Mr. Deputy Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Good morning. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. The committee will be resuming consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training. When the committee recessed yesterday afternoon, it had been considering item 5. Support to Schools (a) Schools Finance (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 40.
5.(a)(1) $824,300--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $155,900--pass.
5.(b) Education Administration Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,077,800.
Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chairman, I am interested in asking some questions on this line about the accumulative spending on the record management system-- no, not the record management system but the school information system. Could the minister's staff give us some idea of the amount of money that has been spent on the school information system over the last five years?
Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): That information is coming forward in just a moment. We call this EIS, and I think the member, if I recall from our conversation last year on this topic, has a good sense of what we are expecting to achieve with that, basically a historical database of information on students, teachers, school divisions, courses, exams and now Senior years' marks. It will also incorporate access to other information sources such as StatsCanada and FRAME. We hope with this to provide a long-term basis for research and evaluation of educational programming. For example, accurate statistics can be derived to measure student mobility, student dropouts, graduation rates and other standard measurements that are currently unavailable or inaccurate. The four-year cost for EIS has been authorized for $3,927,700, and we will, as I say, have the five-year cost available for you in a few moments. [interjection]
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. It is a nice morning, I know, and we are all energetic and ready to say a few words.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I thought we were waiting for the minister. She said that she was going to provide the fifth year.
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Mrs. McIntosh: I do have the five-year figure here now. The figure I read out for the four years was the expected amount and in effect we expect that we will be able to, over the five years, come in at that amount or even less if we are as good as we think we can be on some of the cost efficiencies here. So just to give a breakdown there for '93-94, we now have, for year one we started off at $738,000 for the operating; and year two was $921,000; year three was $966,000; and year four was $948,000. Year five we expect we will see being able to stay or remain at that $3.65 million.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, does this include the pilot project that was run at about the cost of a million dollars?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I think the member may be referring to a pilot project that took place in 1988, and this series of five years which ends with the '97-98 year is a different series of achievements. The 1988 pilot was internal to government. There was no external or other cost to it, but it was not a pilot for these five years that we are just coming to the end of.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, could the minister tell us what happened between 1988 and 1993 on the department's plans and provisions for developing a school and educational information system?
Mrs. McIntosh: This information is going back some six years, et cetera, so I have information here that I think will help, but I do not have personal recollection or full understanding of some of the details surrounding that long ago, but my understanding is this, and that is that between those years of 1989 and 1993 the department staff under the ADM, which was then Mr. Sale, set up a province-wide purchasing agreement with a group called Trevlac. Mr. Sale was promoting Trevlac to divisions. The software was supplied to divisions; Trevlac supplied software to divisions for administrative purposes.
Unfortunately, it was not used by most divisions since many of them preferred a different system. I think it still is there as an offering for school divisions, but school divisions are allowed to choose others if they wish, and you will find a great many are choosing a different system.
Also in those years the department purchased a computer and software for the library at 1181 Portage Avenue for internal data storage for the department, and I understand that that has been replaced as of about three years ago. Last year I remember the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) asking us for this year's Estimates to table a work plan for EIS, and we have that here because we took note of it to bring it forward for Estimates this year.
We have this EIS plan. It outlines our vision, plans, actions and deliverables. I think that school divisions will find that it is much more to their liking. It has been widely circulated, and I have three copies here for tabling as required and a copy for me.
Ms. Friesen: Perhaps the minister could just tell me when Mr. Sale was required to leave this department's employ? I think it was 1990, was it?--1991?
The minister is discussing all actions between 1988 and 1993 as the responsibility of one particular assistant deputy minister in this area.
Mrs. McIntosh: No.
Ms. Friesen: The question I asked was, what happened between 1988 and 1993? I got an answer based upon Mr. Sale's activities. I am just inquiring when he actually was required to leave this department, perhaps we could pin down some of this more precisely.
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Mrs. McIntosh: No. I distinctly, clearly said that in 1989, in 1993, in those years that the ADM had set up a province-wide purchasing agreement. I subsequently then said that the department purchased a computer. I also indicated that the ADM had been set up with Trevlac for the province and that is correct. I am not sure if it was '89 or '90, but I then went on to indicate that the department had purchased a computer and the member--I think it is all known that Mr. Sale went on to other activities at some point in the early '90s, but it was he who did set up the original province-wide purchasing agreement with Trevlac. I do not believe that I attributed the purchase of the computer and software for the library at 1181 Portage or those things to anybody but the department. I believe I was quite specific in saying “the department.”
I am not quite sure what year Mr. Sale's employment was terminated with the department, but we believe it was '89, '90, somewhere in there. He, in 1989, as I indicated, had instituted the Trevlac purchase and apparently, my deputy informs me, the library computer purchase as well.
After Mr. Sale had left, that was after Mr. Sale was no longer in the employment of government that we established a committee in 1992, which was some years later. We had been analyzing the Trevlac use, which was not as well received as the ADM had hoped it would be when I am sure he had hoped that it would be picked up.
The department did not want to impose Trevlac on people, but it is still available for them should they wish to use it. So we established a committee in 1992-93 to begin a revamp and a new EIS plan, which I have just shared with the member just now. So if I have indicated that, when I said that Mr. Sale had instituted the Trevlac purchase and was speaking to school divisions to let them know it was available to them, and I indicated that was done when he was ADM. I do know that he did leave the employ of government. I know that he is still not an ADM with government, but he was the one who instituted the Trevlac purchase. The member had asked what we had done between '89 and '93; that was one of the first things we did in those years. I perhaps should have said that the ADM subsequently left the employ of government, but I thought we all knew that he was no longer employed by government, he is not with government anymore. He did leave the government around the end of '89, '90, somewhere around there, after he had initiated these purchases which we have now modified.
The moves into computerized data gathering started in around that '88-89 period of time. Subsequent experience, as we became more familiar with what the needs were there and the people in the field became more familiar, showed that we needed to move further into a new direction, and that is what we have done and that is what we are doing, a more extensive and broadly integrated system. The work plan that I have tabled I believe will indicate to the member the overview, the one big concern that we had, and I think we talked about this last year when the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) was interested to know where we had been moving with this plan. The big thing for this minister and some of my colleagues on this side of the House was the privacy access and confidentiality concern. I recall us having a fairly lengthy discussion that because we had that concern we were moving very cautiously and very carefully to make sure we were not setting up a big brother kind of regime which I do not think that anybody around the table would like to see. So how do we maximize the benefit of having swift information flow and the ability to trace students to their benefit and ours and education's benefit and still keep that as a prime factor was something we had to ask.
But you will see in here it talks about the functional design, the technical design, the communication, develop school modifications, and all of those documentation and final testing, et cetera. There are two modules, the student module and the teacher module, and I think the member might find it interesting. As I say, it is out there in the field. We also have instituted a newsletter for EIS, and I will table that as well. It is called the EIS Update. This is the April '96 edition. It is called Automating the Grant Application Process. In this particular issue we talk about the new Manitoba student numbers, building awareness of the introduction of a provincial student number. We have the EIS contacts, names and numbers that can be contacted, and on the Internet as well. We have questions and answers that are commonly held and commonly asked. I think it is very easily read. There is something on page 2 about student numbers that the member may find useful in pursuing this topic. So I have three copies of this as well, Mr. Chairman, for the committee, and I hope the member finds this helpful.
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Ms. Friesen: If I can reconstruct it then, in 1988, there was a pilot project. Between 1988 and 1990 or '91 there was some preparation around Trevlac for selling software to divisions for administrative purposes. Between 1990 and 1993 the department did some computerization of its own data storage and purchased some software for the computer for that. In 1989, or between 1993 and 1996-97, there has been $3.5 million spent on an educational information system which has involved, I understand, the development of again another pilot project with four pilot schools. Am I missing something? Is that what we have got for $3.5 million and six years?
Mrs. McIntosh: Just to correct some factual information the member has put on the record and also to correct a perception that she has somehow picked up that is not correct. The member keeps referring to a pilot project done in 1988. There was no pilot project done in 1988. What occurred was an internal project, would be a right word that you could use, internal to the department where the department tested on itself, so to speak, the capabilities of some of this computerization. It was not done in the field, it was not done in the schools, it was not done outside of government. Internally, within the department, they began to use these communication flows to see if they felt they were working, and they had discussions with the schools in the fields at that time.
But the offering up of Trevlac, which was instituted by Mr. Sale in '88-89, the member has just said '91-92 or something like that--I had indicated in the beginning that this project was done under the AD of Mr. Sale who initiated with Trevlac, a company that he felt was the one that should be the deliverer, I believe the sole deliverer at that point.
The member just indicated that Mr. Sale--she told me, I think, that Mr. Sale left the department in 1990. I do not know what date he left, but how could he then have instituted this a year later after he had left? So I just, you know, pose the timing. You have to just take a look at those things, too.
I am going to table the EIS deliverables time line because the member, even though I have indicated that in 1993-94 we began our work on the EIS, seems to think that there has been no activity. Let me tell the member exactly what we have been doing, and then I will gladly table this deliverables timetable.
After having done our internal project but not tested it in the field, we went out. We did talk to divisions. They were offered the Trevlac. Some of the them were willing to take that; others wanted to use ones they preferred better.
Since 1993, we have accomplished the following: We now have the administrative database online. We have the provincial exams online. We are tracing all home schools online. We have all the high school marks online. We have all the special needs students online. These have all been used, by the way, since, like in 1993 when the administrative database went on. In Phase I, in 1993-94, we have Division No. 1, the largest in the province, Divisions No. 6, No. 9 and No. 48--50,000 students in Phase I are being tracked, and in Phase II we have added Division No. 10. We have, again, with student tracing, 70,000 students. We now have, at this point, in those two that I have indicated, the provincial exam specialties, high school marks and home schools all being tracked. The next phase, Phase I of the student implementation which is occurring this year, has 130,000 students on it and in 1997 is being geared up and ready to go for 200,000 students, and that will also include teacher tracking. I will table this so the member can take a look at it and understand that if she is thinking that we did not get a lot done, that we have a tremendous amount done with better and more relevant equipment geared for the long term and increasing with rapidity at an ever-increasing scale, like coming online faster and faster and faster and faster as time goes by.
The grant application system is automated. Student numbers will be assigned for almost 130,000 students by this fall, and that exceeded the target in our plans by 30,000 students, and that is not a small undertaking. We are on track and exceeding our time lines. The member may recall a matter raised by her party in the House expressing concern that the government was moving to use the health number for students, and we did not do that. If the member thinks about how these processes move, I know that she has not sat on this side of the table in government, but in order to devise a new number, we put together a committee of stakeholders and created our own student number system. We are progressively implementing it, and this takes time to do. We could have done it quickly. If the member is concerned that it took too long, we could have done it quickly. We could have just used the health number, but I believe from the questioning the member's party has put before that they did not want us to do that. So when we take the time to make sure that we have covered off concerns about privacy and confidentiality in consultation with other people, the member, I think, will be aware that that takes time to do properly.
When we move quickly, we are usually criticized for not having been thorough enough to consult. When we take the time to consult, we are usually criticized for not moving swiftly enough.
There was the comic who said that if we were able to walk on water we would be accused of not knowing how to swim, and I sometimes feel a little bit like that in the questioning that comes during the Estimates process. That is meant as a piece of humour, not as any criticism. It is, I think, something that people who have sat on this side of the table experience a lot, and it is very easy to say why would you not move faster? I think we have moved very rapidly. This is a lot more than simply adding or subtracting and changing equipment and software.
If the member thinks that to put this program in place is just a case of going down and saying, we will use this kind of software and this kind of equipment, and if we do not like it, we will just change it. If she thinks it is that simple, we could have available our computer experts and our systems planning and managers and so on to indicate to her that it is a lot more complex than that.
It is a matter of evolving a plan for resource acquisition and deployment, an integrated plan, consulting stakeholders, moving from awareness to plan to action. Those are usually the steps that should be followed if a project is to have long-range success. I believe this go round, with the work that had begun in 1993, that we will now have one that will be accepted in the field and used in the field with confidence that all of the sensitive factors have been looked at carefully when we begin to track students, and data, and teachers, and whatever else it is we need to make sure the system is a knowledgeable one with a good information flow.
The plan involves outside interests, school divisions, and internally, the department people. Internally, the department people would be Schools' Finance Branch, schools Administration & Professional Certification.
Ms. Friesen: Well, it is a complex issue, the minister is right, but it is not the first time that any jurisdiction on this planet has tried to put together an educational information system. There are educational information systems in other provinces, in other divisions, in other institutions. My concern has been for the time taken and the money, $3.5 million over the last several years is a considerable amount of money for something which she is now tabling, and I notice and I thank the minister for tabling the newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 1, April 1996, the work plan that has been tabled here, the overview prepared April 4, 1996.
It is possible that this is now on track, but we have had three or four years and a million dollars a year approximately spent on this, and it is not clear what this system has delivered to the people of Manitoba over that period. It is possible that something may now come of it, and I look forward to that, but I think the minister's association of speed, or lack of speed, with a committee which delayed things I think is a little off base. The principle of taking health numbers and adding them to education numbers is against all principles of databases, and it seems to me that there should have been the expertise within government to understand that from the beginning.
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The Canada Privacy Act dealt with that a number of years ago, and that was the question I raised in the House. One of the problems is that this government in general has been very slow off the mark with a minister for informational technology. I think we are about four years behind New Brunswick in establishing that or establishing an advisory committee for that, and this is the implication it has is the slowing down of these kinds of issues and these kinds of committees across the government.
The minister said that this system can now tell us, and I think it says in the material she tabled, that it can now tell us what programs are taught at schools. I wonder why, when I asked the minister earlier about the number of math courses that were taught in schools across Manitoba, she said that the system was not able to deliver that at the moment. Is that something that we should know next year? What I was asking, if she remembers last year, was how many different mathematics programs are offered at the Senior 1 and Senior 2 levels in schools across Manitoba. I was concerned that it might have been that only some schools could offer more than one Grade 9 or Grade 10 math program. Will the system be able to deliver that information next year? Can it deliver it now?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I indicate, first of all, that I am pleased that the member agrees with our final decisions on not using the health number. I believe that was discussed last year. If I am not mistaken, the member might be interested to check Hansard and see what her colleague had to say about the use of health numbers last year. I think I recall some comments that she might find interesting in light of her comments this morning, but I do not recall it specifically enough to quote. So I encourage her, if she is interested, to check to make sure that there is consistency internally within her party.
We did look at all of the other suggestions that the member mentioned. We looked at other jurisdictions. We looked at other alternatives and rejected them. That took a little bit of time too. But if the member feels that we should have maybe just gone to British Columbia and just took theirs and used it exactly as was, I guess we could have done that. We did want a made-in-Manitoba solution. We did take a look, as I say, at those other alternatives and in the final analysis rejected them as not being exactly the right fit for Manitoba, and so we have developed our own. The member indicates that she is pleased with our final decisions, and I thank her for that.
Those decisions, when you are in opposition, it is easy to say do them tonight and have them ready tomorrow. When you are in government and you actually have to really do these things, you will find that they do take a bit of time to put together. But the member, obviously, does not want to acknowledge the progress that has taken place in the last three to four years because I indicated to her what we have been doing, and she says that you spent $3 million for virtually nothing to speak of, and yet I indicate that in 1993 the administrative database of the provincial exams was delivered.
(Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)
In 1994 the home schools and special needs were delivered; in '95 the high schools. We have given her the figures for the '96-97. We have indicated we are already 30,000 students over and above our expectations. I want to point out that the courses she was asking for will be available at the end of June. Senior 1-Senior 4 report on courses delivered on a school basis will be delivered at the end of June. The process that we will be seeing this year is that as the marks come in, so too will all the course information at that time. So that will be available on a school-by-school basis. I think that is what she was asking. That is from Senior 1 right through to Senior 4.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the material the minister tabled dated April 4, 1996, says the EIS system today has the following components. It says, first of all, school information which contains details about grades and programs taught. I assume that what is meant by this is that the system has the capacity to contain what programs are taught, but it does not yet have those, may have them by June.
The minister also said that provincial exam marks, obviously, have been computerized. That is something one would normally do at this stage if you are going to have provincial exams. But it also says high school marks, S1 to S4. Now, are those marks for every course taught in every high school in the province, or is it only the ones, the core courses? Does it include student-initiated? Does it deal with apprenticeship programs? What is there now, what will be there by the end of June?
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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I just first have to indicate that the member is wrong in her opening commentary leading into her question. She indicated that there were no courses on, they would be showing up this June. The final marks for last year are all on. They are all there, so--[interjection] Yes.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, maybe we could just stop there and get some clarification. The minister said the final marks for last June are all there, but the final marks for what? For example, is it for every course in every high school across Manitoba including the special projects, including apprenticeship programs, including those that take place off campus?
Mrs. McIntosh: I will read them. The member is--to each of those questions that she asked the answer is yes. So when she said there is nothing on, of course then she is clearly and obviously wrong because we have all of the second languages, social studies, the additional social studies, the additional sciences, the additional language arts, the additional mathematics.
(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)
We have the practical arts, industrial arts, health, home economics, second languages, additional second languages, social studies, additional social studies, technology education, business education, the arts, physical education, skills for independent living. All of those courses that are all credit courses, they are all on, and they are on for last year and they will be on for this year. So you will see from Senior 1 to Senior 4 the students have to complete 28 credits to graduate, and that includes 12 compulsory courses and four compulsory complementary courses and 12 supplementary courses, and they were all on, all delivered. So for the member to say we have done nothing is not correct. I suspect she will find as she continues to probe into the detail here that for each of those things--in her opening statement she said, so what do you have to show for the end of four years and $3 million? I think she will find as she begins to probe, quite a bit.
I want to indicate that there is a difference between a course and a program. The course would be something like mathematics, and then the designations to whatever kind of math it was. The program, in the sense that she used it in her questioning, is not used that way in education in Manitoba. The program is one of four. Français, English, French Immersion, Technology are the four programs. They are outlined very clearly in Mr. Manness's blueprint, and in the Foundation for Excellence they are very clearly specified as the four programs, and they are the only things that are entitled to the use of the word “program.” The courses, I think, is what she meant instead of programs, and those courses are all there and will continue to be there.
Ms. Friesen: Well, Mr. Chairman, then I come back to the question I asked earlier in Estimates, which was, how many high schools or which high schools are teaching more than one math course at the Grade 9 level? Which are teaching more than one math course at the Grade 10 level? The minister told me at that point--perhaps she did not have the right staff here--that she could not tell me that and that her school information system could not tell me that either. So what am I not understanding here?
Mrs. McIntosh: The member is correct. At that time she was asking questions that were not on the line we were discussing. We had indicated, and still continue to indicate, that if the member wishes to move around in the booklet and not pursue these in a congruent way, that is perfectly fine with us, that we will answer to the best of our ability. I believe we did indicate to her at the time that she asked that question--she asked it I believe when we were in programs--and we indicated that we did not have that information with us in the programming division. We do now have the proper staff available for the line that we are on. That is the danger in hopping around in the book , that we do not always have the staff we require. That does not mean we will avoid answering the question, but the best rationale for staying on line is that we then can get the detail--[interjection] Pardon me, Mr. Martindale?
Mr. Doug Martindale (Burrows): It sounds like a lecture.
Mrs. McIntosh: No, it is information.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. If the honourable member for Burrows (Mr. Martindale) wishes the floor, I will recognize him after the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen).
Mrs. McIntosh: The member for Burrows has just said, oh, yes, but the minister did not hear me. [interjection] Well, they are concerned with keeping certain things off the record, getting certain things on, and I understand that. Anyhow, that little nuisance aside, I will indicate that there is a benefit in staying on line, and by way of sharing with the member how she can obtain the best information available and the best detail available. When ministers indicate from the Chair that it would be preferential to stay on a line, it is not because they do not wish to just really--I will catch Mr. Martindale's comments later, if he wants to talk to me, or if he wants to ask some questions after, maybe he would like to put them into the microphone, or maybe not.
Anyhow, as I continue to be interrupted here, Mr. Chairman, I will get back to trying to complete what I was saying as succinctly as possible. When you have the proper staff here, you can get the detail that you are seeking. We did give the answer we had under programming to the question asked at that time, which was really on this line, and we did not have that information there. Now with the proper staff we do, and this year's information will be available, as I indicated to her in my previous answer, with the arrival of the marks at the end of next month for the--[interjection] No, we have last June's. I thought you were wanting to know--[interjection] Pardon me. We can generate the list. We do not have the computers right here beside us, but we can generate that list, and we will generate that list for the member and bring it in to her. If she can tell us specifically, exactly what she wants, we will provide it for her. [interjection] Well, she says we already know exactly what she wants. So, I am presuming then she wants all of the Grade what? What grade? What subjects?
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Ms. Friesen: I think my question has been put quite precisely a number of times now. My concerns dealt with the number of math programs being taught in high schools across Manitoba at the Grade 9 and Grade 10 level. How many courses are there in math at each high school in Manitoba at the Grade 9 level and the Grade 10 level?
Mrs. McIntosh: The member now says that she would like the list of math, every math course at the end of Grade 9 and the end of Grade 12. [interjection] Grades 9 and 10 rather, at the end of Grade 9 and the end of Grade 10. So mathematics in Grade 9 for Senior 1 and Senior 2 is what the member is seeking, is that right?
Ms. Friesen: I have been asking for a number of times now for the number of math programs taught in high schools in Manitoba, each high school, at the Grade 9 and the Grade 10 level. The minister remembers this came from my concern with New Directions. It came because of the implications of the nature of the new Grades 9 and 10 math programs and the examinations.
Mrs. McIntosh: We will generate that list and provide it to the member. I should just indicate again, however, these are not math programs, these are math courses. We will certainly be able to do that for her, and if she would like any others perhaps she could tell us now so when we are generating the list we do not have to keep running back and forth. If she would like any other subjects known, this would be a good time to let us know to save the staff--they could do it all at once. So if you have any other lists, if you would let us know, we would be pleased to provide them as well.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask the minister about some other areas where the department is collecting information. What I am interested in is how the information is being used. It is two areas that interest me. One is the connection with the Youth Secretariat and the collection of information on special needs students and the sharing it across departments. What kind of sharing of information is going on? Who requests it? Who delivers it? What is the nature of that information base? What kind of student numbers are being transferred across departments? Maybe I will just leave it at that and come to the next one later.
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I should indicate that, as I indicated in my earlier answer, we do not share student numbers, period. We do not share them across departments, lines. We do not share them, period. We first of all dealt with the medically fragile student, and what we did then in the secretariat, I am talking about, was ask for information on categories, not students. We might say how many blind students or whatever the category was, so we compiled information in categories without names, and ultimately then we would come to a series of students who already crossed departmental boundaries, who would have information in say, Family Services and Health, or in Health and Justice, or maybe all four of the departments.
In those cases, when you found those people, then the names were used but kept internal to the secretariat. But where the student was only in Education, for example, that personal identity is not shared. The case description is shared, and we do not even transfer that data electronically. That information is just kept that tight. I do not know if that is answering your question or not.
Ms. Friesen: I am concerned about the interdepartmental committees and the use of information within them. So what I am understanding is that, for example, in the one that would concern this department perhaps the most, or at least is the most visible, the Youth Secretariat, there is no sharing of student numbers, there must be sharing of student names, but that will always have happened.
Mrs. McIntosh: Only for those who are already identified in other departments as well as Education.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the work plan that is established here says that the department is currently in the process of developing a policy regarding privacy access and confidentiality of education-related information. Could the minister tell us when that will be available, what principles or protocols the department is working with now and has been working with since 1993, and could the department table those?
Mrs. McIntosh: I just want to emphasize again and make sure that I have clarified the type of student whose name may get shared internally. I have indicated, so I will not go through it again, that we do not share numbers, period, and, as a common rule, we do not share names either. We discuss common characteristics, like this is an emotionally disturbed child, or this is an adolescent mother, or whatever.
I had indicated to the member earlier that the only time that we would actually share names would be if the names are in all the departments or in more than one department of the secretariat, but even that does not necessarily mean a name gets revealed because there will be students--or we would see them as students because we are in the Education business, but they might be seen as victims by Family Services for abuse of some sort, or whatever. Even there, we may not share the name even if the person is known in each department, unless they are in a severely medically fragile kind of situation where they are like the only one in the province or of such a limited number or such an extremely high need that it is evident who it is you are discussing.
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In answer to the member's question, we have an EIS steering committee. They met yesterday, so I am able to give you as current as I can get. They met yesterday to examine a draft plan on confidentiality that has been six to eight months in the making, and so the timing of the member's question is very good, very timely. They have gone through that draft plan. I do not know as yet what their feeling on it was. I do not imagine they would have a recommendation so quickly after reviewing it, but it has been six months in the making.
Just so the member is aware of who is on that EIS steering committee, there is Art Reimer whom she may know from the Manitoba Teachers' Society; Bruce Cairns from MASBO, the Manitoba Association of School Business Officials; Marinus Vanosh from the Manitoba Association of School Trustees--that is so the member for The Maples can feel, we do not discriminate here, Gary--Doug Edmond from the Manitoba Association of School Trustees; Todd Herron who is an analyst with ITRO, the Information Technology Review Office with the government of Manitoba; Linda Horosko is the director of MIS for the Department of Finance; Dominique Bloy, also from the Department of Education--oh, pardon me, I am given to understand that the new Department of Education training rep is Elaine Black; Guy Roy from the Bureau de l' éducation française; Carolyn Loeppky whom many of you here know who is the Schools Program ADM; Lesley Sellman, the project manager for Management Information Services; Greg Baylis, director of Management Information Services; Jean Britton, Planning and Policy Co-ordination--this is Department of Education names that I am reading now--and John Didyk, the executive director of Planning and Policy Co-ordination, Department of Education, government of Manitoba.
Those are the people that have been working together on this draft plan on confidentiality and, as I say, they now have, as of yesterday, gone through the first draft of the plan.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the other part of my question dealt with what principles or protocols the department has been working with until now, or I assume at least until this one is accepted and in place.
Mrs. McIntosh: The member asked a good question. It has been part of the problem. There never has been a policy on this topic in government. It is why we have been working so hard to get one, and it is why we have been working so hard to make sure it is the right one. So what we have done until now, at least under this government, is we have basically worked to err on the side of caution with the “when in doubt, do not” kind of philosophy. We have basically just not shared any names or information that we felt would be violating someone's privacy or confidentiality, and we have sometimes been criticized for that.
I know sometimes we have had people, including the opposition members, attempting to receive or acquire information where I have said I cannot reveal that, that is third-party information, or a letter sent to me by a parent or a ratepayer that I would consider confidential. There is no law that tells me that I have to keep those things confidential, but I err on the side of caution. Somebody writes to me in confidence--I presume it is in confidence. They write a letter to me, and they put: Dear Mrs. McIntosh, I have a personal concern I want to share with you.
I assume that person does not expect to see their letter handed over to strangers to whom they did not write to have political things done to it or to have it appear on the front page of the Winnipeg Sun or whatever. I do not want to make people afraid to write to the government for fear of that happening, because we need their views, their input, their feelings and their concerns known to us. So it has been a very tricky issue to wade our way through.
As I say, there has never been a policy. It is time we had one so we have clear rules that the public can be aware of as well. In the meantime, what we have been doing is basically saying, if you are not sure if this should be divulged, do not divulge it. Keep people's privacy and confidentiality more important than the needs of people who might be curious about something about them.
Ms. Friesen: There is, of course, a provincial act dealing with privacy access and confidentiality, and what I was really looking for was how the department had been working within that act in the collection of data and the manipulation of data. It is not just an issue of disclosure of names. That is probably the most common one that comes to mind, but the tricky part that the minister references--and it is a difficult line to tread and it is one that all departments and all governments have to be concerned about. There is so much to be learned from the manipulation and amalgamation and sorting of data that can be useful to the general public, to all Manitobans, as well as to any particular government, and it was the principles that the department had developed, the practices it had developed during the last three or four years when it has been spending $3.5 million on the development of an educational information system. So those were my concerns. I can see the caution that the minister is using with names, but it does go much beyond that. I am wondering, as we look ahead to the development of this educational information system, how that is being handled. Has this committee looked at these kinds of issues? What databases can be related to others? What kind of questions is the government going to be asking?
For example, if we just look at those math courses that I was asking about, one of my questions was, is there a certain level, a size of school beyond which it is becoming clear across Manitoba that you can only offer one math course at the Grade 9 or Grade 10 level? Is it an issue of size?
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Are we going to be able to see differences, and does the minister choose to see differences? Does she choose to ask these questions about rural and urban Manitoba or about size of schools or about tax increases related to the level of programming--and I mean programming in this sense--in the department's context which can be offered, the amount of choices which can be offered, the manipulation? I do not mean it in any sinister way, I mean the manipulation of data to provide the answers to those kind of questions which cut across the categories and the criteria which the minister has established in the papers that she has tabled so far and which will enable us to ask a wide variety of questions, to provide--and here is what I am after--accountability across the educational system, means of comparison that goes beyond a high school mark and that enable us to judge some of the context of that mark, the economic and social context, the scale of programming and educational opportunities that we can offer in various parts of Manitoba.
Mrs. McIntosh: The member asks, has the minister asked herself these questions, and I respond by saying we always ask those questions. To me it is just so automatic, it is so understood that it is a surprising question to be asked. It is like asking does the minister stand up when she walks or does the minister breath in when she takes air to her lungs. Of course, we always ask those questions. It is axiomatic; it is just basic to how we survive. I am pleased that the member has been able to identify some questions that we take so for granted that we do not even see them as being something we should think about. It is automatic . It is like reflex that we are continually asking those kind of questions, so I just assure her that--I was surprised that she would ask if the minister asked herself those questions because--anyhow.
I guess it just shows we maybe have not done a very good job of communicating to the member what ministers do. All ministers do that, even the ministers who formed government before us used to always ask themselves questions. It is part of the technique.
An Honourable Member: But did they answer themselves?
Mrs. McIntosh: They answered, but they answered them in their way. Having said that is a fundamental part of our job, I would then like to indicate to the member that we have databases that are to be used or integrated, FRAME, student marks, professional school personal, student information, demographics, school database. I believe we gave her a lot of this information under the program review, but those are the types of things I indicate again that we are looking at.
Some of the questions that we ask ourselves a lot, the one the member indicated, of course, but we also ask ourselves what our results in exams could be integrated. We will say we spend dollars on certain programs, what happens with those dollars, how effective are those dollars, what kind of outcomes have those dollars produced. If we say that we are putting money, for example, into ESL, are we able to come back then and through the collection of data be able to pinpoint students who were ESL students in particular areas and identify the degree to which they have been able to improve or progress in their learning?
That kind of information is extremely useful. If we find that we are providing some sort of service for special needs students, we can then analyze the data and say that before we had this consultant in or whatever the students were performing this way or that way. After we put the special needs consultant in, we can see from our data that in fact there has been improvement. Well, that is a good thing to know, and we then might wish to increase the consulting potential, or we might see that it has made no difference or in fact the students have regressed, in which case we would quickly be able to ascertain that it might have something to do with the service we had put in, modify it, change it, alter it or delete it if it is not achieving the purpose. So it can be used very much in those ways for research and evaluation of educational programming. We can derive accurate statistics to measure student mobility, student dropouts, graduation rates and other standard measurements that are currently unavailable or inaccurate.
I would almost rather see them be unavailable than inaccurate. The member knows how sometimes people can stand up and by giving anecdotal little stories or anecdotal evidences can leave an impression for direction that may be an anomaly. It may be a little anecdote that is actually an anomaly and not representative of the true picture.
That is what happens all the time here in the House. Anecdotes are put forward as if they were statistical data showing a long-range trend. I would rather see them be unavailable than inaccurate or misleading in that way, but we can get accurate statistics this way to measure these types of things.
We also can develop an ability to link varying types of information together in performing an analysis. For example, the student demographic, funding, sex, birthday, address and Statistics Canada household income, the number of single-parent families and so on, that data can be compared to student outcomes, a variety of student outcomes, and so we can then maybe be able to start checking. Is what everybody perceives to be true about various socioeconomic factors, are those perceptions that we have true when measured against the actual statistics and the actual outcomes for student achievement?
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That would be very useful and helpful information for educators to have, because then they would either confirm that they are targeting their energies in the right direction or be able to modify their targets to better reflect the real needs. So the ability to track a student throughout their kindergarten to Senior 4 education, including the results of testing for standards, provincial exams and final grades, will be one of the benefits we see. A student transferring into a new school, even after an absence from the province, would have their academic history available to the receiving school, and the receiving school would have an accurate picture of the student's academic standing and history.
I could go on. I think it is clear that the educational databases provided by EIS will support the province's participation in national projects such as the CMEC school achievement indicators project, SAIP as we call it here; the Pan-Canadian indicators project, the StatsCan student level data collection; the CMEC report on education in Canada and international initiatives conducted by the OECD, INES and CERI. The educational databases provided by EIS will provide important feedback to the department in measuring the impact of new programming and new funding, new curriculum and changes after they are introduced, so I think those are--I will maybe pause there.
There are such a wide variety of things that could be done and questions that are being asked and could be asked in the future. For example, would a survey of students or parents on satisfaction with schooling correlate in any way to other indicators such as the size and type of school, the age of the teachers, the location in the province, the type of course programming, et cetera? There is such an infinite list of variables that could be introduced there, and all of those might be useful--do young teachers do better in the North; do senior teachers do better in the North?--those kinds of things.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, obviously with such a potentially large database, it is hard to, at the moment, see how extensive it is going to be, but it is going to be a large and interesting database.
My question to the minister was, in fact, what kind of analyses is she performing? What kinds of questions are being asked? So perhaps the best way of getting at this is to ask the minister what analyses of this database have been performed? What reports are there that have been done within the department over the past three years and the $3.5 million that have been spent? What does the minister anticipate, what kind of analyses, what kind of correlations are going to be produced in the coming year?
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Would the committee be receptive to a five-minute break? [agreed] We will take a five-minute break, but just five minutes.
The committee recessed at 10:35 a.m.
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After Recess
The committee resumed at 10:43 a.m.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. Would the member for Wolseley mind just reviewing very quickly her last--
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the deputy is searching out the information the member requested, and I wondered, just in the interests of time, if she would like to pose another question while we are waiting, and then when he returns I can provide her with the answer that she was seeking.
Oh, here he comes now. I do have the information now. I thank the deputy for obtaining it for me. This is an example of work in co-ordinating a project, and it is the education indicators. The project will be driven by questions, and asking the questions is a very standard way for us beginning a process of examination and co-ordination. This particular project in education indicators will be driven by questions that we hope will provide us with a better understanding of our students in schools. So we ask questions, some generic questions, such as, how can the needs of students be better addressed? How can the educational system be more effective and efficient? How can the public obtain better value for their educational dollars? Those kinds of generic questions.
Then we try to identify key indicators of importance, and we will look at key indicators of importance such as school effectiveness. School effectiveness would involve things such as the student flow through the learning experience, through grades, through programs, the school climate, the popular word I guess they use today is the “culture” of the school, the school planning, the accountability mechanisms the school has put in place, the student performance, their ability to acquire and apply knowledge, to build upon that knowledge in an evolutionary way through the academics in language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.
We look then at the key, sort of, Grades 3, 6, 9 and 12, or Senior 4. Student performance would also be revealed through behaviour formation in terms of attitudes, human relationships, citizenry and those kinds of things. Student performance would also involve the adaptability of the student, the problem-solving ability, the understanding and uses of technology, measurable outcomes that would prepare them for post-secondary education or the workforce.
We would look, as well, as a key indicator of importance at parental and community involvement, the quality of decision making in the schools, the extent to which people feel satisfaction or ownership in terms of they feel that the school is a place that is there for them, part of them and part of their important experience.
So after we had asked the questions, looked at what the key indicators of importance would be, then indicators will be developed for this--again, we are talking about education indicators as an example--developed through utilizing information from a variety of sources that are already available. Ones that we refer to fairly often around here are Stats Canada, Conference Board of Canada, HRD Canada, Canadian Education Association, post-secondary institutions, other provinces, EIS, student achievement tests, school personnel data, issue oriented surveys, enrollment, financial data, those kinds of sources.
Then we ask what will we use these indicators for once they are obtained. Well, indicators could be used for the following purposes: to develop an information framework to assist in evaluating and monitoring the progress of the processes and the effectiveness of our education and training systems; to examine system processes with outputs; to assist in making judgments about strengths and weaknesses that are identified in the system, to provide points of reference for comparability over time--I think that is a fairly significant one for monitoring progress or looking for degrees to which new initiatives might be successful--to facilitate accountability to the public to be able to give them a better understanding of what we are doing and how we are doing, and we feel it is paramount to gain a fuller understanding of the interrelatedness of factors affecting education and student success. Indicators then can serve as tools for system accountability and evaluation to determine if what we are doing in fact is having the desired effects.
Manitoba indicators could help and will help to address the CMEC and the CESC framework to develop national indicators, and this will facilitate continued participation in SAIP, in the Pan-Canadian indicators on student achievement, accessibility, student flows, school and work transition, satisfaction and citizenship, also the western and Pan-Canadian curriculum development and the international OECD/INES indicators.
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We have some provincial involvement with CMEC and CESC and Stats Canada. Our deputy, for example, John Carlyle is co-chair of CESC, and we are a member of the program liaison committee through Mr. Carlyle, who also chaired the work team developing a statistical portrait of elementary and secondary education in Canada. He also represents Canada on the OECD/INES international education indicators network, the A network on student outcomes. He also co-ordinates department participation in all CMEC projects including statistics, student assessment, indicators, national report card, curriculum development, official languages, distance education and technology. That is one way we begin by asking questions and end up with the co-ordinating of a project.
We felt and feel that the K-S4 education system in Manitoba requires more and better tools to determine system accountability and evaluation. We need a sounder foundation of knowledge to support policy and program development. The need for education indicators has become a national concern. At the current time there are five recognized, important national indicator-related projects underway, and I believe I have mentioned them: SAIP, Pan-Canadian indicators project, statistical profiles right through from elementary to post-secondary, student level data collection, and the report on Education in Canada, to name those. There are also other international projects underway through OECD, INES and CERI.
Last year about this time, in May of 1995, a proposal for kindergarten to Senior-4 indicator development was prepared and approved, and its primary purpose was that indicator development was to be driven by questions rather than by administrative functions and/or availability of data. I just point that out to indicate the importance that we place on asking questions and how fundamental a role the asking of questions plays in the development of these types of projects. So I say that the indicator development was to be driven by questions, and the emphasis will be on systems outcomes, which will evaluate the thrusts in New Directions. I also say that the department is working closely with the other provinces and the Council of Ministers of Education Canada to establish reliable national indicators within which Manitoba will be able to compare itself to other jurisdictions. The goal of that project is to determine and develop system indicators which will assist in department and program planning, policy development, and public accountability. As we progress with that work for kindergarten to Senior 4, linkages will be made with post-secondary indicators as well.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think we must be talking at crossed purposes here, because I do not understand how the answer the minister gave referred in any way to the question that I asked. The question I asked was, what analyses have been performed in the department over the last three years or over this period of $3.5 million on the database that the department is collecting? Is there a list of analytical projects that the department has done? What I am asking is, what questions have you been asking? How have you been linking this data, one to the other, and what do you propose to do for next year?
So I am not clear on how that answer, interesting as it was, really related, and I wonder if one way out of this is to ask the minister to enable her department officials to give, at least our opposition, a briefing on this. Would that simplify matters? Would that enable the discussions of this level of detail to take place in a more informal framework?
Mrs. McIntosh: I am surprised that the member does not recognize that when she asked for a list of analytical projects and I gave her, in some detail, the example of the education indicators, the way in which we are using it, and I had already indicated to her that the EIS is a database, not a policy-making body, but a database, and that the analyses are now beginning and that the draft paper, for example, on confidentiality was received by the committee yesterday, I have answered the question by indicating this work is in its infancy. There is not a list, in the sense that she has given, of analytical projects.
The EIS, if she wants more detail and intense briefing on that, we are prepared to do that here and now. We have all the time in the world. We are not in any hurry. We do not need to dash out of Estimates and set up a series of meetings in the minister's office. Estimates is a very appropriate time for her to ask those questions and provide the answers here for the record. I think Estimates is a very appropriate place for her to ask as much detail as she wants, and we will provide what she wants because I believe that her question was answered. Maybe she just did not recognize the analytical work that is being done in the education indicators.
I do not see any need to sort of stop Education Estimates to go on to another branch to continue Estimates in another form in my office privately. I think we can complete Estimates here, and if she needs till the 7th of June to get her answers, I am quite happy to stay here prepared to deliver them the 6th of June, whenever the date is. So if she wants to ask some detailed questions on EIS, staff has indicated they are prepared to do that, and I have answered the question. I will invite her to ask more, and we are prepared to provide her with all of that information.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, well, I think the answer is there are no lists, there have been no project analyses yet, and that there will be no briefing. The minister is not prepared to do that. But I am delighted to see that the minister now recognizes that questions by the opposition are not harassment--to use her word--of the department, that they do indeed have a purpose to try and find out in a more informal way some of the things which are not yet publicly available or on the record.
So if there have not been those analyses yet, which can be listed and discussed here, I want to ask the minister about some issues dealing with the changes in regulations of the department. We are on a line dealing with Education administration, and I have had some concerns addressed to me. I do not know if they have been addressed directly to the minister or not yet, but if I can read from the concerns I think that were addressed to me, I think the minister might recognize them. These are concerns dealing with the changes in the high school program, and what my correspondent wants to know is that he has a number of students who have started out at different times under the department's different regulations for high school graduations. He says, for example, on March 22, the Department of Education issued a release called Educational Change Update.
I do not think it was a release that I saw. So I am certainly looking for some ministerial comment on that. On page 4 of that letter, the first paragraph states that students who started Senior 1 in 1994-95 or earlier can use any of the three programs to meet graduation requirements. The problem, as my correspondent sees it, is that students who started Senior 1 in 1992-93, 1993-94 or 1994-95 were never under the rules of the revised high school program, yet now they can use them. When these students came under either Answering the Challenge or New Directions, their Senior 1 year counted for credits, and many of them are compulsory for graduation. Some of them--and I think this is where the concern derives from--even repeated Senior 1 courses. Some changed timetables to meet Senior 1 requirements. Some went to summer school and some took independent study program courses to meet requirements they were told were necessary to graduate.
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Now the government has changed the rules and in effect says to three groups of students, Senior 1 was not really required. So there are a number of questions, and I wonder if the department has received other concerns about this. The three questions that I wanted to leave with the minister are, why, as my correspondent says, was this change? That bulletin came out in March. Why was it incorporated at this time of the year? Why was it made retroactive to groups of students who were never under the revised high school program guidelines for graduation? Was the fact that students have repeated Senior 1 courses or taken summer school for Senior 1 courses or have paid for Senior 1 independent study courses taken into consideration?
So the problem is the changing regulations of the department and how they apply to students who began at an earlier time. Has the department received other concerns about this, and has there been some consideration of it and some reference back to anybody who might have written to the department on this?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the member began her remarks by saying that she then would conclude that there is no list of analytical data, and I am pleased to note that that was the conclusion she drew from my statement that there is no list of analytical data. I think it is a very obvious and clear conclusion, and I am glad that, when I said there is no list, she drew the conclusion that there was no list and she affirmed for me that she had understood what I said. I try to make it clear, and I guess in this case I made it clear enough that it actually was understood.
I also would like to correct her when she said the minister would not give a briefing. I will correct her. I said that we would give a briefing here in Estimates as detailed as she wants; I did not say we would not provide a briefing. I said, if the member wants information on this material, which is up for examination in Estimates, that Estimates is the appropriate time and place to ask those questions and receive that information. So we will give her that briefing here in the proper place, publicly, in front of an audience, to be put in Hansard where her questions will be known as well as our answers. I suspect what the member may be wanting to do is to be able to have Estimates here and Estimates someplace else, and I think that is not good protocol.
We are certainly pleased, as the member knows, because we have been providing her with as much information as we can obtain, to give detailed answers to questions here in Estimates, and I do not consider that staff harassment. If we know which staff we need to be here and an approximate time and date that they might be required here, that is part of their duty, and I do not consider saying, could you be here on Thursday at 9 a.m. to provide information to the critics on such and such a topic, to enter that category. I think the member may be misrepresenting the concern that I had earlier about the frantic scurrying around that staff has had to do on occasion between Estimates procedures to appease people who have been issuing requests that would take them away from their duties that might have time lines to meet, to compile information which, in some cases, could be compiled by the research staff in the member's caucus.
Sometimes there is a sense that the staff is not being utilized the way that the government intends them to be, but that example of having staff here to answer questions on a legitimate topic in Estimates is not harassment. So I just think that was very important to clarify those, and, as I say, that briefing is available here and now and the member need only ask.
The member continues to criticize the development of the EIS. We have taken careful time to develop EIS. We have had to get in place the equipment, the staff, the plans for data gathering, and then develop an indicators project to get to No. 2. To get to No. 2, you need to get No.1 out of the way first. We have already outlined today how work has progressed on the first item, and that we are now into work on the second, and I have read all of that into the record. As I indicate, we do not have analysis in the listing that she describes, although we certainly could table data if that is helpful. So, if she would like the data tabled, we could certainly make that available to her.
The member had asked, as well, for information on the other portion of her question. I will indicate that we have had correspondence, and we have dealt with each on a case-by-case basis and satisfactorily. The correspondent to whom she refers should be directed to staff for staff to sit down and talk to the individual about the issue. Our policy is and was, and I will read it, graduation requirements from the Action Plan, page 67: Those students who entered a senior years program of studies before September 1992, but who do not complete the 20 credits required in the revised high school program, will have until June 1998 to meet the pre-1995 requirements. Students will be required to take a Canadian history course at Senior 3 until the new curriculum is ready. All students who have entered a senior years program before September 1992 and September 1995, but who do not complete their program of studies by June 1998, may graduate by meeting the requirements of either Answering the Challenge or New Directions. All students who enter Senior 1 in September 1995 will be required to meet the graduation requirements outlined in appendix B. This group of students will graduate in 1999, provided, of course, that they successfully complete the minimum requirements for graduation in four successive years.
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The update letter to which the member refers went to all schools and was used by the member from Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) to ask questions on physical education. The update did not reference a change. It was intended to clarify and hopefully expand understanding in the support of students. Program requirements are not in regulation; they are in policy, emanating from SPD, which is an area that has already been passed. But, as I indicate, we have dealt with each piece of correspondence on a case-by-case basis, and they have been satisfactorily resolved. If the member wishes to refer that correspondence to me, I will have my staff work with that correspondent, as they have with the others, to satisfactorily resolve that individual student's situation.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us whether there is included in this line, Education Administration Services, provision for the costs of expanding records managements for schools?
Mrs. McIntosh: No.
Mr. Gary Kowalski (The Maples): Going back to the topic of educational information, system database, looking at the work plan, one of the objectives is to effectively monitor student transfers, dropouts, graduation rates and employability. The employability part is what I am interested in in regard to information sharing and follow-ups.
For graduates, what postgraduate follow-up will be done so that employability could be effectively monitored? The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and the proof of employability will be actual employment by students. So are there any plans to use this database, and is there some agreement with the federal government to use their databases using social insurance numbers or somehow study the employability of students leaving our educational system?
Mrs. McIntosh: The community colleges will have data on graduates and so on on their employability. The universities do not at this point, and we do not at this point, provincially, have data on those students who have gone through. We do have data on kindergarten to Senior 4 through EIS. We do not yet have data as to the employability of those coming out of Senior 4. As I say, we do have it from the community colleges. We do not yet have it from the universities. We are looking at expanding into that as the system evolves. Some individual school divisions have already begun to trace their graduates.
I again reference my own school division, which is the one with which I am most familiar because of my background. The St. James-Assiniboia School Division has for some years now traced its graduates and has a very detailed record of where they are in terms of where they are in the workforce, where they are in terms of post-secondary education, where they are in terms of the types of work that they are doing, and they do that as a massive survey every two years. They survey their grads to look at their success rates in various endeavours or lifestyles or whatever they find themselves in upon graduation. That data they then use to see if they are in their kindergarten to Senior 4 training, providing what skills those students--they asked them, did the skills you acquire help you with this job, did you have to learn new ones? If you could have learned anything else in school, what else would you have learned, et cetera?
So they not only have the picture of their employability or ability to get into post-secondary training, their income levels, et cetera, they also have the questions as to, could you gave us some feedback on your training? Those types of questions are wonderful ones, and we are not into all of it yet. Colleges, as colleges have been in so many areas, are leading the way in terms of getting that kind of data, but we want to expand into it. The member's question is a good one. One indicator that we can identify as wanting for mobility and transition of graduates would be that we would include graduation rates, the destination after graduation, to college, to university, to employment, or to, hopefully not, unemployment, although maybe unemployment is by choice, to stay home and be a parent, for example, which I think we should call something else rather than unemployment, but many people make the choice to be at home to parent and are listed as unemployed.
But we can answer these questions right now indirectly by gathering data from places like colleges and universities, and we can compile some macro figures but nothing like we would be able to do once we have a full system that can probe the detail.
Mr. Kowalski: As the minister started out, qualitative study, talking to graduates and getting their feedback is different than the type of study that can be done with this database. I agree with that, but the potential of this database for studying exit results--another area would be in our Corrections, you know, how many dropouts, how many people that maybe we will find out later that had trouble in mathematics would have--who knows what correlations are out there?
That is why in the earlier discussion we talked about concern about sharing information, but there is also a great benefit, and I guess it is always to degrees. I will use an example from my past when I formed a youth justice committee in our area. We had a police officer on the justice committee. We had the vice-principal and a teacher from the high school and junior high. We had community members.
Now each of us at first had our confidences which we were not to share, but slowly, as we got to be comfortable with each other, and we shared information about the youth before us that we were working with, the benefit to the youth was dramatic.
Well, in the same way with the information in this database, although there is a concern by the public about big brother watching, I think at the same time there is an assumption nowadays that if government has the information with all the computers, that people sometimes do not understand. Well, why did you not know about this; I told this other department.
As I said, especially in the Youth Secretariat, the greater the sharing of information, even getting down to individuals, if we could be proactive and identify that certain students who are always having trouble in a certain subject area and maybe through Corrections whose parents are on probation, and then with Family Services, we found that there is a trend, and it could benefit those people, and we could be proactive to identify those students--students or victims or offenders, whatever.
I think when developing the policy for confidentiality, I think we have to be careful not to be so strict that it completely ruins the potential for good to some of the people who are in that database.
So my question is, will the policy be so restricted regarding access and confidentiality that it will not be usable to be proactive across departmental lines in Corrections, in Justice, in Family Services and in Education, that there will be a sharing of information from that database that will be beneficial to the individuals.
* (1120)
Mrs. McIntosh: The member raises a point that, what I indicated before, the length of time we took over privacy provisions was one that we wrestled with long and hard. I believe, just for his comfort, I can indicate that in the secretariat we will share information without the name and so we can go through sort of case-by-case histories, but we do not provide the number of the student. They do not provide the student number or the student's name unless that name is already one that is so obvious in other departments that it is obvious you are talking about the same youngster.
I think I know what he is indicating and that is that if we get a request or a call and say one comes into Justice, it is shared at the Youth Secretariat or someplace like that, do you actually have two people dealing with what they each think is a separate child, like two departments dealing with what they each think is a separate case when really it is just one case? Because it is one child that you do not want cut up into different body parts to be dealt with here, here and here. One child should be dealt with in a holistic fashion as much as possible.
We are not going to be strict in the sense that the member is discussing because one of our goals is to try to deal with a child in a holistic way and to try to develop procedures that could assist children based upon a knowledge of the data. The member mentioned one very, very interesting one, and it is not one we have talked about in Estimates to date. We have talked about the correlation between socioeconomic circumstances and the factors that even if it was a child in his learning or her learning, but in terms of the end result we have not yet talked about students who end up in the Corrections institutions.
We have not yet talked about what the education system should be doing, not just to help children to succeed but to prevent them from ending up in jails. I know it is one that trustees will talk about. I am sure the member, when he was a trustee and attended conventions and conferences or even board meetings, would have occasion to say, if we do not get a handle on helping this particular student, who would normally be the kind of student whose progress would be such that it would show up at the board level, he or she is going to end up in jail.
We do not want that to happen. What can we do? Those kind of discussions will go on with troubled students. Are there specific things that if not achieved in school leads statistically to higher numbers of incarcerations? That is a good question to ask. Those are the kind of questions I think we need to develop and ask our system to find out, and the information system would be an excellent place to do it.
I am sure a whole series of questions will be developed. The member with his policing background would probably have a better sense than this minister would of what kind of questions in that area need to be addressed. I would not mind getting some feedback from him. We will be getting stuff from Justice, of course, but frontline people, be they ordinary citizens or MLAs or critics, who have experience in the area, can generally give, from personal experience, an observation of what they have seen. They have noticed that students who tend to not have this in school end up in jail, that kind of thing. Personal observations give us a lot of hints.
The key in any indicator development, of course, would be agreement on what we want to know, what specifically is it we are looking to find out. In this case, in your question, a link between criminal behaviour and something that has happened in school or has not happened in school. One question might be, what is a dropout? Is it a number of grads and an age cohort compared to the same cohort 12 years earlier? Is it the number of students in Grade 12 who show up at university or show up as college students or show up having a job? What about a temporary dropout for five months, someone who stops school and then comes back? What about someone who has moved out of province?
So we have students who were in the system and suddenly are not in the system, and we say they are categorized as no longer there. Why are they no longer there? Have they moved to another province for some other reason? Have they chosen to go to another province to attend a different high school because the high school here is not meeting their needs?
But we do need to have a clear balance between what we need to know and what we want to know; and, through all of that, we will tend to be referring to cases, and some of them may be the only case of its kind in the province, in which case everyone would know who it was. We do try, because of confidentiality, to avoid using names or student numbers wherever we possibly can.
Mr. Kowalski: In this Education Information System database, what has been done to look at compatibility with other provinces, because we talked earlier in Estimates about mobility? You know, we have become a much more mobile society, and it is not unusual for a student to move from one province to the other. Have mobility and compatibility with education information systems in other provinces been factors in the design of this system?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we have the Pan-Canadian Education indicators project that is going on. Again, so many of these things are in their infancy, but this is the initial Canadian sharing, or one of the early Canadian sharings. We are also asking ourselves what further things we want to know and how we will define those things for the evolution of this type of project so that we will see more and more. But right now that is one of the main ones we have got going. We work with CMEC and with Stats Canada, and we will be developing more projects of this nature as time goes on.
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Mr. Kowalski: One last question I have, it is actually on the previous line, but I stepped out of the room before it was passed, so I could understand if the minister does not have the staff available. In regard to Schools Finance, one of the activities identified is preparing policy papers in regard to school finance, and I would like to know in that area, which is 16.5 (a), how many policy analysts are in that branch of the department?
Mrs. McIntosh: Two.
Mr. Kowalski: Is there any policy analysis being done on moving from a property tax-based education funding to less of an emphasis on a property tax base system, moving to other areas? Property tax sometimes is the most inequitable tax going, because it has no relation to ability to pay. Quite often seniors who own a great deal of property pay a tax for education when they do not have that much income coming in. You know, income tax is a more equitable tax, and to move from property tax-based education system to one funded from general revenues, is any analysis being done on that by this branch, by the policy analysts in this branch?
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, this question comes up fairly frequently through various avenues where people will say: Well, why do you not get rid of the property tax and replace it with something else?. It is kind of like the question: Why do you not get rid of the GST and replace it with something else? I think the member may appreciate that the people in Ottawa found that a little more difficult to do than--I say that tongue-in-cheek. I am teasing him, and that is not very nice. It is tongue-in-cheek and just a tease. Do not worry. But we will explore, as we do, from periodic, from time to time, the whole question of property tax.
I should indicate, first of all, that we do address equity for the rate-payers through the funding model, through the funding model we use to flow provincial money to schools, but to remove school funding from property is a very large problem. That property tax raises close to $600 million a year. Where would we find $600 million? Well, that is the interest in our debt, you know, and so if I am going to give one to you, I will give one to them. I mean, if we did not have to pay $650 million a year in interest on the debt left to us by the NDP government, we would be able to wipe out the property tax, but we cannot because we do have to pay that interest. That is one of the reasons it is important that we pay down the debt.
Now, the official opposition does not want to see that happen necessarily because they keep saying, spend more, spend more. But, by spending more, spending more, we will never be able to get rid of that interest on the debt, and we will never be able to wipe out property tax, for example. But there are ways, internally, that we could eliminate the property tax, and here would be the effects of doing that. If we wiped out the property tax, we could then look at increasing the income tax, the sales tax, the corporate tax, the mining tax, any other kind of taxes, but, to raise the vast amount of money required, we would have to raise--in 1994, we would have had to raise the sales by 2.1 percent. We would have had to raise the personal income tax by 10.5 percent. Those kinds of problems, I think, would be seen as less preferable than the property tax.
(Mr. Frank Pitura, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)
In 1994, at the same time, there was $310 million raised to the special levy. To raise that same amount, the retail sales tax would have had to increase 3.3 percent, and, to raise that same amount through the personal income tax, would have required an increase of 16.4 percent in the personal income tax rate. In total, to replace the revenues raised by both levies would have required an increase in the retail sales tax rate of 5.4 percent, up from 7 percent to 12.4 percent, or an increase in the personal income tax rate of 26.9 percent, from 52 percent to 78 percent.
I just feel that most people, when they realize that if we went to an increase in sales tax or personal income tax, which is often proposed as the solution, when they realize that it means a 26 percent hike in personal income tax and a 5.4 percent hike in sales tax, quickly come back to saying, well, we do not like property tax, but maybe it is the lesser of all of the evils, and maybe it is the one, in the final analysis, that does suit us best.
Some people have said, well, why do you not just eliminate the $250 resident homeowner advance, which is an offset to the two education levies? The cost to government of that was $61.9 million in 1994. Eliminating this expenditure by replacing the two levies with other taxation sources would reduce the potential 12.4 percent projected total rate increase for retail sales tax, reduce it down only to 11.7 percent, and similarly would reduce only by 3 percent the 78.9 percent rate for personal income tax, which would be the end rate, if you increased it by the 26.9 percent required if the property tax were gone. So the disadvantages that keep popping up whenever the issue is examined is extremely large increase in retail sales, the end result there being 12.4 percent sales tax minus the GST--that is just the provincial--and personal income tax rates, the end result there being 78.9 percent or a 26.9 percent increase.
You would also see increased taxation on farm families because farm land and out buildings are presently exempt from the education support levy, so they would then see themselves starting to pay. Some farm incomes, as you know, are not necessarily going to appreciate that kind of increase in their income tax or retail sales. Increasing the retail sales tax would have meant the further use of a regressive tax. Ask any Albertan, when they visit Manitoba or Ontario or any of the other provinces in Canada, how they feel about a sales tax because Alberta traditionally has never had a sales tax. All they pay is the 7 percent GST. There is no PST there at all. It is a regressive tax. It lessens consumer purchasing.
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The elimination of the special levy would be viewed by school divisions as a very serious encroachment on local autonomy. School trustees have always indicated that while they would like a good-sized block grant from the government and they would like that to be around 80 percent more than it currently is, they still want to retain 10 to 20 percent of their own ability to raise the levy because then they could direct those monies to wherever they wished them to go. They have traditionally said, give us as much as you can, but always let us collect a little bit of our own, so we do not have you as a province telling us what to do with that discretionary money. Taxes would increase for homeowners with very low property taxes because we would be eliminating the $250 property tax credit, and some homeowners do not pay $250, so they would actually be experiencing a loss.
(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)
Those are some of the reasons that whenever government goes to examine this, they generally come back and say, we have looked at it, but we really feel that no tax is ever going to be popular, and the alternatives to this would be less popular than this in the opinion of many decision makers.
It is always a question of philosophy in a way in that do you tax on what you own or do you tax on what you may have the ability to own through your income. It may be that someone who owns a piece of property that is modest has a lot of money or vice versa. It might mean that somebody who has a large property is really struggling. House poor, I think, is the expression, so it is hard to know but good questions raised a lot. We have not just said, oh, nuts, we will not even look at it. We have taken a look.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Item 5.(b) Education Administration Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,077,800--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $451,400--pass.
Item 5.(c) Schools Information System (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $287,300--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $660,900--pass.
Item 5.(d) Schools Grants (1) Operating Grants $551,415,600--pass; (2) General Support Grants $19,279,500--pass.
Item 5.(e) Other Grants $1,848,000--pass.
Item 5.(f) Teachers' Retirement Allowances Fund $54,288,900.
Mr. Kowalski: I just had a question in regard to the Teachers' Retirement Fund. The new provisions in maintenance enforcement allow for people to put seizures on the capital if there is a judgment. This is something new. Before, benefits would be split on a divorce, but never before was the capital able to be shared.
My question is, what effect, how many claims have there been on the TRAF fund from people under the new legislation that allows spouses to seize the capital in divorces, as opposed to the benefits?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the TRAF board is set up. We do not work directly with the TRAF board. We give them money. They will indicate how much they require, but they have their own group of people. There is Mr. Claude DeGagne at TRAF that I could refer the member to. The daily operations of that are run independently from government. As I say, the Department of Education and Training provides the funding for a portion of that pension money, but we do not have staff here that has that type of detail for the member. He might wish to try Mr. Claude DeGagne directly. There is, not through our department, a provincial overview of all of these kinds of issues, of pensions and superannuation, all of those things. This question could also be directed there as they take a look at that whole issue.
Mr. Kowalski: Just for clarification, is this a type of fund where the province is responsible for the unfunded liability, or is it a matching fund where the province matches the teachers' contribution? The reason I ask is, if there are seizures being made out of that fund for these divorce settlements, and therefore there is a large exit of capital, would that put a greater liability to the province, their unfunded liability in the pension fund? So I am just curious, is this a type of fund where we fund the unfunded liability?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we put in half the money. We have match the teachers' contribution dollar for dollar. The employer puts in no money, the province does. It is an unfunded liability, and the amount of money we put in is significant. This year we put in--I am just checking the figure--about $54 million into teachers' pensions as the province's share, and that is up from $50 million last year. So you can see the increase in the amount. The unfunded liability over an eight-year period between December 31, 1985, and December 31, 1993, increased 240 percent from $413 million to $998 million which is a compound growth rate of 11.7 percent. The number of contributing teachers has declined, and this is posing a problem. The number of contributing teachers has declined from a 1990 peak of 14,560 to under 14,000 in 1994, and that is because you are now starting to see a large number of teachers retiring. So there are fewer contributors and more--fewer people putting in and more people drawing out, sort of like the Canada Pension Plan.
I do not know if that provides the member with the information he needs or if he requires further detail.
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Mr. Deputy Chairperson: 5. Support to Schools (f) Teachers' Retirement Allowances Fund $54,288,900--pass.
5.(g) Manitoba Education, Research and Learning Information Networks $737,000--pass.
Resolution 16.5: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $631,026,600 for Education and Training, Support to Schools, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.
6. Support to Post-Secondary Institutions (a) Universities (1) Universities Grants Commission (a) Salaries and Employee Benefits $266,700--pass; 6.(a)(1)(b) Other Expenditures $113,200--pass; 6.(a)(2) Grants $208,703,100--pass; 6.(a)(3) Access Fund $640,000--pass; 6.(a)(4) Faculty of Management $889,000--pass.
6.(b) Community Colleges (1) Colleges Secretariat (a) Salaries and Employee Benefits $325,500--pass; 6.(b)(1)(b) Other Expenditures $48,600--pass; 6.(b)(2) Grants (a) Operating Grants $47,487,700--pass; 6.(b)(2)(b) Inter-Universities North $822,100--pass.
6.(c) Post-Secondary Strategic Initiatives Fund $3,500,000--pass.
Resolution 16.6: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $262,795,900 for Education and Training, Support to Post-Secondary Institutions, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.
7.(a) School Divisions $27,553,500--pass; (b) Universities $8,940,000--pass; (c) Community Colleges $2,245,600--pass.
Resolution 16.7: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $38,739,100 for Education and Training, Expenditures Related to Capital, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.
The last item to be considered for the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training is item 1.(a) Minister's Salary. At this point, I request the minister's staff leave the table for the consideration of this item.
1.(a) Minister's Salary $25,200. Shall the item pass?
Ms. Friesen: I want to speak on this for a minute or two because I do intend to vote against this. It is an unusual step. It is not something I believe that I did last year, the first year of the minister's incumbency. This is the second year of this particular Minister of Education, and it has been a very turbulent year in education. Some of that turbulence has its origin in times before this minister, but I believe that what has happened in the past year will lead me to make this particular decision.
Mr. Chairman, I think that there is much to celebrate in Manitoba education. There is much to celebrate on a daily basis of the education and the energy that is happening in our classrooms, of people who are working with fewer and fewer resources, and in many cases, with much more difficult children across the province than they have ever faced before. That is disturbing, I know, for both the Minister of Education and for the opposition, but I think what we have seen in the last year in education is a combination of division, of confrontation, which, I think, has led to a kind of atmosphere in education that we have not seen certainly in the times that I have known in Manitoba.
Many of the issues, I think, I have made reference to at the beginning when I spoke. The inaction on the Boundaries Review, I think, has created uncertainty and instability which was not necessary. The Norrie commission reported in September after a very brief response period over the summer and since then there has been nothing from the government. That instability, I think, as boards now begin to make up their budgets for next year, is one of the fundamental issues.
The second fundamental issue is the continuing cuts to public education, and the prospect of a minister who has, if we look at it in one way, taken $75 from every child in the public school system and has put it in the--approximately $250 added to the amount for the private school, each child in the private school system. The cutting of public funding at the same time as the private schools are being increased to such an extent, I think, is leading to, again, greater instability and to a real sense of undermining of the public system, and I do not think that the minister has done what she could have done to deal with that issue in the public system in Manitoba.
We have not, unfortunately, in these Estimates had the time to talk about post-secondary education, but the long inactivity not only of this minister but of other ministers on the Roblin commission, is truly outstanding. This minister delayed and delayed in creating the interim transition committee. She delayed and finally avoided a fee policy, the two things that she had promised last year in post-secondary education, and so much of the direction of post-secondary education continues to be in limbo.
There have been constant changes and backtracking in New Directions. One of the examples that I read into these Estimates was of a guidance counsellor who had great difficulty in dealing with the constant changes in graduation requirements. The backtracking on Canadian history, for example; the backtracking on timetabling and other areas of program development in New Directions. I think those are, again, creating instability and a lack of confidence in many areas of the public system.
We are seeing school closures as a result of cuts to public funding, something for which the minister is not prepared to take responsibility in the House. We are seeing loss of home economics programs, and I think, again, that is a combination of the results of the constant changes in the New Directions program, as well as the cuts to public funding. We are seeing class sizes increase; we are seeing a special needs review, which has been in process according to departmental records for at least two years and of which we have seen yet--
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Order, please. I would just like to note that we have about a minute and a half left. If there is any interest in moving these Estimates, it is up to the member.
Ms. Friesen: I just want to close with mentioning the loss of the apprenticeship staff and with the wedge which has been driven between the various stakeholders in education through the Enhancing Accountability paper that emanated from this department.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: Very quickly, the minister has a few documents she would like to table.
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I will not take any time to talk about them. I will just indicate that this is additional material requested on the Workforce 2000 and Apprenticeship. I have copies for all the members. I also indicate, the member says, she does not have time to ask any more questions. I am available.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: 1. Administration and Finance (a) Minister's Salary $25,200--pass.
Ms. Friesen: I indicated that I was voting against this, and I would like to request a recorded vote.
Mr. Deputy Chairperson: A formal vote has been requested. I would ask all members to move into the Chamber for the formal vote.
The hour being twelve o'clock, committee rise.