Education — Issue No. 6 — Wednesday, April 26, 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

Presentations		81
	E. Dosdall
	M. Pamer
	A. Blunt
	J. Martin
	J. Boraas
	R. Derrick
	L. Galway
	P. Lacerte

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


Witnesses:	Dr. Adrian Blunt John Boraas (Camosun College) Ruth Derrick (Executive Director, Project Literacy Victoria) Dr. Emery Dosdall (Deputy Minister of Education) Lilaine Galway (Project Literacy Victoria) Paul Lacerte (Executive Director, B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres) Dr. John Martin (La Trobe University) Monica Pamer (Ministry of Education)

Owing to the very tight schedule that we have this morning, I will have the proceedings move forward. It is all being recorded, so the members can always follow what we have done this morning.

We have today in front of us Dr. Emery Dosdall. He's the Deputy Minister of Education, and just for the benefit of the presenter, I shall read my traditional preamble.

Today's meeting is a public meeting that should be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes of this meeting, will be printed and made available on the committee's website. In addition to the meeting transcript, a live audio webcast of this meeting is also produced and available on the committee's website to enable interested listeners to hear the proceedings as they occur. The archived copy of this audio webcast will be retained on the committee's website.

I welcome Dr. Dosdall. It's a pleasure to have you here this morning. Dr. Dosdall, for the benefit of the members, is the Deputy Minister of Education. The Ministry of Education is responsible for the adult graduation program, B.C. adult graduation diploma, adult Dogwood; B.C. certificate of graduation, Dogwood; Community LINK; in-school literacy initiative and monitoring; Raise-a-Reader; matching funds for community literacy; literacy website; public library services; community-level literacy support; Ready, Set, Learn program in collaboration with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Health; Books for Babes; and Roots of Empathy programs in collaboration with MCFD.

Having heard this, members, as you know, Dr. Dosdall also comes with a very wide range of educational background and has a lot to offer, so please do take advantage, after he has finished his presentation, of asking questions.

Dr. Dosdall, because of the time factor, you will have 25 minutes to make your presentation and then allow some time for questioning. Please proceed.

E. Dosdall: I appreciate the opportunity to share some information with the Select Standing Committee on Education on what we believe are some of the exciting things we are doing with respect to literacy in the Ministry of Education.

Beyond that, I will try to talk about some of the specific programs that we're involved in this year and hope to be involved in over the course of the next few years.

If I can direct the committee, I believe you have a copy of the slides, and if not, we'd kind of walk through some of these slides for you.

First of all, as the committee is aware, the government has established the five great goals for British Columbia. The first one really is the one that we'll be focusing on, and that is: to make British Columbia the best-educated and the most literate jurisdiction on the continent. While the achievement of this goal, I think, includes many facets of education, it is widely accepted that in all of the things that we do, literacy really is the foundation of an educated society. What we often say is that without literacy it is difficult to participate not only in the economy — the economy is directly correlated to a good literacy program — but I think it also directly correlates to your ability to participate in a democratic society.

Literacy, I guess, allows us to make sense of the world — and we want to emphasis that this morning in our remarks — and literacy really is a lifelong process. Literacy is something that is changing. When we start talking about the whole direction of literacy and the definition of literacy, it is constantly changing as we add new literacies to the basic definition. Technology is a good one that we all can relate to.

Our mandate through the Ministry of Education is really to oversee, initially, the kindergarten-to-grade-12 program, but following the change in mandate this past year, we've been given the responsibility for early learning, the coordination of literacy programs across government, as well as public libraries. I'm pleased that on the topic of adult literacy we're here as a primary focus today, but that part of our role as the Ministry of Education is to really coordinate with the Ministry of Advanced Education, the work they're doing. Clearly, they have the lead with respect to adult literacy. I am aware that you've had presentations, Mr. Chair, from Advanced Education with respect to some of the work that they're involved in.

I mentioned earlier the importance of literacy. Literacy is more than just reading. Sometimes you just think of your ability to read as your ability to be literate. What we're saying is that it is really the capacity of individuals to read and to write and to comprehend what, in fact, they're reading and writing; to operate with numbers and technologies — technology literacy and numeracy literacy; the ability to communicate and your communications skills — those communication skills, both on a verbal as well as a written communication; your ability to adapt and to function effectively in a changing society; and to engage fully as citizens, learners, workers and as family members. It's that part of the engaging and being part of it on a changing-society basis that I will continue to refer back to this morning.

It's also to understand, if you will, technology, culture and the arts. If you will, literacy, broadly defined — and I guess the term that we would use — is "maximizing human potential." It is all of those types of things. In many cases, just: how do we increase your life chances? How do we do that with children? How do we increase your life chances as an adult?

Now the Premier, as committee members are aware, established the Premier's panel on literacy, and

they came up with a definition. I would read it to you: "…that literacy, it is an essential issue. It is the first step, a basic building block for each person in British Columbia to successfully engage in formal and informal education, personal and professional development, lifelong learning and active citizenship." The panel believes that taking a life stage approach to developing literacy strategies makes the most sense. It identifies, as a principle, the need to link literacy to lifelong learning, noting that literacy is not a "now you are done" kind of issue. It is a continuing and progressive issue.

Really, the higher levels of literacy correlate with some of the higher educational attainment, which in turn, we believe — and that research would show — leads to better health and better life outcomes. For example, studies have shown that 68 percent of the people in Canada in federal penitentiaries have very limited literacy skills and that about 60 percent of Canadians on social assistance have not completed high school. So you can start to see that correlation in terms of the literacy levels and the life chances of those individuals.

Increased English literacy for new immigrants also certainly plays a key role in terms of their successful initial settlements in terms of a society, as well as their ability to integrate into the society that they're moving into. In British Columbia, with the very diverse society we have, the ability to develop those English skills, those literacy skills, is crucial to that integration process.

We know that literacy is the gateway to higher education in skills training. That certainly leads to higher paying employment and is the basis, as I indicated earlier, in terms of a robust economy. One of the recent studies, the OECD study that come out with Statistics Canada — they work with Statistics Canada — shows that a 1-percent increase in the overall literacy levels of Canadians would drive about $18.4 billion in an annual sustainable GDP. So that kind of gives you that direct correlation in terms of literacy as the basis of a robust economy, literacy as the basis of life chances for individuals.

In a study that was also done from the national Centre for Family Literacy…. This is a study done of over 2,000 families that showed that literacy intervention through family literacy programs reduced participants' full dependence on public assistance — taking away their dependence on public assistance or welfare, whatever that public assistance was — from 67 percent to 11 percent. That is across Canada, and that was done in the year 2000. It's a pretty significant factor of which I'm sure this committee is very aware.

Let me focus on the importance of adult literacy. It's clear from the myriad of statistics, a number of which I've just quoted, that many of our adults in British Columbia don't have the kind of solid foundation of skills that is necessary in order to build meaningful lives in today's society — appreciating that that kind of society is a society that is changing in so many ways. The most obvious way is in terms of technology.

A number of the adults today — their education and training has been interrupted at an early stage for a number of reasons. As a result, they may be unemployed, or else they're working in very low-paying jobs, or they're in jobs in which their potential is certainly not being realized in terms of their work ability. They've chosen, for whatever reason, to remain out of school and the workplace and to care for their children. So in many ways, they're in situations in which they haven't been able to develop their potential.

It's essential that these individuals understand that the learning continuum is accessible to them. We need to find ways in which we can reintroduce them in terms of literacy development so that, in fact, as they want to re-enter the workplace or re-enter the economy, there will be those kinds of opportunities for them, those kinds of ways in which they can make a transition from whatever job they now have, or do not have, to a better opportunity.

Currently, the Ministry of Education, as I said, is responsible for adult basic education — the transition program. That really relates to a common adult graduation diploma, which is created in most cases for us between the school district and, in most sections of our province, with college programs. The other part, just to emphasize, is that while the Ministry of Advanced Education has primary responsibility, it's also the Ministry of Education working with Advanced Education that is developing the programs for adult literacy and developing those kinds of strategies.

The key part of those strategies is to keep the focus on: how do we keep the access to those programs as flexible as possible? That's a whole lot easier said than done as you're trying to develop programs. In many cases, as we develop those programs, they become pretty well locked in by curriculum, or they become locked in by other institutional factors. Our concern is: how do we keep them flexible enough so that they meet the literacy needs of the adults?

The other key components of our adult literacy are obviously focused, then, on workplace literacy, family literacy. When we talk about family literacy, we also connect it with early learning. It's really that kind of cycle between the family and early learning, and using those kinds of opportunities to develop the early learning skills, as well, for the young people.

Now, the importance of early learning. I think committee members are aware of the Early Years Study that was done by Fraser Mustard and others a few years ago. That really confirms, in their study, the crucial nature of development, particularly brain development, in early years, and the effects that that has in terms of the child's behaviour, the child's health in later stages of life. All of those things are clearly related to the opportunities that they have, or the experiences that they have provided to them, in the very formative stages of life — in the very first years before school.

In our society we've seen things where kids are coming to school…. Where some kids have had the exposure to several million words, million phrases, million opportunities more than other students in terms of the verbal experiences they've had in, say, the

first five years of their life. There's quite a variation in terms of things that we're doing.

Looking at the students who come to school in kindergarten and based on the work that has been done by, I know, Clyde Hertzman and other researchers, it's our estimation that about 25 percent of the kids who are coming to school in kindergarten are not ready to really enter the kindergarten program. That's huge.

This statistic comes from the early development index, and it really is a checklist that kindergarten teachers fill out for each class. When they do that, they're looking at whether you're ready for learning or not. They're looking at the physical health and the child's wellbeing, the child's social development or the child's social competence, the emotional maturity, the language and cognitive development, the communication skills and general knowledge. The way I remember it is: I use the term "SPICE," which is socially, physically, intellectually, culturally and emotionally developed, because it kind of gives you that opportunity that you need to look at the entire child and how the child is developing.

We're strong believers that strengthening this early learning and developing and fortifying our early literacy efforts is going to help to ensure that B.C. students enter school to be as effective learners as they can. To ensure that school-aged children and youth have the best chance for success, it is important to consider, in our opinion, a variety of approaches to help them become more literate, to become more engaged and to be prepared for success after graduation.

The early learning mandate that we've had the opportunity to have in our ministry over the course of this last year…. We've been trying to develop standards to guide the practice of all of the organizations that will be offering early learning programs, because out there today there is just a ton of those programs — the Mother Goose program, the Success By 6 program, a number of the different programs that I know members here are certainly aware of.

What we're trying to develop in the first instance is: what are those kind of standards that we should have for programs, and how can we look at those programs and try to determine the success of those programs? One of the things that we hoped we'd be able to do in time is also have children in these programs identified with a personal identification number. A personal identification number allows us then to follow those students through into elementary school, into secondary school, and so it gives us, on a longitudinal basis, better opportunities to try to follow these kids. We can do it today, but the cohort changes so much. That would give us better ways of evaluating these programs, to say that all kids should have this type of program or have this kind of experience, whatever the case may be.

The ministry is working on these standards, and we're doing it in consultation — over the past year — with a lot of academics and a number of people across the government through different ministries.

When you look at how we're doing, kind of a status report, I think there are some indicators that we can use. Obviously, K-to-12 — we look at completion and the completion rates. When you start to look at that, you've got to start off…. What about the kids that come to school? As I said, 25 percent are not ready, but if you look at it in a positive way, 75 percent of our kids are entering school ready to learn. We get that from the EDI or the early development instrument that has been devolved by Clyde Hertzman and others from UBC.

We know that B.C. students rank in the top three in the world in reading, math and science. This is clearly from the PISA international studies. Forty-three different countries across the world participate in the PISA study. In the development of that particular study, there is…. We have enough of a sample base in British Columbia, Alberta and a couple of the other provinces that participate. As we look at it, there's nobody that really outperforms British Columbia students. We're in the top 10 percent in just about all of those things.

We also know and are very proud of the success rate in our Dogwood completion rate, if you will, for students getting the Dogwood Certificate out of grade 12. It is now up to 79 percent, and that is excellent. You hear us say it, and we always say it right away, it's not good enough, because we know that over 20 percent of our kids are not succeeding. If they're not succeeding, what are the life chances of those young people if they don't have a Dogwood diploma in today's society?

We also know that B.C. literacy skills are…. By using the international ALS test, which is the international adult literacy and skills survey test, which is completed, I believe, every nine years across the country, so it doesn't give you a whole lot of measures. But on the basis of that, 60 percent of our adults have knowledge or skills that would allow them to function effectively in an information society. It still says, then, that you've got 40 percent of our adults who, because literacy is changing and because they've lost some of their literacy skills over the course of time, are not at what would be functional in this particular survey or test as having the skills to really effectively communicate, to work, to take advantage of today's society, to take advantage of the resources that are out there.

Although we know that British Columbia works well, we said we still have the concern of a number of kids not completing. When we look at the number of kids not completing, the one that we know is of the most concern to us are our aboriginal students. Over 50 percent of our aboriginal students are not completing high school.

We also know, and we say, that if you look at the percentage of kids — even though our population is declining and will continue to decline in public schools for a number of years as we look out and try to do the estimate on live births — public schools are going to continue to decline. By the same token, our aboriginal population is increasing. The aboriginal population of young people today in our schools has gone up to 9 percent of the total population.

When you look at communities in Prince George, for example, where there was about 14 percent three or four years ago, that's up to 20 percent now, and that's going to continue in those particular areas. We know that we have a particular challenge, a special challenge, that we have to reach out and meet with respect to focusing whatever programs that you have, whatever programs that you develop, so that they cannot be overgeneralized. They have to be able to be tailor-made, if you will, or moulded or fit so that we can meet the needs of these particular populations.

Some of the other things that we're doing are to, in consultation with partner ministries as well as other experts in the field, as I said, develop the standards so that we can have those as part of our repertoire. We're working in communities to develop and provide needed programs: the parent-child Mother Goose program — a group experience for parents. You know a number of these different programs. We're rewriting our K-to-12 English arts program. It's been revised to include achievement indicators that describe performance in terms of more clearly setting out the expectations for reading, writing and oral languages.

We're doing things like the early numeracy, reading and writing resources for kindergarten and grade one. These are developed by parents and teachers over the course of the last couple of years. We are working with a centre that we set up at UBC, the leadership development centre, where we send out school recognition research or action grants. They're sent out, about one per district — about 3,000 bucks a piece. These are for promising practices in K-to-12.

We've been working, through webcasting and other means, on trying to share best practices between districts and between schools. We have the network of performance-based schools, which is getting international recognition, as members may know. They're really focused on: how do we connect schools and keep the focus on the literacy bases? We have literacy innovation grants that we put out through the Ministry of Education — $5 million a year for the last couple of years, and that will continue. We have Ministry of Education literacy websites which have been launched. These are really there to allow parents to become more informed. We know it's really a good source of information for teachers, parents and communities.

As members of the committee will know, our minister just announced the one-card system for libraries. The one-card system allows…. We're really pushing the whole concept now of every child having a library card, every child taking advantage of that, moving into it. At the library that you go into in Pouce Coupe, you can also borrow books and that from whatever part of the province.

We're doing that today and connecting that today so that it's available any place in the province. The point is: can we now reach out and also set it up in a way through technology so that we can reach out to universities and to other places where they have really quite rich resources that adults and others can tap into and be able to use those resources — if not in a physical sense, to at least use them on an on-line basis?

The ministry is working with Literacy B.C., and we're developing a provincial family literacy strategic plan…

J. Nuraney (Chair): Sorry to interrupt, doctor. You've got five more minutes.

E. Dosdall: …and a number of other things, as you can see from the slides.

I guess the main thing that I wanted to say, then, maybe, in closing, Mr. Chair, is that we've also been working with the Premier's panel. The Premier's panel has identified a number of things that we think we have to continue to work on that relate to maybe more sustained funding, more coordination between ministries than what we've done in the past. We're going to do that. We're going to work on that.

We need to continue to keep the focus on literacy with our school districts. All school districts right now in the province have a focus on literacy in their accountability projects and their accountability plans.

We are trying to work as an interministerial connection with Literacy B.C., the Premier's panel, Advanced Education and a number of others to make sure that our approach is going to be a continuum from early childhood through to adulthood and that it'll be citizen-centred and that it will recognize unique challenges that are going to be necessary in order for us to be successful — unique challenges of a diverse population, as well as the age things.

A little rushed at the end, maybe, Mr. Chair, but I'd be pleased to attempt, at least, to answer any questions that members have and to share other programs and other activities that are going on in the Ministry of Education.

D. Jarvis: That was quite revealing in the sense of, on page 2 there, that slide mentioning that 40 percent of adults do not have the knowledge. If that's true, then no wonder only 25 percent of our kids have the ability to be ready for kindergarten.

E. Dosdall: It's only by province that we have it. I don't know if there is an opportunity to go through and to drill into the data any deeper. We just have it by province, I think, at this point in time.

M. Pamer: If I may, there will be some follow-up reports. Indications are that literacy levels among immigrants and aboriginal peoples are lower than in the general population. But there will be subsequent reports on B.C. results on this international adult literacy.

D. Jarvis: The high lack in the aboriginal. Is there a breakdown — like, numbers or a percentage — as to how many non-aboriginals finish high school versus…?

D. Jarvis: Do you have that off the top of your head? Can you guesstimate? Is it anywhere?

E. Dosdall: At the present time the overall success rate in terms of completion is 79 percent. For aboriginals it's a 49-percent completion rate. When we look at ESL, ESL students graduate at about 82 percent.

Because we have a personal identification number, we do de-aggregate the data. We have it by region. We have it by school. We have it by aboriginal, ESL and other breakdowns. We have all of that data, and we can demonstrate that in any region of the province for any school and for any ethnic group, basically. Not ethnic group. I'm sorry. Only for aboriginal and for non-aboriginal.

D. Jarvis: On the basis of economic prosperity, the things that you gave there, is that information on economic prosperity available at all in detail?

E. Dosdall: That is the information that is prepared through the IALS report, and we can make that available to the committee if they'd so desire that information. We can make those studies available to them.

D. Jarvis: If we're in the top ten, the rest of the world is in pretty bad shape — aren't they? Because we're not in good shape. We haven't heretofore done that great of a job as far as this goes.

I'll just finish off by saying: are you aware that where I come from in North Vancouver, we have the highest literacy or use of libraries in North America — if you use that as a gauge?

J. Horgan: It's a pleasure to be back in this room with the Deputy Minister of Education. I'm tempted to ask him a question about class size and class composition, but I'll let that pass. I asked way too many of those a few weeks ago.

A couple of questions spring to mind. It is, certainly, a great opportunity for the committee to have access to the deputy's range of experience on these issues. One thing springs into my mind. Of course, the data is evolving and developing. Our ability to track and monitor is improving as time goes by. But that 25 percent of children not prepared in kindergarten to succeed, or ready to learn…. Does that same 25 percent flow through to the 21 percent that don't complete, or is there a point in time where the penny drops for that 25 percent? Are you able to track, or have we got a range of data that can answer that quarter that wasn't ready and ultimately didn't finish?

E. Dosdall: If I can, that was exactly our question as we went through. We said: can we track them? The problem that we have — and I alluded to the idea that we'd like to give them personal identification numbers — is we can't do that until we can apply a personal identification number to the early childhood.

When you register in kindergarten, we then give you a personal number. As that has now been completed by Dr. Hertzman last year, as those kids then go through to the next indicator, which would be grade four, then to the next, grade seven, and then to high school, we'll be able to show that to you, but we can't at this point until they've gone through. We've only got one year of data that Dr. Hertzman's presented.

The answer is yes, we will have that data. For the new system that we're putting in, we'll be able to generate that right across the province by region and, in fact, by school if it's needed.

J. Horgan: We had some…. I guess the only heated discussions the committee's had were at the inception when we were discussing our mandate. I prattled on endlessly about the importance of the continuum. It was only in your closing remarks that you made reference to that, yet the substance of your presentation was that literacy is an early childhood education issue right to the grave.

I think we all understand that. I guess the contentious component of this continuum was that I felt it was important that we focus on the start so that we can understand how we get to the end.

We've had some fantastic witnesses over the past number of sessions that have focused on what we do with that, usually, 21 percent — well, I guess it was 25 percent five years ago, and now 21 percent — that are not completing high school. When they decide to not show up, are they able to read and write when they go out the door, or are they just not able to meet the requirements? I mean, that's the challenge that I think we have in understanding that one-fifth of the population. Are they illiterate, and therefore don't complete, or do they choose employment as a better option for them at that point in their lives and so on?

E. Dosdall: We do some tracking. For example, we track kids that become incarcerated for a whole range of reasons. Literate or not, they still — sometimes on drugs, or crime, or whatever the case may be…. We can track some of the kids that would come out. Basically, we'd track them because (a) they appear as dropouts, or (b) they are taking a school leaving certificate. Either way, on the basis of that you can then follow through.

If they left on a school leaving certificate, it probably means that they didn't drop out of school, but they had special needs or there was some other kind of cir-

cumstance that they left, and they were acknowledged as leaving the institution. We would, therefore, have some level of literacy for them.

For the ones that drop out, there's a whole reason — as you would understand — for them dropping out.

In some cases, it's also that as the economy heats up — which is a major concern to us, not that the economy's heating up — there will be kids then saying: "I can go out, and I can start working in industry, or I can get this high-paying job today and not complete my studies." There's just a whole range of those kinds of reasons. We don't have percentages at this point in time.

One of the things that we are doing is starting to talk to many of the large companies — if you go to Duke Energy or EnCana or others — and suggesting to them that they hire kids with Dogwood. They work with us to put that message out there.

The second thing is that if in fact the students are working in part-time jobs and if the students' marks start to go down, they cut their hours. With education, we can send that kind of message, if it's a responsible kind of message that we can send, with the business leaders and the construction leaders and that. We're talking, and we're having those discussions as we speak.

J. Horgan: Just back to the continuum, to complete up, and your view on the importance of this committee's work with respect to the continuum of literacy from….

E. Dosdall: From our perspective, our mandate is that unless we have the early…. The best kind of opportunities that they have in the first five years means that we're going to be more successful in the next 13 years, which means that what they're going to have…. For us, it is a continuum. What we're trying to do is find ways not only for that continuum but also for expanding it to libraries, to cross-ministry things that are happening in so many other areas and making sure it's more inclusive rather than exclusive.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I encourage the members to please ask shorter questions, because we have seven more minutes to complete this.

Dr. Dosdall, you mentioned in the beginning of the presentation that literacy is the first of the five great goals. I agree. It's an excellent target to have. But I'm reminded. In our last session we heard from a presenter that British Columbia invests $1.4 million per year in community literacy programs, and that is the lowest in Canada. I don't believe we'll ever get anything for nothing.

We've seen cuts in public education to programs for children who struggle, who are vulnerable. We've seen special needs teachers laid off. We've seen numerous professionals cut who would help vulnerable children. Also, the non-targeted funding has made it possible for school districts, including the one that I used to represent as a trustee, to take money that would have otherwise been targeted to help special needs children and put it in to cover cuts to other programs.

You pointed out that 68 percent of prisoners have low literacy; 60 percent of income assistance recipients have no high school completion. You also pointed out that a 1-percent increase in literacy would drive an $18.4 billion increase in the product of this province.

At the same time we see a diminishing or a reduction in enrolment — small, mind you. I believe 2 percent or 3 percent. We also see an increase in special needs presentation at the K level through elementary school. We see an increase in autism. We see an increase in fetal alcohol syndrome. We see increased vulnerabilities that don't appear in any way to be likely to begin to reduce.

When we ask presenters where resources should best be placed…. Most of the presenters have been focused on adult literacy, so they naturally point towards adult programs. Do you think that those resources would be better placed at the beginning of that continuum, as had been alluded to earlier by my colleague?

I think that obviously, as bureaucrats, we're always looking for more money wherever we can get more money. That just kind of goes by nature. But I think that the more important thing for us is to say: "How do we really focus the investment?"

For us, one of the things, for example, is…. You talk about less money or fewer cuts. In fact, there wasn't less money. Over the last five years the graduation rates have gone up in our province. Over the last five years we have also been in the situation where in international studies…. I sit as a co-chair of Statistics Canada for all the council of ministers, and we look at the stats across Canada. The only one who comes out ahead of us is Alberta. By the same token, Alberta is facing a lot less in terms of graduation rates, so I would submit to you that we're probably the best in Canada. I'd like to convince the Premier that we're the best on the continent. I still haven't won that argument, but we are moving towards it.

I think the other part is that we have a report on special education that we're looking at. There has been a decrease in a number of different areas with special education, like learning disabilities and those areas. There has been an increase in things — you're right — in terms of autism. I don't know why that is. That's a

study that's going on right across Canada. Those are significant concerns to us. They're significant concerns, also, as we look at litigations that are taking place. Members are aware, I'm sure, of the Hugo case and the Moore case and other cases that are related specifically to autism.

Where should the money go? Obviously, I think it is focusing the dollars. I think that's what we're trying to do, because we know we have money in a number of different ministries. What we're trying to do, and what the Premier has directed us to do, is to make sure that we integrate those and that we break out of our silos and work in a more coordinated and integrated fashion than we ever have in the past.

Secondly, we're trying to ensure that the dollars are not just sent out there. We're monitoring those dollars and what outcomes we can see for the impact of those particular dollars. That's kind of the switch that's there. I think that that is going to continue to keep B.C. as a leader and, if anything, see us succeed beyond where we are today. I think we're doing extremely well today with the dollars that have been invested.

R. Lee: We have the foundation skill tests. In other countries they are given contests in different languages. When you compare literacy skills, immigrants, as you mention, are facing some problems, some challenges. They may be literate in other cultures and other languages, but they probably have some challenges in English or French. I believe that even the recent immigrants in the skilled category may face fewer challenges, but with the family reunion category and investment…. Probably some businessmen are highly educated in another culture, but they are also facing some challenges in Canada. How do you maximize the literacy skills in those populations, and what kind of investment do you think would be most effective?

E. Dosdall: Monica from the Richmond school district, which certainly has one of the highest ESL populations in the province, can speak to this. I think there are a few things that we're trying to do. We're trying to look at centres that can be developed within the school, where the parents can come to the schools, and by coordinating and integrating with other parents, the English becomes something that we're allowing the parents to learn at the same time as their kids are learning.

That is a whole lot easier said than done, as you could imagine, because the tough part is to get them to come out of their homes, if I can use that, to come into schools and to make sure that we find ways that our schools are welcoming sites, welcoming places, that they would feel comfortable in terms of coming to. There are lots of outreach programs that are being utilized by different districts to try to find ways to get the parents in.

We also think that in many cases, it's the kids teaching the parents — how do we do that? — and sending messages home with those kids through their traditional language to try to find ways in which they can encourage mom and dad and others to come.

On a personal basis, one of the things that I think is really important is to start offering more courses that relate to ESL but to take them out of high schools or colleges — those kind of things — to either the local community centre, the local elementary school or the local whatever because they're less intimidating. You know what I mean? If you go to a college, it is a big building. It's a big structure. It's simple things like that which I think we need to do. But on more specifics, maybe Monica could comment.

M. Pamer: Actually, we've come to conclude that the key is actually family literacy. You will come into a place where your children can improve their chances and thereby get connected with resources that you wouldn't normally encounter if you're new to a community.

I think that piece is key. The other thing is, just in terms of adult literacy…. ESL needs to be, I think, more accessible, and perhaps outreach is the way for the adults that need it. Those are two challenges that are extremely significant. All our statistics show that this population needs some extra assistance and attention to acquire the skills they need.

D. Thorne: Well, I certainly found this interesting. As you know, I'm the critic for Early Learning. I just wanted to refer to the funding. I know that's not what we're talking about. But when we were doing estimates, the answers that I got back from the minister was that there was really…. Other than the library money and the Ready, Set, Learn there actually wasn't anything happening at the moment in early learning. It's still basically a goal or a plan, and you're working on funding, etc.

E. Dosdall: I think that as we set our budget this year, we did not set a specific amount aside in terms of early learning or early development centres or whatever the case may be. We continue to be in discussion with MCFD, and as you know, there have been some changes there.

The most important thing, I think, that we're trying to say is that as we reach out into the communities to make sure that the programs that MCFD has and the programs that we would have, etc., are integrated. So we're not overlapping but in fact we're complementing each other, and within schools and communities, we provide maybe a series of different courses or a series of different programs to those communities rather than just the one size that you would have, like Success By 6 or some other kind of thing.

Earlier I alluded to trying to determine the effectiveness of some of those programs. But from the straight monetary thing, the fact is that as they, particularly, are lobbying — but we're working with them in terms of what's happening at the federal level — as

we're looking at what the needs would be if we put out a number of centres next year through education…. What would that require? What are the costs associated with converting space? We have lots of space, as you know. What is the cost related to converting space? Those kinds of things are continuing to be there. I anticipate that we will not be making announcements on those until later in the spring.

D. Thorne: It's interesting when we look at the continuum, because it's not really quite there yet. Certainly we're watching. I have to agree with you on some of the things you've said. I think the focus on working with the Ministry of Children and Families in this area is…. You're going in the right direction. I think we all recognize — even though we can't prove it — with numbers that the 20 percent and the 25 percent are definitely very linked. If we don't deal with one, we're not going to be dealing with the other in any way.

D. Thorne: It also, of course, fits in with the economy, which is so-called booming. It's not booming for this 20 percent or 25 percent. These are people living often in poverty and, as Doug refers, with severe problems on top of that. One of the things that you said about kids underperforming, because they haven't graduated or whatever….

The reality of the situation, if we look at the big picture…. The economy is booming. There are a lot of jobs, but an increasing number of those jobs are low-paying, part-time jobs. There are fewer union jobs, fewer well-paid jobs for people. Somebody has to do those jobs. I guess a large percentage of people doing those jobs now are young people who don't graduate. If we can work on the whole big-picture thing…. Certainly, the goal of my colleagues and me is to look at the whole big picture and have fewer of those kinds of jobs and fewer people that are able to fill them.

Just to close, the other thing that I'd be really interested in knowing, if you ever have the statistics — I don't need them now — is: what percentage within the 25 percent is aboriginal, ESL, learning disability or any of the other kinds of problem-type areas? Fifty percent of aboriginal kids don't graduate. What percentage are they of the 25 percent and the 20 percent? I'd really like that.

J. Rustad: I'm going to apologize a little bit, because I'm going to be a little bit political here, hearing some of the rhetoric that I have from across the floor. In particular, I just need to correct a few things that have been said.

First of all, there were some comments about the jobs that are happening being part-time jobs and low-paying jobs. In this province now we have the highest median wage outside of Alberta in Canada, which means that those jobs that are being created are not low-paying jobs. They're actually pretty good-paying jobs — particularly, for example, just in the mining sector and the resurgence in there.

J. Rustad: No, I'm sorry. There have been statements put on record that need to be corrected.

J. Rustad: A little bit of respect here, please, Chairperson, as I gave them respect.

D. Routley: Mr. Chair, I take exception to members challenging each other across the floor. We're here to discuss and ask questions of the witnesses. I think it's inappropriate for us to challenge each other's political positions. It's obvious that we disagree on the issue of jobs.

One of the comments that was made — and you didn't quite clarify on it — was that there had been cuts in terms of dollars that had been spent on education, particularly on special needs.

It's my understanding that we are now spending more than $660 million on special needs. That, of course, has been the highest level ever, as well as the additional funding that has been put into education. I want to dispel that in terms of that. Is that correct?

E. Dosdall: That is correct. We have gone down by over some 30,000 students in the last five years. As we go through, we have increased…. The per-pupil amount that is available for education has really increased now up to about $7,200 — $7,235, I believe — per child. That is the highest, and it has been the highest all the way through.

We just also put an additional…. We took the amounts for special education students…. There are three major categories. There's the stuff that's rolled into the block, which is a large percentage, and there are three additional categories. That is for what we call levels one, two and three. A year ago we also increased the amount of money that's available for each of those from a percentage of…. I believe it's close to around an additional $50 million. So there have not been any cuts to special needs funding. In fact, their funding is as high…. Well, it's never been this high.

J. Rustad: I'll be very brief, just in follow-up. Our mandate is on adult literacy and improving the literacy rates there. Although I know the opposition has been continually wanting to talk about the continuum, I think the Minister of Education is doing a good job on that component.

One of the comments that you made earlier, or that Monica made earlier, was around the idea of literacy being a family issue as opposed to an individual issue. I find that quite intriguing in terms of when people have children, particularly with our first nations. As we know, their population is growing. They're having children at a very early age, and those children are coming into the system.

Perhaps if you could expand on any kind of ideas that you have around bringing the aboriginal community and engaging them more in the educational process so that, as a community, that educational process is expanding as opposed to just the individuals. I know that our rates with aboriginal students have been improving, but I was just wondering if you'd like to comment a little bit more on those.

E. Dosdall: Mr. Chair, if I can, I'll make the first comment and then allow Monica to give some of the specifics.

E. Dosdall: I think that one of the things we've been most successful in is what we're calling "enhancement agreements." Enhancement agreements are basic agreements where we have gone out and worked with the local school district and the bands that would be participating with that school district.

If I can just use one as an example. If you go down to Lillooet, Cache and that particular area, there are 19 first nations bands represented in that region of our province, which all basically go to the Lillooet school district. One of the things that happened was that there was, first of all, animosity between the first nations. There was really a lot of animosity between them and in what was happening in the schools. Our completion rates and our rates as we went through and looked at the success of our aboriginal students were really quite…. Well, it was a disaster.

We went to that particular area. We worked with the first nations bands. We worked with the school district. Last spring they signed an enhancement agreement. It was the first time that the chiefs from the 19 first nations were in the same room together. They all signed the memorandum of understanding in the enhancement agreement with the school district.

Those enhancement agreements are to say: "We reach out, and we will develop different ways of working with you." So it is respect for the culture, it is respect for the differences, and it's to try to find ways to then bring those aboriginal parents into the schools.

We've been doing a lot of work with FINESC, the First Nations Education Steering Committee for the province, to also develop what they call "parent clubs" and other things like that. All it is, is to try to find ways in which we can welcome them to come into our schools.

These enhancement agreements — we have 25. We hope to have all 60 one day, but we have 25 of them done now, which have been signed. Just a couple of weeks ago you saw that Kamloops re-signed theirs already. We have another, I believe, 18 or 19 in the drafting stage that will be signed this year. That's almost three-quarters of our districts that will be signed up, we hope, by Christmastime of this year.

Those enhancement agreements are really the basis of respecting the culture, getting them in and getting the support from home for what we're doing in school. I think it's been one of the major reasons why we're getting the kind of success and support that we're getting from our aboriginal partners.

M. Pamer: I would just give an example in the Haida Gwaii–Queen Charlotte school district under the literacy innovation grants. Key to that is bringing families into the school, first of all, to acknowledge the first language that many of these children are learning in and also to link that with their learning experiences at school. So the connection between home and school is really explicit in terms of having a family physically in the school.

As we said, I think children are the greatest motivators you can have to learn more yourself. That's why the family literacy key, and the various ways it plays out, is pretty integral to looking at adult literacy. It should certainly be a useful way to look at things when you proceed in your explorations.

One of the other things that I think I would encourage members to check out is in Nisga'a. In the Nisga'a the superintendent there, Patrick Moore, put in a laptop project. We have seen absolutely fantastic results in terms of the first nations kids, which is something we

did not anticipate to the level that we have. It was an area of a lot of concern, and they've just had quite resounding results. I'd encourage members to look at some of those individual examples, because they really are things that we're quite proud of.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, doctor, for taking the time and sharing your views and your experiences with us.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, before we hear from our next witness, I just want to remind all the members that we are here to receive evidence from our invited witnesses, not to debate each other. There will be an appropriate time to discuss the evidence during the report-writing phase.

Above all, it is important and imperative that all members conduct themselves in a parliamentary manner and use appropriate language at all times. As a parliamentary committee we have an obligation to conduct ourselves appropriately. Please, members, consider this as a reminder as we proceed.

M. Polak: I just wanted to add my agreement to that, but with one caution. That is that there needs to be recognition that statements made on either side will sometimes elicit the need for a response. In my observation, having entered as the conversation was proceeding, certainly there should have been restraint with respect to opinions proffered on areas outside of the committee as well.

I think it behooves those from all sides in this discussion to restrain themselves with respect to their own opinions around issues that may or may not be part of our discussions.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I think we will have ample time and opportunities to discuss and debate among ourselves at the committee level, so let us keep the presentation section of our business in a very disciplined and appropriate manner.

D. Routley: I would also like to agree with the comments that you've made. Thank you for them. But I would also point out that I rely on you, Mr. Chair, to correct the members when necessary, and I rely on my own self-restraint and control to dictate my own behaviour. I have no opinion on other members' behaviour. I don't think it's appropriate for me to express one if I did have an opinion.

I will contain my comments and business to the task at hand, and that is to hear from the witnesses and ask them questions. But I would beg the Chair to accept that I come here with a political bias, as do all the members. I will never attempt to dissuade the expression of that bias from them, and I will trust you, Mr. Chair, to correct members when necessary.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, we have in front of us Dr. Adrian Blunt, a retired professor of adult and continuing education from the college of education, University of Saskatchewan, who is now residing in Victoria. He's contributed to the text Adult Literacy Now and is the author of several studies of literacy — from economic analysis to the human capital perspective.

His research interests include social cohesion policy, literacy policy, essential skills and workplace learning, food security, first nations perspectives, and social and human capital. Several of his projects include the HRDC-funded study of essential skills as a first nations human capital development strategy and the SSHRC-funded study of essential skills in the food sector.

Welcome, Dr. Blunt. Just a little housekeeping announcement. You have 20 minutes for making your presentation, and that allows us some time for questioning. Please proceed.

A. Blunt: Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the privilege of speaking with you this morning. I wonder if I might just take a minute and give a little bit of a personal context.

First of all, I am an immigrant. I arrived in Vancouver in 1965, having emigrated from the U.K. I have always thought of myself as a Canadian since becoming a citizen, and always as a British Columbian since getting off the train in Vancouver in August of '65.

In 1967, I decided that teaching in British Columbia wasn't the career for me, and I went to work for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. My first posting was in Prince George. Prior to that posting, I had an interview with the department. Knowing that I would be quizzed on my knowledge of first nations — although they were not referred to as first nations in 1965 — I arranged to meet at a pub not too far from the Douglas Crossing with a young man who was chief at that time of the Semiahmoo band — Bernard Charles. He was the first native person that I had met in Canada. This is 1966.

He was the only native person I had met when I attended for an interview with Indian and Northern Affairs and was successful in being appointed and transferred to Prince George, where I was responsible for adult education in Stuart Lake, Burns Lake, Fort St. John and parts of the Yukon. I was the sole person working in adult education.

I concluded my career with the Department of Indian Affairs as the acting regional supervisor of adult education for British Columbia when we transferred the entire budget for adult education over to the bands. At that time, I think there were ten or 11 persons employed in that sector of the budget, and we all left. In other words, we were the first transfer of an adult education program in Canada to the responsibility of first nations bands.

After a time at UBC and in grad studies, I was employed by the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission where I was responsible for looking at manpower training needs studies. I worked on things like the Alaska Highway gas pipeline proposal, looking at opportunities to have first nations people become employed in those development projects.

After four years with Canada Employment and Immigration, I went to work for Vancouver Community College in the east side of Vancouver, where we basically had a brand-new campus — the King Ed campus on Broadway — and that campus had the largest enrolment of first nations persons in British Columbia. We also, in my division of continuing studies, worked to support the establishment of the Native Education Centre.

From there, I went to work on CIDA-funded literacy projects, mainly. I spent a couple of years in Indonesia, a couple of years in the Philippines and then, more recently, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe — in all, happily spending Canadian taxpayer dollars on literacy projects. For the last 20 years I've been at the University of Saskatchewan. I retired three months ago and since '96, actually, have been living in Oak Bay because my wife has an appointment at the University of Victoria. From '96 to 2005 I was commuting from Victoria to Saskatoon, and I finally decided enough was enough.

I've tried to give you a context of how I'm looking at the work that I have been doing, because quite frankly, the statistics will give you only a partial understanding. The dollars will give you yet another understanding. I'm talking about understandings of both failure and success, understandings of literacy — for what? I think, in listening to the brief exchanges that I heard around the table this morning, it's very clear that we don't share — either as persons in this room or as persons in our communities — a common understanding of what it is that we are promoting literacy for.

If we take a look at the set of understandings we have, we can elicit that some understandings fall into various categories, such as employment. We want people to have higher literacy skills in order that they can become employed. We want those who are employed to have higher literacy skills so that our industries and businesses can be more effective and more efficient, and also so that the employees who are employed can retain their employment because of those increases or improvements in global efficiency and competitiveness.

We're also interested in literacy because we know it results in gains in health, so each of us has a whole number of reasons why we think others ought to be literate. In this sense, it's a very prescriptive view. If you look at the way in which we set out as policy advisers, legislators, administrators, we're all in the business of helping others. Yet help isn't always helpful.

In the case of first nations, I would submit that as the single most disadvantaged social group, economic group — regardless of how one defines them as a community in Canada — every single socioeconomic and health indicator will demonstrate that these are the least advantaged persons in our society. In other words, everything that we're doing has not resulted in them attaining those goals we have for them.

One of the ways in which we can figure out who wants what for whom is to look at how we speak about issues. This is a huge Canadian issue now, because first nations are clearly the fastest-growing demographic group. Being the single most disadvantaged group they are, we're also able to predict and project that in the future, the level of disadvantagedness will increase, because they are being left behind. The number of persons experiencing that disadvantage will increase, because their population is growing so quickly. Therefore, we can predict we're going to have far more problems in the future than we've actually had in the past. I don't think one needs great leaps in logic to arrive at that.

What I'm going to suggest is that we try to listen to what we say in order to get a better understanding of what our own — what shall I call them? — underanalyzed or ignored wishes are for first nations people. I hate to quote persons when they have said something and then left the room, but because it's a deputy minister, I'm sure he'll forgive me. He has a much broader back than many of us.

One of his expressions, when he was talking about first nations bands in the Fraser Valley, was that we were finding ways of welcoming them into our schools. Having worked in Africa and Asia with colonized persons, I can tell you that there's a very high level of sensitivity as to who we are, who they are, what are our institutions and what are their institutions. The separation of us and them is a place to begin to think about what it is that we're doing.

That was a much longer introduction than I had intended. Like most university profs, even though I'm retired, I do go on at length. Let me now take a leap to this particular project. I should mention….

J. Nuraney (Chair): Just to remind you, doctor, that you have ten more minutes.

Sometimes the more important message doesn't come through PowerPoint. Ms. Ryan-Lloyd did write and kindly asked me to provide you with a copy of my remarks. Unfortunately, I had two deaths in my family and was not able to prepare fully what I wanted to give you before I came, but I will do that.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about one study funded by HRSDC. I'm hoping that you know what the essential skills project is. Am I correct?

A. Blunt: The essential skills project is HRSDC's largest project intended to improve literacy for enhancing Canada's competitiveness. It's basically being used as a workplace learning, workplace education strategy.

It's a new look at literacy, attempting to figure out — now that we know literacy is directly related to economic performance, both collectively and at the individual level — how we can maximize that performance.

What HRSDC did was go out and study all of the jobs that require the lowest levels of education. In other words, they started at the bottom of the list of occupations and have been working upwards. They have now completed an analysis of over 250 to 260 occupations. Starting with those that required less than a grade ten education to participate in, they asked questions: "Well, beyond the actual trade or physical or intellectual skills required to perform an occupation, what are the kinds of literacy requirements that are required in each of those jobs?" They identified nine, and those are the nine.

There is no great surprise to find, for instance, our traditional understanding of literacy — you know, reading, writing and numeracy — to be in there. But what has happened is that as we have built industries and developed sectors of our economy where people require higher levels of education, we focused a lot more on figuring out exactly what the more specific requirements are in each of these occupations.

Here's what HRSDC defines the essential skills to be, and this is a huge generic definition obviously. They're everything that you need for work, learning and life that are not actually related to the manipulation of tools. For instance, a carpenter needs to use a plane and power tools, but in addition to that, all of those prior nine essential skills are thought to be preparatory.

Every single occupation requires a number of these essential skills to be learned at different levels. Thinking skills, for instance, have actually been broken down into five, because problem-solving on the job has been identified as a huge area.

When I looked at this, my first response was: well, if aboriginal persons are the most needy in terms of HRSDC's assistance to acquire employment, how will this particular project assist them? The first thing I found out was that in all of the interviews that have been conducted and jobs that had been analyzed in order to gather this data, not one single first nations business, not one single first nations trained professional or one single first nations employed person was interviewed.

There is an assumption immediately there that you don't have to interview first nations people who aspire to being carpenters in order to figure out what carpenters need in order to perform their jobs. The assumption there is that first nations carpenters do exactly the same work that non–first nations carpenters do. If that's the case, then you would expect that they perform that work in the same context.

Yet we know, when we look where jobs are and what kinds of contextual differences there are between urban and rural environments, for instance…. Being a welder and occupied at a shipyard in North Vancouver, that welder is not performing exactly the same tasks that are being performed by a welder working perhaps in the oil patch in Fort St. John.

It's very easy, when you look at first nations communities, to see that the opportunities for employment that exist there are not the same as those that exist in urban communities. This is made more complex because slightly more than 50 percent of all aboriginal persons in Canada today live in urban environments. They do not live on reserves. So if there's a huge difference between the economy and the social life of a reserve, then to have a single Indian policy is to deny, in fact, the kinds of livelihoods that are actually being sought and aspired to by first nations people.

We took a sample. Actually, sample is a scientific term that doesn't really apply here. We took a group of convenience. We took the Gitxsan area of the Bulkley Valley, and we took the province of Saskatchewan and simply went as quickly and inexpensively as possible to find out: what do essential skills contribute to first nations communities?

One of the things I tried to do before doing that was ask some questions about essential skills. You'll all be excited to have the opportunity to use the word epistemology. Nothing like undergrads going home with a whole set of new terms, scientific terms that try to explain how we think about things and see things — right?

I would think that everybody in this room would basically agree that, yeah, this is how we as a group in this room — and in our colleges and universities, even — see the world. If you want to understand how salmon hatch, you go and look in a river, and you see what happens, and then we can develop hatcheries. We can build knowledge through science.

As a professor, I can assure you that the more and more I know about less and less, the more I get paid. We promote and affirm people with great understandings of minute areas of knowledge. We keep spirituality and physical aspects of our lives quite separate. We keep religion out of our schools. We try to make these distinctions clear in order that we can work together and not have spirituality and concerns about religion interfere with our ongoing daily work.

Certainly, individual development and building an identity are what is important for us. We want our kids to succeed in school regardless of what every other kid is doing, so we go out and hire tutors. We look for private schools. We do whatever we can to make sure that our kid does best. Our phone books are full of tennis coaches, swimming coaches, sailing coaches. By focusing on our own individual family members, we can ensure that we're putting them on the right road to success.

Take a look at a traditional view of first nations persons. Once again, while these are very broad statements, I would suggest to you that the great majority of first nations persons, regardless of whether they live in an urban area or on reserve, would agree with these statements.

We should all live in harmony, particularly with nature. We're looking for broad understandings of how

things work rather than trying to break things down into small pieces and understand them that way.

It's important to be both spiritual and physical, and a person who achieves this level of integration of aspects of their life is very highly regarded.

Your personal identity also. If you place yourself first and foremost in a first nations family or community, you are not going to be congratulated for having done that. You will be regarded as having made a gross error of judgment. In actual fact, you should see yourself as important because you're a member of a clan and a family, not because you are an individual.

Finally, rational thought isn't some kind of separate thing. Objectivity isn't only what MLAs bring to the Legislature — right? We're supposed to have an understanding of life that extends beyond the objective and to integrate values into what it is that we do and not base our decisions on these kinds of simple categories.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Doctor, if I may just interrupt. Three more minutes to wrap up.

A. Blunt: Here we've got a bunch of competing values. If you take a look at them, clearly there is a great level of disagreement between first nations persons when they bring to their decision-making around education and training — how can I say this? — a whole bunch of different underlying reasons why they wish to learn. These reasons permeate why they wish to be literate.

In our discussions with people, these are direct quotes from the communities. It's very clear to us that they do not see education as the process that will alleviate their problems of poverty, because the education that we're offering and providing to them is our education for our purposes to fill our understanding of our society's needs for business and industry to be efficient and effective.

We don't recognize, in fact, that there is more than one labour market, more than one economy and more than one way of looking at what an economy is. Our basic notions of an economy come from Marxist writings. If you look at the forms of capital, they are so oversimplified in order for us to be able to understand this atomistic view that we have completely misunderstood what it is that….

I'm not sure how to bring this quote down. Basically, first nations people are saying about essential skills: "They're not ours; they're yours. If you ask us to acquire these skills, you're asking us to acquire them for your reasons, for your purposes, and they will not be of assistance to us in sustaining our lifestyle."

This is a battle around lifestyle that, clearly, many first nations leaders see themselves as losing. This is why culture, language, is so important. With over 50 percent of first nations persons having left the reserve, they have voted with their feet, perhaps as a consequence of their experience of poverty and all kinds of other related difficulties in living on reserve. They've voted with their feet to leave that lifestyle. The means by which they have been able to do that is through education and credentialism. So we have an interesting problem.

I'd just like to leave you with a quotation from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Basically, the commission is saying that our education system and perspectives really don't address the interests of first nations persons. The great majority of work that has been done on literacy for first nations persons would fall into this area of our having developed a program for them.

It's an ongoing colonization of their minds that's best expressed through something I've just lost. It's a quote that basically says: "Your businesses clearcut our forests. Your education system clearcuts our minds."

D. Jarvis: Thank you very much, doctor. You made some interesting points that I would like to go into further or hear about further.

There was the latter point, where you said that education in the aboriginal community is not a part of their community or their culture — what we call education in that sense. I didn't quite understand what you meant, because education is the mainstay of their health, etc.

If they don't seem to want to grasp our — and I use the word "our" — system of education, that may be one of the reasons why they're not growing or are getting sicker and that their health isn't as great as it should be, and all the rest of it. It's the education — isn't it? — that advances you in the community.

A. Blunt: As simply as I can put it, our schools are an instrument of the state, which represents the majority wishes, value systems and so on. When communities have difficulties with that, they ask for a slightly different education system. So we provide charter schools. We allow for private schools. We've also allowed for Indian-managed schools on reserves.

We have a huge problem there, by the way, because the federal government hands over large sums of money to bands, school districts or provinces for the education of Indian children. Within the contractual agreement there is a very clear statement that says that annually, those people who receive the money are supposed to say how well the recipients of those funds have performed.

The Auditor General has pointed out now in two reports that nowhere across Canada is there evidence of an evaluation being done of the performance of first nations students in public schools or in Indian-managed schools on reserves. I can tell you that a similar problem exists in universities with the training of first nations teachers.

In order for us to be considered less racist and less colonial, we have begun to introduce into our public education system aspects of aboriginal and first nations culture. But it's whitewash. Whether little Jimmy is colouring a picture of a totem pole or colouring a picture of a farm on the prairie isn't an issue that is important in comparison to the principles behind the lessons being taught. If the lessons being taught are, "You colour between the lines, not over the lines, and we're going to have a competition to see who has the best colouring book at the end of the day," what we're doing is eroding the values of first nations students who would say that the lines aren't there, and colouring ought not to be restricted to within-the-lines colouring. It doesn't really matter, quite frankly.

We've managed to fall into this trap of being responsive by doing, literally, a snow job. We're using culture in a highly inappropriate and superficial way.

D. Routley: Thank you very much for the presentation, Dr. Blunt. There are coffee cups now. I know it's a little late.

We heard a presentation from Dr. Kjell Rubenson in Vancouver recently. It was more directed toward technologies and literacy related to technologies. He referred to an increase in technological demands, demands literacy gains. If technology is static, then less demand on literacy. We must make better use of people's literacy. We must provide avenues to use literacy — in other words, referring to your question: what for?

I recently saw a program. I think it was called The Naked Truth. A number of first nations students sat in a circle around a number of non-aboriginal people who sat in the middle. The presenter treated those in the middle the way first nations students have been treated in school. The questions that were asked were about first nations culture, aboriginal culture. When the white students couldn't answer questions based on aboriginal culture, they were punished and ridiculed by the people sitting around them and by their teacher. It was very humiliating and degrading.

I would suggest two things, whether it's chicken and egg…. Wealth equals health, wealth often equals literacy, and literacy equals wealth in our society. The purposes of the people who control wealth, who are either industrious or control wealth for other reasons, dictate the type of literacy that our schools and institutions request from students.

I think you said we're using culture inappropriately. My question is going to be, eventually: how do we make it more appropriate?

Going back to the demand for literacy driving the retention and accomplishments in literacy, isn't it that somehow we allow that culture to shape its own program of literacy and establish its own priorities? How do we get to that point? How do we build the capacities inside this system to get to that point, and do you believe it's possible for us to do that?

A. Blunt: A couple of things. What you began to talk about is kind of educational alchemy — turning knowledge into gold. Dr. Rubenson is absolutely correct in his analysis that those people who already have some gold are better able, in fact, to create more gold. In other words, the more you know, the more you're able to convert that into benefits, power, social status.

Unfortunately, what he didn't tell you was that…. If you look at the evidence, Statistics Canada has identified four groups or levels of literacy — level one being the lowest levels in Canada to level four being the highest. The persons that Dr. Rubenson has looked at mainly are those who are employed and in categories three and four.

What he didn't tell you was that if you look at the economic gain — the return on investment — by raising the literacy levels of those at the bottom, that's where you get the greatest gain. But this is proportional. In other words, if you're making $10,000 a year and as a consequence of literacy you're now able to work for 40 weeks a year instead of 20 and your income goes from $10,000 to $16,000, that's a 60-percent return. If you look at the larger groups at the top of the heap, if they're earning $35,000 or $36,000 and the return on literacy is $2,000 or $3,000, you can see there's a nice line to be drawn on a graph showing that this is a return on investment that's well worth pursuing, but the greater effect of investment is at the bottom end and not the top end.

The other interesting thing is: where are the federal and provincial dollars being invested? They're being invested in those people who already have the most. If you look at the workplace education and literacy programs nationally, what you'll find is that organized labour, corporations and government have found a kind of triumvirate relationship where corporations and organized labour are able to elicit government funding for workplace education that's delivered through provincial colleges and institutes.

So we have this nice relationship where thousands of people are very happy, benefiting from it. But once again, these are all employed persons. We're not creating new jobs. What we're creating is a more skilled workforce that eventually results in higher levels of efficiency and productivity — all good, national goals. So when you look where the money goes, it's basically going in the direction we want it to go.

M. Polak: You speak about something that's not surprising, which is really…. You could take almost all of the things you've been relating and place them well. They'd fit well within the broader education debate about what values we bring to it as a society, what success is for a student. In many ways it's part of a broader discussion.

I was pleased to hear you mention Bernard Charles. He was — and is, although I haven't seen him in about a year — a great friend of mine and sometime mentor with respect to aboriginal education and youth. I was involved for about seven or eight years, which brings me to maybe an unfairly difficult question that I'm going to ask you. I'll try to get to it as quickly as I can.

Within the aboriginal community and within the aboriginal academic community, I've been a part of — I've listened to — a robust debate around the maintenance of values and culture, which, you'll be encouraged to know, typically now in elementary schools doesn't involve the colouring. It's integrated curriculum across the piece, which is a real positive move.

It revolves around maintenance of culture and the creation of systems whereby we can hopefully provide an individual with tools to be self-sufficient and create their own destiny in the way they would. It arises when we are unfortunately the victims of a past history. I say victims on both sides — obviously to a more dramatic degree with respect to aboriginal people. But certainly our own culture is lessened by the lack thereof.

Also, we as those who struggle with this are victims of it in the sense that we cannot change it. It is a context that we must now wrestle with. In a practical sense, there is no way for an aboriginal person to return to the cultural context in which those values would allow them to be self-sufficient in and of themselves.

Given that context, how do we now approach specifically those who are adults now — so we're not thinking long view of how you prepare the future ones — and who are at this point foundering in their lives because of a lack of…. I guess we could use the term essential skills, but I suppose I might even back it off more to say the minimum that would allow them to move forward to being able to make their own choices in life through employment or what have you. How do we address that cadre of people in that specific way?

A. Blunt: I think through governance and accountability, first of all. I think we have to encourage first nations to be more accountable for what it is that they're choosing to do not only to their own people — which should come first — but also to us, so that they can better express what it is that they are seeking.

At the moment there are too many veiled conversations going on, and the discourses are not very honest. It's rather like the potential for separation of Quebec, for instance. We don't want to talk about it as directly as we probably need to. But our strategy there is if we can ensure that Quebec is prosperous and everybody is quite happy being both materialistic and culturally active, then they won't separate.

With first nations we have the problem of participation. If we can have them employed, healthy, living in comfortable homes and buying pickup trucks and televisions, then they won't exclude themselves from our society. They'll come and join us, and we'll all live happily in our mosaic.

Governance and that accountability, I think, have got to come right at the very front. But questioning our own motives for why we are proposing certain programs rather than others and questioning our assumptions that local economies will not work…. There's a major assumption, I think, in the Bulkley Valley that the kinds of industries that are there are connected more directly to the global economy than they used to be. Therefore, we have to do things that are appropriate in that economic framework.

There is a huge blind spot about local and regional economies. You can find parallels all around the world. People say it's anti-globalization. But that's the attack that is made upon these people who are proposing these alternatives. Basically, what they're asking for is an opportunity to engage in their own local economy with their own local resources in ways that respect their cultural traditions and practices, and frequently we're placing barriers in front of them. Programs that they don't ask for, which we take into their communities, are a kind of barrier.

R. Lee: It's a very interesting philosophical discussion. I believe some of the points you mentioned are very valid. For example, the education system as it is right now in our school system may not fit too well with the aboriginal community. I believe language is probably the bigger challenge with the immigration community, but culture is a bigger challenge in the aboriginal community.

I think my question is: how can we integrate the two? We cannot establish a separate education system in the aboriginal community per se because even in the aboriginal community, they have different languages and different cultures. How can we integrate the normal system, the standard system, with their culture? I think that's the gap. How to gauge the gap is important.

I also heard people saying that if more aboriginal people were working or engaged in the educational sector, that would help to bridge the gap. Is that the direction we should be going? Should we train more aboriginal people in library management, in teaching, in higher education, in mentorship — that kind of thing? Do you think that's the direction we should be going — increasing literacy in the aboriginal community?

A. Blunt: In Saskatchewan, urban reserves have been created. The population of cities like Regina and Saskatoon…. I think Regina is somewhere in the area of a 40-percent first nations population currently. Saskatoon is very close to that.

First nations people can live and work in Regina, and they work on urban reserves rather like industrial estates, where the land is designated as a reserve, federally. It's been purchased as part of the reparation being made for lands taken away from them. If you go into Richmond and you go to the Aberdeen Centre, it's very hard, when you walk through there, not to think that you're in Singapore or Hong Kong. We have examples where particular communities and businesses have got together and created very successful enterprises.

It amazes me that we have not yet made the connection that if persons of Chinese ancestry — whether they're immigrants or immigrants of convenience — have managed to do that in Richmond, why is there such a huge problem in managing those kinds of things

across Canada? Certainly, in North Vancouver we've got evidence of the Burrard band and Park Royal.

So these things are possible. But I would also point out that if you take a look at a Chinese immigrant family, when a son or daughter becomes perfectly fluent in English, that family is literate because the child performs the literacy work. First nations families do the same thing. If you have a well-educated person of aboriginal ancestry, there is less need for every other person in that family to become highly literate. Why would you, because the family is literate as a consequence of this one person being able to fulfil every literacy need that the family can identify.

Bringing first nations families, on a nuclear-family basis, into our schools and communities once again is our interpretation of family. The strategy of having a first nations family with only two or three children, of having all of them come to a highly literate level without asking them: "Do you think you're literate enough…?" We're saying to them: "We've already made the assumption that you're not. Therefore you're deficient, and because you're deficient in literacy, you'd better get in here so we can fix you. You are the problem to be fixed."

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Blunt — very interesting comments. I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for taking the time and coming before us.

Members, before we proceed listening to our guest, we have John Horgan who would like to take the floor.

J. Horgan: I just wanted to advise members that I did have a meeting at nine o'clock, which I had to attend. I didn't anticipate leaving with such flourish.

I just want to say that I know we come to this place with different views of the world and different views of our communities. By and large, we usually respect that, and I'm hopeful that from this point on, we'll be able to continue to do that.

Members, we have in front of us a visiting guest with the name Dr. John Martin. Dr. Martin is the director of the centre of sustainable communities at La Trobe University in Australia.

It's very nice of you, Dr. Martin, to take the time and come before this committee. We look forward to listening to your presentation. Let me just give you a bit of a caution. You have 15 minutes of presentation, followed by some questions by the members.

J. Martin: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for inviting me and for the opportunity to meet with you. My wife and I are regular visitors to British Columbia. Our eldest son did the trip to Whistler about ten years ago and met a Canadian girl and got married, so we've been coming back here.

I've managed to organize research at the University of Victoria in the school of public administration and with Prof. Ralph Matthews at the University of British Columbia with his community studies work.

Let me tell you who I am so that you understand who's actually talking to you today. I originally trained as an ecologist 35 years ago when people thought it was a social disease. No one understood what it was. I came to the conclusion as a young man that environmental issues were all about people and institutions, so I became a sociologist and ended up doing my PhD in public policy at the Australian National University.

What I do at the Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities is really broker research on behalf of the university nationally, primarily in the province or the state of Victoria in Australia, and internationally here in Canada, where I'm co-editing a book with a colleague at the University of Victoria's school of public administration.

The book is a comparative study of Australian and Canadian local government, which is a nice way to start. While I don't have a lot of detail about adult education, learning communities and adult literacy in British Columbia, there are a lot of parallels between the Australian nation and the Canadian nation as federal states and their historical and multicultural background and so on. So I'm certainly pleased to be here.

I would like to acknowledge my good friend and colleague Dr. Ron Faris. Ron is a leader in this particular field internationally, and I first met Ron I don't know how many years ago — maybe four or five now — in Australia, where the Australians brought him to Victoria to guide us in terms of our decisions around learning communities and so on.

I've seen Ron's presentation that he made to you previously, and it's very comprehensive. In his overlays and the introduction, he's been able to correlate for you the relationship between socioeconomic factors — health, education and so on — and you know that these things do correlate. That came up in the last presentation as well. He's certainly put it in the context of Canada's place in the knowledge-based global economy, and that's true of Australia as well.

The OECD describes Australia as an economic miracle because of our sustained economic growth over the last two decades, effectively. You will know that Australia is basically a mine, and the reason why we do so well is that we dig it up and export it to China — iron ore and nickel. Largely, Australia's future at the moment, its economic future, is very much related to the future of all of East Asia, in particular China and more recently that of India — two rapidly developing nations, which will certainly impact Canada as it will Australia.

This economic miracle comes at a cost. We've not kept pace with the physical infrastructure replacement, the modernization of assets in Australia. This is ac-

knowledged by the federal government and other governments. It's a major issue as to how we do this and how we pay. Nor have we invested in our people to keep pace. It's a bit of the chicken and the egg argument, because the pace has been so rapid. At one level it's so difficult to actually keep pace with your investment in education and training. This includes all levels of formal and non-formal learning, especially adult literacy.

My focus as the director of a research centre in the city of Bendigo, which currently has the world's largest underground goldmine under the city…. It's a fascinating story. It was closed in the 1930s, but now with the price of gold at over $600 an ounce…. In the last five years it's gone from $220 to $600 an ounce. They've reopened these goldmines all around the world, and that's largely because of the passion for gold from the Indian nation, where the major demand is coming from.

It's in these rural regions, and I'm not differentiating aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities…. In the province or the state that I live in, we don't have reserves for aboriginal communities. We do have them in the northern part of Australia, where aboriginal people are more popular in terms of their numbers. That's certainly in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. But I'm not going to talk about those.

It's the impact of poor literacy, low levels of skills, on the ability of firms — especially small to medium enterprise firms in rural communities — to modernize and to keep pace with change. It's the inability of workers to use basic IT skills, for example, that limits innovation and entrepreneurial development in these rural, regional places. That is a really important point. In the city, small to medium enterprises and large firms are able to do this because they have the pool of talent, the expertise and the institutions to develop people in this particular way. But in small rural communities, they don't have that capacity. This is important.

We know that the sustained growth of the American economy over the last few decades has very much been fuelled by the information revolution. This is true in Canada; it's true in Australia. It's unequal in its distribution across Australian society.

Then we ask the question: what is the role of government in terms of assisting people in small, rural, relatively isolated cases to come up to speed, to develop their capacity? It's a major public policy issue.

In the document I'm going to refer to in a moment…. We have a strong adult and community education sector in the state of Victoria. What's the institutional arrangement for the provision of adult education, adult literacy? I've tabled a paper on sustainable adult and community education for the committee. I actually received this paper in Glasgow ten days ago at the International Research Symposium on Public Management, where I was attending and presenting a paper. I was delighted to see this paper by my colleagues at the University of Ballarat, who were commissioned by the state provincial government of Victoria to do an evaluation of adult and community education — a vehicle for presenting or facilitating adult education and certainly adult literacy programs. I'm going to refer to one conceptual framework in that.

Just as a corollary, in Ron Faris's paper he provided examples of Australian learning communities which include a strong focus on literacy skill development. These include the city of Wodonga and Hume City. It's a fabulous city — an incredible, diverse, multicultural community in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where the local authority publishes everything in 11 languages. It's a beautiful place to go to. Mount Evelyn on the Yarra Ranges, in a cultural sense, is very much the Anglo-European, eastern suburbs of Melbourne where they also have the same processes but in a different cultural mix.

I know all of these places, and I've undertaken research with Ron comparing the Australian and Canadian experiences, and we will provide the committee with those papers. Let me get to a framework, because I would imagine that as policy-makers, you're interested in some sort of guiding light — how you should make decisions around the investment by government in adult literacy programs.

So let me talk about one. What my colleagues at the University of Ballarat did was the usual thing. They went and looked at adult and community education in the state of Victoria, and they concluded that with organizational sustainability…. Now, what that means is: what's the likelihood that those institutions that deliver adult literacy programs will prevail over time? There are a number of things that matter.

The first and the most important one. I was listening to the previous speaker in terms of the value proposition, the cultural assumptions that are made by policy-makers and decision-makers. But in an economic sense also, what is the value proposition? What's the return on investment in literacy programs in an economic sense of the kind that I've been talking about — small and medium enterprises in rural communities?

What's the organizational capacity? At the institutions that Ron and I have looked at, we've questioned the institutional capacity of local government to continue to deliver on these particular programs. The challenge for those organizations is that they're driven by individuals in local authorities that have no provincial or national support. I'm sure they have it in terms of the rhetoric, but in terms of the reality of programs that are designed to support these programs, they are in fact not in existence.

The other thing that's important. I'm going to look at the two horizontal points there — the organizational capacity and the linkage. My own research in local government over many years is that the way in which local governments innovate is by looking over the fence at their next-door neighbour. If you look at the literature on innovation, the way in which we innovate is in fact by, you know, "Rogers talks about being early adopters" — who's doing what. This is why we're having this inquiry — what's happening in Australia?

What are the views? — so that policy-makers can be informed and make the right choices.

So where are the linkages? How do these various adult and community education organizations link with each other, with their community, with state and federal government, such that they are sustainable over time?

Finally, in terms of the revenue base, how do they get their resources to actually run these institutions? What's the relationship between revenue and expenditure in terms of the investment that's actually made? How is that demonstrated? These are questions that are raised in this particular paper.

As I said before introducing this particular concept, while Ron and I have looked at a number of individual cases, the reality is that individual cases have a mixed history. Typically, an individual case will start on the basis of a charismatic, strong individual leader who believes in this passionately. But when you take that leader away, it doesn't always continue. It's not always sustained in that particular community.

My question of government, which is about the structures of decision-making and policy-making, is: what can governments put in place such that they not only have the opportunity to benefit from strong individuals but they have institutional support over time? I think they're the key issues that face them.

What is the guiding value proposition for adult literacy in British Columbia? What are the linkages? How do people who are working in this field learn from each other, share innovative programs? These are things that policy-makers can look at, and investments can be made. How do they professionally develop under organizational capacity?

How do they professionally develop people who work in that field and ensure that they have the organizational structures to continue on? Is it in fact based in a realistic and honest investment strategy? That is what I think underpins the revenue base.

There are some comments. I hope that's within the time, Mr. Chair, of ten to 15 minutes. If we had some questions from the members now, I'd be pleased to hear them.

J. Horgan: For the benefit of my colleagues, I did my master's degree at University of Sydney in Australia, and Dr. Martin and I have already talked about that.

J. Horgan: Based on my experience, the similarities…. British Columbia and the western states — certainly New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria — are quite similar. The significant difference is the aboriginal populations and — certainly in Sydney, in Melbourne and in Brisbane to a greater extent — urban aboriginal communities rather than rural.

My question would be two parts. First, we have in Vancouver particularly, and also in Prince George, Victoria and the larger communities throughout B.C., urban aboriginal populations. Does your research touch upon how the states, whether it be a municipal state or at the federal level, attempt to address urban aboriginal populations with respect to literacy?

The second part, just in the interests of shortness and brevity, is the uneven distribution of resources between urban and rural in Australia. My experience is very similar to that of here in British Columbia. I'd like you to comment on that.

J. Martin: Let me be clear. I'm not a person who actually does research in aboriginal communities in Australia, so I don't have particular prior knowledge of this. But as an informed observer in the community, it's not clear to me that public policy differentiates greatly on the basis of ethnicity. They differentiate on the basis of need and socioeconomic disadvantage.

For example, as I mentioned, in Hume we have a number of people who are refugees, who are migrants who come to Australia, who are not well-off. They have all sorts of assistance programs for those people. I expect what you would find in the programs offered by government — by the Hume City council and the province or the state of Victoria — is that they wouldn't differentiate on the basis of that. They would be inclusive in terms of all groups who would attend.

The reality in terms of rural areas is that you do in fact have particular groups. We now celebrate, as you do, this cultural diversity and the asset that we have with our indigenous communities. One which I know in particular in the western districts of Victoria…. Lake Condah is a fabulous place. Lake Condah is the only place in Australia where there is clear evidence that indigenous people were not nomadic, which was the tradition of the Australian aborigine. Because it's a lava geology over these rocks, what they did was create fish ponds over winter so that in the summer, when the lakes receded, they would be able to harvest eels and fish and so on. This is about to get world heritage status. What we do is celebrate this fabulous culture of the Lake Condah community. They feel really good about this. The value proposition here is that we respect, greatly, these people. Therefore, all of the other things follow.

Part of the issue you're dealing with here is the cart and the horse, the means and ends. If it's a focus on literacy per se, then we kind of get lost. But if the value proposition is to respect and value something for other reasons, like cultural heritage, then instrumental things — like the ability to communicate, to take control of their own affairs, to manage their own lives — are instrumental. This is me, off the top of my head here, talking to you about this.

Clearly, across Australia there is an uneven distribution. In the northern part of Australia it is one of the

wicked social problems. Our inability to deal with black and white in Australia in terms of social inequity is a major issue. I'm telling you this as an individual Australian who is well-off in terms of where he sits in the place. But Australian public policy recognizes that. Our politicians recognize that. We don't have easy answers here.

What I like about this particular sustainability framework is that, you know, sitting at the very top is: why are we doing this? What's the value proposition that we hold in relation to, in this case, adult literacy for first nations people? I hope that answers your question.

M. Polak: The value proposition is always difficult to integrate with a practical problem. We see that in health. We see that now in education.

The committee is tasked with developing recommendations for the Legislature with respect to ways in which we might enhance adult literacy. On a practical level, that perhaps takes us to the 40-to-45-year-old who, in a very practical way, wants a job, wants to be supporting himself and can't read. I say it using that language to bring it down to…. When I have the conversation with that person and talk to him about a values proposition or a moral and ethical imperative, he's thinking: "Well, no. I want to pay my rent."

What thoughts do you have for the committee with respect to how we bridge that gap between the ideals we likely all share around what a whole education is versus the immediate needs of a large group of people who would not recognize those things as being important at this point in their life?

J. Martin: Let's talk about another view of the value proposition. If the value proposition is that we, as policy-makers and decision-makers, believe that there is a relationship between socioeconomic well-being, health, levels of education and prosperity in the community, then how do we make that investment in the community, notwithstanding the day-to-day immediate needs of the people who you're actually talking about?

My recommendation is that there needs to be an institutional framework within which adult literacy can, in fact, be delivered in the province, in the nation of Canada, in the same way that we have an institutional framework that deals with mass education, basic education, and in the same way that we have an institutional framework that deals with health, public safety, firefighting and so on. We have to ask ourselves the question.

This is the value proposition. If we believe there's a relationship between these things, where's the institutional framework for delivering adult literacy programs, and how do we make that investment, notwithstanding that we don't have the immediate feedback as to the value of that investment?

Geoffrey Vickers, in his fabulous book, The Art of Judgement…. You know, for politicians and policy-makers this is the art of judgment. As politicians, this is where you have to put your hand up at some point in time and say: "We believe this to be true, and therefore, we recommend this investment."

D. Routley: Thank you for the presentation, Dr. Martin. I was interested by the phrase you used. You equated innovation to the concept of being early adopters. We are grappling with the ideas and challenges of being early adopters, I think, in our public education system as we move towards a best-practices model, as it's phrased, and a system of supervision of learning. It seems that people will assume that if we're early adopters of something that worked somewhere else, then we can call ourselves innovators.

I think if we went back to the top of that diagram, to the value proposition, that is where we can seek innovation. If we go into the regions of the province and into different regions of culture, so to speak…. The previous presenter spoke — again, as you did — about what for and why, and that cultures need to define for themselves what for and maybe define the value proposition for themselves.

How do we find a balance between a responsible pursuit of best practices, without an oppressive discouragement of establishing the value proposition, and trusting professionals to deliver? Where do you see the balance between those two dynamics?

J. Martin: Fabulous question, because you want to give direction, as politicians, through some sort of institutional arrangement based on a value proposition, but you don't want to overprescribe. You don't want to dictate how it should be done, running the risk of excluding innovators. I think that's very important.

Let me give you a parallel example. In the 1990s I was on the Commonwealth governments judging panel for the innovation awards for local government. I started to study those organizations that won the awards — best practice. I've published all of this work, which is available to you. What I found was that innovation is a process. It's not about invention; it's about the way in which we work. Therefore, when you're talking about adult literacy programs in institutions, it's the way in which you set those up.

I think that was a really important finding for me. In one sense, you might see that as very obvious. It's about the way in which work…. It's about that particular process. We actually set up a situation where the federal minister, who was Senator Ian Macdonald from Queensland, agreed to fund a program where the innovation award winners travelled around the country. They were committed, when they won the award, to deliver four workshops in other provinces on how they did it.

There's nothing more powerful than to take a successful adult educator from one part of Canada and sit that person down with other adult educators in another part of Canada to have a dialogue — nothing more powerful. Is it tangible? No, it's not. Is it a political investment? Yes, it is, to actually do that. I mean,

that's the political stewardship that I think is required here to make that commitment in terms of the sort of institutional organizational cultural change, whether it's around innovation for the delivery of local government services or whether it's about innovation around the delivery of adult literacy programs.

Rogers, where all this literature comes from, says that if you get 12 percent of early adopters, then your people will follow. You see that in pop culture. You see that in the media, the way in which it works. Why not apply the same things that we know about what happens in the business world to public policy when it comes to community development?

R. Lee: You mentioned economic development in some small town in Australia. You mentioned the importance of China and India and how they are important to the Australian economy for the future. You mentioned institutional framework, how to establish a system so that, say, adult education, skills, learning or even…. If I may, probably you wanted to mention how to increase job opportunities for adults — for example, new opportunities.

I understand that the Australian educational system actually made some modifications a few years ago to have an Asia-Pacific view. They now require a second language, Asian language, for all students. In Canada, in B.C., what do you suggest would be the appropriate framework as an Asia-Pacific province?

J. Martin: It's one of the great challenges. They call it the glocal challenge, to be global and local at the same time — how to value local and live in a global world. That's certainly happening through the education system, as you've said. We have very clearly international strategies. Every university has: "What's your internalization strategy?" It happens in secondary schools as well.

There is a great valuing, a value proposition, of investment in a bilingual population. Bahasa Indonesia is a very common language in Australian schools. The tragedy that we have with our relationship with Indonesia is our inability for Australian students to actually go and live in Indonesian society. We're doing things about that.

Once again, you can draw parallels, which is what I think you're doing here, Richard. If you believe in something — that is, that it's good to invest in this bilingual education in Asian languages — then you invest in it. That's a public policy decision, and it's an investment by government.

I should acknowledge here that all the leading private schools in Australia do not do just two languages, but typically three. They'll do an Asian and a European language. In the very best private schools, what's the value proposition? Talk to my friends, who send their students to these schools. Is it an economic proposition? Possibly. Is it a cultural proposition? Certainly. They believe that to be the way in which we go.

Like in Canada: what's your relationship with your American neighbour? The Australian public policy value proposition is: what's our relationship with Indonesia? It's a major issue for Australian society. We have a fabulous relationship with China, Japan, India, Thailand and so on. But this is how the value proposition comes out in public policy in international relations. I think you're quite right in drawing parallels with an internal public policy around adult literacy.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Martin. It is very enlightening to see a viewpoint coming from down under, as we say. Thank you for being here, and thank you for taking the time.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, we have before us John Boraas, dean of the school of access and director of first nations education at Camosun College. He's also the chair of the B.C. public post-secondary deans and directors of developmental education group.

Welcome, Mr. Boraas, and we look forward to listening to your presentation. Just a little word of caution: you have 15 minutes to present, and then questions after.

J. Boraas: Thanks for the invitation. It's a really great opportunity to come and talk about some of the issues that are percolating for the deans and directors group. For your information, the deans and directors of developmental programs in B.C. are responsible for what we call adult basic education, English-as-a-second-language and special education programs and, for the most part, programs for aboriginal students as well. In addition, it's a variety of services to support success for students' learning.

Within that is also a responsibility for literacy programs and the implementation of partnerships with cost-shared literacy programs from funding within the B.C. and federal governments. That's sort of the general direction that I come from within the system.

The deans and directors group represents all of the B.C. colleges and university colleges, as well as Thompson Rivers University, BCIT and UBC, which sit at the table in terms of coordinating programs for developmental needs of students.

The role in which I've been asked to present is as chair of that group, but it's obviously informed by my work as a dean here at Camosun within the developmental programs area in the first nations programs areas.

Some of the things that I want to talk about today have to do with, I think, based on what I've been reading of the Hansard reports, more of an operational perspective of adult education in the province and some of the needs that exist for us and things that we wish to have resolved as developmental educators.

One of the things we'd like to point out and that is really important for our students is the first point in my

presentation, and that's the appreciation of a place that is an adult learning environment for students. We really are challenged by students in developmental programs that are really frightened or intimidated by education. Their past successes are few and their failures are often many.

We deal a great deal with creating environments that make certain that they're working with people who are also adults and who are working toward the same kinds of goals and are taking the same kinds of courageous steps to returning to education. That part is really critical for us. It's one that we take very seriously and think is the keystone of any kind of adult ed program, and certainly to do with literacy where the likelihood is that students have not been successful in the past.

The second point I was going to make is around our current support for literacy education and the kinds of things that we believe work. Obviously, throughout the province and the country, literacy is a buzzword, a topic of conversation for everyone. I'm sitting on a number of national boards that have to do with literacy issues, one of which is around immigrant literacy as well. It's a component of literacy that I think we need to pay attention to as well, given the role that we're recognizing, which is more and more immigrants taking on a critical economic role within the province. Certainly, language literacy for immigrants is seen as being the primary barrier to economic integration, and we have to really take that reality very seriously.

Our literacy roles within the province are very much about partnership, and I'll talk a bit more about that afterwards. All of our literacy programs are in partnership with community-based organizations, which I think is a critical part of any kind of literacy programming. For example, in Victoria we have, I believe, eight different partnerships where we're placing literacy programs out in the community. We're absolutely certain that those kinds of programs are much more effective in terms of linking adult literacy learners with education than expecting them to come to a post-secondary or any kind of formal educational institution.

For example, we have programs at five different first nations sites in the Greater Victoria area where we place Camosun faculty. We also have sites for particular other demographics — programs for women who've suffered violence, programs for people who have recognized their literacy issues at Project Literacy and so on. We're connecting with a group of students through doing that that we would not get if they were expected to come to a college, university or school. It's made very clear to us that students are terrified of doing that. So partnerships for us are a critical element.

The other piece that occurs with a partnership in education is support from the students' or the learners' home community. That's a really critical piece for us. There's no way, as an educational institution, that the level of support that is often required can be mustered. Financially it's difficult, and in terms of connection to the community and an understanding of community, it's difficult. By partnering with a first nations community, we're able to rely on the resources of family and of community in terms of supporting the learner as they learn at their own site.

My third point is one that I heard the previous speaker making reference to: triple bottom-line issues. Often our conversations with the deans and directors group is trying to understand the economic imperatives that are facing our students. Obviously, our primary interest is in helping learners to move forward as better-educated citizens who can take part fully, who can benefit from being a British Columbian, from taking advantage of all of the privileges that we have.

We also know that there are economic issues. How is the student going to use the skills they're developing to be able to integrate and participate in the economy more completely? Also on the same side: how do we deal with the social and environmental side of any kind of programming, and how do we be sure that what we end up with is the kind of society we want to have?

For us, this relates somewhat to breaking the cycle of poverty. We see the statistics and are certainly aware of it through our own practice — that those with low literacy levels are far, far more likely to be living in poverty. That's a critical issue for us.

We would very much like to see policies and programming that recognize and support people who are working and able to continue, in some way, to learn or be supported in that endeavour. Currently, it's very difficult for someone who is at an entry level in the workforce and who is 45 to attend any kind of programming, because the needs of….

It's very difficult to do both. For someone in that situation the demands of working full time at a minimum-wage job and pursuing a literacy program is a really significant challenge. Our belief is that we need very much to recognize that and find ways of making it easier for people to do both — both work and return to education — in some fashion.

My next point is coordinated social support. A significant challenge for any kind of learner in returning to education, especially at the lowest levels, is keeping body and soul together and learning. From my perspective, and from the deans' and directors' perspectives, finding ways to be sure that we can talk — as part of a system, a provincial support system to identify policy barriers, practice barriers that may get in the way of helping a learner to proceed with education — is critical. We face great frustration in seeing learners who are unable to navigate provincial systems and structures, be it in the ministry of human resources or social assistance or within Education itself, in terms of finding a way through.

Often that maze is very complex for somebody who is not strong in terms of literacy skills. That's a critical piece from my perspective. A significant part of what agencies like Project Literacy here in Victoria do is help people understand how to work through all kinds of bureaucracies and systems. That kind of support is absolutely critical. These people often do not have the

My next point is on aboriginal education. This is a really profound issue. Based on current stats, we know that somewhat less than 20 percent of aboriginal youth graduate with the qualifications necessary to move on to post-secondary education. Some 40 percent complete high school with a school leaving certificate, but those are with courses that are not sufficient to move on in post-secondary education.

Almost all aboriginal students that move on to higher education actually present with very low-level literacy skills — grade five or grade six level of reading and writing, even though they may have a school leaving certificate. For us in post-secondary education, that's critical. What are we going to do about that? How do we approach support to aboriginal learners?

For us, for most of the colleges, that is about partnering and working directly with first nations organizations, bands, tribal councils, and working with enough flexibility that people can get those literacy and numeracy skills necessary to move on to be successful.

Timing to complete upgrading — point number six. One of the challenges that exists, and this is particularly for aboriginal students: most funding for developmental programs is limited to one or two years. If somebody returns to learning with a grade five level of education, it's very unlikely that in one year they're going to be able to move on to post-secondary education.

That's a critical policy issue that we're grappling with in terms of funding for students and their tuition costs.

Number seven: immigrant education and integration. Within the post-secondary system, increasingly, we know that we're serving more and more immigrant students. Certainly, we're also seeing more and more international students moving into our programs as well. All of those are growth areas. Most students who come to us from other countries come to us with very low levels of English skills, and clearly, that does take some time to grapple with.

Perhaps even more importantly, their ability to be integrated into the economy suffers on a number of fronts. Research shows that about 50 percent of immigrants to Canada find language to be a primary barrier for getting into the workforce. A further 40 percent show that it's sociocultural competencies, understanding the Canadian workplace.

Beyond that, also, through a survey done through the Maytree Foundation in Toronto, it's estimated that 50 percent of Canadian employers will not hire somebody who is an immigrant or does not have Canadian workplace experience. As an educational system, on a literacy issue, I think there's a critical need to also begin to educate employers about what it means to work with an immigrant employee. I think that role, at least partly, falls within the college system.

Interministry coordination. One of the things that's been very exciting is seeing the number of issues that have received consideration in terms of panels that span ministries. Literacy is certainly one of those areas that requires the attention of more than just a single ministry or two ministries — those being Education and Advanced Education. Policies and systems span many, many ministries, and I think it's critical that we consider all of those.

Student financial support. I have spoken in my presentation already about the lack of financial support that exists for students, with one- or two-year maximums. Some of those are artificial. How do we deal with those, and how do we grapple with those as a provincial system?

My last point — and I've made reference to it, but here it's more specific — is in terms of partnerships for literacy. I list some of the areas in which Camosun College, specifically, has partnerships within the Victoria area. We also, through those partnerships, have been able to generate significant resources for Project Literacy Victoria in terms of Industry Canada funding to pilot some on-line, virtual kinds of programming for literacy learners. I think, again, it speaks to the need for partnerships to exist in relationships in community to really grapple with literacy issues.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Mr. Boraas, if I may just remind you, two more minutes to wrap up, and then the questions, please.

The final point that I'll make is that within the provincial college and institute system, our desire is very much to work to resolve this, and the fact that it's seen as a priority by government and that this panel has been struck to address and discuss literacy issues is very heartening. It's a topic that isn't simple. I don't believe there are any simple answers to how we resolve the lack of literacy skills among so many people. But certainly, there's a significant resource that's available within the provincial system already that is charged with this.

We would very much welcome direction and involvement and participation in terms of changing or modifying how and why we do things to meet the needs that are identified. I think there's a really critical opportunity there for us, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak here. Thank you.

M. Polak: I want to skip to the appendix, where in a letter to the — what is it? — Premier's committee on literacy, if I remember the correct name….

M. Polak: In a paragraph that I'm quite interested in, on the last page of the letter — the very top — it talks about the impact of changes to what I guess we would call social assistance–type programs such that the aspirations we might have for someone in terms of

job training get in the way of their ability to be providing for their education in such a way that they can continue on and advance. I wondered if you would comment on what changes in direction, from your perspective, would improve that situation so that we're, in fact, in the long term, providing the best value for taxpayers' money, shall we say — in the sense of getting them into programs that aren't short-term but, indeed, carry them on to self-sufficiency.

J. Boraas: The point that you're raising has a whole number of pieces attached to it. I'll try to speak to them all.

What we see within the provincial college system are often students, learners, who have very low literacy skills and yet, because of job-training programs, are being shifted into short-term, four- to six-week training programs that help with…. Serving It Right — those kinds of short-term skill sets.

Our strong feeling is that somebody who is working at a grade four or five literacy level probably doesn't understand or isn't able to really understand the issues being presented, at least in writing, and certainly isn't able, then, to be successful in the workforce, if they're successful in getting a job with those skills. We certainly see that kind of revolving door of people who go through job-training programs and then end up back in them a year later or two years later or six months later.

From my perspective, the measurement of literacy that I think we need to grapple with is: is there a point at which somebody who does not possess literacy skills needs to be provided with a way to continue addressing the literacy skills — not just the job skills, which are also important? It certainly isn't denigrating those; those are a critical piece as well. Can we find a way to make things happen concurrently and address the ability of the learner to participate in a literacy program — perhaps one that's very much job-focused and helps with the whole range of learning strategies for developing reading skills and so on — while at the same time either working part-time or participating in job training part-time? I think it's the integration of some of these things that I would welcome.

It's also: is there a point at which as a society we do determine that if someone does only have…? This is a real example from yesterday, where someone came to our college with a grade two level, roughly, of education, who had completed a high school leaving certificate a couple of years before, had been trying to work, had had jobs that bounced from a couple of weeks here, a couple of weeks there — very frustrated. For us, how do we really grapple with that?

The funding that's available to help that kind of a learner has maximums of about a year. It's also very difficult to balance social assistance policy, student funding policy and work and have that package work together. I think that's the piece of somehow finding a way to have social assistance policy talking to education policy talking to literacy.

J. Horgan: I'd just like to follow on my friend from Langley's questioning. I think we've heard some fantastic witnesses over the past number of sessions speaking about shame issues — hiding an inability to communicate in a word-based economy.

In some of your remarks, John, you spoke about — and you just did again in response to the member for Langley's questions: how do we integrate work and learning when, by and large, these individuals are lower socioeconomic strata? They're trying to improve their lives for themselves and, potentially, their family, but they can't find that program silver bullet within the silos that we have, whether it be at the federal level or provincial level — and, the previous witness said, the municipal level as well.

I think we're all grappling with how we get the answer to that one question. Your point with respect to an illiterate individual navigating the structures…. We all now, as MLAs, have the benefit of a better understanding and appreciation of how government works and operates, but it's a daunting task for new people coming to this place to understand it. That's quite often many degrees behind our life experiences.

How do we get to those individuals who see the monolithic state allegedly offering assistance but don't know where the door is? If they do find the door, it could well be for the wrong silo. How do we get to those people?

J. Boraas: It's challenging. I think, if anything, the answer is every bit as complex as the question. From the perspective that I've been following as a dean and from our conversations as a provincial system, we see an opportunity in terms of community partnership. I talked about that somewhat in my presentation.

I believe that if we can connect with the agencies in the community with which these people are already connected — as an example, the Inter-Cultural Association in Victoria or the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre and so on…. If we have those connections as a post-secondary system or whichever, the people in those agencies have the skills and knowledge to help people to navigate. But it's necessary for them to navigate the learner somewhere. That's where I believe that finding ways of being community-based in our delivery of programs really is critical.

You're quite right. Someone who is an immigrant to Canada perhaps has a different perspective of what government does for them, is much more intimidated and has much more of a sense of government being the bad guy or the dangerous one. That often is the case for immigrants in particular.

Then who is it that helps them to understand what their rights are within a Canadian society? What programs are available to help them get where they're

going? I do think it's that helping agency that provides the intermediary between the client and the various institutions.

I also think it's about recognizing the need for provincial systems and others to have a way of resolving issues that come forward. I certainly see some of what comes through the doors at Camosun College in terms of people who are unable to navigate and find their way through, so we try to resolve that there. Often people come to another agency or ministry, and those people don't know how to navigate at Camosun or vice versa.

How do we get together and talk about these kinds of things? Is there a way of creating an integration of management that will lead us toward policy and practice that actually is easier to navigate or is more transparent?

J. Horgan: A follow-up to that. I'll ask you two questions. I wanted to ask you firstly about…. You mentioned five sites serving aboriginal workers in the south Island. I'd like to know where those five sites are.

Back on a potential solution that I'll propose, and maybe my colleagues will agree with me. Perhaps the solution, if community-based mostly not-for-profits are the access point for the ESL community, for the aboriginal community, for the low-income or poverty community…. If they are on the streets or in small agencies, would it perhaps not be better to find provincial funding to enhance the ability of those organizations to deliver in the community, rather than creating a secretariat of deep thinkers to think about how we can somehow dismantle some of the silos?

Although that is a laudable goal, one that we can attack here within the institutions, the problem is clearly on the street. The challenge is: how do we get resources onto the street to help those people who cannot navigate for themselves? Would you agree with that statement?

J. Boraas: At least partly, yes. The relationships that we have in community, I think, are successful because we have the formal educational institution being present in the community, and it's buffered by the community agency. For most learners, there is an intense pleasure — once they've done it — in making the connection to formal education.

For me — and this is a very strong belief for me — the pride which someone has in actually becoming a student at Camosun College, or whatever it is, is a really significant motivator in terms of helping them to move through and sustain their learning. But it's the initial connection with that community agency that allows for that connection to be created. It's a mix of the informal education and the formal system and connecting those two. That's the direction that I do very much support.

The five sites that we support in Greater Victoria are the Saanich Adult Education Centre, where we have a longstanding series of programs; the Victoria Friendship Centre; the Songhees Nation; and also the Beecher Bay. Actually, that only adds up to four, so I was wrong.

R. Lee: I believe those cultural centres are important to deliver community programs, and the connections should be very valuable.

But my question is on number seven. You mentioned about immigrant education and immigration. In the last paragraph you mentioned about a national Canadian language benchmarks initiative. You said it's critical that B.C. be a national leader on programming with that kind of initiative or participating in that kind of initiative.

You also mentioned that right now there's a gap for level four, five and six in that initiative. How can we bridge the gap? What kinds of resources are necessary?

J. Boraas: Thanks for that question. The Canadian language benchmark system was initiated about ten years ago as a concept because it's very difficult to communicate language needs of second-language learners in a common way that people can understand. We had quite a mishmash across the country. This is a standard system now.

As it's been implemented across the country, funding and support for those different levels are very different. For example, in Ontario, funding through the federal transfer payments for second-language learning takes people through to about benchmark level eight, whereas in British Columbia it takes people through to about benchmark level three or four.

There is a gap where there is no funded capability for students to remain in language learning in B.C. right now. Only those institutions that provide additional programming outside of funded levels are continuing to offer the spectrum in between — Camosun is one of those — but it's only in those areas where there are sufficient numbers to be able to really sustain that where that is the case.

We do have a gap in British Columbia where the federally funded transfer payments that come to B.C. support only to a lower level. In terms of getting a job, a benchmark level three or four really isn't enough to accomplish that. Recognizing that gap, I think, is part of the issue. We need to look at what is, actually, a reasonable language level for people to get continuing work.

We have been participating in the last years quite strongly in B.C. in terms of trying to be and act as leaders within Canadian language benchmarks. We have a number of provincial people now on the executive for that group, and they are certainly significant voices for B.C. The intent of the Canadian language benchmarks is to allow us to identify the language skills that are necessary in any range of occupations.

What we're doing is identifying a practice that allows us to say that someone needs a benchmark of five

to be a welder in speaking but perhaps a level seven in reading, writing and those kinds of things so that we can more accurately assess and move learners into the professions they want to pursue. At this point there are about 50 or 60 occupations that have been benchmarked for language learners. That's a really important initiative.

One of the pieces and one of the reasons for raising it here is that B.C. as a province has not formally supported that national initiative, and other provinces that are leaders in terms of immigrant education are. Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario are the other ones that are really actively and aggressively supporting the benchmarks, whereas here it isn't universally or system supported; it's individual institutions that are supporting that.

R. Lee: My understanding is that the federal transfer payment for that kind of program is…. The level for B.C. is probably around $1,000, but for Ontario it's over $3,000. I believe that's something we have to negotiate about.

J. Boraas: Yes. We as the colleges sometimes feel a bit in the middle on the issue of the transfer payments. You're absolutely right. There is a difference of view of the value of transfer payments between the province and the federal government. Other provinces have resolved that, and we're still in that process.

G. Robertson (Deputy Chair): I have two questions. The first is on the barriers that you mentioned to people pursuing adult basic education, developmental education and all of that — basically being adult literacy–oriented. You mentioned in a number of places through your submission, which is excellent in its detail, challenges with funding and challenges in particular, barriers to students that relate to ABE funding and the support networks in place for people on income assistance.

You do allude in your student financial support artificial barriers section, suggesting consideration of partial subsidies, part-time social assistance incentive payments for students, transitioning from social assistance to entry-level work to assist with the interruption of the cycle of poverty…. As I'm sure you know well, we've had programs in place historically — supports, free adult basic education, B.C. grants, the IBT and various other supports in place. We've come through a period where most of that is gone, and there are challenges resulting from that.

I'd be interested in knowing, beyond or maybe more specific to the suggestions you make here as considerations for student financial support and removing those barriers, if there's more detail or if there are specific programs that we've had in the past that work very well in terms of adult literacy that the committee should be considering in our recommendations.

J. Boraas: One of the challenges, the sort of dichotomies, that we face in developmental programs is in trying to help students, learners, move expeditiously and reasonably through to their goal and helping them to do that quickly. I guess the criticism is sometimes that learners don't progress as quickly as funders would like. I think, based in some of the previous structures we had, that criticism was louder — when we had far more social assistance support and so on for learners.

My view is that finding a way to bridge that gap and finding a way to continue to recognize that somebody has very low levels of literacy…. Some kind of social support is necessary, and as a society we need to grapple with that and understand that somehow our systems haven't worked sufficiently to help someone to become able to function and operate in our society.

I think there is definitely a role for social assistance policy in terms of recognizing when someone needs not to be pushed into job training specifically but into a managed, coordinated, highly objective–oriented literacy program that can really grapple with the core issues that the learner has. Generally, if somebody is leaving education or is not benefiting from education, there are other things going on for that learner. We find, certainly, learning disabilities are at the absolute forefront in terms of people who do not successfully gain literacy skills through their educational career. That's where fairly highly trained people who are able to help provide supports for that person to be able to make it through is a critical part of this.

I guess, again, for me it goes back to the conversations between those pieces of government — government systems, ministries — that really do allow us to get at the core issues and not just apply kind of the cosmetics to what the problem is.

G. Robertson (Deputy Chair): Yeah, and you segued into what my second question is, which relates to your point on inter-ministry coordination. We have talked about this and heard submissions related to this to date, the question being: does literacy in general belong in a realm above the ministries where all ministries are cooperating on it? Certainly, there are a number of ministries that need to be involved in it.

My question is: would you recommend, in this situation, a lead ministry — Advanced Education seems to have the most pieces of this puzzle — a ministry that takes charge and is able to lead, rather than a number of ministries, none of them in the lead, none of them taking total responsibility and being able to drive an agenda that achieves the results that we all want to see here?

J. Boraas: Certainly, from my perspective, in all areas I think any kind of project or idea fares better when there is a lead. I think there is a much greater chance of cleaving unto it and moving it forward and taking the responsibility.

I certainly support that Advanced Education is the ministry charged with programming for adult literacy

and helping to coordinate, bring together, those other affected ministries or involved ministries — or systems, for that matter. I think that's critically important.

One of the issues that I've come up against recently is not specifically a literacy issue, but it's certainly related to the idea of some of the cross-jurisdictional issues that come into play. We've come across the reality of aboriginal students needing funding to move on with education. Even though in the economy we have tremendous need being expressed for people coming out into the trades, and local communities are also identifying that same need, we come across the reality that funding for aboriginal students does not allow them to go into the trades or into vocational programs.

We have all of these kinds of things that don't make sense from an educational perspective, from our perspective. But the ability to bring together the people who are necessary to resolve the issue is very difficult. On the issue of literacy, having a lead ministry that is able to move the issue forward but recognize the need for social assistance, the colleges, whoever else, to be at the table, is certainly the ideal solution from my perspective.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Boraas. Seeing no further questions, I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for taking the time and giving us the advantage of your expertise.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, if we can reconvene our proceedings. Before I introduce the next speaker, I would like to ask John Horgan, who has requested the floor….

J. Horgan: Hon. Chair, it is with great regret that I take the floor to offer my apology to you and to committee members if language that I used in haste was unparliamentary.

It was not my intent to show any disrespect to you, hon. Chair. You've run a very capable ship over the past number of sessions. But I do feel quite strongly — and I feel I should say it at this time — that we should park our ideological baggage at the door so that we can have a genuine intellectual debate about this important matter. That was the focus of my frustration.

If I used language that was in any way disrespectful to members on that side, this side, witnesses, Hansard recorders, the Clerk, I apologize.

Members, we now have Ruth Derrick, who is the executive director of Project Literacy Victoria. Ruth has promoted this aspect of literacy as a grass-roots non-profit organization established in 1988. It is to build on community involvement. The Learners Network is a free program that helps adults with basic reading, writing, math and life skills with a literacy focus. It forms the basis of all Project Literacy Victoria programs.

Welcome, Ruth. Thank you for taking the time to come before this committee. Just a word of caution. You have 15 minutes to present your presentation, followed by questions from the members.

R. Derrick: Good morning. Mr. Chairman and hon. members of the committee, it is a pleasure to meet with you today. Thank you for your invitation.

May I also extend my thanks and appreciation to the committee for undertaking a study of this very important issue. It's one that is near and dear to my heart. Joining me is Lilaine Galway, director of e-learning and special projects at Project Literacy Victoria.

In contrast with some of the very respected presenters who've already appeared before you…. I was speaking briefly with the Clerk and heard some of the ones this morning, and we feel quite in awe of it all. These presenters have such a depth and breadth of experience in the literacy field spanning many years. Relatively speaking, I'm a bit of a newcomer. Indeed, my involvement in the field began only six or seven years ago.

A close friend of mine and passionate literacy advocate, Sen. Joyce Fairbairn, asked me to work with her and then Human Resources Development Minister Jane Stewart on the development of a national literacy policy and, subsequently, on a pan-Canadian literacy strategy. The work which I did with these two very formidable advocates, as well as with officials in the National Literacy Secretariat and literacy organizations across the country, was an incredible journey of learning for me. It opened the door on an issue which touches thousands of Canadians in a most personal way, directly impacting on their work, home, family and self-confidence.

While literacy was certainly on the federal radar screen as an important policy issue at the time — and hopefully, it still is — for some reason it lacked the collective oomph or will needed to make it a top-of-mind national issue. It's this policy experience at the federal level and the perspective it brought, coupled with my current responsibilities as executive director of Project Literacy Victoria and the very grass-roots perspective it brings, which, hopefully, will be helpful to hon. committee members in their deliberations.

I'd like to start by giving you a very brief snapshot of Project Literacy Victoria — as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, it is a non-profit literacy organization, not unlike dozens of others across this province and country — and of our programs and the client base we serve.

We were established in 1988 and have four paid staff, close to a hundred volunteer tutors and 300 other volunteer positions. Our total annual budget is a little over $200,000. We gratefully recognize funding sources

in the United Way; all levels of government, including the provincial Advanced Education Ministry; as well as the B.C. Gaming Commission; the Victoria Foundation; and fundraising events and donations from individuals and service clubs.

Our mission is to provide free help and support in basic reading, writing, mathematics and essential skills to adult learners. We also help and support adult learners with living and interpersonal skills so that they may participate effectively in their homes, at work and as contributing citizens in their communities.

Currently we have 98 active learners at Project Literacy; that is, they are matched with a volunteer tutor and are working on a learning goal. They range in age from 20 to 87, with the average age being between 40 and 50 years. There are slightly more men than women in that group, and about a quarter of them have children or grandchildren.

Some are learning to read for the first time, while others are studying high school–level courses in order to complete their grade 12. Some are hoping to enter training for better jobs or even their first job. Others want to read and write for personal reasons, be it to learn banking and cheque writing, to create a resumé, to read to their grandchildren or to learn how to send an e-mail.

Just about half of our current learners are living with some kind of disability, be it physical, developmental, or learning- or mental health–related. Some are dealing with chronic illness, and about 25 percent of them are living below the poverty line and/or are on income assistance. Many are, in the current government jargon, people with persistent multiple barriers, or PPMBs. In other words, they often have a lot on their plates to deal with in addition to their literacy challenges.

As an aside, one of those challenges often comes from dealing with the government system. For whatever reason, literacy issues do not seem to be on the radar, let alone a priority, when social workers assess a client's needs. In several cases we've been told by our learners that they have been advised not to work on their literacy issues because their focus must be on finding a job. But how do you find a job when you cannot even fill out the application or read the help-wanted ads?

In terms of formal education, our learners' attainment ranges from grade one up to grade 12. Interestingly, many tell us during our initial intake process that they've reached a grade level in school that's significantly higher than their skill set actually reflects. In fact, I was tutoring a young man at Project Literacy who said he had reached grade nine or ten in school, but his actual reading level was around grade four. He was unable to write, only print. This is backed up by a report by ABC Canada in Toronto which shows that about 20 percent of Canadians have lower literacy skills than their education level might indicate.

I believe hon. members are aware of the International Adult Literacy Survey, or IALS, which is one of the principal measurement tools we use for gauging literacy levels in Canada as a whole and in the provinces. The learners that come to Project Literacy Victoria are mostly in levels one and two of the five-letter-level, laddered IALS scale, level three being seen as the minimum reading skill needed for today's entry-level jobs.

Most of our learners come to us either as non-readers or poor readers who have serious difficulty dealing with any printed material, or only the most simple. It would also be fair to say that the majority of them, for whatever reason, have somehow fallen between the cracks in terms of their formal education experience. Their entry into our learning programs may be the first time after many, many years that they've mustered the courage and decided to give it another try.

It is important to remember that people with low literacy skills are not stupid or lazy. They are hard-working, creative and probably some of the best problem-solvers you will ever meet. They go through daily life finding solutions to problems that each of us as readers never have to face — for example, what to order from a menu you can't understand or finding a friend's house without being able to read a bus schedule or a map.

It's easy to undervalue learners with low literacy skills, to expect less rather than more. At Project Literacy we approach it from quite the opposite direction. We expect our learners to participate in the workforce, be it for paid or unpaid jobs; to raise families; and to give back to their communities through volunteering and social responsibility. In short, we never try to underestimate them or their abilities. We urge governments and society in general to see them in the same way and not to set them up to fail.

For some reason, systems get created in both the public and the private sectors that don't allow someone with low literacy skills to compete or even participate on an even basis. In pursuing our mission, we provide two core programs for our learners. The Learners Network — which you mentioned, Mr. Chair — has been our flagship program since Project Literacy began close to 20 years ago, and it's based on a one-on-one tutor-learner model. Learning Webs, for which Lilaine is responsible, is a computer and Internet program which teaches the skills necessary to access on-line resources.

We also have a peer support program, an incredibly important ingredient in what makes Project Literacy work, known as Learners Helping Learners. This program seeks to promote interpersonal and organizational skills among literacy learners without too much of a social network on which to fall back, as well as providing peer support and social interaction for them. It guides them as they plan and run their own meetings or special events at our office, for example, or as they take field trips around the city to points of interest, such as the museum, for learning purposes.

Each of these programs — and the backup library, volunteer and staff resources which it entails — is geared to the adult learner's needs and to the learning

goal that he or she identifies at the outset. We therefore evaluate and measure outcomes based on what our learners feel they have achieved, some outcomes being more tangible or visible than others.

As a result, we are talking not only about improving basic reading, writing, math and life skills or learning how to use the Internet but also about increasing confidence and self-esteem, about getting involved in other community activities and volunteer opportunities, about meeting new people and places, about feeling less isolated and alone.

This learner-centred dynamic is key to our being as an organization, as it is with countless other grass-roots literacy organizations such as ours across the province and the country. It's one that is based on sharing knowledge and discussing ideas and, most importantly, demonstrating respect.

Another very evident dynamic is the one-on-one tutor-learner relationship. All of our active tutors are volunteers from the community, many of whom do not have any formal background in adult education. However, we do provide a fairly intensive interview and training process — over 15 hours of training, in fact — prior to matching tutors with learners.

We do our best to put similar interests or backgrounds together to enable personal synergies as well. It's interesting, because some of these tutor-to-learner matches are very strong and can sometimes last one, two or even three years. In fact, the average length of time for a tutor to be involved in our program is 18 months to two years. Our longest match between a current learner and a tutor is seven years and counting.

It's not just a one-way street. Indeed, since joining Project Literacy nearly three months ago, a number of our tutors have mentioned to me how much they were personally getting out of the experience, how special it was and what they themselves were learning from their learner.

Another interesting dynamic is the increasing overlap between our Learners Network program, which is print- and paper-based, and the Learning Webs program, which takes place in our small computer lab. In fact, about a quarter of our learners are now involved in both programs, having adapted quite easily to the electronic format.

We know that an unfortunate side effect of having low literacy skills is often a sense of shame and embarrassment. It may be that our learners are finding the whole process of e-learning and its very forgiving tools for erasing, spellchecking and grammar a more comfortable and less obvious option to the pencil and paper.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Ms. Derrick, I don't want to interrupt, but you have two more minutes to wrap up. Thank you.

R. Derrick: Thank you. I think I will then, Mr. Chair, skip to the end, and I apologize that I didn't realize the time.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Well, we have the report in front of us, and we shall be reading that.

I would like, then, to proceed to the end of our presentation, and it was a topic which you mentioned with Mr. Boraas.

One final issue for the committee's consideration is the interface between community adult literacy organizations such as ours and the provincial government. I understand there's been some discussion here already about the merits of consolidating responsibility for all adult learning and literacy in one lead department or area. We support such an idea.

Conceivably, it could be a centralized administrative hub within government, ideally in the form of an arm's-length agency reporting to the Premier. It could be charged with coordinating the application and disbursement of adult literacy and learning program funding currently spread among several government departments — another type of one-stop shop, which I had mentioned previously in the presentation, but this time for service providers.

It could also help reduce possible duplication or overlap of program proposals, suggest complementary elements to enhance them, and maximize the use of provincial dollars earmarked for adult literacy and learning. It might also be a vessel through which federal funding could flow and be tracked and strengthen an already excellent working relationship with the National Literacy Secretariat.

From our perspective as a community literacy provider, a streamlined application and accountability process through one central point would be very welcome, particularly if the funding goes beyond startup seed money to being tied to longer time lines, in concert with the amount of paperwork being reduced. It would also make accountability for those dollars easier within the government itself.

This agency could also serve as a type of literacy advocate for learners as they struggle to deal with numerous provincial and federal administrative departments and requirements. It would be in a good position to spot any gaps in service delivery across the province, using such tools as asset mapping, which we are undertaking in our SILC project, and then to work with communities and local groups on the ground to help fill those gaps.

Research and best practices might also be driven from such a centralized repository, in conjunction with Literacy B.C. and/or the federal government, as could the public awareness campaigns to heighten the critical importance of this issue.

Such a centralized learning and literacy hub might have a provincewide community advisory board affiliated with it, not unlike the one Premier Campbell established on literacy over a year ago under the excellent leadership of Linda Mitchell and composed of community leaders from both the private and public sectors. Such an advisory group could prove to be a useful sounding board for government initiatives and

could also input ideas of its own, just as Linda Mitchell's panel did, on improving the current system. It might also open opportunities for more private sector partnerships and joint programs, a key aspect in addressing literacy problems.

We are indeed fortunate in this province to have a Premier who has shown strong provincial as well as national leadership around literacy and learning. He truly understands the impact that low literacy levels can have on our province's economy, health and social fabric, both now and in the future. He also knows how complex the issue is in human terms, particularly since it is so often hidden, and unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that can fix the challenge overnight.

Certainly, the community ingredients and political will already exist to realize the Premier's vision of making B.C. the most literate area in North America. As one of the many groups serving on the front line, we believe that the first steps in achieving this goal may lie in system adjustments to help make access to learning opportunities for adult learners easier, to support core costs as community groups develop and deliver more sustainable, long-term programs for them, and to simplify and centralize the interface between the government and service providers.

If we are to have a true culture of lifelong learning and be the most literate province, then the government must also protect the rights of low-literacy individuals. Can you be fired if your boss discovers that you can't read? There are probably thousands of people in our workforce today who believe that they will be fired at any minute if they're found out. If that is the case, we need to educate employers, and government must send a loud, clear message itself. It is not acceptable for our society to force people with low-literacy challenges to hide in fear and shame. All of us must encourage individuals to come forward, and we will remove any barrier that deters them from seeking instruction.

Community literacy and learning groups are ready and waiting when an adult literacy learner does in fact come forward for help. With a streamlined system, along with some sustainable funding in place, we will be able to put even more focus on what we really do best: help other adult citizens acquire necessary basic skills so that they too will have a fair chance in our increasingly complex society.

D. Jarvis: Thank you for your presentation. I'm not too sure how to go about this. You did bring up at the very end exactly what I was going to ask, and that is that I think we need some type of a system or framework to be able to deliver the programs that we want.

I've heard of different systems measuring them, the benchmarks. How do we manage them into it? Do you think that maybe we should have — certainly it would be cost-saving — counsellors out there talking to these people and have them measure them?

It appears to me that they're afraid to come forward, and that's the biggest problem we have. So we have to have some kind of a system where we can have them fall in line into the system and know that they're going to be looked after and categorized into various levels. It would be a very expensive job.

R. Derrick: Yes, and I thank you for that question. It really is at the core of some of the work that we are planning and starting to develop now at Project Literacy. As I mentioned in my presentation, we look at the number of learners who are coming through our doors on an annual basis, and we have 98 active ones. Based on the IALS survey, we know that almost 40 percent of British Columbians, and indeed Canadians, are struggling at levels one and two.

We look around the city of Victoria and the region, and we say: "We're seeing 98; where are all the rest?" That is the part that has sort of been the challenge. In working together with my staff, we've decided that instead of waiting for the learners to come to us — as I mentioned, they have a lot of other issues on their plates — it almost behooves us to go out as an organization and reach out to them.

We are now developing a plan with other organizations within the city and region that have a very similar client base as our own — in particular, the John Howard Society, Sandy Merriman transition house for women, Streetlink and the Mustard Seed, and hopefully others in the future. We are going to be placing our tutors, trained and sensitized to the issues of those organizations, within them. In other words, they will be woven into the fabric of the organization and will be there to work with the client base, which we know is probably very similar, if not the same, as our own. Hopefully, in that way we introduce the notion of learning to them while they're dealing with other issues that are very important in their lives. It's a difficult one to address. That's our way of starting.

I think another way might be — and I mentioned this just at the end — to take away the stigma of not being able to read and write through much more open discussion of it. It's basically a skill set. Many of us, I know, myself included, have struggled with learning — how to use computers and programs and so on. We were not embarrassed or shamed by that. Others accepted that we were having trouble, and they said: "Hey, let me show you how to do it."

Hopefully, literacy, and adult literacy in particular, will come to that point where it's a skill that, for whatever reason, these adults — 40 percent of them, and I've heard the number one million in British Columbia alone — don't have, or don't have at a level that will enable them to participate effectively and fully in their everyday lives and be contributors to their community.

If we can somehow make it okay, talk about it and have employers reach out to their employees, encourage them and offer them the opportunity to receive some help and support, then I think that will go a long way in terms of being able to touch the ones that are

still there. I know Lilaine has some data that we've done and pulled together at Project Literacy in terms of how learners heard about us in the first place. Perhaps she'd like to just mention that.

L. Galway: The majority of our learners come to us through referrals from social workers or other community agency groups, so I believe that it is incredibly important that every community agency, every government worker working on the front line, recognizes that when they see 30 clients in a day, realistically, seven to ten of those could probably use a referral to a literacy group.

If they keep that at the forefront of their minds when they deal with every client, then it's going to be easier. Instead of assuming that every client can read, you always ask the question: "Are they having difficulty? Do they understand what I'm saying?" Are they just sitting there and smiling politely, and you assume that they've understood it? If we can get the agencies…. As I said, other social workers, hospital programs, all refer to us any day.

Our other greatest method of publication is simply word of mouth. We use the phone book; we use the Internet. Obviously, these are not the first places that a low-literacy learner goes to, to look for help, so they might ask a friend. They might ask a trusted family member.

Part of creating a culture of lifelong learning is that we take away the stigma of asking for help. It's okay to go to your social worker if you're doing a financial review. Every year maybe a social worker could say: "Is there anything that you're having difficulty with in daily life that we can get you help for?" As I said, 25 percent of the people sitting at their desk that day do need the help and maybe are too afraid to ask for it.

Also, make it clear that somebody on social assistance or persons with persistent multiple barriers will not lose their funding if they admit to having low literacy or being undereducated. They really are afraid that if their secret comes out, then that's it: they're cut off all programs, and they're just stamped as being a waste of time. They're not going to come forward. That's really not the case. We know that. Otherwise, a committee like this wouldn't exist.

J. Horgan: I want to thank you both for the work that you do in our community, my community here in Victoria. It's fantastic. I have 2,000 questions and only a few minutes to ask them.

You're the first set of witnesses that have referred to literacy or illiteracy as a human rights issue, almost. I'm surprised that it has come this late in the process and also that the penny would drop for me only now. The fear…. We understood the shame and the reluctance to talk about this hidden disability. That's come through loud and clear from other witnesses, but not with the same sense of retribution or repercussion from an admission of this disability. That's a useful piece of information for me and, I think, for the rest of the committee.

I have two potential solution suggestions that I'd like to pose to you and get your views on. You talked about a literacy secretariat reporting directly to the Premier's office. In my previous career as a public servant, I was involved in various secretariats. It was a creative way for government — and it's used across Canada and across North America — to find a problem, collect a group of people who have some expertise, put them onto the task and try to solve it. But the magnitude of the problem that we're dealing with here, as evidenced by your testimony and the testimony of others, is such that we have these silos in government — whether it be Advanced Education, Education, social services and so on.

In order for a secretariat process to work, there has to be buy-in. Because of the silo nature and the desire to increase funding annually in your various departments, if there's a secretariat overseeing that particular challenge or crisis in the community…. There's a resistance to that systemic adjustment that you talked about.

I'd like to ask your view, firstly, on whether you believe that a secretariat would be successful if it were given the full support and weight of the Premier's office. I know that some would criticize that as a centralization of power. I think the member across did it once to me, and I would probably do it to him. But beyond that, I think it's an important way to address the problem, so I'd like your view on that.

Secondly: multi-year funding for the community work that you do, rather than the challenges…. You mentioned gaming money, which makes me weep that you have to go to that well once annually to find resources to carry on your work. I'd like your view on multi-year funding.

Lastly, in terms of targeting this societal problem, do you believe that your outcomes would be better…. You mentioned, Ms. Galway, that if social workers were to ask the blanket question: "Is there anything else I can do for you…?" It's almost like the media. I know my colleagues always say: "Is there anything else you'd like to say? We'd like to tighten the noose a little bit tighter before I turn off the microphone."

Wouldn't it be better if 90 percent of your referrals come from social workers? Yet your testimony says social workers say: "Go out and get a job first. Worry about literacy second." If the question was direct and specific for all caseworkers — "Can you read? Do you understand this document? Do you want me to walk you through it?" — to identify the problem at that moment, then the referrals might increase, you'll be overwhelmed, and the multi-year funding will be essential.

The administrative hub that we are recommending for your consideration — I would call it an administrative hub — wouldn't have a departmental role, as such. It would be more or less just a central point through

which the budgets of the various departments — or this is how we'd foresee it — and the programs would all be collected and would be overseen. It wouldn't be that the decisions about the funding per se would be taken by it alone or by the various departments.

We're not taking away budgets from the departments, but we are looking at the collectivity of adult literacy money that's in the system now. We're centralizing it together, looking at how it's being used and whether or not that money is going to the areas or programs that need it most, that are not overlapping and duplicating other program areas, and so on.

That part of it, I think, would be very helpful, and I believe there is a committee of deputy ministers at the moment who are working together on this. I salute them for that, because that type of horizontal thinking and planning within government on this issue is very important.

I harken to the example of Ottawa's National Literacy Secretariat. It, too, was originally set up as an administrative hub. The difficulty was, though, that it was placed within a government department. They were established in the mid-80s, as I recall. The difficulty was that as subsequent budgets and so on came on, they were at risk of losing funding within that particular department and its budget process.

They never quite fit in any department, as I recall. They were in secretary of state. They were in Heritage. They were sort of bumped around. They went to Human Resources. None of these departments really felt that the NLS, or the National Literacy Secretariat, should be part of it. So they were almost like an orphan.

As a result, they had trouble coordinating, because they didn't have a good base of authority and political will behind them and their mandate. Hence, our recommendation is that if such a thing were brought forward in B.C., it would be the Premier to whom it would report, and it would be the Premier's desire to move the issue forward, which would be the impetus for all of the other departments to work with this core administrative hub.

I think it would just be a very useful and streamlining agency to have when this issue, as I say, and the moneys for it are spread around government.

J. Horgan: In terms of this administrative hub, I think that the challenge, in my experience as a public servant and also observing other jurisdictions, is that secretariats…. The example you use is classic. You start in one place when the priority is of high public importance. As it diminishes and other priorities take its place, it starts to move down the line.

An administrative structure such as a cabinet priorities secretariat…. I know government has a number of issues that are of paramount importance, literacy being one of them, and a whole range of others. As time goes by, new issues emerge that are challenges for government in the broader sense. If it were a cabinet priority rather than an administrative ministry priority or even a Premier priority, because again, there are numerous balls in the air for government at any one time…. This has been identified, certainly, as a key objective for this committee and for the government of British Columbia.

A cabinet priority rather than, necessarily, a secretariat that would start, perhaps, in one home and over time be moved hither, thither and yon until such time as it just is merged, as is often the case as well, into where it came from…. It goes out on its own, trying to be successful, flounders and then is just submerged back into the system. No progress made; lots of money expended. You would prefer not to see that.

By the same token, there is a need to coordinate a lot of these programs and so on that are out in government. I see it as a planning and policy role as well as having an administrative and an oversight role of the departments, of the budgets and so on, so that there isn't the ability for it to drift down again.

I think that the profile that such an agency would receive — and perhaps the name that we're using isn't correct — would be important because it would be the Premier's, and it would be reporting to him. In terms of how the cabinet committee structure works, it would have the same strength in what it could put forward and what it could recommend.

As I've mentioned and as you've agreed, I think that sometimes these things within departments get lost. There are all the best intentions in the world — and we know that there are a lot of wonderful programs out there — but there isn't really a spot in government that pulls them all together.

One brief answer to your gaming question as well. The multiple funding I believe you were asking about….

Our difficulty, and I mentioned it in our presentation, is that we have wonderful programs and terrific support from governments at federal, provincial — particularly provincial — and municipal levels. We have support for our programs from the Gaming Commission, and we have support from the United Way and various other organizations and service clubs. The difficulty is that we don't have any core or operational funding interwoven in those grants to help us keep the lights on and pay the staff and run the photocopier.

Our proposed suggestion is that we be able to have funding that not only addresses the program delivery needs that we face, like the Learners Network and the Learning Webs, but also has operational money in it that allows us to keep those programs going and keep our doors open. That piece is missing now, so we often have to go back, year after year, to have our program funding renewed. That doesn't give it too much stability in terms of long-term planning and development

We're on a very short time line. We don't have operational moneys in the grant, or very little, and we're unable to do some long-term development of what might be a really great program, but it's at risk of ending after a year. Multi-year funding would address, we believe, all of those issues. It would allow us to not be worrying about having to go out and raise money, which so many of us have to do. That really is our only source of unrestricted — i.e., no-strings-attached — money at our disposal.

R. Lee: It seems that over the years your program is sustainable, yet you want more stability in terms of funding. That sustainability is one of the proposals by the previous speaker, Dr. John Martin. I believe that's the aim of the program — right?

My question is, essentially, on the…. You mentioned the learners coming to your centre. Usually it's level one or two. So in the five levels of skills, they are not meeting the minimum reading skill needed for today's entry-level jobs.

We also heard about the Canadian language benchmarks. Are there any variations over the course of the tutoring or the learning in some of those levels attained over the course? Are there regular variations?

L. Galway: There are. Our program is very clear in that we do not test or assess our learners coming to us in the first place. It's an absolute barrier in coming forward to ask for help. So we make the first sessions with Project Literacy as low-stress and as easy to access as possible.

We promise every literacy learner that we will not test them. What we do is some informal work with them, which really could carry over onto the front-line workers. We will ask them, maybe, to produce just a small sample of writing. Could they tell us how they got here? Or could they read a very basic newsletter called The Westcoast Reader, which is funded through the Ministry of Advanced Education? This really gives us four levels of literacy writing examples. So we are able to tell quite easily what level the reader is working at without them ever knowing that they're doing a reading test. We'll have them choose which piece they'd like to read.

After saying that, obviously, in the first sessions with a tutor, that tutor will quite quickly recognize about what level a learner is working at. It's virtually impossible to test a learner and say, "You know what? They're working at a grade-six level," because there are holes in their learning. They may be at a grade-ten level in spelling or reading, but they could be at a grade-three or -four level in comprehension, which is how literacy learners get through in society.

They speak well. They might write or read for you, and you'll never know that they don't understand it. Or maybe they've taken the report home, and their wife has done all the spelling and grammar checks for them, or somebody's doing some backup.

What we do, rather than benchmark or do any testing, is look at the learner's goal. When the learner comes in, we ask them to provide a short-term or a long-term learning goal, and then every year we will look at: have they achieved that goal? If so, great; what's the next one? If they haven't achieved it, what's the barrier?

We don't have the English language benchmark issues, primarily because we're not an English language program. We do certainly take English-as-a-second-language learners, but our focus is on literacy, so that doesn't come into our data collection.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I think that in the interest of the time, we have to close the presentation now. I thank you, Ms. Derrick and Ms. Galway, for coming and sharing your experiences.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, in the interest of time, could I ask you to please take your seats. We shall reconvene.

Members, I have the pleasure of introducing Paul Lacerte. Paul has been an executive director of the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres for the past eight years. The mission of the BCAAFC is to improve the quality of life for the aboriginal peoples by supporting the activities of friendship centres across the province.

Paul, I would just like to caution that we are running a bit late, and I would like your presentation to be 15 minutes. It will allow the members the opportunity to ask any questions. Please, Paul, the floor is yours.

P. Lacerte: I wanted to say that it's a good thing that you're eating. In our communities it's actually a good sign to be able to eat together, so please make sure that you're well-nourished while our presentation is going on.

I'd like to start by introducing myself in my own indigenous language, which is Carrier, from north central British Columbia in the Prince George region. Our territory is the largest first nations traditional territory in the province.

I wanted to recognize the traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt people and say that I'm very happy to be conducting this meeting with you on their traditional territory, recognizing that they are the traditional holders of the land we're sitting on.

I want to thank and acknowledge each of you for your time in coming to listen to our presentation. I wanted to introduce my colleague Dianne Buchan,

P. Lacerte: I'd like to let you know quickly an overview of the presentation that we'll give you. I'll get into it, and then I'm glad that we're going to have some time for questions and answers and a bit of dialogue. You do have a written presentation that's been distributed to you. My apologies; we were under the impression that there were six members of this committee, so we brought seven copies. But I understand that more copies are being made.

I'd like to share with you some information about the friendship centre movement and the organization that we represent, some notions around our approach to aboriginal family literacy, some information briefing — very brief — on family literacy within aboriginal communities, some discussion around cross-cultural approaches and the need for those cross-cultural approaches, one example of how one of our member friendship centres conducts aboriginal family literacy, what our first steps have been in this field and what we're proposing for next steps.

In terms of our organization, the provincial association of friendship centres was incorporated in 1972. We've evolved into a network of 24 urban aboriginal service providers. We employ roughly 750 people full-time in the province of British Columbia. We're part of a network of the National Association of Friendship Centres, where there are 117 friendship centres operating nationally. The friendship centres in British Columbia in 2004 provided services to an average of 1,050 people per day, primarily aboriginal people. We operate off of the reserves. Statistics Canada said in their last census that 64 percent of status Indians in British Columbia live off the reserves, and 91 percent of non-status Indians in British Columbia live off the reserves.

We are the largest service-providing network to off-reserve aboriginal people in British Columbia. Out of the NGO networks in B.C., we believe ourselves also to be the largest public service–providing NGO in B.C. — bar none. In the 2004 year we leveraged 16,000 documented volunteer hours of service through the people participating, both at a program level and at a governance level within our friendship centres.

In terms of our involvement and our approach to aboriginal family literacy, it's not comprehensive. It's not been a planned, strategic intervention. In fact, it's really come about as a result of other programs, primarily our zero-to-six program interventions, early childhood education, early childhood development, and as a result of our adult basic education programs, where we're finding adult aboriginal people coming into our friendships centres and basically not being able to read.

The other indicator or capture that we have for adult aboriginal literacy is around employment readiness programs. Around ECD, adult basic education and employment readiness programs, we've built a network of aboriginal literacy programs. But as I say, to date it hasn't been part of a coordinated and focused, purposeful intervention strategy.

I know that we're limited in time, but I did want to take a minute to talk about the notion of Haudenosaunee, which is an Iroquois concept, and I'll refer to it through the course of my presentation. What I want to do is draw your attention to the difference in the aboriginal community around what literacy means and what literacy interventions mean.

I want to also recognize — and my apologies for not doing this at the beginning — and acknowledge the government and the opposition for coming together and agreeing to address specific strategies to improve literacy rates amongst aboriginal people as one of the focuses of this committee — and to acknowledge for you that there are no aboriginal people on your committee, so it must be a challenge for you to realize that in any way other than through direct engagement.

In that engagement, I want to draw your attention to this notion. It's an Iroquois notion, and it talks a lot about the holistic and integrated approach of aboriginal family literacy. I'll talk in a bit about why that's so important to us. It's certainly the approach that friendship centres take. It's a whole family approach, an integrated and holistic approach, to program and service delivery as a whole. Certainly family literacy programs are nestled within other kinds of program interventions — family support programs, drug and alcohol counselling programs, adult basic education programs, housing. You'll see in our presentation how literacy is nestled in that Haudenosaunee notion of our approach to learning.

In our presentation you'll see that we've done some work certainly around recognizing and trying to benefit from and learn about the vast network of family literacy and literacy supports that exist in non-aboriginal British Columbia. We feel there's been an incredible amount of work that's been done and resources that have been developed to move that agenda item forward in the non-aboriginal community. We feel that within the aboriginal community those same efforts and focused interventions and capacity-building have not happened to date. Again, we're very happy and hopeful that out of this committee come some commitments to making sure that capacity does happen.

On page 6, for an example, we wanted to recognize that there have been statements around good practice. There are ten statements that were developed out of Alberta around standards for good practice, which note that those standards are well-established in the non-aboriginal community — what it means for effective approaches and healthy standard approaches to family literacy in non-aboriginal communities.

On pages 8 and 9 you'll see solid examples and program models that we both have access to and are aware of in terms of the network and the stakeholders that develop programs like Building Blocks, books for

babies, LAPS, parent Mother Goose programs. Some of those programs we've certainly incorporated into our friendship centres, but the purpose of having that in our presentation is to point to the fact that there's an incredible amount of capacity that's been developed in the non-aboriginal community. That has certainly not been reflected to date, as of yet, in the aboriginal community.

One of the areas that we wanted to focus on is: how do we tap into and access that expertise and import it into the aboriginal community — import it in a way that's meaningful for our communities — and why hasn't that happened so far? Some of the challenges that we've been facing to date are the technicians and professional people providing those services to aboriginal people and, with a lack of a technical staffing base within our communities by and for aboriginal agencies and aboriginal stakeholders, some of the barriers to that.

Of course, some of the challenges for us are certainly around shame — the hand-to-mouth of a non-aboriginal person, bringing a non-aboriginal literacy model into an aboriginal community or an aboriginal family, and teaching to read or building those skills from one community to another.

There is a need for cross-cultural approaches, but from our perspective there's a need for cross-cultural approaches where there is mutual learning and where we're building mutual understanding and mutual respect. It brings us back to this notion of Haudenosaunee, around families learning together, around language and literacy being at the core of your identity and being the way that you shape your thinking.

Teaching somebody to read and building their literacy skills is very much an instrument of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual capacity-building. It's not just the simple bilateral function of giving somebody a skill. The way that we speak and the way that we think are very much about how we think and how we are as people.

Within our community's perspective, solely benefiting from the existing capacity and the existing infrastructure in the non-aboriginal community and importing that into our agencies and into our communities is not necessarily the strategy of choice — although it could, on the surface, seem attractive and reasonable. Our interest is to build capacity within our communities around planning, around taking advantage of some of the capacity and some of the resources that have been built, but certainly taking the time to develop our own resources — some of which we have to share and to show you on some of the program development that we've done — to make those things more meaningful for us from a community and from a family development perspective.

I think what I'll do is get into an example of what we've done, again, with our 24-member friendship centres. I want to talk a little bit about the Tillicum Lelum friendship centre in Nanaimo. Before I do that, one of the things that we talk about in our language is teh beh tahlth tuz. We say: "Teh beh tahlth tuz." When we're doing something that's difficult for us that's really important in our families, and it's something around our culture….

Actually, while I'm telling you this, we'll pass around some examples of one of our programs, where they have taken other resources and made it culturally appropriate. For example, youth learning materials are children's stories, but they're children's stories about our culture that have in them…. It's not just a translation. It's things that contain our culture of values, talking particularly around how we function as community — notions around our ceremonies, our government structures and our languages.

You'll see even something as simple as having aboriginal, culturally attractive and culturally friendly visuals for advertising family literacy programs. A lot of the people that come to this program in particular are multibarrier families, so we just wanted to bring some of those resources and share some of the development work that we've done.

This notion of teh beh tahlth tuz. We talk about that, about how difficult it is to do the intergenerational work in a way that maintains our culture and our way of being in this broader society. In our territory you'll see older people…. Something will happen that's really difficult in a family. Then one of the elders will say: "Teh beh tahlth tuz." Then other elders will look at them and kind of nod, because they understand how hard that is.

We talk about that within the context of literacy and how crucial literacy levels are in our communities to be successful in this society. It's absolutely an essential component. But how do we do that in a way that doesn't continue to contribute to the breakdown in our family and the breakdown in the lineage of our cultural teachings and our language and our way of being and our way of being successful?

J. Nuraney (Chair): Paul, I don't want to interrupt, but if you can wind up in two minutes, we have a lot of questions.

What we've done is develop an aboriginal literacy working group. Ten of the friendship centres are represented in this aboriginal literacy working group. They've participated and joined in a national aboriginal literacy network and connected for the purpose primarily of developing best practices around aboriginal family literacy across the country — building a strategy nationwide based on aboriginal best practices of family literacy.

What we perceive to be best next steps, and what we're seeking the support of the government of British Columbia for, is to move in the direction of developing an urban aboriginal family literacy initiative and a strategy. Some of the components you'll see at the end of page 21 of our presentation and some of those aboriginal family literacy initiative components may in-

clude research to establish a baseline around aboriginal literacy. For example, we have a 37-percent high school graduation rate. How many people of the 63 percent that don't graduate high school don't graduate and can't read?

A provincial conference, a bringing together of the network so that we can take advantage of those cross-cultural opportunities. Direct capacity-building in terms of aboriginal family literacy programming and a public education campaign to engage those aboriginal people who are not currently being engaged by the public system.

You may want to develop an urban aboriginal literacy steering committee consisting of the Ministry of Children and Families, Education, Health, Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, the Canadian Council on Learning, the National Indigenous Literacy Association, the Movement for Canadian Literacy, the National Adult Literacy Database and our association.

Those are our two suggestions. One is that we continue with some developmental work around a specific initiative. Second is that really we're calling on this government to move in the direction of developing a provincial strategy that is informed by what interventions are being made currently and what we need to do to address the gaps in aboriginal family literacy.

Paul, we've been hearing that perhaps the model that is generally used in the mainstream for literacy programs may not be suitable for aboriginal people. Is that a fact?

J. Nuraney (Chair): That some of the methods of teaching literacy…. You just gave an example about storytelling — that storytelling in the literature that may be available may not reflect the culture of the first nations people. Is it critically important that that switch be made?

P. Lacerte: Absolutely. I'll use a few examples. We talk about the public education system, which of course is the most fundamental literacy-building tool that we have in our society. As I've mentioned, the high school graduation rate for first nations people entering the public education system is 37 percent, so the system is not graduating 63 percent of the aboriginal people — first nations people — that enter it.

That mechanism for teaching and building literacy — I'll give you a practical example of one of the ways that it's failing our children. I'll take you back to the institutional barriers that we have. We have kids that are coming out of their homes where…. We have very serious issues around residential school resolution that's happening right now, so you see a lot of talk in the media and a lot of talk in our communities around the fact that we're resolving residential schools. That dialogue is happening in our homes. Those triggers are happening in our homes, so our kids go into the public education system out of that environment.

The public education system really is not a structured, prepared resource to be able to respond to those challenges. So you have a behavioral challenge, the kid gets marginalized in the school system, and the resources and the supports are not there to understand what's happening and where the child is coming from. Inevitably, the child gets steered either out of the education system and not into an alternative system of some sort or into an alternative system in terms of the child protection system where 46 percent of the children in the care of the ministry or the correctional system in terms of women's prisons in British Columbia, where 50 percent of the population….

You see, there is no shortage of institutional interventions where there are some efforts being made to build literacy skills, but clearly those are not being successful in terms of building those skill bases in the aboriginal community.

In terms of the program models per se, they're highly effective. Literacy program models are designed to build that skill in young people. We're not saying that those are not effective for aboriginal children, because mechanically we learn the same as non-aboriginal children. What we're talking about is the methodology and the content about how an aboriginal child will respond to information that's being given to them, so it comes back, for an example, to language.

Your Premier recently held a provincial summit on aboriginal languages and talked about that being the cornerstone of rebuilding first nations families and first nations communities. One of the challenges, of course, is that all of the family literacy resources that have been built in the non-native community have not been built around our languages, our teachings, our governance or our stories. So from a content perspective, there's a fundamental challenge. The tools are good, but the content and the approach may not be working for us currently.

I've had the honour, privilege and benefit of attending quite a few friendship centres around the province recently and in my own home community of Cowichan, and I was really impressed by all the programs and the effort that people put into them.

We've heard a lot from different presenters about the shape of programs and literacy what-for — the question of why. Why literacy? What for and for what purpose? As our lives demand literacy, we gather the skills more effectively and retain them. Dr. Adrian Blunt, who presented earlier here, talked about literacy for — what? — jobs, income, competitiveness, health. This is a prescriptive view. This is what you need to learn, this is what we're going to teach you, and this is why you need to learn it.

Another presenter talked about a values proposition being the beginning of all this. Somehow we make

a proposition that the value of literacy is this to us, or to whatever community we're talking to, and that all things will flow from there. In order to achieve that appropriateness or the shape of the program, how do you recommend the government, as inflexible as it is, approach aboriginal communities in terms of empowering that decision or that values proposition to be coming from the community rather than being prescribed to it? What process do you think should be put in place to consult the communities in order to establish that values proposition?

P. Lacerte: We're having an experience right now with this government where we're trying to answer that question within the Ministry of Children and Families, where we're working in the direction of devolving the Ministry of Children and Families in answering that same question.

This is actually quite closely related to a lot of the dialogue that's happening. It's a very difficult question. The Crown is a non-aboriginal institution, and so answering it for us…. Really, there's no way for the government to be able to answer it for us or really to consult us about it. From our perspective, it's really about capacity-building. It's about being by aboriginal people for aboriginal people.

There's a lot of dialogue in our communities around: what is the source? What's the foundation that we move forward from? Is it addressing the housing crisis in our communities? Once we address the housing crisis, then kids will get a better rest. Then they'll go to school, and they'll be able to learn better, and then they'll learn the essentials that they need. Or is it employment?

From my perspective, there's no definitive answer to: is it the value source? Is it where things kind of springboard from? Like I say, we're having that discussion. It's been a four-year discussion within the Ministry of Children and Families. It's not an easy solution, and I think it's something — the answer to your question — that will require a much broader dialogue with aboriginal people.

I was talking with one of your staff here when we first arrived and asking about how many aboriginal stakeholders have come — not non-aboriginal people talking about aboriginal literacy challenges, but people from our communities coming forward and being able to give voice to that. To date it's been limited. It's a perfect example of the reality that we have in our communities where there's a broad dialogue that happens about our challenges, but certainly limited input.

The model that the Ministry of Children and Families has been undertaking — and it's now being driven by the Premier's office — is to very meaningfully and very substantially engage the issue and the discussion with aboriginal communities and move away from the development of a solution and move into a dialogue, which is really about mutual learning.

One of our goals in coming here today was to share some of our language with you, share some of our teachings with you. I know a lot of you engage with our communities, but just to continue that process…. It's a mutual learning process. It's not really about having an outcome or having those definitive academic answers. It's about the relationship, and it's about building that understanding so that solutions come out of that.

D. Routley: You make me think of the story I just read, "The Eagle and the Raven." The eagle invites the raven for lunch and goes up in the sky and dives down to catch the fish, and they have lunch together. Then the raven invites the eagle and goes up and dives down and crashes into a rock. The eagle asked: "Why are you using my way? This is not your way."

I referred earlier in a question or statement — whatever you want to call these things — that I recently saw a program called Naked Truth, where a person brought together aboriginal people who sat in a circle around non-aboriginal white people in the centre. They represented a classroom of students. The teacher asked questions based on aboriginal culture and aboriginal governance, priorities and what not, and they couldn't answer the questions. When they couldn't, they were harassed by the teacher and the people around them, insulted, called "Blue Eyes." It was devastating for the people, even though it was just an exercise. But it really drove home for me how alienating it can be if content isn't relevant.

R. Lee: Thank you, Paul, for sharing your thoughts with us. I believe the cultural aspect is one of the obstacles between the understanding of the education system and to participating in the so-called standard system in B.C. for aboriginal people. However, it's difficult right now, I believe, to establish a completely separate system with the aboriginal languages as a stand-alone system. Using the standard system as much as possible, but keeping the cultural component as a course or as certain courses in the system should be productive. Other countries adapt western teaching — say, physics, math or other courses — into other languages. A lot of countries are successful in terms of education.

In the future I just want to see what are the most effective ways of engaging the aboriginal community in a very successful education — all getting educated somehow. What's your thought on that?

P. Lacerte: I'll go back to our example with the Ministry of Children and Families. Some of you may know that the Premier has retained the services of Lesley du Toit from South Africa. She recently oversaw the transition from white South African rule to the government of Nelson Mandela, and she oversaw the change of the child welfare system.

Her theory, which we hope is being implemented with that ministry now, is that you don't continue to improve the system to increase success rates of populations that have traditionally been subservient to that system. What you do is change the people in the

system — and you change them at a fundamental, human level that will result in meaningful improvements for traditionally subservient populations.

In our case, primarily, in this province it's racism. In the case of the Ministry of Children and Families we're not saying to child protection workers, "Change your risk assessment of a single mother with three kids under the age of five who has a drinking problem," but: "Don't change your risk assessment. Challenge yourself about how you feel and think when you get into contact with that woman. When you first show up at her door and the kid comes to the door and has a diaper that's been on for three days, challenge yourself, and be aware of what you think and where you're coming from."

The same principle is true for us when we engage teachers in the school system. How do they feel when an aboriginal child comes and they see that they've worn the same clothes for five days? How do they feel about that child, and how do they treat that child? Where is the respect component? How has that evolved in this society, and how do we change the thinking of tinkering with the system so that we can lift up subservient populations a little bit more and start being a lot more introspective in the way that we talk about changing the whole strategy of how the system looks at itself?

R. Lee: Yeah, I think that raises an important point. You're now training for teachers in the universities. We have special training for teachers teaching people with disabilities.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Richard, can I ask you to speed up a bit, because we need to close in the next minute.

There's ESL, but I believe there's not much specific training for aboriginal education, for teaching aboriginal students. Do you think that this would be one step we should be taking?

P. Lacerte: What exists — probably the most dominant tool in terms of influencing the public education system — is the local education agreements. Those local education agreements are relationships between local nations and school districts. They set out targets, strategies and planning for the aboriginal targeted funding as ways of building and strengthening aboriginal graduation rates and success in the public education system, for example.

Public teacher education is certainly a part of that, but really it comes back to relationship-building. It comes back to having a dialogue where — if there is a critical incident or something that happens, for example — there's a place for dispute resolution that includes mechanisms that are meaningful to us — other than a straight-up suspension and beginning the process of marginalizing the child and rejecting the child out of the system.

When those relationships are built and they're strong, then the more serious points of contact that are abrasive happen, and then the relationship happens. It's a way of responding other than those specific kinds of capacity-building. It really becomes about the relationship.

I guess our final comment is that we see an absence of a focused, integrated intervention. This government has not come together to be clear in its thinking about the challenge of literacy in aboriginal communities. That's our interest: to begin the process with this committee, with individual ministries — particularly around programming, local community networks and provincial networking — to get a clearer sense of where we're at today around aboriginal literacy rates, and to be a lot more focused and purposeful in what we're going to do in the future to improve and to address the gaps.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Lacerte. I think this has been one of the most enlightening and revealing discussions and presentations we've had. As you know, one of the significant parts of our mandate is to address first nations problems in literacy. Thank you very much for taking your time. Be prepared to be in contact with us again, because we may perhaps need your services again.

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REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION