2nd-36th, Volume 35a - Committee of Supply - Department of Education and Training

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House Business

Hon. Jim Ernst (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I wonder if the House might recess for five minutes while I have some discussions with regard to the Estimates process.

Madam Speaker: Is it the will of the House to have a five-minute recess while the House leaders have a quick meeting? Agreed. [agreed]

The House recessed at 2:44 p.m.

________

After Recess

The House resumed at 2:49 p.m.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. The House will reconvene.

Mr. Ernst: Madam Speaker, for the third committee of Estimates for tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., the order of Estimates will be Urban Affairs; Culture, Heritage and Citizenship; Government Services; and the Status of Women. That will be continuing through until tomorrow afternoon at 5:30 p.m.

Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the Minister of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship (Mr. Gilleshammer), that Madam Speaker do now leave the Chair, and the House resolve itself into a Committee of Supply 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.

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COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

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

When the committee last sat, it had been considering 5.(a) (1) on page 40 of the Estimates book. Shall the item pass?

Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chairman, the last time we were here, we were looking at the private school grants. The minister had tabled a list of the grants to the private schools in the last fiscal year and she did not have the enrollment, obviously, for the '96-97 fiscal year but my question, perhaps, follows on from that.

What total amount is the minister budgeting in these Estimates for the private schools for next year? Even though she does not have the enrollment number and does not know the specific amount to each school, there must be a total amount.

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, from July 1, 1996, to June 30, 1997, the amount will be $30,168,000.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, could the minister tell us how, under the new formula of the agreement that the government has reached with the private schools, the per pupil grant will be 46 percent in the '96-97 year? It will be 46 percent of the public per pupil cost.

Could the minister tell us how that public school pupil cost is being determined?

Mrs. McIntosh: It is done in a series of steps. First you take the expenditures of the public school, the public school expenditure, then you weight the amount by taking the costs in each public division where the independent school exists. Then you derive a weighted average, you multiply it by 46.5 percent, and you end up with the amount given to the independent schools.

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Ms. Friesen: I wonder if the minister could explain that again. She said the first step is you take the total of public school expenditures. Does that mean across the province, first of all?

Mrs. McIntosh: You take every area of the province where the independent school students live. You take the expenditures from those parts of the province, so it is across the province where independent school students live. Then you weight that amount by taking the costs in each public division where there are independent schools. You derive a weighted average by multiplying times--you multiply by 46.5 percent. You end up then with the amount given to independent schools, and each independent school thus receives the same rate per pupil which in this year, through which we are currently living, is $2,466.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, could we go over that again? The first step is to take the expenditures of school divisions where the students who attend private schools live. Now the list the minister gave me, I think, she actually said it had school divisions listed. I think the one the minister read from might have, but I do not think the one I got did. So could the minister give me an account of where those students are living who are going to private schools? How is the minister arriving at that? Which school divisions are being included in that list?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, those addresses are provided by the schools that the students attend.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, could the minister then put on the public record what those school divisions are that have students attending private schools?

Mrs. McIntosh: Staff is obtaining that information. The member will note that the people who live in these areas, of course, are taxpayers for those areas and pay full education taxes and all other taxes to the local authority where they live. Staff is digging that information out for us, if you just give us a moment.

Mr. Chairman, Winnipeg School Division has 2,476; St. James-Assiniboia has 402; Assiniboine South has 1,522; St. Boniface has 288; Fort Garry has 672; St. Vital has 897; Norwood has 150; River East has 1,102; Seven Oaks has 811; Lord Selkirk has 102; Transcona has 670; Agassiz has 25; Seine River has 213; Hanover has 133; Boundary has 3; Red River has 3; Rhineland has 29; Morris-MacDonald has 40; White Horse Plain has 34; Interlake has 38; Evergreen has 57; Lakeshore has 7; Portage la Prairie has 171; Midland has 175; Garden Valley has 17; Pembina Valley has 34; Tiger Hills has 3; Pine Creek has 17; Beautiful Plains has 10; Turtle River has 2; Dauphin has 54; Duck Mountain has 2; Swan Valley has 55; Intermountain has 2; Birdtail River has 5; Rolling River has 19; Brandon has 180; Souris Valley has 6; Antler River has 1; Turtle Mountain has 37; Kelsey has 5; Flin Flon has 5; Western has 6; Frontier has 13; Lynn Lake has 1; Mystery Lake has 4; Sprague has 1; Leaf Rapids has 1--for a total of 10,506.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think that is about 48 school divisions. So those school divisions, their cost per pupil will be averaged, so the minister will take the sum of all of the costs of each of those school divisions and will divide by 48. Okay. Could the minister explain that first step?

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Mrs. McIntosh: When I indicate initially that, because the latest accurate figures are the ones we use, the figures we use for working out this formula, the ones that I am quoting her now are from two years ago, '93-94. It will be behind that way for accuracy purposes.

What you do is you take the total number of students who are in private school living in a particular division, taking Winnipeg No. 1 for an example. In Winnipeg No. 1, which I believe is the member's division, she has 2,474 students who attend private school who live in her area, who live in her division, so we count those. We take that number and we multiply it by the cost that it would cost us if we had to educate them in that particular public division, which would be, in Winnipeg No. 1 at the time of this enrollment, $6,532. So we take the number of students who live in the division who attend private school, we multiply that by the cost of what we would have to pay to educate them per pupil if they actually went to the public school in that division, and we get a total. The total of this example would be $16,175--million, $16 million. Then you add up all of those totals of what you would have to pay if they were fully funded students. As I said before, the parents do pay the full taxes as if their students were fully funded, but the net effect is you take the cost of what it would cost, and if these students had not opted to attend a private school, the cost would be $60,038,960, adding up all the school divisions that way. So after you have got that total, then you will divide by the total enrollment number that I gave her before of 10,506, and you divide that by the 60 and that--you divide that by the number of students and that gives you the weighted average. Then you take the weighted average and again you multiply by 46.5 percent to give you the support which would be $2,600.

So we go from having to spend--in Winnipeg No. 1, for example, instead of having to spend as a government $6,532 for each of those students, we only have to pay $2,643 per student with the parents picking up the balance on top of the education taxes they pay, as everybody else does. That is how the province saves money, and that is how the formula works.

Ms. Friesen: I just want to make sure I understand what the minister is saying. She started out by giving me a Winnipeg No. 1 example of 2,474 students at a cost of $6,500. Now that $6,500 is the cost two years ago and that is part of the formula that it will always be two years ago. The number of students, is that also two years ago or that is the current number of students, that is, as of the '96 and '97 enrollment year?

Mrs. McIntosh: We keep the current number of students at a two-year-old cost.

Ms. Friesen: So the example that we will be looking at is the '96-97 enrollment numbers, and we will be using the cost per student of two years ago in this case in Winnipeg No. 1, and that will give us the $16.175 million. Okay.

The second step the minister said was to develop a weighted average. Now she said add up all the total which would give you approximately $60 million across all the school divisions, all those 58 school divisions. Is that what is happening there? Have I got that step right?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, that is correct.

Ms. Friesen: And then, Mr. Chairman, we divide that by the total enrollment in private schools across Manitoba which gives us the weighted average. Okay?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes.

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Ms. Friesen: That is then multiplied by 46.5 percent in the case of '96-97 in order to provide us with a figure of $2,600 for Winnipeg School Division No. 1.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, it would be for Winnipeg School Division No. 1. It would also be for all other school divisions. Every independent school. That is the one rate. That formula is how we arrive at the weighted rate which goes to each independent school. They have the same.

Ms. Friesen: Does that mean that a child who lives in Winnipeg No. 1 and a child who lives in Transcona will both be taking the same amount of money with them, say, to Balmoral Hall or to St. John's Ravenscourt or to St. Edward's, whichever school they are going to? Is the per pupil payment from the provincial government going to be exactly the same for every child in every private school?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, does the minister have an estimate of what the percentage increase will be to the private schools in this coming year? It was $27 million last year. She has given us an approximate $30 million for the coming year.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, approximately 11 percent, taking into account the rate increase as a result of moving from the 42 percent to 46 percent and a projected enrollment increase of some 4 percent.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, could the minister just perhaps spell out the mathematics on that for me? What does the minister mean by taking into account the transition from 42 percent to 46 percent, and what is the basis for projected enrollment increase of 4 percent this year?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, projecting enrollments is not an exact science, but the 4 percent is a figure that has been used historically. Sometimes it is above; sometimes it is below. For example, in 1992 the actual increase in enrollment was 5.6 percent, whereas last year the actual increase in enrollment was only 2.6 percent. Of course, if they do not have a 4-percent increase in enrollment, they do not get 4 percent, they only would get--like last year, for example, when the increase in enrollment was lower than was expected, they only got funded to the actual enrollment, not the projected, but 4 percent has historically been used. As I say, sometimes it is above, sometimes it is below. In 1992, it was above; last year, it was below, but they do not get the 4 percent if they do not have 4 percent.

The other rate, of course, is the letter of agreement where we have moved from 42.5 percent to 46.5 percent as per the terms of the agreement.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I asked the minister if she could spell out the mathematics by which she arrives at 11 percent increase this year. There is a transition in the formula. Perhaps using real numbers, or perhaps using an example, the minister could indicate how the increase is 11 percent.

Mrs. McIntosh: The 11 percent, of course, is four plus seven, but the four is the expected enrollment increase, and the 7.2 percent, as I indicated, is the difference between 42.5 percent and 46.5 percent, the exact same dollar amount as it would have been under the old formula, moving from 68 percent to 74 percent under the old formula. So the dollar amount in the old formula and the dollar amount in the new formula in terms of the percentage rate increase are the same, no difference, expressed differently, but the same amount of money.

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Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the minister could provide me with an example of how she has gone to an 11 percent increase. I am not understanding it from what she is saying. When she says, for example, that the amount under the old formula would have gone to 74 percent and the dollar amount remains the same, I am afraid that is not clear to an outsider to the department's finances. I wonder if the minister could make that clear by giving me an example of how that works.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, perhaps I can maybe say it a different way. It may help her. Going from 42.5 percent to 46.25 percent of costs is the same as going from 68 percent to 74 percent of provincial funding. Method A uses the amount that we the province fund public schools per pupil times 74. Method B uses the amount spent by divisions times 46.5. Does that help?

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think I got that part. What I am trying to get at is why the minister believes that the total amount is no different. I also want to understand how the minister gets from 42 to 46 percent. Could she give me the accounting on that?

Mr. Chairman, maybe I could clarify what it is I am looking for. The minister has said--not just here, but on other occasions as well--that the 74 percent of funding under the old formula--that is, the grant from the government--is equal to, but the dollar amount remains the same as the new formula, 46 percent of the cost. Now what I would like is an accounting of that. How do we get those two together?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we will plug in the real dollars, and that may help the member put some clarity around this. We provided, under the old formula, $3,500 per provincial pupil to public schools. Under the old formula, we were going to be moving to 74 percent at this time, so we would multiply that $3,500 by 74 percent and that comes out to $2,600. The number actually is $3,600, sorry. We are just working it out quickly here, but it is $3,600, not $3,500. Just a correction there.

Now, under the new formula, we will say that we take the $5,700 amount, which is the weighted cost per pupil, and we multiply that by 46.5 percent. It comes out to $2,600 as well. You are taking 46 percent of $5,700, and you are taking 74 percent of $3,500. So the larger numbers with which you are working are not identical, so your answers will be--they will end up the same answer.

If you look at it as being on a graph, you look at yesterday's way, you would go from 50 percent to 80 percent on a graph, which was the commitment of the funding and, on that graph, just before you got to 80 percent you would see two figures, one 68 percent and one 74 percent, and you would move from the smaller of those to the larger.

Currently you would have another graph that would move from 42.5 percent to 46.5 percent on a graph that would go from zero to 50 percent, and the points on the graph would line up. It is like when you get a measuring cup where you have got one side in metric and the other side in imperial, but you still end up with the same amount of water. You just call it something different.

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Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the minister has used the number in her new formula of the weighted per pupil cost as $5,700. Could the minister give me the numbers upon which that is based? How is that arrived at?

Mrs. McIntosh: All right. I think I have given the member an indication that in Winnipeg the eligible enrollment in the Winnipeg School Division was 2,476, and that the cost per pupil if that pupil attended a Winnipeg public school would have been $6,532. With St. James, I believe I read the enrollment, so I will maybe just go to the cost per pupil. In St. James-Assiniboia, the cost per pupil would be $5,416; in Assiniboine South, $5,711; in St. Boniface, $5,805; in Fort Garry, $5,850; in St. Vital, $5, 318; in Norwood, $6,101; in River East, $5,250; in Seven Oaks, $5,645; in Lord Selkirk, $4,935; in Transcona, $5,150; in Agassiz, $5,272; in Seine River, $5,022; in Hanover, $4,252, a very efficient division, that one, and known for its cost efficiency; Boundary, $6,497; Red River, $6,339; Rhineland, $4,901; Morris-MacDonald, $5,306, not bad; White Horse Plain, $6,283; Interlake, $4,534; Evergreen, $5,568; Lakeshore, $5,304; Portage la Prairie, $5,307; Midland, $5,454; Garden Valley, $4,587; Pembina Valley, $6,168; Tiger Hills, $5,918; Pine Creek, $5,443; Beautiful Plains, $5,173; Turtle River, $6,020; Dauphin, $5,157; Duck Mountain, $6,266; Swan Valley, $6,131; Intermountain, $5,521; Birdtail River, $5,554; Rolling River, $5,662; Brandon, $4,678; Souris Valley, $5,543; Antler River, $6,693; Turtle Mountain, $6,062; Kelsey, $5,526; Flin Flon, $5,916; Western, $5,188; Frontier, $9,619; Lynn Lake, $7,320; Mystery Lake, $6,208; Sprague, $6,628; and Leaf Rapids, $7,450.

Ms. Friesen: I am still trying to make sure that I have the method down. The minister took $2,476 as the cost in Winnipeg No. 1--sorry, that is the current attendance. She took the cost of $6,500, came up with a total and then took the total of all the ones that she has just read out, and, approximately, she said that was about $60 million. Then she divided that by the total enrollment of $10,000-and-something, arrived at the weighted average cost of $2,600.

Mrs. McIntosh: The total weighted cost of $5,715.

Ms. Friesen: That was the missing piece I did not have--and then took that $5,715, multiplied that by 46.5 percent and came to $2,600. Is that it?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes.

Ms. Friesen: Some of those figures are approximations that might be--

Mrs. McIntosh: Some of those figures are rounded off so they might be out $5 or $10 or something, but basically, yes, those are the figures.

Ms. Friesen: When the minister was developing this new formula, did she discuss this with the school trustees of Manitoba, because I think what the recognition is is that the government has tied grants to private schools to the costs in public divisions and also tied it to the increasing costs in public divisions, costs which are frequently out of control of the divisions? I am thinking of gas costs. I am thinking of repair costs, building repairs, as well as other kinds of inevitable costs, putting aside the whole issue of wages. There are inevitable increases in those costs that trustees are having to provide for in a variety of ways.

The public perception on these changes, I think, is very clear, that the private schools, under the old agreement, had tied themselves to a situation whereby they were being affected, having their costs reduced as the government reduced the cost to public schools. It was a bit like a U-tube in a way. As the government cut the costs in one area, it was also able to reduce its commitments to the private schools under the old agreement. They have gone to a new agreement, which is tied essentially to the prospect of increasing amounts, so that every time school trustees raise taxes, they are inevitably increasing the amount coming from the Province of Manitoba to private schools.

Is that the minister's understanding of what is happening? Did the minister discuss this at all with the school trustees of Manitoba in making this new agreement?

Mrs. McIntosh: We did not talk to the public school trustees because this does not affect their tax bill in any way. The Manitoba Federation of Independent Schools pupils are resident in public divisions, and their parents are full taxpayers there. They will pay the local special levy and provincial school taxes, so their school taxes will go up when the public school board of trustees sets the tax rates. If they set a tax increase, of course, the independent schools pupils' parents' taxes will go up because they pay the same taxes that the parents of students in public schools do. So, when their public school trustees raise taxes, they pay those raised taxes. But the setting of the taxes that the public schools choose to do does not impact in any way, shape or form--pardon me, it would not be impacted by this decision of the government of Manitoba.

In some provinces--in fact, in Alberta, provinces to the west of us--taxpayers have the choice of directing their taxes. They can direct their taxes to the private school system or the public school system. In Manitoba they do not have that luxury. They have to pay the public school taxes, and then on top of that they also have to pay for the private schools. In Alberta, for example, the private system is fully funded by the people. They do not pay public taxes at all, and the students going to the private schools, the separate school system there, the Catholic schools, do not pay user fees the way they have to here in Manitoba.

(Mr. Frank Pitura, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

So people who wish to exercise their religious rights in that sense can take advantage of religious education, provided they are willing to accept less and pay more for that privilege. That is some 83 percent of the independent schools.

There are also other schools that are not necessarily religious based, but they may be all-girls schools like Balmoral Hall or all-boys schools like St. Paul's. They pay again extra to be able to participate in a single-gender school, which, again the public schools cannot provide them, just as they cannot by law provide religious exercises.

Division costs, the member indicates, have been rising. She said they are experiencing rising costs that they cannot control and to leave aside the question of teachers' wages as a cost impact. But the fact is that many divisions are being able to lower a lot of their other costs. The only one they have not been successful in lowering is the teacher wage cost. If the divisions continue being successful as they have--and I can name a number of areas in where school divisions have substantially reduced costs in heating and many school divisions have now put in efficiency factors in their schools that have reduced heating costs substantially. They have brought in simple measures, such as tying the light switch to the heating register so that every time the light goes off the heat goes down. They have closed off wings of schools where they have empty classrooms, mothballed the classrooms, put the heat down to just maintenance temperature and saved heating costs that way.

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Many divisions are now renting out empty rooms to daycares or to other suitable community enterprises and generating revenue for their schools, thereby offsetting their costs. Many divisions are using more low-maintenance buses. Many have switched to computerized systems for their busing routes so that they can reduce the costs of transportation organization where they have to decide, you know, having to have people make decisions on busing routes. There are so many efficiencies that have been brought in by school divisions that have been able to bring costs down that I am very admiring of school divisions that have done these things.

As I say, the one cost the member says that we should set aside and not look at is the one cost that to date they have not been able to get a control on. If they are able successfully to prevent the ever-rising escalation of salary costs, then it is conceivable that continuing their efforts to become more cost-efficient in purchasing of supplies, moving to joint purchasing with other divisions on materials as many divisions have and moving to multimedia materials as opposed to print materials and a wide variety of other things they are doing, it is quite conceivable that their costs could come down in which case, of course, the funding for independent schools would also go down, because the funding for the independent schools will go up or down depending upon how successful the public schools are in containing their costs. Since the independent school parents pay those costs to public schools plus their own on top of it, I think they have a strong interest in seeing public schools get their costs down.

Our formula is not unique; it is not a unique formula. It is based upon the same kind of method used in British Columbia. British Columbia--the member may be familiar with the government there as it is of her same party, an NDP government--uses a somewhat similar formula that we have modelled ours upon. They seem to think it works well there and we are not partisan about these things. If the NDP have a good idea in one province that we think will work well here, we are quite happy to emulate their example of the role model that they have set for other Canadian provinces. The member may feel differently, but then we are not being partisan here.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think the minister was in one part of her statement assuming that private schools and separate schools in Alberta were the same and towards the end she did pick up on that. So it is important, I think, in this discussion to keep those issues clear.

The minister made many comments about the ability of school divisions to cut their costs, and I wondered if the minister had a collected list of those initiatives, some of the ones she mentioned. She indicated that there were many, many more that school divisions had used across the province. Here is an example of the role of the government in providing information and assistance to school divisions in best practices, the kind of thing that we talked about earlier in Estimates. Does the minister have available a list like that, that could be tabled, or that perhaps she has already made available to school divisions?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, certainly, I can recall that, when I was chairman of the St. James-Assiniboia School Board, we had identified some $11 million worth of cost saving that our division had invoked by doing such things as closing off wings of schools, bringing in heat conservation measures into the schools, purchasing of different brands of floor wax; I mean, getting right down to the nitty-gritty. Certainly, divisions share those with each other, and we encourage them to do that. In fact, the member is probably aware that we have just come through some very intense consultations with divisions in Manitoba concerning the Boundaries Review, and one of the things that has come out of that has been the identification of cost savings and cost efficiencies.

I believe it was Garden Valley or Hanover or one of those divisions that just recently submitted to me a list of the cost savings and efficiencies that they had just, in the last month or so, identified for me in terms of reducing expenditures by shared-services agreements with other school divisions. One way in which St. James-Assiniboia was able to bring its transportation costs down was, for example, to share busing costs with St. Charles Academy, the Roman Catholic private school in our area, where they shared the bus going the same route. Each paid a per capita; each got it for less--those kinds of things.

We have comparative statistics from the 1996-97 FRAME budgets showing areas where school divisions have been able to reduce costs. We look, for example, at a drop of 2.7 percent in administrative costs. We look at a drop of 2.3 percent in transportation of pupils. We look at a drop of 0.5 percent in the operations and the maintenance, a way of delivering operations and maintenance. We look at the community education services in terms of ways of delivering those things. We look at a percentage drop there of 8 percent. We look at a number of efficiencies that are sort of generic.

I do not have that kind of data on a division-by-division basis, but the numbers I have just indicated were gleaned by summarizing the data available in FRAME, and I will table this as a public document, and if the member wishes to do her own extrapolation on any kind of figuring in here, she is most welcome to do that. So I will table the FRAME Report, 1995-96 budget, and indicate to her, as I table it, that this goes out to every school division in Manitoba so they can do just those very same kinds of deductive extrapolation that the member may wish to do with the document.

As well, I indicate that secretary-treasurers and superintendents and trustees, particularly the MASBO officials, are constantly sharing ideas for cost efficiency. I mentioned the cost savings that could have been made on the purchasing of materials or different ways of planning out the bus routes, and divisions looking for best practices can examine FRAME and see how the information in there fits their own needs, and we encourage them to do that. We encourage them to continue their co-operative efforts. We are delighted to see boards all across this province working to identify to me how they are planning to reduce costs by sharing of all kinds of things.

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(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

We also know that once the initial technology education is finally in place, you can expect to see a lot of course deliveries and itinerant teachers and so on--you can expect to see a lot of those costs come down. Initially, they are not going to in those areas because the costs are still high, and we still have CRTC rulings, et cetera, but over time the use of technology will eventually result in abilities to deliver sophisticated course offerings at a much lesser rate than can currently be done, or sometimes not be done at all right now.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think the FRAME document that the minister refers to is a summary of numbers, pie charts, diagrams which would indicate changed costs. It may or it may not show efficiencies. It may indeed show cuts. What I was looking for from the minister was some sense that the department took a role in summarizing, in publicizing and encouraging best practices. The minister gave a number of examples, but as I understood the minister's response, it was that this was something which she left up to others, that this was to be done on an informal basis through secretary-treasurers, superintendents and trustees. I am asking again, does the minister take any responsibility? Does she see any role for the department in taking the best practices, seeing where there are real efficiencies and encouraging and finding ways for divisions to come together, to use them in some cases, or to plan for these kinds of efficiencies?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the department does do workshops and seminars. We have seminars, seven planned, coming up for about 150 school division financial people. We talk about best practices, accounting, those kinds of things, and we also are available and are often called upon, upon request, for advice and guidance. We have had workshops in the last year. Again, the school division financial people with the Department of Education, Finance Branch, they do look at best practices. They worked on an intensive analyses with three school divisions in this last year, actually working with them on parts of their budget when requested. So there is very intensive assistance available.

The only thing that we have to be careful of, because of the local autonomy of school boards, is that we do not put boards in a position where they end up saying here is government interfering with us in the matter of our spending of money. The school boards, as you know, are very sensitive right now about the spending of their money. We have just come through two consecutive MASS conventions where they have passed resolutions on the floor of the house asking that their local autonomy be seen as a high priority, demanding that their ability to pay be allowed to be considered at the bargaining table, that they did not want control of how they spent their money being turned over to a third party for decision making. They have passed two resolutions two years in a row stating that to government.

So, when we are available, providing workshops, seminars, advice, guidance, we are very careful not to be seen to be telling them how they have to spend their money, because that, as I indicate, is of high priority to them, that they retain that local autonomy.

Even when we went and did that intensive analyzing with those three divisions, it was the desire of the divisions that we be there providing them that help. It was not our imposing ourselves into their area of jurisdiction and authority.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think what the minister misses is the sensitivity of school trustees to the constant cuts that it has received in public education from this government, the sensitivity of trustees who now see that as they are forced to increase taxes that in fact at the same time as they are doing that, they are also taking money out of the public purse to go to private schools as well.

I think what I was looking for from the minister was some sense that a government which continues to cut the money to public schools also take some responsibility for ensuring that schools and school divisions across Manitoba were aware of what their neighbours were doing, were aware that there were efficiencies that perhaps they had not tried, that the government could encourage divisions in that way. I do not see any responsibility for that, but I would like to ask the minister if she would table the workshop outline which she said dealt with best practices, the workshops that the Department of Education’s Finance Branch did with three school divisions at their request.

Would it be possible for the minister to table the workshop outline and some of the materials that were used in that?

Mrs. McIntosh: I do not have that here and as far as indicating the exact nature of the work done in an intensive analysis of three particular specific school divisions at their request, I think that would be up to the school divisions to determine whether they wanted that brought forward.

I would say in response to the member’s questions or, I suppose, comments, really, that we are very sensitive not to be micromanaging in the school divisions. One of the things that we discovered with the new blueprint and the Foundation for Excellence was that boards indicated that they did not want the department in there micromanaging and felt that the blueprint was, in the first instance, providing them with micromanagement from the department, and that was a large part of the initial resistance to the blueprint. It was not so much that they did not approve of having new curricula or doing assessment as rather that they did not want to have the department telling them what to do.

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I think, by and large, from the work that has been going on in the last few months, we are through a lot of that in that divisions, many divisions are now up and running and enjoying some of the new plans and finding that they are enjoying them and are pleased they are there and that the hurdles, many of the initial hurdles have now been crossed and so there is a much easier implementation period than we had thought we might be having at this time based upon the initial feeling that, oh, the department is micromanaging and to imply, as the member has-- I think, maybe not intentionally, but there seemed to be a bit of an implication in her commentary that because we were not out there imposing that, therefore, we were not available.

As I indicated, the department is ready upon request, and I gave her the one example of the working with three divisions on an intensive analyses of their financing and expenditures and even helping them with certain sections of the budget preparation. That was pretty in-depth assistance which the division desired. We are at the divisions' wishes too. We are most willing and eager to do that. I do not know, if maybe the member could indicate if the member would be prepared to endorse my implementing a program of a network of sharing best practice in addition to the workshops, you know, I would be interested in a response to that.

We also have assisted boards with flexible management by allowing them a little bit more in the formula, that 20 percent flexibility within some four or five budget categories, and boards have expressed a tremendous appreciation for that because it has allowed them to mix and match their needs more. Naturally, I think everybody would prefer a larger block grant and so would we, but, when money is tight, the flexibility within the frame lines does assist greatly, and that has been expressed back to us many, many times, thank you for the flexibility. The member should also recognize that we have two main reasons that cuts have been necessary this year in the public school system. One, of course, is the tremor or ripple effect that we are feeling from the federal transfer cuts, massive cuts, huge in their impact, enormous in their impact, on the education system, and the ripple effect of those through the system is that it was impossible to maintain funding for this year or until such time as the federal transfer cuts are no longer cuts.

Last night, in fact, I was out in Altona speaking at a parent council there, which I do. As the member knows, I do regular school visits. Because there were some people there who had taken the trouble to take a look at the impact of external circumstances on the provincial budget and understood the negative impacts of the transfer cuts plus the $2 million in interest on the debt that we have to pay every day, the debt left us by the NDP, we were actually thanked by a small group of people for being able--actually, what they asked me to do, I did not do it, and I must do it, is to pass on--they said, pass on to Treasury Board our thanks. I thought this was a very unusual thing for me to hear. But what they wanted me to do--and this is true, and I will make sure that Mr. Stefanson knows. They said, pass on to Treasury Board our thanks for being able to minimize the impact of the external circumstances your government faces to 2 percent and for not passing through what the real cut would have been to education if Treasury Board had not found ways to save money elsewhere.

I thought it was an indication of the public finally beginning to understand that $116 million taken out of a system plus $2 million a day that has to go in interest means that you just simply cannot fund to the level that you would like to. But I can guarantee you that, if you look at the way the funding has been developed, we have actually been able to increase the intensity of our provision provincially to the schools over and above what it used to be in the government that held power before the Filmon government took over the reins and started making some efforts to get finances under control.

I think I have indicated before, but it bears repeating, that next year we will have a $220- million cut from Ottawa, roughly the equivalent of the operating budget of the University of Manitoba. [interjection] The member for The Pas (Mr. Lathlin) would like to say something, Mr. Chairman. Could he please be given the microphone so that he can say his comments into the record? I have no objection. He is speaking. He might as well have the mike.

Ms. Friesen: I hope that when the minister speaks to Treasury Board that she will pass on the comments of my constituents, many of whom are facing a 20 percent cut in their welfare rates. These are young people who have to find transport out of that to look for work. The situation that many of those young people in my riding have been put in through this Treasury Board, this government, is unbelievable.

I want the minister to remember that. I want the minister, as she leaves this House, to look those young people in west Broadway in the eye, to tell them how they are going to feed themselves on the money that they are being allowed by this government, to tell them where the jobs are that this government says are there.

The minister must want to pass on a balanced report to the Treasury Board. I hope she includes that. I hope she includes, as well, the impact of the cuts in her funding to school divisions across Manitoba. In particular, she might think of the loss of nursery schools in the city of Winnipeg, nursery schools and the Headstart Programs, which are one of the things that the young children of the inner city very much depended upon, one of the things which every educational report indicates gave them a head start, gave them a chance. The cuts that this government has imposed upon the school system of the public--[interjection] Oh, I am sorry, is the minister speaking to someone?

I am so sorry, Mr. Deputy Chairperson. I guess the minister is not paying attention.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. Order, please, to everybody. I would ask that we try to follow the line that we are on more carefully, to all members. I would like to keep these Estimates, if possible, rolling smoothly.

Ms. Friesen: I would like to continue with what I was saying, reminding the minister of the balanced picture which I am sure she will want to present to Treasury Board and suggesting, since the minister was at that moment speaking, that it was essentially the same kind of position which she indicated to the member for The Pas (Mr. Lathlin), and I think we should treat each other equally in this case, and I notice the minister is doing it again.

I am quite prepared to continue to speak while the minister continues to discuss things, as she should, with her staff, but I do think that should be put on the record because it is the kind of behaviour the minister has employed throughout these Estimates. I have ignored it until now, but I do think it is important to recognize it.

Mr. Chairman, I understand your concern and desire to continue on the particular line that we are facing here, and again I will return to that line and suggest when the minister presents her report to Treasury Board that she also talk about the increases in salaries which have been offered to members of Crown corporations, 42 percent increases, I gather, in some cases in this government, and the increased grants to elite schools across Manitoba at the same time as grants to public schools have been cut. It is the inequity, it is the unfairness that so many Manitobans are coming to recognize from this government.

I want to ask the minister what reports she receives regularly from private schools. What are the reporting lines? We know, for example, that the private schools must have trained teachers, trained in the public universities. I assume that they present a report to the minister of the qualifications of the teachers in their schools each year. They must follow the curriculum of Manitoba.

Is there a report that the private schools provide regularly to the minister on their attention to the curriculum of Manitoba? As they receive both Level I and in some cases Level II and III special needs, is there something similar to the ADAP or to reports from other schools that are provided by the private schools on a regular basis? Could the minister tell me what regular reports--by regular, I think I mean annual in this case--she receives from each of the private schools of Manitoba, the funded private schools?

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. A formal vote has been requested in the Chamber. We will now proceed to the Assembly. Thank you.

The committee recessed at 4:20 p.m.

________

After Recess

The committee resumed at 5:12 p.m.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. We will resume Estimates in Education and Training. I believe the honourable minister was about to answer a question that had been asked.

Mrs. McIntosh: The member was indeed correct that during her question I did turn to receive some information from my deputy on a question that she had asked earlier. In that sense, I was following her example of talking while other people were speaking, but I am pleased to say, I am not following the other examples of the way in which we treat provincial money.

I should indicate that one of the reasons we have $650 million interest that we have to pay on the debt every year is directly because of the care that the previous NDP government forgot to take with our finances. So the fact that we have that amount of interest to pay on the debt every year--$650 million or just a little under $2 million a day--really does hamstring us in being able to do a lot of things.

I also should indicate, since the matter was raised by the member, that we have also done some other things where we have not followed her example. The CPI, for example, is up 32.5 percent since we took office and the provincial support to schools is up 36.5 percent. When we took office in '88, the support to schools as a percentage of the provincial budget was 11 percent; now it is 12 percent. So those are just a few of the things that I think are important to put on the record in light of the comments that the member made in her commentary before she asked her question.

She had asked a question about the accountability for independent schools, and I think we have been through this before several times, but I am happy to let her know again that the independent schools must provide audited financial statements which are filed annually with the schools Finance Branch. Their accounting must conform to a standard. They must employ certified teachers, verified by the schools Finance Branch annually by the professional certification office upon mandatory provision of a list of teachers employed by each independent school.

With the special needs students, they negotiate with our staff on each Level II and Level III pupil based on the same criteria as in public schools. They will have to prepare annual school plans which will include the plans for special needs programming and, when those are in place, which we expect will be happening shortly, there will be no need for ADAPs because we will be having the annual school plans.

They must also teach the Manitoba curriculum. We do not monitor this directly, nor do we in the public schools but, since all the students will be having to write the Manitoba tests in both independent and public schools and the tests are curriculum congruent, the knowledge of the curriculum will soon become evident.

I am not quite sure what else the member asked because we did have a 45-minute break and I am not quite certain if I have forgotten some of the other aspects of her question,but, if I have, she may wish to restate some of those points now and I will seek to try and provide the answer.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us what the enrollment was at the beginning of the year in private schools last year and what the enrollment is at the current time? Does the minister have a means for knowing that or does she have, for example, a previous year where we would be able to have an accounting of initial enrollments and final enrollments?

Mrs. McIntosh: Excuse me, is there another committee going in the Chamber as well, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Yes, there is.

Mrs. McIntosh: Okay. The member had asked the question about, she wanted to know about the enrollment, and we know, for example, that 10,305 students were enrolled in '94-95 and 10,569 were enrolled in '95-96, and so it is possible then to see the difference between those two in terms of numbers and you can extrapolate a percentage from that.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I am interested in knowing both the reporting mechanism and the actual numbers of enrollments in private schools at the beginning of the year and enrollment in private schools at the end of the year. What the minister provided me with was two separate enrollment years, and I am looking first of all for the method, the reporting mechanism of how the department receives that and, secondly, if she could give me an actual example.

Mrs. McIntosh: We use exactly the same method that we do in public schools. The September 30 enrollment is the enrollment figure that is used for public schools and for independent schools as well, as the member can see, the consistent thread of similar treatment for the partly funded schools. The nonfunded schools, of course, do not require the same adherence to public school rules. The deputy has just indicated that we do not know at the end of June the enrollment figures for the public schools either. We go by the September 30 date.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, does the minister not request final enrollments from public schools? I mean, the minister has got a $3 million school information service. Is this not providing those kinds of numbers?

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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we still follow the NDP way of doing it in that regard. We have not yet had a chance to reform that aspect of education because we have been too busy reforming all the others. But right now we are still following the exact same method used by the member's government when it was in power, although we certainly are interested in moving to more frequent enrollment projections and accounting so that we can improve from their methodology.

I am pleased to hear the member's question because I think it indicates that she too feels the method the NDP employed could be improved, and certainly we are interested in that. Right now we are still using the old NDP way.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I am interested to note that the government over eight years and $3 million is not able to ask these kinds of questions of its Schools Information System.

I wanted to ask the minister too why there is no separate line for the amount of money given to private education neither here nor on the Schools Grants section. We have spent a lot of time in this Estimates partly because the minister has changed the funding formula. I wanted to have it on the public record precisely, for trustees and parents and students, how that actually works. So we spent a lot of time putting that on the public record.

There is also no line, as far as I can find in the public Estimates of the department, where the public in general can follow those amounts. So I am suggesting to the minister there may be an opportunity to do that within the Estimates of the department. Is that a possibility? Should the minister be directing us to other areas of the budget where this is accounted for?

Mrs. McIntosh: The member indicated that she is surprised that in eight years we have not been able to change everything over from the way they had it when they were in power, but I indicate to the member on the year-end enrollment figures, the fact that we do not yet have a change does not mean we have not been working on it.

We at least have taken the time to begin work on it, and we will be moving electronically, which is the way to go. We have an EIS committee with representatives from MASBO and school divisions working on the compilation of data so that we can find electronic means to do this. Right now, of course, as the member may or may not know from her party's days in government how school divisions feel about being forced to produce paper blizzards on shifting enrollments, we are working to have that out, and it will probably be within the next year or two that you can see that electronic system up.

I think that will be very significant for a whole host of reasons, not just for year-end enrollments but for other reasons as well in terms of the compilation of data and the ability to utilize it for decision-making purposes. The member had asked another question regarding the independent schools, and she was asking will there be a separate line. I am indicating that we are looking into a separate line, but right now the line says Schools Grants, and that is, they are children in our schools both public and private. When I think about the students in schools and when I think about school grants, I tend to think of students. I often will say to people--because I know the member has made quite a point at some moment in the past of saying that the minister is the minister and responsible for public schools in Manitoba, which indeed I am.

I am also the Minister of Education, and I am responsible for the education of all students, not just those in public schools. I am responsible for the students who are educated in public schools, which are the ones the member is interested in, but I am also responsible for educating the students in independent schools, in partly funded schools, in nonfunded schools and in home schools. They are all equally important to me, because each deserves and requires an education, each has the money being paid by their guardians or parents to the exact same tune, the same amount, except the independent schools of couse pay a user fee on top of their basic amount. The member made reference to Alberta where I lived for three years and had my own children start school there, so I am well aware of the differences she pointed out to me after I had explained the system in Alberta to her that we do not have that ability here in Manitoba of having a separate school system.

I do take my responsibilities to all children seriously. I do feel I have as big a responsibility to those who exercise their choice in a free country to choose a religious school or an alternative school just as Ed Schreyer said when he signed that agreement with the federal government saying that he believed that all children had the right to attend schools of their choice other than state-run schools and that all education should be free till the end of Grade 8 and that he would bring in legislation if he had to to ensure that they had that right.

Just as Ed Schreyer said that, so I believe.

Ms. Friesen: I am glad to see that the minister will be looking into the prospect of having a separate line dealing with the amount of funding going to private schools because the issue here is not one child versus another child, it is that the funding is based upon different assumptions. There are different methods of funding the two kinds of schools; and, when we look at Estimates and when we pass or reject Estimates, we are looking at the financial responsibility. So I am glad to see that the minister will be looking at that next time.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, and I think that will show up, of course, as--right now, as I say, it is all school grants. I think a separate line might more clearly delineate how much money the public school system is saving by having the independent schools pick up $8 million of the public schools costs. That perhaps would be a good thing for people to see.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please.

The hour is now 5:30 p.m., and I am interrupting the proceedings of the committee. As previously agreed in the House, the committee will be recessed until 9 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday).