Education — Issue No. 13 — Thursday, October 5, 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		267
J. Cliff-Marks A. Wassing J. Exley C. De Melo P. Uppal B. Xiao A. Godderis L. Olsen

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:	Jennifer Cliff-Marks (Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — Nakusp) Connie De Melo Joan Exley (Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — Castlegar) Ann Godderis Dr. Lyle Olsen (Selkirk College) Paramjeet Uppal Ali Wassing (Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — Nakusp) Bo Xiao

J. Nuraney (Chair): Good morning. My name is John Nuraney. I am 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 Castlegar. It is a real pleasure for us to be in your fine city and 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 made available on the committees 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 committees 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 committees 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. The mandate says 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 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 the Clerk Assistant in the Legislative Assembly and our Committee Clerk, and our researcher, Josie Schofield, is at the information table.

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

J. Rustad: Good morning. My name is John Rustad. I'm the MLA for Prince George–Omineca. I've been through the Kootenays a couple of times in the past, but I must admit this is my first time in Castlegar, and it sure is a beautiful city.

N. Macdonald: My name is Norm Macdonald. I'm the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke, part of the Kootenays. I had the pleasure to be here as recently as last weekend, so it's nice to be back here in Castlegar. This is a tremendous turnout. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to travel here and join us.

M. Polak: Mary Polak. I'm the MLA for Langley. Again, I guess, I want to acknowledge the turnout. We're really pleased. In a lot of the communities that we've been to or tried to go to, it's been difficult to raise interest in the topic to this kind of a degree. So you're to be commended for being able to provide such interested participants and audience in a relatively small community, compared to the other places we've been. Thank you.

D. Routley: I'm Doug Routley, MLA, Cowichan-Ladysmith. If this is the day I think it is, then it must be Castlegar. The committee has been like that. For someone who's afraid of flying, it's been quite an experience. My role in the opposition caucus is that of critic for apprenticeships and skills training, and I am very happy to be back in Castlegar. Norm and I were here a week ago. It is a beautiful community, another beautiful rural community that provides the real bread and butter for this province.

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 this committee to help us in our work.

J. Cliff-Marks: Thank you so much for this opportunity, and thank you for travelling to the Kootenays. We appreciate this opportunity.

We're Ali Wassing and Jennifer Cliff-Marks. We're the regional literacy coordinators for the Selkirk College and College of the Rockies regions, and we co-direct the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, which I'd like to refer to as CBAL from this point forward.

CBAL is a charitable non-profit organization working in 16 community areas of the Columbia Basin. We actually have a map there with the community areas where we're located.

We're strong advocates for a unified community approach to serving the literacy needs of our communities. We support integration of community services, community literacy coordinators and building partnerships. As well, we've seen strong evidence to support the continuum of services from family literacy programs to programs designed specifically for adults and seniors.

We would like to highlight today what works for us, what we think would work in other communities in British Columbia, and the important role that family literacy plays as a preventative role in raising adult literacy rates.

The Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy has a strong base built on a history of community cooperation and collaboration. It's interesting to note that Project Literacy West Kootenay was started in this library as a partnership between Selkirk College, interested folks from Castlegar, West Kootenay libraries and a branch of the United Nations. So the history actually started, in some ways, in this building.

The area covers 60,000 square kilometres, going from north, Valemount; west, Revelstoke; east to the Elk Valley; and south to the Grand Forks–west boundary area. While it's less than 10 percent of the population of British Columbia, we host more than 25 percent of its communities.

The organization was formally incorporated in the year 2000, but again, its predecessors — Project Literacy West Kootenay in the west and Project READ in the east — had beginnings in 1988. Over the years CBAL has expanded its focus to include family and adult literacy. It has emerged, after the most recent community literacy planning process with Literacy Now, as a model for community development in our province.

Because of the strength of our base, we're able to provide a stable platform from which to apply for additional funds and distribute those funds and support equitably among our 16 community areas.

We offer family literacy and adult literacy services to approximately 4,000 adults and children annually. Last year we worked with 129 community partners, including our schools, colleges and libraries. Last year we employed 104 people and trained over 150 volunteers to work with adults and children in schools and literacy centres.

Our annual budget has grown from $450,000 in 2001 to a projected $850,000 this year. All of this work is accomplished by a part-time staff, almost entirely women.

A regional approach has worked for us in many ways. It allows for an infrastructure that provides stability to our collaborating communities. It provides financial stability and an accountability process that our funders demand. It provides stability for our community literacy coordinators and facilitators who would otherwise scramble from year to year not knowing if they themselves have a job or that they could provide funds for programs that they've planned with their communities.

It also allows for the building of strong and respectful partnerships with school districts, colleges, libraries and other funding groups such as health and social service agencies, which depend on stability and accountability.

It provides us with a reporting process that's completed centrally and does not require excessive time and resources from our community coordinators. It's an efficient use of resources, time and energies.

This stability, the respect with which CBAL is viewed and the record of its past achievements make it more likely to be able to leverage the funding that our primary funding source, the Columbia Basin Trust, provided us over the years in order to obtain funding from other sources. We would not be able to do the work we do without the Columbia Basin Trust. They have been our core, solid funder.

We support our many small, rural and isolated communities, which would not have the personnel or experience or resources to apply for the significant funding to follow projects through to the reporting and accountability stages. Past experience as well as research and the Canadian council has demonstrated that community providers are exhausted by the demands of applying year after year for funding that's uncertain and uneven in its distribution.

Overall, we know from the reports coming from communities that the work of this organization has made a significant difference to individuals, families and communities as a whole. Over the past five years it has become a model for the province and across Canada. Requests for advice and support are received daily.

CBAL is used as a case story for partnership development. We've received two awards: one from the Association of Canadian Community Colleges for exemplary practice in rural community development; and last year, the very prestigious Council of the Federation Literacy Award in recognition of outstanding achievement in literacy.

CBAL is involved in national projects, foundational training for family literacy and weaving literacy. Provincially we sit on many steering committees, including the B.C. steering committee for family literacy. We've been on the Literacy B.C. board for a combined total of 12 years. Two of our team are involved in an evaluation framework for B.C. programs, and one member of our management team played a role in the national strategy for literacy, which is building a pan-Canadian strategy on literacy and essential skills — recommendations for our federal government.

A. Wassing: The integrated approach piloted by CBAL provides the following benefits. For one, the use of community literacy coordinators. Previous to the establishment of community coordinators in every CBAL community, a structure did not exist for an integrated approach towards assessing and addressing community needs for the delivery of programs, for the accountability and for the support required by the facilitators of these programs. Having community literacy coordinators in place in their communities has been most significant because they are very familiar with the needs of their community and with the people who can work together to address those needs. They have the trust and respect of their communities and have become a keystone to planning.

Community coordinators work with a community advisory committee — this is a community literacy

advisory committee — to develop a plan for services and programs needed by the community. They meet regularly to assess and evaluate programs. By working together, they can respond quickly to changes within their communities.

Working as part of a team, they are successful at integrating literacy work into other kinds of programming to address social issues defined by the community. Often non-profits are able to be more flexible in responding to new initiatives that require multi-agency work.

For example, we can often create programs in non-traditional places, such as our adult literacy program in the trailer court in Sparwood that brings people together who are often isolated, provides them with transportation and lunch and offers an opportunity to improve their personal and economic well-being.

Our facilities frequently become the community centre for families. One example is the CAP site in Nakusp, which is housed in our school board office. The CAP site provides free computer and Internet use, one-on-one and group instruction and special programs for seniors, youth and adults.

Collaboration between communities, programs and agencies promotes respect and understanding. Community literacy coordinators have a great respect for the skills, experience and knowledge of teachers, mental health workers, social workers and others who provide services within our communities and try to find ways to capitalize on these various strengths. We work well together.

Our organization was a regional pilot in the province for Literacy Now and completed an extensive report on the process and the results. We found that in the discussions at the Literacy Now planning sessions, attention turned from an earlier emphasis on early childhood development to older children and adults in crisis. We have seen a shift in literacy work on a continuum of community development. The work of CBAL continues to be integral to this process.

In the community discussions there was a clear understanding that the community literacy coordinator is the catalyst to bringing groups together and actively moving things forward. This can only happen when those coordinators experience support and respect.

As part of the CBAL organization our coordinators have access to a strong network, professional development, regular salary, support for generating more funding and a strong base of established work in the field. Each one does not have to reinvent the wheel.

Through the Literacy Now community planning process, Columbia Basin communities have told us a number of things.

(1) It is vital to work with employers to provide workplace literacy services to people once they're in the workforce.

(2) There's a need for ongoing learning and options outside formal systems already in place to address the needs of adults in crisis with integrated services.

(3) Communities want to work with and in schools to support children in grades 4 to 7.

(4) Better communication between agencies, schools and colleges produces positive results.

(6) We want to reduce the gap between the children who are ready for school and those who are not. Early intervention and family literacy is a preventive approach to adult literacy.

(7) Providing child care when parents use programs allows parents to participate more effectively in those programs.

(8) Parents recognize that their literacy levels directly affect those of their children. They want to be able to help them read and do homework.

These are some of the things that came out of our planning sessions within the communities.

Finally, while we've met with many successes at CBAL, we still face a number of challenges. The foremost among those is making the services sustainable, rather than the time-consuming process of securing funds year to year. Organizations now have to hire and fire when programs start and finish.

The Canadian Council on Social Development completed a report in 2003 based on a series of focus groups — held in different regions of the country and attended by more than 100 non-profit and voluntary service sector organizations — as well as round-table discussions with funders and interviews with key informants, responses to a written survey of non-profit and voluntary sector organizations, in-depth case studies and a review of other research. They found that this reliance on year-to-year funding was very detrimental to the ongoing work of the non-profits, and we're feeling that.

As funders increasingly target their funds, are reluctant to fund administrative functions, provide funding over shorter periods of time, move away from core funding, demand more partnerships and demonstration of financial or in-kind supports, it's become very difficult to provide the management required to meet all the fiduciary and reporting responsibilities. We've been very successful, as a larger organization, leveraging and spreading the risk of project financing, though this has resulted in more complex and demanding management requirements.

We need, as CBAL, to improve and refine our assessment and evaluation methods so that we can demonstrate, using objective data, what we know to be true — that our practices make a significant difference to the lives of those who participate in our programs. Assessing participant growth and evaluating the efficacy of our programs is a primary goal of our organization this coming year.

Meeting places. We need spaces within communities, like this library, that are accessible and affordable. Often programs are at risk because we can't afford the rent required to secure an appropriate space in our community.

Integrating services — taking advantage of the skills, resources and experience available within

communities to partner and share planning. We see an increasing demand for English-as-a-second-language services, support for learning disabilities and services for new committees in our isolated, rural communities which do not have access to the services larger centres enjoy.

We want to continue our commitment to providing continuous programs and service and consistency in staffing. We're challenged because any funders for a charitable organization want their funds to be used for leveraging for matching funds but not vice versa. Any funder for a charitable organization does not want to pay for the infrastructure in administration.

We as part of the non-profit and volunteer sector have responded to the calls for more professionalism, more transparency, more evaluation, more capacity-building and more partnerships, but in doing so, we have put huge strains on our human resources to manage this. We are pressed to become more financially independent, but core funding to keep the infrastructure constant is essential.

We are very grateful for the funding that the Columbia Basin Trust has provided for us in the past few years. It has made our organization more sustainable.

In closing, the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, Nakusp, works closely with school districts, such as district 20, Kootenay-Columbia, and district 10; with colleges — the Selkirk College, College of the Rockies; and we have a strong working relationship with the Okanagan College for the literacy work in Revelstoke.

At last count we had 129 community partners and will no doubt increase those this year. We believe we have developed a working model that can help address the serious challenges that low literacy presents for our communities.

Jennifer and I are very proud of the work that CBAL does. While we acknowledge that there are serious growing pains, we feel the organization can be sustainable. Regional literacy coordinators are already in place across the province through Literacy B.C., and we have been able to expand that role with the addition of community literacy coordinators who work with the community advisory committees in the Columbia Basin.

These are early days, but we believe it's the way to go. We urge you to build on the work that CBAL has begun.

N. Macdonald: Thank you very much for the presentation, and thank you very much for the work you're doing in the Kootenays.

A couple of points that you made — just to clarify if I've understood correctly. You have taken a regional approach, and it sounds like one of the points you're making is that the approach the government takes needs to recognize that each community is different, each region is different and the grassroots approach to designing these programs is an important part of being successful. That's one point I thought I heard you make. I see you nodding, so that's correct.

The second thing is around the funding. The Columbia Basin Trust has provided that core funding that allows you to organize yourselves so you can go out and get other funding. So that point around having the core funding — making sure that that's adequately paid for, and in this case, the Columbia Basin Trust…. For those that are not from the region, that's a wonderful organization that Castlegar played a big part in, and it has done a great deal to help this region. It's something we're very proud of here in the Kootenays. I think somebody is here from the Columbia Basin Trust, and we're really proud of that organization — what it's been able to do.

You talked a little about day care, and that's sort of the question that I have. One of the things we're hearing is the need to remove barriers for people that are coming in as adults. Maybe you could speak a bit more about some of the other barriers that you see for adults who are trying to take advantage of the programs you offer. Are there any other things that we would need to focus on?

J. Cliff-Marks: Transportation is significant in the Columbia Basin. Very few communities have buses — certainly, no taxis or buses where I'm from in Nakusp. The population is very spread out. So transportation is a huge problem, and child care as well.

N. Macdonald: Maybe just one more follow-up. You talked about the need to get in and really assess the needs, and you talked about the continuum of literacy. That part of dealing with adult literacy is making sure we're doing things right at younger ages. Do you have any sense of how you would assess in the most efficient way? What sort of assessment do you think needs to be done? Where should it be done?

A. Wassing: That is a challenge we're facing. What we've done so far is had our planning sessions within the communities. As Jennifer was telling me on the ride down, those discussions have been taking place for some time. So communities do have a good sense of what they feel they need, and they'd like to be able to move on with it.

Assessment is a challenge for us. Having objective data is difficult in this field. Establishing baselines for where people are in their lives in terms of their literacy needs…. It's a vulnerable population. If we made things too formal and difficult for people when they came into a number of our programs, I don't know that they would stay or that they would participate in some of those.

We have to be building something in terms of assessment that works for us, that makes sense in the context of what we're doing. That's something we've set as one of our goals for this year — to look at that issue and do it better.

J. Cliff-Marks: The data that we do have are the EDI scores, which tend to be higher in the Kootenays, and the FSA scores, the standardized testing within the school. I know that there are differences certainly in my district, in school district 10. But in terms of adults, we did not have a baseline when we started this work. Intuitively, we know — and we know through stories and changes in people's lives — that we are making a difference.

D. Routley: It seems like your organization has gone several steps past a lot of the recommendations we've received. For instance, the way you've got community coordinators spread out — the advanced way you're dealing with that. Those are recommendations from some communities, so you can be proud. I'm sure you are. I'm sure you know that your group has taken this a long way past most communities.

I particularly wanted to focus on the exhaustion from year-to-year funding struggles and also acknowledge that you as a larger organization point out your ability to spread out the effect on programs. Like when saying "hot," we know we were also talking about cold. Well, when we talk about smaller groups, they talk about mandate slippage — trying to change their appearance every year for a new fund. A bigger organization can maybe have components that can adapt to get that funding without changing the mandate of the whole organization.

I think it's a significant piece. Year-to-year funding provides politicians like us lots of ribbon-cutting opportunities in a sense, or press releases. But it takes a huge administrative capacity to apply for funding.

It seems to me that you have so many programs that have proven their effect, and you're busy collecting that baseline data. It seems to me that we need to establish a streamlined accountability process for these organizations to take the weight off the administration. The core funding should be leveraged, but also those other funding packages should recognize some track record and achievements already gained.

Do you have any suggestions as to how that accountability framework could be simplified to help us recognize work already done and achievements already made?

J. Cliff-Marks: Well, I think that as we're developing our evaluation framework, we're hoping that it will come from the ground up. So we will be able to present government with a framework that we think would work best for us. That should be done at the end of next year. We're going to pilot the tools this year. That's being done provincially.

A. Wassing: A couple of our staff members have been working on some evaluation models, the logic models. From the Ground Up is a provincial example that's been developed. They're just producing their results now. We've just had a chance to look at kind of a draft in this last week.

I think that over the course of this year, that's going to be our primary focus.

J. Cliff-Marks: We would be happy to work with you because we think we have some good ideas of how this could work. So we're more than willing to help you.

D. Routley: In the way you acknowledged the size of your organization as an advantage…. It would allow you the advantage of putting forward something that would help a lot of the smaller groups, I think — if that could be achieved.

A. Wassing: While we say that the size of our organization is an advantage, it is still very much built on a house-of-cards model. If something happens, the whole thing falls apart. We still go every year with a wing and a prayer.

J. Cliff-Marks: In terms of our mandate, when we set out to do this, we said we would not take any funding that was not within our mandate or vision. We've turned funding down that was going to take us in another direction. We were very committed to doing this and doing this well. If people want to fund us to do that, we'll be happy to use their resources, but we weren't going to turn….

L. Mayencourt: It's very nice to see you again. I'm Lorne Mayencourt. I'm the MLA for Vancouver-Burrard, and I am sorry that I was late.

M. Polak: The first question is about the CAP sites. I'm assuming that's the federal Community Access Program.

M. Polak: So is it continuing? My understanding was that it was sort of ebbing. In my past experience, they set up some sites in the area I worked in, and then it was that famous federal situation where they launch something, and then it gradually trickles away. Do you know if that's continuing?

J. Cliff-Marks: What I do know is that it was a ten-year project, from 1996 to 2006. We were given a three-month…. "What are you going to do now?" As far as I know, that was one of the cuts that happened last Monday. That's as much as I know.

J. Cliff-Marks: Again, it was a small amount of money, but that $4,000 allowed us to keep a CAP site open and leverage other funding.

M. Polak: But it is interesting as a model. I mean, one of the things we're obviously interested in is different access points that we can create in communities. It's helpful to know whether or not that's actually…. I was actually surprised to see it. I thought: "Gee, I thought that was ending."

J. Cliff-Marks: Those CAP sites have made a significant difference to rural communities. They've become a hub.

M. Polak: In your experience, do you see a tangible improvement for the outcomes for children when you engage in literacy for their parents?

M. Polak: Do you think that a form of distributed learning would be at all helpful? Transportation is a running theme that we hear about — in particular in rural areas, but also in urban areas — as a challenge. Do you think there's an opportunity to employ some of the technology to assist? I mean, obviously not completely, but would that aid?

J. Cliff-Marks: Actually, we're doing a project right now with the office of learning technologies that very much uses technologies to increase learning across rural areas, so we'll know. We've been at that for a year, so we'll have a better idea of that as the project continues, but absolutely.

A. Wassing: Yes, but you still want to be able to bring people together as well.

M. Polak: Yeah, it would have to be an enhancement as opposed to a new replacement.

J. Cliff-Marks: Our organization has actually been built on an electronic conferencing system that's allowed us to be tight, working together across distance. Ali's in Invermere; I'm in Nakusp. We're seven hours' driving distance away.

J. Rustad: Thank you for your presentation. Some of the things I've found most interesting about this committee and the work are the various presenters — expert-level presenters on literacy to local-level coordinators to very small community groups and teachers that are involved in very specific projects that have fabulous results.

You've made a very good presentation about a structure of delivery that you have in place here in the Kootenays. I commend you for that. It is quite a phenomenal feat, when you think about trying to deliver a program or a series of programs over a broad area such as this — to be able to actually find a way to get various groups to work together as opposed to everybody always off in their own directions trying to build successes. As I say, I'm very intrigued by the model you've set up here and how that works with the community organizers you have in place.

The question I have sort of touches a little bit on what you've already talked about around the evaluation process. I wonder if you could expand a little bit on some of the actual initiatives that you have in place, which you're delivering. Particularly, I'm very interested in the preschool and what you may be working on at that level.

Also, a large component of our mandate is…. Of course, the majority is the adult literacy — how to be able to reach the adults and how to be able to bring them into the system. Frequently what we have found — in my experience, and certainly it's being heard from witnesses — is that people come and seek literacy, seek improvements in their education, when they are ready for it. They get to a stage where they've decided, whether it's fear or whether there are other challenges in their life they're able to set aside, that they can actually come back into literacy.

I'm wondering if, in the work you're doing, you're running into those same sort of barriers and if there's any way that you can think of that might be there to be able to draw more people in and try to overcome some of those barriers — such as a job or family life or just the general fear, maybe, of taking the steps to come back into literacy.

J. Cliff-Marks: It was a big question. To let you know, we do things a little bit differently in the Kootenays in that we don't suggest to Golden that they run X, Y and Z programs. We give money to Golden and tell them, in their community, how would they like to run a program, what they think would work there.

Each community is very unique in their programs. They all have different names. In Nakusp you're going to find something called LAFF, which is Learning Adventures for Families. In Golden there will be a completely different model.

We don't have a packaged set of programs that we give to communities. We give the money to the communities. They tell us what they want to do. They develop a budget and deliver their programs.

In terms of barriers, I think that addresses a lot of the barriers, because the learners really develop the programs in conjunction with the coordinator.

A. Wassing: There are certain sort of packaged models that they'll use, like the Mother Goose and Books for Babies. There are a number of things that are…. You'll find similarities. In a number of communities they'll be running the same type of program, because there is a lot of communication between the coordinators and between the people who are actually facilitating the programs.

A network that Jen has alluded to before…. Anyone who is working with us has access to that network on First Class. That's been a huge boon.

J. Cliff-Marks: Right. Communities generally know what they want, and adults know what they need and want to learn. The best way to break the barriers is to give people what they want and need.

D. Routley: It just struck me that yesterday we heard from a presenter around the issue of shame. Issues of confidence have come into this — trust in the program, authenticity as being really important.

This presenter brought up the fact that programs start with the absolute intention to help people read, of course. But for those who just cannot, for whatever reason — a disability or whatever it might be — make it to that level, perhaps an important aspect of dealing with literacy and illiteracy is building coping skills in people.

Taking the shame away is something that Jacques Demers, an NHL coach, did. It was obvious to everyone that he must have developed incredible skills to be able to cope with his disadvantage.

Has your organization considered those kinds of programs? Because it also seems to me that if we can remove the shame and provide people with coping skills who just won't be able to retain or access that skill, it would go even further to take the shame away from those who are able but haven't yet been able.

J. Cliff-Marks: I think that we always use a strength-based approach here. We don't ever talk about illiteracy. We talk about literacy and learning as being of value to families and communities and about lifelong learning and how important that is for people.

We also use a broad definition of literacy. It's more than reading and writing. It's about coping and getting along every day in society. We certainly have learners who will speak to you today that…. We make it a good thing.

It's not a shame to not be able to read. It has nothing to do with intelligence, I can tell you. All of my students have as many or more skills than I do.

A. Wassing: If I can add to that, you referred to something earlier, Mary, about a site. If you have that, people will come in, and they will get drawn into things. At the CAP site in Nakusp, they come in because they want to use the computers. They want to get on the Internet. Then, you know, a tutor has a chance to connect with them.

It goes very gradually. That's also what makes some of the assessment part difficult, because where did you move into actually starting the literacy teaching and literacy work? We're grappling with all those things.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I have one quick question: have you any model of assessment? How would you assess a client or a person who was coming to you for help, as to where you put him? How do you slot him?

A. Wassing: Yes, we do. We have several. We have a number of them. That's what we're trying to do: look at what we've got and work from our strength base there, because some people are doing things that work effectively for them. We don't have anything that's used uniformly across the board.

J. Cliff-Marks: Actually, we use the CARA, which is Canadian Adult Reading Assessment. That's used with adults.

J. Cliff-Marks: Fairly. We're finding that we need a more effective assessment tool.

Our next presenter is Joan Exley. Joan, you have 15 minutes, and then ten minutes of questions.

J. Exley: That's longer than you told me. That's okay. I'm going to be fairly brief.

J. Exley: I'm Joan Exley. I work for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy. I'm one of those community coordinators, and I wanted to thank you for the opportunity today to come together and talk about adult literacy.

I work primarily with family literacy. When I heard about this consultation process there were a few points that came to mind that I brought up at a meeting, and then I became a speaker today.

I have two main points that I really wanted to bring to the committee. I'd like to speak to the importance of reaching out to adults through family literacy and the idea of recognizing literacy skills on a continuum.

At times it's difficult to reach adults, and at times adults feel uncomfortable coming forward to be involved in a literacy program. This can be true for a number of reasons. I think that it's important to look at the many ways we can reach adults. I think community and adult literacy programs are wonderful assets, and I think they're not always the only way you can reach adults.

In family literacy programming it often appears that all the activities are geared towards the children in the

family, but in actual fact, family literacy programming is geared to the adults in the family. Our programming goals are to empower those adults in the family to be the best they can be at supporting their own children's learning. This works to develop the skills of the parents as well as to break the cycle of illiteracy.

The foundational belief of the field of family literacy is based on the belief that parents are their children's first and most important teachers. We work to support parents in developing their skills as well as their children's skills.

Family literacy programming can act as a bridge for parents to move into adult literacy programs, to provide information about upgrading and to provide information about further education opportunities. It can reawaken an interest in education and learning.

A parent can come to a family literacy program, and they'll find out about adult literacy programs, and there will be a bridge there. A grandparent might come to a preschool family literacy program and find out about a seniors' literacy computers program. A new mother will develop skills in a family literacy program to teach her children and to enable her to pass on her skills to her children.

In 1997 Padak and Rasinski did an extensive review of family literacy programs. They found that these types of programs worked to benefit four groups: the children, the parents, the family unit and the larger society. For the adults in the family, the benefits included improving their reading, writing and math skills; increasing their knowledge about child development and parenting options; enhanced opportunities, employment status and job satisfaction; and a more positive attitude towards education.

You can see from this that the adults who are involved in family literacy programs benefit themselves as well as providing benefits for their children. At times parents might not actively become involved in a family literacy program for themselves, but they may find that a multitude of their skills are improving when they become involved in a program that's perceived to be of benefit for their children.

We all want what's best for our children, and we can reach out to adults through this door. Family literacy is casual, and it's experiential. This nature can reach out to adults in a unique way.

My second point is that I would hope as we're doing this planning around adult literacy, we remember that literacy skills are built on a continuum and that they're not always a matter of have and have-not. I think that's where some of the stigma comes from in society. We look at it as a have — you can read, or you can't; you have literacy skills, or you don't.

Universal programs that are available to a whole community meet the needs of a lot of people on that continuum. Many times in my work with families I've been reminded that looking at a small target group can be dangerous and that there are many families that come to family literacy programs just to have fun with their kids, and they end up benefiting themselves in a lot of unexpected ways.

This family would not have been considered an at-risk family, and the parent would not have come for her own literacy skills. Their daughter was shy to the point of not going anywhere except for school. The family had been involved in a family literacy program at night in a school for several years, and then four years had gone by in the time that she came to talk to me. She told me how being a part of that program had changed her family's life. It was the first place that her daughter felt comfortable going to, and that was their motivation for coming in the first place.

She said that what she hadn't expected was to gain so much more. Her specific point was that her family had never sat down and read together. She told me that now, four years later, with her kids in elementary school and high school, they read together every night. She said they would never have done that had they not come to that program for another reason.

She stressed that the sharing of this simple activity had changed who they were together as a family and how they discussed things together, how they talked. This mother, who could read and write — she was on that continuum — found that her skills along that continuum were improving as she read and discussed books with her kids.

In that Padak and Rasinski review, they talk about the family literacy benefits to the family, including learning to value education, becoming more involved in schools, reading more and engaging in more literacy behaviours at home with your families.

The last point I wanted to bring to the panel is to remember that the children and youth of today are tomorrow's adults. So reaching out to families, we engage with people across those generations, and we work to break that cycle of low literacy skills.

In the work that you do, I wanted to remind you of the three things: the importance of reaching out to adults through the back door, through other things and activities that they're involved in like family activities; to remember that literacy skills are on a continuum; and that the children and youth of today are tomorrow's adults.

J. Nuraney (Chair): I thank you very much, Joan, for taking the time and coming before us — really appreciate that.

N. Macdonald: Just to repeat the point you made about it being cross-generational. We've heard that from a few people — that if you draw in the family, then you can reach adults in that way. I think it is a really very useful way of doing things.

In Nelson that's the approach that's taken. How many other communities in the basin have family…?

J. Exley: All of the 15 communities that we're in. The history of our organization started out with adult

literacy first, and then about six or seven years ago family literacy came on the scene.

In some communities we have two people working as community literacy coordinators, one that focuses on adult and one that focuses on family. In communities that have come on more recently we may have one person. All of the communities are working to make those bridges, so we talk about community literacy more than adult and family now, and we make links between.

Margaret…. In the adult literacy program here in Castlegar where I do my work, we work together to link our programs and make sure that for families who come to programs, I have information out for them about her programs. Sometimes I go and present a workshop to an ESL group that she has, where there are parents there. I'll go and talk about reading at home with your kids to that group of adult learners. There are lots of links across, I think, in all of our communities.

N. Macdonald: We've also talked about physical locations of programs. You've talked about a school here, but in general, where are these physically located? What are the sorts of facilities?

J. Exley: Like Jennifer said, the really great thing about our organization is that it grows from that community. Castlegar, Trail and Nelson are three communities that are very close geographically, so we do a lot of sharing of knowledge and resources.

The community coordinators do a lot of work together on projects. But when you look at those three communities, what they offer to their communities are very different. It's grown from that community advisory committee that looks at: what does our community need? One community may look at it and say, "The gap in our community is all around zero to 6," so that's where their programming will be. In Castlegar it's a much more broad range, so we have baby programs, preschool programs and programs for whole families in the evening.

Location-wise, some programs are at the library here. Some are in community schools. It's just wherever there is space available for whatever we need.

D. Routley: We heard from a presenter in Vancouver, Dr. Satya Brink, who talked about the focus of how we prioritize funding of programs. She talked about the number of Canadians and British Columbians who find themselves with low literacy skills — of level 1, level 2, level 3. She encouraged us to think about level 2 because it is a much larger population there, and these programs are more easily accessed by those folks, whereas level 1 is probably more associated with learning disabilities that were not recognized through the K-to-12 system.

I note that you warn us about the dangers of target groups versus…. Would you say targeting skill levels is more appropriate?

J. Exley: My personal belief is that the more universal programs that we have in a community that are accessible by all people, the less of those very specific, targeted programs we need. There is certainly a place for those kinds of things, but I don't think it negates the need to shift our views as a society and bring literacy to the forefront for all the people in that continuum.

My fear sometimes is if we look at…. We discuss this as a group when we're talking about promoting programs and trying to reach those people that are most needy. I think there is just a little red flag for me — when we're talking about family literacy programming where assessment is a huge challenge — that there are lots of people who are helped in those kinds of programs and that move along that continuum that wouldn't necessarily be accessed if we were looking for something very narrow. Our programs are stronger when a range of people across the community attend.

I think of an example of a program in a school in the evening, where many people come. Families come together, right from little babies in arms to grandparents, and lots of it is school-aged kids. There was a group where there was a really wide range of abilities, and you could physically see one mom who was very able, working with her child, borrowing some resources and working, and another mom who needed some skill development. You could see her watching and then using that, modelling that mother and doing it with her children.

If that program was targeted to a specific group only, you wouldn't have that sharing of skills across a community.

Another thing that happened in that exact same program was that a principal came to me and said: "You know, I can't believe that that family's here and that they're sitting down reading together, because they don't do that." That mother had literacy skills herself, but she had a lack of ability to pass her skills on to her children. She didn't know how to do that.

Through those kinds of programs…. If we were looking only at her literacy skills, she wouldn't be in that target group. But the skill she needed was: "How do I now take my own abilities and pass them on to my children?"

C. De Melo: Good morning. My name is Connie De Melo. I've been in literacy for 15 years. When I come from Portugal, I…. I have a bad education in Portugal. I can't read; I can't write. After a couple of years my husband, he gets blind. I cannot read…. I cannot do nothing. He do everything for me. I've got to ask for help.

Bless that lady, Mrs. Livingstone. She went to my place for three months, teaching me the alphabet, and then would take me to college to go to literacy class.

I said I can't go, because he's blind. She find somebody, then, to take care of, let me learn…in college. I go for three whole days a week for nine years. I have a blessing, because it's funny…. I go for the drapes and….

The teachers love my husband very much, and he loves me. It's a blessing. My life is a blessing. After nine years he gets really sick, and I quit for two years. But I still come. It's a blessing for me because if there is not literacy, I cannot do nothing.

I make everything short when I make a few rounds. My son hug me very hard. He said: "Mom, you're a good mother." I never know as much…not because I'm smart; somebody teach me to be smart. I'm always work inside the house, like a slave. My husband do everything — banks, bills, everything. After three months I think I might drive less. I drive my car yet, and I'm 75 years old. This is my story.

C. De Melo: A true story and not a lie. He die seven months ago, and I still miss him very much. But he died happy and at peace at home. I take care of him all the time. I now have a warm heart, and I can…one day. I'm still alive, and I love my life now, and I love my husband, God bless his soul, and God bless Canada.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Thank you. It was very nice. On behalf of the committee I want to tell you that we are also very proud of you.

C. De Melo: Thank you. I'm very proud of the government, because after that I have a nice computer. The government gave it to me. All…Victoria, Vancouver, and he come from Castlegar. He come from…. I don't know why.

I'm so happy. I went to the…and I said, "I cannot go, because my husband is blind, and I haven't got nobody to take care of him," and the government said, "No, no. You take him with you, and we pay hotel" — everything paid for. I have nice people from the government, and I talk like I talk now, and this is my life.

P. Uppal: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Paramjeet Uppal. I came to Canada about two and a half years ago from India. Today I'm glad to speak on behalf of my classmates. We study English twice a week at the Castlegar Museum. I would like to talk about our situation for the ESL classes and students and why these classes are important for us.

The first point is that we want to become a part of the community, so we need help to learn Canadian customs and culture. Then we can communicate with each other. This is hard, even in daily activities like shopping, banking and health care.

The second point is that we need to improve our working English. If we don't understand our work properly, how could we last long there? People who work pay taxes, and that's also good for the government. English is also a very important safety issue at work. For example, at the sawmill in Castlegar you used to be able to get a job pulling lumber on the greenchain and then learn English. Now the machinery is computerized, and it is very dangerous if you can't understand the instructions and the rules.

The third point is that as soon as we improve our English, we will be able to apply our skills and education we already have. Some people have university degrees, and they never get a chance to use them because they don't get enough support. ESL classes are a key to that door we have to open for our future.

B. Xiao: My name is Bo Xiao. I'm from China. I immigrated to Canada six years ago. Now I'm a student of adult literacy at the Castlegar Museum. Today I'm glad to attend this hearing and tell you why we need the government to support ESL education.

First, we need some investment to support and plan the environment of ESL education. We use a room from the Castlegar Museum to study because we don't have our own place. Besides that, we need more books and movies, which feed us, to read and watch. In addition, the government should allocate money for teaching ESL. They can control this outlay to develop ESL education.

Second, we need more opportunities to study English, such as increase the time or go to society to practice our English that we learned from ESL class.

The third one: we need a program where we can prove our English and show our ability, such as job training or volunteer placement. We think this program can be regarded as an extension of ESL teaching.

M. Polak: I think when we hear from people who are, in particular, recent immigrants…. You haven't been here that long, and how well you speak English compared to those of us who would dearly love to learn a second language other than English. We struggle for years to do it, and we don't do so well. So congratulations and well done, because it is a lot of hard work, and you've made it sound easy.

I wanted to ask about the kinds of programs that are available to you here. In the city, in Vancouver, in busier areas they have the ELSA program. They have a number of different federal programs for adults. As you probably know, the kids in school have their ESL program, and the adults have theirs. In this area do you have those programs available from the federal government — those adult programs?

If you haven't heard of ELSA or LINK…. Do those names…? Because if you don't know, then that gives me the answer. That tells me.

M. Polak: So it's not something that you would have access to unless you're in the big city.

P. Uppal: We don't know about it because I've just been here in these classes about two weeks. I just joined them, so I have no idea.

My role in the opposition caucus, as I said, is apprenticeship and skills training. There is a skill shortage in this province, but there's also a training space shortage. Those people who have immigrated here are having difficulty just showing your skills, is what Bo said: "An opportunity to show our skills." So you pointed out something very important to us: that as we welcome people to work here, we have to put the supports there to let you show your skills. So I appreciate you pointing that out. It's not a question.

J. Rustad: Actually, the question I had has been asked, but I do want to just thank you for your presentation. Thank you for standing up and giving us that information as witnesses. Public speaking is not an easy task to do, and it takes a lot of courage, so thank you very much. You both did very well.

N. Macdonald: Just to echo that, it's very important for people to come forward and tell us what's working and what's important, and thank you very much for taking the time to do it. All three of the speakers who have come forward remind us just how important the topic that we're looking at is for individuals' lives. Congratulations. Wonderfully done.

A. Godderis: I'd like to add my thanks for coming to Castlegar to hear our concerns and ideas with respect to improving levels of adult literacy in B.C.

First of all, because I'm not representing an agency — I've just come because I saw the ad in the paper, and I really had wanted to speak about this for a long time — I'd just like to briefly introduce myself, to explain my interest before addressing your questions.

I've made my home in the West Kootenays since 1969, with the exception of a few years away living and working in West Africa, Sri Lanka and Central America. Over the years I've had a variety of positions, both paid and unpaid, with a focus on community development, adult education, poverty, human rights and socioeconomic justice. As well, I've been involved in a number of capacities with a provincewide group that not only works in B.C. with refugees and immigrants but also has links in Central America and has developed strong community connections with community-based groups in Central America.

Currently I'm working as a community outreach worker for the WINS Transition House in Trail. I'm working on prevention strategies for domestic abuse and violence against women in general.

Over all this time and experience, which also included an early exposure to the pioneering literacy work of Paulo Freire, I think I've developed a pretty solid understanding of the multi-faceted value that lies in developing high levels of literacy in the society.

It starts with the empowerment of individuals and ripples out to enhance families, communities and the world in general.

I've also developed a huge respect for the long-term effectiveness and strength of grass-roots, community-based initiatives. With regard to your questions on adult literacy in B.C., I first need to say that I doubt that a single model is possible for our province. In particular, I suspect that effective strategies for rural and urban areas will not at all be the same. I therefore urge you to resist the temptation to find a one-size-fits-all solution, and I especially ask you to do all you can to avoid a top-down, Victoria-centred approach.

I say this because over and over again, we British Columbians who live beyond Hope have to put up with systems and solutions created in urban centres to solve urban problems, which totally ignore the often amazing, creative and appropriate programs already developed within, by and for our local communities. All too often the Victoria solution proves to be a wasteful failure that simply adds to the growing cynicism and sense of alienation in our local communities.

Because of my personal connections and friendships and my interest in poverty and related issues, I've had the privilege of following at least some of the development of adult and family literacy work in this region from the beginnings of Project Literacy, which trained volunteers to work one-on-one with adults in each of our many communities, to the genesis, struggles and current reality of the present-day Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, CBAL, which you've already heard about.

I came here today to say that I strongly believe you don't have to look any further than CBAL for a model that already has in place the expertise, the creativity, the structure, the community base, the commitment and the respect for people needed to effectively take a leadership role in addressing adult and family literacy concerns in this region.

I can only talk about this part of the province. With regard to successful strategies from elsewhere, I know that CBAL has already done a lot of work looking at models and best practices from other jurisdictions and continues to be open to and aware of new developments and approaches that might be appropriate in the Kootenay context. CBAL's approach is learner-centred and strongly committed to community-based, bottom-up, participatory decision-making. It goes to where the learners are comfortable and does its best to overcome external blocks that discourage people from being able to access the programs.

The organization is blessed with leadership that is skilled, experienced, highly respected and recognized in literacy circles across Canada. It's something Jennifer

didn't talk about, but she is known as an expert across this country. In fact, CBAL is already known for its expertise by local school districts, colleges and other education and social service agencies and is able to work closely with them on program development. Best of all, it already has the trust of many hundreds — in fact, I hear it's thousands, which doesn't surprise me — of adults in this region, who've been and are being empowered and encouraged to develop their literacy skills and to go on to further education and training.

However — and this is what I really need to say to you — what CBAL lacks, plain and simple, is the long-term core funding to get on with delivering the necessary number and variety of adult and family literacy programs. They're asking for more Mother Goose. They're asking for more programs in all the communities. They can't deliver them.

The current situation of staff having to spend most of its time and energy writing grant proposal after grant proposal and report after report for a few measly dollars to keep the programs going for a few more months is simply, in my mind, outrageous. It is a discouraging and frustrating waste of the talent, skills and abilities of dedicated people who should be out there facilitating, organizing and teaching full-time. It is, in fact, an absolute scandal that up until recently the West Kootenay coordinator, whom you just heard from, was paid only a few hours a week for the more-than-full-time job she is doing. Even now her level of compensation is, in my opinion, absolutely inadequate.

I suggest that if Premier Campbell actually wants to see B.C. become one of the most literate places on this planet, he'll have no choice but to have his government set aside adequate long-term core funding to back up the rhetoric. It's nonsense to have to depend on donations, fundraising and short-term grants to fund this vitally important work.

Who can take seriously the need to improve literacy levels if there's no long-term, multi-year substantial budget from the provincial government like the schools and every other institution in our province get? This need is now even more critical, because staffing is becoming more and more of an issue, due to the very low unemployment rates in B.C. All too often, no sooner does CBAL select and train a community coordinator than that person finds better-paid work elsewhere. Without more money, the problem will only get worse.

I therefore strongly encourage you to recommend that the province immediately make available long-term core funding for CBAL's coordination, staffing, program development and delivery, and administrative costs. If there was a commitment to properly fund CBAL so staff could spend much more of their time actually working with learners, I'm sure the Kootenays would quickly take the lead in dramatically increasing adult and family literacies in this province.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Ali and Jennifer, if you don't know, you have a good friend here.

M. Polak: I would reiterate that thank-you for something from your heart. It's a common theme, not just in literacy programs but in other types of community development programs, that there's this just intense frustration, and understandably so, with the amount of paperwork and time involved in constant grant applications and then the accountability frameworks afterward and all of that.

Having said that, and having experienced some of that frustration myself, there's a competing need on government's part these days: the public clamour for more and more accountability. "I want a report. I want to go line by line where the money went."

For us who are looking to make recommendations that will make sense for communities, how do we…? In my experience, people like yourself have usually thought these things through, and they have some neat ideas. How do we put those two pieces together — the need for the community to have something stable so that when someone comes and asks, they can say, "Yeah, we're planning next year to spend this much and do this," but at the same time giving government the ability to go back and say: "Here guys, this is proof that this money went and it did something"? It didn't become, like you say, this wasteful problem out there.

Should we give it to someone to manage? Should we say: "School districts, here, you do that, and you dole it out"? That's just an example, but what would be your thinking on that? How do we square that circle?

A. Godderis: In this region, I think from what we've already heard and from probably the written information you would have available about CBAL, a structure of accountability is in place. I don't think that you have to get any more accountable than they already can be in terms of the work they're doing, but if it could be consolidated into one effort once a year….

I know they're applying to the Columbia Basin Trust. They're applying to the federal government. They're applying to charities. They're going into the community and doing bake sales. It's ridiculous. It's such a waste of energy when they already have contact in the community. They're already respected in the community. They don't need to do that. Sometimes fundraising work can link you with the community, but they don't need that. The structure is there.

For this part of B.C., I think they're ready to move on with some long-term, sustained core funding. I don't understand why the provincial government

doesn't recognize literacy as being equally important as K-to-12 or post-secondary education or whatever else. Premier Campbell has said it. He's said the words. We need a literate population. We need people more empowered and more active and involved in their communities, which is what literacy does.

It's there. It just needs that support. Why not make this a pilot project for the next ten years? Commit for ten years, and then accountability is there.

I can say that without any hesitation. It's there in spades compared to, say, even what the schools deliver, or any other institution.

N. Macdonald: Great presentation. As you said, the rhetoric is there, and the test is to make sure that the actions of government follow that rhetoric through, because I think everyone in this room agrees that we should be striving to be the most literate society. That's what we should be striving for, but it has to be more than words. That's part of what I hope we're going to be able to drive with this committee.

I think the point that you raise — I guess it's a Kootenay point of view, but I think it fits everywhere, especially in rural areas — is that grassroots decision-making…. What works so well about this organization is that it doesn't come into Golden and tell them how they're supposed to do it. It gives them the tools and the support they need to make their own decision and to do what people in a community….

We know what we need to address. That's such a sensible approach, and we can see from what everyone is saying here that that works. So that grassroots decision-making on this…. My own opinion is that it works for everything, but in this for sure. Grassroots participation. The funding. The Columbia Basin Trust, which is another grassroots…. I think that probably started here in Castlegar or Trail, as well, or Nelson.

N. Macdonald: Was it Nakusp? There we are. It is a grassroots decision that puts together an organization that has provided some of the funding. I think your key point is: let locals make the decisions, the funding needs to come from the province, and then let us organize ourselves so that we can be successful.

D. Routley: You pointed to the low unemployment making it difficult to attract people into these roles as coordinators, tutors and that sort of thing. Definitely that's an issue, but there are other negative effects to literacy programs from unexpected consequences of sectoral boom, because there are people working in certain sectors. But at the same time we see that coupled with a child poverty rate over 25 percent and family poverty rates of 20 percent. You pointed this out, and yesterday we heard about students who access literacy programs and then end up in an $8-an-hour job but aren't able to pursue their literacy training.

So when these sectoral booms — a made-in-North-America housing boom or a made-in-Asia resource mineral boom — dry up or the cycle shifts, as it always has before, we're in danger of being left with a made-in-B.C. poverty boom because we're not laying the foundational elements to sustain ourselves. I think that's a very difficult thing for literacy programs to deal with: loss of students, as well as loss of professionals.

Do you have any recommendations as to how we can access people who do sort of get vacuumed up into low-skill, low-wage jobs, to help them access your services? Maybe at-work programs — that sort of thing?

A. Godderis: I can't speak for CBAL, because I'm just a really interested community member. That would be something that I'm quite sure that Jennifer and the coordinators are aware of. I really understand what you're saying in terms of that long-term consequence.

The issue in terms of the coordinators, I think, is just that they pay them enough to retain them — and more than $8 an hour. Right now I don't know what the amount is, but I'm sure it's very small, and they're putting in probably double the time in volunteer time. Realistically, if you're going to train someone to work in the area of literacy and to be a good coordinator and teacher and facilitator and bring people in, you want to be able to retain them. You've got to be able to pay them, and you've got to be able to guarantee it's more than a year-by-year or month-by-month kind of pay. So that's one issue that core funding would address.

The other one is extremely difficult, but my sense would be that CBAL would be looking at that and, again, listening to the communities about where they can reach those people who are working for $8 an hour somewhere now — and they weren't before — and reach them in their workplace or wherever it makes sense to them, because that drive to become more able to work with reading, writing and math skills is still there, whether someone's working or not, but it's finding an avenue. It's because of their creativity and their ability to listen to the community that they can adjust to different circumstances in the province, I think. That's what I see.

J. Rustad: Just a quick comment, actually. Just for the record, I certainly hope that the esteemed member is not suggesting that B.C. would be better off without jobs and people in education. However, I'm sure that isn't what's being suggested.

I just wanted to make a comment. During your presentation you talked about those who lived beyond Hope. My apology to our lower mainland MLAs, but in Prince George–Omineca "beyond Hope" means the lower mainland.

J. Nuraney (Chair): Our next presenter is Dr. Lyle Olsen. Dr. Olsen is the last presenter on our record, but if there is anybody in the audience who may wish to take advantage of the open mike after he has done, you would be most welcome.

L. Olsen: Morning. My position with Selkirk College is that I'm the chair of the school of developmental education. I'll come back in a minute to talk about what the school of developmental education entails. First I'd like to convey the apologies from our President, Marilyn Luscombe. She's asked me to say that she could not attend the forum today and to give you her assurance that she would have attended if she had not had prior commitments outside of the province.

She has asked me to convey some points here, the first of which is that Selkirk College has been providing access to post-secondary education in the West Kootenay–Boundary region for 40 years. We're committed to providing enhanced accessibility, especially to those who are disadvantaged. Illiteracy is a primary element of accessibility.

In addition to our longstanding and ongoing efforts through the adult basic education program and other development learning opportunities, we're working with the volunteer literacy sector to complement their work with children and parents and so on — in particular, Jennifer Cliff-Marks, Regional Literacy Coordinator; Margaret Sutherland, who is here; Christie Lukes from Grand Forks; the regional coordinators; and, of course, the many, many volunteers who are to be praised for their work in our communities.

It's important to consider, as resources are allocated to literacy in the province, the compensation provided for our literacy coordinators, which has been mentioned here already, and the other workers in the field so that we can recruit and retain the best possible people for these life-altering responsibilities. Of course, literacy is a vitally important investment in the economic development and the social climate of the province into the future.

Now, just to tell you what developmental education is at Selkirk College, we've got basically four major components. Adult basic education, I'm sure you're probably aware, has fundamental and intermediate levels, which are most closely aligned with literacy definition. Then we have advanced and provincial levels, which correspond roughly with grade 11 and grade 12 and are primarily concerned with preparing people to enter college programs.

We have adult special education, which is for people with developmental challenges. The adult special ed program operates at four locations in the community: Nelson, Trail, Castlegar and Grand Forks. The adult basic education program I just mentioned operates in six communities throughout the West Kootenays: Nelson, Trail, Castlegar, Grand Forks as well as Nakusp and Kaslo.

We do a certain amount of ESL domestic or settlement. That's a developmental education responsibility. In Selkirk College our ESL is divided into the international component and then the local component — the settlement component. My school is responsible for the settlement part.

I heard somebody mention ELSA before. We did have an ELSA program that ran in Grand Forks for about four or five years, and it basically expired about a year and a half ago for lack of clients, for lack of students. As I'm sure you're aware, there are some pretty specific rules on who can qualify, how many hours of instruction they can have and that sort of thing. We basically used up our client base. We thought about moving that program to somewhere else, one of the other locations. We simply couldn't locate enough students who qualified according to the rules.

What happens with ESL primarily is that wherever we have enough people that come to us, we'll try to deal with them as a small group within our regular ABE developmental ed programming. In some cases that group may be as small as one or two, and then it's up to the individual instructors to try and figure out how to look after those people at the same time as they're looking after people who are doing algebra at the grade 11 level and chemistry at the grade 12 level and all those kinds of things. It's difficult, but our people are very good at adapting to dealing with individuals and small groups, so we try very hard to provide that service regardless of numbers.

Another aspect of what we're doing these days is of course the literacy part. We are a partner with Columbia Basin Alliance — proud to be, actually. We are a financial contributor to that group. I'm embarrassed to say how small it is, but we did increase our contribution by 62 percent last year out of what's called quick-response funding. Of course, quick-response funding is not there every year, so we didn't really have that amount of money available again this year. But we went ahead and made the decision to continue with our contribution, even though we don't really have a budget line for it.

As you probably know, institutions like ours have very little discretionary funding available. We don't have a lot of pockets of money that we can shift from place to place. We have funded our ongoing contribution to CBAL because it is such a worthwhile program, even though we're not quite sure where we're going to find the money to do it.

We can't say enough about their good work, which you've heard plenty about already. They're an amazing organization. They do amazing work in the community, so we're proud to be a partner. As Marilyn said in her note, it would be wonderful if we could figure out a way to compensate the regional coordinators for what they do.

In developmental ed as a whole at Selkirk, our enrolment is soft at the moment. It's down probably about 20 percent over the heyday of about four or five years ago as it is, I think, in similar programs in other colleges across the province. Why? Well, it's probably the perfect storm of things coming together. You're quite aware of the strong employment situation in the province and the big sucking sound from Alberta drawing people to work there. Especially the males who might

be interested in our education are looking after mortgages and that sort of thing, so we're finding that people just can't afford the time to come to school.

Another thing that affected us at the upper end of our delivery system is what we perceive as the easing of standards at the colleges and universities. With the 25,000 additional new seats, it seemed that for a while universities and colleges were competing to attract students. We found that students in the upper two levels were finding they didn't need to upgrade their math and English and science quite as much as they used to. So that was one factor, we think.

The major fact, without a doubt, in the declining enrolment has been the withdrawal of living expense support for developmental education students from the ministries — in particular, the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance, formerly MHR, which at one time probably provided living expense support for 15 percent to 20 percent of our student population. Then we had some support from WCB and the vocational rehab division when it was functioning.

Now all those agencies have basically withdrawn that kind of support. The MEIA in particular has made it quite clear that they're not in the business of human development, and I guess education is part of human development. So there really are no solid agencies. There's some patchwork of federal and provincial programs that occasionally will provide support for students at the developmental ed and literacy level, but by and large, that's gone. That, for us, is the big one. A lot of my instructors tell me that if that was to come back in some way, our enrolments would probably be back to roughly where they were at the heyday. They think that's the major impact on our enrolment situation.

We have put in front of you a proposal. It's called the "B.C. Developmental Education Training Allowance Proposal." It basically addresses that situation or tries to address that situation. It says that the low levels of functional literacy are associated with poverty statistics and high rates of unemployment. I'm not going to read it out for you, but basically there really isn't support for these students anymore for living expenses.

We do have something called ABESAP, the adult basic education student assistance program, which you're probably aware got an additional $1 million this year on top of the $3.7 million it has had traditionally, which is wonderful.

That amount of money spread over the whole province provides support for things like tuition fees and books. That's about as far as it can go. It doesn't even go that far that way, of course. It doesn't even begin to deal with things like child care issues, transportation and living-expense support.

What we at Selkirk would like to see happen is for that to come back in some way and, if possible, perhaps for Selkirk to be a pilot site to be able to deliver that kind of program. We think we could look after the administration of the program through our student financial aid office a lot more effectively and in a less costly way than external agencies providing the rules.

So in our last line, on implementation, we think it's absolutely vital to the program that we at the college would be the ones to administer the funding and to make sure that the expectations for the program for the students are met. The two major expectations are that they would be full-time students and that they have an approved learning contract that would involve things like attendance, progress and that sort of thing — that they would meet their goals.

That's the major part of our proposal. Let's see. I think that's pretty well my presentation. Any questions?

M. Polak: Two questions. The first is around the provision of services to adult ESL students — new residents in Canada. The issue with respect to finding a critical mass of students in order to provide an ELSA program has become an issue all over the place, even in the lower mainland.

Are there other federal programs that have come in to pick up the slack now that you have smaller cohorts of students who can't form an ELSA program? I ask that understanding that we've seen a shift in immigration policy in Canada whereby new immigrants are encouraged to locate in more isolated rural areas.

But that is an issue, because the federal-provincial divide around K-to-12 education, which is provincial, and then provision of English-as-a-second-language supports for adults, which is essentially federal, as part of settlement moneys….There's a pocket of cash that we won't get if we don't find a way to develop programming that doesn't require that kind of critical mass.

The second thing. I'm interested in your assessment of the numbers that you're seeing decline and the reasons for it. I'll just ask you to help me understand the numbers. If we know on the one hand that we're seeing a real heating-up of the employment market — the sucking to Alberta, the tremendous growth in jobs….

I don't know what the percentage of unemployment is in this region. If it's close to what the provincial level is, then most economists would mark 4 percent or 4½ percent unemployment as being full employment. You've got everybody. That's what they would categorize it as.

If that's true and if it mirrors that, those who are having the challenge with MEIA — and we have heard about that challenge as a barrier — would be social

assistance recipients. How does that cause the decline? Those who are employed wouldn't be the ones with that barrier. It's the social assistance people who would have that barrier — and those who would be chronically on social assistance for various reasons, I would think. I mean, it would still be a barrier, but it wouldn't account for the drop.

L. Olsen: I think that people who are sort of in the lower levels maybe are finding a certain amount of part-time work and minimum-wage work. Perhaps they will be employed while the job situation is very strong. But as Doug was saying a while ago….

L. Olsen: As soon as the cycle turns around, which we know it always does sooner or later, then all of a sudden those people are going to be very unemployable once again. That's, I think, basically the concern.

M. Polak: But it would argue for the drop being the work that they find, and therefore perhaps needing another conduit to attach them — in other words, something through work, something that catches them where they are right now.

L. Olsen: Especially being able to ratchet up their education and skill level, so that they're not just able to do the entry-level jobs. We're talking now about getting a trade or being able to do something at a more skilled level, because that's where the need will be in the economy — the more skilled work. That's the problem.

N. Macdonald: Dr. Olsen, what I'm hearing is what we've heard again and again. If we're serious about meeting the objectives that the Premier has talked about — about making this the most literate society — it's really clear what needs to happen.

That is, among other things, that we have to remove the barriers. You've been very specific in terms of what has been put in place with the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. You would look to this group, if we're serious about moving beyond rhetoric, to make changes there. Your view, as somebody who works within education, is that that's absolutely clear to you — right?

L. Olsen: Yup. Of course, we can't tell the Ministry of Human Resources — or MEIA as they're called now — what to do or how to run their ship. That's their business. But what I'm saying is that responsibility for supporting students for living expenses I would like to see moved into the Ministry of Advanced Education.

N. Macdonald: I guess the point — or what the government has said they're trying to do — is to put literacy as a priority. If we're serious about that, then there are certain things that need to be done. You as an expert are saying one that we must do is make changes to that ministry and how it works, make changes that remove barriers for people who are going to take advantage of the programs.

L. Olsen: Especially for the most disadvantaged. We're really talking about the most disadvantaged, the most challenged — multiple barriers and that kind of thing and people with children. Single mothers are a very large part of the group that we're really not serving very well now because we'd have the issues of child care, which is another aspect that's difficult to access right now, and being able to not work in order to come to school. That's a big part.

N. Macdonald: I guess your other point around something like child care is that investments there at the time sort of break the cycle, don't they? Once you increase the literacy of the parent, not only are you improving their life — and we've heard stories about just how important it is to individuals' lives — but you also allow them to pass that on to succeeding generations.

We've had a lot of talk about the importance of that whole experience and that that's part of it. It's a good investment.

L. Mayencourt: To begin with, please give my best to Marilyn. I'm sorry that she couldn't be here as well.

One of the barriers you talked about is obviously going to be employment — right? Those individuals that needed to upgrade their literacy at some point now will go to work, because you're in a superheated economy, and there are lots of jobs.

To what extent are you doing workplace literacy programs? Are you allowed to at Selkirk College? It just seems to me that there are certain industries here where there's going to be a large number of people. Is there any of that kind of work going on here?

L. Olsen: That's something there should be more of, theoretically. It's one of those areas that's sort of an enigma to me, because I would think that would be an area of strength. But we've not been terribly successful in getting a lot of those programs going, which probably comes back to me, and it's my fault that we don't have more of that going on. It's a little tricky for us in some ways because when we do get interest, in general they prefer it if we go to them rather than have them come to us. They go on site.

Then we have to find resources that work to their timetables. You know, they've got an hour break and so on. We have to be entirely flexible on our side. Our instructors are willing to do that. It's just that we don't generally get the kind of response that we think should be out there.

L. Mayencourt: We've heard a lot about the motivations for people to go and gain literacy in any number of different areas. Once of them is: "I have a burning need." I think Connie was talking about the fact that she

absolutely had to have English skills in order to have her driver's licence, in order to handle the banking or do whatever. We had people that had been tricked, or as Jennifer said, they come through the back door. We get them hooked into a literacy program.

One of the more innovative ones we had was yesterday — the lady who talked about bathroom literacy, where she left books open in the bathroom so that her kids were kind of tricked into reading and stuff like that. And the other one that seems to be really huge is: "I need to know it in order to compete in the workplace." So it seems to me that's a real area of growth for people.

I'm just going to share this idea with you. One of the programs being offered was a college training tutors within the workplace, who would then get an hour off work to tutor another employee in the workplace. So people were upgrading their skills. They're getting the literacy they need. It was removing that kind of shame stuff, because there are lots of people that can benefit from these sorts of things.

I just put that out there, and I guess if CBAL…. If there are workplace things that are going on in the neighbourhood, I'd love to hear about them.

J. Cliff-Marks: Cominco in Trail has a workplace literacy program that's actually a national champion, recognized across the country. That's in the Cominco plant in Trail.

L. Olsen: One of the things we're doing in ABE…. We're in developmental education at Selkirk — which is not quite the same as what you asked, Mr. Mayencourt, about going to the workplace. But we try really hard to make sure that we have an ample number of night school offerings in all our locations so that people who are working…. That's really a service for people who are already working, so that they can come to our programs — and very flexible hours.

In Nelson, for example, they run four days a week from eight in the morning until eight at night. So if you get off shift at four o'clock, you can go there and get service until you're tired enough and have to go home to make dinner for the kids or whatever. In all our centres we try very hard to offer those night school offerings, but the surprising thing is they're not attended as well as we would expect.

L. Mayencourt: If I may, one of the things that I've heard is that it's viewed as an add-on to the day. In other words, I've worked nine to five. Then I get in my car, I have dinner, and then I go to school.

L. Mayencourt: Yes. Whereas if an employer is motivated to have their literacy levels in their system, there is a way of integrating it into the workday — perhaps lunchtime or an afternoon coffee break where an hour is set aside to do that. It's just that I find a lot of people that are working and then go home…. They've got kids. They've got this whole thing going on that they've got to be attentive to. So I just think those are great avenues.

D. Routley: One of the issues we've dealt with is prioritizing where the funding goes, but I also think prioritizing has something to do with timetabling of where funding goes. There has been a lot of discussion this way and that way of economic cycles. Unless Mr. Klein can convince more dinosaurs to die and Mr. Campbell can convince the boomers to retire twice, we do look at this cycle.

Folks who have low literacy and low skills — it could be argued they are the last to benefit from a boom and the first to suffer a downturn. When we consider not only where we place funding but when we place funding, do you think that addressing the lower-literacy levels becomes a time imperative as well?

L. Olsen: Yes, I think it is. It should be the priority, and it should, as you say, be a time imperative. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think that's the basis of our proposal, basically.

There is an opportunity now, if anybody wants to take advantage of the open mike. No one? Oh, everybody has had an earful.

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1)	Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — Nakusp	Jennifer Cliff-Marks
		Ali Wassing
2)	Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — Castlegar	Joan Exley
3)	Connie De Melo
4)	Paramjeet K. Uppal
	Bo Xiao
5)	Ann Godderis
6)	Selkirk College	Dr. Lyle Olsen

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