Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates of the Department of Sport.

Does the honourable Minister of Sport have an opening statement?

Hon. Jim Ernst (Minister responsible for Sport): No.

Mr. Chairperson: I thank the minister for that. Does the official opposition critic, the honourable member for Radisson, have an opening comment?

Ms. Marianne Cerilli (Radisson): I will just make a very brief comment highlighting some of the areas that I am going to focus on because we do not have very much time once again, but I want to put on the record my very real and deep concern about the direction that this government is going with respect to the health and physical education curriculum and programs in the public school system and, indeed, for all schools in the province of Manitoba.

This is one of the areas that I want to ask the minister questions about, given his background and given the sport policy that is part of his responsibility. I am very concerned that, sitting around the cabinet table, given theYouth Secretariat, this government has backtracked on its commitment prior to the election to maintain physical activity as an important part of the school day for children.

I think that this is going to have a huge impact on sport and I think that the minister will have to agree that, if we go forward with the policy to reduce the activity time, whether it be by 40 percent or 25 percent, it is going to have an impact on the staffing levels of physical education teachers in the school system, and this is going to have a direct impact on the skill development of students in class. It is going to have an impact on intramural programs. It is going to have an impact on extracurricular competitive sports through the school system which will, in turn, have an impact on the amateur sport development programs throughout the province, on official development, on the volunteer coaching development, and, I would think, on every aspect because the physical educational professionals in the province play such an important role.

There is a very real concern that there will be fewer of them employed in the school system given the decision of the government to make it less of a requirement to have physical educators teaching in the area of physical education. We know that there are some school divisions, Portage la Prairie being one, I believe Beausejour another, where they are moving away from having physical education professionals teaching physical education. The requirement to have part of physical education become health education is going to make it easier for school divisions to have other teachers besides physical education teachers teaching phys ed. This is going to also have implications for safety and for the quality of the kind of programming that kids are going to receive. So that is one of the issues that I am very concerned about.

The other thing that I am going to delve into is the whole transition to the new Sport Manitoba agency with the provincial government. It has been a couple of years since this was first introduced, and now it is implemented. I have a number of issues that I want to address with respect to the functioning and the priorities, I guess you could say, of Sport Manitoba, and I, hopefully, will get time to touch on the Pan Am Games and a few other issues in the time that we have.

So with that I will conclude my opening statement, and we can get right into questions.

Mr. Chairperson: I thank the critic of the official opposition. At this time we would invite the minister's staff to enter the Chamber.

The honourable minister would like to introduce his staff present.

Mr. Ernst: The staff present today is Mr. Jim Berry, who is the Director of Community Support Services, and since the implementation of Sport Manitoba, as there are no staff of the provincial government anymore, we have Mr. Berry who does the administrative side of things for the sport function amongst many other things for the government.

Mr. Chairperson: We are on item 28.1. Sport (a) Sport Manitoba $10,260,000.

Ms. Cerilli: Maybe I will start off by asking a question related to both Sport Manitoba and the curriculum changes vis-à-vis physical education and health education, and I want to ask the minister to explain the position of Sport Manitoba regarding the reduction in physical activity time in phys ed classes in our schools.

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I know that at the Forum 3 there was a representative of Sport Manitoba who did express concern at that public forum, outlining some of the concerns that I just did in my opening statement, that it would have an impact on sport. So I am wondering if the minister could tell us what position either has been communicated to him or if he is aware that there has been some discussion of this with the Sport Manitoba groups or at the board level about the implications that this is going to have on amateur sport in the province.

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, the Sport Manitoba board has not communicated anything to me, either verbally or in writing with respect to physical education issues, nor am I responsible for those. The Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) is responsible for the physical education aspects of things, and while sport certainly has an interest, it is the responsibility of the Department of Education to deal with physical education, not the Department of Sport.

Ms. Cerilli: I am wondering if the minister would clarify two things. Was the decision regarding physical education a cabinet decision? Did that kind of proposal of major curriculum changes come to cabinet, first of all, and, secondly, was the minister not at the forum when the representative from Sport Manitoba made the comments about the impact that this is going to have on amateur sport?

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, to answer the last question first, no, I was not present at the time that the member raised the issue.

With respect to how--I quite frankly do not remember whether it came to cabinet or whether it was a decision made directly within the Department of Education. There was collaboration and discussion about it. I raised the issue of our commitment under the sport policy for quality physical education. The minister indicated, and I support--and I think basically the phys ed teachers also support the issue that physical education is not simply running around the gymnasium or running around the playing field.

Physical education is considerably more than that, and the responsibility, I think, of physical education teachers will evolve ultimately through the new curriculum into attempting to instill in students a lifelong desire for active living, a lifelong desire to be physically active and to respect and understand the benefits that they get out of being physically active, whether that has to do with sport or some other kind of activity.

The fact of the matter is, it is not good enough anymore. Phys ed teachers have told me they understand that and that they have some work to do themselves with respect to ensuring that once students leave the school system, they still have that understanding, and, hopefully, they will have the desire to want to continue with physical activity long after they have left school and understand and respect the benefits they get out of physical activity throughout their entire life, not just during the few years that they spend in the K-12 system.

Ms. Cerilli: I hope the minister is not suggesting that running around the gym is all that occurs now in physical education in schools in Manitoba, because that is not, and there is a lot of time and effort that goes into trying to create a fair, an interesting, a participatory environment where young people can develop skills, sports skills, so that they can indeed, as the minister is saying, leave high school with the propensity to participate in physical activity. I wonder if the minister would agree that the way to do that is to have some skill development in sports, that you are not very likely to go swimming if you cannot swim. You are not very likely to play tennis if you cannot indeed swing a racquet, and I am wondering if the minister will agree that it takes attention and activity time in physical education to develop those skills so that people are more likely to participate outside of the school day, and if this is not going to negatively affect the ability for schools to develop that kind of propensity in students.

The other thing that I cannot accept--and I would encourage the minister to consider carefully his comments that phys ed teachers are accepting this, because I have gone through this with the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh). I can assure you that I have numbers of letters, and I have received additional letters from individual teachers, as well as from the Physical Education Teachers' Association that they do not support this. They figure they have to perhaps go along with it because the government has a majority and they have no choice, but they do not see, and neither do I, and neither do we in the NDP, how it is going to help anyone's health or physical activity to take away phys ed time to teach health. I would encourage the minister to tell me if he agrees with that, and I would support having more health education in high schools.

I would support what he has said about encouraging young people, as the Minister of Education has said, to have more attention so that they learn the benefits of physical activity in what they are doing, and I know many phys ed teachers include that in their curriculum and their classes already, but I think to suggest that taking away physical activity time to accomplish that is the best way to go. I think it would be much better to have that attended to in additional time, and I am quite concerned that that additional time was first of all eroded when the government removed health education as a required course in the core curriculum. So the minister and the government are contradicting themselves. If they think that health education is so important, why did they remove it as a required course from the kindergarten to Grade 8 level?

So there is, I think, a misguided attempt here to make more room in the school day, and I want the minister also to comment on the number of studies that I have referenced in Question Period. I have studies from the Women's Directorate, for example, of this government that have shown that girls participating in phys ed right through to Grade 12 see all sorts of benefits, everything from increased likelihood of going on in education after Grade 12 to less likelihood of unplanned pregnancies. We have studies from the--I just want to find out who did some of these. I referenced 49 studies anyway, and one of the key points is that they not only speak to the health benefits, but also that increased physical activity benefits academic learning, because it benefits healthy self-esteem and concentration, the ability to stay focused and not get into discipline problems.

So what I am suggesting is that the minister could have a lot of support to take to cabinet and to take forward to the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) to support his Sport policy, which has the very good recommendation there of encouraging mandatory physical education from kindergarten to Grade 12. The back-to-basics approach that the Minister of Education is trying to take in having more time for math and other core subjects, there is no research that is going to support that. All the research points to having healthy, active kids as support for academic improvement.

I am very concerned that the minister has said he supports this move and agrees that the way to go is to take physical activity time away from kids not only at the high school, but right on down to kindergarten when kids, I think, have a difficult enough time of sedentary classroom requirements and they need time to be active. We know that there has been a 50 percent increase in obesity. I think 40 percent of all kids under 10 are obese, and we have to have some public policy that is going address that. This, Mr. Minister, is going in the wrong direction.

So maybe you can respond to some of those issues I have raised in terms of the studies that support increased physical activity, some of the government's own studies, The Health of Manitoba's Children is the other one I was thinking of. Also, the whole issue of taking away physical activity time to teach health is like defeating the purpose.

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Mr. Ernst: Well, there were 20 or 30 questions elicited by the member, and I am going to try and remember at least some of them. First of all, let me say that, with respect to whether physical education teachers agree or do not agree with what I said earlier, in my office sat the members of the executive of the physical education teachers supervisors group as well as the Physical Education Teachers' Association, and concurred with that statement. Now, the member may have letters from other people. They may not be what their executive members said, but they sat at my office and said that, so I can only go on the basis of what they told me.

With respect to the question of health as being taught on some physical activity time, there may a gross misunderstanding somewhere along the way, but the intent, I believe, and I believe that is also the intent of the Department of Education, is to, as I said earlier, try and instill in people a lifelong interest in physical activity, to learn the benefits of that physical activity, not necessarily to teach the historic type of health curriculum, but under the new phys ed curriculum to include as part of that some understanding by the students of the benefits they get from doing the physical activity.

If they understand that, Mr. Chair, then hopefully that will carry with them for their life after they leave school, which is a considerably longer period of time than the time they actually are in school.

With respect to the physical activity, yes, I agree with the member. It is important to learn those skills, the motor skills that are associated with it, the skills associated with individual sports, and the more proficient they are at it, very likely the more they will enjoy it. But the fact of the matter is it is a much broader situation than simply just learning certain skills; it is that understanding of the lifelong benefits of physical education, or physical activity rather, that I think needs to be instilled. I had concurrence with that from the Phys Ed Teachers Association executive and the phys ed supervisors association executive, who sat in my office as we discussed this for some considerable period of time on at least two occasions. So it may not be the be-all and end-all, but I think progress is being made.

The fact that the Department of Education now is going to employ a full-time phys ed co-ordinator, something that was done away with a couple of years ago, I think is important. I have approached the minister with respect to continuing the grant to the Phys Ed Teachers Association for them to continue with their work, and I am hopeful that the minister will see fit to be able to continue that because I think it is important. Perhaps without blowing my horn too much, I was instrumental in having that done in the first place, to have a contract taken with the Phys Ed Teachers Association in order to continue and to do some of the good work that they have been doing over the last period of time. That is with the former Minister of Education.

As I say, it may not be everything that everybody wants. I think it is a good start. I think that the new curriculum will go a long way to defining what people mean in terms of the so-called academic portions of the phys ed program that attempt to instill into people an understanding of what the benefits are of physical activity and why they should continue it for the rest of their life, not just while they are in school. It is not just an opportunity to get out of the classroom, not just an opportunity to avoid doing academic work, but rather to understand that there are significant health benefits.

Ultimately, everyone will be a winner in that, Mr. Chair. First and foremost, of course, will be the individual. If they learn and understand that physical activity, sustained over their lifetime, is something that ought to be done because it is good for them, and they can not only learn to enjoy the time they spend at that but know of the benefits of doing that, I think they are much better off in terms of their own health for the rest of their life.

Certainly, the Department of Health and the hospital system, the medical system that we have in this country, will be better off because we will have less people accessing the system for a wide variety of ailments that might well be prevented by virtue of the fact that they are physically active over their lifetime. Society in general will be better off because we will have a much healthier population, a more active population, ready to do the kinds of things and that activity will transfer into the volunteer community into a host of other benefits that accrue to society as a whole.

Mr. Chair, I do not disagree with the member; I am not sure of what she has said. I guess it is a matter of degree, a matter of what focus you want to take. I do not subscribe entirely 100 percent to the fact that the only benefit coming from a new phys ed curriculum that deals with both aspects, both the physical, actual activity and accruing benefits, that hopefully the students will learn. I think that the latter part plays a role, certainly a significant role, in the long-term development and long-term health of people and is something that ought to be pursued.

So as I say, I do not necessarily disagree with much of what she said, but I think at the same time we hopefully can see some considerable benefit from the academic portions of the phys ed program which will hopefully instill in that student the benefit for the rest of their life.

Ms. Cerilli: There are a number of things I want to pick up from what the minister has said. Is the minister aware that the Minister of Education has given the superintendents and principals a directive March the 22nd that for this year, until the new curriculum comes in, phys ed teachers are supposed to be integrating community health, social emotional well-being, safety, dental health, nutrition and family life, life skills, drug awareness and mental well-being into the physical education class? Is the minister aware of that?

Mr. Ernst: No.

Ms. Cerilli: This is part of the reason I have been asking questions of the Minister of Education in Question Period about this. Because what has happened is in the meantime, until we get the new curriculum, this directive has gone out, not to phys ed teachers but to the principals and superintendents who are now doing the hiring and doing the scheduling for next year.

What my concern is, is before we get the new curriculum we are going to have this erosion of the people in the schools that are going to be qualified to teach physical education, and I know that there has been correspondence exchanged that suggests that there are actually going to be 75 percent physical activity in the new curriculum, and not as this document says only 60 percent physical activity. So I am wondering if the minister could--

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Point of Order

Mr. Ernst: This is all very interesting and I would be prepared to have some discussion about it, but I think the member is really overlapping into the Department of Education. I am not privy to all of the things that go out of the Minister of Education's office, nor am I responsible, Mr. Chairman. Well, as I say, it is all very interesting and it may have some relevance, I think that portion of it has well been covered in the last few minutes and that to continue on with letters from the minister to the schools and what portion of time and so on is going to occur is not relevant to the Estimates of my responsibility, nor can I respond appropriately because I am not aware of all the things that the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) has said or done or written or anything else.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. I have been listening very intently to the line of questioning that the member for Radisson (Ms. Cerilli) has been posing. Her line of questioning has been posed towards your opinion, or are you aware of within the area of Sport, even though it did come under a different category, under Education. The minister does have the option of not answering the question, but only under Question Period would she be going within the rules of relevancy. As long as she is dealing or asking your opinion within this line of questioning, she would be relevant to this line. So the honourable minister did not have a point of order.

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Ms. Cerilli: Basically, given all of that information for the minister, and I appreciate that he was honest and said that he was not aware. There is different information that is going to the physical education professionals and to the superintendents and the principals. What I am wanting the Minister for Sport to do is bring forward his concerns as the Sport minister, as the former Minister for Fitness, that this is going to have a serious effect on the future of sport and on the future fitness of children and youth, and that in the short term the confusion and the scheduling and hiring of physical education professionals is going to be compromised.

So I am asking if you will have another discussion on this with the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh). What I have asked specifically is for her to send out all the same information to all the people in the school system, that if the intent is eventually to have a curriculum with 75 percent physical activity time, that information should go this year now to all the principals and the superintendents, and that has not occurred, and that is what I am concerned about, they are hiring and they are scheduling now for the coming year.

I will give the minister a chance to respond to that before I carry on.

Mr. Ernst: Okay.

Ms. Cerilli: I am wondering if you will also agree, given that the Department of Education first of all eliminated health education as a required course, kindergarten to Grade 8, and some people think that making that an option is simply so that there is less of a likelihood that certain topics that are controversial in schools will not have to be taught--drugs, sexuality, all those things that are taught in the health curriculum, kindergarten to Grade 8--that some people think that is the reason behind moving away from mandatory health education.

Regardless of that, because the minister had said what he thought the intent of it was; it was to have students understand why they are doing physical activity, but perhaps it is a different reason. But then the real issue, and the point I want to make is, given that they have reduced health education, will the minister not agree that it does not make sense to reduce physical activity time to teach some of those health topics, especially some of the health topics that are being included in physical education, and would he not discuss that as well with the Minister of Education, that there are serious implications this is going to have on the future fitness and ability for sport participation?

Mr. Ernst: The member can surmise all she wants as to the motivations of people and so on. I am sure she has covered all of this with the Minister of Education during her Estimates. My understanding of the issue is, as I have said before, that if you teach children in the school system the benefits of being active, what it does to their body, how it develops their body, how it prolongs the life of their body and how it will prevent susceptibility to illnesses in the future, it will make their life much more pleasant over its entirety, I see nothing wrong with that.

In fact, I think that is a major benefit of teaching those portions of health to the students as part of a phys ed program. I think they will get more out of that ultimately over their total lifespan than they will out of pure physical activity. I think they will get more benefit because they will be able to carry that thought, those precepts, that information, that benefit that regular physical activity over their lifetime will benefit them much, much more than simply another 10 or 15 minutes of physical activity time while they are in the school system. That, in the overall scheme of things is pretty small.

The benefit they get out of the education portion of that or the academic, if you like, education portion of that will carry with them for the rest of their lives. If they accept it, understand it and believe in it, then that physical activity time over the rest of their lives will be much, much more beneficial to them in the overall scheme of things.

Ms. Cerilli: I am wondering if the minister is familiar with the term “experiential education” and if the minister would not agree that especially with sport skill development, that repetition is an important component and that if we are serious about teaching to the whole child in our school system, that phys ed activity is one of the few times in the day when they get some attention to their physical being, and it is an opportunity to learn by doing.

I know that a lot of the phys ed teachers are going to struggle to find ways of teaching some of the topics that are going to be introduced into phys ed, the health topics. They are going to find ways of teaching those in an active way. I am concerned by what the minister is saying, that he would not acknowledge that experiencing activity and fitness is a better way of learning it, rather than just learning about it in a book-learning fashion or in a nonexperiential way.

I am not going to spend too much time on that anymore, but the minister can respond to that because I know that the teachers are going to try and find ways of teaching some of the health topics in an active way and in an experiential way.

The other thing I want to ask the minister specifically, though, is how he justifies this policy direction from cabinet vis-à-vis the very clear policy statement on sport that I believe was developed when he was the minister and how he can justify that the sport policy is so easily disregarded. As I understand it, one of the reasons for moving to the Sport Manitoba concept was to try and ensure that this sport policy that was developed under this minister would be more adhered to by the different funded sport agencies in the province.

I would like some explanation of how we can have a sport policy that says one thing, specifically saying that there should be a connection between sport and education, specifically saying that there should be encouragement for physical education from kindergarten to Grade 12--it talks about some of the things that I did, the importance of the development of sport leadership through the schools--and then on the other hand we have a government do exactly the opposite and reduce physical education time in the schools.

Mr. Ernst: I do not agree with the member that the only way of learning about fitness and active living is to do it, and certainly that is the way it is being done in current circumstances in many cases. I do not believe that just simply going into the gym for basketball practice or something along that line is the only way. It is not the only way. The member knows it is not the only way.

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If you combine with that some--and how you do it, of course, is a different matter. You can well teach, for instance, the benefits of aerobics, to stop in the middle of an aerobic activity and say, check your heartbeat; check your lung capacity; what has it done to you; what do you think is happening to your body when you are doing this? I mean, there are a number of different ways, and I am not a phys ed teacher. I do not have the training. I do not have the experience that many of those professionals do, and I support the work that the professionals do in the system.

Mr. Chair, they told me when I met with them that, yes, they would have to find different ways of dealing with those issues because they thought they were important, as well. Hopefully, out of the fact that you have the phys ed co-ordinator now in the Department of Education, and hopefully that as the new curriculum is developed, over time, those things will work their way into the system and that they will be beneficial to the student.

Really, I mean, the bottom line is, why are you there? Why do you have physical education at all? It is for the student. The student needs to benefit. The student needs to benefit in more than one way. The student needs to benefit in as many ways as possible, and by writing that kind of curriculum--whether the Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) has said this or that or the other thing, I do not know. I am not privy to all of the things that go in and out of the Minister of Education's office or whether what the member says is even factual. It may be; it may not be. I do not know.

With respect to the sport policy itself, Mr. Chairman, that is certainly the objective. The objective has not been reached. We have further work to do. You know, and quite frankly that policy was developed in 1990. We are now six years later, and sometimes there are tradeoffs, particularly in the education system, where you need to spend a certain amount, perhaps more, time devoted to certain types of subjects. I mean, the student that graduates needs to be healthy, needs to have a healthy body, needs to have a proper attitude, but also needs to have some other skills in order to compete in the world, and that competition is getting tougher and tougher.

I do not want to go into all the other benefits of the blueprint for Education and the kind of benefits that come from enhanced curriculum. This is really not the time or place for it, but it is a goal. The policy was a goal. If it is achieved or achievable, or if there is a tradeoff somewhere along the line, that is the way things go, and it may have to be that ultimately the policy will have to be changed to meet the objectives and goals of other policies with the government.

Ms. Cerilli: I am going to table a document and send it over to the minister for his information. It is called, The Evidence Behind Quality Daily Physical Education, Facts and Support. It was developed in March 1995, and it is a compendium of 49 studies which demonstrate the benefits of fitness and physical activity in the schools and for kids, young people. I am hoping that the minister will realize that the direction that he is supporting the government in going, in terms of education, is not only in violation of his policy, and I just want to remind the minister that it says, one of their objectives was to communicate to all members of the education system the value of sport within education in developing leadership, character and healthy lifestyles and that they have not set a very good example in this.

Also, the main point is that the direction that they are going with teaching more of the same, math and English and science and social studies, is not going to improve the academic performance of young people, that there has not been any research put forward in the Department of Education that is going to support that. Here is the research that supports more phys ed and activity time in education is going to have kids perform better. So, you know, I do not know if the minister has any studies that he is aware of that would contradict that, but I am concerned that the curriculum direction is misguided. I am disappointed to hear that the minister is supporting it.

Anyway, I want to move on to deal a little bit with Sport Manitoba. Maybe just to start off with some questions about the hiring of the CEO for Sport Manitoba. I have had some concerns expressed to me that this seems to be taking an awfully long time. The official launch of Sport Manitoba was the beginning of this fiscal year, as I understand it, April 1, 1996, and I do not recall when exactly the notice was in the paper for the position, but could the minister explain why this is taking so long; how many people have been short-listed; if we are at that stage yet, how many are being interviewed; and when we can expect the CEO position to be filled?

Mr. Ernst: I think the advertisement went in the paper in February, early February. The closing date was around mid-March or thereabouts. I think there were 170 applications for the position. I know that I spoke with the chair of the board not long ago with regard to this, and he indicated that they were attempting to arrange interviews with some of the people, although the qualities that they were looking for in a CEO of Sport Manitoba were not readily evident in the applications of many of the people that filed them. Their view was that it required certain unique qualifications, and I know that--I am not directly involved in it, of course. The board of Sport Manitoba has a responsibility and is, in fact, conducting this search, but I know that when the Manitoba Sports Federation sought out a CEO for their organization, or whatever they call it, executive director, I guess, they had the same problem trying to find somebody with that right combination of skills that were necessary. But it is their responsibility. They will carry on and deal with it, and, ultimately, they will make a decision.

Ms. Cerilli: So we do not know when we are likely to have someone in that position? Do they have a target date? Do they now have a group of people short-listed that they think have the desirable qualifications? What are these qualifications that we are looking for that are not forthcoming?

Mr. Ernst: Mr. Chairman, I do not know exactly all of the details of what they are specifically looking for, nor do I know who or how many are short-listed. That is their responsibility, and they will conduct it. Overall, I am trying to take a fairly hands-off approach to the operation of Sport Manitoba. We charged 15 people with the responsibility of running Sport Manitoba organization. I think it is somewhat untoward for the minister to try and go in and micro-manage activities that are going on within the board and the operation of Sport Manitoba. So they are given pretty much free rein in terms of what they are doing, and if ultimately they do not perform, then, at least for those that are appointed by the government, we will seek other people to try and do a better job, but for the moment they have pretty much free rein, and I am reasonably confident that they will do the right job.

Ms. Cerilli: With regard to the staff that had been with the Sport Directorate that are now with Sport Manitoba, they previously were part of a collective agreement with the MGEU, I understand, and now they no longer are part of a collective agreement. I am wondering if the minister can describe the changes that occurred for those employees and how that occurred, how their salaries and benefits changed.

Mr. Ernst: Without going into a lot of detail, the individual employee that went from the Sport Directorate to Sport Manitoba would not notice any difference. The salary levels, the benefits, the pension arrangements, I believe, they are continuing under the superannuation. For those who were government employees before were permitted to remain in the government pension plan, so that they would have no change. They will continue to make the same contributions and so on, and Sport Manitoba will make a contribution on their behalf.

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The only area that might be a little bit different is in terms of vacations. I think the board of Sport Manitoba did not quite agree with the former vacation entitlements, but I do not think it is material, and certainly nobody has said anything to me about any concern over anything related to the transfer, how they are paid, what they are paid and what benefits they have. As far as I am aware, they are all quite satisfied.

Ms. Cerilli: I am just looking at the time, and I know I am going to have to move along quickly.

On a different area then, one of the concerns I have raised before with the minister, given Sport Manitoba, is that the sports are now expected to have a maximum of 25 percent, I understand it, of the funding that comes to them to go to administration. If that is incorrect, if I am misunderstanding that, maybe the minister can correct me, but I have had concerns expressed to me by sports that it is going to be difficult for them, because one director for a sport can perform a variety of duties that would be managerial, in the development area of their sport programs, in the elite area of their sport programs, and it is very difficult for them to know how much of their time goes towards strictly administrative.

So I am wondering how it is that the minister and Sport Manitoba have devised to oversee this. I mean, I look at the way that Sport Manitoba has broken down its organizational functions, and I can see that they have separated their finance administration from their sport programming, and, well, I will ask some questions about that in a minute, but just in terms of the sports, I have also been told that already there are some sports that have moved out of the building, that they have decided that it is going to be better for them to be outside of the building, and I think one of them, they are operating out of their home, the sport director's home. I have raised the concern that the sports are worried that the way the money is going to flow is going to force them to have one director for a number of sports and that this is going to have a direct impact on the kinds of organizational work that can go on for the different sports.

When I look at the salary levels that have continued for the CEOs, or whether I should call them COs, for the directors, the staff people in the different sports, these are people who are earning, even after eight years of employment, less than $35,000 a year. So they are not high-paid people, but, if they are going to have to manage more than two sports, especially, the impact, I am concerned, on the sports is going to be very serious.

I would ask the minister to clarify what his intention is with this limit of 25 percent on administration, if I am, in fact, understanding that correctly.

Mr. Ernst: I am, Mr. Chairman, not familiar with the 25 percent that the member refers to. Now, that may well be some position taken by the board of Sport Manitoba in a recent time. I am not aware of it.

In the funding agreement between Sport Manitoba and the government, there is a requirement that Sport Manitoba not spend more than 15 percent on administration. That is a carry-over from the same clause that was contained in the agreement with the Manitoba Sports Federation, who, in this agreement, is a successor to that. Generally speaking, the intent, function, in Sport Manitoba is to be as least interventionist as possible with respect to how individual sports operate.

In the past and continuing for this year, the Manitoba Sports Federation had a policy of providing salary support whether they wanted it or not. As a matter of fact, I am aware of one case where in fact it was attempted to be forced upon a particular sport, and to tell them--this sport did not have an executive director, and the Manitoba Sports Federation was encouraging them, very dramatically, to do that because they had money in their budget for that.

Again, it is up to the board of Sport Manitoba to decide, but I suspect what will happen in the future is that there will not be specific money set aside for salary support. There will be money allocated to sport and individual sport, based upon a variety of activities. If they choose to spend it on hiring staff, that is their choice. If several of them decide that they should perhaps reduce the amount of staff that they have and join forces with another sport or two, that is their choice, but they will have an allocation of money based upon probably a certain--again, I am only speculating. Ultimately, the board of Sport Manitoba will have to make these decisions. I am not going to tell them how to do it, but I suspect that, ultimately, what will happen is that there will an allocation for program development, there will be probably some for elite athletes, and there may be a base grant of some kind for operating, but ultimately Sport will decide how they spend their money.

We did notice during the transition period when we examined all the sports that some of them have an inordinately high administrative cost. Some of that is corrected by the fact that the way they kept their books was not necessarily the most appropriate way in terms of allocation of time so that if somebody earning $35,000 a year was executive director but did a bunch of other things they should be allocating portions of their time and of course portions of their salary then to those other things not to the job of the executive director administrator.

In fact much of that I think will be cleaned up because what is going to be required is that each sport is going to have to have an annual game plan to bring forward, and they will have to identify in there what they are going to spend their money on, how they are going to do it, what their programs are, what their development programs are, what their elite programs are, what their championship requirements are and so on.

This is not going to happen overnight. It is going to be an evolutionary process, and I suspect it will still take two or three years or more before some kind of system finally evolves out of the operation. But it is certainly not going to happen overnight, and for this year of course there is no change.

* (1720)

Ms. Cerilli: I think I want to ask a few questions about the bingo allocations. One of the other concerns that has been made is that--well, two things--the money is going to be reduced that can go to administration. As I understood, that is one of the purposes of going to Sport Manitoba is they want to make sure that more money is going to go to athletes and coaches, okay. As I have just suggested, we are not quite sure how that is going to mean.

There is also a concern though that the amount of money raised through bingos for Sport is being reduced, that what is happening in the casinos is that less people are playing bingo because they are playing the slot machines and the VLTs, and that now they are going to staffing the bingos with Lottery staff, and that the Sports are having to provide less and less volunteers. The Sports are concerned that these two trends are going to mean that there is going to be less money available through bingos.

The other concern is if there is sort of a push being made that they do more independent fundraising, private sector fundraising, I am wondering if built into the Sport Manitoba structure there is any support to help the volunteer boards and the Sports organize corporate or other private fundraising. So I guess that is another sort of multipronged question, but I am just trying to get at the picture. I think that we are changing the picture for funding in the Sports, and the people that I have talked to feel that there is more of a push made, that they should be doing more fundraising on their own.

If that is the case, I am concerned that there be something built into Sport Manitoba that is going to provide the necessary training, help with making appeals and presentations to corporations to help organize fundraising plans, that kind of thing. I am wondering if that is going to happen through Sport Manitoba.

Mr. Ernst: Firstly, with respect to the question on bingos, the funding agreement between the government and Sport Manitoba has exactly the same number of bingos that they had before, and the dollar values for payment under those bingos is the same and will remain the same for the balance of the agreement.

So, for the next five years, there will not be any change. There are fixed values for bingos. I forget just exactly the names of them and so on; there are three different categories of bingo. There are three price structures. They have been the same for the last couple of years, and they are contained in the funding agreement between the province and Sport Manitoba at those numbers. That agreement runs for five years unless it is terminated for one reason or another.

With respect to marketing, I think it is in the individual sport's best interest to try and seek out as much funding as it can from whatever source, not simply rely on the government to provide that. I would guess that, in the case of hockey, for instance, the government might provide, or Sport Manitoba might provide, 20 percent of the revenue that hockey gets. It gets a lot of revenue from other sources, but there is marketing staff that came from the former Manitoba Sports Federation.

I think over time that could well become the major focus within the supports available to individual sport through the Sport Manitoba model. That assistance for the kinds of things that the member raises--an excellent idea, and it ought to be pursued. I am sure that the board at Sport Manitoba will consider that, given that there is some availability at the moment. There is at least one staffperson who is involved in that activity, perhaps more.

Ms. Cerilli: Maybe I was not clear enough. As I understand it, from what the minister has said, it is that the total amount of money from bingos has not been reduced, but what I have is a concern expressed to me that the number of bingos that are being allocated to the sports, to a number of the sports, has been reduced, so that a given sport organization may have had 25 bingos last year and that this year they only got 20.

I do not understand, then, if there is change in just internally with which sports are getting more bingos and how that is working, but if there is no plan then to have the total number of bingos reduced for sport.

Mr. Ernst: The total number has not changed; the dollar value has not changed for sport. Now, individually, individual sports might have had a change for some reason or other, but the total allocation and the total amount of money have not changed.

There may be some reason, I would not suspect that there would be many because I think they are following the same funding pattern as last year, but in the overall scheme of things there are the same number of bingo days and the same value, so the total amount of money is not reduced.

Ms. Cerilli: Back to sort of the structure with Sport Manitoba, I am wondering if there will be plans or provisions for members from the different sports to meet and if that is maybe something they could initiate of their own volition. But let us say, all the executive directors wanted to meet on a regular basis or all the presidents of the different sports to meet on a regular basis, if anything like that is planned, because, again, it has been expressed to me that there is some sense that this may be a good structure, a good way for them to make plans and develop and compare notes. I am wondering if that is something that is being considered.

Mr. Ernst: I know that individual sports are quite free to meet on their own, and executive directors meet every day in the building there. There are meetings of all different kinds for a variety of purposes, many of them just informal discussions on a variety of problems that they have to deal with, but there is nothing prohibiting that. There is a provision for annual sport congress for all the sports to get together once a year to discuss issues related to sport. But again, over time, things will evolve that I think will be beneficial over--you know, people have lots of initiative.

Ms. Cerilli: One more question in terms of Sport Manitoba and I will lump it in with one question on the Pan Am Games plans. In terms of Sport Manitoba, I just want to clarify the total number of staff that will be working, and in terms of the Pan Am Games I am wondering if the Facilities Development Fund, the $20 million that is to be spent in facilities development, I am wondering if all the facilities sites have been selected and if all of the agreements have been made for the plans for all of the facilities, and if I can get that listing given to me.

Mr. Ernst: I am not 100 percent sure of the number of staff. I think it is 28, but I could be wrong. The other end of it, the facilities plan is not finalized yet, and I am expecting that by the end of June. I have requested them to do that, so I am hopeful that it will arrive on time.

Mr. Chairperson: The hour being 5:30 p.m., this committee is recessed until 9 a.m.

Ms. Cerilli: I am wondering if there would be leave to go past 5:30 so that we could complete the Estimates and pass the items on Sport.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. That will not be possible. We are not on Friday rules right now, and it is only when we are on Friday rules that this committee can extend its sitting time. So the hour being 5:30 p.m., this committee is recessed until 9 a.m. tomorrow (Friday).