[ Page 5889 ]

The House met at 10:05 a.m.

Prayers.

Hon. J. MacPhail: In Committee A, I call Committee of Supply. For the information of the members, we will be debating the estimates of the Ministry of Education, Skills and Training. In this House, I call Committee of the Whole to debate Bill 20.

PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYERS
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997

On section 1.

F. Gingell: This section deals with definitions. I don't find a definition of employee within the act. There are definitions of employer, but is there a definition within the act of employee?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The concept of the employee is captured through the definition of employer, which is defined in the act. The range of what a public sector employer is, is captured in the act, and from that flows the employee. It also flows from section 4.1, which is section 2 of the act, about exempt employees.

F. Gingell: There is a definition in the definitions section for a public sector employee, which means a person employed by a public sector employer, but does not include a justice or a person employed as a justice.

Perhaps the questions I have are more related around the technicality of who is an employee and who is not. Normal usage, from my experience, tends to lead me to the position that the chairman of the board of a corporation is not an employee; he is a director and has been elected by the directors to his or her particular role. That would apply to directors, also.

I am wondering whether it is the intention of PSERC, under section 20, to include those types of individuals within the gambit of this new legislation that will regulate termination arrangements.

Hon. J. MacPhail: The way the member has described this, chairs are not intended to be covered by this legislation.

F. Gingell: I'm getting a little deaf, and I forgot to bring my hearing aid this morning -- not intended.

Many of the issues that have been on the front pages of the media have dealt with people who are in those chairman positions -- i.e., Mr. Laxton at B.C. Hydro. I know there were no termination provisions at B.C. Hydro for Mr. Laxton, or as I understand it, nothing was paid out. But then, would it apply to Brian Smith, as chairman of B.C. Hydro? Would it now apply to the gentleman from Burnaby who was recently chairman of B.C. Transit? The name escapes me for the moment, but he drove off in a Saab, I seem to remember.

An Hon. Member: Corrigan.

F. Gingell: Oh, Corrigan. Mr. Corrigan.

Is it intended that those appointments would be covered by this legislation?

Hon. J. MacPhail: This legislation covers where there is an employment relationship.

I appreciate that the opposition wants to go through individual situations, and we can certainly do that. I don't know why you raise the name of Laxton. He had no payments whatsoever. I don't know why we're bringing in the name of Brian Smith here, either, but feel free to do it if you want.

The situation of this legislation is to cover where there is an employee-employer relationship.

F. Gingell: I'm a little taken aback. I only raised the names to differentiate between chairmen of boards and presidents. Presidents are clearly employees of corporations. In my experience, chairmen of boards are not employees, and I've had it confirmed by the minister that this is not intended to cover order-in-council appointments to the senior positions of the boards of directors.

I brought up the issue of Mr. Laxton because Mr. Laxton, as I understand it, didn't get paid; he only recovered his out-of-pocket expenses. But I understand that the arrangement with Mr. Smith is very different from the arrangement with Mr. Laxton. So I am interested in the issues surrounding whether or not his employment arrangements would be included within these circumstances.

There have been individuals who were not local and who were brought in from other jurisdictions at great expense to fulfil roles as chairmen. Mr. Marc Eliesen will be an example. There is a whole series of termination issues which were all part of the auditor general's recent report, which I understood was one of the reasons for the government bringing this legislation forward. The intention of this legislation was to look after those circumstances that have played such a prominent role in the media and were the subject of the auditor general's report.

So although we used the opportunity during second reading debate to point out our belief that the government has not been particularly efficient or effective in this area and has opened the taxpayers to somewhat expensive exercises, we support this legislation; we think it's good. But we do need to have the assurance from the minister that it encompasses the whole range of people, and I'm not getting that feeling at this moment.

[10:15]

F. Gingell: Recognizing the famous words of the Minister of Forests that government can do anything, was it a specific decision of the government not to include provisions within this legislation that would capture these substantially remunerated non-employee persons who play major roles at Crown corporations?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The employment relationship is determined on whether there is a contract with the government, the public sector employer. If there is no contract, this legislation does not apply. So that is what distinguishes who is included and who is not.

[ Page 5890 ]

F. Gingell: Is the conclusion from this that even if the person would not be categorized as an employee -- i.e., the chairman of the board of ICBC -- they would be captured by this legislation if there was a contractual arrangement -- if their terms of engagement had been put down on paper, as it were, and duly signed?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I certainly appreciate this kind of discussion, but these matters about what we agree to in here are used in the future, as well. So let me be very clear. If there is a contractual employment relationship -- a contract that is an employment contract -- then this legislation applies.

F. Gingell: I just wonder whether it would be appropriate for the minister to consider whether an amendment should be brought in to ensure that those people will be captured. I'm not trying in any way to push the issue that they should be excluded. I believe that they should be included. I'm not a lawyer; maybe I should. . . . We have two or three lawyers on our side, and there's a lawyer on your side of the House sitting there. I'm wondering whether they might give us -- you and I, non-lawyers -- some light as to whether this question I'm raising around definitions of employee would allow those contractual arrangements to escape the provisions of this bill.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I don't know what I can add to give comfort. I've said everything that needs to be said on this matter. But I also hope that the hon. member will make clear his research -- for instance, in bringing up names such as Marc Eliesen. That was an employment relationship. No severance was paid, but that was an employment relationship. To date I'm not aware of any examples that he could bring to our attention where they weren't deemed to be employment relationships. So a contractual employment relationship that exists between an employer and an employee is captured by this legislation.

F. Gingell: Then clearly the minister and I have different definitions of employee and the relationship between a director of a corporation and the corporation. That's perhaps because I come from business. Maybe within government or with a Crown corporation it's appropriate for someone to be chairman of the board and have an employment contract. If that's the case, then my concerns are without foundation, but I think it was worthwhile debating or looking into the issue.

G. Plant: I want to pick up the theme from maybe just a slightly different angle. First of all, I understand the minister's concerns in respect of how she wishes to make clear the point about what the act applies to, and I have no interest here in committing the minister one way or the other to a characterization of any particular specific relationship between an individual and government.

What the minister has done is say clearly and repeatedly that the bill is intended to capture employment relationships. There are relationships that can exist between the government and people who have responsibilities either to Crown corporations or to the government directly, which would not be characterized at law as employment relationships but which might involve the payment of sums of money in circumstances where there would be a public interest issue as to whether the sums of money paid for personal services are adequate, sufficient or excessive.

I think the issue that I, anyway, have not heard answered is whether the decision of the government to make this act apply only to employment relationships is a reflection of a deliberate act of policy; that is to say, the extent of the interest of the government in the issue which has given rise to this bill is limited to relationships in law that will be characterized as employment relationships.

I think there are other relationships. One might argue, for example, that the relationship of an independent contractor is not an employment relationship for some purposes. One might argue that OIC appointees are in some circumstances not people who have employment relationships. I think those arguments are out there. It may be that I'm wrong to wonder whether those individuals in some of those situations might be outside the ambit of this act.

I guess the point, though, is yes, we have it very clearly from the minister what she thinks the act is intended to encompass. The point is: is there a deliberate policy decision on the part of government to be so clear and defined in that respect, and if so, what is the policy that has motivated that decision?

Hon. J. MacPhail: We're talking about legislation, so I will describe the legislation to you. The legislation is to deal with employment contracts, a contractual employment relationship. Flowing from a contractual employment relationship is the requirement to have notice of termination. That's common law, and it's that issue that's being captured here.

The hypotheticals that the members have been describing. . . . I have no ability to talk in hypotheticals in the context of this legislation.

G. Plant: With great respect, I think the minister's answer is both unhelpful and disingenuous. The minister has already told us a number of times this morning what the bill covers. We're asking questions about the policy behind the decision to limit its application. I've heard a number of attempts to ask the minister that question, and I've heard, frankly, a number of fairly clear attempts on her part to avoid answering the question.

If that is the way she wishes to proceed, then that's fine. The minister's use of the term "hypothetical" is also disingenuous, in the sense that these situations do exist. There are people who enter into consulting arrangements with government and with agencies of government that would never be characterized as employment relationships.

I think the minister agrees with me that those categories of persons exist. The minister may agree with me that those categories of persons would be outside the scope of this act because they are not persons in an employment relationship. That leads to the question which I think is a perfectly logical question for committee stage debate, where we're trying to just make sure we understand why the government is doing something. Why has the government chosen to extend this legislation only to the employment relationship and to leave out people in consulting arrangements?

Let me assist the minister in one respect. I don't need a lecture from her about the law of notice in terms of employment contracts. Most members in here know all about that. We have obligations to give notice that arise in law in the context of employment contracts. But we also have the situation where government has the capacity at law to enter into a consulting arrangement with someone who will not become an employee of the government and who would have rights, upon the bringing to an end of that consulting arrangement, to receive certain payments of money.

There is a public policy interest, I'd suggest -- a broader public policy interest -- in scrutinizing those terms and condi-

[ Page 5891 ]

tions of consulting agreements. It seems that the government has here chosen to go partway down the road by saying: "Yes, we will have a bill that allows us to look at employment contracts but not to take in the world of people who are in consulting arrangements, for example."

I personally think that there is a legitimate public policy point there, and it may be one that the minister has a very clear and principled answer to. I'd certainly be grateful to hear why the government has chosen to take this route as opposed to another route that could have been taken.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I don't in any way wish to get into a legal debate with the hon. member, because he would clearly win. I'm sure that's not his intent here, either. Terms like "giving lectures" and that are not helpful in a debate. This is the first debate I've had with this hon. member about it.

Let me tell you what this bill is to cover. This bill is to cover the employment relationship. That is a legal entity. I don't know any other way of describing it, except that that is a legal entity where notice of termination is the requirement. This legislation deals with the issue of what happens on notice of termination -- severance.

I am not aware of any consulting contracts in any government where severance is given; I'm not. I am aware that there are arrangements in consulting contracts where the payment of the contract is established. They are contractual arrangements with a payment amount tied to them. It's got a beginning and an end.

We're talking about employment relationships where an end comes about, and that end has to be decided about -- whether there is any severance attached to it.

G. Plant: The minister's answer is very helpful. Let me see if I can take something from it. What the minister is saying is that the issue with respect to whether or not there are consulting agreements that government has made that have in them provisions for termination that say: "Well, if we bring this consulting agreement to an end sooner than we thought, we would give you a lump sum payment of four months' worth of consulting. . . ."

I think the minister is saying that none of those contracts exist anywhere in government; therefore there is no public policy issue that needs to be addressed, because the issue is purely hypothetical. There are in fact no Crown corporations, no ministries of government that enter into consulting agreements with people, where they say: "We are planning to use you as a consultant for a year, but if we change our mind at the end of six months, we'll give you a lump sum payment."

If the minister is saying that those contracts don't exist, then that is, in effect, an answer to my question. If, however, those contracts do exist, then my question remains, because it seems to me that there is a legitimate need to deal with that issue. It may be that the minister can deal with my concerns simply by confirming that in fact, so far as she is aware, government never enters into those kinds of consulting agreements.

I know they exist in the private sector, where people can have consulting agreements that do not make them employees, by any means, but that are expected to last over a period of time. If the party hiring the consultant prematurely brings the consulting relationship to an end, there may be a payment of two or three months, or there may be a payment of six months or 12 or 18 months' worth of consulting fees. If those arrangements aren't made in government, then that's an answer to the issue.

[10:30]

F. Gingell: I'd just like to add one more word to this. One must recognize that this isn't just direct government. This includes all of the employees that are covered through hospital boards. There are some strange relationships where government funds organizations virtually 100 percent. I understand the responsibility that you feel for the contracts that they enter into, but the government is very remote from day-to-day control over some of those organizations. I think that some of the situations brought forward by the member for Richmond-Steveston may well exist there in a hospital. I mean, we have been through the St. Paul's exercise and the Lions Gate. With that, I don't have any further questions.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper:

[SECTION 2,

(a) in the proposed section 4.1(2) by deleting "a date on or after the date on which the Public Sector Employers Amendment Act, 1997 receives First Reading in the Legislative Assembly" and substituting "May 1, 1997", and

(b) in the proposed section 4.2(2) by deleting "a date on or after the date on which the Public Sector Employers Amendment Act, 1997 receives First Reading in the Legislative Assembly" and substituting "May 1, 1997".]

Amendment approved.

On section 2 as amended.

F. Gingell: I would presume that PSERC and the ministry. . . . I guess the Ministry of Finance was kind of surprised that this bill came up under the Ministry of Health, because I think that PSERC does report to the Ministry of Finance. But they must have given some thought to these standards that are going to be set by regulation. Has that work been done? Do they follow the recommendations that Justice Nemetz made in 1989, which I think some of us feel are quite generous? Or has the government had a second look in light of the fact that eight years has gone by since Justice Nemetz made those recommendations and made changes?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I would say that the Nemetz standards exist now under the auspices of the Public Service Employee Relations Commission. In fact, I agree with the hon. member that our standards would perhaps be viewed as much more rigorous than the Nemetz standards.

The process that we're going through right now is quite an extensive consultation through the Public Sector 

[ Page 5892 ]

Employers Council and will cover matters such as the amount of notice and severance payments -- those will actually be more rigorous than the Nemetz standards, for lack of a better word -- what the employees are supposed to do during the notice period -- and in fact that is an issue not covered by Nemetz -- what resignation and the limitation on severance payments is, what working notice is, what happens if notice is set aside and what happens upon re-employment. It also deals with the issue of prohibiting double-dipping, and where severance is not paid.

F. Gingell: As I understand it, these conditions and standards will be set by regulation, and by doing that, they will become within the public domain.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes. Part of the legislation also requires the monitoring and reporting of the compliance with the regulations.

F. Gingell: Obviously the government has considered how these regulations, and the way they are developing them compares to the status of common law, because that changes also as precedents are created within the court system. Is there an intention in the future to adjust them as the courts change their attitudes about wrongful dismissal issues? Or is that not a question that can be answered?

Hon. J. MacPhail: That's a very good point. In fact, the standards now will actually reflect the lesser of the amount equal to the remaining term of contract or an amount provided under common law. So as common law changes, if it is less than what the contract provides, it prevails.

F. Gingell: I'm really going to show my ignorance now, that I'm not a lawyer, because I sort of understood that common law doesn't make a definitive determination -- that there are a series of cases which are determined and there are a whole bunch of issues and happenings behind that case that have affected what the final judgment is. So common law is a great big range. If the judge feels that the employer has been the responsible individual in the case, but if there are still termination payments to be made, then it will be down; and if they feel that the employee has been the responsible person and the employer has been irresponsible and unfair, then it will be up at the high end of that range. A bulletin doesn't come out after each case to say: "Common law now says. . ." or "Common law practices are that these are the standards."

Hon. J. MacPhail: The standards will say that when the employer is negotiating the amount of severance to be included into the contract, he or she has to take into account the common law range that exists at the time. In fact, there's also a requirement that the contracts frequently be renewed. So any changes in the wind of common law can be incorporated in the renegotiation, as well.

F. Gingell: So the purpose of section 2 in this bill is to deal with the starting point -- an arrangement whereby contracts won't be entered into until they've gone through a vetting process at PSERC, which will ensure that they meet these standards. When we get to section 3 we'll deal with the issues post-termination, where there are concerns that what has happened hasn't met the standards that were previously set.

J. Dalton: I have the general service contract between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and Paul Jeune, for editorial services. I just want to put this on record and see if the minister can assist me as to whether this is an employment contract. It sets out schedule A services, and then there are two pages attached which detail Mr. Jeune's services to be provided. The date is from April 1, 1996, to March 31, 1997. The maximum amount is $10,000. Billing dates are biweekly. But it doesn't talk about minimums or what happens if this arrangement is terminated before March 31, 1997.

So let me just read into the record two or three things that Mr. Jeune and his editorial services are engaged to provide to the government, and then maybe the minister could assist us as to what would happen if some of these things happened prematurely or some arrangement is ended prematurely. For example, in schedule A, Mr. Jeune is to provide news releases "no longer than a single page, except where otherwise identified by the public affairs branch." These releases are to "conform to CP style, including spelling, grammar and other stylistic requirements." For news releases involving a government MLA, the contractor shall, among other things, "draft a news release on the direction of PAB for all awards within a prescribed area. . .obtain approval from DRP staff, incorporating revisions. . . ." I could go on and on, but that's not needed. Could the minister tell the committee whether this service contract would fit within the Bill 20 purview as an employment contract, or is it some other creature?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I would certainly be more than happy to receive that contract, and the Public Sector Employers Council would be happy to give the hon. member an opinion on that. I won't be doing that in the Legislature. I've made it quite clear that if a contract is an employment contract, it's covered by this legislation; if it's not an employment contract, it's not covered by the legislation.

J. Dalton: As a follow-up, could the minister suggest to us what would happen if this arrangement, which runs, as I say, from April 1, 1996, to March 31, 1997, with a maximum amount of $10,000 stated on the covering agreement. . . ? What happens if this arrangement between the Municipal Affairs ministry and Mr. Jeune terminates before March 31, 1997? Does he have any legal rights to severance or some other predetermination of the arrangement between the government and himself and his editorial services?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Actually, hon. Speaker, I'm a little bit confused about why we're dealing with this here. I'm not familiar with the contract at all, but clearly it's one that has already terminated. So we could actually tell you what did happen, and I'd be more than happy to do that. The contract's over, according to what the member is reading.

Interjection.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Well, I said I'd be more than happy to get that information for you. But why don't we talk about what did happen?

[10:45]

[ Page 5893 ]

Secondly, we don't know. . . . I don't think it's quite fair for the minister to respond that this agreement is over. Well, sure it's over, but I could probably drag in a thousand contracts like this that are over, that are not over or that will be over. We're trying to dealing with accountability. I think that's the message that the minister is trying to deliver to the taxpayers of this province, and I'm not so sure that I'm hearing that accountability.

So I still would like to at least have this on record, whether we get an answer or not: what happens if Mr. Jeune's arrangements with the government are terminated prior to the date this thing terminates? Now, I agree that's in the past. We can look at the calendar for this year; we know that March 31 is over. But what would have happened? As I say, I'm sure we can find other agreements. If the minister likes, we could adjourn this committee, and we'll drag in a whole box full of them.

What would have happened if this arrangement between the government and Mr. Jeune terminated prior to March 31? Would he have any legal recourse to trot into court and say: "Well, by the way, I have a contract here, set out on two pages. I had a deal with the government that I was going to be paid $10,000, and they terminated it early"? Is that caught by Bill 20?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I've already answered the question, hon. Chair.

M. de Jong: This may have been answered earlier, but it was an issue I raised during second reading debate. The language in section 2 is permissive, insofar as it suggests that regulations may be created. Was there a particular reason why it's not directive, insofar as indicating that standards shall be created?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Forgive me on this. No, we are drafting them. I've answered that question already. We are in the process of drafting them through public consultation, as well. I've been over this several times with legislative drafters, the use of the. . . . There's a long reason behind the use of the word "may" versus "shall," and it has to do with future amendments, etc. But no, the intent here is not in any. . . . The intent is to proceed, and in fact we are right now.

M. de Jong: With the benefit of that information she has received from the legislative drafters, can the minister indicate. . . ? I understand her intention to proceed, her government's intention to proceed, but if we found ourselves in a position a year or two or five years from now, where another government decided they didn't want to be bound by these regulations, would the legislation as it now reads require that regulations be enforced at all times, or does the use of this terminology allow for a situation where another government could suspend those regulations without replacing them with another set?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I certainly can't, nor am I required to, commit myself on behalf of future governments. Our intent is to do this. I guess future governments can change any legislation either through regulation or through this House, but our intent. . . . In fact, we're well on our way to a public consultation and confirming the regulations, and that's our intent -- to have regulations in place permanently.

M. de Jong: It's not my purpose to ask the minister to do something she's not in a position to do and that it wouldn't be fair to ask her to do.

I think, though, it is fair to ascertain whether we are creating a legislative regime here that would require the existence of regulations. The minister talked of future amendments to the legislation. My point is: could we find ourselves in a position where there are no regulations in existence, without having tampered with the legislation? It's a question, of course, of how tightly government's hands are bound by this existing legislation.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

F. Gingell: When the minister closed debate on second reading, Hansard recorded the words: "I'm on the record saying that I find it very difficult under any circumstances to understand how anybody in the public domain can leave a job with $500,000 in severance." Can the minister advise the committee what specific examples she had in mind when she spoke of a $500,000 severance?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I'm sorry. Could we recess just for two minutes?

The Chair: Yes, minister.

The committee recessed from 10:53 a.m. to 10:56 a.m.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

F. Gingell: First of all, can the minister advise who is leading in the British Open?

The question that I asked was: was the minister's reference to a $500,000. . . ? I was wondering what example was in her mind.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Hon. Chair, is the British Open. . . ? Is that golf? What is that?

Interjection.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I accept that in a. . . . No, that's not true. I was offering a personal opinion, and I think I described it in terms of my background and all of that. The figure didn't come out of thin air. There are people who have very recently been paid in excess of $500,000 or more. One is the CEO of St. Paul's Hospital, and the other was the CEO of the Health Labour Relations Association, just to name a couple.

F. Gingell: Bringing up the issue to do with Health Labour Relations causes me to ask the question at this point about the issue I raised in second reading, and this is an opportunity to ask the question specifically. Is there going to be a new standard or a new set of rules or disciplines relative to the issue of severance in instances where there are clearly cases where a person could be dismissed for cause?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes. The standards will say that there is no severance in the case of just cause.

F. Gingell: That may well have been the case in examples in the past. But the issue surrounding the issue with Health Labour Relations was one where it was the opinion of many 

[ Page 5894 ]

that there was cause. In the end, the minister is well aware of the exercise that went through. I raised some issues; Mr. McArthur was asked to look into them. A senior bureaucrat left the public service because of this whole issue. It seems to me that in every case there needs to be someone who sits down and makes a specific decision about whether or not there's cause. In 90 percent of the cases it will be a formality, but clearly in many cases it won't. It has seemed to me that the test has been: has a public prosecutor or Crown counsel been willing to take the issue forward to court? I'd like to suggest to the minister that that's a very rigorous test, and I'm wondering if there's going to be a change in policy surrounding those issues.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Let me recap the question just to make sure that I understand it. The member is suggesting that these are difficult matters about determining cause, and asking whether government is intending to try to standardize when we proceed to actually pursue cause.

F. Gingell: A process.

Hon. J. MacPhail: A process. Again, I hope the member will allow me a little bit of indulgence in that this is a bit of personal opinion, but understanding that I'm standing up in the capacity of an executive council member. I know that employers, even if the employer is a government, try very hard to pursue cause, because there are always matters where there will be precedents set and policies established about future practices around dismissal, etc. Frankly, I'm always amazed -- and have been for the last 15 years -- about the difficulties in pursuing cause, and I've been on both sides of the fence: defending a person fired for cause and as an employer having to terminate a person for cause.

[11:00]

F. Gingell: So that this section doesn't pass, I will ask another question that I thought was going to be asked by the member for Matsqui, which was the issue of termination payments when somebody voluntarily leaves employment.

Hon. J. MacPhail: There will be no severance pay on voluntary resignation.

F. Gingell: Can that apply through to organizations such as the Workers Compensation Board? Or is the Workers Compensation Board clearly outside the ambit of this legislation?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The Workers Compensation Board is covered by this legislation, so it would apply.

F. Gingell: It's a pity the retroactivity doesn't go back a little further, only to May 1.

When we deal with the issues in section 3 which talk about the ability to recover from an employee when an employer pays, I guess section 3 recognizes the issue that there may well be two employers: the original employer, the relationship of which has been terminated; and the new employer within government, in some other section of government or somewhere else within this wide band of employers that are now covered. So in this particular case, I presume that it is envisaged that we're only dealing, unless the contract states differently, with employers within this large band -- i.e., a person has left the Ministry of Health, has received a termination arrangement, was not fired for cause, was redundant because of a reorganizational change and then goes to another employer, which is a regional health council, say. Is it the intention that it's an issue of public funding that will cover these two circumstances?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The range of public sector employers captured by this is defined in the act, and the severance and re-employment and the allowable amount as a result of that are when someone is terminated and/or re-employed in the context of this very broad range of public sector employers -- some of which are not publicly funded, by the way. Some Crown corporations don't receive public funds but are Crown corporations that are captured by this act.

F. Gingell: Is it intended that the regulations will also cover termination in lieu of notice periods that overlap with new employment by the individual in a non-government position in a different province, in a different country -- a financial officer in Health who has gone to be a financial officer in a non-government industrial corporation? Is it intended that the regulations and the rules that you are producing will cover those circumstances?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The rules will only cover re-employment in the broader public sector as defined and not beyond that. I just might add that it is controversial amongst senior executives that we're even extending it that far.

Section 3 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Hon. Chair, I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Bill 20, Public Sector Employers Amendment Act, 1997, reported complete with amendment.

The Speaker: When shall the bill be considered as reported?

Hon. J. MacPhail: With leave of the House now, hon. Speaker.

Leave granted.

Bill 20, Public Sector Employers Amendment Act, 1997, read a third time and passed.

[ Page 5895 ]

Hon. J. MacPhail: I call Committee of the Whole to debate Bill 28.

HEALTH AUTHORITIES
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997

The House in committee on Bill 28; G. Brewin in the chair.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

S. Hawkins: I'm wondering why the service providers committee definition was repealed.

Hon. J. MacPhail: We are no longer mandating regional health boards or community health councils to have specific committees. It will be up to them to decide the nature and extent of committees that they have.

V. Anderson: Can the minister explain why the Vancouver Charter is being amended at this particular point?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The section is necessary because the Vancouver Charter refers both to the city and to the council of the city. This clarifies that either body will be covered when reference is made to health duties that may be transferred to the health board. There is also a related amendment in section 19(3) that will allow provisions of the Vancouver Charter to apply to regional health boards and community health councils.

A. Sanders: I'd just like a little bit more clarification on what the minister has said about the service providers committee. My understanding is that she has told us that the boards can decide on who they want themselves. What I need in terms of clarification is: if the board or health council decided that they wished to exclude acute care service providers in total, would that be up to the jurisdiction of the health council, by eliminating the service providers committee repealing?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Let me answer that question in two parts, if I may. I think the question is legitimate, but let me explain what this is about, first of all.

In the previous legislation, service providers were excluded from sitting on regional health boards and community health councils by policy. So in order to allow input from health care providers, physicians, etc., these service provider committees were set up as a sidebar, to get their input. The new legislation now allows for the appointment of service providers directly to the regional health boards and community health councils, so it is not necessary for us to have service provider committees anymore.

[11:15]

Sections 2 to 4 inclusive approved.

On section 5.

G. Abbott: Just a few brief and, I think, relatively straightforward questions from section 5. As I recall from our discussion in the Ministry of Health estimates, 15-member boards are pretty much standard across the province with the exception, I think, of one or two in the greater Vancouver area. Could the minister confirm that that's the case and where that is set down? Is it in regulations? It doesn't appear to be in this act.

Hon. J. MacPhail: That is prescribed by regulation. The regulation also prescribes specifically for the Vancouver-Richmond health board that there will be up to 18. But I might just at this point offer -- because it may be in the public domain very shortly -- that aboriginal representation has made it necessary in some boards to expand now to 16 people, so that we maintain the integrity of proper aboriginal representation but also allow boards to have the full committee representation of 15, as well.

G. Abbott: Thank you to the minister for that answer. That may be a constructive change to move to 16.

The next question I have is: clearly, given that the number is set down in regulation, if a regional health board in 1997, '98 or '99 decided that it was appropriate for their circumstances to expand or contract the size of their board, is there provision or any mechanism for them to tender such a request to the minister and for the minister to consider it?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, through ministerial regulation.

G. Abbott: On section 5, section 4(2)(b), just very briefly, the subsection refers to non-voting members of the board. I would presume, first of all, that in every case non-voting members are never included in the 15 or 16 members of the board.

I guess the second part would be: is there any limit with respect to the number of non-voting members of the board who are employed by the ministry?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The member is correct in that the person would not be part of the 15 or the prescribed number of voting members. Secondly, we haven't done any yet, but if indeed we did this, legislation contemplates one per board.

G. Abbott: Section 5, sections 4(3)(a) and 4(3)(b) deal with the appointment of chairs. Could the minister advise: were all the current chairs of the regional health boards across the province appointed by the minister concurrent with the appointment of the current boards? Or are there instances where, in the present situation, the chairs have been elected by the boards themselves?

Hon. J. MacPhail: They were appointed concurrent with all appointments, and they were all appointed by the minister.

M. de Jong: I think we have to have a bit of a discussion here about the change in composition of the board. We certainly talked about it generally in second reading debate, and there's been lots of comment around the announcements and the changes that have taken place. But it is of more than just passing or symbolic interest when a democratic institution, albeit one with a relatively short history, is changed from being an elected body, or partially elected body, to one that will be completely appointed, particularly when it is appointed by the central government of the province.

[ Page 5896 ]

The minister heard yesterday -- or maybe she didn't -- when I discussed the concerns I had about where the accountability would lie for these people. That troubled me insofar as the boards -- however they were composed; however they found their way to that board -- were going to receive their funding from Victoria. Generally, one is most responsive to that agency which controls the funding. Now you've coupled that with the fact that an individual will find their way onto the board purely by appointment by the ministry.

This is the opportunity that the minister has to explain why, apparently, the confidence that was formerly there in communities to elect and select a number of the people who should be on this board, why that reasoning, why that rationale are no longer appropriate in the minister's mind.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I appreciate us having this discussion again. We did have a thorough discussion in estimates, but it's appropriate to have it here again.

Let me just get the history straight. Boards have never been elected. Community health councils and the regional health boards were never elected. Judge Seaton never recommended that they be elected. There has been a myth built up around elections. Let me tell you where the idea for partial elections came from. It came from our previous government, under the auspices of the first Minister of Health, under the previous NDP government. That's the only place the idea for elections ever came from. In fact, under that concept the first-ever elections were to have occurred last November.

I'm too tired, actually, to get into a harangue about this, but I don't mind it. I hope you'll appreciate when I just sit back and accept your comments.

When the opposition talks about us firing these democratically elected boards, it's not on. It just simply isn't on under this legislation; it didn't occur. Those boards have never been elected -- the community health councils and the regional boards that existed. When we instituted New Directions -- and I can see the flaws of New Directions; that's why we brought in Better Teamwork, Better Care -- it was contemplated that there be a three-part approach to determining the boards: appointments from government; appointments from municipal councils, local governments, school boards; and then the other third would be elected by direct representation. When the regional assessment team toured the province, this was an issue that was discussed substantially, but it certainly wasn't the most important issue by any stretch of the imagination.

The people said two things. One, those who were already elected people and were going to be designated to sit on the regional health boards and community health councils said: "Please, we're busy. We don't have this -- we weren't elected to do this -- on our mandate. We can't attend the meetings. The attendance. . . ." They were quite honest in saying that they weren't able to attend. "Please don't take us as designated members again." That's two-thirds of the problem that we were given very solid advice on. The last third of the boards, which were to be directly elected. . . . People across the board said: "Keep the voluntary aspect of our health contribution. We have, as a tradition in this sector, never been compensated." There's a reason for that, and frankly, we'll probably get into that debate a little later on, as well.

It was at this point divided in the discussion between those who said "Please appoint" and those who said "You should elect." There were those who said: "If you're not going to remunerate people for an elected position, how is it that they enter into an election in the first place? Do you have to be of a certain class or of a certain substance -- wealth substance -- in order to enter into the election? You have to lay out money for a position that receives no compensation." When that discussion occurred, there was consensus on not having elections.

I have also heard the debate that the previous health societies that existed were by election. I know from my own involvement in a movement of a different day that those elections did not exist in any broad community base -- none whatsoever. There were flashpoints of elections that occurred, and I myself participated in those flashpoints of elections. Then once that single issue was decided, we never heard from an elected process again in the broader community sector. So some people say: "Look, hundreds of people stood for election, and they didn't have to put up any money."

What was contemplated under the previous act was a broad election not dissimilar to school trustees or councillors, which requires a commitment; it does require a financial contribution. In light of that, the regional assessment team recommended that there not be elections, and in fact, they received that through much advice. That's the conclusion to which we came.

M. de Jong: I understand that the minister has, in this body and elsewhere, been confronted by a reversal, as it were, on this particular point. It would be somewhat easier for me to understand the rationale behind the change had I not been confronted with all of the arguments by the former minister in the previous government, had I not been confronted with all those arguments in support of the previous model.

I think it's more important for us to understand what has changed in the government's mind. I mean, there was another model; this happened in Saskatchewan. I was alerted to that by members of this government who pointed with pride to a system that, quite frankly, I thought at the time was fraught with difficulties. But I don't think that it's unreasonable, when a government does a 180-degree turn on an issue, to probe and query what has changed in their minds and where the motivation. . .and why, quite frankly, they embarked down the previous path in the first place. I'm not sure what information the minister has now that her government couldn't have had previously. All of those concerns that she referred to existed previously. But it probably doesn't help us. . . . In fact, it doesn't help us to relive history.

I'm more interested today in this notion of how these appointments are going to be made -- how they have been made and how they are going to be made. As I said earlier, there is great concern at the community level that a process that was supposed to be about decision-making in the community is now going to be about a body which consciously or subconsciously is answerable to Victoria. If your money is coming from Victoria and if your appointment is coming via the minister in Victoria, it follows logically that you would consider yourself answerable to Victoria. It is that notion of where the accountability will rest through these boards and councils that I think is causing people the most difficulty.

Let me simply ask the minister this: based on the practice that has been followed thus far and what will follow in the future, how are these appointments made? Where does the minister get the names? What qualifications. . . ? We talked about a regulatory scheme or a schedule of. . . . I mean, what qualifies a person to sit on one of these boards? I think these are fair questions from the perspective of communities to whom these boards are supposed to be answerable but which now no longer have any input into who occupies these posts.

[ Page 5897 ]

[11:30]

The original appointments were made through government. There's no question about the hundreds of appointments. We did as broad a consultation and seeking of input as we could by that time, but we also wanted very much to quickly put the new system in place. The whole health care system had been in a state of anticipation, I will call it; others who were more upset by the process would call it a state of anxiety. It was important that we got the regional health boards in place, with the full authority delegated to them, by April 1, and then the community health councils next.

We had a fairly broad input and call for nominations. Some regional health boards took it upon themselves -- the regional health boards that were in existence prior to the new ones being put in place -- to actually do a public call. My own area, Vancouver -- I was so pleased -- did a public, advertised call and then screened the applications themselves, went through a panelling process and made recommendations to me that were virtually accepted.

In other communities, the municipal councils took it upon themselves to have input and make recommendations. And then in other community groups, we met with the health care providers, both the physicians and the other health care organizations, for input and the nomination process. I might also say -- and I certainly don't want to embarrass anyone on the other side -- that I received some very valuable advice on appointments from members opposite, as well -- and followed that advice. That will continue.

What we anticipate. . . . Already the boards themselves are taking this issue on through a newly formed provincial association that they've set up among themselves, recommending to me on a community nomination process for the next round of board appointments. They are working on that right now. I look forward very much to having discussion with them. Also, the UBCM has a view on it, and I will be discussing that with the UBCM at their upcoming convention.

M. de Jong: I want to assure the minister that I don't intend to prolong this unnecessarily. I think she knows that except perhaps for ten seconds one day last week, it is not my practice to unnecessarily prolong the debate. I do have a couple of questions, and I do want to pursue them.

I know that there are good people doing good work on these boards, from whatever walk of life they come. But I have to say that in terms of the mechanism by which these appointments have taken place thus far, the best thing that can be said in terms of the process and procedure is that it was rather ad hoc, insofar as how names came to the minister.

She has described scenarios and situations that I think reflect positively on the process, but there were other examples. I know of them and she knows of them, where at the last minute, ministers of her government were calling around, desperately seeking people that they were comfortable with in their respective areas -- comfortable with from a competence point of view, I hope, or comfortable with from a political point of view, which would be more troubling for me. The process was by no means as clean and clinical as I think the minister would like to have people believe. I understand that it was a rushed process. I don't take responsibility for that, quite frankly. I think people know where responsibility for that lies.

We're creating a framework with this legislation that, hopefully, will bring some stability to this sector of public life and that people are going to have to live with and work with. In creating that framework, it is important that people have some assurance that. . . . Again, I can give this minister all of the benefit of the doubt, if I want to, about how that process will work. But the safeguards exist, or are supposed to exist, legislatively.

I guess what I am asking for from this minister is: what processes are in place that will provide communities with some assurance that now and in the future, these appointments will be made on the basis of competence, on the basis of ability and not on the basis of what a particularly powerful minister from a particular area deems expedient for political purposes?

The other issue -- and I know this was also canvassed in estimates. . . . The minister knows. She found herself in some difficulty during the course of this appointment process. I don't want to reopen that particular issue. I'm happy to if she wants, but in the interests of time, I have no particular interest. But she found herself in difficulty, where there were allegations of the central government pursuing a political agenda. She denied it, yet that suspicion lingered.

I guess the fair question to ask today is: what are her government's intentions insofar as establishing a mechanism by which these appointments will be made that will provide a legitimate defence to those allegations that oppositions and people in the community are inclined to make when appointments they disagree with come from government?

Hon. J. MacPhail: There will be basic criteria. The basic criterion that each and every board member must adhere to is that they agree to deliver all of the legal health care services to the region -- the full range of services.

After that, as I've just described in my previous answer, I am in the process of receiving recommendations from the newly formed provincial association of regional health boards and community health councils on a process for the next round of appointments. I very much await that -- as I will from the UBCM, as well.

M. de Jong: This may be my last point on this. If you're going to adopt a regime which calls for appointments by the minister, maybe that's the best way to do it. Maybe that's the best way of collecting names from those outlets, from that new provincial body. If it is, if the minister believes that, is she prepared to commit her government, at least via regulation, to following that procedure?

At the end of the day, as an opposition, what one tries to do is ensure that there is a mechanism in place by which we can hold the government accountable when those suspicions that I've just described arrive. The ultimate question that I would envisage asking a year from now, when a suspect appointment might be made, is: did you follow the procedure? Did you follow the procedure that you laid out, that exists in regulation and that says this is how a particular individual arrived on one of these boards?

I guess it's establishing now that mechanism by which government can be held accountable, if you accept that it will 

[ Page 5898 ]

be the appointment process by which people land on these boards. Is the minister in the position that she is prepared to make that commitment to establish these guidelines, of the sort that she has alluded to, in regulatory form?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No, because that would then set. . . . I would ask the hon. member if he asked the same question of other boards that exist in the public sector.

What I am committed to -- and I've already made this commitment -- is to make the selection process public. Further, where the real accountability should lie is in the appointees doing their jobs and carrying out their jobs. That, of course, will be a public process, as well. In fact, the mechanisms by which regional health boards and community health councils will be held accountable have been well described and well discussed.

M. de Jong: Lest there be any doubt, if I had the opportunity, I would ask that question of all the boards that exist, because I think it is a laudable objective.

A. Sanders: It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to section 5 of Bill 28, the Health Authorities Amendment Act. Continuing on from the comments of the hon. member for Matsqui concerning composition of the board, as the minister has mentioned, I think it's really important to interdigitate what we did talk about in the estimates for health care with the inception of the amendment act to describe what is going on in terms of regionalization -- the boards that we will be creating.

For the benefit of those in the gallery especially, one of the implications that the minister has left us with is that we are talking about a democratic process whereby people are brought forward as volunteers to boards in British Columbia to run the health care of the communities. It's very important to recognize a different interpretation of what the regional assessment teams were told when they went into communities, and that is that those communities said that they wanted to elect their members to health boards and councils, that they wanted to have the right to choose and that they wanted to have volunteers on their boards. There is no dispute about those facts.

The interpretation by government is the differentiation between the words "appointed volunteer" and "volunteer." To me, as an individual in a community, there is a very large chasm between the concept of an appointed volunteer -- in other words, the minister appoints who is going to be on that board from a roster of individuals -- and the community appointing an individual. When we look at the culling process -- if I can use that pun -- it is very much a circumstance where there is quite a significant difference in the individuals who may get on the board and, as a result, from a politicization point of view, it is very much different in terms of the kinds of decisions that people may make on those boards, having been appointed, as opposed to having been volunteers. It's very important to reiterate that communities did say they wanted the volunteer capacity to remain. But more importantly, the interpretation has been "appointed volunteers," which to me is a very different concept from the word "volunteer."

When we look at section 5, there is one thing that I'd like to look at in the context of Okanagan-Vernon. Being a reasonable-sized community, I'm sure that the context will apply to very many of the communities of British Columbia -- that is, in section 5, section 4(4): "Members of a board may receive reimbursement for prescribed expenses necessarily incurred while discharging their duties as members of the board."

I'd like to read into the record a very short article from the July 4, 1997, Vernon Morning Star:

"The North Okanagan regional health board believes Victoria is placing unnecessary financial hardships on local directors. The board was looking to have directors compensated for wages lost as a result of attending regional meetings. But a letter to the board from [the Health minister]. . .states 'there will be no remuneration for individuals who sit on RHBs or CHCs.' Director Jim Cook calls the minister's response 'disingenuous at best,' saying 'it's pretty hard to describe wage replacement as remuneration.'

"Regional chairman Elsie Gerdes said three Vernon directors are forced to take time off work to attend meetings. 'The problem is if they take time off work they lose wages, and there's no means of replacing that,' said Gerdes. 'I can see this as being a potential problem. They're excluding working people from sitting on boards and limiting when boards can meet.'

"In her letter, [the hon. minister] admits: '. . .the ministry recognizes the current policy does create difficulty for some members of boards and councils,' adding she is 'willing to listen to alternate proposals.'

"Gerdes said the board will write back to the minister to 'keep the dialogue going.' Director Moira Jaatteenmaki said the ministry's policy could have serious future repercussions. 'In looking to the future when reappointments come up, when there is no compensation for lost wages, it will severely limit the opportunity for people to participate' on [regional health boards and community health councils]."

[11:45]

Hon. J. MacPhail: Again, we addressed this issue thoroughly in estimates. But let me reiterate what was said. The policy and now the legislation contemplate expenses only. However, at the very first meeting I had with the regional health board chairs and community health council chairs, I said: "Live through a few months, then meet and make a recommendation to me on this." They themselves are of mixed views. They themselves have suggested that the problem is extremely complex in terms of what, if any, compensation is given to whom, if anyone. How does one value the time of a retiree who may do other things? How does one value the time of an at-home mom or dad compared to wage loss?

All of those complex issues are being addressed by the regional health board chairs and the community health council chairs. But I would be very much interested in the opinion of the members opposite. It would be a substantial expense, if one were to go to per diems. It would be a very substantial cost that would then be an administrative cost and not a patient-care cost.

A. Sanders: This, in fact, has been one of the issues that I feel will lead to the demise of this structure, as we know it, of the New Directions health boards and health councils. That is why it is of significant concern. In terms of the statement "reimbursement for prescribed expenses," could the minister 

[ Page 5899 ]

please outline for me what constitutes prescribed expenses for individuals on regional health boards and community health councils?

Hon. J. MacPhail: They are expenses such as travel, accommodation, child care.

A. Sanders: I would appreciate a form, if that is available from the minister, to look at what the prescribed expenses are, as outlined in Bill 28.

Noting the hour, I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Committee A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. J. MacPhail moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:52 a.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

The committee met at 10:11 a.m.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
EDUCATION, SKILLS AND TRAINING
(continued)

R. Masi: I would like to open up this morning on the monetary side of things a bit. There's a budget summary that was distributed by the ministry relative to the estimates for the year. I notice that in skills development, there's a substantial reduction of 8.2 percent. In terms of dollars, that's $2.871 million. This is a substantial decrease. I'm just wondering if the importance of and the concern about the area of skills development is demonstrated by this reduction.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll say a couple of things. First, during the cost-cutting measures that this government took in preparation for this budget, we really did seek to reduce staff across government -- very often, staff in central operations -- and preserve the services delivered in the field to British Columbians. In the Ministry of Education, Skills and Training, that pattern was similar. As I said in my introductory remarks, before we could go to the school districts and say that we wanted them to save some money on administration and support, we needed to demonstrate our own commitment to finding those sorts of efficiencies and preserving education services.

You're right: the impact on the skills area has been a reduction of over 8 percent. This equated to the loss of 47 full-time-equivalent positions, which we talked about a little yesterday. These were positions that were funded to assist with the setup and implementation of Youth Works and the Welfare to Work programs within the ministry.

We believe that we can still deliver those programs effectively at this lower level, in part -- again, as we discussed last night -- because the Youth Works and Welfare to Work programs are effective and have been effective in reducing caseload. So with the 24 percent reduction in caseload for Youth Works, we believe we can still deliver a high-quality service with this reduction.

But the member is accurate. This is a reduction in the budget for program management, and it is a real reduction in FTEs in the ministry.

R. Masi: In terms of the reduced FTEs, have any of these FTEs been simply moved to another ministry, such as the Ministry of Labour?

[10:15]

I must say that I'm pleased -- I just checked with staff -- that the people holding those positions have all, I think, found other work with the provincial government. Some did go through a period of layoff and recall. But we have been able to deal with staff, in spite of some very difficult reductions, in, I hope, a responsible way. Those who wished to have continuing work, either in this ministry or other ministries of government.

I would say that there was one adjustment to FTEs that is in addition to the 47, which I think I referenced last evening. That was a shift of 20 FTEs to the Ministry of Labour for the ITAC initiative. That will show on these books as an adjustment in base rather than a year-over-year reduction.

R. Masi: In referencing ITAC, we've seen a bit of it through Bill 43, which is on the table. I was also fortunate to undertake a substantial review of it with the Minister of Labour in terms of the development report that came through referencing ITAC. This is new legislation, and the concept here is very interesting. I would like to ask the minister whether the minister feels that the education field had enough input into the development of the ITAC proposal.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The short answer is yes, and I'll elaborate on just a couple of points.

First, the committee the member referenced that came up with the proposal for ITAC involved educators in a way that the past work of the Provincial Apprenticeship Board did not. In the past, educators, both administrators and vocational faculty, felt that in many cases they were on the outside looking in on the work of the Apprenticeship Board, and their responsibility was really limited very narrowly to the deliver of programs.

With the report, the ITAC commission now has built into it representation from the education sector, from college 

[ Page 5900 ]

boards, college administration and college faculty. So this gives educators an involvement in a decision on trades training and apprenticeship at the design level; at the decision level on what trades should be designated; at the certification level, where qualifications are discussed and debated; as well as, of course, at the level of deciding how programs are delivered.

I would say that this is a good step in a direction that I support of involving educators in the decision-making around trades training and apprenticeship. They are not, nor should they be, a majority on the board, but they have a significant voice.

I would also reference that the acting CEO of the acting ITAC commission and secretariat -- which we will set up in the near future after we debate and pass that legislation -- has been seconded from the skills development division.

R. Masi: I think the success of any organization or any commission or any functionary body depends upon the persons involved. I guess I would ask the minister how much input into the selection of personnel to sit on the commission the Minister of Education and the Minister of Labour will have. Here we are into another duality, and I again raise some concerns about this.

Another concern I have with this is. . . . My understanding is that the recommendations will come from industry, labour, education and government. Will these be accepted by the ministers, or will there be other influences involved here?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The bill that we're going to be debating has a very interesting feature that is somewhat unusual in provincial legislation, in that the responsibility for carrying out the act explicitly rests with two ministers -- the Minister of Education, Skills and Training and the Minister of Labour -- not one minister. At one point -- not to tell tales out of school -- we were even seeing whether it was legally possible to introduce it jointly under our names. That model of joint decision-making will be carried out.

The member is right that the representatives to the commission from various sectors are nominated by the groups involved -- by the employers' associations, by the union movement and by the educational community. We have asked those communities to nominate twice as many people as there are spaces available so the ministers do have discretion in evaluating appointments. I would describe the relation between the ministers as one of joint vetos and joint approvals.

R. Masi: On this point, I'm happy to hear that there will be a wide body of selection involved in this. I think that's a healthy way to go at it.

I would like to repeat that my consultations with a number of people in the various fields -- education, labour, business -- all seem to say the same thing: if this is going to work, it will depend upon the people involved. In the past -- no reflection at all on past membership in the Provincial Apprenticeship Board -- my understanding is that it was largely an advisory body, and it was very tied up in the bureaucratic process, in terms of flexibility and forward thinking.

In terms of the funding for ITAC -- and the minister may or may not want to comment on this, because it is an upcoming bill -- I understand that the budget will be in the neighbourhood of $70 million. I wonder if the minister could advise me on the proportional breakdown between Labour and Education, Skills and Training.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The figures are as follows: the Ministry of Labour has in its budget approximately $27 million that will be under the purview of ITAC. The Ministry of Education, Skills and Training has $42.3 million that will be under the purview of ITAC. So its total budget for the coming year, '97-98, will be just over $69 million.

R. Masi: Looking ahead a bit here in terms of the various programs under skills development programs, I see a substantial reduction in the budget for Youth Works and Welfare to Work programs -- a drop of $11.8 million. I wonder if the minister could comment on the reason for that.

Hon. P. Ramsey: This is a reflection of the circumstances that we discussed last night. The reduction in budget was driven largely by a reduction in caseload. We have around a 22 percent reduction in the caseload for Youth Works from '96-97 to '97-98. We expect the caseload to stay at the lower level. We've also had a 14 percent reduction in the caseload of Welfare to Work clients, which the ministry is also responsible for. So those reductions are reflected in the budget for Youth Works and Welfare to Work programs.

R. Masi: In terms of the reductions in numbers. . . . I certainly commend the ministry for approaching the situation in this way. There seems to be, though -- and we commented on this last night -- sort of a vagueness about where some of these people have gone. Are all these people employed, or has a substantial proportion just dropped from the roll?

Hon. P. Ramsey: As I said last night, we are concerned with doing a good longitudinal study of Welfare to Work and Youth Works clients to make sure we understand what impact the program has had in their lives on a longer term, over a five-year period.

With a year of experience under our belts, what we can say is that of those who have left the rolls and are no longer supported on Welfare to Work or Youth Works, around 75 percent are in employment, and the great majority of those are in full-time positions. So that is indeed excellent news. We also know that around 7,000 of those who are not on the rolls have chosen to pursue post-secondary education, and they are, as the member knows, pursuing post-secondary education supported by student financial assistance, not by income assistance.

Those are the two largest categories that we can clearly identify. Others have left the province or have chosen a variety of other lifestyles, I assume. As I say, we will be following up over a long period of time, over a five-year study, so that we can provide, in subsequent estimates, increasingly accurate and detailed information about the impact of Youth Works on its clients.

[10:30]

Hon. P. Ramsey: This program was eliminated as a result of Treasury Board's direction to all ministries to look hard for 

[ Page 5901 ]

programs that were clearly subsidies to business, looking to the elimination of the great majority of those programs. As the member knows, this program provided support to the business and industry sectors for upgrading the skills of their workers. It was not clear where the public responsibility was there, as opposed to the individual responsibilities of employees and of the businesses themselves for maintaining a well-trained workforce.

I will say -- because I want to be as open as possible here -- that my view of it is that through workplace-based training and similar initiatives where we are asking employers to play a role with us in helping people gain and retain employment, there is some assistance there for training. Workplace-based training, as the member knows, provides a training grant to business, which may be used both for the workplace-based training client and also for training other workers to upgrade skills generally. We think that it's a better model that really asks industry to play a partnership role with government -- a much better partnership than this program did. As far as I can tell, it was pretty much just a direct subsidy to business operations and one which, like too many of these, really was very uneven across the piece. It created a very uneven set of incentives for various businesses.

R. Masi: My colleague has a number of questions in terms of the Student Summer Works program. I will turn the floor over.

D. Symons: Not a number, but I do have some questions. We're at about the halfway point for this particular program. I'm wondering, first, if you're tracking the support. You have about $6 million allocated to the program. I'm wondering if you might be able to give us a feeling for the number of people who are in the program. Is that $6 million going to be expended? Will you be cutting back on availability because of the funds there? Are you on track? That's basically what I'm asking.

Hon. P. Ramsey: We have achieved the planned outcomes for this program. The target for Student Summer Works was 3,300 job placements. We are already above that target; we may even get a few hundred more. We expect that all of the $5.95 million will be expended on this program.

D. Symons: I noticed that you set a target of 3,300 job placements. I see that I had put an extra zero on that. It makes quite a difference there.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I wish.

D. Symons: Yes, I'm sure a lot of students wish that, also.

I note in the program that they must be employed for a period of 150 hours, which really only works out to 20 days at seven and a half hours a day, and a five-day week. It's not a great deal. If they are getting $8 an hour -- because I note that the government pays up to $4 on a 50-50 share -- that that would work out to $1,125. If you are indeed targeting people who are going on to post-secondary, that's going to leave them somewhat short of the funding they would need to continue their education.

I'm wondering why you chose 150 hours. You might get twice as many people through if the employer is only keeping them for the length of time that the job subsidy is there. It's not going to be enough for a student to earn enough to continue their education.

Hon. P. Ramsey: There's a misunderstanding at the base of your questions that I want to clear up. The 150 hours is the minimum that a job can qualify for in this wage subsidy program. That's the floor, not the ceiling. The great majority of employment opportunities are far higher than that. We wanted to provide an incentive and a job subsidy for significant chunks of work. As the member says, this is just a little more than three weeks of full-time work -- not quite four, I guess. But there is clearly a much higher average number of hours. I have asked staff here if they can provide me with an average number of hours for a job that has been created with the assistance of Student Summer Works.

D. Symons: I gather from what the minister was saying that the $4 subsidy will carry on for the full time. If one gets employment at the beginning of the program and goes for the full four months, they could receive that. That would clear up my concern there.

I'm wondering if I might get. . . . I know you won't have it now, but I'd appreciate having this for future reference. There are nine host agencies involved with it. Could I get a breakdown as to the number that are employed through this program in each of those nine host agencies, and possibly the amount of money that went through each of those nine agencies?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We don't have that information with us today. We will be pleased to provide it for you.

V. Anderson: I'd like to pick up for a few moments where we were talking about multiculturalism and the various programs -- the new language programs for grades 5 to 8 and then in high school. Could the minister explain: is it a requirement that a school taking up a new program in grade 5 -- say Mandarin, for instance -- provide that. . . ? Is it grade 5 the first year, and then grades 6, 7 and 8? Does it go up? And does it also have to be connected to the high school if they are a feeder school? So when they have finished grade 8 in Mandarin, is there the possibility of continuing that in high school? Do you have to have that connection? Or does it mean that a student would be taking it from grades 5 to 8 within their school, and there would be no possibility for them continuing that? Is there a connection or a follow-through?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I regret that the staff that support me on the K-to-12 system are not with me today. Your critic said that we would be dealing with that at a later date. We can come back to that.

This is an exciting initiative. As I said to my deputy, I would hope that as school districts design language opportunities for the grades-5-to-8 cohort, they would look very hard at not only the demand for those programs at that level but at how they would provide continuing opportunities to master one of those languages at the secondary school level.

V. Anderson: We can come back to that one again under another area.

In the multiculturalism that we were discussing just briefly last evening, is there a multiculturalism committee within the ministry that oversees the multicultural programs for both the Education and Skills part?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The ministry has not organized an intraministerial committee to deal specifically with multiculturalism issues and make decisions on them. Those deci-

[ Page 5902 ]

sions are made by the most senior committee in the ministry -- the executive committee -- at the level of the assistant deputy ministers and the deputy minister.

V. Anderson: Is there a budget for the multiculturalism concerns and aspects of the ministry program? If so, what would that budget be?

Hon. P. Ramsey: As we discussed last night, issues of multiculturalism, inclusion and tolerance for the diversity of the population of British Columbia are built into so many operations of the ministry that it's hard for me as minister to know where I should be drawing the line when I respond to you. Should I put the $70 million we spend on ESL in the public school system on the multicultural side of the line as part of what we do? Should I put the money that we're going to be spending on language training in grades 5 to 8 as well as secondary on one side of the line or the other? What should I do with our efforts in the revised curriculum for socials and history and the like to reflect more adequately the diverse nature of the cultures that make up British Columbia? In a way, I'm almost tempted to say the answer is $5.5 billion, hon. member. I don't think that's really what you're after, though.

Within the ministry itself, in dealing with multiculturalism within staff -- for the people who actually work for the government -- we do indeed have a person who is a special rep, a special programs and diversity coordinator for the ministry. So we have specific staff tagged with that responsibility for working through personnel and other issues that have to do with multiculturalism. We have a budget of around $30,000 a year that's devoted for that purpose.

V. Anderson: I appreciate the minister's comment about multiculturalism being a part of everything they do. I appreciate that that's the way it should be. I'm delighted in that regard.

The diversity coordinator. Could the minister briefly indicate if that $30,000 is program money or salary money or both? Is this person involved in multicultural awareness or competency training for staff people?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The $30,000 that I referenced is strictly program money -- training money for programs run within the ministry for ministry staff.

V. Anderson: I noticed in a previous report that a number of grants had been given to organizations like the British Columbia Centre for International Education, the British Columbia Asia Pacific Awards program, the United World College Scholarship programs, the foreign qualifications assessment and Mexico grant programs. Are these kinds of grant programs still available? Are they listed in the current multicultural program outline that you plan to provide to me?

[10:45]

I'll just reference a couple of others, because again, it's pretty much a part of what we do every day. We have the B.C. teacher exchange, which provides opportunities for teachers in our province to gain experience and a global outlook by teaching elsewhere and by having teachers from elsewhere teach here. We have the Monbusho young visiting teacher program that provides visiting young Japanese teachers exposure to English-language teaching in B.C. We have student selection offices in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan to promote internationalization through recruiting, screening and counselling students who wish to study in B.C. schools. The list goes on.

There are indeed a wide variety of initiatives that this ministry undertakes to cement relations not only around the Pacific Rim, which is obviously the area that I think we have many opportunities in, being on the west coast here, but with the world at large.

V. Anderson: I appreciate the minister's comment very much. I was talking to the ministry earlier about the multifaith calendar. I'm wondering if that is being made available or encouraged for use throughout the ministry, because I think it's the only source that's available that gives the special holidays and special celebration days which are so important in our community.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Thank you very much, hon. member. I'm pleased to inform the member that, as I said to him earlier, not only do I have a copy of that calendar but I've just been informed that all members of my executive have copies of that calendar. So indeed it has received distribution within the senior ranks of the ministry and can inform the work that they do.

V. Anderson: I'd like to move for a moment to a comment that the minister made last night that under section 9 of the Child, Family and Community Service Act -- if I understood the minister correctly -- agreements with youth are being administered by the Education ministry at this time because they haven't transferred. Could the minister explain just how that is working at this time? My understanding is that that's for young people who are under 19. How is that working, and how many young people might be under that program at the current time?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I have some of the information that the member has requested, and we can get more if he needs it. The ministry delivers this service by contracting with agencies. Once programmatic responsibility is shifted to the Ministry for Children and Families, those contracts will be shifted and administered by Children and Families, as well. The overall budget for the ARMS program, the at-risk minor services program, is $4.2 million for '97-98. That's the information I do have in the chamber. The information I don't have is the number of youth that are served by the program. We can get that and provide it to the member.

V. Anderson: If you could provide that information about the number and also about the contract service groups that are handling it, if that's possible, please. It was a surprise to discover that it was still here in this ministry or that it had got into this ministry at all. Was it transferred from Social Services into Skills and Training? I know it would have been in Social Services, so how come. . . ? I'm curious as to how it came into this ministry in the process of going to the other one.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I just asked staff to trace the progress of this program. It ended up in this ministry. It was indeed 

[ Page 5903 ]

transferred from the Ministry of Social Services. It was part of a group of services called the YES program -- youth employment services -- and since those services were transferred over here, the supports for harm reduction were also transferred at the same time. That was done as part of B.C. Benefits and the work that we did around reform of the welfare system starting a couple of years ago. As you know, the Gove report recommended that those and other services be centralized in a ministry responsible for a wider range of service to families and children. Therefore, while we have the contract responsibility for it now, the programmatic responsibility will be transferred to the Ministry for Children and Families.

V. Anderson: Just one other question, then. What kind of supervision -- I'm thinking of Social Services counselling and that kind of supervision, which is very crucial for these young people -- is being given to them at this time? Or is it just a matter of financial transactions to them?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Minors -- under 19 -- who have a social worker in the Ministry for Children and Families would be referred to these programs by their social worker in that ministry. We would be the deliverer of the program. Eventually, of course, that ministry will also be the deliverer of the program.

V. Anderson: Thank you very much for your answers.

R. Masi: A couple more housekeeping items on the printout from the blue book. I notice that under professional services, there is a 21 percent decrease in the budget. . . . I'm sorry -- it's a 17.61 percent reduction in that area.

Interjection.

R. Masi: What does STOB 20 mean? Does that mean anything?

Hon. P. Ramsey: You're looking at STOB 20, and you are looking at the skills development programs, which I think is a reduction of 17.6 percent. These were services that the ministry contracted for in the development of the Youth Works and Welfare to Work programs -- the B.C. Benefits programs -- in '96-97, last fiscal year. Since the programs are developed, we do not need the same level of contracted expertise. We are in the delivery stage, not the development stage; therefore the requirement for those services has declined and the budget has been reduced.

R. Masi: Looking at STOB 40 -- I believe that's the advertising and publicity area -- I see a dramatic increase of 49.08 percent. Could I get a comment on the dramatic increase and what the funds are used for?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I was just talking to my staff. I'm going to have to tell you about an initiative that we're undertaking and that I'm going to be announcing in September. I'm going to have to let the cat out of the bag. It's something that I actually referenced last night. You and I were discussing how we made information about Youth Works and appropriate training materials on job search, job-finding and job retention skills widely available, particularly for a population that in many cases has challenges of comprehending, particularly print material.

This $160,000 increase is devoted, staff tell me, to the production of three video presentations that we are going to make widely available to Youth Works clients and that will be used in the Youth Works program for a job search and assisted job search. We're going to be officially releasing these with, I hope, a bit of fanfare this fall when the work is completed. I think they are very valuable tools, not only for clients of Youth Works; they'll probably be valuable tools for the general population. Indeed, we hope through marketing to actually get some revenue to offset the cost of producing these videos -- from other provinces or perhaps even the private sector. If you wish to see copies of these, I'll be pleased to provide them to you.

R. Masi: I fully support this, by the way, in terms of. . . . I think one of my last questions at the last go-round in estimates was: why was there such a tiny little budget for publicity in this area? My feeling was that the program was of such importance and that the understanding of it wasn't out there. So as a critic, I'm happy that maybe one little suggestion may have got through. I don't know; I may be dreaming here.

Interjections.

R. Masi: We'll take credit for it anyway.

I have one more comment here -- a question probably. Or maybe it's a request. I'd like to get a handle on the contractors in British Columbia. . .a list of contractors for Youth Works. I think I put a request in for some idea -- on a regional basis, if nothing else. It seems to me that it's not an impossible task to have that. I have requested it through the office, and I'm still waiting for it.

[11:00]

R. Masi: That pretty well wraps it up for Skills and Training as far as I'm concerned. I do have a couple of comments here. I would like to thank the minister and the deputy minister for the first briefing we had. It was excellent in terms of the overall educational picture. We moved along beautifully from there. I specifically would like to thank the Assistant Deputy Minister of Skills and Training for a supplementary briefing that we had. This, of course, provides us with the materials that we need and moves the whole process along a lot more quickly when it comes to estimates. I congratulate the ministry on the work they're doing and the support that you give to the critics. So thank you very much.

J. Weisbeck: First of all, I'd like to thank the minister for giving me this opportunity to discuss post-secondary education. I have inherited universities, as well, with the passage of Wilf Hurd.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Oh, what a horrible way to refer to it!

J. Weisbeck: It was a sad day for all of us.

[ Page 5904 ]

I'd like to also thank Shell Harvey and Tom Austin for their help and cooperation in helping me attain an understanding of what's happening in the ministry.

As a graduate of the system -- I graduated from UBC in 1967 -- I'm very proud of our system, and I'm particularly very proud to be associated with UBC. The recent Maclean's ratings show very, very well for our institutions, especially SFU, which is ranked number one, and UBC, which is fourth. All of us who have attended our institutions can step out there very proudly.

But I also think that we would agree that we've got a fiscal crisis as a result of a number of factors: decreasing operating grants, rising costs, and all those sorts of things that are creating some problems within the system.

One of the very good supporters of our system who is also very proud of our system is Dr. Dennison. He states very well, in his book Challenge and Opportunity, a couple of things that I would like to quote, because I'd like it to go on the record. He talks about those challenges.

"The first theme is the challenges which colleges must address if they are to maintain viability and relevancy. . . . This requires finding new styles of leadership, maintaining competitiveness within a dramatically different economic reality and a growing private sector. . . ."

"Colleges have an opportunity to re-establish themselves as flexible institutions which contribute to economic renewal, to accommodate the needs of society's most disadvantaged members and to regain public confidence and government support.

"The issue for the future is how well the overall system (including public and private sectors, distance learning and workplace training, unions and employee agencies, federal and provincial governments) can adapt to the reality of a rapidly restructuring economy and the need for a differently prepared workforce to sustain it. The response to this issue will ultimately determine B.C.'s position in the marketplace of the twenty-first century."

Colleges and institutes have been asked to do much more with less. There is a growing need to become more efficient. I hear this all the time when I am speaking to the various institutions: the government's policies of freezing tuition fees and decreasing grants and asking for more efficiencies by increasing class sizes, etc., has had a huge impact.

Students are also finding it more and more difficult to fund their own education. These difficulties include an economic climate that has made it increasingly more difficult to find summer employment. Student loans are not student- and graduate-friendly. These loans must become more friendly in their acquisition and in their payback.

As we enter the new economy, post-secondary education takes on even greater importance. More than half of the new jobs in B.C. in the nineties will require four or more years of post-secondary education and training. Life-long learning has become a necessity, with six or more career shifts becoming the norm in the new economy. About half of the skilled and technical workers will become obsolete within three to seven years of completing their training, and obviously this is going to create huge demands on our system.

Over time this government has made statements that it has made a commitment to education, so I would hope that over the course of these estimates I would have a better feeling for what this commitment really means, what the definition of "commitment" is and what sorts of criteria they used to establish this commitment. I think education is evolving, and it is important to know where this evolution is going. It is particularly necessary to give some certainty to the youth of our province to know that the programs they're taking will be both meaningful and accessible.

So if the minister would like to respond to that, I'll sit down for a while.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes, I will take the opportunity to respond to some of it.

I think underneath some of the challenges that the member is pointing to, we probably share many common understandings of the role that our colleges and institutes and universities play and the challenges they face in preparing British Columbians -- and this is the point I want to make -- both for participation in the economy of our province through meaningful and, one hopes, well-paid careers but also as members of our culture generally.

We talk about applied education for the job market and this other stuff that we do in our schools and our colleges and universities that prepares people generally to participate as citizens, as parents, as members of a relationship, as members of a community. I am a firm believer that that is an equally important part of what our institutions do, both in the K-to-12 system and at the post-secondary level. So it is not an either-or, nor do I limit the role that our post-secondary institutions play to economic development and support of economic development in the province, though that is clearly one of their principal roles.

Our universities are obviously not only transmitters of knowledge and skills but generators of knowledge. They not only tell people what past generations have learned but find new knowledge for future generations. That's an important part of what we support in our post-secondary system, both at universities and in the college and institute systems as well.

I do take some exception to what the member said about what he described as a fiscal crisis in post-secondary education. I would say that if he were talking about post-secondary education in Canada, rather than specifically in British Columbia, that phrase would indeed be accurate. We have a federal Liberal government that has abandoned its commitment to post-secondary education, and the result in many provinces has been decisions by provincial governments to pass those federal cuts on through, with devastating results to colleges and institutes and universities across this country.

But the action of this government and the result in British Columbia has been diametrically opposed to what has happened in the rest of this country. Over the past four years, funding for post-secondary education in British Columbia has increased by nearly $200 million -- a 19 percent increase in funding for post-secondary education. In comparison, the average across Canada has been a cut of 1.5 percent each year for the last four years. So we have said that we're going to provide training opportunities for our citizens, and we have walked the talk.

I recognize as well as anybody that in doing this, we have also asked our institutions to play a role in ensuring increased access with less money than we would have provided in the past for that access. Therefore, in partnership with our col-

[ Page 5905 ]

leges and universities and institutes, we have been enable to increase student spaces by some 7,000 FTEs last year. We're projecting an increase of another 2,900 student spaces this year -- an increase of nearly 10,000 spaces over the last two years.

We have done it in a different way. We've done it by asking the system to work like a system. We have 28 different institutes in this province that provide post-secondary training -- everything from the Institute of Indigenous Government to UBC to community colleges to university colleges to provincial institutes. There is a huge range of educational institutions. And we have asked them. . .and have taken the leadership in saying that it's time that this group worked as a system.

I assume that the member opposite is aware of the strategic plan that the college-institute system recently adopted in the fall of 1996, called "Charting a New Course." That plan reflects many of the goals that Mr. Dennison set out in his book. So when the member talks about how we as a province seek to tailor programs to meet the economic realities and the challenges that we have in providing trained employees for new and emerging sectors of the economy, we are working hard with our educational partners to do just that.

So in terms of overall space, I would submit that far from being a crisis, these are tough times for post-secondary education. When the member describes a crisis, he must be talking about Ontario. He must be talking about some of the really devastating things that have happened to post-secondary education in Manitoba or in the Atlantic provinces. He is surely not talking about British Columbia, where funding for post-secondary education has risen by nearly $200 million, rather than been cut; where rather than decreasing opportunities for students to enrol, we've increased them by nearly 10,000 seats just in the last two years; and where, contrary to the movement across the country, we are keeping access to education affordable.

The member referenced the tuition freeze, and I'm sure we'll have more debate about that. But the impact on access is clear: it has kept the doors open to students, where in other provinces, other governments of other political persuasions have slammed the door in the faces of students -- particularly low-income students -- with tuition increases of 15 and 20 and 25 percent.

[11:15]

Tuition in this province now stands as the lowest of any province in this country. I submit that that is something we should celebrate. I know students do. I know that when I talk to students, they say that that is one of the things that has helped keep the door open for them to attend post-secondary education.

We've also made sure that the student assistance program is increasingly responsive. The budget that we're debating today increases the funding for student financial assistance by 4.6 percent. So in that area, as well, we are delivering on our commitment to education.

The member talks a little bit about participation rates, and I must say that I share his concern. I think the situation he describes from '86 to '91 -- if I remember the time period he quoted -- are the participation rates which got me involved in politics. During that period, I was president of an organization called the College-Institute Educators Association, which was pressing the government of the day to increase the participation rate. At that time, B.C. ranked ninth in participation rate, I think, among the ten provinces, and there was no sign that the government of the day was interested in any measures to improve the situation. I will tell the member some of my activities involved in efforts to get the government to change its view of what was needed in post-secondary education, but I think it's not for Hansard.

I will say that the situation has changed. Staff have advised me that the latest figures we have would place us in a cluster just behind Ontario and Nova Scotia. They clearly have the highest participation rate, but we are in a tight cluster, either third or fourth, with Alberta and Newfoundland, of all places. So we have made great strides. We are no longer trailing the pack. We're gaining on the leaders, and it's my commitment, as minister, to continue that progress.

I will close by saying that I agree with the member that we do need new ways of leadership, and new ways of asking our educational institutions at the post-secondary level to work as a system so that we are increasing educational opportunities for our citizens to make sure they are equipped for the twenty-first century -- both for the economic life of this province and also for their broader role as citizens of British Columbia.

J. Weisbeck: I did enjoy reading the strategic plan. I think that it has a great deal of merit. The people I've talked to about it have commented, though, that it requires a huge amount of resources to implement. Obviously we're even taking an entirely new direction. So my first question is: what sort of predictions are there for the increase in the amount of funds that are going to be required to implement this program?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I think I would take exception to the member's characterization of what the strategic plan, "Charting a New Course," recommends for this ministry and for government in terms of enhanced revenues. I think what the plan says, very explicitly in places, is that government revenues will not be expanding at the rate that we had come to believe would be inevitable in the eighties and early nineties, and that the system itself must find ways of more clearly prioritizing the activities that it undertakes and living within the financial circumstances it finds itself in. Now, that does not mean that there won't be opportunities for additional revenue. There are some minor adjustments to institutional budgets this year. But clearly, the focus of the plan is how we, as a system, undertake the challenge of rationalizing our system to really make it work.

The system leaders are showing that willingness. I'll give you just a couple of examples, hon. member. Prior learning assessment: we are devoting $1 million to that this year. I think this is a wonderful initiative that says to people who have been in our workforce and now require training or retraining to advance in their career that educational institutions will do all they can to assess not just the transcript they have from past educational endeavours but their actual skills; they will assess what they have in skills, knowledge and abilities from on-the-job work as well as education. I think that is very important.

A second very important one, to carry through on some of the initiatives that the critic for skills training and I discussed last night, is to break down the barriers between the 

[ Page 5906 ]

world of work and the world of education and get them integrated. We're devoting $3.6 million to co-op education this year -- an initiative that the strategic plan says is one of the areas we should definitely be moving in. In addition, the strategic plan references two provincial centres to provide coordination on vital initiatives for the system: the Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology and the Centre for Education Information Standards and Services. Both of those centres are now up and operating, so we are putting in place some of the building blocks of a plan to work with our colleges and institutes as a system. The leadership of that system has risen to the challenge and is working hard at those initiatives, as well.

J. Weisbeck: There is a strategies and action table in the back part of this book. I'd like to know what the current status is of the actions completed. There are about 75 actions. How many of those have been completed?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I regret that my copy of the strategic plan is down in my office. I didn't bring it today. The ministry informs me that they actually have a spreadsheet with each of those 75 actions and are tracking action on them. It's information that we're quite willing to share with the member, so he can see which ones have moved well and which ones we're having some difficulty with, and track progress himself. I guess what I would say is it's that level of detail that shows our commitment to carrying through on the directions of the strategic plan.

Hon. Chair, if I could, I just realized that I haven't introduced to the chamber some of the staff that are supporting me for this portion of the estimates. For the information of the member opposite, to my left is Deputy Minister Don Avison. I think many of you have met him before. To my right is Mr. Shell Harvey, assistant deputy minister for post-secondary education. Behind Shell is Mr. Tom Austin, of post-secondary finance and information management. Those are the people that are assisting me for this portion of the estimates.

J. Weisbeck: You did give me a strategic work plan. It states the various milestones, the latest one being approval of a new funding mechanism. Is that approval currently in place? Has that been implemented?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I've been advised that much of the work on that new funding mechanism has now been done. It wasn't done in time to actually put it in place for '97-98 fiscal year. We expect to be reporting out to the partners in the strategic plan at a conference this fall on the work done to date on that part of the initiative, as well as on many others. We expect to have that new funding mechanism in place for the '98-99 fiscal year.

J. Weisbeck: I wonder if you could just give me a brief summary of how you think this is going to work. It obviously looks very comprehensive; it looks like you can break things out quite nicely. Could you give me a brief synopsis of what you think the advantages are of having this sort of mechanism?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm tempted to say that we should really just invite the member opposite to a seminar on this as we work through the intricacies of it. Let me say clearly what some of the goals are, the touchstones that I as minister expect this to produce. One is we're clearly shifting here towards basing funding on performance. I think that is the right way to go. Last night we talked about increased measures of accountability and making sure we're getting quality assurance in the post-secondary system and the education system broadly. This different way of funding will reflect part of that.

As one might expect with funding for such a diverse system, both geographically and in the program area, the other goals are: ensuring equity in funding that's provided, as much as possible; ensuring, as much as possible, that we are recognizing differences in how services are delivered or geographic differences across the province and the challenges that educational institutions face; recognizing core services that we expect colleges and institutes to have, no matter where they are; and in general. . . . I think I'll stop there; there are some other pieces to it. Those are the outcomes we're looking at.

It is a matter of devising a system for equitably distributing this portion of the provincial budget. As I'm sure the critic has heard, as I've surely heard during my 20-some years in the college-institute system, there are always concerns about whether people are getting a fair shake on the dollars they get through the program profile system for various programs across the province. This is, I think, a significant attempt to say to all the partners -- to the faculty members, to the colleges, to the institutes, the boards, the administrators and to the ministry: "Let's take a hard look at it. Let's see if we can get it more nearly right, and see if we can spend at least as much time looking at the performance of the outcomes as we are in measuring the inputs."

[11:30]

Hon. P. Ramsey: I will reference a couple things here. Clearly, as we move into this technological age -- and increasingly move into it -- there are some things we need to do centrally and lead on, and the work that the ministry is undertaking in the development of a provincial learning network is something that I think must be done centrally if we're not to disadvantage those who live, as I do, several hundred kilometres removed from some of the centres of technology development. We intend to lead on that and to fund it at the level that's required.

There are, I would submit, though, some pieces I just want to bring to the member's attention. It is a challenge. I agree with the member that this is a challenge that colleges and institutes face, but there are also opportunities here, and there are opportunities for cost saving that come out of the very technology the member is talking about.

On Monday of this week, I had the opportunity to tour the downtown campus of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and I would urge the member that if he ever has a 

[ Page 5907 ]

free half-day in Vancouver -- and knowing how our lives are, that could be a rare occurrence. . . . But if you ever have that opportunity, do give the president of BCIT a call. I'm sure Mr. Gillespie would be very pleased to provide you with the tour that he provided to me. It was very instructive. First, this is an institution that has done some remarkable things in acquiring state-of-the-art technology that is probably the envy of many a private sector firm. They have done it by some very creative partnerships with the private sector, by putting public money in where it was needed, and by figuring out how to work with the private sector in other areas. They have done an excellent job at that centre in providing some really state-of-the-art equipment. I think that is instructive for other colleges, as well: to form some of those liaisons, to figure out where the opportunities are for sharing equipment and facilities and leveraging public dollars into providing the equipment that the educational institutions require.

The operating budget for equipment replacement for colleges and institutes remained this year at 2.5 percent of overall budgets -- around $13 million. I recently received a recommendation from a task force I struck in the college and institute system that we should look at enhancing that, and we're seeing if we can enhance that this year.

I want to also turn to the opportunities here. In the member's statement, I'm not sure he recognized the opportunities well. My tour of BCIT confirmed my belief that we are very close to delivering education to diverse populations -- diverse in their ability to come into a classroom and diverse in background and geographical location -- through the very technology that the member talks about. There are huge opportunities to deliver education more efficiently if we seize those opportunities.

As I talk to faculty and administrators in the post-secondary system, every institution I talk to already has a number of courses up and running on the Internet, ready for access by students wherever they happen to be. The geographic barriers for us in our generation, and to some extent for our children, will not be there for their children in accessing education in the twenty-first century. They simply won't be there.

The choice will not be which school we choose to physically attend -- that will be part of it, but that won't be the only choice. We will be entering an era when a biology professor at UNBC will be offering services across Canada to students who are in no way physically present in Prince George. We'll be entering an era where the choice the student in Prince George faces is whether to take economics 201 at the community college -- on-site, face to face -- or whether to enrol in a course offered by MIT. These will be the educational choices of the twenty-first century.

Our challenge in this province is to help lead the educational system into that era and to work with the colleges, institutes and universities -- as a system -- in accepting that challenge. Frankly, we are too small a jurisdiction, in world terms, to try to allow it to happen through the individual actions of 28 institutions. We only have a population of 3.7 million -- a good-sized Chinese suburb -- so we must work together if we are going to be leaders in design and delivery of post-secondary education services in the twenty-first century, as we are now, at the end of the twentieth.

J. Weisbeck: I certainly share your enthusiasm for the whole process. I want to talk about the PLN later on, because I've been having trouble getting information on it. I had an opportunity to speak to Royal Roads about their concept of education, and I was quite excited about the fact that a professor could be in England or Germany or wherever. I really do believe this is where it's going to be going. There are some people out there, though, who think that it's a very, very expensive way to go, but I'm still very, very enthusiastic about this whole process.

I want to talk just a tiny little bit about the budget -- although this is all supposed to be talking about the budget. . . . But this relates directly to the budget. We talked about the budget being an increase of 0.26 percent over this past year. When you look at the inflation rate of 2.5 percent, and with the actual decrease in the value or the buying power, we really haven't maintained funding at the status quo. When I hear that we are increasing funding to post-secondary education, I guess I have a little trouble believing that. Would the minister like to comment, please?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I want to just touch on one element of your concluding comments on the technology initiatives before I deal with this. Trying to figure out the expense of the technology that supports the sort of learning environment which you and I are talking about is difficult, but I think we have to be guided by what has happened over the past decade in the cost of that sort of technology. I remember in 1982 buying an Apple II Plus with 48K of memory, which I think cost me $2,500 at the time. It ran off a cassette tape drive. Look at what you get for $2,500 today. The power of technology increases exponentially; the cost of the technology decreases almost exponentially. I guess I am one of those who is an optimist about where those lines are going to intersect, so that we can provide the technology we require to have the sort of learning environment in the twenty-first century that you and I have talked about, and have it throughout our post-secondary system.

On the budget in general, I just want to say a couple of things very quickly. The budget looks flat here -- and it is relatively flat, not only from '96-97 to '97-98, but from '95-96 to '96-97. What the budget doesn't show is that had we simply based it in part on the transfers we got from the federal government for post-secondary education, the budget in '97-98 would be $110 million less than the budget that we got from them and from our own revenues for '95-96. I recognize -- and I have said it widely; I've said it to presidents of universities and chairs of boards of colleges -- that this is a flat budget. We are asking them to deliver more spaces with the same dollars. We think we can do it, and we're helping them where they are having difficulty.

In terms of our commitment to it, this is a huge commitment. As you look at what has happened to other ministries that we have debated over this session. . . . My colleague the Minister of Transportation and Highways sat here not so long ago and defended a budget which was 23 percent less than her budget last year. My colleague the Minister for Environment, Lands and Parks sat here earlier this week and defended a budget which was 12 percent less than the budget last year. That is the magnitude of the work we have done in this government to shift the resources into education. So we are not asking our colleges and institutes to cope with the drastic decreases to funding that colleges and institutes in other provinces have been faced with.

I would also point out. . . . And this goes back to whether we've got a crisis in funding or not, because I really think this is a different version of the same question. One way of measuring commitment to education is by how much you're spending on it per thousand of your population. I have a 

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rough graph that shows the performance of Canada as a country in that measure over the last six years, and of this province. It shows a disturbing trend for our country, which I think is cause for concern. It shows that in the last six years, from '91-92 to '97-98, the spending per thousand population across Canada has decreased by 18 percent.

That is worrisome, because as the member and I agree, a sound training and educational system is imperative for a strong economy. In British Columbia, on the other hand, expenditures on post-secondary education per thousand have grown over the same period by 6.7 percent. So the commitment is there. The difference between the route we've chosen and the rest of Canada is clear. It's my goal as minister to continue on the route we have chosen, which is quite different from the rest of Canada.

J. Weisbeck: There was a concern in the executive director's report from the Advanced Education Council of B.C.:

". . .the impacts of successive years of frozen revenues and increasing costs are beginning to reveal themselves. While our government repeats its commitment to 'protect' education, we have reports of some difficult deliberations at board tables regarding employee layoffs, program elimination, centre closures and other actions intended to reduce operational costs." He talks as well about having lost 50 percent in purchasing power since 1992 and 1993 "as a result of combined effects of inflation and frozen grants. When mandates to increase enrolments are added, the shortfall is even more serious."

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm a touch puzzled by the tenor of the member's question. Yes, we are indeed asking our educational institutions to find more ways of stretching the dollars they have. Requirements for increased productivity and efficiency are as common in public post-secondary education as they are in any other large sector of our economy. Talk to your friends in the banking community. Find out the sort of productivity increases that are being required of firms in the forest industry. Across the piece, we are requiring people to find ways of spending the dollars more effectively and efficiently.

[11:45]

So yes, I think the report you quote accurately reflects that the college-institute system, like other sectors, has been asked to get more productive with the dollars it has. But let me again say that the post-secondary system in this province has had to deal with a 19 percent increase in funding over the last five years as opposed to what the rest of the country has had to deal with, which has been around a 9 percent drop in funds over the same period. No, it is not everything that university and college faculty or administrators or board chairs would like. It just happens to be the best in the country.

The Chair: Member, noting the time. . . .

Hon. P. Ramsey: I got so engrossed, I totally forgot to look at the clock. Noting the hour, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 11:47 a.m.

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