Education — Issue No. 11 — Wednesday, October 4, 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		211
E. Nyce B. Wilson E. Ryan L. Woods S. Scott B. Davies J. Camazzola K. Leach M. Grinstrand L. Vo G. Jiang J. Nixon L. Gagnon

Chair:	* John Nuraney (Burnaby-Willingdon L)
Deputy Chair:	Vacant
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) David Cubberley (Saanich South NDP) * Rob Fleming (Victoria-Hillside NDP) * Norm Macdonald (Columbia River–Revelstoke NDP) * Doug Routley (Cowichan-Ladysmith NDP) * denotes member present


Witnesses:	Janette Camazzola (Literacy Kitimat) Beth Davies (Literacy Now — North Coast Region) Lianne Gagnon (Northwest Community College) Marie Grinstrand Guiha Jiang Kevin Leach (Kaien Island Alternate School) Jeseema John Nixon Evangeline Nyce Edna Ryan Sharon Jo Scott (Northwest Community College) Linh Vo Bonita Wilson Lorraine Woods

J. Nuraney (Chair): Good morning. My name is John Nuraney. I'm the MLA for Burnaby-Willingdon, and I'm the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Education.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Education Committee's public hearing in Prince Rupert. It is a real pleasure for us to be in your fine city and to hear directly from you about the important topic of adult literacy.

For your information, today's meeting is a public meeting which will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes of this meeting, will be printed and will be made available on the committee's website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/education.

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. An archived copy of the audio broadcast will also be retained on the committee's website.

Let me also, for the benefit of the presenters, read out the mandate that this committee has. The Select Standing Committee on Education was reissued the following terms of reference by the Legislative Assembly on February 20, 2006: that the committee be empowered to examine, inquire into and make recommendations with respect to finding effective strategies to address the specific challenge of adult literacy and, in particular, to conduct consultations to consider successful strategies from other jurisdictions on the promotion of adult literacy and specific strategies to improve literacy rates among the aboriginal people, English-as-a-second-language adults and seniors.

The committee is encouraging participation by written and telephone submissions and has extended the deadline for this process until Monday, October 23. We are required to report back to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 30, 2006.

Today we have a number of people working with us. Andrew Costa and Mike Leblond are here from Hansard Services. They record what is said during the hearing, and then Hansard produces a transcript of what people say, which is posted on the Internet.

We also have staff here from the Office of the Clerk of Committees. Kate Ryan-Lloyd is a Clerk Assistant in the Legislative Assembly and is also our Committee Clerk, and our researcher Josie Schofield is at the information table.

I would now like to invite the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting from my extreme right.

N. Macdonald: My name is Norm Macdonald. I'm the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke over in the East Kootenay. It's my pleasure to be here. This is my first visit to Prince Rupert, and I'm looking forward to the proceedings.

M. Polak: My name is Mary Polak, and I'm the MLA for Langley, which is in the lower mainland. This is a return visit to Prince Rupert, because I lived in the Charlottes for about three years. So it's a place that is formerly familiar to me, but it's very pleasurable to be here today.

D. Routley: My name is Doug Routley. I'm the MLA for Cowichan-Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. I appreciate the many first nations in the community allowing us to hold this meeting on their territorial lands.

J. Rustad: My name is John Rustad. I'm the MLA for Prince George–Omineca. I have to say that it sure is a beautiful day here. I've been in Prince Rupert many times, and today is a very nice day. Thank you all for coming out today.

R. Fleming: My name is Rob Fleming, and I'm an MLA in Victoria. My riding is Victoria-Hillside. This is my first visit to Prince Rupert as well. My friend Dan Miller, who hails from these parts and now lives in Victoria, told me that it rains sideways here, so I'm waiting to see that.

L. Mayencourt: I'm Lorne Mayencourt. I'm the MLA for Vancouver-Burrard, which is just the downtown peninsula. It's my, I think, eighth visit to Prince Rupert, and it's nice to be back. The weather is lovely today. It's very nice.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, members. Now I would like to encourage the presenters to throw as much light as they can on the mandate of the committee to help us in our work.

Our first presenter will be Evangeline Nyce. She is accompanied by Bonita Wilson, Edna Ryan and Lorraine Woods.

E. Nyce: Good morning, hon. members of the standing committee on Education. Welcome to Prince Rupert. Thank you for taking the time to come and listen to us and, hopefully, get us more educated in the aboriginal areas throughout Prince Rupert and the surrounding areas.

My name is Evangeline Nyce. I was born and raised here in Prince Rupert, originally from the community of Gitwinksihlkw, which is about 98 kilometres north of Terrace. As a young girl, I was taken out of Prince Rupert to go back to my village. I found that very hard, trying to learn, because my parents were both fishermen, and my mom was a net-mender, so every season we'd be taken back and forth from Prince Rupert to the village.

I found it kind of hard because we were a bit ahead when we were here and then, going back to the village, it was kind of sad to see, because they were a bit behind in reading. I don't think that they understood exactly what they were reading and learning and writing, because there was only one teacher for 28 students. I thought that was a bit much, and I was 11 years old when my parents first took me back to the reserve.

I am from the Nisga'a Nation. I come from the house of [first nations language spoken]. I belong to the Eagle tribe. My first language is English. I do understand my given tongue, and I understand our cultures. I've still got a long ways to go on that, but I am picking it up.

As a baby-boomer from the 50s, I've seen a lot of people my age struggling to understand our world. I believe that they should have more brochures and tutors to help the aboriginals learn and speak and write.

E. Nyce: This is my first year — after 33 years being out of school, so this is kind of a cool thing — getting back into school, into Northwest Community College. I'm having the greatest time of my life. We've got absolutely great instructors here on campus, and my heart goes out to them, you know — listening to us and putting up with us. All I can say is: I am having fun.

My belief is maybe if we had more tutors out there to help us first nations, maybe we'd get a bit ahead and understand more in what's happening out in the world, skill-wise, for work, education. I do have my report card from when I was in, '63, and it does show where I defaulted in my spelling, my language and whatnot. I can say it was a few years back, but I do have it to help me.

I was taken out of the village to go to school in Vancouver at John Oliver. That was kind of hard, being taken away from my family and getting sent to a big city. That was the scariest thing as a teenager. I was 15, and I thought that was very scary. I didn't have very much skill when it came to reading and writing. We were put into a special class. I can't, for the life of me, remember it. It did help us a bit, but I think to help my people — all the aboriginals up here…. If we had more flyers, maybe people, if they see it, could pick it up and read. That way they'd educate themselves on their reading. And like I said, maybe tutors to help us better understand what we're learning.

I think that's about all I can say for now. Yes, I think that's all I have to say.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Evangeline. Would the members prefer to ask questions now or after the presenters have finished all of their presentations?

E: Nyce: May I also just say I'd like to thank the Tsimshian Nation for giving me the opportunity to speak on their territory. And thank you, hon. guests, for giving me the opportunity to speak.

B. Wilson: Good morning, hon. members and the standing committee. My name is Bonita Wilson. I'm a student here at Prince Rupert. I was born and raised with my native tongue, and my Raven crest is Raven. I'm a Raven. I've fished up and down the coast from here to the Fraser for the last ten years. I did raise my children on my own. They're all grown up now.

What I was going to say…. Okay. I've fished up and down the whole coast for the last 15 years. Now my children are, like, raised up. They're all grown and gone on their own. I lost my licence five years ago because of the buy-back of the fishing industry. It was like taking my livelihood away at the same time. I've lost my licence there, and I started moving back to Prince Rupert.

I lived on land. I couldn't fish anymore. I thought: well, jeez, I gotta support myself. So I went running all around and about, trying to look for a job. The only problem was that I did not know how to use a cashier till. I did not know how to communicate properly to the employees. I did not know how to write proper resumés out, because I've never done this before. I was really, really raised with my own native people, and it was just really strange for me.

For me, trying to go back out to the workforce to support myself was really next to impossible. Nobody wanted to even look at me or even say anything to me. They asked me to write down these little questions, and I couldn't even answer it. I was so embarrassed. Then I went back and just kept on going. I kept on going, and they said, "Well, if you get this school…. If you go there and you get your education and you learn your basic math skills" — you know, stuff like that…. I did not know that.

Actually, I was raised with four grandmothers, so learning with my grandmothers and then coming to our society here is really strange. It's like a big class. We native people — it's just not enough school and education, eh? A lot of us people are going down the drain really fast because of that. They get disheartened, because they don't understand that a lot of doors will be closing on them. They don't understand that education is really important for us. It's important for me. I got a different look at it. Actually, I've gone to school for a year and a half now, and I can see a lot of difference in me. I can see the future and people differently than I was.

I'm learning, and it opened up a lot of doors for me. I've still got a lot of learning to go. What I was going to say, too, is…. Because when I left the boat five years ago and the buy-backs from the fishing — you know, when they bought the licence back for us, where we can't fish anymore…. I went to the Ministry of Human

Resources. I tried to go get…. I couldn't even fill out their application; can you believe that? I couldn't even do that. I went in there; I wanted to go get assistance. They said: "Go in there. You can go get some money." They gave me these papers. I was, like, looking, "What am I supposed to do with this?" and they're saying: "You're supposed to put your name in there, your SIN number, your that and that."

I wasn't even actually taught that, because when I was 15, 16 years old…. I found out later in my life — 16 years later — that my name was Bonita Mary Wilson. Can you imagine that? I didn't even know that. I did not know that, because I grew up with different alias names when I was kid living in a village. I did not know my name was Bonita Wilson until I was 16 years old, when I got in trouble with the law. Everybody used to say, "Well, what is your name," and I used to say: "My name is [first nations language spoken]." They all looked at me. "Excuse me?" "It's [first nations language spoken]." Or "[first nations language spoken]." It was really confusing.

So I believe that education is really important for first nations people. They should make it more mandatory, because there's going to be a lot of people like me that will be on the streets. Everybody needs education, and it's really important. I don't want them to be like me, and I don't want my grandkids to be like me. I've got grandchildren now.

Hopefully, they don't run into problems like what happened to me. It's really confusing. But now I've accepted my name. I'm 44 years old, and I love my name now. Before that, I thought: that's not my name. It's not me. But now that I'm living in a community and a new world, it's a whole new beginning. I say education should be mandatory for all people.

E. Ryan: Good morning, hon. members of the Select Standing Committee on Education. My name is Edna Ryan. My first language is Gitxsan. I lived in Skeena Crossing. I went to school at Hazelton high school. The only grade I went up to there is grade 10. I tried to get a job around here, and they said: "You have to go back to school."

So I went to the Friendship House school over there for a year and a half. There was only one teacher that didn't like me there, so I came to Northwest Community College. These guys accepted me here. That guy over there didn't treat me good. He said I was just a little kid to him. He said it in front of everybody in that whole class I was going to school with, so I just stepped out and left.

That's when I came over here. Right from then, I enjoyed coming to this college. I'm improving my literacy now. Before, I never used to. This is my first time talking to a big crowd. I've been at the fundamental level, and I'm trying to improve my skills so I can get a good job. I have worked in the cannery for 25 years, but work is not enough for hours and weeks anymore. I hope there's lots of tutoring going on over here for adult literacy.

L. Woods: Good morning, hon. members of the Select Standing Committee on Education. My name is Lorraine Victoria Woods. My regular name is Nicholl, but I changed it to my dad's name, Woods.

I was raised as a native in Moricetown. I lived there till I was ten, and then welfare took me out of my grandmother's house. They said they weren't able to raise me. They said she was too old, but she was in her 50s. But she raised us good. My first language is native, Gitxsan-Carrier from Moricetown, B.C.

I went to school at Chandler Park School in Smithers and St. Joseph's School when I was in kindergarten to grade 5. But I didn't know English. One teacher asked me why I couldn't read a little paragraph. I said: "I can't speak English, because I've been raised as a native."

At first sometimes I think a word and…. It was scary, but it's hard when you first learn English. I've got kids. I have three boys and two girls. I'm trying to teach my youngest how to read…literature. That's like me. I'm trying to get my education also. I could learn more. I have two grandkids, a girl and a boy. This is my first time doing this.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, ladies. I think that was a very good presentation for us to understand and learn some of the difficulties that you went through. Now get ready. You're going to be asked questions.

D. Routley: My question is related to confidence. So often in what we've heard from people the issue of confidence and trust in the program is very important to people. I've heard it echoed by all of you that, you know, it's very scary — what you went through. Perhaps when people acquire a new skill, that confidence can be transferred to other parts of our lives. My question is around that.

As you've gone through these programs…. You've talked about your children and your hopes for them in amongst this discussion. How have these new skills and these programs affected the other parts of your life, your role in your family and your role in your community?

E. Nyce: Well, I've been out of school for 33 years. I've got three beautiful, grown children. They're all very educated and have jobs of their own. I waited 33 years. I just turned 50 years old this year. Yea. I went and celebrated in New York. That was the trip of a lifetime. It was a trip that I'll never forget. A lot of people can't go travelling. I worked very hard to earn this trip. I had it as a present from my younger sister, and next year it'll be her turn.

As a single parent…. I was a teen bride. I got married at 17. I was just a baby myself, raising babies.

I love what I do. My goal is to open my own day care centre for aboriginals so that their parents can get educated out there. It is really hard for young parents

D. Routley: As a follow-up, if I might, you mentioned curriculum materials, like brochures and in-community things. If there was more culturally appropriate, more in tune with….

E. Nyce: Maybe a TV station with just aboriginal for, you know, everything — sports, weather, whatever's happening in the surrounding communities; maybe a TV program. I believe they do have one on channel 57. BCTV is surrounding…. Maybe if they could have one just for every Tsimshian, Nisga'a for education….

D. Routley: In the courses, though, if you had material that was more appropriate to your own culture?

E. Nyce: Yeah, brochures, magazines, flyers. I think that if they were sitting there, it would catch people's eye. You know, pick it up. Read it. "Hey, this is cool." Anything that will catch the eye of an aboriginal — maybe big print, because a lot of people don't understand. I was one of them. I'd more or less pick up a dictionary to understand what exactly I was reading. Even now I still do that, which is giving me better skills.

M. Polak: You're all very articulate. You are. You should feel very proud of yourselves, because there are very many people who don't have literacy issues at all, who couldn't write out some things to say and present them to the committee. They would just be too afraid and too nervous, so you should all feel very good about that.

I have some questions for each of you on things that you said, just wanting to understand a bit about it, because you're the ones who know — right?

Evangeline, you talked, as well, about the placement of tutors. Sometimes it's really hard for adult learners to find that place where they can learn. Where do you think would be good places for us to be sending people, putting people in? Is it their workplace?

M. Polak: This is a tougher one, but I'd like to know what you think. You've all had different experiences with English and with your native languages. For some of you, more English, and for some of you, more your mother tongue.

There is always a challenge when we talk to aboriginal people about, on the one hand, wanting to maintain culture and language and, on the other hand, what you've talked about — not having the skills in English that get you a job. What are your thoughts on balancing that when we deal with adult learners? How do we make that work? What are the things we need to watch out for? I guess maybe that is the way to put it. It's a tough one.

B. Wilson: The way I balance mine is…. The brain is broken into four halves, so what I do is take one language or the other and concentrate on the one, take the other one and concentrate on the other one and just put the rest all behind. That's how I do mine.

I learned this when I was a child. When I was a child, I think I spoke more Nisga'a, Gitxsan, Hagwilget and Tsimshian at the same time. That's four languages. Every time I used to go to the village, it made me feel like I had to learn their language, so it was really confusing for me.

It's the same thing with English. English is not any different from any other language, the way I look at it. What would happen is that you would have to almost practically totally concentrate on one thing rather than having so many at the same time. That's the way I look at it anyway.

M. Polak: My next question is for you too, Bonita, so this is perfect. You talked about having education more mandatory. What I understood from that is that you're watching kids and others as they grow up and maybe not knowing how important it is.

I think you're all mothers. How do we do that? How do we make these young people realize it's going to stop things for them if they don't know?

B. Wilson: Actually, it's a lot better. I mean, you notice that you get urban children. You get a whole bunch of different children, but when you get the children here in our community, they are more alert and different.

When you get the children in the villages and all around the village and they come here…. They've been in the village for ten or 15 years, like happened to me. You take them and throw them over here, and they were told different languages. I'm not going to be racist, but it's just like you're trying to throw a Chinese into a place. You've got this child to learn on his own, and this child is going to get confused one way or another. What you have to do is learn how to take it step by step by step, like we do — one step at a time.

M. Polak: Make it gradual. Bonita, your life is really interesting — where you've been and come to. What motivated you to say: "Okay, I want to learn more. I want to improve my skills"? What was it that made the difference, that made you want to do that?

B. Wilson: I got involved with the law when I was a child. Like I said, my friends used to walk around, and they'd go stealing. I was there. In my time I was born and raised actually religious — very religious. My grandmother raised me that way. With my four grandmothers….

What really changed me was that when I was growing, up as a child, I noticed that everybody was just as confused as I was, and just trying to talk to each individual and people to get my point to them was just next to impossible. Actually, I didn't even know how to read. I had to learn how to read on my own.

It's still happening as we speak — children in the village. Then they come over here — 20, 30, 40 or 50 of them — and they are spread right out here in town, and they get the education. Their language and their living are way different than how we live here in the city.

That's what helped motivate me to learn, to seek for, actually — so I won't have to get in trouble with the law and find myself in a situation that I'm not supposed to be in. If you get people like me…. When I was a child, we weren't taught these things. Then the whole town would be just a big ruckus. Everybody would just ransack it over. They don't care.

Education is important. That's why I said it should be mandatory, even in the villages. In the villages the kids that come here should have a little place where they can all get together like here and talk them out. This is what is expected for all of us. You don't just take a kid out in the wilderness, throw them over here and say: "Look, work on your own." Of course, somebody's going to get in trouble one way or another. You can't fight by yourself. We need people and adults like us to help walk them out properly.

Edna, you talked about working in the cannery for so long. All that time you were waiting to blossom and do what you're doing now. Would it have helped you and would it have been practical if there was a program in the place you worked — if, say, after work you could have a reading program there at work? Would you have taken it?

Lorraine, you talked about how difficult it is. You're raising children. You've got all these things going on. Now you want to teach your children, and that makes you want to learn.

M. Polak: Do you have a family program here? Are there literacy programs, reading programs for a whole family, or is it more just for adults? Would that have helped? Would that have been something that you would have used?

L. Woods: There's one at Roosevelt, but that's for adults only. My daughter's in literacy right now at Roosevelt, and they've got a really good staff there. They always tell me that she's doing well, but she's under her grade level. She's still at grade 3 level, but when she comes home, she reads to me really well. She tells me: "Mom, in school I can't even think of some…." Some of her friends make fun of her because she's under grade 3 level, but when she comes home, she reads a paragraph to me better than I could read to her.

J. Rustad: I just want to start off by thanking you for coming and presenting today. It's one of the scariest things to do, actually, to stand up in front of a group and speak. I just want to echo comments about the courage and to thank you for doing that. Our work is quite challenging, as well, and without the input that you and others have brought for us, we wouldn't be able to complete what we're trying to do.

There have been many questions already asked that I was originally thinking of asking, but I would like to specifically focus on what led you to improve your education, to learn more, to go through this process.

You've explained how you've come to this point today, but I guess the question is…. Many people haven't come to the point yet where they would want to go back to school to further their education and skills. What do you think would be effective? Or how do you think we should try to reach out to them to encourage them to participate, come back to school to learn, become more literate?

Our mandate, in particular, is looking at individuals who haven't yet come to the realization, the desire or the goal that they would like to take those next steps forward. For example, when you're working — when you're fishing, when you're in the cannery — and when you're doing things, you have your career, your job, and you are moving forward. Literacy wasn't quite as high a priority at that stage because you were making a living, and it wasn't until things changed that you made the decision to come back in.

What I'm wondering is…. Mary touched on it. It's the idea of a program within where you work, to try to help — whether it was in the cannery, whether the program was available — and whether or not people would actually be interested in taking advantage of that or for other people who might not have come to it…. What do you think would be the catcher or something that would be beneficial to draw those people in and to foster more of an environment or a desire for approaching education?

E. Nyce: I would say probably more commercials on TV for aboriginals — maybe some kind of slogan to catch their ear. For me, I came back because everything out there now qualifies a grade 12 or better. I wanted to go for Customs. For security you needed a grade 12. I don't have a grade 12 level. Grade 10. It's like taking

those baby steps again, starting all over. But I think maybe commercials on TV, the radio, with a little slogan….

J. Rustad: If I could, maybe in future you could just have a comment on that. What else could we do in terms of drawing people, perhaps earlier, or encouraging people to participate in education?

B. Wilson: What we can do to encourage them? To start with, I think we could start with the grade 2s and 3s and 4s and make sure that they don't fall in the same footsteps as we did. Make sure that they get them before they come into the…. The village people come here. Try to show them that they've got a new future. Come here. That's what I would say, if it was me.

Go out and give pamphlets. Talk to people. Encourage them. Tell them that this is the new millennium now, so we've got to have a new change. We can't function just like the way we are now — you know, not getting anywhere. But as long as we all go to school, like I said….

Broadcast it on TV, radios. They've got radio channels. They're always talking about football and Saddam Hussein. I don't see why they shouldn't talk about education. And who is killing who. God, I don't want to hear that anymore.

N. Macdonald: Very quickly. All of you have had mixed experiences with institutionalized education, but you've come into this program, and you're sounding very confident and happy about what you're doing. So the question is: what allowed you or what drew you into a program now? And what about it? What allows you to come in and access this program? Can you name a few key things?

B. Wilson: I know what allows me — to strive for fame, fortune and courage, and [first nations language spoken] decent government. I want to run the village. They've been running me for a long time — might as well me run them.

E. Nyce: As for me, I come from a family of 14, but ten survive. I'm the only one that's not really educated yet. That's why I'm back — to get a better education for myself.

N. Macdonald: I guess part of it is…. What allows you to do it in terms of costs or how you're made to feel welcome within…?

Edna, you mentioned that you feel welcome here, within your program. Are there things like that that are real keys, so as we go and look at what needs to be improved, we also understand what works? What is the key for allowing you to come here? Are there any issues like that, beyond just the personal desire?

E. Nyce: Funding, I believe, is a really big issue with our aboriginals. I believe that is one of the things that are holding them back from getting a better education.

E. Nyce: That's correct. My village didn't fund me. I'm funded by ABESAP, through the college here. That is how I'm coming back to school.

E. Ryan: Yeah, and I like it here much…. Everybody at the college here really accepts me the way I am. They're teaching me more things that I didn't know years ago. I'm happy to be here.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you. This should wrap up. We are running behind time. I want to thank the ladies for coming before us. I think you have been excellent presenters, all of you. Don't ever have any doubts that you are good public speakers, all of you.

E. Nyce: Just on behalf of the four of us ladies, we'd like to thank you, hon. members, for coming to Prince Rupert and listening to us. Have a safe journey, and hopefully, one day we'll meet again.

S. Scott: Hon. members of the Standing Committee on Education, as you have seen, some of my students' first language is Gitxsan or Sm'algyax or Nisga'a, not English. All aboriginal people are one or two generations away from an oral culture — all the aboriginal people who live here.

When I visit my aboriginal friends' and relatives' homes, I know I will see family photographs, school pictures on the living room walls. There will also be many videos and DVDs. There will be few, if any, books or magazines. Here is an oral rather than a written tradition.

In 2003 I completed a project on behalf of the college, the Friendship House and the library on barriers to adult literacy in our community. One of the things I found out when I surveyed the cannery management was that there were no problems with literacy with any of the workers, although I knew different from talking to their workers. They had no need for workplace literacy. They all told me that.

The next year I initiated a program for free adult computer classes at Roosevelt Park Elementary School, because it was a community school. I could do it through their community school. My thinking was that computers motivate learners because the Internet is a portal to the universe. It has something for everyone — to go through the pain of learning how to use the computer or learning how to read, to gain what they want or need.

My research had shown that people over 35 didn't know how to use computers unless they had children. So we had lessons at the drop-in computer classes, and they still go on. It's being run by…. Now it's called the Prince Rupert literacy project.

Today I'm here to talk about two ideas I have that I believe will address the challenges of adult literacy in this community and the outlying reserves. The first is to recycle magazines within our community and out to our neighbouring reserves. This idea is based on my personal experience. I call it "toilet literacy."

The bookcase in our bathroom, about five years ago, helped my husband, who is a Haida carver, become a reader. I placed magazines in the bathroom — Reader's Digest, Canadian Living, whatever I had. Accessible reading material helped him to get into the habit of reading.

Magazines are easy to read. The photographs attract the reader, and the articles are short. Books can be daunting for adults unused to reading.

My plan is to involve our local high schools in the collection of magazines. Then I want to place boxes of free magazines. It's all on this street here in town — it's called Fraser Street — at the Friendship House; the Salvation Army; the Fisherman's Hall; the seniors centre; and the Fairview Management, which is for adults with cognitive difficulties.

I also want to send magazines to our neighbourhood reserves, to be distributed freely to the community members. I'm going to be frank with you. I'm planning to do it with the federal nurses. I don't want to send it to the band office, because a lot of things that are sent to the band office don't get distributed throughout the reserve — like money or magazines.

By the way, I'm also of Mi'kmaq heritage. Both sides of my family are from…. I'm from the east coast.

When there are magazines available, people are encouraged to read. Information that is practical, like recipes, appeals to everyone. General interests and specific interests can be found in magazines.

I'm hoping that this project will enable us not only to recycle magazines but maybe to get some of the native art magazines that exist but are expensive out to the reserves so they could be passed around some of the people working there. Once the magazines are in the homes, then reading will just take place. It just naturally takes place.

I have a sister-in-law who lives in…. The Nisga'a pronunciation is Laxgalts'ap, but we call it Greenville. It's up in the Nass. She places magazines on the bathroom floor open to pages she wants her family members to read. I didn't talk to her about it. This is what she was already doing. She knows. She gets them to read.

My second idea is to train volunteer tutors at Northwest Community College. Northwest Community College is very supportive of this idea. The tutors would then go to places….

They wouldn't go, when we tried, to Roosevelt Elementary School to study at night in reading and writing. Adults are too ashamed and embarrassed about their literacy skills to do that. They would come once or twice, or they'd come occasionally. They'd come for computers but not for tutoring.

I want to go to places where the literacy learners are already in their comfort zone. I want to take tutors to the Salvation Army soup kitchen on Fraser Street, to the Fisherman's Hall, to the Friendship House. All these places are welcoming, are eager to have it happen. One-on-one matches would be made. This idea came from seeing a video about what has been a success at the Carnegie Centre on Hastings in Vancouver — drop-in tutoring projects there.

The recycled magazines would be available for tutoring materials in these places. There'd be boxes of them. That's one of the problems when you want to tutor. What do you tutor with? You have some things already there to start with. The students will tell you what they want to learn, and then you help them along that way. That's how I learned anyway. Learners could take the magazines into their own homes.

This is going back to 1973. A high school friend of mine taught a woman from Newfoundland how to read using a TV Guide. She was motivated because she wanted to know when her soap opera would be on TV. She learned to read.

I taught a young Cree man how to read in 1982 using a carburetor manual in Trout Lake in northern Alberta. He wanted to fix his Ski-Doo, so he had a reason to learn to read.

Magazines contain myriad subjects. That is why they make great accessible reading materials. The reluctant reader reads slowly and is overwhelmed and discouraged by books. The more one reads, the better one reads.

I believe that motivation is the key. My husband read the 400-page autobiography of Stompin' Tom in a week. Stompin' Tom's life story of poverty and abuse resonated with my husband's childhood, spent on the Masset reserve and in residential school. He just gobbled that book. He couldn't put it down. I'd never seen him read a book before, and he was reading one this big, but it was what he was reading that mattered.

It is difficult to access funds for literacy. I need to speak to this. This past year the tutoring proposal I had in place, supported by the college, was not accepted for the funding. Only one project in one community can get funding at a time, and the adult computer literacy was already going.

Even though part of it, to me, wasn't working and I wanted to address the part that wasn't working, the nature of the funding is that you can't have two projects in the same town at the same time. I think they're really good projects, though, and they're doing a lot to advance literacy. They weren't expensive projects. They didn't cost a lot of money.

When the NLS grant proposals were announced in August, I couldn't understand the guidelines. I wanted to put my proposal in, but I couldn't make out what the federal government meant by their four categories acceptable for funding. It was gobbledegook to my head. It wasn't English.

I couldn't figure out where to put my proposal or how to do it, so I e-mailed our regional literacy coordinator, who lives in Houston, for clarification. But she couldn't get back to me in time for me to put the proposal in by

September 15. She's only part-time, and she works the entire region from Houston to Masset. She can't travel very often. It's not part of what she's able to do with her position, and her hours have been cut.

Here we live in a place that needs literacy so badly, and it's really hard to get help. So proposal writing is done on my own time, with little help from anybody. I'm not that good at it. I need help.

In Cuba, Castro cancelled the university classes and forced every student to teach someone to read. That person would then teach another, and Cuba is still literate. For a Third World country, it's incredibly literate, just by him doing that.

Literacy funds are very much tied to literacy research these days. We don't have any literacy researchers here. I'm only an amateur. I'm not a qualified researcher.

There are two more points I want to make. One is that there's a first nations man — I think he's the Solicitor General in Ontario — and he's sending books by the thousands to reserves. I believe aboriginal literacy would be greatly served by the distribution of recycled magazines to all the reserves in B.C.

My students didn't mention this, but they mentioned it to me over the last eight years I've worked at the college. This town has a very unhelpful welfare office. When my students want to go to school full-time, they're told by the welfare office that they cannot. They have to look for jobs full-time, even though they can't read or write and there are few jobs in this town.

In other places in British Columbia, like Dawson Creek, if it's in your job plan, you can go to school full-time. My students need full-time schooling to get them to a level where they're just literate.

According to the Ministry of Social Services, that I know of, it's a policy interpretation. The college president, the college deans…. Everybody that can has tried to help us to convince our local office to let these people get educated. It's not going anywhere. So if you have any power in that way, please…. It would be a big help. They shouldn't have to fight to learn.

I have a paper at home — I forgot it — that I was going to hand around. It's in pencil. It's a line one student gave, saying, "They're not letting me go to school," and "They're not" is spelled t-h-e-i-r. He can't write a sentence, but he's not allowed to get educated because he has to look for work.

N. Macdonald: Two points. On the first point. Gary Coons is your MLA, and if you've….

N. Macdonald: He's tried? Well, you've had an opportunity to let us know. I would say that people would expect that regardless of the part of the province you're in, there be consistency in how these things are handled. Certainly, making us aware is a step in that direction.

S. Scott: I'm hoping it's all over the province that people of low-literacy ability and on welfare can go to school full-time. I don't know. I just know that here my students have trouble. They have to keep going to the office. They tell me they have to stop. I know in Dawson Creek they are allowed to.

N. Macdonald: Well, I think most would agree that it's sensible, if you're going to expect somebody to be employed, that they would have the skills necessary for that — and literacy programs are part of it.

But I'm intrigued with your idea about the magazines. Part of the question is: in terms of the magazines that are there, are there magazines that address west coast first nations culture? Are there magazines in particular that you would find appealing? One of the points you made is about the appropriateness of material and how that draws people in as well.

I think your point is around the types of articles that are there, the pictures — all of those things being attractive — but also, do we have the magazines that would be appropriate?

S. Scott: One of my students here — I don't know if he's still there — wanted me to suggest that comic books are really good. He learned to read with them. I know there are some native comic books now. I think it's good to address…. And there are newspapers I've brought into classes that are first nations newspapers. But I think anybody can benefit from reading the advice for families in Canadian Living or…. We have a recycling box at the recycling depot here, and people go out there and go through it and just take what they want.

I know also that when I taught in Trout Lake in northern Alberta in 1982, I taught grades 3, 4 and 5. It was the first year we could get some books that were basically for grades 1 or 2, but they had Cree words and English words in them. They were storybooks. Some of my students really took to reading. They were produced a little further north than us. With those books or if there were materials that had even a few words, it made a difference, because it means they're seeing their language in print, and their lifestyle. The books they had to read were about suburbs and dogs and driveways. These books were about trapping and snow, and there are no curbs in that village. That makes a difference.

Television is huge in aboriginal communities and aboriginal homes, so everything you want to know about Brad Pitt or Angelina would also be a sell on the reserve in a magazine, because they recognize that culture.

M. Polak: Two quick ones. First, you mentioned the National Literacy Secretariat grants that you were applying for. Are you given any assistance by the federal government in writing for those grants? If you're not, would it help if that was something that the province did?

S. Scott: Well, they had phone numbers in Ottawa, and I called, but then they were unavailable, on vacation.

S. Scott: No. See, we have Dee, but she works, as I said, in Houston, and she has to help Houston and Smithers and….

M. Polak: Is she a federal…? Who's that through? Is that through the federal government?

S. Scott: She's the regional literacy person. I think she's funded provincially, but she's the person who interprets the federal grants and helps us with the federal grants.

M. Polak: So even just somebody to sit down with you who knows how to write grants, knows how to do that, because there's a skill to it, would help.

M. Polak: Secondly, I love the thinking around the magazines. There's been a lot of mention about television. You talked about the fact that it's really a big part of what happens in families and homes around here.

I don't know if you recall that years ago they used to have these little vignettes on with the cartoons on Saturday morning that would explain things about grammar and nouns. I can remember the little jingles still. Is that kind of thing still practical? I mean, we don't see them around anymore, but it gets mentioned once in a while. People will say: "Well, gosh, why don't we do that?" Do you think something like that would still work?

I also want to mention that we're not served by APTN very well. I have a brother-in-law in TV in Toronto, and I asked him about it. It's because we don't have any stringers here. We have the biggest aboriginal basketball tournament in the world here every February — the All-Native. It gets no coverage on APTN.

The only thing on APTN is Ravens and Eagles — about art in Haida Gwaii — and occasionally news, but there's no local person working for them. Even though they're out of Edmonton, they spend most of their time covering the Mohawks. People disagree with me, but I think the culture there is not as intact. There are still feasts here. I've helped raise a totem pole here. It's a culture that's really worth having people see, but it doesn't happen because we don't have it.

L. Mayencourt: Thanks for your presentation, Sharon. We'll certainly check with the minister's office to get some clarification around the jobs plan, including learning how to read. I think that you're quite right on that one.

I just want to clarify. You and the other presenters brought forward some things that motivate us for being literate. One of them is: I have a burning need to know something. I've got to learn how to fix my carburetor. I'm interested in the topic. There's something — Stompin' Tom Connors — that I can relate to.

Then there's: I can accomplish something. I can run the band if I have this capability.

Finally, it's intentionally available, and I think that's the bathroom literacy that you're talking about. It's there; you're not doing anything; have a look at it — that kind of thing.

S. Scott: Yeah, well I'm doing one this year. I've put together a couple of binders. I've collected about 250 brochures and maps. Instead of doing the normal SRAs — they're boxes with little stories about India or whatever, and they read them and get tested on comprehension — my students are trying out my theory. Well, it's not my theory. It comes from Taoist training, from the federal government and from the fact that now we need literacy, numeracy and document understanding.

So I'm calling this document Familiarity. They're looking at picking out whichever brochure or document they want, but they're all to do with health or — the same idea. There are lots of different things to select, and then they're answering questions about it. In the face of normal literature, which goes right through grade 12 without ever looking at real documents, there's a manual on how to fix your hot water heater — or anything. Plain English.

Those are my two biggies this year: plain English and not just reading literature but reading things so that in real life, when you're at the doctor's office, you'll pick up a brochure. You had one in class already, and now you read that, and you did that — you know, that kind of thing. That's it.

D. Routley: This is less of a question, but just a little story to support what you've said. I had the luxury of being quite unemployed in the early '80s, around that time, in this province. My wife and I sold everything we had and bought an open ticket to Japan. We started teaching English. We went without any plan. We went and took on all sorts of students. My youngest student was three and my oldest was 80.

The most frustrating class I had was a really well-educated group of Japanese businessmen who were forced to take training after work, and they would be falling asleep. Finally, one guy said to me, "So, Mr. Douglas, if Mr. Popeye is in love with Ms. Olive Oyl, and Mr. Brutus…." In the discussion that ensued after that, everyone was totally engaged. So I agree. If we go where people's hearts and minds are with the material, like your bathroom reading project…. I guess that's where the hearts and minds are.

D. Routley: Yes, that's exactly…. It's productive, and it also draws people in, not just the person who's reading that piece, but it encourages more discussion, perhaps.

S. Scott: I'd have to thank my training as an ESL teacher as well. I spent five years teaching adults in Vancouver from all over the world how to speak English. ESL is a lot of listening and speaking as well as reading and writing, so it opened my ideas wider.

J. Rustad: Knowing that we're very short on time, I just want to ask one quick question, and that is with regards to the applications from the federal government on resources. Did you utilize the services of your MP? Did you contact the MP's office and ask for…?

S. Scott: You know, I never thought of it. It was the end of summer; it was short notice. I just phoned Ottawa, the people who were supposed to help. One person got back to me when I wasn't home, and I e-mailed Dee, waiting for her help. I think she was on vacation. But in the future, that's a good idea.

J. Rustad: I would highly recommend letting your MP's office know about the challenge you had there, because that's an issue they could perhaps look into some more for you.

S. Scott: Yes, and they've made some bad…. They cut some literacy lately, I think — the federal government.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Sharon, for a very enlightening presentation.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Our next presenter is Beth Davies. She's from the north coast Literacy Now.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm really glad that the standing committee did come to Prince Rupert. We were disappointed, I guess partly in our own failure to respond in a timely manner…. I know that literacy is an issue that's very much in the forefront of people's thinking in Prince Rupert and in the communities at large, so I think that was not a true reflection of the priority that we give to the issue. I'm very glad that you have given us a second chance.

B. Davies: As you can see, there's a certain amount of enthusiasm around the topic here.

I also think that the province of B.C. needs to be congratulated for naming literacy, in particular adult literacy, as a priority.

We've just had this huge blow with the cut in federal funding. They seem to have come to the conclusion that adult literacy is a waste of money, and I'm hoping that the province can exert some pressure on your federal colleagues to revisit that. Literacy activists throughout the country, I think, are just grappling to come to terms with what exactly that funding cut is going to mean and what services we're not going to be able to access any more. It's very unfortunate and kind of ironic, I think, that the province is taking this initiative at the same time as the federal government seems to be undermining it.

Enough politics. I'm sure you're familiar with the Literacy Now initiative. I'll just say very briefly that Prince Rupert is one of the six original pilot communities identified for a Literacy Now project. We were given that opportunity late in 2004, I think, and we immediately struck a steering committee in the community to move that project forward.

We were fortunate in receiving planning money about 12 months ago to develop the community plan. What we did was redefine community in a rather ambitious manner. We are not just looking at Prince Rupert. We're looking at the four coastal Tsimshian communities of Hartley Bay, Kitkatla, Metlakatla and Lax Kw'alaams — and also the municipality of Port Edward, just up the highway a little bit. So we're essentially undertaking a regional community plan that, within it, embodies six individual community plans.

This has been a really enriching experience for those of us involved in the process. I currently chair that committee. That's a volunteer position, obviously. I retired in January. I was, at that time, the vice-president, education, at Northwest Community College and had been for 11 years, I guess. Before that, I had been working in the adult education field as an administrator and as a teacher for — I hate to say this — more than 30 years.

I'm speaking on behalf of Literacy Now and around that project and what we're finding out, but I'm also going to allude to some prior knowledge, I guess you could say — prior prejudices that I bring to the case.

Anyway, it's very rare as a practitioner that we get to go and ask people what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. We tend, as educators, to be funded in a way that requires us to deliver something and hope that it's the right thing and that people will show up. Sometimes they do, and as Jo Scott — we call her Jo — was saying, they don't always show up, because maybe it's not the right thing, maybe it's not in the right place, maybe it's not at the right time — whatever. They haven't really had a chance, and we haven't had a chance to put those two pieces together: the learner, and the institution or the agent of delivery.

We've had a year to go into the communities and set up dialogues within the communities as a: "Come

all ye, and talk to us about learning in your community. What would improve your quality of life that's related to lifelong learning?"

It has been very enlightening to us as educators to go through that process. We spent a day in Lax Kw'alaams, which is the largest of the coastal communities. It's up the coast, just a little bit below the Alaska border. They're quite isolated, as many of our communities are. We must have had 100 people come through that room, that hall where we were meeting over the course of the day, and talk to us. We had all generations — pregnant 16-year-olds, 80-year-old elders and all steps in between — coming in and talking about their vision for their community and how learning would fit in.

I must admit that some of my ideas about literacy were, in a sense, blown out of the water. One thing I've come away with is a very clear sense that we don't do anybody a service by categorizing according to age. In fact, everything that anybody came up with as a bright idea, when we tried to slot it into who it would serve — who would be the participants on the basis of preschool, children, young adults, adults and seniors, for example — we were having to write it right across the column. Any community education idea that makes sense doesn't distinguish on the basis of age. In fact, learning is very much a social and community-based activity that involves everybody.

First nations communities have always known this. They've always involved elders in the teaching of children, and to some extent vice versa. I think it was good for us to learn it all over again and to hear it from them.

The other thing I should say is that we've made our job a little bit difficult in Literacy Now by taking a very broad definition of literacy. We're not just talking about reading and writing or even numeracy. We're talking really about the tools that people have to interpret and to relate to the world outside, including cultural literacy, social literacy, citizenship literacy — in a sense, how we participate with the world around us through what we have learned.

That has also been helpful in the community discussions because literacy with a capital "L" has a bit of a stigma attached to it. Illiteracy with a capital "I" certainly has a large stigma attached to it, and people don't show up for classes for illiterates any more than they show up for classes in abusive parenting or something. It's somehow focusing on the wrong thing, so by exploding that definition to lifelong learning in general, we've been able to remove that stigma, and people have responded well with that.

As I'm sure you know, we are in Tsimshian territory here. The territory has also been traditionally used by the Haida, the Nisga'a, the Haisla, the Gitxsan and other first nations peoples. It was settled by Europeans of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds early in the 20th century. There's a strong Norwegian, Chinese and Japanese community history here.

More recently there's been a fair amount of immigration from the Italian and Portuguese communities, and even more recently, with the establishment of the pulp mill, Punjabi, Vietnamese and Filipino immigrants have come into the community. That tide has stopped now, because there is virtually no economic activity. So there aren't many new immigrants coming into the community, except family members.

Of the population of the north coast region, 35 percent have got less than high school. That's 11 percent more than the provincial average. More than 10 percent have got less than a grade 9 education, which again is considerably higher than the provincial average. Surveys have identified that five-year-olds in the north coast communities are the second-most vulnerable in the province in terms of educational preparedness.

The school district here has made early learning and literacy a very high priority, and I'm assuming you're going to hear more about that. One thing that they have done very successfully is involve families in the education of young children. That's been very well received in some of the Tsimshian communities. I know that Hartley Bay reports a participation rate of something like 90 percent of caregivers in those early education programs for their children.

Obviously, where you have undereducated parents and undereducated grandparents, the degree to which they can actually participate and assist their children's learning is limited by their own level of learning. It's a huge opportunity for adult educators to complement the work of the school district in those communities, which include Prince Rupert and Port Edward, to bring the caregivers' level of education up at the same time as their children are learning. So they're learning with their children, but in a different way, so that they can then help their children learn.

Learning is something that happens at home as much as it happens in the school, and there is no reason for it to be one way. We were certainly hearing very much from older people in the community that they would welcome the opportunity to share their traditional knowledge — their knowledge of oral history, their knowledge of food-gathering, these kinds of things — but they also have a lot to learn from the youth in the community, because they don't know.

The older people are intimidated by technology. They don't know how to operate an ATM. They don't know how to send an e-mail. They were advocating some kind of intergenerational knowledge exchange rather than classes for specific age groups. I think that that allows us to acknowledge the social component of learning and to make it a little bit more of a celebratory and positive experience for everybody involved.

There are some social issues on the north coast that affect those literacy rates and have contributed to them. The remote location and the real lack of educational resources in the smaller communities is obviously one of them. Children have to relocate to Prince Rupert to complete their high school education, and many are

not prepared to do that. We're not talking about a short commute here. We're talking about going by boat or by plane to get home. That doesn't happen.

The residential schools have left a very long shadow in the communities of the north coast. That's resulted in not only a loss of culture at home but also a real lack of trust in white institutions and a sense that participating in what we offer as education is at the same time a giving up of one's own cultural knowledge, cultural values and language. That isn't something they've just imagined, obviously, because that is very much what happened in the residential schools.

Another factor, of course, is that the living was good here for a long time. We've got one of the best fisheries in the world — probably have had — and the forestry industry. You could make a lot of money in this community without being educated. You could get a job on a fish boat. You could go work in the bush. You really didn't need to be highly literate. Those jobs have disappeared.

What can we do as communities? I've touched on some of these. We're going to find that I'm reiterating a lot of what Jo Scott said. We're often very much on the same wavelength about this.

As I've said, tackle literacy as an intergenerational issue. Complement the school district initiatives with learning support for adult caregivers. Encourage knowledge exchange between elders, adults and youth. Acknowledge the social aspect of learning, and celebrate people's successes.

The other thing we really need to do a lot better — and I think it was you that was asking questions that related specifically to this, but it came up quite a bit in the last presentation: literacy development has to be related to a real-life context. It has to be related to something that somebody at that time really wants to know or needs to know.

Certainly, assisting children to learn by learning yourself and then teaching them provides one of those incentives. That's a huge motivator. People want to be able to read to their kids. They want to be able to understand what their children are learning. They want to be able to help them with homework and generally not feel completely alienated from what's happening to the child for those hours when they're in school. I really think there's work that can be done around the school system in terms of involving adults.

The whole aspect of technology use, of transmitting traditional knowledge, oral history, health and safety knowledge, child care…. All of these need-to-know issues are the best way to convey literacy — undercover almost. You know you're learning something you need to know, and incidentally, you're learning to read and write or whatever else.

B. Davies: I'll give you an example of a program we ran at the college here that relates to that need-to-know aspect. Many of the Vietnamese immigrants established themselves in the crab fishery. They bought boats, and they went out and fished crab, and they drowned. There were terrible accidents because they weren't used to these waters. They didn't know the navigation rules in Canadian waters and so on and so forth.

They also didn't have English, so the college put on a program that was our regular nautical safety program. We involved a translator into Vietnamese so that they were able to follow what was going on, but they actually learned the basics of navigation at the same time as acquiring the English that you need to be able to operate safely in a Canadian harbour. That's just one example of many I could think of related to something that people urgently need to know and recognize that they urgently need to know it.

The other thing — and Jo also mentioned this — is that you take the programs out of institutions, schools, colleges, out of intimidating environments, and take them to where the learners already are: to the Salvation Army soup kitchen, to the youth drop-in centre, to the friendship centre, to the seniors centre.

Jo mentioned the Fisherman's Hall. The college ran one of our more successful programs with unemployed shoreworkers — cannery workers at the time of the Mifflin disaster to the fishing industry — and conducted all the training in the Fisherman's Hall, which is the union hall they'd be comfortable in. It's a safe place for them to be.

The participation rate and the success rate in that program were remarkable. The people were coming in there with maybe a grade 2 reading level and many of them older, quite a bit older than conventional students, and desperate. They were without means to survive, so that's partly why they were there, because they were getting benefits as long as they were there. But that wasn't what kept them there.

We had so many actual Dogwood diplomas come out of that program. It was quite, quite remarkable and very gratifying. I think that the cohort — you know, the peer group of friends — were in a place they were comfortable in and felt safe in had an enormous amount to do with that.

In contrast, I'd say that the program we tried to run in Massett in the former Canadian Armed Forces base was a terrible failure, because we found out after the fact that the relationship between the Haida community and the base was such that I don't think first nations people were even allowed on the base in the good old days of flourishing Massett. Even if they were, they certainly wouldn't go there voluntarily. We were running classes in the one place in Massett that nobody would go to. Place is very important.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Ms. Davies. I wanted to leave some time for questioning, so if you are done….

B. Davies: I wanted to talk about things that government could do — very quickly.

Remove some of the barriers to learning that come out of individual office practices that sometimes contradict government policy. Jo addressed that, as well, in her comments. Sometimes local practice has evolved an ethos of its own that is not supportive of students.

Simplify the funding process for programs. Base funding on capacity to deliver rather than on ability to read the minds of the people that designed the proposal.

Measure results and participation rather than processes, and don't amateurize community education. There's a real need, even though it's community-based, to have some kind of resource centres and some kind of professional training for volunteers — people generating materials that are relevant and are an appropriate reading level and high quality.

The last thing I'll say is look at the mandate for public and/or school libraries. There are no books in these communities. These are non-print communities, and you're not going to have a literate community if they're never exposed to print. The school library is not open after hours. It's not open to the community at large, only to students. The public library here does not serve the first nations communities. I really think there's some mandate fiddling that can be done, which would address that.

D. Routley: You mentioned the Vietnamese drownings, and we've heard about people on income assistance having barriers placed in front of them in an inconsistent way.

We've also heard people in certain arenas speak about jobs that are out there for people who are illiterate. They point to the construction industry. What you've said here mirrors a big concern I have over workplace hazardous material — handling and that sort of thing. I can't think of a workplace in the modern world that could be safe for a person who's illiterate or for the people working around them.

That's just a comment. You've put the focus on blending the generations in this traditional way, and that first nations have always known this to be important to education. You also spoke about upgrading caregiver skills and the lack of educational resources in small villages. Those three things kind of work together.

How would you recommend that without amateurizing the service? How do we bring resources into community and address the caregiver issues? Then we're kind of passing it to an amateur, in a way, but through the hands of a guiding instructor…. What would be the best use of resources?

B. Davies: I think that involvement of community people is absolutely crucial. The sense of ownership in the community of a program is absolutely crucial, but they can't operate in a vacuum. Maybe it's a role for the community colleges. Currently community college funding does not acknowledge that community resource aspect of their operation. Everything is FTE-based, and there is no support for providing any kind of outreach service that doesn't translate immediately into FTEs.

Again, that's something that could be changed. There are qualified professional people that know how to do curriculum development for adult education, how to put together training manuals and resource guides for volunteer tutors, and so on and so forth.

I totally believe in turning it over to the community in a very guided, supported way — some kind of regional support centres for literacy. Not in Houston. They need to be close enough that people can realistically access them.

N. Macdonald: Thank you, Ms. Davies. You've raised a number of interesting things that I'd like to question you about, but because I have limited time, I'll just focus on one.

It's to do with transition, which has been talked about somewhat with…. I think Bonita mentioned it — just moving from one job to take advantage of new opportunities that are coming in here but require a skill set. Do you have a sense that there's a comprehensive transition plan that is going to give opportunities to people and give them the skills they need?

B. Davies: I wish I could say yes. I think we always fall down on the planning. We skimp on the planning phase — right? We have immense development just over the horizon here in Prince Rupert, but we have had a very hard time coming to grips with what that is going to require in terms of training of the workforce. It's very difficult to get that information and then very difficult to translate what information we do get into practical training plans and to get people to buy into them.

N. Macdonald: Is your sense that if we're going to have people currently living in the area take advantage of those opportunities, then there has to be more emphasis put on that transition plan?

B. Davies: Absolutely. And certainly you do know that everyone is going to need the basic skills. They're going to need good literacy skills and good technology skills. That's a given.

R. Fleming: Ms. Davies, I just had a couple of questions. You mentioned in your recommendations for government action and support of literacy that one of the things they could focus on is their policy inconsistencies where government overall is seeking to promote adult literacy across the province, yet some of the ministries and agencies are actively discouraging people from having those opportunities. We heard the example from Jo previously about the NEA office here. I wonder if there are any other examples you could share with us where that's happening.

My second question is about…. You said we should be looking at libraries more. In this community the library is not serving the first nations community very well or perhaps…

R. Fleming: Right. I have a municipal government background myself, so I know that sometimes at budget time, with sensitivity to property taxes and all the rest of it, things like other infrastructure, let's say, will take priority over libraries. It may be the case here that to make a first nations–friendly library in this community…. I'm surprised they don't do it at all, given the number of first nations in this community.

B. Davies: Yes. I think there's potential for rotating a mobile collection. Because the communities are small, it would need to be a suitable and appropriate collection, and first nations people would have a voice in selecting what they want to have in it. It needn't be hugely expensive. I think there's probably some extension of their school library mandate and, again, placing appropriate collections in those for adults.

R. Fleming: Sometimes with libraries you can triple or multiply by five the usage by just redesigning the space. Libraries sometimes aren't the most fun places to hang out, but we know from experience with the Vancouver library and other places that redesign…. Of course, you're talking about capital costs and such. But if it were to be a literacy centre, could you see that being of use to your efforts in this community?

J. Nuraney (Chair): Seeing no further questions, thank you very much, Ms. Davies. It's been very good.

Our next presenter is Ms. Camazzola. Ms. Camazzola has driven all the way from Kitimat.

Let me, first of all, offer my apologies for running a little late. This is one of the things….

J. Camazzola: If I sound pedantic, forgive me. I've been in the teaching profession for so many years.

In 1989 we were thrilled when this book came out. I hope you know it. This is a wake-up call for Canada — Peter Calamai, Broken Words.

With the United Nations in 1990 declaring that the year of literacy, we became very ambitious and launched out. However, to date, I would like to tell you that the level of literacy in Canada has stayed the same since 1990. There has been no improvement of any kind, despite several hundred million dollars' worth being spent. Did you know that?

Let's have a look at this front one I have. The OECD tested children in over 40 countries, and Canada came out number three in the reading. We used to be number two. Number one, Finland; number two, Korea; number three, Canada. By the way, United States is number 17, but that's not our problem. It's heartbreaking.

I know Mr. Calamai is very upset. I've enclosed this for you. This is five years after his publication. This is 1995. He sees some problems. Also, this is in the year 2005, last year — a wake-up call. You may, I hope, have time to read that. Sad state across Canada, but in Kitimat, I hope we keep the flag flying.

In 1990 we got together and planned that we needed help from everybody. Can you recognize when there's a reading problem? We handed this out to all the offices and businesses in Kitimat and said: "If you see people having these kinds of problems, refer them to us, please."

This was published in the local paper in our many languages. I think there are 16 there. It's quite an international city, Kitimat. At the same time, we produced these bookmarks, which are in the five official languages of the United Nations, and left our telephone number and things at the back, so those could be distributed.

Yes, you can see we are an international city. Don't ask me to name all the languages, but they're there. These are the five languages.

Today, on the ESL page, I have a group of ESL ladies. These are the ladies who have been kind of abandoned by the schools, because they concentrate on keeping their home language going. There's shame on them if they can't go out to visit folks in India, and the children can't speak to their grandparents or their relatives.

Now the children have gown up and gone, and they come to me. So we sit and talk, and we comfort them and help them. We've devised a very delightful program in ESL — very casual, lots of conversation, lots of illustrations. This is where our money goes. This comes in four different levels, and they find that very comforting. We sit and swap stories, recipes, and stories about children and husbands too.

They become Canadian citizens, and we help them with that. They learn to drive a car. We help them with an easier manual, which is in easier English.

We sit and discuss, and when we're in a group like that, they feel confident asking me questions about religion — Sikh religion, Roman Catholic religion, Hindu religion — and they ask questions about other religions. We spend a lot of time discussing that, because they're Canadian citizens now, and the word is "tolerance" — only with tolerance, a little knowledge.

I always remember a Hindu lady saying to me: "Christianity is like Hinduism. We have three gods; you have three gods: Father, Son and Holy Ghost." I didn't argue.

Then another thing I must admit. When I feel they can trust me a little, I get around to teaching them that — now, believe this — the sperm of the father determines the sex of the baby. I've watched many couples in Kitimat send the first wife back and come back with another wife. So they have to get that, and they've never heard of it. This is not discussed.

Even with my Japanese students…. Alcan has a Japanese quality control fellow who…. She, a well-educated woman, said to me: "If a woman has narrow hips, a boy; wide hips, a girl." This is an educated Japanese lady. It's not discussed in these cultures at all, but I let them know. I might as well confess that when I meet any cab drivers in Vancouver and ask them about their family, I let them know as well.

This one, the IELTS…. I'd never heard of this before, but this is a University of Cambridge exam, which is international. I was faced with a Thai nurse coming to Canada, marrying a Canadian. She has a four-year degree in nursing, but she has to take this exam before she can even tackle the nursing exam. Have you ever seen it before? No. It took me by surprise, so I did some research in Vancouver. This is where they have classes for them. Can you see the expense?

I wrote a letter to the MP and complained about lack of funding for professionals who come to Canada. Again, across Canada you get the same complaint. He might help. But I'm preparing her to get, with this exam…. But she may face three months in Vancouver, and since she's a new bride, that's not in her at the moment.

Anyway, back to my original Canadian students. I enjoy my ESL work tremendously. Alcan, when they first hired people, made sure they were in good health. They didn't ask for grade 12. So my first students were people earning excellent salaries. Along comes this man who's been injured in the garage. He's put in front of a computer and told: "You do light work now. You just tell the garage what to do." He had to type in "change oil." He couldn't spell "ch."

Another one with some money couldn't pass his driver's test, but he bought a car in Terrace, drove it back illegally and parked it in his driveway for a year. He got his licence. Oh, you have no idea. Anyway, Alcan has, of course.

What I do with all my anglophone students — you'll find it on the bottom of the page — is test them when they're comfortable. I don't give them a reading test. I give them a receptive vocabulary test. I'm talking teacher talk. It's what goes in through their ear and they understand. They haven't been able to read, but they've been listening and talking, so some vocabulary is in here. That gives us an idea of their potential — what might happen to them.

Then I have rather specialized tests for their strengths, especially kinesthetic/ tactile. These are your plumbers, your electricians, your tradesmen. They are bright, but they're bright through their hands. Any tutors I've trained know what to do with them. They manipulate things when they're learning. They use it with colour, like all the vowels are marked in red. That means danger or stop. Left- or right-brained — left, completely organized; right-brained, completely messed up — and blending of the two.

But there are strengths. You know yourself how you remember telephone numbers. Do you remember them up here, or do you remember them on paper? You have those strengths. I know for teachers, we don't have many kinesthetic/tactile ones. I can't fix my car.

Then I zero in on blending, the sounds of the letters. It's a code. You have to break the code for them so they can look at a word and say: "I can sound that out. It's not ABC; it's ah, buh, kuh." Each of my students gets one of these. It's called a word bank. It's alphabetized, and at the back there are all the dangers — the regular ones. You know, 80 percent of English is regular — would you believe?

Then there are highlights, because there are two sounds of this letter. Fortunately in Kitimat we've got a bus that goes to the city centre, so we don't go to the "kity kentre." Got it? There's the rule, in front of an "e" and "i." I'm sorry — teacher's talk again. The "g" and the guh, so it's "Gingerbread man ran into the gym." You have a rule without teaching a rule. Another one is that the "y" is yuh. See, the "y" begins with the sound wuh, but the sound wuh is a "w," which is a crazy name.

Anyway, sorry. This is what I do. And for the ESL folks, they put in the English word and the translation initially so that they can use this as well. We fill this up as they learn to write journals and things like that. I published that manual because I found the tutoring manual was inadequate, so I made my own and published it for $25,000 way back in 1992. I got a horrific review. This is the one from Okanagan. They said it was for children, not for adults, but I disagree strongly about that.

If you look at the next one, this is from a tutor trainer in Nanaimo who loved it. It's very simple; it's straightforward. Tutors are not teachers. For tutors this has to be simplified. Anyway, kinesthetic/tactile with this. This comes in this book, which was published in 2002, when there was another around-the-province review. Do you know it? I'll leave it with you.

This is part of the tutor training — things to do with people who are visual, kinesthetic, tactile; activities, and a remediation and respite page. I found horrific stories from some of my students, explanations of why they couldn't read — nothing to do with teaching, nothing to do with school. It was horrific, especially that first one — the male in a Roman Catholic school where the sister strapped his left hand because the devil was in it. True story. He's about 45 now. It makes you cry that teachers could do that.

Then the Kitimat Community Services, which kept me going all these years, sent me to this brain conference. All the speakers there had to speak in non-academic terms because there were people from all walks of life

By the way, this is reader-friendly. We stick it up outside the stores, so that folks recognize it and go in and ask for help — anglophone or ESL.

N. Macdonald: When I was talking to Janette earlier, one of the things that she asked about — maybe it's something that you could just address to her…. She was talking about the report that was done in 2002. From her perspective, the work that was done on that was valuable but had not been acted upon.

J. Camazzola: My recommendation is in there. They've noticed that 80 percent of folks who can't read are kinesthetic/tactile. I don't know why there isn't training for tutors. Nobody tackles that in the tutor-training manual.

N. Macdonald: I thought I'd just give you the opportunity. Not everything that is going to be put before the committee, of course, is going to be incorporated, but just to assure you — and I'll just let the Chair do that — that he has been assured….

J. Camazzola: Professional testing. The coordinator should be able to be professional enough to diagnose what the learning style is. But when I speak to groups of people who do this, they look at me with a blank look. They don't know what I'm talking about.

M. Polak: I just wondered what kind of initial response you had from businesses around the reader-friendly program. Did you face any resistance to it at first, and if so, what did you do about that?

M. Polak: From businesses that…. For example, putting the sticker in the window — the reader-friendly….

J. Camazzola: Oh, they welcomed it. We're on the point of renewing it. I got many questions on how it worked, and it worked very well. Our MP wrote a note and said he might use it nationally, but nothing came of it. It's truly innovative and would be a wonderful project to be implemented on a national basis. That's 1990.

D. Routley: Thank you very much, Ms. Camazzola. You mentioned professional testing. Dr. Satya Brink, who brought testimony to the hearing last time, mentioned that if we don't catch issues like bias toward tactile learning early in the K-to-12 system, we end up paying twice. Part of the goal of this committee is to identify where resources will best be directed.

I think you've underlined the importance of identifying those issues while the ear of a child is young enough to adapt….

D. Routley: Yes, I appreciate that. You also mentioned workplace safety issues around literacy — the example of the Vietnamese drownings. This brings up another issue, because there's a big discussion in the province around immigrant workers coming to Canada now. Many people are familiar with the fact that we'll be driven in a taxicab by someone with a very high skill set who's not able to apply it in this country. As we try to identify where to place the resources in literacy programs and to protect the people who do lower-skilled jobs in industrial scenarios, you would agree that that's an important area of focus?

J. Camazzola: I have an engineer from east Germany, and she has to face improving her English before she can attack her engineering tests. She speaks Russian too, of course.

J. Rustad: I want to thank you for your presentation and for coming today. We've heard a lot of expert witnesses from various areas around the province. It's very interesting hearing an academic approach to solving the issue in literacy and hearing from someone who has the academic background but who's on the ground and applying it.

I wanted to just actually thank you for presenting your ideas and thoughts around this.

J. Camazzola: I'm on a teacher's retirement pension, and I get a raise every January — I hope you know. I got a raise, and my grandson says to me: "You work, Grandma?"

Anyway, may I add one more thing? In Nunavut the children learn English in grade 5. Warning sign: they're failing school — all of them. Did you know that in Quebec there is no grade 7? One to six, eight to 12. They leave at 17. They must go to a local college for the first two years of university. The people from Quebec love it. It has worked extremely well. I have several people from Quebec who come because Alcan sends

them over for two or three years while their children become completely bilingual.

The Korean children, of course, are paying school boards up and down B.C. for their education. Do you know about that too? Up in Kitimat it's a little cheaper than Vancouver, so we have a few of those.

J. Rustad: We have some in Prince George, as well, in the school district there. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for that, because it was very refreshing to hear your perspective.

J. Camazzola: And the program wouldn't have survived unless the community services had sponsored me. They even sponsored me coming here. They put me up at the Crest.

K. Leach: Good morning, hon. members. I'd like to go over a couple of things before I start my official presentation. One of the items that I received the other day was the report on education from Emery Dosdall, the Deputy Minister of Education. In it he talked about enhancement agreements that have been signed in 16 districts around the province with aboriginal partners. In here it says:

Some statistics. First nations are not attaining education and employment levels equal to Canadians even though most first nations are under the age of 25 and represent the workforce of tomorrow. About 70 percent of first nations students on reserve will never complete high school. Graduation rates for the on-reserve population range from 29 percent to 32 percent annually.

Ten thousand first nations students who are eligible and looking to attend post-secondary education are on waiting lists because of underfunding. Unemployment rates for aboriginal groups continue to be at least double the rate of the non-aboriginal population. Registered Indians have the highest unemployment rate of any aboriginal group at 27 percent.

My English name is Kevin Leach. My Tsimshian name is [Sm'algyax spoken]. I am a member of the Gispaxlo'ots tribe of Lax Kw'alaams. I come from the houses of [Sm'algyax spoken]. I am the vice-principal of the alternate school, Kaien Island Alternate School, which is a hop, skip and jump down the street. We share facilities with the Prince Rupert Friendship House. We have three classrooms. The Friendship House provides us with two first nations educational workers, which they fund. The teaching staff is funded by the school district.

We have some of the most at-risk adolescent and adult students in Prince Rupert attending our school. Last year our enrolment as of the end of September was approximately 71 students. This year, because of a number of changes that we enacted last year, we had over 101 applicants to our school. Out of that, we finished on September 30 with approximately 91 students — 64 adults, and the rest are adolescents. The ten students who disappeared from the list disappeared primarily because of funding issues.

Now, what I've done is put together a package for you, and I'm not going to go through everything in here. At the back I've included a couple of articles I wrote a number of years back that deal specifically with literacy and literacy-related issues. I've been involved in literacy from the days that I had long flowing hair, and it was a different colour than grey. In that time I have accumulated a lot of experience with literacy as it applies to adolescents as well as adults. I think that good literacy practice is good literacy practice; it works for everyone. I've detailed that in a couple of articles, so I'll leave that for you to read over when you have the time.

As I said, I'm the vice-principal of the alternate school. I oversee 91 students, 27 of whom are school-aged. The balance are adults.

Enrolment is up this year significantly, I feel, because we tailor our program to first nations students. We offer first nations language programs, first nations art, first nations studies and participation in culturally based classes outside of a timetable, where our students can carve, weave, make regalia.

We had a feast in March of last year where all the students in the school, adolescent and adult included, participated in the creation of a series of panels that were 120 square feet. We are really drawn to first nations culture, first nations history and trying to tap into things that will draw more first nations people into our building. As I stated earlier, there is a significant body of people out there who do not have their high school diplomas, and we want to change that.

If you want to improve literacy, you want to also provide those opportunities where adult students can access their high school diplomas. That's an issue we've been fighting for, for a number of years.

So far this year I've advocated on behalf of four students who are set to graduate in 2007, and I'm glad that Jo Scott mentioned the local EI office. But I do want to present a slightly different picture in that Bob Miller, who's the supervisor in that office, has been a great partner for us. Through Farley Stewart, who is the executive director at the Friendship House, through other school district personnel, through myself and through Bob Miller, we have actually brought Bob Miller over to the Friendship House and sat down and showed him the kinds of things we're doing there in terms of programs.

You know, oftentimes we talk to these people on the phone or we end up in their office, standing at the counter, angry because we're having to deal with something. What we decided to do is take a slightly more proactive approach and invite Bob over and give him a sense of what we're offering adult students in the Friendship House program.

We're still dealing with situations where, according to EI legislation, adult students are only allowed to take two courses a year if they're receiving EI funding. For a lot of the students that attend our school, their literacy skills are often compromised. What I mean by that is that I have students who range in their reading abilities anywhere from grade 2.7 to past high school, and that obviously can have an impact on what kind of relationship they have with the school. So we're really trying to work at that.

If you are a student and you know it's going to take you three to four years just to get your high school diploma, how motivated are you going to be to do that? That's the question that a lot of our adult students are asking us as well. If I'm only allowed to take two courses a year, and it's going to take me four years to finish my high school, and I'm already 34 years old…. It really changes your prospects.

Bob Miller has been a great advocate for us, and one of the things he's looking at in terms of his employment plans that can be drawn up is that we can look at a school program that's being offered. If it can be offered in a timely fashion so that the student can obtain their high school diploma in a reasonable period of time, they can include that as part of the plan.

We actually had one case. He's been looking for a test case, and we got one case of a student where it was actually included in her educational plan, and that student is set to graduate in June 2007. That's the first one we know of. I've had more meetings than I care to share about trying to get this issue going. I think the local EI office, the supervisor in there, is really doing a job and trying to get this stuff going, but he's limited by the legislation that's in place. That's been the major difficulty.

I think that one of the main barriers that's existed for students who haven't been able to enrol in our school is living expenses. Now, we don't charge tuition. We charge a $50 book deposit and a small stipend for arts supplies, but other than that we don't charge tuition to the students. Where the problem lies is that they don't have money for their living expenses. They want to improve themselves. They want to be able to get a grade 12 education, but it doesn't happen because they can't afford to go off EI. If they attend school, they lose their EI benefits. For many of them, the funding that comes from the villages only goes so far.

Now, what I talked about back in November 2005 before the First Nations Summit in Kelowna…. I brought these issues forward, and I attached a letter in behind, which I sent to everybody I could think of that might have a hand in this issue, hoping that the issue might be addressed at that point. It wasn't, unfortunately, because of the way that government changed and so on.

But the need is still there, and I think that my main case, I guess, is to go to EI and supporting government organizations and say: "Look. It makes sense to allow people to maintain their EI benefits while they're attending high school." There's more funding out there for post-secondary than there is for secondary.

Now, if 70 percent of the people who are on reserves are not getting a high school diploma, and you extrapolate that year to year to year, there are thousands of people out there that don't have it. So let's make it easy for them to be able to access that by putting the support network in place to make that happen.

One of the things we do at the Friendship House to make things more supportive, as well, is that the Friendship House allows us access to programs from alcohol and drug counselling, pregnancy outreach, community health workers, nutritionists and the Friendship House elders. We use all of these services and facilities to help our students along. Some of them do have issues where they need to have counselling, and those services are there to be able to do that. That's where I'm really proud to have the school district and the Friendship House combine forces to be able to provide these options.

One of the other things that we do in our program, in conjunction with the Friendship House, is offer skill certification programs — or courses in conjunction, actually, with the college here. Last year, as an example, through funding provided by the Friendship House, students who wanted to participate obtained their drivers' licences, FoodSafe, Serving It Right, WHMIS, cashier training, traffic control or flagging, SuperHost, first aid and more.

Some of the students that we got back this year heard about the fact that their friends and relatives got these certifications, which make them more employable with outfits like B.C. Ferries and so on, and that was a draw to bring some of these people in. Again, these are at no cost to the students. There are Skeena Native Development funds and so on and Friendship House funds that help to support that.

Now, the other thing that we're doing as well — again, in the articles that I've attached there — is that literacy also has to be addressed, obviously, in the classroom. Good literacy practice is good literacy practice. You have to include materials that are culturally relevant and meaningful to the group that you're working with. You have to make education exciting and interesting, and there's a wide variety of ways to do that — scaffolding instruction to make sure that all students are working at a level that they're capable of. That means, perhaps, giving them more time; cutting the assignment down a little bit so that the level of complexity is not there; organizing assignments into smaller steps so that they can experience success that way; explicit instruction of literacy practice.

One of the other things that I've discovered in my literacy experience is that engaging in action research — looking at the actual population in your school, identifying what some of the issues are that are impacting

students' ability to learn and trying to address that within each school — is another way of improving teaching practice. Now you're looking at the population a little more closely.

I've been involved in the network of performance-based schools, which is a provincial organization which allows all the schools that are participating to access all the great experience and other approaches that schools are using. There's the Imaginative Education Research Group out of SFU that is also promoting these kinds of things.

In the end, adult literacy, or the achievement of it, requires (1) securing people's basic needs, (2) providing education that's culturally inclusive and relevant to adult students and (3) ensuring that government programs and personnel support and sustain practices and legislation that promote literacy and long-term employability.

N. Macdonald: Kevin, just a quick question on resources. You again mentioned, as other witnesses have talked about, the need for culturally appropriate resources. Is that something that we need to build?

K. Leach: Yeah. I think that's, again, one of the advantages that we have in our building. We do have first nations cultural workers. I think that resources aren't just paper resources. Resources are also having the ability to have those cultural liaisons. Lots of times, when you're talking about first nations issues, the students feel more comfortable dealing with somebody who understands that — somebody of first nations ancestry.

The other thing that we've done is that the local school district has done an excellent job of developing a wide variety of first nations resources, but there are huge costs associated with that. For one of my master's courses, I was reading a paper where out east, off of Hudson Bay, they were looking at developing things like language programs and first nations resources. They guesstimated that per school, the cost of doing that was at $200,000.

Now, they multiply that by…. There are 11 schools in this district. It's huge money, but the initiative has to be there to be able to do it. I think that in Prince Rupert we've been very fortunate in that our First Nations Educational Council as well as the first nations ed department have really developed some awesome materials. Those are available to schools throughout the district. That kind of stuff does make a difference.

They launched a new book called Persistence and Change last year, and that book is being used across the district. It deals with Tsimshian culture, Tsimshian history and Tsimshian language. Being able to tap into that and use Prince Rupert's stuff makes a big difference to these students.

M. Polak: With respect to the issue of providing for people's daily needs as they attend classes or programs, the committee certainly would have a significant role to play in making recommendations for ministries to cooperate, etc. To do that, I want to understand it a little better.

Just to clarify: when you mentioned EI, you're not talking about employment insurance. You're talking about social assistance — otherwise, welfare.

M. Polak: I'm trying to tease out what parts are federal and what are provincial, because when you're dealing with aboriginal populations — and in particular, on-reserve — there's often a push-pull ramble.

You're talking about the provincial level, and you're talking about social assistance payments.

M. Polak: Now, is it the same for off-reserve and on-reserve, or is there a difference?

K. Leach: Obviously, most of the students we're dealing with, because we're down the street, are off-reserve. In our adolescent group we had, actually, three or four students that came in from Lax Kw'alaams this year to attend school here.

One of the things that we do after we finish setting up a program for our adult students is that we give them a letter that says they're enrolled in such-and-such a school so that they can take that to their band and get funding, if that's available.

One of the things, too, when we set up our class schedules for our adults, for an adult grad you need an English 12 of sorts, you need a math 11 and you need three grade 12 electives. We try to set up the adult students' schedules in a way that opens it up so that they can go and look for work, so technically, they're satisfying the EI requirement there.

We try and set it up so that they get two or three afternoons a week that are completely free. So they're not attending school from nine to three every day. We try to break it up into terms so that those things are open. We're really trying to tailor our program to what the EI requirements are. Like I said, Bob has been great, and we are so happy to finally get the one person qualified this year.

M. Polak: And it fits with the stated intent of government. We've seen the Kelowna accord and all those things everybody's pushing toward. How do we work together to make this happen? It's helpful when we get a highlight of where the problems lie and what we need to do to get everything aligned so everybody's pulling together.

D. Routley: It was very interesting, and I appreciate your strong emphasis on the barriers that are in front of people. Some of the pushback to some of those barriers and identifying them is that people will say: "We want

to avoid the eternal student on assistance." I think that's a poor characterization, and most of the certificates you've pointed to are short-term. They help that learner, but they also have a very strong social determinant of health link, I think, and a public safety link.

When we look at WHMIS, look at Serving it Right…. These are programs that help protect the community and were established in order to help protect the community in areas of industry that could have potential harm if workers aren't well-enough educated.

I congratulate you on identifying those, but what do you think would best benefit the students who seek those programs in terms of focusing the resources that this committee may be recommending to government?

K. Leach: I'm sorry that I didn't address that when I was delivering. In the letter that is set out to the Hon. Claude Richmond, what I said was that you can't have people on year in, year out for time immemorial. What I suggest is a window of 24 months, because we legitimately have some students…. Like I said, if you've got somebody that's got a grade 2.7 reading level, you're not going to be able to move them as far as they need to go in nine months. It's not going to happen.

You've got a better chance over a two-year period. You're not going to be able to solve all the problems there, but I'm saying with a 24-month window, that then enables us to go to the band councils; that enables us to go to the students themselves and say: "Look, you have to attend on a regular basis, because this funding is set for this period of time, and after that it dries up."

It allows us, as well, to put some pressure on the students to ensure that they're there. It would also provide a degree of motivation for them to be in the program but yet still be supported. Some people can do it in a year; other people need two.

D. Routley: Are you finding that there's an acceptance of the notion that these programs have a wider benefit than just to the learner, that there is an impact to the social determinants of health, which we've seen are quite poor in many of our rural communities — this one included?

We've heard that a very high percentage of…. I think the students here are the second most vulnerable in the province. Have you focused your message to community at all on the broader benefit to community?

K. Leach: Oh, absolutely. I think that's one of the things that we deal with every day. Last year our grade 10 class of 17 students had five pregnant girls in it — right? Interviewing students last year about their school experience — the adults: "Why did you leave school?" "My family situation was horrendous, and I just had to get out." Or: "Parents had a job, then didn't have a job, and I had to go out and work." We had another fellow whose father was laid off, so he went back to work to support the family.

There's a wide range of why people left school in the first place, but what we want to focus on is: what is it we can do to get them to come back? How is it we can make them feel more comfortable? I think that we're doing a reasonable job at that. I think the fact that we've got 20 to 30 more applicants this year than last year is an indication that something's going right.

I'm not saying that we're God's gift, but people vote with their feet. I think there has to be something there that's appealing to them. I think the fact that we're not just focusing on one area…. We're focusing on certificates that can help them be more employable. We're providing them with an education.

The other thing which I haven't mentioned is that we have a free breakfast and lunch program. We've secured $5,000 in funds through Community LINK. That's not going to make it through to the end of the year. I spend God knows how much time applying for grants just to keep that kind of stuff going.

We've got a regular group of adult and teenage students who are there for breakfast at 8:30 in the morning and who are there when I'm serving grilled cheese sandwiches on Thursday — that kind of thing.

We're doing all of that stuff because if you provide the food, they'll be there. You know, if you build it, they will come. That's a draw.

D. Routley: One final, tiny question, just for clarification. You mentioned that your increase was to 101 and that you lost ten, and it was mostly due to….

K. Leach: Yeah, we're down to 91 students. I had one fellow, actually, that was on the verge of tears, because he could not get funding anywhere he looked. He's probably 50 years old. Our graduating class last year ranged from 22 years of age to 59. Our oldest student this year is 56. Our youngest is 19.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Leach. Let me commend you for the work that you are doing. I know that alternate school is a huge challenge, but it meets the need of the community. There is one in Burnaby that I'm working with also. I think the work that you are doing is absolutely commendable, so I congratulate you.

K. Leach: I invite you all to come down if you want to and have a look around.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Members, we have an open mike. We have two presenters at the open mike. The format is a little different. The format is that each of the presenters will get five minutes to present and no questioning.

The first one is Marie Grinstrand, and she'll be accompanied by Linh Vo, Guiha Jiang, Jeseema John Nixon and Ranjit Kaur Toor.

M. Grinstrand: I'm glad that you said it was an open mike and less formal, because I have not prepared a formal presentation…

M. Grinstrand: …although I possibly will put my thoughts in writing and submit something in writing.

I have been working at the college for 30 years. I've been teaching ESL since 1979, mostly here in Prince Rupert. These are some of my current ESL students. I thought it would be a nice experience for them. I explained about the government committee and so on. I just wanted you to kind of see who it is everybody else is talking about.

Everybody has come before you and spoken very eloquently about learners and so on, but sometimes the learners themselves don't have the voice yet to articulate their needs or their feelings. My students have bravely agreed to sit here. We've been practising adjectives this morning — brave, nervous, shy and so on.

J. Nuraney (Chair): No. You have five minutes, as I said, to make the presentation.

M. Grinstrand: I'll let Linh introduce this. First of all, I'll just say that this is a bit of an example of the immigrant community in Prince Rupert. There is a large Vietnamese community, a large Punjabi community, a tiny little Sri Lankan community — four families, I think. But there is immigration into Prince Rupert. We do still get immigration. We do get funding from the ELSA funding. Anyway, I'll let my students take over.

L. Vo: First I want to say hello to everyone here. And therefore, myself and my family really thank the Canada government. It really concerns us when we come here. We miss lots of English, just like….

I'm sorry. My name is Linh Vo, and I come from Vietnam. I think everybody immigration is…. I just want to say thank you to government and especially my ESL teachers, and we really need to keep the ESL classes, still, and develop in the futures. We all have families and really busy, but we can come here because we have the benefits from the government. So I think it's really good. We really lucky to live in the northwest, small community. We have special benefits here. So, again, we really thank you.

G. Jiang: Morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to college here. My English is not good, because I have live here for four months. I'm working. I work in China for ten years. I'm a construction engineer in China, but because my husband work pulp mill, I live here. My name is Grace, in English; Chinese name, Guiha Jiang. Jiang, my family name.

At first I don't like English because my English is not good, and I don't spoke to English. I worry about my English — not good. I didn't listen to the people. I say: "What do you say? I don't know."

Slowly, Marie teach me English. I interested in English and listen to people, English, a little, little, little. Oh, I like English. I think this place, the people is warm heart. I like here.

Though this place is small, but it's beautiful and people happy for me. I think my English, someday, it's very good.

J. Nixon: Good morning to everybody. My name is Jeseema John Nixon. I am from Sri Lanka. I live with my husband, and one baby I have here. Six month I am in Canada. I am very happy to be Canadian. It's very good people, with friendly, not like my Sri Lankan people. Everybody is very friendly — like doctors, teachers.

Everybody is really good, and I can speak English not very well. But I am in ESL, like, one month. It's very good. Good and patient in the school. They help very much. They help very good.

Anjou, her nickname, came to Prince Rupert briefly in about April. Then she got a job right away. Her family got her a job down in Abbotsford picking fruit. So she has just come back now. The season is over so now she can come to English class.

Part of the reason the class is quite small is that people are busy working and they do have jobs and it is hard for…. You know, they do have to make a time commitment. Women generally have a little bit more time than men because often they're home with their children. We do get funding from the ELSA to pay for day care, which is a real boon. That's an excellent advantage, and it really does help. But again women, especially, do become isolated in their homes, and so it's a wonderful opportunity for them to come.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Excellent. Thank you very much for coming in. Let me congratulate you, Marie, for the work that you are doing.

M. Grinstrand: They've made me so proud. I'm very proud of them, yes. They're doing well, and sometimes just forcing yourself to do something is a good experience for you.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Excellent. Next year when we come we want all of you to make a speech.

L. Gagnon: I understand you have to be in Prince George by four. Is that correct?

I'm going to be brief, obviously, if I have five minutes. I wasn't planning on speaking today. Our president

was going to speak; however, unfortunately, she's ill. I've been sitting here all morning and wanting to jump out of my seat and add comments, so this is my opportunity.

You may not be aware that Northwest Community College serves a region about the size of France. We actually serve all the way from Haida Gwaii up to Stewart, so we have a real sense of what the learners need. I'd say certainly a common core is the fact that literacy is a huge barrier for students.

I'm the dean of developmental education and have been working within ABE, literacy, adult special education for many years now, and it's near and dear to my heart. A lot of what was said today I won't reiterate because it's already been said and it's quite significant. Certainly what Kevin said earlier is absolutely true about many of the barriers. We find, of course, funding is a huge barrier. I have to reiterate just this one point about the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance — that our students are not coming to school because of their policies.

A few years ago, before that policy was put in place, we had 100 students on the wait-list to get into adult basic education. We no longer have that wait-list, and it's simply a matter of funding. We've seen dramatic decreases because of that and it really needs to be addressed. Kevin has approached the ministry; we have approached the ministry as the deans and directors, provincially; I know our president has, and hopefully some changes can be made.

Our students also experience day care problems. Big issue. A lot of our students are parents and can't come to school because they don't have day care. Of course there are personal problems that Kevin certainly illustrated. Some of them are working, particularly, in the past, in the canneries. We lose students sometimes to working in the fishing industry, although we see decreases there as well because the industries aren't doing as well.

We have many, many students who come to our classes who have learning challenges. What that means is that they may have a learning disability or they may be slow learners. So you can imagine, when we have students who come to the classrooms with such barriers or challenges, it's very, very challenging for the instructors to address their needs. Unfortunately, because of provincial policies, the students that are in ABE — adult basic ed — cannot access funding to get additional resources or services because they're in ABE.

There's a small pot of money known as APSD, and they're given to the institutions. It's a very, very small pot of money. For instance, I think last year our institution may have had the sum of around $30,000, so we can hire a tutor to help a student that has a learning barrier that has not been identified as a learning disability.

What that means, though, is that we have to divvy up that $30,000 between all of the campuses or learning centres, from Haida Gwaii to Stewart. As you can imagine, that money doesn't go very far. Many, many people have these learning challenges, and so that is also difficult for them to increase their literacy skills because of these disabilities.

What I also want to mention is the importance of cooperative relationships between communities, organizations and agencies. We have such partnerships, I'm proud to say. We've got Literacy Now, the community literacy project. We've just recently signed letters of agreement with Lax Kw'alaams. We have a teacher living over in Lax Kw'alaams, the village of Port Simpson, right now teaching 25 literacy students. We're very proud. Last year he moved there, and he had six students. This year he has 25. He has 20 more students expressing an interest.

I think that shows how important our partnerships with aboriginal communities are — that we really have a presence. We have to be very mindful of our partnering with first nations communities, using first nations content and curricula and respecting that and also understanding about the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and the utilization of elders in our community programs. That's what we do.

We also have partnerships with villages that we just signed — with Gitwangak, Laxgalts'ap, Glen Vowell, Kispiox, Gitanmaax. We're really proud of a new program that we launched last year. It was a pilot project called essential skills for work — ESWK. We recognize that in order to address literacy issues, we really have to approach it at a holistic level. This is what our ESWK does. We take this program, and we go into the villages that I just mentioned, and we offer these programs.

What's different about them is that they certainly have the literacy component as part of the curricula, but they also use the elders and community members as support. We have work experience placements, as I'm sure you're all familiar with, but our work experience placements are often non-traditional placements where they may help out at feasts; they may, in fact, contribute to the beautification of the village; they help each other.

We organize the programs so that we don't interfere with their mushroom picking, fishing season and harvesting. Last year we ran three programs, one in Kispiox, Glen Vowell and the other one in Greenville — Laxgalts'ap — and we found they were so successful that they've come back to us again. We're offering those three programs, but not only that; we're probably going to offer three or four more. So we're doubling the number of programs, and it's because of this holistic approach that we're looking at in addressing literacy issues. We consider that very significant, and we're proud of that.

We really consider ourselves a bicultural institution. We feel that we're quite unique. We're not like the urban campuses or urban institutions in the lower mainland. We recognize not only the diversity of the first nations in this area — and there are many within the area that we serve — but also, of course, the multiculturalism that exists here within NWCC. We feel that we address the needs of our unique learners, their special needs, through our bicultural goals.

One of the things that I want to mention before I finish is that I think also that internal supports are extremely important to learners. I know that Kevin had touched upon it too. We have what we consider to be a very successful student support team. Not all institutions

do this. We have a first nations access coordinator who helps our first nations students. We have a learning assistance specialist. We have an accessibility services coordinator. They work as a team with our education advisor, and they do a number of things to help our students. I think those internal supports are really important. We also, of course, have library services, and we have a very, very strong first nations council who advises us on curriculum and programs. That's key.

One of the things I just have to mention about funding has to do with a previous funding that we used to have, particularly for students who are on income assistance. It was called TAB funding. Unfortunately, TAB funding was eliminated a few years ago, and we saw a huge decrease in numbers. It all coincides with the new policies around the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. The TAB funding was ideal for students that couldn't afford to come. As Kevin said, the living allowances are really, really important.

The other one is the IBT. I don't know if you remember when IBT was in place, but IBT was a support budget that helped students that were in ABE, basically, and it would give them supports — recognizing that students who come to us, usually literacy-level students, have baggage. They have issues outside of school that can be barriers to their learning.

It helped them with day care and accessing day care. It helped them getting to school, with transportation. Funding like that would be very, very beneficial, if we could access something like that again.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, this concludes our session in Prince Rupert. The meeting is now adjourned.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

1)	Evangeline Nyce
	Bonita Wilson
	Edna Ryan
	Lorraine Woods
2)	Northwest Community College	Sharon Jo Scott
3)	Literacy Now — North Coast Region	Beth Davies
4)	Literacy Kitimat	Janette Camazzola
5)	Kaien Island Alternate School	Kevin Leach
6)	Marie Grinstrand
	Linh Vo
	Guiha Jiang
	Jeseema John Nixon
7)	Northwest Community College	Lianne Gagnon

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