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

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

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Mr. Deputy Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of Committee of Supply, meeting in Room 255, will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training. When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 1.(b)(1) on page 34 of the Estimates book. The honourable minister, to complete her response from yesterday.

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, yesterday, I had been answering a question on best practices that had come forward from the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale), and I would like just to conclude. I had begun a response on that.

This question on best practices is interpreted to include all aspects of Education, such as teaching strategies, programs, application of technology, administrative practices, approaches to decision making, ways of working with education partners involving parents and others. The member had asked what the department is doing to stimulate, to support and identify and disseminate such best practices, and it is a good question because it emphasizes that innovation, collaboration, and sharing of practices are effective.

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The department believes that a supportive environment is needed if best practices are to be developed and broadly applied, and no one simple model or approach can accomplish this. This environment needs to be viewed in its total context to include structures, mind sets, organizational culture, commitment, trust and the ability to be innovative and visionary. The best environment for this to happen is where educational partners feel empowered, supported and meaningfully involved in the education system. The department, in order to create this kind of environment, together with other education partners has taken many important steps. I briefly referred to some of them yesterday, the establishment of advisory councils for school leadership to ensure that parents and community members have the fullest opportunity to participate in the education process. They have also established departmental regional teams which provide a local presence and a forum for educators to work together and share ideas. We have held several Parents' Forums, or recently held one a couple of weeks ago, to encourage parents to share effective practices in school planning and to look for areas where improvements are needed or to build on strengths that have been discovered, and that is a very good sharing process.

The department has initiated a key thrust in school planning which will bring out so to speak the skills, knowledge, and insights of communities and assist schools in planning effectively at the local level. Manitoba Education and partners are actively supporting best practices in a series of specific areas. Some examples of those include the assessment and evaluation, activities increase teacher skills, support divisions in conducting effective assessments and evaluations and generate new knowledge about what is working and what is not, so they have been working on assessment and evaluation with school divisions. Also in the area of technology they have brought about activities which have enabled the piloting of educational applications of technology, to foster the sharing of information on using technology for teaching and for learning both as a tool in the classroom and as a skill for students to acquire and also to develop the use of technology for communication and administrative purposes.

In the area of curriculum development, activities have capitalized on collaboration with other jurisdictions, incorporating the input of experts in many fields. Curriculum development also identifies learning outcomes, standards, teaching strategies and resources and emphasizes the continuous and timely updating of curriculum.

With regards to school planning, there is a new thrust and emphasis on school planning. Activities in that regard will assist schools to strengthen their planning and to share knowledge and experience with this very critical endeavour. We feel schools do need to have a comprehensive plan so that they have goals identified towards which they can strive.

In the area of teacher training and professional development the department has activities to support the development of teachers skills and knowledge to enable teachers to support one another through the train the trainer approach. I made brief reference to the train-the-trainer approach yesterday and also to encourage teachers themselves to be lifelong learners and encourage students to be lifelong learners.

Those are some, Mr. Chairman, of the initiatives the department has undertaken in support of best practices, and I would emphasize that you do need to have some sort of structure around which these things can be woven. It is difficult just to go off and have decisions being made in an ad hoc piecemeal fashion that do not have any sense of continuity. So we are trying to see all these areas linked together, and I hope for the member that that would provide the type of information he was seeking when this question was posed.

Ms. Diane McGifford (Osborne): Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister some questions regarding the Norrie report on school boundaries. Particularly, I am concerned with the Osborne constituency and specifically with one school in the Osborne constituency, the Fort Rouge elementary school, which is situated in the northeast part of the Osborne constituency.

In order to make my questions more sensible I would like to provide a few details about the school and, therefore, put the question in a sensible context.

The location of the school in this matter is extremely important. The area where the school is situated is sometimes called the Stradbrook-Mayfair island, because really the school and the community are isolated, made an island, because of the extremely busy streets. The traffic is very heavy.

Some of the features of the area are changing a little bit with the construction of the Norwood-Main Street bridge. The Stradbrook entrance to Main Street will be closed so that the area that I am talking about now will exist between Mayfair and Bell as opposed to between Mayfair and Stradbrook, which indeed will make it slightly bigger.

One of the features of the area is the Mayfair-Stradbrook housing project, which is a large, social housing complex. It is home to many of the children who attend Fort Rouge School. Many of the families who live in this complex are single parents. Many of the families are immigrants. Most of the families, and I could probably say all of the families, are quite economically disadvantaged. The community is interesting and fascinating because the parents of this school, disadvantaged as they are economically, and some of the children who attend this school come from across the Donald Street bridge. Anyway, the parents here have developed a very strong community and very strong community links and all of them lead back to the school.

Community here is made possible, in part, by the fact that the school has a school-aged child care centre, which is an extremely vital part of the community. The child care centre is called the Maybrook Children's Centre. There is also a preschool program on nearby Mayfair, almost right across the street from the school, called the River Avenue child care co-op, which has been around for a long time. It is a wonderful, wonderful centre. It has an extremely good reputation in the community.

The school, together with these child care centres, is the community centre, and it is the gathering spot. It is the only real place that children can play, for example. There is no park in this area; kids can play in the school ground.

Parents are very, very strong in their hope that the school will stay open. They want the school to stay open. Yet parents are afraid that with the pie-like divisions proposed by the Norrie report, this small inner city school, which has now been chucked in with--I forget the name of the division--but anyway it has been chucked in with that division that is south of the Assiniboine and west of the Red River, so it has been placed in the same division as very upper middle class and certainly wealthy neighbourhoods, and they fear that the school will close. They fear that their children will be bused to other schools, and consequently this vital community centre would be lost. Can I keep going, Mr. Chairman?

Last summer, a group of extremely dedicated parents went door to door and produced, I believe, some 200 petitions which, together with a document, a letter, detailing their concerns and fears, was submitted to the Norrie report. I want to ask the minister if these parents are correct in their fear or in assuming that their school might close, given the prospectus that I have described?

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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, decisions on school closure, of course, are decisions made by school boards, and they are not normally decisions that would be made at the department.

Norrie had worked very hard to ensure that the choice of people in a certain locality would be their choice; that would continue. He went further to say that people should have access to schools of choice. But school boards throughout the decades have opened or closed schools based upon their local decision making, so any decision about the continued existence of any particular school would always come back to the trustees elected by the people in the school division.

So I really find it a difficult question to answer. I know the concerns the member is raising, and I understand the legitimacy of those concerns for those people, but they are concerns that would have to go to the locally elected trustees for decision making.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: The honourable member for Osborne, before you start your question or comments, to all members, there is a 10-minute limit, if you will, that you all have.

I was not sure when you asked--

Ms. McGifford: I knew about the 10 minutes; I did not think I had taken 10 minutes.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: No, you have 10 minutes to do your question or your comments.

I was not going to cut anybody off; I was just wondering when you mentioned to me, could I go on. But there is a 10-minute limit, and I will let you know when you get within a minute of it so that you will know.

Ms. McGifford: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your remarks.

The parents of the school are then very anxious that their school be included in one of the divisions whose socioeconomic mix more closely matches theirs. They feel this will help protect the school and keep it open. Would the minister like to respond to this?

Mrs. McIntosh: I understand what the trustees are saying, what the people are saying. They are talking basically about the principle of what has come to be called communities of like interest, communities with similar goals and objectives. Again I can indicate, with the current Winnipeg School Division there is a very wide disparity amongst the various areas, the neighbourhoods of the Winnipeg School Division as it exists today where you will have areas that are fairly well-to-do and others that are quite poor.

I believe the Winnipeg School Division Board in its decision making has made every effort to try to accommodate the needs of those in schools that have greater challenges in terms of socioeconomic circumstances or children at risk or disadvantaged families vis-à-vis those in the more affluent neighbourhoods in Winnipeg No. 1 where the families have a fairly good income and a lifestyle that would indicate a degree of privilege in terms of being able to have piano lessons and swimming lessons and access to enrichment in their social fabric outside of school.

I say that because the current configuration that you are describing finds the particular school in question in a division right now that has a very wide range of socioeconomic circumstances. Yet I believe the trustees on that board have worked very hard to try to accommodate that mix that they find and in many of the schools have done a very good job in fact of achieving that meeting of the local need.

So it is not always a truism that a division, just because it has a variety of peoples and backgrounds, is unable to accommodate those various factions and diversities within their own division.

Ms. McGifford: Mr. Chairman, I think the fear of the parents, I know the fear of the parents is that according to the proposed boundary there would not be a variety. Their school would be an anomaly in this area of basically economically well-heeled schools. Therefore, their school, a small school, would be quickly closed, or maybe not quickly closed--closed. After a number of years a decision might be made to close the school, taking away their community centre and creating a situation where their children were bussed, where their children did not have that community centre anymore, and they feel it would be absolutely destructive of their community. I wonder if the minister could respond to that.

Mrs. McIntosh: I very much appreciate the concerns of the parents in that regard. It is a concern, I think, that many schools have felt through time, whether or not boundaries were up for examination, because school divisions right now have the ability to close schools--and have and do close schools--where the trustees of that division feel the need is warranted. That has happened in many of the existing divisions with usually a fair degree of concern and upset expressed by parents during the closure period.

I have been through the process. I know what the member is talking about because my home division has closed many schools. Experience has shown that once the students enter a successful, consolidated school, generally, in the vast majority of cases, the opinions do change once the new situation is experienced. But I quite agree that the nervousness at the thought is most unsettling to people.

Part of the dilemma inherent in the member's question is that, whether or not anything happens with boundaries, any decision as to schools would still be up to the local elected board of trustees. There is just as strong an ability for the current board to make decisions on school closures as a potential new board. So it all comes down, in the final analysis, to who is it that sits on the school board and what kinds of decisions do those trustees make once they are in power and empowered to make decisions.

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I note your concern. I am aware of it because it has been brought to my attention. I appreciate you and other MLAs who have come forward to express, on behalf of their own constituencies, a reiteration of those concerns and the request that they be taken into consideration. They are indicative of the sensitivities of this kind of question. It will be one of those concerns that is looked at as we go through our process, which we are doing now as government, to see if the balance that needs to be there in education, a balance for taxation equity, for community needs, administrative feasibility, but most important of all--and the one essential that can never be overlooked-- is this, in the long-term benefit of students. That will always underlie everything.

So I am not able to answer her question with definitive answers because it enters so much into the speculative realm. Yet, I know the concern that has caused the question to come forward. I note it for reference and thank her for bringing it forward.

Ms. McGifford: Just to reiterate or clarify one of the points that I was making, I think in the current situation, the school feels safer because it is an inner city school along with a lot of other inner city schools, but if the boundaries, as they are proposed, were indeed enacted upon, then the school would be an anomaly and would be alone. So that is why the parents feel themselves much more susceptible to closure in the proposed divisions than they do in the current. That is also why the parents would prefer to be in a division, have their school included in a division which is an inner city division.

I understand that despite the 200 petitions that have been submitted by the parents and despite what I understand to be quite a lengthy presentation, there was no mention made of Fort Rouge School in the second Norrie report, which really, I think, underlines the concern of the parents. So I am very glad to hear that the minister understands and has heard what I have had to say on behalf of the school.

I spoke this morning with the chair of the Fort Rouge parents council, and this woman asked me if I would ask the minister why they cannot get straight answers from the minister and why they cannot get an appointment to speak to the minister about their concerns. They feel they have no credence and no recognition in the office of the Department of Education.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I have met with many school division boards and schools. Do you happen to know when they made the request for a meeting?

Ms. McGifford: No, I do not have that information. I was also told that they had sent several letters which had not been answered. I can certainly find out that information and correspond with the minister. These parents are very concerned, and they would really like to meet with the minister so that they can put their concerns directly before the minister.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for that. As I say, I have met with many communities and virtually all the school boards at this point. What may have happened, if they did not receive a response, if it was a 200-signature petition, many of those have been received in the office and received as information. Some of them may have requested a reply and would receive one; others, it is assumed that a petition, for example, would be sent in for information and not be seen as one that had desired a reply but rather just wanted to make sure that information was before the minister.

Anything that came in before the commission completed its second report was received by my office either as information or as a piece of correspondence that wanted a reply and anything that was sent in of the nature the member describes before the commission reported was forwarded to the commission with a covering letter from me indicating something along this line that I have received a petition that is applicable to your study and forwarding it to you for your consideration so that you will be aware of these citizens' concerns, something like that. The commission may have been copied on a lot of these things because I noted that sometimes I would receive something that was clearly something the commission should have, would forward it over for their consideration and they would indicate that they had already received a copy of it. So people were either writing to the commission and copying me, or writing to me and copying the commission, but I never assumed that would happen. I just, normally, would forward them over for their consideration, and at the same time, of course, would then tuck the knowledge into my own brain as well, because I had then heard the information.

I have not consciously refused to meet with anybody who has asked to meet with me on this issue. It may be that there have been some requests come in that I am not aware of. A lot of things will come into the office where it may be seen that the information can be provided by staff, in which case the staff will simply provide the information and feel that they have provided what the person contacting the office was requesting, and then they do not bother the minister, so to speak, just because of the volume of telephone calls and so on that come into that particular ministry's office.

So staff, generally, when requests come in, if they feel they are able to accommodate or provide information, if that is what is being asked for, will handle it themselves and come to me with those things where it is a specific request, or where they feel that they, themselves, are not able to help the citizen with whatever it is.

But I will check when I get back. I think you have the name of the school in the Hansard, and I believe it is in the Fort Rouge area. Is it the Osborne school?

Ms. McGifford: Fort Rouge.

Mrs. McIntosh: The Fort Rouge School. I will check when I get back, and if they have a specific request there, see if they would still like to meet with me. I would be pleased to do that. Sometimes it is sort of funny times for meetings, but it can be arranged.

Ms. McGifford: I thank the minister for that. I am sure that the parents still are very anxious to meet with the minister, and I will phone the chair of the parents council and give her the information that the minister is willing and eager to meet with parents councils.

Mrs. McIntosh: That would be very helpful, if the member does not mind doing that, and perhaps you could indicate when he or she phones that they indicate on the phone that the minister and their own MLA have talked about this and the minister is expecting the call. That way it will go through to my appointment secretary.

Ms. McGifford: I will certainly do as the minister suggests.

I wanted to just ask one other question, and that is, back to the Norrie report, the second Norrie report. I understood the minister explained about petitions and letters and whatnot, all going to the commission, and yet, despite these 200 petitions and lengthy document that was apparently submitted, according to the parents--and the minister will have the opportunity to discuss those with the parents, no doubt--there still is no mention in the second Norrie report of Fort Rouge School and of the concerns brought forward by those parents.

I wonder what could have happened. Is there a problem in the process, or are there glitches? I wonder if the minister could answer that question, please.

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Mrs. McIntosh: I am assuming the petition came in prior to the Norrie report's final determination.

Ms. McGifford: Actually, what had happened is that I phoned and made an arrangement for this material to be accepted a little later. It is wonderful that these parents were able to do anything, and I think that the minister would agree with me that some people are more equal than others and, in this case, these are disadvantaged people and it took them a little longer to get things together. I did phone and I did obtain permission for them to have their submission received slightly later and the dates escape me now, but I think it was August 15.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, at that date, yes, it would have gone to the commission.

I cannot speak for the Norrie commission in terms of what they included in their final report. I know we had a similar question raised yesterday by the member for Wellington (Ms. Barrett) who was also looking for commentary on points that had been raised by the Brooklands area. My answer to her yesterday--which will be essentially similar to what I will now provide you--is that Norrie in his second round did not comment on Brooklands or Fort Rouge or those areas, although many had brought concerns to his attention. What he did was to indicate where he had decided to deviate from his original report and had indicated in his second and final report that, unless he had specified a change, the rationale that he had presented in the first one, the commission still felt held on the second round, despite what they had heard from people.

Essentially--I am paraphrasing--but the message that came through was that they had not been sufficiently convinced to change their original rationale when they did the second report, except in those few places.

Just looking at the report, which I am sure you are familiar with, on page 8 he has indicated that they are reaffirming their original recommendation on virtually all of the Winnipeg decisions and he acknowledges some of the items that school boards had put before him and people had put before him, but then indicates--just to give you an example, because it is the page I am looking at--he is talking about some things that were pointed out by a school division that had had a lot of school closures. He indicates the commission recognized that over the years divisions have had some difficult choices with respect to school closures and downsizing due to reducing student numbers. It goes on to indicate the concerns that were put forward and then says, however, such adjustments are inevitable with any attempt to rationalize the 10 Winnipeg school divisions and comes back to saying that we reaffirm our original recommendations. So he heard, listened and held to his original position.

Ms. McGifford: Perhaps I could finish with a comment. The failure of this group of parents to be sufficiently convincing I think really underlines the fear that they have, that there are a few of them, there is a small number of them. Who is going to listen to them? Who is going to look after them? What is the future of the school? What is the future of the community? What is the future of the kids? I think that we have a moral obligation to protect this school and this community and these children.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for her comments. At this time, I am unable to indicate a conclusion to the Norrie report, but her comments are now with us, and I will be most pleased to meet with the parents. I might indicate it might be sort of an unusual time of the day or something like that, but if they do not mind, I do not mind, and I will be expecting their call when they are able to make it to the office.

Mr. Gerry McAlpine (Sturgeon Creek): Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of areas that I wanted to touch on. I do not know whether the minister or the department will be able to answer these questions at this time, but I do want to get some understanding of the matter with regard to the Department of Education's direction or whether there is any direction with regard the degree program, primarily the bachelor of education degree, centred around that and the numbers of students that are enrolling in these faculties. What is happening with these students when they graduate? I guess my concern is the numbers that are graduating. How many of these are able to get employment in the system within the province of Manitoba, who we are putting through this system in this province? I wonder if you could comment on that, and then I will go on from there.

Mrs. McIntosh: We can check the exact numbers and provide them for the member. What I can tell you, without the specific numbers here right now, is that we are graduating right now many more teachers than are being hired. We have four faculties of education in Manitoba, as the member is probably aware, and we see it come in surges in that right now there is what we call an oversupply or an overabundance of newly graduated teachers. We are graduating more than the field requires.

We are aware at the same time, however, that there is a large body of teachers who are in an age grouping, that big grouping again, that is sort of moving through the system, the big generation moving through the system. They are in their 50s, fiftyish, in terms of age bracket. Many of those in a few years will be beginning to retire. So we have on the one hand an oversupply right now; we are graduating more than we need if they are looking for classroom teaching. One thing I say to people is that a degree in education can be used for a lot more than teaching in a classroom. A degree in education can be used for a wide variety of occupations and career opportunities, but by and large, of course, people are seeking classroom experience.

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When we get to the point that that large group of teachers retire, and they retire within a very short time span, we will then require more people graduating to take those empty positions. It may be the number we have got graduating right now is the amount we will need graduating in eight years time or 10 years time, even though it is too much right now.

We have Dr. Shapiro from McGill University currently taking a look at the faculties of education in Manitoba. That was sparked by two things: One, BOTEC, the Board of Teacher Education and Certification, has asked for some changes in the credit hours at the University of Manitoba in teacher education. The University of Manitoba, earlier this year, indicated it wanted to move to a two-year after-degree program. In other words, they said they wanted to have students coming in to obtain a degree in education who already had their undergraduate degree in arts, music, whatever it would be. They would then come in and take a two-year after-degree. So it would be what we call three plus two, a five-year program to obtain a teaching degree.

The University of Winnipeg, on the other hand, has an integrated program where they have teachers from Day One of their studies working on things that are useful in the classroom. They take courses in mathematics, for example, that are geared towards the teaching of mathematics as opposed to just the acquiring of knowledge. They then take their final year of experience through the University of Manitoba. So a change at the University of Manitoba has a very large impact on those studying at the University of Winnipeg.

One of the things when we talk about moving towards a post-secondary system where we see the system as a whole, instead of looking at it as a series of individual institutions in competition with each other, as we start to look at the system as a whole system with a series of co-operating partners rather than competitors, we need to make sure we can get the flowing of needs back and forth working well.

We asked the University of Manitoba if they would hold for a while, at least a year, on their decision to move to the three plus two while we tried to look at the impact on everybody else who was either doing teacher training or hiring of teachers. One thing that was of great concern to school boards, when the University of Manitoba announced its intentions, was that it meant the teachers would automatically graduate with Class V. The school board said, that means first-year teachers will cost us more and it will discourage us from wanting to expand our base with teachers from the University of Manitoba because they will be more expensive in their first year without the experience.

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

Dr. Shapiro from McGill University, who is an expert in this area and has done similar studies elsewhere in Canada, is currently examining and exploring what could be done to ensure that teacher training in Manitoba is--it does not have to be identical institution to institution, but that you can do some good interacting, that you are not impacting negatively on any other area by decisions made on one campus, and that we have a system that best meets the needs of students of a system that is a system-wide system, and of the ultimate system for education where the students learn from those teachers who have graduated from our universities.

This is a rather long answer, I realize, but it is a rather complicated issue. We are hoping that the information that we obtain from Dr. Shapiro will be useful for the universities to examine and discuss, for us to look at in terms of any direction that we might feel we should be giving to help.

We are also, at the same time, wanting to make sure that what we are teaching those who would be teachers is really relevant and meaningful, and this goes much beyond what Dr. Shapiro may be able to say to us, but as Minister of Education and through the department, we want to make sure that as we renew education in the schools, teachers come out of faculty equipped to handle those new directions and that they are not left foundering. So we have to look at those kinds of upgrading of curricula there as well.

We can get you, and we will get you information on the specific numbers that you have requested, and we might hopefully have it for you this afternoon, but the trend is we are putting out more than we are currently able to find jobs for right now.

Mr. McAlpine: I thank the minister for that answer, and she did answer some of the other questions that I was going to raise at this time.

My understanding and my interpretation of the answer that she did give is one that I am led to believe that the minister, after Dr. Shapiro's examination of this, would maybe put a greater onus on the universities and the faculties to create the balance that we are maybe lacking in that area as far as the enrollment with regard to Education students into the faculties throughout the four areas of the universities that offer that today.

The other aspect that I would be interested to know is, if that is the case, would the minister or the department be possibly open to the suggestion that there be some consideration given to the same faculties as, say, engineering or the medical faculties where they do limit the number of students that are enrolling in those faculties for that very reason?

I guess when we talk about the--and the minister hinted on that--when we have young students graduating from the Department of Education, and I know that there are many out there that are unable to get employment in the system, they either go and are quite qualified to go and do other things. We have all had that experience with these young students, but also I think that what happens then, if then want to, if they are determined to stay within the profession, they are encouraged to go, just by the design of this, and try to gain greater education like a master's degree. Then they get to the point where they price themselves right out of the market, because they do not have the experience to go along with that. I guess what I am leaning to here, and I am asking for the minister's and the department's feeling on that aspect, as to whether or not they would actually consider having a greater input in terms of what the numbers are going into the enrollment of the education faculty.

Mrs. McIntosh: The member raises questions that are being wrestled with constantly and certainly recently by the Board of Teacher Education and Certification, by the universities themselves. The whole question of supply and demand is an inexact science. You can make trends and predictions; particularly in education, you can make trends and predictions based upon population projections and demographics. It is possible to look ahead, for example, and say, if population remains stable, we now have X number of infants who will in four years time be in the public school system or in the school system somewhere and will require X number of teachers. You can sort of do those predictions a little more easily than you can with other kinds of disciplines.

The university itself, universities and colleges and so on are aware of this supply-and-demand question. They have been addressing it themselves, to some extent, by raising standards for admission, by making it more of a requirement to have certain prerequisites prior to entering faculties of teaching, and they also have by virtue of suggesting things, such as get an undergraduate degree first before you take your degree in education. They are either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, providing students with a degree useful for other areas besides just education prior to a two-year pedagogical study, whereas the integrated program would see people preparing from Day One for a classroom career, which may or may not be the end result of their training. So they are aware of those sensitivities and conscious of supply and demand.

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I will be interested to see what comes out of discussions currently being held amongst the decision makers with Dr. Shapiro and BOTEC, as they wrestle with the very question the member has raised.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

We are always receptive and open to any suggestion that we think might help improve the quality of education, the right mix of aptitudes and abilities entering the teaching fields. We know that within a decade, give or take a few years, we will once again see a high demand for teachers as that great body retires. We want to make sure that, when that time comes, we have the right numbers and the right kinds of graduates coming forward. I am afraid I cannot be more specific than that at this time.

Mr. McAlpine: Mr Chairman, I guess I have a little bit of concern with the answer, where the minister has made the comment with regard to increasing the standards. I have some concern for that in the fact that the best students academically do not necessarily make the best teachers. I would just throw that caution out.

I do want to make it clear and have it put on the record, too, that I do not want to see the minister making the decisions for all those people, or the department making the decisions for all those people who should be making decisions for themselves. Being the enterprising individual that I am, I feel that there is a responsibility on them to ensure that there is going to be an opportunity at the end of the tunnel for these people before they do go into it, but that does not seem to be happening. I guess my concern is for that because when you consider the economics--and that is really what I am looking at from that aspect, so I just wanted to clear that aspect of it, and also to make the comment that I do not necessarily think that increasing the standards is necessarily the answer to limit the number of students enrolling because of that reason. I felt that going through the school system and university courses throughout my education process, I found that those that certainly had a good command academically of the education process did not necessarily make the best teachers.

I think that is what we are really concerned with is the quality of the teachers and the quality of the learning because I think it is one thing to be a teacher, but I think it is more important that the people that are going through the system are learning from this. That is where I guess I put a priority and just making those comments.

There is one other aspect that I wanted to--actually, two more things that I wanted to address, and those are with regard to the numbers of teachers that are going through the system. I just want to ask the minister and the department if they are aware that student teachers before they graduate must spend a particular time in the classroom. Is there any difficulty in placing these students that are going through from year to year? If there is such a problem--and you may want to check on this because it has been suggested to me that there are universities that actually have had to send some of their students out of the country in order to get experience. I do not know how that can be done and still get a certificate here in Manitoba. But that has been suggested, and it came from a fairly reliable source.

Whether you will be able to answer that or not, at least it is on the record that the student teachers before they graduate have to have practical experience in the classroom and there are not sufficient schools that are able to take these students to give them that, so that consequently universities are having to refer them to areas outside the country. So, if you wanted to answer that, and then I have a couple of other questions that I would finish off with.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, there were two points that the member raised, and I would like to address them both. One is in his comments after my last response about standards. He made some very good points, and I agree with him. I would just like to reassure him that, when universities talk about raising standards, they are not talking about academic marks per se. I think over time we have come as a society to use the word “standards” so specifically that this is a common concern out in the field. We talk about testing for standards and people automatically assume that we mean standardized testing, or when we talk about standards, people make automatic assumptions based upon past usage of the word.

In this instance, the raising of standards for the entrance into the faculty, some criteria have been set. One of those criteria is indeed the academic standing which, at the moment, is confusing for universities because, until we get some standards in Grade 12 against which there could be a common measurement, you know, 80 percent in one school means something completely different than 80 percent in another, so it is very difficult for the university. It is a source of constant complaint from the university that we have to have these measurements that can be seen as consistent so they know what the mark means, particularly when they are used for university entrance.

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The university talks from time to time about trying to have a common first year or first year of sort of remedial work so that they can take the students through and then again test and find out what their standards really are. We do not want that of course. That is why we are putting in standards exams and assessments so that people know what 80 percent in Grade 12 mathematics means when they go to apply to university, as one place they apply.

But having said that, academic is one of the things, but there are two other important components of the standards. One, of course, is to ensure the person is free from any criminal record, and that is seen now as something that must be done. So that is one. The academic is the other. The third is a personal, in-depth interview, which we will discuss with that person or attempt to find out from that person attitudes, feelings, personal interactions, the human side, the manner aspect of teaching, those kind of things.

One very simple, simple thing I had I will use by way of an example because I remember feeling so very, very sorry for this particular individual, a true illustration that absolutely verifies the member's point. The person in question was a Faculty of Education student assigned to my class as a co-operating teacher who had straight A's all the way through and got in front of a classroom and just simply could not teach. It was so sad. A lot of it was simply an inability to project the voice or speak in anything but a monotone. It was very difficult for that individual, very, very soft-spoken, that unless you were in the front row you could barely hear. The tonal quality was such that it did not take very long for people to become no longer willing to listen and attention was diverted to other things. Try and try and try as we might to assist this person, and it is possible this person could have been assisted ultimately given enough time and enough energy into it, the teaching experience was not a happy one, and yet this was a very highly skilled academic.

A very important component, I think, for people who want to become teachers is that they find out fairly early in their studies how well suited they might be to the field. I think that is good for them to find that out early; it is good for the system as well. But, in the final analysis, we want excellent teachers, as seen by the fact that they are good and sound people for the safety of the children, that they are academically able, that they must know what they are teaching. It is not enough just to know how to teach; you must know your subject area as well. I know a lot of people argue that and say that you do not have to know the subject area, if you know how to teach, you can then learn the subject area and teach it--you know, a music teacher being a prime example. You have to know your subject area well, have a passion for it, and then, on top of that, have the pedagogical skills to transmit that knowledge.

The third thing is that they have to be methodologically effective. They have to know about, and how to employ, and when to employ various methods, the how-to of teaching. Some things will work with some children; you will need a different approach for others. They need to have senses of that. But the human qualities of fairness, caring, firmness, understanding, the ability to inspire, to motivate, to be interesting--if you are not interesting, if you cannot inspire in front of the class or if you cannot get people to listen to you, you are not going to stand a chance trying to transmit knowledge.

You have to be innovative because you are going to have this group of people in front of you, each coming to you with a different way of looking at life, so you have to be innovative to try to reach them all. You have to have a sense of humour; you die if you do not have a sense of humour when you are teaching. To me, it is an essential. You must have the ability to see the humour and the joy and the fun in things as you are ripping yourself apart trying to get knowledge into the students.

So those are things they are looking for now as students come in, so when I say raising standards, that is all part of it. I think it is what I heard in your question, is the concern that those things should happen, and we are moving to see them happen.

In terms of your other question about the practicum, I have not heard of any teachers that have had to leave the province for that practical experience. We are seeing comments coming forward and suggestions coming forward that if the faculty has 150 credit hours, that 90 percent of that should be for academics and 60 percent for the practical.

I am one that advocates a long period of time in the classroom. My personal preference is to see the mentoring. I have said it before; I do not mean to be repetitious about it, but in all areas of learning I like the master/apprentice. I like that way of doing things where you attach an enthusiastic student to a master who is skilled in the field, and you let them work in conjunction with each other for a long enough period of time that the master's model becomes absorbed by the apprentice.

So I think the choosing of co-operating teachers is critically important and that the period of time that a student-teacher spends with what we now call co-operating teachers, which in my mind I call mentors, needs to be a fairly long period of time. It needs to be a period of positive interaction where the mentor, the co-operating teacher, is there to assist and to help that student improve and reach higher and higher standards.

In the final analysis, it has to be one where the mentor is honest with the student and not give them a passing grade on their practicum if, indeed, it has not been of good quality. That is very hard for many co-operating teachers; but if our long-term goal is to say that schools are for students, then everything else, in terms of how people might feel, is irrelevant in terms of the greater need of the student. I have seen co-operating teachers pass practicums when they should not have been because they did not want to hurt the student's feelings and because they had A's in their other work.

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Mr. McAlpine: Mr. Chairman, I guess I am encouraged by what the minister offers.

I think that--again, I talk of past experience with regard to teachers--the quality of each individual teacher--I mean, we have such a wide choice in seeking teachers and hiring teachers today from those who are graduating. Certainly, we have a strong resource there. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the quality of the teacher, not so much on the academic but in being able to have the understanding, because often those teachers who have graduated with high academic marks do not maybe have the understanding that some people may not be able to learn as quickly as they were able to and have that same appreciation. I think that is enough to say about that.

I am encouraged by what the minister says. Hopefully, the divisions that are seeking teachers are of the same mind because I think that is really important, and that is where the decisions are made in terms of the type of teachers who are being hired.

It leads me to my next question: With regard to society today where we have a lot of single parents in society, and most of those single parents are female according to my recollection and my knowledge, I am just wondering if there is any policy in place, an Affirmative Action Policy, that as far as the department is concerned or any divisions that you might know of which practise affirmative action. Primarily, because of the fact that if that is the case, where young students may not have the same exposure to the male influence in a person's life--which I think is really important, I think there has to be a balance--but for a young student, whether it is a male or a female, the father image or the male image is so important in building and helping to build relationships and helping to build character in individuals, so that they do have an understanding of that.

I just wonder if the minister could comment on that. I guarantee after that, I only have one more question.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the government and the department have an Affirmative Action Policy; divisions are not required to have one, but many do. Winnipeg No. 1, I believe, has a policy of affirmative action that sees them working very hard to ensure that aboriginal students have role models in the classroom, for example, to whom they can relate.

I just spent the noon hour at the Children of the Earth School, which I have visited before a couple of times, but I was seeing it today because I had gone with the Prince of Wales to the Children of the Earth School, and I was looking at it through his perspective, trying to think, now I wonder what the Prince of Wales thinks of this school. You do see it differently when you are in the presence of somebody like that, and saw the role modelling and so on that is going on there for the students and the positive impacts that come out of that.

So Winnipeg No.1 has worked in that area to try to address the kind of requirement I think you are asking. A lot of boards, whether they have a policy to do that or not, will still move internally to try to get that balance. You see a lot of divisions now really encouraging their female teachers to apply for administrative positions. They will say, you know, you are a really good teacher and you have got a lot of skills, why do you not consider applying to be a vice-principal, and they will solicit applications from women or other people in the division that they think might serve as good role models, not to say that they always get the job, but they encourage them to start thinking of moving forward in that way.

One thing where I think school divisions should really be aware of student's needs is in terms of children who have lived their preschool years and their early school years with a single mom and miss the father modelling. Some divisions have started to encourage men into kindergarten and primary school teaching positions, but that is not happening to the degree that I would like to see. I think divisions have gone a long way in terms of encouraging women into administrative positions, but there still seems to be an understanding that those teachers who teach kindergarten or Grade 1, 2 or 3 should be primarily female.

I think that it would be wonderful for children to have a male image, a male role model at the front of the room, particularly when there are so many single families headed by women. I think that could give the child the male bonding that is required for full and healthy psychological development.

So I am hoping that we will see more young men consider teaching careers in the early childhood portion of learning. I think they would find great satisfaction from teaching at that level, and it would be very, very good for the children to see the mix and to be exposed to a healthy, positive relationship with a man, particularly if they do not have that opportunity to any great degree in their personal lives outside of school.

I do not know if that answers your question, but I think it touches on what your concern was.

Mr. McAlpine: The only comment I would make is that I guess it is entirely up to the divisions and rightly so. They should be the ones to determine whom they should be hiring through the interview process. I certainly have all confidence in that, and I certainly would not want to take any responsibility away from them.

I guess I would have to offer encouragement to the department to ensure that that message is given to divisions, or to be at least conscious of it so that they know that they are serving the students with that aspect of it. From that point, you know, I think that the more we can do as legislators along that line and without making the decisions for these people, that we could go a long way in the education process.

I will let the minister--I know she is anxious to respond to that, and I will ask her one more question after that on another matter.

Mrs. McIntosh: I just cannot resist responding because--the member is correct. One source of irritation I have always had--and I keep saying this to trustees and teachers when we get talking about this particular topic. It irritates me when I hear the kindergarten to Grade 8 area talked about as somehow not as significant as the Grade 9 to Senior 4 experience. They will say, you are moving up into a higher stratosphere when you are teaching high school or you have had to go back and teach elementary school.

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If education moves continuum, then, of course, you are always moving forward and up to higher levels of learning, but the skill that is needed to take the little five-year-olds, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds and give them a really solid foundation is incredibly important because, if they do not achieve well and feel good about those first years of learning, they will not have the foundation to learn better and better as they go on, and they will not achieve the final skills and things they need in Grade 12 if they have shot themselves in the foot, so to speak, in the primary grades. So I think, of all the levels of learning, to me it is critical that those first years, those early years, be solid and thorough and be taught by highly skilled people.

I wish people would see that more as highly significant. I wish that men would see that as a challenging and interesting area to enter and that people would stop seeing it as sort of the lesser part of education. I just had to make the comments, sorry.

Mr. McAlpine: That raises another aspect, and I just make this comment because you are absolutely right, Madam Minister. I can say that from personal experience as a partner in McAlpine Nursery and Kindergarten many years ago, when we would have children of two and a half to six years of age in a private nursery and kindergarten. My wife was the main partner in this. I was just sort of the person who went along for the ride. But anytime that I was to go into that environment and to the classroom and to the kindergarten and nursery and work with those young students, you could certainly see what was going through their minds and how attached they would get to you, and only because of the male image that was there and was prevalent to them. It was so important to them.

I think that is really the point that I wish to make. I know the minister is on the same wavelength with regard to that. I guess it could be carried over into the older ages but especially at that point. This was not in an area of people that were doing without. These parents paid for their children to be in this environment, so they were able to afford that, but still it was a situation that was so obvious, and that brings that to mind as the minister was speaking.

Another area that I wish to talk on, and I do not know whether there is any direction on this, but I would like the minister and the department, if at all possible, to--as the minister knows, we come from an area where, in the last 15 years, we have closed 15 schools, which has been a real concern. It has been a real challenge for the people in the areas that we represent, especially of going through the hardship of uprooting their communities and closing these schools down.

I guess if we look back over the past 25 years, certainly hindsight is better than 20/20 vision often, but we may have done some things differently that may not have put the communities through these difficult times. I throw this caution out at this point to other areas where there is development, say, in the areas where student enrollment is increasing to the point where the school cannot keep up with the numbers, people, and they are having to bus and those sorts of things, which is an additional cost coming into the equation.

I am just wondering, in view of that, and in these areas, has there been any consideration to entering into the year-round education and bringing communities into the framework or the understanding of the year-round education so that the students can continue to be educated and taught within their own communities and at the same schools?

Mrs. McIntosh: Some years ago, apparently, the department did take a look at that particular issue and they spent a fair bit of time delving into it and concluded at the end of that that it was not a way they wanted to go for a variety of reasons, the basic reasons being that the public, parents, students, teachers felt that they just did not want to see that occur.

Having said that, of course, we do have summer school. We have summer courses which in the main are used for remedial work. Students will often take a course to improve a mark or to repeat something that they had not accomplished during the academic year and, in a sense, you are talking about someone who is then going year-round. Maybe even picking up an extra course would be possible in those circumstances.

I know that is not what you are talking about. You are talking about actually having the regular curriculum running. We have not discussed that in the department since some years ago when they raised it at that time. It has not come up again as a topic for discussion.

It does get raised from time to time the way you are raising it. Somebody will ask the question, but the response has always been, we have not discussed it at this time.

Mr. McAlpine: I only want to comment on this from the aspect of year-round education, really it is not maybe what the minister is suggesting here. Year-round education is one where they still have their breaks in the summertime, but maybe a shorter break. I think that, from the experience that I have had with the year-round education and, granted, it is limited, there are far more benefits in terms of the quality of the education and the learning that the students are gaining from this. The teachers, once they understand the concept of year-round education, are buying into it as well because of the fact that, when they go through their cycle in terms of--and the community is the one that takes the responsibility in determining as to whether or not they want to buy into the year-round education.

When they weigh the alternatives, the year-round education is a very positive alternative. It is certainly from our aspect, as far as government is concerned, when we consider having to go and build another school to the extent of millions and millions of dollars and bearing in mind what we have gone through as a community in closing 15 schools and not getting very much in terms of the true value for those when we have to sell them or close them, for whatever reason, I think that the department should take a very strong and serious look at that aspect and, especially, in the areas where there is a need and where there are increasing enrollments, where the capacity of the school is being challenged.

Years ago, I think that maybe year-round education did not fit in terms of people's lifestyles, because they look at it from the aspect--when you look at the economics of it. Summer camps, as an example, well, you do not have to have summer camps only during the summer months. You can have them year-round. It gives an opportunity for those economics to improve and to develop. It also gives an opportunity for more teachers to be involved. There is just no end to the number of advantages. I think that if we are going to take--and I do not mean this in a derogatory way--but a narrow vision, I think that we really have to be open to the opportunities that are offered and can benefit. Because the experience that I had in terms of students and what has been reported to me as far as the year-round education program, I mean, this is practised in places where there are ghettos and the students are far better educated. Their delinquency level has dropped to unbelievable levels.

All those things, all those positive things are happening, and it just seems that with all these things that we are facing and the challenges as far as the number of students in classes and the increased enrollments and schools being pushed to the limits as far as the size in the enrollments, I think that is something we should, rather than building schools, I would invite the minister and the department to really look at that very seriously because I think there are economies there that we are not recognizing. Just because we have been doing the things that we are doing for a hundred years does not necessarily mean that we are doing it right. I have challenged the minister and the department to look at that very seriously.

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Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for his suggestion, and, as I indicated, we have not undertaken any recent dialogue on this topic. I have received the question you have asked much the way you have asked it from sources from time to time. You have presented some rationality or question that has merit, that is meritorious. Right now with all that we have got on our plates, so to speak, we have some pretty mammoth changes coming into education. We are always willing to look at new ideas and agree with the member that we do not need to keep doing things the way we do them just because we always have done them that way. As the member knows, we are not afraid to make big bold changes if we think they are needed, and we are not afraid to explore new ideas or new concepts.

The idea and the concept he has proposed, if he has additional literature or reading on it, we would be pleased to take a look at it. Maybe it is something we should talk about someday. I think right now the timing--we can always look at new ideas and talk about them and start to research them and look at them and weigh pros and cons. In terms of major initiatives right now, my sense is that we have so many major initiatives going on right now that we need to space and time decision making so that we do not burn out all the people who are researching and studying.

Anything we have read on the points you have raised do support some of the benefits that you have cited in your question. Most year-round education that we are aware of that operates well, operates well or better in large urban settings as opposed to more sparsely populated rural settings, but I must confess that I do not have an in-depth knowledge on all the pros and cons of this particular topic, because I have not spent a lot of time myself looking at it. But the member is most welcome to continue putting forth thoughts on that, and if you have, as I say, any literature or readings on the subject you think that might be useful for us to see, we would be pleased to read it--once the session is over, not right at this very moment because of time constraints.

I just want to say one last thing before I finish, and that is that whether or not we adopt this particular initiative, that is the kind of creative thinking that we want to hear from elected MLAs, from educators, from people of Manitoba. What are the creative ideas out there that might help make education more cost-effective, more ultimately beneficial, might help students fast-track their education if they are fast learners and want to get on with the job? We need to blue sky and brainstorm and talk about ideas that may seem at first glance away from the norm or unusual or sometimes even at first glance unworkable. We need to look at all of those things. Only by getting springboards for discussion--one idea sparks another idea and out of that kind of think tank kind of dialogue, good ideas can pop out that are seen and recognized when they might never have surfaced otherwise, so I thank you.

Mr. McAlpine: Just one more comment, Mr. Chairman, and I would just say that I am not expecting the department necessarily to take the lead on this aspect as far as year-round education, because I think that is the wrong message that I am giving, because I firmly believe that responsibility begins at home. I think that the community is the one that has to take the responsibility, but I think if the department would suggest to these communities to look at the alternative or the opportunities that are available with year-round education, where that may fit--I come away with somewhat of an impression that, well, we looked at it, we did not like it years ago, so we are not going to even consider it today. I would not want the department to have that idea instilled in their mind today, because I think there is an opportunity, and I firmly believe that.

But I still maintain that it is the community. Give the community the responsibility to determine if that is what they want or not, and after they do a thorough study and a thorough understanding of that, because there are lots of places--I mean, we only have to go to Calgary just within the last couple of years where they have gone to year-round education because of that very reason, the high enrollments of students. Granted, we may not have that challenge here in the city of Winnipeg with not having the same developments, but I just put that caution out to the department and to the minister, and hopefully they would give that message to the communities and the divisions and to the areas that may be able to benefit from it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I have the statistics the member was requesting in his first question, and if I could just read them into the record and then that will conclude, I think, that particular question.

They did a survey of graduates from the Faculty of Education in 1995--the survey was done in 1995. They surveyed all the Faculty of Education graduates at the University of Winnipeg, University of Manitoba, St. Boniface and Brandon. In total, they surveyed 872 graduates; 531 responded; 341 did not respond. Of those who responded, 83 percent or 445 were employed, and the rest were not employed as teachers. They may have been employed but not employed as teachers. That 83 percent, again I indicate, was of the ones who did respond. So I do not know if those statistics are ones that will help him, but there they are.

Ms. Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): Mr. Chairperson, I appreciate the chance to ask some questions of the minister on this line in the Education Estimates. I am going to deal specifically with the government's policy related to the Boundaries Review that has been done.

Is that on? Do I have to repeat what I was saying earlier?

An Honourable Member: Yes, you do.

Ms. Cerilli: Okay. I was just, by way of introduction, saying that I appreciate the chance to ask some questions, and I am going to focus on the Boundaries Review and the issue around the potential of having a reduction in the number of boundaries in the city of Winnipeg. This is an important issue in the area that I represent. The school divisions of River East and Transcona-Springfield are in the boundary of Radisson constituency, and I have had meetings, along with a number of my MLA colleagues, with the school boards of both divisions, and this was on the agenda, to talk about boundaries. There is a forum next week at a school in River East School Division where the parents have initiated specifically to speak to this issue. I know that one of the other local MLAs for the area, the Minister of Labour (Mr. Toews), will be participating.

I want to also preface my remarks by saying that I am going to be raising some of the concerns that have been raised with me by teachers, trustees, parents in the school divisions in around where I live and represent. I am hoping that the minister will respond to those issues.

(Mr. Gerry McAlpine, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

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I also want to emphasize how important it is that during the Estimates process we do have this discussion and debate, because it is a way for the public to get more specific information than they otherwise would have. So our role in opposition is in fact to do this on behalf of the school divisions and the students and the community that we represent.

To begin with, I want to start by raising, I guess, the largest concern in the area that I represent, this proposal that is before the government for the Boundaries Review. For those of us that believe very strongly in public education, it is going to make the system more inequitable. It is going to increase the disparity by increasing for those divisions and areas of the city that have and reduce the resources for those areas of the city that do not have. That was stated to me very clearly in a meeting I had with the principal, and that was something that was initiated by the principal. It was not something that I initiated. That is the real sense of the community in the area that I represent, that this is going to create really very much a two-tiered system. It is going to exacerbate the inequities that already exist. When I look at the way that the school division funding comes from the property tax assessment in areas like Transcona that have a higher mill rate, that have a greater proportion of homes that are of less assessed value, and you combine that with the way that the government is also reducing funding and putting more responsibility on the local school divisions to raise money through the property assessment, combining that with these boundary changes, is going to very much exacerbate that inequity. That is one of the issues that I would like for the minister to respond to.

One of the comments that was made by one of the trustees in the area was a question that this is going to create a very much affluent school division in the southwest part of the city, and they made the comment that that school division has, I think, five cabinet ministers in it. I understand that this proposal is not, as the minister may say, the government's proposal per se, but that is noticed by members of the community that I represent, and they are very concerned about that.

One of the things that they also mention is that it is not going to do what it is intended to do. They are concerned that it is not going to reduce spending on administration. They were very specific in pointing out that the administration through superintendents, the proportion, is recommended to be four superintendents, each in an area that would have 33,000 to 35,000 students. When you break this down, this works out to what exists almost exactly in the Transcona-Springfield School Division, where there is one superintendent for 8,300 students.

Mrs. McIntosh: I wonder, could you just run that by me again? I heard you, but I just did not get the figures there. Would you mind very much repeating just that last little bit for me.

Ms. Cerilli: As I understand it, the recommendation is that there would be a ratio with the superintendents of four in areas where there would be 33,000 to 35,000 students, and that is equivalent to the current ratio that exists now in the Transcona-Springfield School Division, where there is one superintendent for 8,300 students. There were a number of other examples where it is not going to, in fact, reduce bureaucracy or administration, but it will create a new large bureaucracy in the delivery of education at school division level.

Further to that, they had some very clear recommendations for what the department should be encouraging and what school divisions should do, and those were that there could be the opportunity for school divisions that chose to amalgamate. Specifically, this could occur in rural school divisions where, in some cases, there are less than a thousand students, and there could be other things that are available or that school divisions could also do in lieu of amalgamating. There is a point made--I forget what year it was, but not that long ago--Transcona-Springfield was created by the fact that the Springfield area chose to amalgamate with Transcona.

The other things that they are recommending should happen are joint purchasing and waving of fees, or permeable boundaries, because I think that is one of the things that is disconcerting to the public, why students cannot, in a public system, move from school to school. I think that also goes back to the way that the school divisions generate their revenue from local, municipal taxes. That perhaps is one of the reasons that this system has evolved.

There are other ways that school divisions can share resources, co-operate and do all the positive things that the boundaries amalgamations are said to create without making such huge changes in the school division administration.

The main thing that they recommend in dealing with all of these issues is that we need to change the funding formula for school division funding. Again, I will refer back to the way that the mill rate works and the disparity in the school divisions and the difference in the assessments and the inequities across the city in being able to fund education. Even in the area that I represent, the difference between the River East School Division and the Transcona-Springfield School Division where, in the River East School Division, the total budget for this year is going to be over $69.5 million and in Transcona-Springfield it is over $43.5 million dollars. The Transcona School Division has had to have a much larger increase in their mill rate and in their taxation in order to deal with the funding cuts from the provincial government.

I guess to start to close, I would like for the minister to respond to those key issues, the fact that there are other things that the divisions could do to achieve the ends of the boundaries changes and in fact they will not do what they purport to achieve.

Mrs. McIntosh: The member has indeed raised some valid points in her question. I thank her for repeating that part of her question because I thought I had heard her mention the breakdown in Transcona-Springfield but was not quite sure. I thank her for repeating that because that is a very interesting figure for us to put into our mix for our discussion.

Many of the points that have been brought up by the member are ones that we have heard and that we are examining. I appreciate her bringing forward on behalf of her constituents their specific feelings around those issues. The comments about the funding formula will require some re-examination as we move more into electronic communications and delivery systems changing via technology, that type of thing.

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That type of request we could properly make through the advisory council on educational finance. But the funding formula, as the member is probably aware was just recently changed--when I say recently, within the last few years--to upgrade it from the previous system. As I say, as we get more into the electronics and distance education, there will probably be some factors that need looking at as well. If boundaries amalgamate, then that, too, would probably necessitate looking to see that as a funding formula fits with different configurations other than the ones that currently exist.

We have not made any conclusions, and some of the MLAs have been in through Estimates to ask questions maybe differing in the types of concerns but similar in nature to the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) who is putting forward concerns from her constituency about boundaries. My response has been that all concerns brought forward will be discussed and considered as we are doing right now.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

In fact, this is part of the discussion, I suppose, this whole series of Estimates questions. But as government now moves to decide what does it do with the Norrie commission report, then these kinds of comments are very helpful and particularly when I pick up, as I did today from you, one new piece of information that I had not heard before, that is most helpful.

There are other perspectives that proponents of Norrie would indicate and that is that if there were fewer boards and a greater ratio of trustees to electors and fewer central office administrators--now there is the if, which is the assumption but if that assumption held true--then there would be a new method of division and administration that could be required and could work. Through school councils at the local level, you could empower more local input and establish effective linkages between advisory councils and school boards.

Again, as with the recommendations from Norrie, there are certain assumptions built in, and I think what the member has indicated today is there is no guarantee that those assumptions will become realities. I hear what she has said. I am not able to give a definitive answer at this point to what our conclusions will be but certainly information and commentaries such as she has provided today is helpful to the decision-makers on this side of the House.

Ms. Cerilli: I am just going to recommend perhaps that you make a response regarding the issue of equity and equitability across the city in provision of educational programs and services. That was the other big part of the question.

Mrs. McIntosh: One of the things that the Norrie commission wanted to achieve and certainly it is one thing that government wants to achieve is equity in the system. There will be a variety of ways that people will recommend equity be achieved. Some of them may be more effective than others, but our desire as government is to see that every child in the city has equal opportunity. Specific programs will be determined in large measure by local school boards. That is something whether it is the existing school division or a new amalgamated school division or some other configuration, ultimately, those men and women who get elected to sit on the board of trustees will have authority in law to make decisions as to whether or not they wish to have, say, a nursery program, which was one of the concerns posed by Winnipeg trustees. So they will make those decisions, hopefully, reflecting community interest, what they believe their constituents want and require. Presumably, if they do not provide what the constituents want and require, they would be replaced in another round of trustee elections. But there is no guarantee that I can give at this time that any board of trustees, whether it be the existing board or a new board, would guarantee certain programs wanted by certain groups in any given division, because that authority does rest with school trustees. I am not sure if that answers the question that was posed.

Ms. Cerilli: Not really. I mean, the MLA for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen), our Education critic, and I were just saying that there has to be the tax base in the local area to support it, and we know that choice is going to come with fiscal opportunity, or financial opportunity, I should say. There can be quite a difference between Wellington Crescent and Furby Street, which is in the constituency of Wolseley where our Education critic is from, or Keenleyside which is in my constituency or Plessis Road which is in my constituency, where there may be quite a different level of financial ability to pay.

I want to go on to raise a few other issues and to sort of put it into the context of we are talking about an education system here and we want to make it--similarly, I guess, the members from the minister's party often talk about efficiency. Well, I often look at effectiveness, and we want an effective system; we want a functional system, not a dysfunctional system, so we have to look at how all the other initiatives that the government has are going to interplay with the boundaries initiative. We also have to look at the impact of the boundaries review and changes on amalgamation of school divisions on areas that I want to touch on such as programs and transportation, and then I want to talk a little bit about neighbourhood integrity and community, as well as urban sprawl.

First of all, I will start with programs, because the minister had made reference to assumptions that are made with the intention of the boundaries amalgamation, and I think that one of the myths is that it is going to increase access to programs. I will give you another specific example from the area that I represent. I do not think Transcona-Springfield has an IB program. River East School Division does. The River East School Division IB program cannot handle any more students, even if there are more students who can then go to that program from Transcona-Springfield, so it is still going to rely on the availability of resources to create that equity and opportunity.

The same can be said for the fact that the size of the division may not relate proportionately to the quality or the delivery of a specific educational program, and that can be seen in some of the ways that the different school divisions--and again a specific example in the area that I represent would be in French Immersion where one division has milieu and one does not.

All of these issues are going to get raised with this amalgamation, and I hope that the minister will be able to comment on how the proposal will deal with that.

The other area that I want to spend some time drawing her attention to is with transportation. We know that with a larger school division there is going to be more migration. It is going to further increase the demand for transportation. I have raised with the minister a number of times how the policy for transportation needs to take into account the availability of public transit and work at the civic level to ensure that there is going to either be school busing or public transit if in fact we are going to be availing young people to move to a school that is even further away from their home.

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In the River East School Division, I know last year, because of the other policy changes the government has made, they lost $78,000 in terms of their transit busing because of the elimination of what I call now the unicity clause in the school bus transit policy. We have the experience in Transcona-Springfield where there is one-quarter real rural school division, and there has been a huge reduction. I think it is six buses are being lost.

So, if we are going to have the government continue to reduce the busing provision and the formula that is going to reduce the busing availability to areas like Transcona-Springfield where they have lost, in south Transcona, busing because it is no longer considered rural, then we are going to have huge problems where children are put in unsafe situations. In larger school divisions there is going to be the increased temptation or opportunity or necessity in some cases for them to walk longer distances, to hitchhike, to perhaps take other rides to and from school that are not safe.

I think that that is another big concern in the division, that this may be another area that we are not giving careful enough consideration to that I would like the minister's response.

The last area I want to look at is how this policy is going to affect neighbourhoods and community, because there is going to be even more of a tendency for children on a given street to go to five different schools. That is really affecting the sense of neighbourhood in a given neighbourhood, the sense that children know the people on their street and that families then know the people on their street because they often tend to meet their neighbours through their children and the interaction of their children.

There is a real concern that, as we are creating this sort of shopping mall approach to the education system, that we are affecting communities in a way that is irreparable. Some may say that the children will just increase the number of peers that they have, but I think that there is a lot more that goes on in a community when children live and go to school in a local school. There is a real sense of community and neighbourhood that develops.

The final issue I want the minister to respond to has to deal with urban sprawl and how this school division amalgamation proposal is going to exacerbate the problems of urban sprawl. It is related to transportation and migrancy but, especially, we are familiar with this in an area like Radisson where Dugald Road goes out to Anola and those communities and we have a lot of traffic that comes into the Transcona-Springfield School Division.

But I am concerned that the new boundaries will create in the southeast quadrant or division another school division that is going to have a large rural component and that this is going to impact on urban sprawl and the tendency for people to come from the rural areas into the city. I think that is going to have effects then on the neighbourhood and community aspects of those rural communities. So I am wondering if the minister or the group that is reviewing the boundaries proposal has looked at that issue and the impacts that the boundaries amalgamation would have on urban sprawl. Thank you.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I will try to answer this fairly simply if I can. There are a number of things that were looked at, but all of them it seems to me revolve back around three central issues: one being the tax base and equity, the administrative efficiency and effectiveness, and the community of interest--whatever term people use--the decision preferences, the desired programming in a particular area. Each of these is important, but none of them can really be examined in isolation from each other. They all fall back on each other. So we can look at taxation, for example, ability to pay which is determined by the local assessment and provincial funding formula effects as well. The goal is not sameness or specifically being identical because that is not possible or achievable in the real world, but the goal in equity is to be as fair and even and similar as possible as you can make it to be.

It is a relative issue but the attempt to reach towards similarity and fairness and as close as possible the same kinds of financial opportunities is one that I think that Norrie's commission sought to achieve. It is one that we want and it is one that I know the opposition wishes as well. Certainly, it is one the people want. They do not want to be feeling that they are falling way behind in one area of the city or the province if other people are serging ahead or be perceived to be serging ahead.

One of the items that Norrie identified and that some people believe to be accurate is that a driving reason for amalgamation would be to create a larger pool of taxing capacity so as to provide greater equity or more equitable sources in a new and larger reason. Norrie makes reference to that fairly often in his report, but that, in and of itself, would not be an issue sufficient to inspire amalgamation because, as I said before, these issues are all intertwined. The administration issue where you have a certain ratio of trustees to the electorate, the distances that people might have to travel not just to school but for school trustees in some areas to school board meetings, population density across a division.

The member's constituency and my constituency are similar in this regard in that they both have urban and rural components where the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) experiences a densely populated urban area and then a rural area and similarly so do I in my constituency. The chairman has the same configuration in his, so you have really sort of two different kinds of communities within one constituency. In my case, they happen to be the school division as well and partly true as well in the Transcona-Springfield School Division in Radisson. So distance and equity and transportation and equity in those school divisions are questions that exist now. I hear the member saying she does not want to see those exacerbated, and appreciate why she is saying that, because of her experience with the current situation. I know she has brought forward to me, on a couple of occasions, the concern with transportation in her area and the decisions the city might be making with regard to city transit. So I know what her concerns are.

But equality of roads to and from schools, are they equitable now in our various divisions? The communications aspect in the communities of interest, we have people who wish to see certain value systems in their schools, certain religious bents in their schools, and where the schools are all similar, or not too unalike, boards may be able to achieve some of those things. We are conscious of those desires to have similar goals be contained in a similar configuration.

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Mr. Gregory Dewar (Selkirk): Mr. Chairman, I want to just read into the record some comments provided to me by the board of trustees of the Lord Selkirk--[interjection]

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Excuse me. Is that mike on?

Mr. Dewar: I do not know. Do you want me to give that speech again?

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Pull a little closer, or find another one that is--[interjection]

Mr. Dewar: Anyway, getting back to my discussion, I want to just talk a bit about the proposed changes, in particular, the concerns raised to me by the board of trustees of Lord Selkirk School Division No. 11. The Lord Selkirk School Division No. 11 consists of the provincial constituency of Selkirk but also takes in part of the provincial constituency of Lac du Bonnet and Gimli.

As the minister is aware, the proposed Agassiz/Lord Selkirk School Division No. 14 will have more than 8,000 students and more than two dozen schools. It would include the areas of Pointe du Bois, Pinawa, Pine Falls, Powerview, Lac du Bonnet, Whitemouth, Seven Sisters, Reynolds, Beausejour, Garson, Tyndall, Lockport, Selkirk, East Selkirk, Clandeboye, Petersfield, Grand Marais, and every other area in between.

They presented me with a letter and I would just like to, if I could, read that into the record: The Board is concerned about the following aspects of the proposed boundary review. Any contemplated changes to existing school division boundaries must benefit students. Changes should be based on sound, educational, economic, and demographic rationale, and those data and rationale should be shared with school divisions. New boundaries must be congruent with the boundaries of rural municipalities and the jurisdictions served by the provincial departments of Health, Justice, and Family Services. Of particular concern is the gap that exists between the southern boundaries of Lord Selkirk School Division No. 11 and the R.M. of St. Andrews.

On the southern tip of the R.M. of St. Andrews, there is an area between Highway No. 27 and Lot 1, Park Cove, and currently that belongs to the Seven Oaks School Division, but in fact it is part of the R.M. of St. Andrews. Lord Selkirk School Division would be willing to take in those additional lands as part of their boundaries. Changes to school division boundaries should reflect the natural flow of traffic and trade in the area. We feel in Selkirk that we have more in common with the Interlake--and it is a natural flow of traffic and trade--rather than eastern Manitoba.

Decisions regarding the location of central school offices should be based on a variety of criteria including population density, existing business hubs and proximity to schools. The realignment of school division boundaries must not result in economic penalties to the taxpayer. Before any boundary changes are affected, there must be a cost-analysis and an impact study conducted for each amalgamated school division. The final point is that the government must first develop a clear, detailed and incremental plan to assist school divisions to move smoothly into the new alignment.

I want to put those comments on the record, and I just look forward to the minister's response. Thank you.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Before I go to the minister, I would ask all members sitting around the table carrying on a conversation, if they could keep it to a lower volume, I would appreciate it.

Mrs. McIntosh: In response to the member for Selkirk's question, I first of all want to thank him for putting forward so clearly the concerns of his constituents. I actually would like to expand that a bit to say that I have been impressed today with the way the opposition members have brought forward, specifically on this issue, their constituents' concerns on boundaries. I will give again the same response I have given to the others. I do not mean to sound repetitive or that I am going over same ground, but the decision is in the process of being examined. We are attempting to now do our duty in terms of responding to Norrie's commission, having now received the report, by looking at the issues and trying to determine what is the right thing to do with the commission's report. So, in that sense, the points that have been brought forward are ones that will be looked at as useful information presented to the minister and through the minister to my colleagues in government.

Some of the concerns that have come forward today are ones that we have heard from the constituents directly, but there have been one or two other things brought forward today that are of interest to us in terms of a desire to take a look at those points. The member identifies concerns that are, in some sense, generic to some of the other divisions as well but in others specific to his locale.

I can say to him that those points will be looked at, and we will try to move in a timely fashion so that we do not have the field waiting for too much longer for a decision. Sometime this spring is what I have been saying, because it is impossible for me to tighten the time down more specifically than that. Everything that comes forward will form part of our discussions, and so through him to his constituents, we appreciate receiving that expression of concern on those particular items for examination.

Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chairman, I, too, want to continue on the issue of boundaries and to place some comments on the record on the other submissions which were made to the second Norrie commission.

One of the difficulties, I think, that we have had as a community, and I mean Manitoba, is that that second boundary commission, or the final report as the minister calls it, were all written submissions. There were no public hearings or discussions, and there was a very short time period for people in the various constituencies to have public meetings in order to have a general discussion about this although some, and Lord Selkirk, in fact, was one of them which was able to have that kind of public discussion. So I want to suggest to the minister that there are concerns, that people feel that second boundary commission, the final report, was very limited in its discussion of the representations that had been made to it.

My colleagues have raised the issue of Fort Rouge School, and they have raised the issue of the concerns of Lord Selkirk, and Mr. Norrie chose not to respond specifically to each of the ones that had been raised. So I wanted to put on the record some of the concerns in the first instance from rural Manitoba that were raised with the second Norrie commission. This is people reacting essentially to the map that he presented to them and to the rationale that he gave.

If we start in the southeast with the new proposed division, Southeast No. 6, the Boundary School Division, in writing to Norrie noted that the 1960 amalgamation of school districts came at a time of low inflation, high economic growth and when enrollments were increasing, and they pointed out to him that none of these factors are present there now. This division noted that it is concerned about the loss of small schools. It disagrees with the loss of La Salle, Ile des Chenes, St. Adolphe and Lorette whose tax base, they argue, should stay with rural divisions. Falcon Beach School preferred to remain within Frontier Division, one of the many protests which the supplementary report does not discuss. Seine River School Division pointed to an Ontario study of the amalgamation of Windsor and Essex counties that demonstrated that the creation of super boards is an expensive exercise. They suggested a period of more gradual amalgamation. Parents of Bothwell School did not want to see these boundary changes. They are concerned that extra power to determine catchment areas is accruing to the minister.

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In South Central District No. 6, the new proposed Central South 6, the Garden Valley School Division and its parent advisory council are adamantly opposed to the amalgamation. Western School Division supports voluntary amalgamation, but they also said, and I quote: We remain unconvinced of either the need or the desirability of amalgamation for the students, parents and ratepayers of Western School Division. The town of Carman opposed consolidation. The town of Starbuck wanted to remain as part of a rural division, with a rural lifestyle. Morris-MacDonald School Division opposed divisions that were too big, which they defined as over 9,000 students, and offered the commission three alternatives to which in part the commission did respond in its creation of Division 5A Red River.

Rhineland School Division, like so many, wanted some indication of the costs to be incurred in amalgamation. Like others, they oppose the commission's desire to make school boundaries coterminous with municipal boundaries. That is one of the commission's basic principles, and it is one I want to pick up with the minister later on. They argued that, and I quote: Schools are not only buildings were students are prepared for the future, but where community is fostered and practiced in the present.

They believe, as many others did, that trade patterns and associations are important to rural Manitoba, more important than arbitrary groupings of 9,000 students. Rhineland, in particular, wanted the commission to take into account ethnic, historic and community differences, trading areas and existing partnerships. They noted that school choice is increasing and they see difficulties ahead in accommodating students.

Midland School Division, like Rhineland and others, wants to see voluntary slower amalgamation and asks particularly for, and I quote: A fair process that provides for dialogue and consultation.

Moving to Southwest Central No. 7, the new proposed 7, three divisions here have been co-operating for some time and are prepared to work together towards amalgamation. But I wanted to underline for the minister that their acceptance is in part because they assume there will be a flexible and co-operative approach to the drawing of the actual boundary lines. The trustees of Pembina Valley, Mountain and Tiger Hills, and I quote: Recommend that within a township or a range where the majority of residents do not wish to belong to the proposed division, that the boundaries be adjusted accordingly.

In the same area, from Cartwright, the chair of the small schools association wrote that they were, quote, adamantly opposed to wholesale change in division size. The councils of the villages of Roblin and Cartwright wrote separately that they could see no economies and asked for more evidence of such savings. The R.M. of Cartwright argued that to increase the size of divisions goes against the philosophy of decentralization. Thus, even in the areas, I think, where there is a willingness to proceed, there are areas of caution that I want to underline for the minister and to underline for the minister that people believe--and I know she has been out meeting with them--certainly believe that these changes have the potential to damage some rural areas.

In Southwest No. 8, the R.M. of Edward is opposed to changes at the Antler River School Division, reiterates the concerns of many about local jobs, the longer transport times, the impact of school closures. They believe that although there is an aging population, their communities can survive. In fact, they said, and I quote, the only destabilizing effect is that of the provincial government threatening to amalgamate municipalities and school divisions, end of quote. They argue that their strength lies in small communities which offer safety. Do not waste our time and money with structural changes, they said, but they asked for help in technology in co-operative ventures and believe that changes should not be forced on people.

The Turtle Mountain School Division argued that the critical factor in education is parental involvement, and a contact here, they thought, might be lost with larger divisions. The commission's recommendations, they felt, were too arbitrary. They asked to see the report of Dr. Rounds, which had been prepared for the commission and into which had been much local input. The study, they believe, showed that restructuring would not be of assistance in the development of cost-effective services.

The town of Virden supported amalgamation but suggested that it be begun in Winnipeg, where they believe there were greater savings to be made.

Turtle Mountain School Division underlined that for public acceptance of the commission's proposals, the commission would need to show both savings and improvements in education. They emphasized that there is need for technological support in a provincial plan for distance education.

Fort La Bosse trustees believe the proposals are too drastic, that alignment--and again this same issue came up--of municipal and school division boundaries is not a good ideal and that pilot projects on a gradual basis should be the order of the day.

Forty-five letters were received from Oakland, underlining for the commission that these proposals will increase their taxes and offer them less choice. So, again, I think there is a specific issue there for the minister to be aware of.

The commission responded to the concerns of Lenore, and Mr. Norrie, in his final report, did alter the proposed boundaries, but he did not directly respond to the other concerns that were raised by this whole region.

Brandon, No. 9 division, of course, remains largely unchanged, but the trustees there suggested to the commission that they were moving far too fast, and they made some useful proposals for appeal boards for regular 10-year reviews and for a way to deal with the Oakland issue.

Yellowhead No. 10, the Pelly Trail School Division, believed no rationale has been presented for amalgamation. Rural pilot projects over a five-year period, they said, would be more acceptable.

Strathclair home and school said the restructuring is too radical, and the division is too big.

Rolling River School Division rejected amalgamation. It rejects the principle that alignment with municipal boundaries is best, believes that boards should decide on the number of trustees, not the minister, and that issues of school choice, fee transfers and busing can be dealt with without the restructuring of divisions.

The R.M. of Cornwallis is opposed; the village of Erickson opposed and suggested change could be achieved by other means. Municipal boundaries were not the best guide for their area, they suggested. The parent council of one school in this region supported boundary changes, yet the parents and teachers of Sandy Lake pointed out that they had sat in the Brandon hearings and had heard the majority speak in opposition to large school divisions, a point they said that was, and I quote, made loud and clear. Our response, they said, quote, comes straight from the heart. It was contained in our brief, and our views have not changed, end of quote. The fundamental issues were ones of representation of small communities on the larger boards and, again, I quote, the quality of life in rural Manitoba.

Elton Collegiate and Douglas School parents reiterate many similar positions. They support smaller schools and school divisions. Consolidation, they believe, does not mean economy.

Birdtail River School Division opposed the reduction in school divisions and is concerned that the commission has given so little attention to the issues of transport under the new proposals.

Beautiful Plains-Pine Creek, the new No. 11--Beautiful Plains School Division believes the proposal is too extreme and there is no demonstrated cost saving. They want to see a slower implementation.

Portage la Prairie--Mr. Norrie responded to Portage la Prairie and altered the boundaries of this and the new No. 13.

The Interlake-White Horse Plain, the new No. 13--the White Horse Plain School Division objected to being included with the Interlake and they made comparisons on ethnic and cultural grounds for being closer to Portage la Prairie.

Stonewall School Division rejected the commissions linking it with White Horse Plain. They believe that their portion of the Interlake is expanding and should be considered in a different light. And again, there were no specific responses to that.

Agassiz-Lord Selkirk No. 14--Lord Selkirk School Division held a public forum and reported its findings. People equated larger school divisions with higher taxes, they said. They believe that there should be longer term planning for these changes and that 21 is not a magic number. The number of trustees should be determined locally and, again, that was something which came up quite frequently. An Ombudsman should be appointed for appeals and mediation, again an interesting suggestion, I think, that was hinted at by others. A major point of Lord Selkirk was that amalgamation cannot be done with existing dollars. There must be additional provincial financial assistance. And they attached 137 signatures in a petition from residents of St. Andrews who would like to be attached to that Lord Selkirk School Division.

Agassiz School Division said clearly, and I quote: We are at present an optimum sized division. We see no reason for such a merger and maintain our original positions.

End of quote.

They had not been convinced that there were demonstrable savings. They were concerned with the loss of representation in larger divisions.

Lakeshore-Evergreen School Division, the new No. 15, argued, and the Evergreen portion of that argued forcefully that it is, and I quote, imperative for the Boundaries Review Commission and the province to endorse the right of school divisions to decide their fate at a local level, end of quote.

Twenty-one school divisions is too few for Manitoba. Evergreen thinks the government should be focusing on municipal boundaries, again a common theme in some other presentations, and upon a better co-ordination of services such as distance education and post-secondary education and a more effective implementation of curriculum. Finally, they cannot see how amalgamation will benefit their students.

Lakeshore School Division had serious concerns about the process of the supplementary review. They wanted to involve their communities in a response to the commission's original proposals. The public has little knowledge of this, nor do they yet understand the possible impact, they believed. Restructuring advantages have not been proven. I quote: We must answer the question of costs with respect to the harmonizing of collective agreements and the economic impact on small communities that may be threatened with the loss of their division office.

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In Eriksdale, for example, the loss of jobs at divisional office, they believed, would mean the loss of over $200,000 annually in wages. Lakeshore does not believe that 9 trustees are enough in such a large division. The division notes that it has offered the department a pilot project for the evaluation of school board governance, shared services and the impact of amalgamation but had had no response at the time of writing.

They are proud of their innovative, co-operative programs with other divisions. Lundar School Advisory Council wrote to oppose amalgamation and the LGD of Grahamdale supported the position taken by Lakeshore Division and asked the commission to reconsider amalgamation.

In the Parkland, No. 16, the Dauphin-Ochre school area asked for evidence that amalgamation will be cost-effective. Thirteen rural divisions are too few. The Parkland proposal is for too large an area and, quote, we oppose it. End of quote.

Trustee travel would be so extensive that it is likely that only day meetings could be held and this would limit the range of people able to seek election. Dauphin-Ochre River divisions in southern Manitoba advise that municipal boundaries, and I quote, do not always recognize the natural and established traffic patterns between communities. It is important that communities be allowed to follow these economic and traffic patterns. End of quote.

They are concerned about who will bear the cost of restructuring and believe that it should be done over a longer period of time. Their basic question remains that of so many others. What will be the savings and where are the benefits?

Grandview School's parent advisory council wrote with their concerns about the loss of school board offices and the prospect of losing their high school.

Having only nine trustees would make it unlikely that Grandview would be represented in a larger division, and I quote: We in rural Manitoba are being asked to sacrifice our communities. Having our children attend a small school may far outweigh any fiscal benefits that may result from school closures. Grandview feels the commission is attempting to separate education in the community. Rural communities are struggling to maintain population. The proposed plan only exacerbates the problem.

Mr. Chairman, those are my summaries from the rural areas. I would like at a later time to talk about the North and the city, although I think both my colleagues from St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) and from Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) have alluded to some of these in earlier submissions.

What I want to do for, I think, the public record because I think the minister is aware of these issues--I know that she and other MLAs have been out talking to people in rural and southern Manitoba. So I do not think that any of these issues are new, but I do not think they have been on the public record, and that is really what I wanted to do at the moment--

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. I have allowed the member for Wolseley to go considerably over the reasons. It seemed to me that you wanted to get this information on the record. I did allow that, although I could have been called on a point of order for it. I would only ask that a little leeway be given to me by the committee from time to time. Where I see that kind of thing, I will try to allow it, and then give the minister an amount of time equal to that, if necessary, to answer it. The honourable member--minister, pardon me.

Mrs. McIntosh: I am a member, too, so you are safe. Yes, and certainly, Mr. Chairman, I do not have any objection to the extension of time, because I recognize there was sort of a block of thought that the member was trying to get in as a block of thought. Certainly, if we feel that is being taken advantage of we have the opportunity for a point of order on it, so that is no trouble.

I just want to indicate in terms of the second round of Norrie, as it has become called colloquially, the second round was never intended to be a repeat of the original process or a rehearing of the hearings or a study of the study. The second round came into existence simply because when Norrie presented his report, there were a lot of people who then began to write in and say, I did make a presentation to the commission but now that I have seen the report there is now a new thing in existence that I would like to respond to, so here are some comments on it.

When we realized that we were getting a fair number of responses like that, we thought maybe we had better let people know that if they are reading the report and they do not like what they see and it sparked a new response from them, that we will formalize the process of them getting that information back, and we will ask the Norrie commission to take a look at these responses to see if in any way they have had points raised to them based upon their actual recommendations that might cause them to rethink their position. So we allowed a few months for that to occur.

That was occurring anyhow. We simply put the Norrie commission back in the loop to give them an opportunity in case some new ideas had come up that would spark a change in them. That was the rationale for it, and that is why it did not repeat the process. It was simply another opportunity that we felt might be useful and helpful to people and to the commission.

The member is correct. We have been out in the field, and I have met with the people from Eriksdale, for example. I have been out to Eriksdale and talked to the board and talked to the parent council and talked to the teachers and talked to the municipal councillors in Eriksdale about the location of the board office, all of those things. We have done that in a fair number of communities around Manitoba. As well, as I have indicated, I think at this point I have met with all but a very few boards individually as one by one they have come in to see me, and many parent groups, et cetera. As well, we have received a very wide return of correspondence. People have written in on this issue in great numbers, so we have a wide variety of opinion before us.

I understand and am aware of the views that the member has read into the record. I understand why she thought it was important for it to be in the record, and I appreciate that, but I just want to indicate that, as the member has shown in her commentary, views around the province do vary, because some do support amalgamation, forced or not forced, and they may have thoughts about implementation which we should consider. Basically, some will say, yes, we want amalgamation; some will say we support voluntary amalgamation; some will say we do not support amalgamation at all, so we have a wide variety of opinion.

Some people have said amalgamate only in the city; some people have said amalgamate only in rural Manitoba, and the rationales for those have been do not amalgamate in rural Manitoba because distances are so great, amalgamate in the city where distances are smaller. The flip side of the coin is that people have said amalgamate in rural Manitoba because populations are smaller and do not amalgamate in the city because school divisions are already too large in terms of number of students. So we are getting such a wide variety of opinion coming in, and I just mention that to say that each of those views will have merit attached to them. They are significant, but all of them underscore why a decision must be arrived at not on a local or parochial basis but must stem from a set of clear, fair, accepted principles of taxation equity, administrative efficiency and effectiveness, community choices, local views, religious, cultural considerations, educational preferences and so on. We are trying to find the balance. We are trying to find how those three twined together could be most effective for the benefit of the students of Manitoba. I see my time is up.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Thank you, Madam Minister.

The hour now being 5:30 p.m., I am interrupting the proceedings of the committee. The committee will now be recessed until 9 a.m. tomorrow (Friday).