Education — Issue No. 7 — Wednesday, May 10, 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

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

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, I call the meeting to order. As you may have seen, you have the agenda in front of you. In view of the fact that it is really difficult to tie down the timing and the members' availability, what I suggest we do this morning is approve in principle the locations we would like to visit and leave it for the Clerk to tie down the dates and the calendar — as to what would be most convenient for all of us.

The proposal, to put it very succinctly: I suggest that we do a three-location submission presentation in the lower mainland. The suggested locations are Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey.

On the regional side, three locations once again: Prince George, Smithers or Terrace or Prince Rupert, and Castlegar or somewhere in the Kootenays. The idea behind this is to give the regional representation equal time also. What I suggest that we also keep in mind is that when we do the regional meetings, they should take place within the week for economic purposes, so that we can have a charter that can take us to various locations. It would be most cost-effective for the committee members.

What I would like at this point is for the members to tell me whether these locations are appropriate and whether they have any suggestions for making some other proposals.

M. Polak: With respect to the areas that you mentioned — possibly Prince Rupert and a couple of other suggestions — I would suggest that Prince Rupert, other things being equal, might be the better choice, simply because we're looking, in part, for a range. I think Prince Rupert might bring you closer to a different area, with respect to the fact that it's on the coast. It has interaction with some of the island and coastal communities that the other options may not have.

One other suggestion. I apologize for not having brought this forward sooner, but it simply arose only recently. That is, the Ministry of Economic Development is doing significant work around looking at our labour market and the future of it. One of the areas that they are giving study to is the impact of poor literacy skills in the workplace. It seemed to me that may be something the committee wishes to consider hearing from the ministry about, given that the demand for what we need to make recommendations about should be driven by data that we have available to us.

Lastly was just a question. It's not on numbered pages, but in the lower mainland…. It mentions the Lower Mainland ESL Consortium. It says: "Burnaby school district." I'm assuming that's simply a location issue and that the whole consortium would be there. That's all.

D. Jarvis: Ms. Polak has some good points there. My only thought is, generally, that Smithers is a more central location in the sense that we can go almost all the way to Prince George and the Vanderhoof area, and that it covers all up and down Highway 16 up to the…. You know, its access is easier.

That would mean all those groups would have to come west, and most of them don't have facilities to come west. Smithers is more central to Terrace, Kitimat, Houston and Vanderhoof, and then you go up to New Aiyansh and all those areas up through there, north of there. They can just drop down inside. I mean, it's an hour's drive for them down there, where it'd be about a two-hour drive or more to Rupert. That's all. But I'm open.

J. Nuraney (Chair): At this point, let me also interject and mention that our vice-Chair is not able to attend today but has sent some of his comments about the locations. What he says is that Smithers and Prince George are too close together, and he suggested that we should broaden our consultation and maybe consider Prince Rupert or Terrace instead of Smithers. So that is also a question that I would like to open up for members to suggest.

J. Rustad: I think the idea of Smithers and Prince George being too close is probably right, in terms of that. It's only about a three-and-a-half-to-four-hour drive between the two communities.

Depending on the range you want to get to and the issues you want to look at, Prince Rupert being right on the coast…. My preference would probably be Terrace because then it's more of the inland, but it depends on whether we want to get some coastal exposure. In that case, do you want to consider something out on the Queen Charlotte Islands or those sort of things?

It really depends. I mean, we can't be everywhere in the province; we can't approach everything. So we want to try to have as broad an exposure as possible. I think Terrace would most likely be a better alternative.

M. Polak: To contribute further, it makes no never mind to me whether it's Prince Rupert or Terrace or what have you. I guess what's important to me is that we do provide some sort of knowledge for the committee with respect to the differences that are represented amongst coastal communities. However we achieve that is fine.

I think Dan's point is well taken around the travel for those who would come to the committee. On the other side of that coin, though, is that for those in coastal communities — whether they're on the Charlottes or simply up the northern coast — it's much more challenging for them to travel inland as opposed to coming into Prince Rupert. For me, the central point to that is finding some way that we can accommodate getting some knowledge of what's going on in coastal communities, which very often have a very different experience.

R. Lee: Yes, both are fine. I think Rupert has more development in the future, I guess, so it may be interesting to see how they'll be trained over there.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Yes, but our mandate is really specific on literacy, and we want to get to as many communities as possible that are indicative of this problem.

J. Rustad: I think when you look at some of the first nations groups, you probably get a more…. Terrace to Smithers would be more central to a lot of the bands. Rupert is going to give you more exposure to what's happening out on the coast in those types of communities, so it really depends on what you're trying to approach. If you really wanted to do something, have it in Kitwanga or some place like that. Depending on what you're looking for — but travel and those sort of things…. Either Smithers or Terrace or Rupert — any one of those would be good. You're just going to get a slightly different perspective on probably the same issue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Committee Clerk): Well, it's really whatever the members of the committee decide would work to meet their needs in terms of this process. The initial plan, as the Chair described, was to have a chartered plane for the week — so as many communities as we can fit into the schedule during a week. We can probably accommodate that. In previous years we have done more than one location in a given day. If you wanted to add a fourth, I can't see why that wouldn't work in the course of an average week.

In addition, I should mention that in the document on your desks, you have a draft advertisement which we would propose be distributed provincewide. In addition to the selected regional public hearings that you are currently discussing, there would also be essentially a call for input in writing from people who wanted to participate in this process.

Because of the unique nature of the inquiry that you're undertaking in terms of adult literacy, we are suggesting for the first time that the public be able to make submissions by telephone. What we would propose to do is have a dedicated phone line set up in our office, sort of a toll-free line where people can leave their contact information and a statement of up to two to five minutes, which we would then have transcribed and incorporated into the body of work that the committee is going to look at in the course of writing its report. We're hoping that will be just another means of access to interested individuals.

D. Jarvis: Do you contact the specific groups — some of the groups? I see you have different names down here, different groups that you've already listed here. Do you contact them first and tell them that we're coming in there, and would they like to make a presentation? What kind of response do you have to advertisements?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Essentially, because of the specific focus of this particular mandate, it's quite a specialized terms of reference that you've received. We would suggest that in addition to the usual open advertising that we usually get in newspapers, we would also send the e-mail — which is listed, I think, called "stakeholder e-mail invitation" — to specific groups within the broad regional area of the locations that the committee decides to travel to, to alert those specialized stakeholders that the meeting is occurring.

At the meetings, we would have provision, basically, for a public open-mike session. The proportion of time we allocated to each, we will assess as we go along in terms of how much time we need to accommodate all the interests.

Typically speaking, we do have a lot of experience with newspaper advertisements and find that they generate a high degree of interest in the work of the committee.

J. Rustad: If you're looking for approval in terms of your suggestion of the six areas — Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Prince George, somewhere in the northwest, somewhere in the southeast — over that period of time, I think that's a good idea. If there's something that you would like to fit in if there are other opportunities, I think that would also be good. But we'll leave it at the prerogative of the Chair, if that's okay.

D. Jarvis: I would rather see Surrey out of there and then maybe look at somewhere up in the Island, like Nanaimo or something like that, because we're not really doing anything on the Island.

D. Jarvis: Yes, but where have they come from? Victoria. Only one group I know is from out of Victoria that came on here. That was the aboriginal band, and they have an office right here themselves.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I think one of the reasons for suggesting those locations was also to get to as large a population as possible in terms of community and the services required. That is why these locations were proposed.

I guess I'd rather see us add another spot than drop off a community like Surrey. Part of the reason I would argue that is because you're looking at a population centre that has quite a vast array of approaches to adult literacy, second-language issues and concentration issues — extreme growth — so it's really a microcosm of what's happening provincially. I think that would be very useful for the committee and indeed would probably be noticeable by its absence if we were not to include it.

I certainly understand what you're saying with respect to the Island, and perhaps that's the whole issue of considering how we address issues on the coast and the outlying areas, like the Charlottes. How do we hear from those communities who have some really different needs represented?

J. Nuraney (Chair): I think that's the idea — to go with as broad a spectrum as we can.

One of the things I should also mention is that the next meetings will take a little bit of a different form in the sense that not only will some of the stakeholders be invited, but owing to and due to the advertising that we are going to do, we'll be inviting other people who are interested in the field.

What I would suggest is that they should preregister so that we'll know exactly the level of interest and the time factor we may need to hold that mike open for those who are not stakeholders, who are invitees but who have expressed an interest to come and talk to us about this.

That will give us also that perception of an open forum, an open public consultation, that we also need to do in the course of our exercise. If the committee agrees, the advertisement would carry the message that those who are interested to come and speak to us should preregister and would have the locations and the dates at which we will be in those areas. Is that acceptable, members?

J. Nuraney (Chair): Good. Finally, if I may suggest an agenda — we don't really have a quorum for this meeting — what we will do is collect all these reports that we have talked about today, circulate them to the other members and obtain their approval as well.

R. Lee: For those who have not registered before the meeting, they can still come to stand in front of the open mike — right?

J. Nuraney (Chair): If time permits, yes. We have to be very conscious of the time factor. It will not be a mike that will be open for six hours, so it's something we'll need to control. We're giving them the opportunity to come and speak to us, as long as they tell us they have the interest in coming and speaking to us.

If I may just recap, for the regional meetings the locations suggested are Prince George, Terrace, Prince Rupert and Castlegar. Is that okay, members? For the lower mainland we will have Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey. As far as the time frame and when these things will happen, we will leave it to Kate to discuss this among all the members, to look at their calendars and suggest appropriate dates.

One more thing I also need to point out is that in my mind, there is really no urgency. We can go on into September if need be to accommodate all the members and their availability. Kate will touch base with the rest of the group and then come back to us with some suggestions.

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CONTENTS

		Page

Public Hearings Locations		119

Committee Staff:	Josie Schofield (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION