Education — Issue No. 2 — Thursday, March 2, 2006 (HTML)

2006 Legislative Session: Second Session, 38th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
MINUTES AND HANSARD

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION



CONTENTS

		Page

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair		3

Draft Business Plan and Preliminary Witness List		3

Committee Meeting Schedule		9

Other Business		9

Chair:	* John Nuraney (Burnaby-Willingdon L)
Deputy Chair:	* Gregor Robertson (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
Members:	* Daniel Jarvis (North Vancouver–Seymour L) * Richard T. Lee (Burnaby North L) * Lorne Mayencourt (Vancouver-Burrard L) * Mary Polak (Langley L) * John Rustad (Prince George–Omineca L) * John Horgan (Malahat–Juan de Fuca NDP) Doug Routley (Cowichan-Ladysmith NDP) * Diane Thorne (Coquitlam-Maillardville NDP) * denotes member present

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Committee Clerk): Good afternoon, everyone. As this is the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Education for the second session of this parliament, and there not yet being a Chair elected to serve this committee, I hereby open the floor to nominations.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Thank you. Are there any further nominations? I'll ask three times. Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Then I will put the question to the committee.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, members, for once again putting your trust and confidence in me. I look forward to serving with you in completing the task that has been allocated to us.

The second item on our agenda is the election of the Deputy Chair. Once again, it is my pleasant duty to ask for nominations.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Any other names for the Vice-Chair? Hearing none, may I have the approval by saying aye.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you. We have elected Gregor Robertson as the Deputy Chair.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I believe you have in front of you the draft of the business plan. Have you had an opportunity to take a look at and see if the draft is in order and whether it meets the approval of the committee members? Would you like a few minutes to take a quick look at it?

M. Polak: Just a question with respect to our scope as far as looking at adult literacy programming and successful programs. One of the areas I think we dare not miss, because I think it's a significant issue that people don't realize, is the area of K-to-12 school districts. Many of them in many ways reach out to adult learners with respect to adult literacy. I'm thinking particularly of school districts with large immigrant populations who have family literacy programs where they actually reach out to the adult members of a family along with the children. I wondered if that might be something we consider looking at, as well, because I think it's an emerging issue for us as a province.

J. Nuraney (Chair): It is my understanding that the mandate that was given to us is very clearly talking about adult literacy. If that program does include adults in their program, I would certainly think that it will be a part of our mandate to make sure that we understand those programs and also to get some details as to how best we can look at them and perhaps include them in our reporting.

M. Polak: Further to that, a number of lower mainland school districts in particular — perhaps others, as well — have specific family literacy programs. We may find it easiest to canvass them and ascertain which ones have active family literacy programs and the way in which we might best access the information. It may be as simple as getting some written material that references what their activities are.

J. Schofield: The research staff, in anticipation of the second phase of the consultation, is actually compiling a list of school districts that offer not simply family literacy programs but special services for ESL adults as well, so that the committee will have that background information.

L. Mayencourt: I just wanted to raise the issue of where we might be. It seems that it's Vancouver or Victoria. In the lower mainland there are five municipalities where the bulk of ESL citizens live. I think it might do us some good to sort of hit those five communities as a way of making sure those people know we're caring about the issues they're facing. I think that will make it easy for…. I don't think it will add to the cost, because we can drive from Vancouver to wherever we're going, but it will also allow witnesses to come forward from within their own community.

J. Nuraney (Chair): If you look at the schedule, we have two lower mainland meetings and then two other locations.

We have thought about that — that we should not just concentrate only in the Vancouver downtown area. We should move around to the suburbs, like Surrey, perhaps Burnaby — wherever there is a need — so that we can also talk to the other groups who are wondering what they're doing in those areas.

J. Horgan: With respect to objective one, it strikes me — certainly, in my time in this place and working as an opposition critic for the Ministry of Education, the K-to-12 component — that the continuum of literacy is an objective that's worthy of our study, not just adult literacy.

I'm wondering if the committee will have an opportunity to expand the objective in objective one to include early learning. At what stage we will be advancing beyond this initial objective, I guess, is the question. If it's not for a period of time — if that period of time is unforeseen — I'm wondering if we could perhaps amend our objective to broaden the scope of our discovery.

J. Nuraney (Chair): It is my understanding that we cannot really amend the mandate that is given to us by the Legislature. But in the course of our hearing and our work that we'll be doing, I'm quite confident we will expand on those areas and take some of those things we may be hearing from the stakeholders and include those comments.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Just by way of further clarification, the business plan goals and objectives are based on the terms of reference that were issued, so we have only created specific tasks to help the committee achieve those objectives and goals that were issued essentially by the Legislature. In terms of the way the business plan is unfolded, we would, in particular, appreciate your help and input to guide us through the key tasks that you would like to see us undertake to support your work. But the objective, the wording of that, is linked directly to the terms of reference.

J. Horgan: I guess my point is — and my interest…. I don't want to force my views onto the committee, but when we're challenged with adult literacy, it's probably a result of a failure at an earlier point in an individual's life. It seems to me that we should at least, as a minimum step, take some effort to understand how it is that we came to the point where we have a significant number of adults in our population who have literacy challenges. That speaks to the role of the K-to-12 system, what other opportunities there are with the expanded mandate of the ministry in terms of libraries and what the role of libraries is in our community with respect to not just adults but children.

Again, it's my personal view. I haven't discussed this with anyone from my side. But it strikes me that to get to a solution for the adult challenge, we have to make sure that we've got the foundation in place for our K-to-12 system so that we're not producing more illiterate adults — in fact, fewer.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I agree with you, John, and I think I have discussed this with the staff before — to see if our parameters can be expanded. I believe that through the information we will be gathering and the presentations we will be receiving, we will have the opportunity to make those references.

D. Jarvis: I was just wondering if there was any duplication coming forward here in the sense of Advanced Education and its adult literacy program. In my riding, for example, Capilano College came to me and said that they have quite an advanced adult literacy program going in which they're going out into all the businesses — where we have people immigrating to the country and all the rest of it. They have a literacy program, they feel, that doesn't seem to be included through us.

I'm wondering where our parameters are. Are we taking into consideration what is going on with adult literacy in…? I'll leave it at that, because I believe our committee Chair has an answer.

J. Schofield: Yes, you're quite right. Capilano is doing a lot of rather innovative work. In fact, in this file that we're compiling on adult education providers, it's not simply the school districts we're including there. We're also looking at the colleges and institutes so that the members, for the second phase of the consultation…. We hope to provide the members with an overview of what's out there, because there is a lot of program work going on in all types of education institutions right from, actually, preschool up to the post-secondary level.

Just as an aside, I think the legal school-leaving age or, if you like…. People have to attend school until the age of 16. This question of what we are defining here…. Our research staff has sort of been operating using that as a criterion in the sense that it seemed to give us a way of looking at youth at risk, for example, who are beyond that school-leaving age. I might just throw that out as something to consider.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I would encourage the members that if they have groups that they are associated with or that they know of and that they would like to

invite to make presentations before us, please give those names to Josie so they can be included on our witness list.

Further to John's point, I think there is some utility in asking ourselves the question: what is adult literacy as intended by the Legislative Assembly? It sort of goes to Josie's description around youth at risk and the school-leaving age. Certainly, many of the successful strategies that one may encounter around adult literacy focus on…. I want to say youth, but it isn't quite correct, because it crosses into the adult realm. Those who would be, say, between the ages of 16 and 19 have a somewhat different profile and yet are typically included in an adult literacy framework, as far as school districts and others.

What I would caution, though, having had a lot of years of experience in the K-to-12 system, is that the topic of early literacy, literacy within K-to-12…. To attempt to include it, I think, as a formal direction is problematic in a couple of ways, the first being that, just in and of themselves, they are such massive topics that the committee could spend its entire time looking at early childhood education, at K-to-12 education. The needs and strategies that are looked at and employed with respect to adult literacy tend to be very different and confront a number of different topics.

I suspect that by speaking with those who are expert in the field of adult literacy and adult basic education, there will be significant opportunities for crossover and exploration of some of those K-to-12 issues. I guess I'm looking at the terms of reference and noting that, first of all, our focus is on successful strategies that have been employed with respect to adult literacy, with, I would imagine, the intent of recommending something to the Legislative Assembly that would describe some of those and how they might be useful to us.

I think there is some room for us to discuss what adult literacy is, and we may want to extend that to youth at risk and how they are involved. But again, I think the idea of looking at early childhood literacy or K-to-12 really bogs us down and will take away our focus on what is a large enough topic in and of itself.

A quick addition — I know I'm going on; I'll try to stop very quickly — to that would also be that I think we have to be very focused on looking at perhaps two types of adult literacy. I would imagine this will flow out of our witnesses, but typically, the research points to those who have had failed experiences in the K-to-12 system, and many years back — unless we're talking about at-risk youth. The system has changed dramatically since then.

The other, and more significant, these days tends to be amongst our immigrant population, which again, reflects on adult programs as opposed to the K-to-12 system.

J. Rustad: Looking at our objective number one — "successful strategies from other jurisdictions on the promotion of adult literacy." When you're considering adults in terms of literacy, in terms of where there may have been failings and stuff, you would have to go back ten or 20 years or more and look at the education system that was in place, if you're going to try to get to the roots of why they're in the situation today.

If you look at the education of today and try to draw conclusions as to why somebody who was in the system ten or 20 years ago was unable to get through, I don't think we could draw some fair conclusions there. I think it'd be worthwhile to look at in terms of future potentials, in terms of adult literacy, but looking at K-to-12 today to try to do an analysis of adults would not be a fair procedure to go through.

The question I actually have is around successful strategies from other jurisdictions — other jurisdictions meaning what? Are we talking about other jurisdictions around the world or other jurisdictions in B.C. or…?

J. Nuraney (Chair): Outside the province, I believe, within Canada and…. It literally means anywhere else in the world.

J. Rustad: Yeah, and that's actually the exciting component. I think exactly what we need to be doing is looking at…. I mean, we have a great education system here. I'm sure there are some challenges, but in comparison to the rest of the world, we have a pretty good education system.

So how is everyone else in the world dealing with adult literacy, and are there things that we can take…? I look forward to seeing how we're going to be able to capture those different perspectives from the other corners of the world, in terms of meeting that goal. I think that will be a challenge.

J. Schofield: I think it might be helpful if the consultation phase for members is broken up into two phases. The first phase would focus on seeking an-

swers to that question. As a result of that, we have prepared the document that accompanies a business plan, the preliminary witness list. It seemed to me that before we get down into what's actually happening on the ground in British Columbia, it would be good to hear from people based in B.C. who have knowledge of what else is happening in the world, as well as, in the case of Ron Ferris…. He has knowledge, too, of initiatives in the province that are very interesting.

We've also been compiling, during the first session, a number of reports that have been prepared on this topic. What they are doing in the U.K. is very interesting. They're spending literally billions of pounds on further education for adult learners with a similar time target as 2010. There's a very interesting report there. The federal House has done an interesting study.

Apart from hearing, if you like, from the expert witnesses with knowledge of what's happening outside our borders, we'll also supplement that with summaries of what's happening in other parts of the world so that the committee can then consider whether they want to pursue those strategies. I hope that makes sense.

J. Schofield: I think it will make the committee's task more manageable because it's…. Actually, we've got a mandate that's sort of broken down into two.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Brace yourself, guys. There's going to be a lot more reading involved in this.

J. Schofield: I do think if you define a strategy as an integrated approach…. This is where I see this continuum of learning that John Horgan was raising. I think that comes in there very clearly — that you're not just looking at one facet, like what we can do to help aboriginal peoples; you're looking at all sectors. We can incorporate it into the first part, I think, conceptually quite well.

R. Lee: I believe that the second item in the terms of reference should be our focus. Of course, I agree with what John said — that we should compare to other jurisdictions, look at their experience and methods to increase literacy. The focus on aboriginal people, English-as-a-second-language adults and seniors…. Those should be our prime focus. If we diffuse the focus too much, then I'm worried that the time and the effort will be diffused.

I believe that for some of the senior sector…. How can we tap into the senior community and ask what they think would be most effective in increasing the literacy level? That would be one of the roads we can go on. Also for the immigrant community — the English as a second language that's also involved in it — how do we tap into the community? How do we seek their opinion and their strategy, or whatever, to increase the literacy level in that sector?

I also would like to see more experts coming from the community level instead of…. We know that there are a lot of experts, but in the community level we also have some people with some experience and opinions on that. So I would like to, if possible, increase the expert list to include representatives from the seniors groups and the….

J. Schofield: I think the plan is, Richard, that we would hear from people who are knowledgable about the three target groups in phase two of the consultation. It's kind of hard to say that they're each self-contained. For example, we actually have already identified in the province 65 different organizations that are providing ESL services for immigrants and their families.

Seniors are much more of a challenge. We actually have currently only about 13. I think seniors are a target group who, of course, because of their age, had an education that was pretty curtailed, so that comparison is very valid in their case. So any assistance, for example, from members about key senior organizations to contact would be very helpful.

We're not ignoring the experts for the target groups. It's just a way of organizing the process. Your comments are very valid, I think.

J. Nuraney (Chair): So I still encourage that each member should, if they have people they know of or organizations we've worked with or that they know about, pass them on to Josie to make sure that we do hear from them.

R. Lee: Yeah. Actually, for some experts, maybe they are experienced across all three groups: aboriginal, seniors…

R. Lee: …seniors from the immigrant community — that kind of thing. I think it's nice to get some of those opinions.

L. Mayencourt: Actually, John, my points have been covered, but I do have some stuff under "Other Business" that I'd like to raise when that time comes.

J. Horgan: I guess I'm concerned about the scope. I agree with John that looking at the strategies in place today in the K-to-12 system won't help us address, nec-

essarily, the shortcomings of the previous system. But perhaps the solution could be that we have a subcommittee, a small group of this committee, to just meet with current educators, teacher-librarians and representatives from the ministry so that we'd have a good understanding of what the strategies are in place today for the K-to-12 group, so that we're not making recommendations that may well have already been addressed for that body of the population that's moving into adulthood, where the challenges rest.

It just concerns me that we're targeting at trying to solve a problem that's already been created, rather than going back as a group to find out what's in place in our system that our government is responsible for and is advocating. What are the positives? That's presumably what we're looking for. How can we take that to help us address the challenges directly in the community with respect to ESL — aboriginal and adults and seniors?

"Seniors" just pops out at me for the first time. I don't know why. I apologize to the group, but I didn't realize we were going that far afield as an Education Committee.

I'm concerned that if I don't, as a committee member, have a good handle on what's going on today to ensure that we have fewer illiterate adults, based on the system that's in place, I don't think I can accurately or knowledgably listen to reasoned arguments from experts about what we need to do to help those that are illiterate now. Perhaps a subcommittee might be a solution that would at least ease my concerns that we are ignoring a significant portion of the continuum.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Good idea, John. I think we should consider your suggestion as we move along.

G. Robertson (Deputy Chair): I think it's interesting. We keep returning to the scope of the committee and this debate between whether we have a narrower scope and we focus, or we accept that this is a continuum, that there are root causes and that there are education practices taking place right now that could be the solutions or could be part of the problems related to adult literacy. I think John's point on opening our eyes to the whole continuum is critical. We don't have it specified in our terms, but I assume….

John, the Chair and I spoke of this earlier in terms of how the terms should be phrased and whether or not the continuum…. Our feeling was that the continuum is integral to all of this. I think the language that was approved through the process beyond us limited the scope to what we have here today.

Yet my assumption at this point is that our expert witnesses…. We're not the experts on adult literacy. Our expert witnesses are the ones who are going to come forward and say: "This is a continuum, and you can't look at one piece of it and pretend that the rest of it doesn't exist or isn't connected to it." By virtue of the work we do in bringing expert witnesses forward, this will be opened up to that continuum.

We as committee members are, I think, obliged to be open-minded and inclusive in looking at the continuum. If a subcommittee structure is the best way to do that so that we aren't all overwhelmed with the broad sweep of the continuum, maybe that's a way to contain it and contain the time that goes into it.

I think it's a great question to pose to our expert witnesses in the next phase of this so that we have a clear understanding from them of what we should be looking at here, so that we move towards clear, focused recommendations. That, I think, will become clear in the weeks ahead as we bring those experts in. But I feel like we have to be open-minded to this. It's not specified in the terms, but if we aren't thinking more broadly on this, we aren't going to end up with the right focused outcome that we would like, because it doesn't take everything into consideration.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Gregor. As you know, we have shared this conversation on the topic before.

It is my understanding, John, that we'll be led into that through various discussions that we will have. I have no doubt in my mind that we'll be led into that kind of discussion in the course of our work.

D. Thorne: My question is in the same area. Josie made a comment earlier. She feels that this paper does deal with the continuum.

I'm just wondering: where do you see that in here? I'm struggling to find it, and I can't.

J. Schofield: …is, I think, what we're talking about when we're talking about the continuum. It's actually literally before the womb nowadays. It's fetus to the grave, if I can put it like that.

J. Schofield: I can see very clearly in my mind…. I'm already thinking, being somewhat overwhelmed by this topic already: how can I make sense of all this material? I can see that if the committee is going to recommend successful strategies from other jurisdictions, that will presuppose an integrated approach to the problem.

That integrated approach will involve looking at what is working, to answer John's initial concern, at the preschool level, in the K-to-12 system, and so on — the sort of preventive aspect. I can see it all being dealt with very clearly under one, if you think of a strategy as integrated and multi-pronged. The committee can interpret its terms of reference, so I can see it happening.

D. Thorne: Just so that I'm clear…. This is my first meeting, so I may be going over old ground. I'm sorry if I am.

John, you were saying that these, one and two, are basically empowered by the Legislature, and we can't take out a word or put in a word or anything like that at this point in any case.

D. Thorne: Then the best we can do at this point in time is for us all to be clear that we do feel there is a continuum and that it's very important. You can't look at a problem without looking at what caused it or what may still be causing it.

J. Nuraney (Chair): It's my understanding that we will be led into those discussions through witness presentations.

D. Thorne: Okay. Well, then, talking of witnesses, and Josie was…. There are some excellent early childhood and literacy people at UVic — all right?

D. Thorne: Excellent people. I have some contacts that Josie and I can talk about at another time.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Good. I do encourage members to please put forward names they are aware of that they don't see on the list right now, and if they wish to expand it, then please do talk to Josie.

M. Polak: Further to structure and trying to be successful with this, I think that a lot of it — Josie is quite right — will flow out of the expert witnesses. If you look at the experts that we have — and many of them have some pretty lengthy backgrounds and have also published a lot that's available on the Web, etc. — it's only natural that we're going to hear, from them, references to the continuum and how we plug into that.

I would favour, structurally, considering the idea of whether or not we need a subcommittee to focus on K-to-12, early childhood, and considering that after we've heard from a number of the witnesses, because I think we may find that the way in which we focus our discussions gets fleshed out somewhat through what they present.

Having a lot of years of committee work, I always feel a little…. This is some of the most important time we spend as a committee — right now — deciding on how we're going to function. A lot of times it determines whether or not you come out with recommendations that can be acted upon and that are concise enough — that you can actually get a handle on and say, "Have we done this? Have we achieved it?" — versus a committee report that talks about a whole lot of things but doesn't really get focused.

While we want to remain open-minded to places we might go with subcommittees, I think we want to be frequently casting our minds back to the different areas of focus that we've been given, because I think you'll find, listening to the experts, that they are very large in and of themselves. They have specific research attached to them that's been done over the years, much of which involves recommendations around K-to-12.

I would say that if we're going to consider a subcommittee or other areas of focus, let's hear from the experts and draw from that as opposed to presupposing what we might want to do. As Gregor said, we're not the experts, and we'll hear from them. I'm sure they'll be dying to tell us what they think we ought to look at in order to improve adult literacy.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Rest assured. There's a whole line of people who are already talking to me about how they would like to come and talk to us.

J. Rustad: I want to put a cautionary note out there with regards to looking at the continuum as it's being discussed. The reason I want to do that is that if you're going to look at the causes, or the potential causes, for people entering into adult literacy, you need to go into socioeconomic factors. You need to go into family units. You need to go into the early, zero-to-four age. You need to go into such a whole wide range of things that, quite frankly, we'll be bogged, and we won't get anywhere.

I think it's very clear in terms of the committee's work that what we're trying to do is not so much look at the causes or potential causes for how people got into this situation. What we're trying to do is focus on how we can get these people to a place where, as a province, we are the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction.

If we need to break that down, if we need to go down into K-to-12, I think we would need to go back into the Legislature and say that we don't want to just look at solutions to help this group of people. We want to look at some of the causes as to how people get into there. I think we would have to get a new mandate, or an updated mandate, from the Legislature in order to do that.

Quite clearly, in the terms that we have been given, our goal is to find successful strategies from other jurisdictions on the promotion of adult literacy. That gets grey, when you start going back and looking at K-to-12, as to the reasons why people are there. But you know what? That wasn't what we were struck to do. What we were struck to do is look at solutions for the people that are in those situations, not so much the reasons why people got into those situations — whether they came from other countries or whether they came from within our own system.

I just want to put a big cautionary note out there. If we're going to strike subcommittees or do anything else that goes down and looks below the surface of the goal, I really believe that we have gone outside of our

D. Jarvis: Time's running out, and we haven't gone through all our business yet.

Quickly, doesn't it theoretically come to pass that once we review our witnesses in, say, K-to-12 and then look at the adult end of it — how would you put it? — the specific challenges of the adult education will…? They will tell us what's lacking as those people approach them or come into their age group.

D. Jarvis: I'll just leave it at that. I just thought it should be mentioned. Let's go on with the agenda, then.

L. Mayencourt: Mr. Chair, would you entertain a motion from the floor that we adopt the Select Standing Committee on Education preliminary draft business plan and move forward from it?

J. Nuraney (Chair): Schedules of meetings. You have a tentative list, again, in front of you — page 7. We have a protocol lunch on March 20. There is this group — from Germany, is it?

J. Nuraney (Chair): They're visiting us, and it's just a social thing, just to interact with them. Maybe these are some of the questions that we need to ask them as to what they are doing in their country about adult literacy. It would also be quite appropriate.

M. Polak: I apologize if this is already in the information about the protocol lunch, but looking at what they are interested in talking about, I guess I got to wondering if there would be, say, Ministry of Education staff or others available. I don't know that any members of our committee would have the expertise to respond to their queries, really.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I believe they are meeting with the ministers before they come to the lunch.

M. Polak: Okay. So our lunch is strictly social, and their topics will be covered there.

The meeting on March 22 — that will be the first set of our witnesses here in Victoria. We have picked this day because in the morning, as you know….

J. Nuraney (Chair): The House is not sitting, and we'll have that window of opportunity to invite that first batch of witnesses to come before us between…. Was it ten and three?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): May I clarify? The meeting on March 22 we tentatively had something in the business plan that will not work for members now. We've had it scheduled now from nine to 12, and it is our intention to invite three or four of the Victoria-based or B.C.-based experts on your phase one consultation list. The people who are able to come — presumably those based locally — will enable us to get a start with that meeting, and we hope to find a date that would be convenient to members to have a similar expert-witness session very soon in Vancouver.

J. Nuraney (Chair): That meeting will be from nine to 12 and not as otherwise indicated on your paper. That will be the first set of people, and that will sort of start the ball rolling for us.

I have no doubt that we may run into problems as to the convenience and schedules of members that could be conflicting with our meetings as and when we decide to hold them. I have told the staff that we will try and get as much consensus as possible, but it may not perhaps be possible to accommodate every member's schedule. It is just a little notice that the meetings — that we will be deciding on the calendar that is best suited. I hope that all members will be able to attend.

J. Horgan: I am assuming, since we skipped right by it, that March 13 is off.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Yes, because I was told that your caucus is very busy that week. So we have accommodated you guys for this, but in the future I hope that we will have to set a certain timetable and hopefully that all members will be able to make it.

First, in our package we have a brief synopsis of science literacy and the Hume Global Learning Village plus the two educational round tables that I hosted in Vancouver. On the one for Hume Global and the one for science literacy, obviously there are going to be opportunities down the road where some expert is going to be making a presentation that we don't get to see as a committee. But if we knew it was happening, we might make the effort to get there. If we could maybe be informed of any that the Clerks are going to attend so that we can be part of that if we want to be.

The second is with respect to the education round-table meetings. I think they went pretty well. I think it

makes sense to maybe just have one set of round table, and I'm going to suggest that I continue in the ESL field and invite all of the Vancouver MLAs and all of the members of this committee that wish to attend.

My question to the Chair is: do we continue to distribute minutes for those meetings at this committee, or is this sort of it? We've got notes from the previous two meetings. Are we going to continue with that, or will members simply bring back their own thoughts? How would you like that to be?

J. Nuraney (Chair): I would like to ask the members what their views are on this.

J. Horgan: I spoke with the Clerk. I was under the impression after our first meeting that Lorne's meetings were Lorne's meetings. I didn't attend. I was hopeful that I could, but I couldn't fly over on the first day, and I was unavailable on the second. When I learned that legislative committee staff were present, I was concerned that that gave the participants the impression that your efforts — and laudable as they are, Lorne — were the result of this committee. All of the correspondence in my mailbox was from your constituency assistant, which struck me to make it your event.

So I'm quite happy for you to continue doing that. I'll participate as much as I can, and I want to support that. But I think it's important that participants know that when they come to a meeting with a member of the Legislature, whether it be Diane and I holding a meeting or Dan and Lorne, that's a member of the Legislature. If the committee and its staff are going to be participating, then it becomes a meeting of this committee, and therefore a whole new set of challenges emerge.

I was profoundly unhappy about that, and I made my views known to the Clerk. I should have talked directly to you about this, Lorne. I was going to let it pass, but if we're back up again on it, I think we do have to have some protocols. We as MLAs have restricted and finite resources to do all of these things.

L. Mayencourt: John, before we go too far into this. I certainly get your feeling, and I can appreciate it. I'd ask you to review Hansard on the last meeting that we had here with respect to those two meetings. I'm not really very sure how to proceed with this. If you want it to be my gig, I can keep on doing it. I don't really care. I think this actually meets some of the objectives you were referring to earlier in the meeting.

J. Horgan: My point was that if you guys want to come out to Sooke — great. If I can bring the full complement of Legislative Assembly staff with me — great. If it's open to all of us, fair enough, but if it's only open to the large metropolitan centre, I'm opposed to that.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I think the feeling is that each individual member who has taken an initiative to have round tables or discussions or whatever…. They are doing it on their own steam. It has nothing to do with this committee, but the invitation to the committee members to come as observers would certainly be appreciated if there are those kinds of meetings going around.

J. Rustad: Noting the time, I would like to move adjournment of the meeting.

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Committee Staff:	Josie Schofield (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION