the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board would be enhanced by your more direct participation in terms of greater numbers of representatives on that board?

Ms Valiquette: I'll volunteer my personal opinion. The college system educates a lot of Ontario -- students. I was going to call them adolescents; however, as we talked about earlier, the student range is growing from people who are going to school for the first time to people who are coming back to school. I think we personally have always been concerned about the minimal representation of the college system on that particular board. I think we are concerned that there is an infrastructure that could be used well if the right participation was allowed to be brought to the table.

Mr MacDonald: I'd just add to that as well. I believe that the issue that is pinpointed by your comments is that the colleges have historically had a tremendous role in training, and in fact, in these times of economic crunch, the revenue generated from offering those services is something that we often have looked at as depending upon in order to carry the budget requirements in an effective manner. I believe from our college's point of view, that would be a representation issue that we'd like to see considered.

Ms Valiquette: One of the premises -- and I'll make it very brief -- is that we as a system would like to see as many of the dollars as possible going to the classroom and not to the administration of how to get the education out there.

Mr Bradley: That's encouraging to hear. I know I just received yet another package -- I don't have it with me -- from OTAB. I can assure you that they are putting out some lovely material, that the printing business is doing well. I'm sure they're going to try their best to do an excellent job as well. I found it strange that the community college system, which I always understood was very much involved in training and has been in that business since its inception, would not have a greater direct role in the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board.

My next question deals with governance. We dealt with this issue; others asked questions yesterday of Mr Johnston, the chair of the Council of Regents, about governance and proposals for governance which would call for specific categories to be represented on a board as opposed to a board having a general population which you would hope, and people would watch carefully to see, would be representative of a community at large, still being people as you have pointed out who are going to know how to run a college and not simply be selected because they happen to be from a category.

Are you concerned that if we are too specific in the categories from which we draw people we are going to get people with hobby horses showing up and that the overall governance of the educational institution will be sacrificed as people promote their own agenda? What's the plural of agenda in Latin, agendae? Agendas. I'll say that.

Mr MacDonald: Maybe I wouldn't mind commenting on that. I believe there are two issues in response to that question and that has to do with the geographical natures of the catchment areas in which we serve. Oftentimes if the prescriptive matrix is too restrictive, when you are trying to represent geographical areas of your catchment area, the community doesn't necessarily provide the pool of people who have the experience that was talked about briefly earlier. So I think that there is that issue about the geographical nature of trying to make sure that your college is representative of that area.

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I do also think that why the colleges have been successful over the past 26, 27 years is that people who have been coming to the board table as community members, come to the board table with a college agenda, not personal agendas, that they do not feel any specific responsibility to report back to a group, and I think there is probably wide opinion to support the feeling that that might occur if we got more prescriptive as you've suggested and as has been recommended.

Mr Bradley: I also look at the ability to competently run a multimillion-dollar operation as being important. To be politically safe, I will use cabinets as an example. Cabinets, I know you'll be totally shocked to hear, are not always selected on the ability of people to run the government well, but sometimes have other considerations.

Mrs Cunningham: You're kidding. What a terrible thing. Why did you --

Mr Bradley: How else would I have gotten into the cabinet without that, without geography or some reason?

Mrs Cunningham: Well, that's true. I withdraw my comments.

Mr Bradley: The Irish Orange had to be represented somewhere, I suppose.

My concern that I have that may or may not be shared is that there may be people from various categories that government select who are in fact in the majority on a board in a specific area and run it very, very competently, and the best of all worlds you can get is that. My concern again is that in our desire in our society, and it's in the cabinets as well, one of which I've been a part of, and Tories and NDP, we tend to select people so that we can say, "See, we've got an Irish Orangeman sitting in the cabinet and they're not neglected," and yet, that doesn't always produce the best of cabinets. Are you concerned that if we get too prescriptive again that you will run into that problem?

Mr Chin: Yes, I think it's well said. If we become too specific in identifying the various categories of people to be represented on the board, I think we may miss out the link of proper education to create a brighter, proactive economy. I think education is a driving force for a brighter economy and also I think we also miss out the perspective of opportunity, both locally and internationally. So it is important that we do not become too restrictive on identifying the category of representation. We need to have diversity but at the same time we need to have people who have the perspective to allow us to have good educational programs to give us a strong economy and create jobs, and also capture the international opportunity.

Mr Bradley: There's another issue that comes up. I guess what the committee allows each one of us to do, and it's a great opportunity in the committee, is to ask some of the questions that our constituents direct to us. We may not always agree with our constituents when they put forward certain issues or may be apprehensive about even asking questions, but nevertheless it gives us the opportunity to do so.

This is less relevant, I must admit, to the community colleges than it would be to universities: Is it going to be essential to lower the standards of admission for some people in order to ensure that people have equal opportunity within the system? I'll give you an example that's not yours. The colleges of education have said that they are going to save so many seats for people in certain categories, or some universities have said, "Your marks don't have to be as good if you're in a disadvantaged category." Is this going to be essential, to ensure that everybody in this province from various backgrounds and various categories has the same opportunity? Is it going to be essential to lower the admission standards for some so that all will have the same opportunity, or are we heading down the wrong path if we do that?

Ms Valiquette: Could I suggest that perhaps that loops back to our curriculum discussion of before?

Mr Bradley: Yes.

Ms Valiquette: I think the right answer would be to determine what additional assistance that person requires to meet the standards of admission to the college, which is where things like prior learning assessment, or whatever, at a college level can be determined to make sure that those people have whatever they require in terms of additional education, additional classes, additional whatever, to meet the standards that would allow anyone to get admitted to the college. I think that is the right answer as to how to go about that problem.

Mr Bradley: I understand within a community college it's different because you provide a much more diverse kind of education, if you will, than elementary and secondary and universities. You handle far more people coming back, adults coming back, for instance, and so on. So it's perhaps somewhat different from you. But a lot of people can show me figures that'll say a lot of people have not had that access to post-secondary education, and people who are well meaning and perhaps right will say: "Well, the only way you're going to be able to do that is to lower the standards and then see how the people make out. They may do very well."

There was the other question of, again, some university, the law school -- some people are going to have longer to write the exam than others. Needless to say, the constituency office telephone rings off the hook when that happens. I guess I'll ask for a general comment on that.

Ms Kohner-Friedman: If I could speak to that briefly, as Ms Valiquette suggested, I think what we want to focus on is not lowering standards but building up the people who come into the programs. I know at our particular college we have a school of access, which I believe was one of the first in the province, which has as its mandate preparing people to enter into general college programs and to give access to college education to those various sectors that otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity.

I think, certainly in our technology programs, if you've got weak math skills there is an emphasis towards directing the student to take a year of what's called a pre-tech program so that they are able to build up the skills and be successful in the program. I think retention rates are very important and if you have students who are in a program who don't have the basic skills, there's a reasonable expectation that they may not be successful and will just become another dropout statistic. I think our job is to assist the people acquiring the skills and then have them pursue the programs.

Mr Bradley: I can see from personal experience that it would make a lot of sense to do some of these things and, as I say, it's -- I hate to use the word "common sense" these days because someone has stolen the word and used it for other purposes --

Mrs Cunningham: You're so political.

Mr Bradley: I recall having a student in my classroom who had a brain tumour removed and therefore there was an impairment on how long it took the student to read as compared to other students. It made all kinds of logical sense to me that that student would have a longer period of time to complete an examination, because that student could read much more slowly; there was a part missing. That made great sense in that particular case to accommodate that, just to make it equal with others -- not giving any advantage; just to make it equal with others. That's why I asked that question. I find your answers very good.

I think Dalton McGuinty has one question he might get in.

Mr McGuinty: Just briefly.

The Acting Chair (Ms Jenny Carter): Less than a minute.

Mr McGuinty: All right. There's not much time remaining. I think you hit the nail on the head -- Ms Valiquette referred to that in her remarks and Mr Hodgson read it because it was contained with the body of the presentation -- and I think that's the problem that we have here of trust between the Council of Regents and our governors. That's manifesting itself through poor communications and a movement towards centralization. We have a problem here.

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Now, sometimes if you listen to the folks at the Council of Regents they'll tell you that: "All is well in Camelot. Don't worry." You're giving me -- and of course I knew this ahead of time -- a different impression: that there is a significant problem. It's not insurmountable, but I think, at the outset, if we're going to address it, both sides have got to recognize that it's a problem. Are you satisfied that the Council of Regents recognizes that there's a problem here?

Mr Hodgson: Mr McGuinty, certainly from my perspective and the conversations I've had with Mr Johnston, I'm positive he recognizes the difficulty and the need to improve relations between the Council of Regents and the Council of Governors, and I believe the healing process, if I can call it that, is under way and moving right along. I would also have to add that if the paper that the Council of Regents sends to the minister on governance is totally out of line with some of the suggestions we've made, then that may set it back a little bit, but I'm hoping that won't happen.

The Acting Chair: We are out of time now. Mrs Cunningham.

Mrs Cunningham: My questions have to do with the programs in the colleges, and they don't reflect directly on your paper, but I'm sure that you discuss this in your day-to-day work as governors.

I like to look about 10 years down the road in our work because I think one of the greatest challenges facing Canada and certainly this province is whether we're training people for the right jobs. I think it's more difficult to know just what those jobs are and that's why I think in the past we've relied so heavily on the views of the program advisory committees within the colleges as well as the local training bodies. They have different names in different communities, but there were about 48 of them until about a couple of weeks ago, and now under OTAB there are about 24.

That was not the message the government got when it went out on its five-minute presentation bit across the province on OTAB, which was, excuse me for saying this, a farce; it was an insult to the public. But even then, in five minutes, when they heard that there were problems about the boards, they didn't do anything about it. So I think we've got some really serious concerns. I think the citizens of this province do.

How are the community colleges and the training institutions -- and our secondary schools, which I don't feel do enough training; I personally feel that the curriculum there has to have a major overhaul. I'm not talking about tinkering; I'm talking apprenticeship training for 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds now. How are you getting your best advice with regard to training needs and do you have the capacity within the system now to change your programs quickly enough to meet these demands?

Mr MacDonald: I'll just respond from our college's point of view. We feel that the infrastructure of our advisory committees is well in hand. I believe the answer to your question is fairly direct in the sense that we get our technical advice from the experts within the community. That continues to be a very strong, supportive network in terms of guidance and assistance with our faculty and our boards.

My sense is that is a well-grounded network of support and guidance and continues to draw on the most up-to-date directions that are in both business and industry.

In terms of turning programs around and meeting the demands, I believe contract training within the college system is a well-known fact and I think we're capable as a college and as colleges in the province of being able to design and meet the needs in a fairly quick fashion. In fact, that's really one of the major changes and the pressure on faculty, I believe, at the present time: to be able to turn the needs of a client into a program in short order, and that's being done, I believe, across the province.

Ms Valiquette: If I could just add to that, being pragmatic about it, what we're doing is trying to involve the industrial sectors in our programming deliberation, financially as well as just on the program advisory council. We've just opened a communications centre in East York, for example, which brings the best in the technology industry in as a partner, which gives us the benefit of their expertise and their buy-in right from square one with respect to where the communications industry is going to be 10 years from now. So we are building to that future with them as opposed to trying to determine through our own other sources what that future should be and trying to tool to it with limited resources.

I think the way of the future that Centennial sees is to have much more partnership arrangement with the players who are going to need the resources and will influence the requirements over time.

Mrs Cunningham: Do you think that these relationships, or whatever other word you'd like to use -- mechanisms, whatever -- have become more apparent in the last five or six years or the last two or three years, or have they always been there?

Ms Valiquette: Again, speaking from my limited experience at Centennial, I think fiscal constraints have forced us to become more aggressive in that particular venue, as well as the recognition that education is being so impacted by telecommunications and by the information technology of the world that the pace of change is going to become so rapid that the old way of retooling the college system isn't going to work any more.

Mrs Cunningham: No. Otherwise, you're saying, much of the training is going to have to be done, the technological, out in the industry itself, working with them.

Ms Valiquette: Certainly with their help, that's right.

Mrs Cunningham: I heard Mr Axworthy talking the other day about some recommendations he'll be making with regard to immigration policy, and you've probably heard more than I have because I honestly, in this job, don't get time to listen to the things I should be listening to. But it bothered me, once again, to hear -- and this is not a political comment -- the fact that he stated that our resources in this country with regard to skilled tradespersons are lacking. The fact that that may be one of the requirements of immigration is probably all very good, but if we've got this same lag in skilled tradespersons, where do you think we should best be dealing with this?

I'd like our young Canadian people to be having jobs. It's very frustrating for me when I get these young people in my offices, and I use the word "young people" advisedly. I understand that maybe a third of our college system are mature people coming back for retraining and what not, and I respect that. But we have a real responsibility to use the energies of a generation of young Canadians who have done it right and don't have jobs. I'm now talking about people in their 20s and early 30s. There's a very depressed society out there of young people who have so many skills, such ambition and are losing hope for their future and are having to change their expectations, which all of us have had to do over our lives.

But why haven't we been able to respond to this need and why would a Canadian minister have to make that statement yet again? This is probably the third decade that I've been involved in this whole area.

Ms Valiquette: You're speaking to a very apolitical person here, my view of the world being that any government needs to come to grips with some kind of definition of what they want the core skill set of their workforce to be and they need to somehow get their minds around what's going to be required to develop that particular expertise or that competitive advantage and then develop the infrastructure that will allow that to happen. I guess I'm not clear at any point in time what the vehicle is or what the mechanism is for delineating that kind of economic and development policy.

Mrs Cunningham: Well, all I can say is that we're spending billions of dollars on talking, and if we put that money into the classroom -- and you mentioned how the money has to go on the students, and I have always felt that way. People are concerned about what would happen if we were in government; they should be. Because I think that people feel useful when they're doing the things that they were trained to do and most of it is front-line work whether we're in health care, teaching, social and community services, whatever. Pushing paper has never accomplished very much in my lifetime.

I do know that I'm very concerned about the availability of the training mechanisms. I guess the only thing I can say to you today is I'm really pleased to know that there are boards of governors such as yourselves and people who are willing to serve in their local communities, who are sticking up for the young people and making sure these things happen in their colleges regardless of the bureaucracy that one has to face. I think if we didn't have our local boards, in spite of the criticism dealt towards at least elected local boards, our systems of education would not be as good, because every once in a while you get two or three bright lights who ask the key bottom-line question: What are we providing for the students?

I was thrilled to hear you refer to these program advisory committees more than two or three times today because most people don't know anything about them. Most people don't know anything about the things that work in life, I don't think, because most people who work hard don't really want to talk about it.

I'm just going to use the last five seconds or so to say thanks. I enjoyed reading your paper yesterday afternoon and was looking forward to your presentation, and you haven't disappointed us at all.

The Chair: That uses our rotation for each party. I'd like to thank you very much, Mr Hodgson, for your appearance before the committee this morning, and Mr Moorehead, Ms Valiquette, Ms Kohner-Friedman, Mr Chin and Mr MacDonald.

We have a subcommittee meeting following this immediate recess until 2 o'clock this afternoon.

The committee recessed from 1201 to 1400.

The Chair: This afternoon we continue the agency review of the Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.

COUNCIL OF PRESIDENTS OF THE COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY OF ONTARIO

The Chair: Our deputation this afternoon is the Council of Presidents, and Mr John Saso is the chair. We welcome all of you to the committee this afternoon. Maybe, Mr Saso, for the people who have not yet clarified who is sitting where with you this afternoon, you could introduce them and identify them.

Mr John Saso: I'm delighted to introduce my colleagues. Bruce Hill is the president of Georgian College, Mary Hofstetter is the president of Sheridan College, John Tibbits is the president of Conestoga College, Dan Corbett is the president of St Lawrence College and Bob Gervais is the president of Northern College.

The Chair: You have an hour for your presentation if you wish. If you don't wish to use the whole hour, it means there is more time for the three caucuses to ask questions.

Mr Saso: We will need approximately 25 to 30 minutes for our presentation.

The Chair: Excellent. Then we'll have an hour and a half for the members to talk to you.

Mr Saso: My name is John Saso and I'm the chair of the Council of Presidents of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology and the president of Niagara College. The presentation I will be making represents the collective view of the Council of Presidents.

Since their creation, the Ontario colleges of applied arts and technology have experienced tremendous growth, both qualitatively and quantitatively. With 25 colleges in 900 sites serving over 200 communities, we are committed, individually and as a system of colleges, to meeting the unique learning needs of all of our students and clients. Through our 10,000 advisory committee members, we are able to ensure that the academic portfolios of individual colleges meet local needs as well as prepare our students for provincial and regional opportunities. The addition of three francophone colleges represents a recent expansion of our system in line with our mandate to serve our diverse communities throughout Ontario.

On November 1, 1993, over 127,000 students were enrolled in full-time post-secondary programs, and we know that number has increased as of September 1994. Even with the significant decline in federally sponsored programs, the colleges also are able to provide some two and a half million training days. Our continuing education activities continue to grow, with over 600,000 students registering in continuing education programs this year.

This all comes at a time when college grants for students have shrunk by 27%, from $5,166 in 1989-90 to an estimated $3,788 in 1994. Our student population is also changing. System-wide, close to one quarter of our full-time post-secondary students are over the age of 25 years. We are also seeing greater differences among colleges as they reflect their communities with regard to cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

As we approach the next century, our overriding objective is to find local solutions to the challenges posed by our differing communities while continuing to work as a provincial system to meet our common goals within a shared vision.

Qualitatively, the colleges have become dynamic institutions responding to the needs for education and training throughout Ontario. Working with our partners in business, industry, labour and social services, we have become key players in the economic renewal and development of our communities.

Our academic profile has expanded from post-secondary, retraining and continuing education to now include international projects, joint degree-diploma programs with universities and articulated programs among ourselves, with universities and with secondary schools. Responding to our changing markets and their diverse need for access to education and training, colleges throughout Ontario have incorporated distance education, technically mediated instruction, prior learning assessment and opportunities for full- and part-time students to complete their studies through self-paced or self-directed learning.

We are, as a system, committed first to meeting the local, regional and provincial needs for high-quality education and training in a cost-effective manner; and secondly, establishing and maintaining a learning and working environment conducive to the productivity and wellbeing of our students, our employees and our communities.

More specifically, it is the mandate of the colleges of applied arts and technology of Ontario, as articulated in the Vision 2000 document:

(1) To provide high-quality career education that enhances students' ability to acquire information, reason clearly, think critically, communicate effectively, apply their knowledge and participate in society as informed and productive citizens;

(2) To make a college education as accessible as possible. Accessibility should include the opportunity to succeed as well as the opportunity to enrol, and it must be provided in a way that achieves educational equity.

(3) We must be responsible, as a system, for quality assurance through system-wide standards and program review.

(4) We must work together and with our educational institutions offer students opportunities for educational mobility and lifelong learning.

(5) We must create a dynamic, learner-driven system by anticipating and accommodating the diverse needs of students, both full-time and part-time, enrolled in credit and non-credit courses.

(6) We must forge partnerships in and with our communities, including employers, labour, community groups and governments.

(7) We must be participatory institutions in which decision-making involves both internal and external stakeholders.

(8) Last but certainly not least, we must be model employers in the manner in which we invest in and manage human resource development, in our commitment to equity and the creation of a positive, healthy and supportive working environment.

What began as a loosely knit association of 19 independent colleges has evolved significantly. Recognizing the many benefits accrued through formal associations across colleges, we rely on the Council of Governors, the Council of Presidents, the Ministry of Education and Training, the Council of Regents, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the Ontario Community College Student Parliamentary Association for their collective wisdom and unique perspectives on college policies and practices.

In addition, both policy and operational issues facing colleges are addressed in a timely and creative manner through our association's coordinating committees for student services, instructional programs, administrative services, training and development and human resources.

The Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario, ACAATO, was established as a non-profit voluntary association of Ontario's colleges by the governors and the presidents to meet system needs for advocacy, research and planning and human resource development. Through the ACAATO structure, the colleges have created a provincial framework within which to address the ongoing and emerging planning and operational issues facing the college system, while at the same time responding to local issues with local solutions.

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With respect to the Ontario Council of Regents, COR was established to provide advice to the minister on policy issues of a system-wide nature. In addition, COR was assigned executive responsibility for the appointment of external board members and for collective bargaining with support staff and faculty and recommending employment conditions for administrative staff in Ontario's colleges.

In its early years, the council also recommended program approvals to the minister and dealt with such capital issues as leases, capital funding and college site selection. The council is not involved in these latter matters today.

The first Pitman report, issued in June 1986, recommended a shift in the council's role away from involvement in operational issues to long-term planning for the system.

In 1988, the Council of Regents was asked to oversee a comprehensive review of the college system and develop a vision of the college system in the year 2000. The Vision 2000 report challenged the colleges to rethink their academic operations in light of expressed needs for program standards, generic skills, general education and prior learning assessment. Vision 2000 is a fine example of the valuable role played by the Council of Regents in identifying the long-term planning needs of the college system. The then council is to be commended for both the quality of this product and the comprehensive consultative process by which it was developed.

Recently, the current Council of Regents returned to its former role of providing direction on operational issues for two newly established bodies: the College Standards and Accreditation Council, which is responsible for defining program standards, general education and generic skills required of college programs, and the prior learning assessment secretariat, responsible for developing and implementing a system-wide process for prior learning assessment.

At the same time, the Council of Regents continues to act in its advisory capacity to the minister, providing an arm's-length and objective assessment of issues facing the colleges. It is the view of the Council of Presidents that the Ontario Council of Regents' valuable contribution to the integrity of the college system, through its objectivity and arm's-length advisory role, could be jeopardized by the council's deepening involvement in operational matters.

With the maturing of the college system and with the assistance of ACAATO, the needs of today and tomorrow call for a clearly redefined role for the Council of Regents, including specific accountabilities and articulated relationships with the councils of ACAATO and the boards of individual colleges. We are very confident that we can work together with the Council of Regents to achieve our common goals.

We suggest, then, that the role of the Council of Regents should be to provide advice to the minister. With the integrated Ministry of Education and Training, there's an even greater need than before for the minister to have an objective arm's-length council from which she or he can receive timely and comprehensive advice regarding policy and planning issues affecting the college system.

The Council of Presidents therefore views the COR mandate as very important for the provision of objectives and arm's-length advice, and supports the continuing role of the COR as an advisory body to the minister. The Council of Presidents would also expect COR to advocate on behalf of the colleges, where appropriate, as the system of colleges strives to ensure access, quality and efficiency in its operations.

Further, COR should devote its energies to long-term planning. The Vision 2000 document, completed in 1990, was a fine example of the role COR can plan in long-term planning for the college system. Likewise, COR's current leadership on college-university relationships and the task force on economic development has been very valuable in many ways. The boards of governors, which also play a very active role in long-term planning for individual colleges and the college system, find the council's advice to be invaluable.

The Council of Presidents therefore suggests that the Council of Regents should work collaboratively with the Council of Governors, with COR's primary role focusing on long-term planning for the college system in conjunction with the Council of Governors and the Council of Presidents.

With respect to operations, while the council is no longer involved in program approvals and capital issues, its recent expansion into academic operations, specifically CSAC and PLA, has caused concern. Notwithstanding the good intentions and extraordinary efforts of COR staff and secondees, decisions regarding academic operations within the colleges are best arrived at and implemented through a process of academic leadership which is, and is perceived to be, of, for and by the colleges.

Therefore, the Council of Presidents believes that operational issues should be handled by individual colleges or, when system-wide in nature, within the ACAATO structure. This would leave the Council of Regents free to pursue long-range planning and policy issues as envisioned in the founding documents, thus maintaining for the minister this invaluable arm's-length source of advice. Consideration should be given to incorporating the College Standards and Accreditation Council and the prior learning assessment secretariat within the existing college structures.

Regarding the issue of governance, the role of COR in college governance was dealt with more fully by the Council of Governors in its submission.

The Council of Presidents wholeheartedly supports the governors in their position regarding the council's role in governance and would reinforce its conviction that the colleges and their students are best served by a community-based, as opposed to a constituency-based, model of representation. Such a position was recommended in Professor Abe Konrad's Green Paper on Board Governance of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, 1993, and referenced in Accepting the Challenge: An Agenda for the Council of Governors, and the Council of Governors' Response to the COR Governance Review.

Our final observation is reserved for collective bargaining. The complexity of this issue has occupied much of the council's energies, and as a result COR has come to be viewed by many in the college system as having its primary focus in this area. Pitman again, in 1986, opined that "the interests of the province could be better served if those who negotiated the agreement were those who would implement both the letter and the spirit in the local college. Currently both [individual college] management and the union locals are able to disclaim ownership in the settled contract because they can pass the responsibility on to the centre." Central to the issue of collective bargaining is accountability, which must rest with the employee and the employer.

Konrad, in 1993, observed that, "Collective bargaining on a provincial basis may create anomalies across regional boundaries of the province, and provisions should exist for resolving local and unique working conditions at the college level."

Both Pitman and Konrad encouraged the ministry to establish a new employers' association with the authority to act on behalf of boards in matters of collective bargaining.

We believe that a relationship between management and OPSEU, both locally and provincially, should be built on mutual respect, understanding and a commitment to excellence. This is an essential component to our success in the future. The Council of Presidents also recognizes the diverse nature of the 25 colleges of applied arts and technology and the difficulty inherent in obtaining a collective agreement which can be applied fairly, province-wide. The need to integrate the creation of our collective agreements with their implementation and the overall human resource management philosophies and strategies has never been more critical.

The Council of Presidents would encourage the minister to explore fully alternatives to the present system of collective bargaining.

In conclusion, since the inception of the college system and the establishment of the Council of Regents, much has changed in the world and in the province of Ontario. It is therefore time to revisit the role and relationship of the council within the college system as it now exists.

The colleges themselves, in conjunction with their association, ACAATO, now have the structures in place to handle operational matters managed by the Council of Regents. For operational matters it would be far more effective and efficient to use the resources and structures already employed in the colleges and their associations rather than create a new bureaucracy within the Council of Regents.

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At the same time, the Council of Regents is most effective when assuming a leadership and advisory role in long-range planning and policy issues. What we now need as a system is a clear differentiation of roles, particularly with respect to policy, operations and long-term planning.

On behalf of the Council of Presidents, I would like to thank the committee for providing us with an opportunity to contribute to the review of the Ontario Council of Regents. We look forward to a continued positive relationship with the council and the devotion of our mutual energies to the benefit of our present and future students and our emerging clients.

Respectfully submitted by the Council of Presidents.

The Chair: We don't have on our list here any titles, so if I'm calling any of you Mr or Ms and you have some other title, please correct me.

Mr Saso: We respond to anything, Madam Chair, so feel free.

Interjection: We've learned.

Mr Saso: We've learned, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Fine. If it's agreeable to the committee, we'll proceed the way we did this morning, which is in 15-minute segments. We started with the government this morning, so I think we'll start with the official opposition this afternoon.

Mr Bradley: My first question deals with the issue of financing. I notice that one of the roles you hope the Council of Regents would provide would be to ensure that there is sufficient money for the system to operate appropriately. We heard figures from the Council of Governors this morning that in fact the funding had decreased considerably. They used the year 1989-90 and this present year, coincidentally -- I don't know whether it has any significance -- but the funding had diminished significantly.

Since the person who is now the chair, I believe that is the word, of the Council of Regents was such a strong and articulate spokesperson for adequate funding for the post-secondary system, and since we do not have a great amount of money flowing in and apparently people are coping, could you tell us how you've been able to cope with funding that many in the Legislature previous to 1990 would have considered to be totally and completely inadequate to run a community college system?

Mr Saso: I thank you for that question because I think it does point up one of the major struggles that we have in the college system, where at a time when unemployment was high and when things were changing around us in our communities, we needed to do two things: We needed to allow a lot more people in the province to have access to post-secondary education and, at the same time, we needed to find new ways of providing courses that were timely and in a lot of cases required equipment etc that was a lot more costly.

The way I guess we coped was through becoming a lot more innovative about the way we provide programs. For example, a number of us now have moved far beyond what is the traditional sense of education in allowing people to come from 9 to 5, from September to the end of April or May. We now run summer programming, evening and weekend programming. We've had to reduce to a certain extent the number of hours that we provide in a week, we've had to take much larger classes in and we've had to become a lot more innovative in the technologies we use to provide education. That has meant some difficulties for some colleges where they have had to do some downsizing.

I think it's been a struggle that all in the college system, the faculty, the support staff and the administrative staff, have embraced to cope, but I would suggest very strongly that we are at a point where we do not have very much, if any, elasticity left after this term to take in more students. We experienced increases over the last several years of 9%, 10% and in some cases 12% each year. I think our enrolment this year will be somewhere between 2% and 4% increases, and a number of colleges actually increasing less.

We've had to become entrepreneurial at our college, for example, and I'll speak to that, Mr Bradley, one that you're very familiar with. The post-secondary grant now accounts for about one third of our funding. At one time it was about 60% to 70%, so it has dropped radically. I would suggest at our sister institutions at Niagara that has been the case. We've had to do a lot more in terms of working with industry, with business, and finding other sources of revenue to cover off the dollars that are required to increase both the quality and quantity of education that we provide in the system.

Mr Bradley: If I can, I will switch from topic to topic. In terms of governance, I've heard now both the Council of Governors and the Council of Presidents state rather clearly that your students will be best served by a community-based as opposed to a constituency model of representation. Do you have a fear that I have, or at least a concern if not a fear, that if you do it on a constituency basis, those who represent the constituency will be preoccupied with advancing the cause of that specific constituency as opposed to dealing in an objective and fairminded way with all of the policies they have to deal with in a community college?

Mr Saso: From my perspective, and I think some of my colleagues may have a comment too, I would suggest that each one of our communities is different. A college in Metro Toronto has a different constituency base -- and I say that in the broad sense in terms of the citizens that it serves -- and you know in our area we have another number of challenges in serving our constituents.

I think a community-based way of governance is the best way for us to keep providing high-quality skills. That way I think the community itself can select the people who can help provide the leadership on the board and the direction the college needs to serve the needs in terms of education that is needed in a particular region. From my perspective at least, I believe a community-based model is effective, and most effective in helping in the governance issue of the community colleges.

The Chair: If there are other presidents who wish to speak, Hansard can pick you up. Just feel free to take part if you wish.

Dr John Tibbits: I'd like to speak to this. I'm John Tibbits, president of Conestoga College. Some of you may be aware we went through a difficult time with the council over the last eight or nine months and it was over this very matter.

The area we serve is quite different than the area of Toronto and is quite different than the area of, say, some other colleges in Thunder Bay etc, and I think it's absolutely essential that the community reflects the diversity of that community, not some forced diversity that is determined by Toronto.

The colleges are difficult enough to manage. On one hand we're dealing with limited funding, there's no question; on the other hand we're dealing with very powerful internal unions, and to throw another layer of fragmentation into the college -- I don't see how that helps the student or the community to manage.

I think most of the governors and most of the presidents would feel that way. We are trying to do our best under very difficult circumstances, and I think it's absolutely essential that the people who are on the board are there, first and foremost, to represent the broadest community and the college, not a particular constituency.

For one thing, it's a zero-sum game. There are an infinite number of constituencies in a community, and one person often reflects a number of different constituencies, so we feel very strongly about this.

Mr Bradley: Another issue I'd like you to comment on -- I asked the governors about it this morning -- there's a significant new training initiative in Ontario, with the cooperation of the federal government I believe, called the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. One of the notes that members of the opposition offered while this was being discussed in the House, and perhaps some of the government members within the context of the government caucus meetings, was that the community colleges had, at best, a minor role to play in a $2-billion operation. Do you believe the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board's operation would be enhanced by more involvement by the community colleges in that operation?

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Mr Dan Corbett: I'd like to speak to that -- Dan Corbett of St Lawrence College -- because I've been involved in the OTAB process for the last year or so through the education and training steering committee. In fact, when you look at what OTAB is doing with regard to the whole concept of labour-market partnership and getting the community to decide the levels of training and the kinds of delivery systems, that's precisely where the colleges are. That's what we've been doing.

I think the figure I have in my head is that roughly about 70% of the historical training that is now being amalgamated into the various OTAB organizations was historically provided through the college system. So the changes that are going on there are very important to us with respect to the changing in the environment, the changes with respect to how training is going to be delivered across the province and the long-term economic development issues for the regions, once the local boards get established.

Mr Bradley: There is another issue which has emerged which has caused a conflict between the secondary schools and the community colleges. The secondary schools, with declining enrolment and with battles going on over separate and public schools and because they feel they have a role to play in this, have moved into what some people would have considered in years gone by to be your turf, that is, retraining of people and adult education. Now every board of education has adult education and I think it's free, in most cases, as opposed to yours being a cost, but you will correct me on that if I am wrong. Have you been able to resolve this matter with the secondary schools or is this intrusion into your area -- and I'm not making a judgement whether it's right or wrong -- but this intrusion into your traditional area still posing problems?

Mr Saso: We all have different experiences in our areas and I'll attempt to talk about my experience, and other colleagues may want to make some comments too. That's a very good question and I appreciate that because with declining enrolments, the secondary school boards, I think, are trying to fill a void, at least in terms of the numbers of students they serve, by moving into areas that traditionally they have not served before, particularly in the adult education area.

We find in our area that, yes, there is a growing number of programs offered by the secondary school boards that traditionally we have offered in the past and we find it somewhat confusing, in that we have situations where programs are offered that are "free" to the user, to the student, and it requires a whole new initiative on the part of secondary schools to get into that area.

We think it is not the most efficient way for the taxpayers of the province to be served. We believe there are well-defined roles for both colleges and our friends in the secondary school sector to provide the right education at the right time. We are working with the four boards in our area on articulation agreements and those articulation agreements are useful in trying to define where one role begins and where the other starts. The one thing I think we will continue to struggle with is not to "misuse" very limited funds from the taxpayer, and there's only one taxpayer, and to provide the same type of training in the same area, I think, is a waste of taxpayers' money. So we have a lot of work to do.

There's also an intrusion of the private sector trainer into areas and there's a confusion now, a great confusion in that area, about what a diploma is and whether or not a diploma coming from a private institution is of the same quality or what type of weight it carries. We need to be careful about what a diploma is and a diploma coming from a college, I think, is a solid statement that a person is well trained and well educated.

We have those two issues coming from both the private sector and from the school boards and I think there's a lot of work to be done. But I think, as populations decline in the secondary school levels, that there will be more and more pressure on the secondary schools to find, if you'll pardon the expression, new markets for their education and training. Maybe Bob, and then Mary has a comment.

Mr Bob Gervais: Bob Gervais from Northern College. In northeastern Ontario we not only have a decreasing population in the high schools but we have a decreasing population overall. The points that Mr Saso has raised apply in the north as well.

I'd like to raise one other issue, however, and that is that the risk of the numbers of players who are getting involved in adult education could result, at least in the north where we have very small populations, in our population being served less well than they are now because it's going to mean the bankruptcy of somebody. If we divide the numbers so small, then the colleges, the school boards, the private entrepreneur -- none will survive or the fittest will end up surviving but that's at a cost of our citizens, I think, that we should really take a look at very seriously.

Ms Mary Hofstetter: I'm Mary Hofstetter, president of Sheridan College. Just to augment what the chair and my colleague have said, the Council of Presidents has also been working closely with representatives from the boards of education and have just produced a report called the schools-colleges report which we will be exploring in depth at our annual retreat starting this coming Sunday. In that report we explore the issues that relate to territorial imperative and one of the key recommendations that emerges is the need for some clarification from the Ministry of Education and Training with regard to where it wants to see us put emphasis.

I would also add that I think all of the college areas -- and we serve Halton and Peel regions which have the luxury of being one of the growing areas of Canada. We have articulation agreements with each of our four boards of ed and indeed are setting up joint facilities right now with the Halton separate board of ed wherein we will be in the same facility offering adult education but determining what they do best and what we do best so that we complement and not replicate. I think that's the model you will see happening in many of the larger colleges in the province.

The Chair: Now to the Progressive Conservatives.

Mrs Cunningham: Welcome. It's great to see some educational leaders here today to talk to us about community colleges and the tremendous challenges I think that you have ahead of you and have had in the past.

One of the reasons we asked to have this on this agenda as an agency is that there are so many unanswered questions as to what's happening in our colleges, questions about governance which you've touched on, and questions with regard to the role and responsibility of the Council of Regents. So I just thought if we all got here and talked about it in front of each other then maybe we could straighten it out. It's really rather simple. At the same time, I'm going to be asking you for some solutions.

One of the questions I do have though, and not just because I probably would have asked it anyway, but both the board of governors and yourselves have mentioned the expansion of the Council of Regents' role into operations such as CSAC and the prior learning assessment seems to be causing some confusion among the colleges and the general public. I can only tell you as the critic for the Conservatives, we get a lot of calls about this. I wanted to ask you if you could give us some examples of ways in which this confusion of roles has had a negative impact on the college system.

Mr Saso: For one thing, we believe that part of what we're doing now in terms of dealing with some of those issues has been ongoing for some time. Colleges and their advisory committees -- and I mentioned earlier that there are some 10,000 advisory members in our communities across the province that I think can deal effectively with a number of these issues and deal with them in terms of local solutions.

I think there is a need, however, for a central way of approaching some of these problems and I guess our concern is that there are ways of dealing with them now within the ACAATO structure that has been set up to deal with a number of these issues from committee structures. There's some duplication there.

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In terms of moving at a pace that is in some ways important to get to where we both want to get to, in terms of where the colleges want to get to in these issues and where the Council of Regents wants to get to, time is an issue. I say "time" not from the aspect that we don't want it to happen -- we all want it to happen and have been working on it -- but sometimes, with the pressures that we have just to make sure that the students and clients we're serving now are well served, the introduction of a number of these items in a much faster way than we anticipated they should be introduced can lead to some mistakes.

We're not at the end of the piece yet, we're still moving towards the end, but we think we should do it right, we think we should do it right the first time and we think that the luxury of time is helpful in getting there at the right time.

Mrs Cunningham: I appreciate that.

Dr Tibbits: You were asking for some specific examples. I'm speaking for Conestoga here and not necessarily on behalf of everybody and the Council of Presidents. From my point of view, I think it's very important that there are central standards, but I think they should be in the form of performance indicators, for instance, on retention rates and placement rates and certain other quality measures that can actually be verified. Then I think it should be up to the local institution to ensure that it adheres to these. For instance, as Mr Saso was saying, we have over 10,000 people on our program advisory committees in the system.

The problem with a lot of this central control is that in many cases we have not been able to properly consult with the program advisory committees. These are 10,000-plus volunteers from industry. These are the people, by the way, who are hiring our graduates, these are the people who are assisting us in ensuring that we have adequate equipment, that we have relevant curriculum.

The problem with central control, if you talk about problems, is that in many cases the program advisory committees are bypassed in this process because it's being jammed down. A particular example is general education. I think every president would agree that it's very important for students to have strong generic skills: good reading, writing, numeracy skills, problem-solving skills.

Centralizing that, what happens is that you get what we call the liberal arts thrust in a university. That's not what the students need, that's not what these people need. They're coming to college to get specific training. Obviously, if they're in woodworking, you don't want to just train them on 28 machines. They have to be able to work in groups; they have to be able to solve problems.

We can, I think, demonstrate in some of these cases that even the faculty in the system -- I mean, there's a big difference between OPSEU as an executive and the faculty as faculty. I know that in our college about 95% of the faculty were not in favour of some of the recommendations that were driven down centrally. I could go on; I don't want to bore you. I don't want to give the impression that we think we should just be doing whatever we want. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is: Let's have standards. Those standards should be adhered to; for instance, on budgets. As far as many other criteria are concerned, let's establish those central standards, but then let us get on and do the job.

Mrs Cunningham: You mentioned general education. What is the view of the colleges on that timetable for general education?

Mr Saso: Our initial impression was that it was too short a period of time. We agreed essentially with the thrust. But to have it implemented in the period of time that was initially drawn up was just too short a time to do it, we felt, properly.

Ms Hofstetter: If I could just add one thing to that, another issue that is bound up in this is the value of a college diploma. We all know that we live in a time of credentialism, and the colleges have been struggling for 27 years now to really establish the credibility of a college diploma.

Another part of this piece is not only the timing, but also prior learning assessment, wherein we have been advised that people should be able to achieve 75% of the number of credits required for a college diploma through PLA and not through having to come into the college at all. There are concerns, and very justifiable ones from an academic point of view, among our faculty as to what this will be doing to the value of a college credit.

These are the kinds of things on which we feel we do have the expertise among our faculty in particular and consultation and time so that we don't jeopardize the credibility of a college education in the process.

Mrs Cunningham: It's nice to let professionals do their work, isn't it, some days? Thanks.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): If there are a few minutes left, Mr Saso opened the door for me in his opening comments when he mentioned the expansion of the college system in the three francophone facilities. I know the Council of Regents is a strong supporter of the francophone colleges and I wonder about the need, whether it's as strong as the desire. In the past we've supplied services for Franco-Ontarians through bilingual colleges. I'm just wondering what your view is in respect to that, why that was not adequately meeting the needs, apparently.

Mr Saso: Maybe I could start addressing the issue by looking at the one francophone college that is now up and running in Ontario and is extremely successful, la Cité in Ottawa. I think we've all been most pleasantly apprised of the numbers of students who are attending that college. There are well over 3,000 today. The demand for francophone programming in the Ottawa area was very strong.

It's difficult for me to comment because the other two colleges that are just about to get up and running in 1994-95 have not really come on stream totally yet. Whether or not the need is there for Franco-Ontario colleges in those two other regions, I think we'll find that it is. How well will they fare? I guess time will be the measure of that.

I would also add, though, that bilingual programming is also essential, and in the area of Welland, Ontario, a number of major corporations such as Canadian Tire Acceptance demand of our college, and rightfully so, that programming in French and English be provided to students so that the students they hire to man what is a very sophisticated telemarketing and telecommunications network be a supply of well-trained students who are bilingual.

Mr Runciman: You're not really answering my question, though. I asked you, what was wrong with the system we had in place with bilingual colleges? What was the major failing?

Mr Saso: I don't recognize any major failing.

Mr Runciman: So what you're saying is that you don't recognize the need for specific francophone colleges.

Mr Saso: No, I would not say that. I would say that there is a need for francophone training in Ontario.

Mr Runciman: How do you back that up? Do you have studies to back that up?

Mr Saso: No, I don't have any studies to back that up.

Mr Runciman: This is just an instinct, is it?

Mr Saso: Just coming from an area, for example, in the city of Welland where there is a large percentage of francophone residents and high schools that function in the French language, the obvious conclusion for me is that there is a need for francophone training at the post-secondary level.

Mr Runciman: And that can't be achieved through bilingual colleges?

Mr Saso: Some of it can.

Mr Runciman: It seems to me that when we make these kinds of commitments there should be more than gut instincts that drive those kinds of decisions.

Dr Tibbits: Quite frankly, we're at a disadvantage here. This is a political decision, whether there should be bilingual or francophone colleges.

Mr Runciman: I agree.

Dr Tibbits: I really think you're putting John in a difficult position. I don't think we should answer that question. But I think there are two other questions that could be asked, and one is, whether or not there should be francophone colleges, the big issue with the presidents, assuming we all agree that there should be francophone colleges, is that the pie is the same -- in fact, it's less; in other words, the financial pie. You're adding colleges to a system that is already under pressure.

Mr Runciman: Absolutely.

Dr Tibbits: I think that's a key question. I think another key question is, what percentage of the francophone students at la Cité are from Ontario? I think that would be an interesting question.

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Mr Runciman: That was my next question, as a matter of fact. You were talking about how successful la Cité has been. You mentioned the 3,000 students. Do you have an idea what the percentage from Ontario is in terms of that student body?

Mr Saso: I think about two thirds, from my understanding, come from Ontario.

Mr Runciman: Do you have any information on the teaching load at la Cité?

Mr Saso: I don't.

Mr Runciman: Maybe I am directing these questions to the wrong body, but there was a rumour, whether it could be substantiated or not, that some teachers at la Cité are in the classroom for as little as three hours a week and they're being paid for 44 hours a week, full-time work. It would be nice to have those kinds of answers at some point during the process. You wanted to comment on this?

Mr Gervais: I wanted to comment from the position of a bilingual institution, which Northern was. I don't think the Council of Presidents questions the merit of the establishment of a francophone college. That is, in my personal view, something which a decision has been made on. What I find difficult is not to have options for people to continue to study in institutions that are and provide a bilingual milieu which reflect the community as, for example, Northern College did in Timmins. People should have a right to choose, and if they want to choose the French college, they have a choice of the French college. If they wanted to choose to continue to study at Northern College in French, that choice, in my view, should have been provided for the student.

Mr Runciman: How has this decision affected Northern and, I guess, the Cornwall campus of St Lawrence? I'm just curious. How has this impacted or how is it going to impact in the future?

Mr Corbett: In the short term, there was an impact on the Cornwall campus, because what we have in Cornwall is something unique: it's called the education centre. Along with our campus, St Lawrence College, la Cité has a branch campus there. There are I think somewhere in the order of close to 200 students actually attending la Cité in Cornwall. But going back to the point that Bob Gervais was making previous to that, the services were provided through St Lawrence College in Cornwall on a bilingual basis. It was part of my time, but I understand it was also a very much desired need in the community to have a separate post-secondary francophone institution, which is now what they have in Cornwall.

Mr Runciman: Desired by the francophone community?

Mr Gervais: Yes.

Mr Runciman: Okay, thanks.

The Chair: Now we have four government members: Martin, Harrington, Carter and Malkowski. I'm just saying that because you're only just starting your first 15 minutes; you still have a second round.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much. I indeed want to give you kudos for the good work that you do in these very difficult times. You've described the challenge that is in front of you trying to deliver post-secondary education and training at a time when all of us are struggling with the question of reduced dollars, reduced resources outside of our control. We're in a day when that is the reality for all of us.

I want to continue a stream of questioning that I've been trying to follow in these hearings so far, and that's the focus on the changing picture we face. Mr Bradley earlier painted you a partial picture, certainly not partisan in any way, of what's happening out there for colleges re the question of fewer resources. It's fewer resources because there just are fewer resources out there and tremendous demand for those resources across the board as government.

As government, over the last four years we've gone through some of the more difficult times in the history of the province, with the help of people like yourselves who have been tremendously responsible in front of that, I must say. I've said that to the leaders in my own community of Sault Ste Marie -- Gerry McGuire, whom you all know very well -- on a few occasions recently. You've done remarkable things in some very challenging times in partnership with us in trying to come to terms with some very difficult circumstances.

However, in the middle of all of that we are also called to change, because things are changing. The demands are changing. The needs of students are changing. The world, the global economy, is calling for us to prepare kids in various and sundry ways. As a government, we struggle with what the community wants, what the various segments within communities -- we sometimes call them constituencies -- want. We struggle within the already existing structures that deliver programs and we use terms like "territorial imperative," which some people define as "turf," when we get into the discussion of that. It becomes very difficult and confusing at times, so we have to try and keep things clear. Right now, today, we're looking at the role of the Council of Regents in the delivery of programs re post-secondary and colleges.

As government, what do we do? Who do we listen to? We have the organization that represents the governors. We have your organization. The mandated role of the Council of Regents is to advise the minister on issues. We've asked them in these very difficult times to help us in coming to terms with how we introduce some of the new realities. The demand that I hear in my office, and as I read what's happening across the province, for standards and accreditation, is not just in colleges, it's in universities, it's in elementary and secondary education. The public is demanding of us that we be accountable and that there be standards, that people be challenged to meet those standards, that they be equal across the province and that somebody be responsible for making sure that happens.

At this point in time, in that one particular area -- there are a number of areas that I'd really like to get into further discussion with you on, but certainly the area of who does all this, who works with us to do this. We've looked to the Council of Regents because that's the body that's already there, and we don't want to be designing something else, because we feel very strongly that the Council of Regents does and has the potential to represent the various interests and the various voices that we need to be listening to across the province. In light of that and in light of the recommendation that you're making here and that we heard earlier this morning, for example, that the college standards and accreditation council should in fact maybe be moved to a body that's closer to yourselves, such as ACAATO, how do you think the groups that are probably most closely aligned to you would feel about that, your faculties and your student associations, re that kind of a shift?

Mr Saso: Thank you, Mr Martin. One of the things that you raise is an important issue with us, and it's role clarification. You indicate that there is the ministry, there is the Council of Regents, the Council of Governors etc. I think every one of them good-heartedly is trying to do the best in difficult times to enhance the type of education we provide our students. One of the things, though, when you have difficult times is that I think we do have the luxury, however, of doing it right, and time does provide us with the opportunity to do it right.

We feel that with the advisory committees, for example, a lot of the visioning of what we need to do to keep on top of a global economy that's changing rapidly is to listen to those people who will ultimately have a lot to do with providing jobs for our students. We feel that the college system itself has a lot of expertise to move towards proper accreditation.

We also believe that there's a role for the Council of Regents to play in this to provide some long-term planning activity in this area, but the implementation, when all is said and done, comes down to the colleges to put in place, and I think the importance of consulting with the colleges on how to implement and what should be implemented is extremely important. We're not damning the Council of Regents; we're just saying that you have to be part of a chain and very much involved in the decision-making part of it as colleges, and through governance and advisory committees, to have it happen properly.

Mr Martin: Have you talked at all with the faculty association and the student association around how they would feel re a shift of that sort?

Mr Saso: I'll only speak for my college, and some of my colleagues may have some additional comment, but I think that our faculties think it's probably a good thing in terms of standards coming into play. The issues are always that we don't want to make sure that the standards are so low that they're easily achievable and that you move to the lowest common denominator rather than coming to the highest common denominator. If you have to move to a higher plane, you need the ability in terms of the competence and in terms of the funding and the assistance to get to that higher plane, and you also need the luxury of time to get there properly, because mistakes can be made if it's rushed.

I think our faculty, from my perspective, generally agree. The biggest complaint that I have had in terms of faculty concern has been that it may be moving too fast and that we need a little more time, at least, to implement.

I don't know if any of my colleagues, Mr Martin, may want to make a comment.

Mr Martin: Okay, sure.

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Mr Bruce Hill: I'm Bruce Hill from Georgian College. I think there are two other elements to your question; one of them has to do with the large number of programs in the colleges that are delivered with a work-experience component. Many of the college programs are cooperative in nature, where students combine periods of time in the workforce along with times at the college. That keeps the college faculty, the college staff, very much on their toes as to the relevancy of what they're teaching in the classroom. That can't be done from afar; that has to be done locally.

The other aspect is concern, I'm sure at some of the colleges, that CSAC and PLA would be more effective if they were more linked and not as separate as they are in the form that they're being driven at the present time, again not because the concepts aren't supported and believed in, but faculty ask us, "Why are we doing CSAC over here and PLA over there when if we were doing more of it internally we would be able to do them in harmony?" So I think there are a couple of other aspects to the question.

Dr Tibbits: We happen to be people who are in management, which is not necessarily popular with some people on the council, but I think there's a big difference between advising and being accountable. In other words, I have no difficulty with the council suggesting there should be standards and ensuring that there are standards that are put in place, but we're the ones accountable for managing that. If you have four major initiatives -- CSAC, gen ed, generic skills and PLA -- going on at the same time, and your key people are telling you, "This is not the way it should be done," then I think there's a problem. The problem isn't that we should be doing these things; the problem is how we are doing these things.

I think what you want to see is that you want ensure, as a government, you're getting good advice. But there is a problem, I think, when you meld advice and operation. The people on the council are not accountable, ultimately. If our college has difficulty with implementing this, Richard Johnston is not the one who is called on the carpet by the board, I am. It's in the community that I have to answer questions if these things aren't going well.

So I don't think we're questioning here that the council should be involved in any of these things. They should be providing advice, and they should assure the minister that these initiatives are being managed, but they shouldn't be managing them, operationalizing on a day-to-day basis. That's where the problem is, and it's creating all kinds of difficulties in the college system. You may not hear it from the OPSEU executive, but walk into a college and talk to the faculty, ask them what they think of the PLA and generic skills.

My understanding, when you're trying to manage change, is that you are trying to empower the individuals and get them involved in that change process. You're not telling them what to do -- I would hope we're not telling them. We're trying to get our employees involved.

So I don't think we disagree here with what you're saying. We're just saying that the people who are accountable for the system would like to have a little bit of say in how these things are implemented, not just be told how they're implemented.

Ms Harrington: Thank you all very much for coming. I first of all want to reiterate what my colleague has said about what you have done over the last three to four years with regard to the funds available to you and the increase in enrolment. We heard yesterday that the enrolment has gone up 35%, while your funding has gone down 25%. So we certainly want to commend you. On a more personal note, I do want to let you know, from my knowledge, how important Niagara College is to our region. I have a daughter who's 18, so I know how many of her friends have mentioned to me over the last couple of years how integral Niagara College is to their future.

I had two questions. On page 4 you say, "The Council of Regents' valuable contribution to the integrity of the college system...could be jeopardized by the...involvement in operational matters." First I want you to explain to me how you view the valuable contribution to the college system that the Council of Regents makes, just how you see that.

Secondly, to go to the second part of it, which we did discuss yesterday with Mr Johnston, and that is that they have in fact done some of the operational procedures now with both CSAC and the PLA, and we discussed why they had done that. They explained to us that this was an economical way of doing it. I'm not sure if they felt it was a long-term thing. I think they did feel that possibly it was a short-term thing. So my second question is, what do you see as the correct future way of dealing with these very important operational procedures?

Mr Saso: If I could deal with the last part of your question first, one of the things we believe is that the college system, through the ACAATO structure, has in place with a number of college people who work through different committees the ability to help us operationalize those issues, because, as we mentioned a little earlier, the ability to operationalize policy decisions is critical.

I think that the experience we have and the ability to operationalize that has been demonstrated a number of times over and over again over the years and more particularly in the last four or five years with the stress that we've all been under with respect to the economy moving in a different direction. So to answer that question, we believe that in the long term ACAATO has in place, not by adding staff but by using the staff that already exists in various colleges, the ability to operationalize those types of policy decisions.

Ms Harrington: Have you spoken to the Council of Regents about the future of these programs?

Mr Saso: Yes, we discuss that quite often. I don't want to paint this as an acrimonious discussion. I understand that my colleague Richard Johnston the other day talked about the pressure that we're all under and how from time to time there are stresses. We have differing views on this, but I think we all have a very strong view that what we're doing in essence is correct; there just may be different vehicles of getting there. So we need to explore that, I think, in a lot more detail as this unfolds.

Ms Harrington: Before I let you talk about what you see as the valuable contribution of the Council of Regents, I do also note that you have some concerns around governance and other issues. What I would suggest to you, and of course to everybody, is that the way to deal with these concerns about the relationship between different bodies is obviously openness and partnership, and when there are differences get together and find out where the common ground is. Obviously, that's the only way to deal with situations like this. So that's what I would encourage you to do. What do you see as their valuable contribution?

Mr Saso: One of my colleagues wanted to make just a comment on that particular matter.

Mr Hill: I think it's already been mentioned, but I would applaud the efforts of the council to draw to the attention of the minister the good work that's going on in the college and the support that the council has brought to the funding issue. As difficult as it's been, the Council of Regents has carried to the minister the work that we're trying to accomplish in the community.

Ms Harrington: But could you not have done that yourselves?

Mr Saso: I think that the council has championed the funding issue for us. Personally, I think that Richard Johnston has done a lot in terms of trying to make sure that we get the best we can in terms of tight-funding times. No, we could not have done that ourselves; we do need somebody to champion those types of issues. I think that Richard has really attempted to at least help us.

For the first time in our history, we at least find ourselves on more of a level playing-ground with the universities in terms of funding. It's not that our funding level is exactly the same, but it certainly has moved to the same type of a basic allocation, which was not there before. We've wanted that for a long time, and I think that the council, particularly Richard, has helped that.

Ms Harrington: So, in a sense, you see the council as an advocate for you?

Mr Saso: Yes, we do.

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Mr McGuinty: Welcome to the committee. On behalf of my party, and I know it's been said by virtually everybody else here, I too want to both recognize and congratulate you for the good work that you have been doing under very trying circumstances. The long and the short of it is that you're getting less money, taking in more students and you're introducing new initiatives. So I think that's a pretty significant accomplishment and you're to be congratulated for that.

I want to get your response to Vision 2000. It was a document that was developed in the heady days, the late 1980s, 1990, when, by some standards, the sky was the limit and we had the fastest growing economy, as I understand it, on the planet, faster than Japan. I think you could make a good argument to the effect that your vision at any particular time is a function of the circumstances that obtain, and certainly the rate at which you're going to implement it is also a function of those circumstances.

Now, I understand that the initiatives from Vision 2000 -- you can correct me if I'm wrong -- are, by and large, good things and they will lead to significant improvements in the quality of the programs that are offered at our community colleges. The real concern we have is that there's no money and we're supposed to add that on, add those new programs in, in those difficult and trying circumstances. How do you respond to that?

Mr Saso: From my perspective, Vision 2000 performed one of its most valuable services in having us stop and take a look at where we were, and I think that's important. Secondly, I think that most of the recommendations that were in Vision 2000 were those types of things that would help us now and in the future because they talk about where we should be going.

With respect to adding new programming, that is the difficult issue. The difficult issue is not to add them on but what you subtract in order to put into place those types of programs which, like generic skills, are important. So that's the real struggle. The real struggle is not just add layer on layer, it's what layer disappears and how you make those decisions on what layers should disappear and in fact implement those types of things which are, quite frankly, mandated for us to implement.

Dr Tibbits: The problem with Vision 2000 -- there were a lot of good points, and I don't want to sound critical, but I think when you're devising a strategic plan, I know in our college one of the key aspects of planning is to prioritize, and I think that's one of the issues. You can't do it all. What is essential to do?

If you look at what is being pushed ahead now -- CSAC, gen ed, generic skills and PLA -- one would logically start with the standards. You would determine the standards first, both centrally and locally, before you would move ahead with the others. How can you determine the generic skills and gen ed component, how can you go ahead with PLA, before you have program standards?

Ms Harrington mentioned the comments that were made yesterday about saving money. In fact, there's duplication, and there's going to have to be rework here, because one would logically prioritize if one was doing some planning. I think that's one of the prime issues. You can't do it all in Vision 2000, so you have to try to do it the best you can and do it cost-effectively. You have to determine what is the most important thing. The most important thing, to start off, is standards, and it can't just be determined centrally.

Mr McGuinty: I think you've made a very good point there. The committee members should understand that with respect to general education, and correct me if I'm wrong, we are introducing a new component when we have yet to determine whether what we are presently teaching meets a yet-to-be-determined standard. Is that correct?

Mr Saso: Yes, basically.

Mr McGuinty: Okay. I want to talk about your relationship with the Council of Regents. As you know, the council is the subject matter of these hearings. I'd ask you to characterize that relationship. The governors told us this morning that they felt trust was lacking and they'd like to see more trust. I don't ask that to cause mischief; I ask that because if there's a problem with that relationship, then the people of Ontario should know about it, because it cannot help but have a corrosive effect, gradually but surely, on the quality of education we offer here at our college level.

Mr Saso: I think that there are some communication gaps certainly in terms of developing what is practice and policy in terms of operationalizing policy that have been lacking at times between the council and ourselves. On the governance issue, I think the governors were quite competent and quite willing to make their views known. But I would suggest that the relationship has been anywhere from a good working relationship to stormy. I think that's not something that does not occur in the types of decisions that we have to make in a very difficult time, that you will have stormy times. We have had some stormy times, and we have had some substantial disagreements. So we've had both parts of the relationship, but I would not suggest that it's a relationship that's broken and that can't be revised and revisited from time to time to improve.

In the last several months I think our relations have been better than they have been for probably a three-month period prior to that. So there are some common understandings. There have been very strong opinions expressed by members at this table and governors about what they didn't see eye to eye on, on the council, and I think that some of those have improved and some of them may continue to be sources of disagreement between us, but I think we accept that that's part of the way the system works.

Mr McGuinty: I want to look into the future now, after the social contract expires. I'm concerned about keeping our colleges up and running and continuing to meet probably ever-increasing financial pressures. I want you to tell me what you foresee, what we're not doing, what the council is not doing or what anybody in particular is not doing and should be doing in order to make sure we can properly address that.

Also, are we starting to talk about rationalization in our colleges? For example, just to give you an example, our expensive technology with radio broadcasting, something like this, I think it's offered at 11 colleges. It's pretty expensive equipment. Are we starting to think about offering it at maybe four or five, saying, "You do your first two years here, and you do your third year at this central college" or district college or regional college, whatever you want to call it?

Mr Saso: If I could, I'd like to deal with the first issue with respect to what happens after the social contract. I don't think it's specifically a Council of Regents initiative. You talked about funding and the problem that we're going to experience in the years ahead if the pressure to supply as many people with a solid post-secondary education is still there and with resources shrinking, with numbers increasing. I think that we are at a point where we can't go any further, and I know that we have been pretty good about getting on with the job, even with scarce resources, and not crying a lot about how difficult a problem it is. But I think, quite frankly, in the college system we've reached the point where we just cannot keep going.

There's not only the funding factor, there's a burnout factor. I'm very concerned about a number of people in the college system being stretched to the limit, trying to do the job at all levels; faculty, support staff, administrators being pressured day in and day out and having to deal with those changing issues at the same time that other things are coming from a different level. So one thing I would urge this committee to do is to get to us the resources which are necessary to do the fine job that we've done in the past.

The second thing I would say to you is that we are not sure what's going to happen with respect to the social contract and when we come out of it. We're still up in the air with respect to the contracts. I don't know if anybody has a firm handle on that. But I know right now that I do not anticipate that a lot of money is going to come our way to help us deal with that issue.

The social contract and all those other things that are sitting over there, we still have the day-to-day operations and what's taking place in a global economy and a very changing economy in our own world to deal with, and where we find the funds to keep up with the technology to train students about what they're supposed to learn today to be able to function effectively in the economy is what concerns us greatly. So although we're talking about one particular set of issues today, to us there are those other issues that are critical for success in the future.

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Dr Tibbits: One of the concerns I have, I'm not saying there should or shouldn't be a council, but I don't think the council in its present format should be responsible for collective bargaining.

My own assessment at Conestoga is that there will be less and less resources. There are not going to be more fiscal resources in the future. Therefore, we have to find ways to be more flexible, more creative, and we feel that the only way we can do that is to have a different kind of bargaining representation. It's very difficult to take an inclusive group like the council and say it is now representing management. Look at the executive committee of the Council of Regents. They're ultimately responsible for collective bargaining for management.

Certainly some of us feel there should be an employers' association. There should be the opportunity for the colleges and the boards to be able to handle their negotiations and to try to ensure the flexibility that's required in the future. Ideally, some of us believe, and not everyone believes, that there should be local bargaining so we can have some of that flexibility.

Mr Saso: Mr McGuinty, my colleague would like to deal with the second, the rationalization question.

Ms Hofstetter: I think that's an important question and a timely one because, as my colleagues have said, we've done the things that every other corporation has done in terms of downsizing administration and the more obvious things, and what we're now left with is examining the centres of excellence that each college has developed in its history and working together to decide who will offer what programs in the future.

You gave one example of broadcasting. There is the fact that right now 23 colleges have schools of nursing. Does that remain appropriate? Those are the questions we are now asking: "Okay, should we say that this college will offer nursing and this college won't? It will offer other allied health programs."

When it comes to technology, which is capital-intensive and where we frequently don't have high student numbers in year three, I know that a number of Metro colleges, of which Sheridan is one, are talking about divesting ourselves of some technology programs, or of the advanced years of those programs, to another college so that each of us can concentrate on the areas where we specialize and where we have the best program. So those conversations are ongoing.

Frankly, to put a positive spin on the financial constraint, those are conversations that were long overdue. There are indeed some good things coming out of this as well.

Mr Corbett: I would just like to add to the comments Mary has just made because the eastern region colleges have had a project in place for the last year or so where we've had a task force looking at this whole issue of rationalization of programming across the eastern region.

But I think when you look at all of the issues we're facing, the other area that we have to pay attention to is this whole aspect of alternative delivery. We have to move out of the traditional modes of delivery, out of the classrooms, and be able to bring learning needs to students, whether they're at home or at work. So this whole issue of using technology to become much more efficient, I think, is one of the things we're all going to have to look at over the next couple of years.

No matter where you go, you always go to wherever the money is. Ultimately that's what you do. Business does it and the colleges do it as well. So as John mentioned earlier, we're all going to have to become much more entrepreneurial and we're going to have to learn how to compete in a much different environment.

I think one of the strategic goals that I have for our college is to become less dependent on government funding, and we have to do that by going out and being competitive in a marketplace by bringing products and services to business and industry so that they'll continue to bring funds into the college and then we can support our post-secondary programming.

Mr Saso: Just to add very quickly, I don't want you to run out of time, the rationalization is a good thing. The problem you face is distance. Sometimes if you want to be a community-based college -- and when students don't have a lot of disposable income to move a long way away from home, where they don't live at home and have to expend dollars to live in another community -- that is the difficulty you face. But rationalization, I think all us here would say, when and if, is a very good thing.

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the committee. I think these types of discussions are beneficial to all. I know in our part of eastern Ontario there are concerns, and we're lucky to have our president with us here today.

It's my understanding that 87 jobs were lost on the staff in the colleges and students were 997, and I guess last year they're 948. It's common knowledge in eastern Ontario that the savings were $5.2 million from the academic budget and $3.4 million from the administration. I know there have been a number of concerns. The gentleman just mentioned about students having to go to live in another community and I know that was the cause of some in our area, namely Cornwall, to drop out of their courses.

I was just wondering, are you going to be able to maintain the present level the way it stands right now, or do you feel there will further cutbacks in the near future?

Mr Corbett: St Lawrence College has gone through a rather difficult time in the last two years because of severe financial pressures. In fact, we've had to cut about 15% of the cost structures out of the college, and that's been through accommodation of increased efficiencies in our processes. But where you have 80% of your budget tied up in human resources, we in fact have gone through a major reduction in staff. This year alone, we've reduced the college by 90 people. That's across the board with management, faculty and staff.

What we've tried to do is provide a level of service into our communities -- because we have three campuses: Cornwall, Brockville and Kingston -- and make sure that we maintain our diversity of programming there as well. So in fact this year we're now operating with about the same number of students overall, although there are probably fewer at the Brockville campus. The Cornwall campus has about the same number of students as last year, and Kingston is up just slightly.

The reality that we have, I think, in our particular sector that you've just mentioned is that the financial situation caught up with us and we had to take some rather drastic, tough and very unfortunate circumstances because of the effect we had on people. But what we tried to do in the end, and what we will do, is maintain a level of quality programming in each of our communities, because I think the important issue, particularly in Cornwall, is the whole issue of having access to post-secondary training because of the economic development issues there.

Mr Cleary: Cut off again by the Chairman.

The Chair: I'm sorry. Thank you. Ms Cunningham.

Mrs Cunningham: This has really been informative, really helpful, but I still have a couple of questions.

I'd like to go to the whole issue of the Council of Regents again. Correct me if I'm making a mistake here, but I don't think you're really complaining too much about what it has decided should happen, but about how it's being done. Is that correct?

Mr Saso: Yes. I think there are two problems primarily, and one is a time to implement things properly. In some ways, I think it's a matter of communication and involvement. We're leaders in what we do and I think everybody at this table has talked about the good leadership we've provided. We think the leadership has to be more involved at some of the planning stages of policies that are going to be implemented in the college system.

Mrs Cunningham: You know, if we're looking at cutting spending in this province, which it appears we will be and are -- you're experiencing it in a very real way -- my idea is not to cut in the front lines. I don't think students should be suffering because of cutbacks in funding.

It's not unusual for me to say this, but the Council of Regents itself has gone from a base budget of $671,000 in 1991-92 -- their base is still around the same amount; it's fluctuated. In 1994-95, it's projected at $634,000 or $635,000. They've had the human resource area attached to them. Well, that budget has actually gone down. Maybe that's just a matter of putting something somewhere, and if I'm wrong, you can correct me.

But the CSAC and the PLA part have gone -- CSAC, for instance, has gone from $98,700 in 1991-92 to $1.249 million in 1994-95, and the PLA has gone from $139,700 to $446,000 in 1994-95. That's about $1.7 million in those two programs just for next year.

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I represent taxpayers, and especially students, and if I hear in this committee from both, and especially the council of governors, who give us an example and they talk about prior learning assessment and they say, "It probably could have been managed through the existing structures and resources at the ministry or ACAATO, and secondly, whether PLA should continue as a COR responsibility following its implementation" -- we're talking real money here that could be spent somewhere else.

If somebody doesn't give us good advice, then we'll just have to make up our own minds perhaps a year from now, and this is an area that I have no patience for at all. So if anybody would like to speak to it, I'd be happy to hear from them.

Dr Tibbits: I'd like to say one thing on that in general. One of the issues certainly that we've faced in the last four or five years is what we call "off the top of the grant." This money would come off the top. It used to be, about four or five years ago, that 6% came off the top for special projects like the Council of Regents and others. It's my understanding now that it's up to about 14% and it's directed. Rather than going directly to the college, it's directed into different projects. So not only do we have a situation of declining fiscal resources, but we also have a situation where more moneys are being taken from the grant and put into other projects.

Certainly from our point of view at Conestoga we are very concerned. I think the money should go into education. Mr Corbett explained what happened to our college. We've grown by 20% in the last three years. We're doing it on about 15% less grants and we have 15% fewer employees. So I find it very distressing to find an advisory body going from, say, six or seven employees three or four years ago to close to 70 now, 67 employees, and a budget of roughly $1 million up to $4 million. It's very, very difficult, because we're all doing more with less and doing it better. So it's very distressing for us to find an advisory body doing more for more, and a lot more.

Mrs Cunningham: These are of course the kinds of questions that you want to ask, but if you don't have good information, then you can't ask them, and that's part of the problem for the politicians. So when we visit you, I hope you'll make that kind of information available. I have been to some of your colleges.

The other issue I want to talk about is something that's a very large interest of mine, and has been probably for ever, and that is training of our young people, both in our secondary schools and in our colleges and universities. Over the last two decades, one of the reasons I ran for this job is because we didn't get the kind of direction we needed. I was on the London school board for 15 years and we did the co-operative work programs and we also began the communication with our community college, Fanshawe at the time, with the -- I forget the name of them. It starts with an A. You talked about them earlier.

Mr Corbett: Articulation.

Mrs Cunningham: The articulation program. The administrators in charge of that program were so frustrated because after three or four years they were able to educate some 15 students or something because of all of the paperwork. I have no patience for this. So I thought we really needed a government to talk about what training needs should take place. Why have we not paid any attention to the Premier's Council recommendations on changes in the apprenticeship programs? Where should they happen? What can we do with our young people? They're leaving school because they're not finding some of their secondary school programs meaningful. They want a job otherwise. Whether we like it or not, they want a job.

So when OTAB was established, I was absolutely appalled, after all the work the colleges and school systems did with regard to trying to find out training needs within their own communities, that we weren't given the kind of representation we needed. Then I heard Dan talk today about the fact that you've been doing some 70% of this training in your college in your community, and you said you're involved in OTAB in some way. I just wondered, is that a body that's going to get something done? I'm going to give you the number: $600 million. That's their budget.

Now, I'm just an ordinary person who represents north London, but I've had a lot of experience in education and I'm very frustrated. This is a hard way to get things done, to get yourself elected. Anyway, why don't you tell us? I don't expect you to say it won't work, because you and I don't really know that, but I think that's a big bureaucracy to get things done.

Mr Corbett: I think the short answer is that OTAB is just getting off the ground. I feel a much higher level of confidence that they will be able to deliver on the education and training mandate in the province precisely because of the whole philosophy in place, and that is that the labour market partners, management and labour, will have a much more direct influence on the kinds of education and training which are needed. That, frankly, fits right in exactly with the history of the college system, where we have advisory committee systems and we have other structures in place.

I guess the big concern I would have is because of the whole issue of what we've talked about as the day went on, jurisdictional issues and what have you. I sit on a group that has to do with education and training and we're considered to be five equal partners around the table.

There are school boards, universities, community-based trainers and private trainers, and everybody wants a slice of the action.

So one of the things we have to do as a college system is not only learn to work in this new environment, we've got to fall back on some of the strengths we have. I think there's no greater issue in Ontario at the moment than the education and training of the workforce. When you start to see the dropout rates in high school that we have and the dropout rates, frankly, in colleges and universities, it is just totally unacceptable in the sense of how we want to be able to move into a new economy.

To me, there's a major initiative that we all have to take to make OTAB work, because frankly there's been such a long process of getting it in place and there's such anxiety in our communities that we need to start to make things happen in a very quick and structured, fashioned way.

Mr Saso: If I could just briefly comment, I think that we are, as a college system, very much underrepresented on the OTAB board. That's something that I hope is corrected. We need to be very strongly represented on the board simply because, as we indicated, 70% of the training that is done by colleges. I think that to exclude us and not have us more involved is not helpful.

Mrs Cunningham: Well, John, I sure gave that one a go, and we'll do it again when the House resumes, but you'll have to keep reminding OTAB as well.

She's not watching, so I'm going to ask another question. Margaret's my colleague. She shows me no mercy, so I'll continue on here. Do I have more time?

The Chair: You have five minutes and four seconds.

Mrs Cunningham: It's so unusual that I have more time. Here we go.

Vision 2000 identified the following problems -- we have great research. I haven't thanked David Pond for the work he did, but in getting prepared for these meetings he really is terrific and it's really good to -- I don't think education is partisan, by the way, in any way. I think it's really nice to get the good advice, so thanks, David. I'm quoting from a document that he put together and all of the work he did to get us ready for this.

The problems -- you hate always focusing on problems, but somehow in this job you want to make things better so you're looking for solutions. The first one was "a lack of system-wide standards, quality or planning." Has that been taken care of with CSAC, or is there another way of going there? Should I relax on that, or is there something we should be doing?

Mr Saso: Well, we don't think you should relax on that.

Mrs Cunningham: None of us should relax, right? That's fine.

Mr Saso: Maybe we should relax. In any event --

Mrs Cunningham: Who relaxes any more anyway?

Mr Saso: We think that's an issue that's still unfolding and there's a lot more to be done. I think it's imperative that the right standard level be hit. It can't be too low. We should not be going down to the lowest common denominator. We should move to a level that's achievable, reasonable and also ends up with quality in it, a strong quality component. So there's more to be done.

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Mrs Cunningham: Okay, so it's not just within the requirements of the course. I thought they were referring to that, but it might be one of the other points, the "high rates of inadequate reading and writing skills among incoming college students." In your opinion, are those students coming out of our secondary schools or are they both the incoming secondary school students and the adult learners?

Mr Saso: I'd ask my colleague to address part of that, but I would suggest to you that as 25% of our students are over the age of 25, there's a whole set of challenges there that exist with respect to that. We have to bring people who maybe have been out of the system for a long time up to a certain level. That's a critical component and a very strongly growing component. We have a lot of challenge to look after that one. I'll ask Mary to make some comments.

Ms Hofstetter: I would hate to see you having to relax, Ms Cunningham.

Mrs Cunningham: No, I don't want to do that. It would be boring.

Ms Hofstetter: There are two other items on which I would suggest some vigilance could be in order that are very much related to this. One is, we haven't mentioned the word "universities" here today, but I think universities are also a very important part of our business. Particularly when we talk about standards, what we need to achieve, and this is where we all need to be vigilant, is not only the ability of transferability between colleges so that you could for example start a diploma in business administration at Fanshawe and finish it off at Algonquin with full credit, but also the ability for transfer between colleges and universities, because there are a substantial number of people who go both ways.

We have been working closely in developing more agreements on an individual basis with universities, but through the provision of standards, and this is where I think the Council of Regents indeed deserves some commendation for pushing on this, I think we'll make it easier for our customers to be able to move from colleges to universities with better credits. The need for an educational continuum in this province, which takes us from the secondary through post-secondary and back again through a career of lifelong learning, is something on which I would suggest none of us can ever relax.

Mrs Cunningham: On that issue, it was the inadequate links with secondary schools and universities, and you've sort of addressed it, but this point is so important to students. They have lost confidence. They feel they're being pushed from pillar to post, but I have to say they have to accept some responsibility for that themselves and so do their parents. It would be really great, as their interests change, to see that they get credit for some of the things they've done and that we don't keep them in the system so long. Some of the best years of their lives are certainly not wasted, because education, knowledge and training are not a waste of time, but they become discouraged when their first job still pays -- a PhD is expected, I'm told. We heard that last week. But young people really want to get out there and contribute. So I'm glad you're working on that one.

My last point is that I really feel you're such an integral part of one of the greatest challenges we've got in Canada. Although some of you mentioned Ontario today, I really feel that we just don't have a training mechanism in this country, and other countries know it and so do our young people who are working in other parts of the world. It's not to criticize what they've had, because this is still the best country in the world -- people want to live here first -- but we could be doing so much better. The downside is, it's so expensive and we could be doing a better job with more efficiency. We've got to train our young people and older people for the jobs of tomorrow.

I really wish you all the best of luck. Don't relax, because we need your leadership. You're the experts. I'm just supposed to be a policy person or a critic of policy people. So thank you very much for what you do.

Ms Carter: I certainly would like to welcome you to Queen's Park today and to congratulate you on the good job you're doing with those huge extra numbers of students and less money. I would first of all like to make a comment and then go on to something where I hope to get some response.

First of all, it was suggested by Mr Bradley and Mrs Cunningham, I think, that money is maybe being wasted at the top level and also that money obviously is short within the system. I would just like to suggest that you can't abolish that administrative level of spending altogether. You do need planning, because if you don't have planning, you're not going to spend money to the best advantage throughout the system. Obviously, you don't want to waste it there and you don't want to overdo it, but I think that is a point. I would just wonder where Mr Bradley and Ms Cunningham would get extra money, since they feel that we are already taxing the public too heavily.

Mr Bradley: Do you want an answer?

Ms Carter: This is an ongoing question.

Mr Bradley: I have an answer, if you'd like.

Mrs Cunningham: Since you've mentioned our names, I think you'd better let us respond. First of all, there are some agencies --

The Chair: Excuse me. Ms Carter is actually out of order in asking questions of the other caucus members.

Ms Carter: That was meant to be a rhetorical question.

The Chair: I knew it was. However, Ms Cunningham and Mr Bradley can use some of their time tomorrow to respond to you, I'm sure.

Ms Carter: Okay. The question I want to raise is the question of governance, and I understand that this is still under discussion, that the sort of substantive suggestions for this have not come forward yet. I see that you are distinguishing between a community-based model as opposed to a constituency model of representation. That's on page 5 of your presentation. I have been involved with the employment equity discussions and I think there are a few analogies here between the situation there and the situation as regards boards of governors.

There's a tendency to assume that these things are automatically putting themselves right, that groups that have been discriminated against are somehow joining the flow and are being represented as they should be, and I think the point we have to remember is that this is not necessarily the case. Ideally, all the constituencies would be melded with the community and there would not be a community on the one hand and constituencies that somehow are not integrated in that community.

I think we have to be quite subtle in our approach to this, because certainly in employment equity we've been accused of saying that the best person won't get the job. Of course, what is forgotten where that is said is that quite often the best person for a specific job might be somebody who comes within one of those special categories that we're saying must be represented.

So we have to be very careful of assuming that there's somehow a body of people that is integral to the community and that would therefore have a global picture of what needs to be done and would include all interests, as opposed to people who come under specific headings and are therefore deemed only to be able to speak for the people within that category and not for the community as a whole.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for people who emphasize one interest or another, because as I said, I think there are interests that are still not fully integrated and represented. But on the other hand, we shouldn't see those people as only representing that constituency and therefore not being able to see the big picture and make a contribution on that scale. I'm just wondering what your comments might be about that.

Dr Tibbits: First of all, the what I would call artificial diversity that's been defined by the council does not reflect most of the communities in this province. The truth of the matter is, you could define in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, Cambridge area probably another 15 constituencies, and I think that's one of the fundamental issues. If there are issues whereby the college is not serving certain groups appropriately, I think they should be addressed in other ways, and one of the ways they could be addressed is by holding colleges accountable. We talked about central standards etc and I think they should be held accountable.

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But there are ways to get opinions of different constituencies without artificially defining two or three constituencies on a board. In fact, I would argue, as you go to the artificially defined constituencies that this council is recommending, that all it's going to lead to is other groups in the community getting very angry because they're not on it. I'm not going to mention another, but I can mention at least five or six in our area that are going to be furious. They're going to want to be on it. So I think we've got to find ways to ensure that these people are being served. That's the key issue, not that they should necessarily be on the board.

Ms Carter: Certainly with employment equity, the categories that were chosen to be especially singled out were so because research had shown that those were precisely the groups which in this place and at this time were the ones that were not getting fair representation. Obviously, this varies enormously. In England a couple of generations ago it was the Irish and so on, you see, so there are just certain groups out there that need a little bit of assistance to gain that representation that maybe other groups take for granted. As time progresses, maybe those groups will become integrated and this will no longer be necessary; maybe new groups will arise which for some reason are not adequately represented. So, obviously, you could designate endless groups, but I think there are reasons behind those particular ones.

The Chair: I don't wish to interrupt you. I just want to advise you that you have used seven minutes and there are two other colleagues of yours who wish to take part.

Ms Carter: Okay. I will leave it at that. I don't know whether there's any response to what I said.

The Chair: I don't think they heard a question at the end.

Mr Malkowski: Thank you to the presenters. Reading through the last page, you're talking about special needs, and I'm wondering what the numbers of students are in this category. You're finding that there is a large increase in students. Are you finding there's a large increase in students with special needs or have there been staff changes within the special-needs departments? Have you increased the number of staff providing services to students with special needs or has that remained the same in spite of increases in the student population?

Mr Saso: I'm going to defer to my colleague Dan Corbett. I think St Lawrence College is probably a good example of what happens in the system.

Mr Corbett: We do get some special funding for special-needs students, first of all, and I think when you look at the whole diversity of the student population which we have, you'd be quite amazed at what we have in the way of self-identification with regard to special needs.

I can't speak for the system because I haven't seen all of the statistics for this year, but I know in our own college roughly 18% of the 4,700 students -- that's roughly 836 people -- have identified themselves as special-needs students. The large majority of people would be in what we call just general learning disabilities, but then it goes all the way through mobility, medical, hearing-impaired, visually impaired and multiple impairments as well. It's not a small percentage at all with respect to the total student population. It's a large, significant portion of our student population and it requires us to pay very special attention to that so that they have the level of access to post-secondary education which they require.

Mr Malkowski: But with funding restrictions, and in your experience, have there been cuts in the special-needs offices, like cuts to support staff, or has there been an increase in the level of support staff, or has it been basically stable, given the funding climate?

Mr Corbett: No, there have not been cuts. As a matter of fact, the special-needs allocations have increased over the last number of years even though our total funding has gone down.

Mr Waters: This morning, Mr Bradley brought up the fact that people are complaining that government functions are being spun off, away from control of government, to non-accountable bodies, and you, as the Council of Presidents, talked about CSAC and the PLA and how you should have control of it. So I wanted to ask, whom are you accountable to? Are you accountable, as an organization, to the government? The Council of Regents, or your organization -- I'm sorry, I got the two mixed up. What role do business, labour and non-college participants have in ACAATO?

Mr Saso: We are accountable, through our board of governors, to the minister. Through the advisory committees, I think we are responsible to our communities because they bring the various concerns and initiatives back through to the college and the college programs according to those needs.

Mr Waters: But then indeed what you're saying is, instead of ACAATO taking control of these, the board of governors should take control of these because ACAATO as an organization is not responsible. It is what I said to the board of governors this morning: It is like what the Canadian Manufacturers' Association is to the industry.

Mr Saso: That may be true. It's a voluntary organization. It is not a board that the colleges report to. We have a direct reporting relationship to the minister through the boards of governors.

Mr Waters: But the boards of governors said this morning that they didn't know whether they were accountable to the ministry, to the Council of Regents or to ACAATO. They didn't know who was the boss.

Mr Saso: Well --

Mr Waters: That was very clear in their statement this morning. I read it into the record again this morning to make sure that --

Mr Saso: I'm sorry, I wasn't here for that comment and I don't know the context under which it was directed. The boards may in fact have some confusion about the directives that they're receiving, but I think they know they report to the minister.

Mr Waters: Okay, a totally different topic: On page 6 you mentioned that, "The Council of Presidents also recognizes the diverse nature of the 25 colleges of applied arts and technology, and the difficulty inherent in obtaining collective agreement which can" only "be applied fairly province-wide." I have a feeling that what you're saying is that you would sooner do local bargaining. Does this mean you would like to bargain locally with your teachers and the support staff and all of the people who touch the college, the OPSEU people, for wages, and that at a local level?

Mr Saso: To put that in the proper context, we're saying that an agreement is best concluded when the employer and the employee conclude the agreement because what comes out of it directly affects them. We have some strong feeling that the way the bargaining happens now is probably not the best way for it to happen because it is a system-wide bargained initiative, rather than dealing with it on a community and college-by-college basis. We feel there is some advantage, from the standpoint of resolving local issues, in bargaining some issues at a local level. Perhaps some of them can still continue, in our opinion, to be bargained centrally, but there are local issues that I think are useful.

Mr Waters: Okay. I thank you very much for that clarification, that you're dealing with some of the local issues. The other thing that happened this morning was that I asked about adult students, people coming back from the workforce, and I think it was agreed that somewhere around a third of the college students at this point make this up. If I'm not mistaken, a lot of those people come from Jobs Ontario Training, from WCB for rehabilitation, from UIC. Are they not fee-for-service? When you get your operating grant, they're over and above, right? Or a portion? What portion of --

Mr Saso: That's a yes and no answer. Let me just give you some interesting information, because I know we're running out of time. Nearly 30,000 applicants who approach colleges every year for full-time places have got either a university degree or university background. That's staggering. The 25% that I think we referred to earlier is people coming to post-secondary, but there are all these part-time courses, short-term courses, adult training courses that are primarily adult learners, and there are well over 600,000 of those whom we service every year.

Out of the total number of people who come to a college -- and we touch almost a million people a year in the college system in one way or the other -- I would suggest that probably 100,000 are who you and I would have considered a few years ago to be the logical persons coming into a college: persons coming out of the high school system. So we do so much more than what we've talked about in terms of just post-secondary two- or three-year programs. We do so much more for the community in terms of short-term, skill-specific training and adult training, continuing education than maybe what's shown in the document.

Mr Waters: Thank you very much.

The Chair: See, when you're having fun, how fast five minutes go?

I would like to thank you for appearing before the committee today. I would like to mention again by name Mr Dan Corbett, president of St Lawrence College; Ms Mary Hofstetter, president of Sheridan College; Mr Raymond Guindon, directeur général from Collège Boréal; Mr Robert Gervais, president of Northern College; Mr Bruce Hill, president of Georgian College; Dr John Tibbits, president of Conestoga College; and Mr John Saso, who is the president of Niagara College but also the chair of the Council of Presidents. We have appreciated very much your attendance today and the time that you've given the committee.

The committee will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

The committee adjourned at 1601.