(Hansard)
MONDAY, JULY 21, 1997
Afternoon
Volume 7, Number 3
Part 2
[ Page 6051 ]
The House resumed at 6:35 p.m.
[The Speaker in the chair.]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: In Committee A, I call the Ministry of Education, Skills and Training estimates. In this House, I call committee on Bill 31.
[G. Brewin in the chair.]
Hon. D. Miller: I call second reading of Bill 38.
BUILDERS LIEN ACT
(second reading)
The bill fundamentally -- and we'll get into it in committee stage -- deals with the holdback that has been a part of the construction sector for many, many years. It broadens it and puts in place a process that is fairer, particularly for the smaller subcontractors. Under the old system they had to wait until substantial completion in order to get paid. They obviously don't have deep pockets, so any system that improves on that and allows timely payments of contractors' work to be put forward is welcome indeed. I don't anticipate that there will be opposition, although there are some technical issues for committee stage, so I'll close my opening remarks on that.
G. Plant: I am pleased to rise and speak on Bill 38, and I am sure that although my remarks will also be brief, the fact that both the minister and I are speaking briefly to this bill is in no measure a negative reflection on its importance. It is an important piece of legislation. What we have here is a long-overdue revision of the statute which creates the legal framework for financing building construction. The revision is necessary to ensure that the act strikes a fair and efficient balance between the needs of owners, contractors, materials suppliers and their creditors.
As the minister pointed out, the need for reform has been widely recognized for many years. In fact, I remember learning about builders' liens in my bar admission course the year I qualified as a lawyer, 1982, and being told then how desperately overdue this bill was for reform. Clearly it's undesirable that needed reforms like this should be long delayed, but equally clearly, this is a constructive step. It's a constructive step forward when reform finally does arrive.
There are, as the minister indicated and as I'm sure he expects, some technical issues for committee debate, but the major principles here are sound, and they achieve the goals of those who had called upon the government to bring this bill forward and to reform the Builders Lien Act. I can say that this is an instance where the opposition will be in fact supporting this legislative initiative of government.
Deputy Speaker: I recognize the minister to close debate.
Hon. D. Miller: I appreciate the comments of my hon. colleague, and I move second reading.
Motion approved.
Bill 38, Builders Lien Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I call committee on Bill 31.
FAMILY RELATIONS
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
(continued)
On section 22 (continued).
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I move the amendment standing in my name in Orders of the Day.
[SECTION 22, in the proposed section 120.1, by adding the following subsection:On the amendment.(3) In applying Part 5 or 6 for the purpose of this section, a reference to "marriage" in Part 5 or 6 must be deemed to be a reference to a marriage-like relationship between the spouses who are not married to each other.]
G. Wilson: I just wonder
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.
G. Wilson: So when the committee ended, we sort of stood down all the other sections to this. I'm assuming, then, that we'll address the amendment to 120.1 and then go back to pick up discussion on the remaining sections. Is that what we plan to do?
The Chair: We stood sections 8 to 21 down in order to deal with the issue in section 22. We will deal with the amendment and section 22 and then go back to section 8 and proceed through.
[6:45]
G. Wilson: On the amendment, then. I should say by way of preface to my comments that I appreciate the opportunity that was made available by the Attorney General to have access to the Attorney General's staff to go over a lot of these matters and to address a number of the concerns that I've had and to have them explain in some considerable detail the implications of this. I appreciate the fact that the Attorney General made his staff available to me.[ Page 6052 ]
With respect to the amendment, I would agree that the amendment does clarify, even though the Attorney General took the position that it wasn't really necessary. Certainly it would appear that the amendment, which reads "deemed to be a reference to a marriage-like relationship between the spouses who are not married to each other," makes it explicitly clear, then, that in part 5 and part 6 of the act, wherever the term "marriage" occurs, it in fact now does cover those people who are not married but living together. If my understanding of that is correct, then I have no objection to the amendment.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: That is my understanding, as well.
G. Plant: When we were looking at this section a few evenings ago, I asked a question about the basic intent of this section. At the time, there was a discussion about whether the words used were going to give effect to that basic intention. As I recall trying to say it, the basic intention of this provision was to ensure that the totality, I suppose, of parts 5 and 6 will apply to an agreement made between spouses who are not married to each other -- that is, two people who choose to enter into such an agreement, who have the necessary relationship for the purposes of the act.
We are now proposing to amend the section to clarify the reference to the word "marriage" as it appears in some of the provisions in parts 5 and 6. But I take it that we are not intending here to alter that basic statement of intent, and I wonder if the Attorney General could confirm that that is his understanding, also.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Correct.
Amendment approved.
Section 22 as amended approved.
The Chair: Now we will move back to the sections we stood down, so we will go back to section 8.
Sections 8 and 9 approved.
On section 10.
G. Plant: I should use this opportunity to do that which the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast has already done, and that is to also express my appreciation for the time that staff, including legislative counsel, have spent assisting me in understanding these provisions.
One of the issues that arises when you move away from a definition of legal status which is contingent upon something fairly easily demonstrated, like a marriage, to a definition of legal status which is perhaps a little less easily demonstrated, is who will decide whether or not somebody is a spouse. Here we have a provision which is part of the mechanics of the division of pensions that will now become available in certain circumstances to people who are in the same general relationship. I guess the issue is: who is going to decide if the people in such a relationship in fact fall within the definition of spouse? I suppose, in this particular case, that it will probably happen just simply by a process of self-selection.
I'm wondering if my understanding is right or if it's wrong. If it's wrong, perhaps the Attorney General could explain and correct my understanding.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It's the process of self-selection, with the consent of the administrator, and if there are any problems, then one has recourse to court to get a declaratory judgment.
Section 10 approved.
On section 11.
G. Wilson: I have a couple of very quick questions in terms of the explanation of this. My understanding is that section 11, section 75.1(2) refers to the application of fairness. I guess my question is, then
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand that this itself obviously has nothing to do with the change in the definition of spouse. This is to clarify an existing situation. There is discretion in the courts. I understand there was a recommendation from the drafters that for purposes of clarifying it further, it simply be
G. Wilson: So the clarity, then, is to leave to the court the discretion, as opposed to having whatever the agreed application may apply. So in other words, what this does is
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Absolutely correct.
Section 11 approved.
On section 12.
G. Wilson: I just wonder if I might get just a very brief explanation of the "Despite subsection (1), if no other spouse
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Obviously this is in case there are other spouses. There could be several spouses, possibly, making a claim.
Interjection.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It simply says that if no other spouse is entitled to receive a proportionate share of benefits
[ Page 6053 ]
G. Wilson: For a moment there, I thought I heard the Attorney General saying that you could have a whole bunch of spouses -- but only one at a time, right? And that is a good idea, let me tell you. That's a very good idea.
As I understand it, then, if in fact there hasn't been
Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's essentially correct, but let me just read the note that I have that the hon. member may not have. It essentially says that section 12 repeals the existing section 76(2). It substitutes a new subsection (2) to make clear that a spouse's right to receive the entire postretirement survivor benefit is subject to the right another spouse may have to receive a share of benefits under the pension.
G. Wilson: Okay. But that's covered off anyway, I would think, when there are other sections of the act that say you can't not divide. The law now requires
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, it is redundant if one can logically conclude this from everything else. But obviously this is meant for laypersons to use. This is stating the obvious in a way. For instance, I don't understand much about pensions, as you may have gathered, and even I would need to read this.
Sections 12 to 14 inclusive approved.
On section 15.
G. Wilson: I just have a question on section 15, paragraph (c), subsection (2.1). I guess I'm having a little bit of a problem understanding paragraph (a) in light of (2.2). What it says is: "If the spouse and member agree under subsection (2) to divide the pension in accordance with this Part, then, unless the spouse and member otherwise agree, for the purposes of this Part (a) the original agreement or order dividing the pension applies as if it were made as of the date of the agreement under subsection (2)
I'm assuming you're talking about subsection (2) of the act and not (2.2) as defined here. It seems quite confusing. Maybe you could just explain it.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It refers to the existing subsection (2) of section 80.
G. Wilson: And that's a July 1 date that is made reference to. Is that right?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Correct.
Section 15 approved.
On section 16.
G. Plant: What this section does is add a definition of "child" for the purpose of a part of the act that deals with maintenance and support obligations. I think I understand the major public policy purpose here: it is to make "the definition of 'child' for the purposes of part 7 of the act consistent with the corresponding definition in the Divorce Act (Canada)."
[7:00]
As I understand it, based on letters I've received over the last year or so since I was elected, there is a problem of inconsistency, and it works its way up in relation to young adults who may want to go on to university. I'm not sure if I understand this all the way through, but as I understand it, the basic problem is that up until this point it has been possible to make orders under the Divorce Act that require one spouse or the other, in effect, to pay support and maintenance that will look after such things as a university education for someone who is no longer a legal minor -- that is, somebody who is over the age of 19. But if you were outside the Divorce Act, if you were just in the case of judicial separation or common-law relationship, then you didn't have that opportunity. So there was a perceived inequality between the two statutes. What this definition does is it remedies that inequality, and to that extent I understand what it's doing. And frankly, while it doesn't really matter whether I support it or not, it's there, and we'll deal with it.The more interesting question is that it seems to me that it goes a whole lot further than that, because the provision in the Divorce Act necessarily only creates obligations in respect of children of divorces. This provision, it seems to me, when you read it in conjunction with section 88, and especially the now very plain language of the new section 88(1) -- "Each parent of a child is responsible and liable for the reasonable and necessary support and maintenance of the child
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I believe that this section, in fact, eliminates an anomaly. That anomaly was that if you were separated or divorced -- particularly if you were divorced -- you had a continuing obligation to support your child or children past the age of 19. If you are together and the child is 19 and you are under the Family Relations Act -- let's say you weren't divorced -- there is no obligation to support that child. I think it's important that parents who are separated or together be treated the same. That is essentially what this does. Parents, whether they are separated or together, should have the same obligations. Under the old scheme, parents who were separated had more obligations than the parents who were together. For instance, this would now allow a child or children who are over 19 and in full-time attendance, or disabled or ill, to be able to sue the parents for support and maintenance if the parents could afford that support and maintenance.
[ Page 6054 ]
G. Plant: Well, I think I understand the answer and that, frankly, is a better explanation than I have heard from anyone else so far. I see the Attorney General's point. The old discrepancy, as I understood it, was the discrepancy between, on the one hand, divorced parents and, on the other hand, separated parents. I can see the need for equality of treatment there. This is, however, potentially a fairly significant expansion of the responsibility of parents. I suppose I just make the observation that I actually think there is every likelihood that this provision over time will create as significant an expansion of obligations as any other provision in this bill, with the possible exception of the child support guidelines.
It's an interesting fact of life, I suppose, that this provision has attracted almost no public comment. I suspect it's been lost in the noise of the other interesting issues raised by this bill.
I take it, then, that the way that this would work is that a child -- who may be an adult, but is a child of the parents -- would essentially make a demand of his or her parents that because of his or her illness, disability or some other cause, he or she is unable to withdraw from their charge or obtain the necessities of life, and therefore is entitled to maintenance and support. If the parents refuse to provide that support upon request, then the child would simply apply to court for a maintenance order. Is that a fair summary of how the procedure will work?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It's a very fair summary of the situation as it might unfold. On the other hand, you also have the obligation of the children, the sons and daughters, to support parents. That's been a longstanding obligation in legislation that hasn't been enforced until quite recently.
I think, philosophically, what we're saying is that if you
G. Plant: At first blush, that strikes me as being an awfully good statement in principle, although I'm sure it's going to come as a bit of a shock to some people.
Let me just move, then, to the more technical issue, I suppose. The provision enumerates two specific causes that may give rise to the obligation: illness and disability. Then it goes on to say, in much broader language, "or other cause." I have to say that I always understand the need for basket clauses in general language like this. But I also think that if it's possible to enumerate the specific reasons that might give rise to this obligation, then we really would be doing our job better as legislators if we in fact did that.
To be specific, the example that I began this discussion with was an example around supporting an adult child in his or her university education. I think that that is part of the social policy purpose behind this, and yet, unfortunately, it's not specifically enumerated here. So really, we're all going to have to guess whether or not the phrase "or other cause" includes things like university education, travel to Europe or whatever else, leaving it to the courts. I'm sure that over time the courts will probably do the right thing here, but I wish that in the process we would be a little more upfront and helpful in some of these things.
Frankly, some people, interpreting the phrase "illness, disability or other cause" may interpret it according to canons of statutory interpretation that suggests that the other cause must be something related to or close to illness or disability. I hope that argument does not take place. I guess I want to record here my concern that it's open to someone to make that argument, when I really think that's not necessary.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand that there is significant amount of jurisprudence under the Divorce Act to lead the courts in the direction where we would like them to go, which is that "other cause" means education and the like.
G. Wilson: There are a number -- actually not that many now -- of areas where there's serious disagreement, and this is one of them. I think the difficulty that I have with what is being proposed here is that there are three different definitions of child in this act: one in section 1, one in section 87, and another in section 90. It would appear to me that what the act is attempting to do is to encompass the obligation or responsibilities of a parent -- whether or not that parent is the biological parent or whether or not that parent is someone who has been in a marriage-like relationship for two years -- to look after the financial requirements of a child who therefore has access to sue them if they don't. This is really problematic; it's a matter that I think the Attorney General needs to clarify.
Let me restate it. First of all, maybe we can just break it down into simpler questions and less editorial comment. The word "child" is defined at least three times. I wonder if the Attorney General might tell us why, if it was the intention of this to apply in the act, the "child" in section 1 was not defined, and what the difference is with respect to the definition of child in section 90.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: In section 1, the child is defined as a person who is under the age of 19 years, because that is the definition that then attracts all of the sections dealing with custody. One could not be asking for custody of a child that's over 19 years of age.
With respect to section 90(1), that deals with a child's obligation to support a parent. One wouldn't want to impose the obligation to support a parent on a child who is under 19, and that's why the child is defined as an adult, in that section.
G. Wilson: I appreciate that definition. That makes it very clear that we're dealing with a child who is over the age of 19 and who now seeks to have support from a parent, if they are unable because of illness, disability or other cause
Hon. U. Dosanjh: As I said earlier, education would be the primary example. I'm certain that over time courts will find other circumstances that may be construed to be included in the term "other cause."
But, as I said, there is a substantial body of jurisprudence around the Divorce Act -- issues around maintenance with respect to children who are over 19 and who are in full-time attendance at schools. Courts therefore have interpreted this kind of language appropriately over the years. We believe that provincial courts and the Supreme Court, in interpreting this language, would obviously get guidance from the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada that already exist on this issue.
[ Page 6055 ]
G. Wilson: These's no residence requirement in this, and I don't think in any other section, with respect to the child over 19 actually living at home -- if I can use the term "home." They can in fact be living away. Is that true?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes. That section we're dealing with, where children can or ought to be supported past the age of 19 years, for illness or for other cause
[7:15]
G. Wilson: Then a child of 19, who's living someplace other than with the parent, who is entering into post-secondary education, for example, who then requires support of the parentHon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, a child in that circumstance could apply. But it would be my assumption that courts would look at whether or not a child previously has withdrawn from the charge of the parents and is now trying to seek maintenance and support because his or her circumstances in life have changed. If there has been continuing support or maintenance, or the need for support and maintenance, under those circumstances courts would find it very easy to make that kind of an order. But if the child has previously totally or substantially withdrawn from the charge of the parents, it might be slightly more difficult for the courts to find that there ought to be support and maintenance in those circumstances. But courts, I am sure, would deal with these issues.
G. Wilson: It's a technical question, and it's one that's actually just come to mind, keeping in mind that I think most parents, if they're able, willingly try to assist their children -- and some find that their children when they're well beyond the age of 19 are still, once in a while, coming back for some assistance from parents. Having said that, what I'm curious about is whether in drafting this material there has been any consideration given to the requirement and the eligibility process for people on student loans with respect to their ability to now claim that they are separate and distinct from their parental income and therefore eligible on that question. If there is an obligation that's now being established, how does that affect students who are making application for student loans?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I am unable to give you an interpretation under legislation that I don't have at my disposal right now. But an individual who has shown independence and is wanting to strike out on his or her own -- and wants, obviously, to indicate truthfully to those who are providing support and assistance for educational purposes by way of loans that he or she intends to be independent and is not in receipt of support -- would get that loan or assistance. If I understand it correctly, when children apply for loans they are asked to enumerate the assets and income-earning capacity of their parents and whether or not parents are willing or able to support them. I can indicate to you that my wife had to do that with one of my children just in the last few weeks.
G. Wilson: I know it's getting expensive. However, having said that, the ability of a child over 19 to sue applies to both a biological parent -- if I can say that -- or a parent who may be living in a marriage-like relationship who has been together with a spouse for a period of more than two years. So it's quite conceivable that somebody at 19 -- or older than 19, in fact -- could press legal suit against a parent who has been together with a father or a mother, for example, for a period of more than two years in a very recent capacity. Is that right?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes. But the added condition would be that that individual would have had to support the child for the preceding year at least. Otherwise, generally for anyone who is in loco parentis -- in the position of a parent -- the child would be caught by these obligations, provided some of those conditions are met.
G. Wilson: I wonder what is envisaged with respect to the length of time that this obligation continues. At what point does the legislation say: "Okay, you're off the hook. You no longer are under the potential threat of suit"?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: That would be best determined by the courts in each case. Obviously the governing word would be "unable." The phrase would be "unable, because of illness, disability or other cause." And as long as the child or children are unable for any of those reasons, enumerated or otherwise, courts may determine that that support obligation must continue.
G. Wilson: I don't think there's any dispute for an individual suffering some level of physical impairment -- or whatever other kind of disability that may be there -- that there is an ongoing obligation to try and make sure that the basic needs of that individual are met. I guess the problem we have is with respect to the term "or other cause," which seems so loosely defined. It seems quite problematic, from my point of view, if someone over the age of 19, who may have been supported in the last year, for example, of high school by a step-parent and then deems that that ongoing support is going to continue, now has the right to turn around and simply sue the step-parent for ongoing support. The question, then, is: if they can sue the step-parent, that presumably will apply equally to the parent, keeping in mind that there's going to be one or the other.
This is a new provision. It's a rather sweeping provision, and it's one that I really question in terms of why we're doing it. If we're talking about strictly trying to continue support for people with a disability, that I can understand, but to allow an able-bodied 19-, 20-, 21- or 22-year-old to have access to the courts to sue a parent or step-parent because they deem that parent to be in a position to continue to pay for their education is problematic to me. I just don't think the state should be imposing that right on an individual. I mean, an individual
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand the concern that the hon. member expresses, but there haven't been problems with the Divorce Act. There is an in loco parentis provision in the Divorce Act. One could be a step-parent under the Divorce Act in loco parentis and be deemed responsible by the court to support a child within the definition that we're now putting into the Family Relations Act, so it is not a great jump. It is simply bringing our legislation in line with the Divorce Act definition, essentially. Yes, if you're in loco parentis, whether you are a step-parent or a biological parent or you have adopted the child, you are a parent -- and a parent is a parent is a parent, a child is a child is a child. That's what we're trying to do away with. We're trying to do away with categories of
[ Page 6056 ]
parents and categories of children. We are simply saying that this definition should apply and the definition of the parent should apply for support and maintenance.
G. Wilson: We have reached a point of disagreement, and I'm not going to carry on. In the spirit of cooperation, which we're attempting to accomplish, there are, I think, only two sections in which I would seek a division, and this is one of them. Perhaps we can just do that, and then get on with the rest of the bill.
G. Plant: I understand that we may get to that point, but I guess I don't want the debate on the provision to conclude without sort of adding to it a little bit more -- in large measure because I've been able to continue to think about the implications of this section as the debate involving the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast and the minister has continued. I think that with further thought, I could draw distinctions between the circumstance in which one is attempting to make provision for the children of a marriage or a relationship upon the termination of that relationship. Arrangements are being made to change custody, to change access and to change the whole way in which a family is going to function from that point onward. I've always been able to understand why it is that one party or the other -- the husband or the wife, the mother or the father -- at that point might have a particular interest in ensuring that before the person who has all of the ability to support the family unit disappears from view in some sense and leaves the position where he or she is a custodial parent, there is careful provision made to ensure that the child will be provided for in a way that looks after all of the child's prospective needs.
When we're not foreseeing or dealing with the breakup of the relationship, I think there are a whole host of different emotional and other obligations that come to play that create the beginning of a distinction that is the same issue that I spoke about at the beginning: why on the one hand it may be appropriate to ensure that insofar as orders under the Family Relations Act that are consequent upon relationship breakdown are concerned, it's quite appropriate to do what is being done here; but perhaps in other cases it isn't. So that's one comment.
The second comment is to again pick up on the theme that this is going to mark a significant change in the expectations that parents have. I think I could go some distance down the road along with the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast in saying that, yes, it's probably less of a controversy in respect of children who are ill or disabled. Parents assume a longer-term relationship for those children, although I know many parents of adult disabled children who know nothing about what we are about to do here and who will regard it as a rather significant change in their lives to be told that the adult child, who is unable to obtain the necessities of life but has been in the charge of the state by one means or another for years, will now have a call on the parents' resources. That may be a good thing, but it's a pretty significant change.
I think the magnitude of the change is enhanced by the fact that the circumstances which give rise to the obligation are expressed in fairly general, unspecific language. I hope that the Attorney General is right when he says that there is lots of jurisprudence under the Divorce Act to guide the courts in terms of defining what is meant in this provision by the phrase "other cause." It's one of these things that when you sit and look at it for a while, you can see it having some fairly significant long-term impact on issues, even perhaps as serious as the decision made by parents whether or not to have children. If in fact the law is now creating new and extended obligation for parents -- a legally enforceable obligation, an obligation that can be enforced by suit in a court of law -- then that's another significant factor to think about.
I may be overstating that. Frankly, I hope I am, because I think it would be unfortunate, if we have come this far in a bill which is significant and important in so many other ways only to discover that is has buried within it something -- I blame myself for my failure to think about its implications more carefully until now -- that has the potential to effect a fairly significant change.
[7:30]
In the long run, I think that the philosophical statement about personal responsibility is a good one. I'm prepared to support that statement of responsibility, but not without a whole lot of reservation about how it's going to work out. To conclude, the reservation includes the fact that within a whole system of law, where we are increasingly realizing that the courts are more of a problem than a solution -- and I say that with great respect for the institution of justice, in which I am participant -- it is unfortunate that we still find it an irresistible temptation to create obligations in general terms and then to trust that the courts will give them flesh and concrete details, over time, because that is to invite more litigation rather than bring it to an end.But I hope that all of those risks will not materialize here, and that this section will in fact have no more significant impact than the real and important need to make the provisions around support in this act consistent with the provisions in the Divorce Act.
Section 16 approved on the following division:
| YEAS -- 61 | ||
| Evans | Zirnhelt | McGregor |
| Boone | Hammell | Streifel |
| Pullinger | Farnworth | Kwan |
| Waddell | Calendino | Stevenson |
| Bowbrick | Goodacre | Giesbrecht |
| Walsh | Kasper | Orcherton |
| Hartley | Priddy | Petter |
| Miller | G. Clark | Dosanjh |
| MacPhail | Cashore | Ramsey |
| Sihota | Randall | Sawicki |
| Lali | Doyle | Robertson |
| Smallwood | Janssen | Dalton |
| Gingell | Reid | Farrell-Collins |
| Plant | Sanders | Stephens |
| Coell | Anderson | Nebbeling |
| Whittred | Penner | Krueger |
| McKinnon | Masi | Nettleton |
| Coleman | Chong | Weisbeck |
| Jarvis | Abbott | Hawkins |
| Symons | C. Clark | Reitsma |
| J. Wilson | ||
| NAYS -- 3 | ||
| G. Wilson | Weisgerber | Neufeld |
Section 17 approved.
[ Page 6057 ]
On section 18.
G. Plant: We have before us now some of the provisions of this bill that will give effect to the intent to implement the regime of orders for support and maintenance under this act. In this context we have already had a discussion about some of the issues that arise there. I want to make a comment here, and I will then ask the Attorney General to respond to the comment.
I have indicated that there are concerns about how the child support guidelines will work. Some of those concerns have already been discussed. Let me now give specifics about one concern. I want the Attorney General to know that it's out there, and I hope that the Attorney General, as his ministry monitors this process, will be allied to it. Earlier I had been thinking about the problem that arises in the case of parents who separate and divorce, where an order is made giving custody to one and access to the other. I know that there are issues that arise with respect to the relationship, around the payment of maintenance and access.
There are also, however, important issues that arise when the court makes an order for joint custody and then, as part of that, the child is divided, in effect. The child's life is divided up into little bits. One parent gets the child for a certain amount of time, and the other parent gets the child for the balance of the time. The courts, when making maintenance and support orders, might look at the fact that in situations of joint custody, both parents will in fact have concrete expenses related to support and maintenance of the child. That is, if you have two custodial parents who live in two separate houses, each of those parents will have to have room in their house for the child or the children to live in. It's not as simple as saying that the child will be spending part of the time with mom and less time with dad, that really only mom will have expenses related to child-rearing, and that therefore it's appropriate that mom essentially be given maintenance awards that contemplate the totality of expenses of child-rearing, ignoring the fact that dad will have child-rearing expenses.
The way the child support guidelines are designed is to give, perhaps, less effect to this than could be the case. Time will tell in terms of whether or not that works and unfairness
[7:45]
What I would really hate to see happen would be that the whole regime around custody and access -- and support and maintenance -- would start to respond to this 40 percent rule, that judges would begin to make orders and parents would begin to seek orders solely designed in order to maximize entitlement under the guidelines on the basis of this 40 percent. I don't think it's the intention of the guidelines that parents, either consensually or in bitter opposition, start to reorganize how their children will be looked after according to a somewhat arbitrary rule established in a regulation that determines the entitlement to maintenance.It may well be that the scenario I'm drawing won't come to pass. If that's so, then that's good. These kinds of things are always a risk, when we put ourselves in the hands of guidelines that set fixed percentages in an area of human life where we haven't yet done this before. I'm not going to say that I'm opposed to the process because of this risk. What I wanted to do was leave this specific example with the Attorney General as an example of a case that's been brought to my attention of a potential for these guidelines to work in a way that ultimately will, in fact, cause more hardship rather than less.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The hon. member's comments are appreciated, and that's exactly the reason why we are monitoring how things develop.
Section 18 approved.
On section 19.
G. Wilson: Section 19 deals with amendments to section 96 in the act. This is an area where, with all due respect, I had some difficulty with what the Attorney General was telling us the last time we met -- basically that variances are going to be reasonably standard or straightforward and that you could apply this new grid. My consultation with people in the practice of family law -- and I've tried to go to a variety of people who might give me a variety of opinion
One thing they all agree on is that the application to vary is going to be an enormously complicated issue. They agree that the provisions of the grid are not something that are going to be simple. Certainly, if it's complicated for lawyers with respect to looking at the variance questions, it's going to be even more complicated for laypeople who have to try to determine what their rights are.
I understand that there are a number of support agencies. This was discussed earlier with staff, that these support agencies are being set up to try to assist parents in understanding what it is that's going on. There has to be somewhere in this bill that we can address this question. We're not there yet; they're not set up yet. I wonder if the Attorney might make comment on that. It strikes me that if we're going to use the child support guidelines and if we're dealing with reference here to the federal guidelines
There has got to be some way that somebody can sit down and read, in very common, plain English, what their rights are with respect to varying an existing custody, what the provisions are with respect to what the court can and cannot look at in the variation on the basis of the new guidelines, and how they should proceed with that. That information has to be available, because if you look at the documentation that's been sent to family lawyers
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand -- as I said earlier, the last time we were debating the child support guidelines -- that there is a certain amount of fear of the unknown, as well.
[ Page 6058 ]
Something that's written in legal language, despite the fact that it's alleged to be plain language, can be increasingly difficult.
The guidelines have been in place since May 1 with respect to the Divorce Act orders. I have not had many concerns expressed to me, other than some concerns that the guidelines may have unintended consequences that we will monitor for and deal with. That's why there is, enshrined in this legislation, the ability to append those guidelines as regulations so that they can be changed more easily, rather than having to come here and wait maybe several months before it can be done.
There are several things that have been done. There is a toll-free inquiry line that has been put in place. There has been training for front-line staff dealing with these issues. There are federal materials that are the same for us, and we are using those. There would be parent education programs; I agree that they haven't been in place yet, but they would be. And we would have -- I was told, and I could be wrong -- 20 family clerks across the province assisting people with variation proceedings.
This is simply a guesstimate. I know there are 54,000 orders. Now, I don't know whether they include the Divorce Act orders as well. Yes, they include Divorce Act orders in British Columbia, as well. There are a total of 54,000 maintenance orders made by the courts pursuant to the Divorce Act or this legislation. It would be my guess that a vast majority of those orders would be between parents who are salary or wage earners, that there isn't much difficulty for them to deal with these issues. Then there might be 10 or 15 percent of the orders that are between people who are not salary or wage earners, but business people, be they rich or poor. I would guess -- and I believe that my guess would be correct -- that a majority of those would be people who are well-off, who are not salaried or waged employees. The majority of them would be well-off, and both men and women would have assistance available to them. There would be a significant minority -- which is important -- who may not be wage earners or salaried employees, but who are self-employed poor people who aren't well-off and who will need assistance. Those are the people that we want to target with our assistance. We want to make sure
As we know from our experience with respect to the federal guidelines with respect to the Divorce Act, there hasn't been a rush of variation applications for proceedings. I haven't been advised of any significant problems with respect to that. I'm hoping that there would not be many problems with respect to these either. But if there are we will deal with them as we go along. We will have some federal money coming in. It has been late coming. Once that is here, we will
G. Wilson: It's that small group of people, the working poor or those who aren't working and are poor, who are exactly the group I'm talking about. I think for the vast majority, the sensible thing to do, even though we may not like what's come down, is once this is passed
It's the small group of people that I'm talking about, because the intimidation that is felt by those individuals, as it has been expressed to me, is significant. I think that the Attorney General will be sensitive to this. Often these are people who are poor. Many do not have English as a first language. Many of them are people who are finding that they're in a situation where they're now overwhelmed by a new set of regulations which are coming in place, having just only now understood or come to accept the existing standard.
Legal aid is no longer available on variance issues. That's an issue that I think we need to address. I think legal aid should be available to people who legitimately need it for variation application. I think that when this new federal money comes into the province, we have to move posthaste to make sure that people outside of the larger urban centres, people who live in the rural parts of British Columbia -- especially the poor and people for whom English is not a first language -- do not find themselves at a disadvantage because they don't understand the complexities of the new law. And also, people who are able to put before a court -- if it gets to that point -- the information that is needed in order to meet this new, rather complicated formula that's in place with respect to the new variance applications
I would hope that those words are taken seriously by the Attorney General, because there is going to be considerable hardship, I am sure, felt by those who find themselves in that niche of people in the province.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I take the comments in the spirit in which they are made.
I just want the hon. members to know that there are about 29 family justice centres around the province, and there are going to be at least 25 child support clerks -- which I said were family clerks -- and there could be more if need be. In terms of the language needs, our system of justice is sensitive to that. Of course, there are agencies available for people to get help from, particularly around large urban centres.
The difficulty that I have in terms of legal aid would be that the funding we get from the federal government can't be channelled into legal representation; but with the programs we have in place, there are, of course, the public legal education agencies. They will also be participating in these issues. I am hoping that we will deal with all the issues the hon. member has talked about and any others that may come to light.
We don't have the resources to put more money into legal aid. However, I have discussed the issue with the poverty law leaders as well as the Legal Services Society board, and I have urged them to make sure that the poverty law areas are not impacted or adversely affected by cuts. I know that efficiencies are required in those areas as well, but we shouldn't be cutting the services. I hope they are listening to this debate, as well.
Sections 19 and 20 approved.
Section 21 approved on division.
On section 23.
G. Wilson: I just wanted to clarify this in light of the other discussion that we had. My understanding is that this
[ Page 6059 ]
simply makes this definition now consistent with the previous definitions that we put in place, and that's all that it does.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Correct.
G. Wilson: So our vehement and strong objections to that other section should apply to this one equally.
An Hon. Member: So taken.
Sections 23 and 24 approved.
On section 25.
G. Wilson: Under "Commencement" I just want to restate the concern I have that we don't bring this enactment into force until we've got the resources in the communities to deal with it. I know the Attorney General has indicated that to date he hasn't had a huge rush of applications, but I know that there are people out there who are extremely concerned, and I know that there are people who are already being lined up and geared up now to have to deal with this issue. Those community resources are going to be absolutely critical to make sure that people who need help can get help, especially in the rural parts of the province.
I can only restate that as strongly as I can again with respect to commencement. I hope the Attorney General will seriously consider delaying commencement of this act until such time as the community resources are in place with respect to the provisions of the grid.
Section 25 approved.
Title approved on the following division:
[8:00]
| YEAS -- 56 | |||
| Evans | Zirnhelt | McGregor | |
| Boone | Hammell | Streifel | |
| Pullinger | Farnworth | Kwan | |
| Waddell | Calendino | Stevenson | |
| Bowbrick | Goodacre | Giesbrecht | |
| Walsh | Kasper | Orcherton | |
| Hartley | Priddy | Petter | |
| Miller | G. Clark | Dosanjh | |
| MacPhail | Cashore | Ramsey | |
| Sihota | Randall | Sawicki | |
| Lali | Doyle | Robertson | |
| Smallwood | Janssen | Weisgerber | |
| Whittred | Nebbeling | Anderson | |
| Coell | Stephens | Sanders | |
| Plant | Farrell-Collins | Reid | |
| Gingell | J. Wilson | Reitsma | |
| C. Clark | Symons | Hawkins | |
| Abbott | Weisbeck | Chong | |
| McKinnon | Neufeld | ||
| NAYS -- 7 | |||
| G. Wilson | Penner | Krueger | |
| Masi | Nettleton | Jarvis | |
| Dalton | |||
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.
Motion approved.
The House resumed; G. Brewin in the chair.
Bill 31, Family Relations Amendment Act, 1997, reported complete with amendments.
Deputy Speaker: When shall the bill be considered as reported?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: With leave of the House, now, hon. Speaker.
Deputy Speaker: There is a nay; leave is denied.
Leave not granted.
Bill 31, Family Relations Amendment Act, 1997, reported complete with amendments to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Committee on Bill 32.
FAMILY MAINTENANCE ENFORCEMENT
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
On section 1.
The Chair: There is an amendment that the Attorney General has. I beg your pardon, it's the member for Richmond-Steveston -- my apologies.
G. Plant: If the Attorney General wants to move the amendment, that's just fine by me.
I move the amendments standing in my name on the order paper.
[SECTION 1 (d), by deleting the definition of "spouse" and substituting the following:On the amendments."spouse" means an individual who is married to or living in a marriage-like relationship with a debtor;]
[SECTION 1 (d), by adding the following definition:
"domestic partner" means a person who lived with another person for a period of at least 2 years in a close, personal relationship that is of primary importance in both persons' lives and which has the attributes of permanence, physical intimacy, sharing and interdependence, if the application under this Act is made within one year after they ceased to live together, and for the purposes of this Act the relationship may be between persons of the same gender.]
[SECTION 1.1. by adding the following section:
Sections 8, 9 and 21 are amended by deleting the word "spouse" wherever it appears and substituting the words "spouse or domestic partner".]
[SECTION 4, in the proposed section 14.2, by deleting the word "spouse" wherever it appears and substituting the words "spouse or domestic partner".]
G. Plant: Hon. Chair, I have moved amendments to section 1.1 and to section 4 of the act. These are consequential amendments. They will stand or fall as stands or falls the amendments I am moving to section 1. The amendments seek to do for the term "spouse" in this act that which I sought to do for the term "spouse" in Bill 31, the Family Relations Amendment Act, 1997. All of the reasons why I urged the
[ Page 6060 ]
government and others to support the amendments in the context of the debate on Bill 31 are the reasons I now rely upon in support of the amendments which I now move.
I call upon the government to accept and vote for these amendments. Those are all my remarks.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I believe that I would repeat verbatim the arguments that I made in the previous bill that just passed.
G. Wilson: I would agree that everything that needs to be said has been said on this. This is an issue that has been thoroughly debated. I would like the record to demonstrate that my objections are exactly as they were under Bill 31, both to the amendments and to the definitions as they now stand. Unless the Attorney General is prepared to entertain other amendments, I don't think that there's much more to be said on the issue.
[8:15]
Amendments negatived on the following division:
| YEAS -- 26 | |||
| Dalton | Gingell | Reid | |
| Farrell-Collins | Plant | Sanders | |
| Stephens | Coell | Anderson | |
| Nebbeling | Whittred | Thorpe | |
| Penner | Krueger | McKinnon | |
| Masi | Nettleton | Chong | |
| Weisbeck | Jarvis | Abbott | |
| Hawkins | Symons | C. Clark | |
| Reitsma | J. Wilson | ||
| NAYS -- 38 | |||
| Evans | Zirnhelt | McGregor | |
| Boone | Hammell | Streifel | |
| Pullinger | Farnworth | Kwan | |
| Waddell | Calendino | Stevenson | |
| Bowbrick | Goodacre | Giesbrecht | |
| Walsh | Kasper | Orcherton | |
| Hartley | Priddy | Petter | |
| Miller | G. Clark | Dosanjh | |
| MacPhail | Cashore | Ramsey | |
| Sihota | Randall | Sawicki | |
| Lali | Doyle | Robertson | |
| Smallwood | Janssen | G. Wilson | |
| Weisgerber | Neufeld | ||
Section 1 approved on the following division:
| YEAS -- 54 | |||
| Evans | Zirnhelt | McGregor | |
| Boone | Hammell | Streifel | |
| Pullinger | Farnworth | Kwan | |
| Waddell | Calendino | Stevenson | |
| Bowbrick | Goodacre | Giesbrecht | |
| Walsh | Kasper | Orcherton | |
| Hartley | Priddy | Petter | |
| Miller | G. Clark | Dosanjh | |
| MacPhail | Cashore | Ramsey | |
| Sihota | Randall | Sawicki | |
| Lali | Doyle | Robertson | |
| Smallwood | Janssen | Weisgerber | |
| Whittred | Nebbeling | Coell | |
| Sanders | Plant | Farrell-Collins | |
| Reid | Gingell | J. Wilson | |
| Reitsma | C. Clark | Symons | |
| Hawkins | Abbott | Weisbeck | |
| Chong | McKinnon | Neufeld | |
| NAYS -- 10 | |||
| G. Wilson | Penner | Thorpe | |
| Anderson | Stephens | Dalton | |
| Jarvis | Nettleton | Masi | |
| Krueger | |||
Section 2 approved.
On section 3.
G. Plant: The section before us is a provision that deals with payments required to be made by a debtor under a maintenance order that's filed with the director. It says what has to happen to the payments. The amendment before us makes some changes to the language of the provision, and I'm just not sure that I
It seems that when the amendments are in place, then the payments must be sent to the director of the family maintenance enforcement program and be payable either to the director or, as specified by the director, to the creditor or to a reciprocating state; or, if the director gives his written approval, they can be made directly to the creditor. It looks to me as though there is a duplication in these provisions; that is, there are two places where the payment can be made directly to the creditor. I don't know that there's any difference between the two. It may just be that there isn't any, but if there is some, I'd like to know what it is so that I can think about whether it's important or not. It's the relationship between what will become section 10(1)(a) and section 10(1)(b).
Hon. U. Dosanjh: With subsection (a), when the payments are sent to the director, it is essentially how they are distributed. And subsection (b) would be in the event that the director says that it is okay not to send them to the director; the payment could be made directly to the creditor. So it cuts out everybody else, I'm assuming.
Section 3 approved.
On section 4.
G. Plant: This provision will allow the director to convene payment conferences that will take place between the director of the program and the debtor. I take it that there are just two parties involved in this process: the director and the debtor. The creditor doesn't have a role here. Or does the creditor have a role in these payment conferences?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The creditor, one would assume generally, wouldn't be required to be there or have to be there. In the case that there is some information that is required and hasn't been available to the director until the date of the payment conference, the director may require the creditor to be there. There would be just the two persons there, generally speaking: the director and the debtor. Is that the question the hon. member was asking?
G. Plant: Well, it is the question. Let me make sure I understood the answer. The answer is that generally speaking the minister expects that there would only be two people there, but there may be cases where there needs to be a third person in order to essentially deal with the new information and make whatever decision has to be made for the benefit of the creditor. So there may be some occasions where the credi-
[ Page 6061 ]
tor will have to be there. Before I get to the question that that raises in my mind, maybe I should make sure that the Attorney General and I are in agreement on what his understanding of the process is.
[8:30]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand that at a payment conference, there may not be any decisions made. This would be simply information-gathering and a discussion conference. It is quite possible that the director may have spoken to both the debtor and the creditor on the phone before having the debtor come in to confer with him or her. So I'm assuming that if the director feels that the presence of both parties is required, despite the discussions that he or she may have had with them or the debtor, then that would be the case -- otherwise not.G. Plant: The way this section works is that it creates this mechanism of a payment conference. I think I understand what that's about. It's a little bit like
So we have this process. There's really only one person that has to be there, and that's the debtor. If the debtor isn't there, then that fact may get drawn to the attention of the court in a subsequent enforcement proceeding.
The creditor's attendance must surely be optional. Otherwise there is a situation where the creditor could hold the director and debtor hostage through the proceeding, in effect, by not showing up. There's no obligation of the creditor to show up. It would be awfully unfortunate if the director were to say: "I need to have both parties here to have this conference
[E. Walsh in the chair.]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Correct.
G. Plant: For your information, I am now moving into what will become section 14.1 of the act, which is part of section 4 of the bill. So we still have before us section 4 of the bill. Section 14.1 makes provision for the registration and enforcement of maintenance orders against corporations.
In this bill there are two provisions about corporations. The first one, which is the one I'm looking at right now, is the case of a corporation which only has the debtor as a shareholder. Specifically, the debtor is the sole shareholder and is also the person with the sole beneficial interest in the shares of the corporation. So it's really a one-person company.
The way the statutory scheme is intended to operate is that if the debtor defaults on a payment required under a maintenance order, and the amount owing by the debtor exceeds $3,000, then the corporation will become jointly and separately liable with the debtor for the amounts required to be paid. There are some provisions which excuse the corporation from this joint-and-several liability, but that's the basic proposition.
I guess the consequences are that if the corporation fails to make the payments that are owed, then enforcement proceedings may be taken against the corporation. Enforcement proceedings under the act include default hearings, warrant for arrest, committal hearings and eventually imprisonment. Now, how does the Attorney General see those provisions working in respect of enforcement of maintenance orders against sole-owner corporations?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I'm certain the hon. member knows that certain remedies, of course, and certain consequences may only apply with respect to the person -- not the legal person that's the corporation, but the human being -- who owns the shares, is the sole beneficiary of the interests and has the sole beneficial interest in that company. For instance, one cannot imprison a company. Beyond that, I don't know what the hon. member is seeking.
I see that with respect to this particular provision there wouldn't be any problems. I believe that this provision is intended to make sure that if you are, in simple language, the sole owner of a company that essentially -- other than in pure legal fiction -- is indistinguishable from you in terms of your assets and what you have access to, in those cases all of the remedies with respect to maintenance enforcement are available to you, with the exception, of course, of things like imprisonment for the company.
G. Plant: I think the problem, at least in its theoretical sense, will become a little bit more interesting when we get to the second category of corporations. But let's not forget the fact that one of the wealthiest people in British Columbia is in fact the sole and only owner of a small private company that itself owns dozens of corporations that employ hundreds and thousands of British Columbians. I'm sure that individual's ability to pay would never be a problem if the issue arose.
But on the other hand, there is a question for all those hundreds and thousands of employees, if they are at risk for committal or imprisonment. I think the answer to that question, at least in respect of sole-owner corporations, is that they are not at risk. Is that the Attorney General's intention here?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Correct.
G. Plant: The next aspect of the problem arises as a result of the provisions in section 14.3, which are quite necessary in order to preserve the business reality, I suppose, of life. That is the requirement that there be a balanced approach to enforcement against a corporation. The way that works, as I understand it, is that in the case of sole-owner corporations it is the director who must look into these considerations before undertaking enforcement proceedings against a sole-owner corporation. Is that right?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Correct.
G. Plant: I don't know that this is anything more than a comment. It's probably a more acute comment with respect to section 14.2, so I'll make it very briefly now and maybe make it at somewhat greater length in a moment.
This is going to be a difficult job for the director. Clearly the intention -- ensuring that people who have maintenance obligations not be essentially permitted to hide from those obligations by using corporate vehicles as a mechanism for avoiding their obligations -- is a good intention. But it's like a lot of things in life. Once you try to take that good intention
[ Page 6062 ]
and give concrete expression to it in language that will eventually be scrutinized by courts and that will afford a considerable degree of power to the director under the family maintenance enforcement program, there's always a risk that things won't happen in the way that gives effect to the original intention. There may be unintended consequences.
So I want to express my concern in that regard and to recall that we are not simply dealing with situations where somebody owns a company and is not just the only owner but is also the only employee. We can all understand that if we have a one-person company that is in every respect simply the individual debtor dressed up in a corporate veil, then that's fine; but there are an awful lot of very significant business enterprises in British Columbia that are conducted through corporations owned by only one individual. I hope that the director has a significant understanding of what it means to be a business and to be solvent, things which may not yet be issues that the director has had a lot of experience with, frankly. Corporations are often run in a way that is a little bit more complicated than sole proprietorships.
There will be a learning curve here, and I wish the director well in discharging his or her duties as they evolve under this provision. Perhaps the Attorney General has a comment on that.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Not more than saying that that's essentially what I believe 14.3 would take care of. The director would give it appropriate interpretation.
G. Wilson: Following along on the comments of the member for Richmond-Steveston, I understand that under 14.2, where there is a family enterprise
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It would be against the corporation, yes. I believe that the term "control of the corporation" is defined as "the holding, other than by way of security only, by or for the benefit of a person or a group of persons not dealing with each other at arm's length
The most important thing to consider in this
If one or more siblings or the parents have been managing their affairs in a way that they simply happen to be shareholders in the same corporation
[8:45]
G. Wilson: If I could try to get clarification for a secondI think this legislation says that family maintenance can go after the company in which the brother is maintaining this operation, so in effect -- even though the brother personally can't be liable, certainly -- the assets that the brother has built up can be liable for the delinquent member of his family. No? Is that not correct? That's the way I read this. That's the way I understood it to be.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: On the face of it -- prima facie -- one makes that argument, and the corporation would be liable. In fact, as a result, the share and interest of that good sibling could be attached or attacked. However, with the words as they have been included in the definition of control of the corporation -- that it means "the holding, other than by way of security only, by or for the benefit of a person or a group of persons not dealing with each other at arm's length" -- of course, this refers to the immediate family members as well.
In your example, there would be a rebuttable presumption by the innocent sibling that he is dealing with the other sibling at arm's length, that if the delinquent sibling's share or income is to be attached, at least his share or income -- of the innocent sibling -- should be protected. I'm certain that that result would be arrived at, particularly if you look at section 14.3, which then says that we have to take into account the solvency of the corporation and the like. I'm quite confident that if one read this section the way I'm reading it, that would be the construction placed upon this by the courts.
Of course, the courts are independent to do what they choose. However, I was concerned initially, as well, because the phrase "arm's length" always means that in the security legislation, siblings can never be at arm's length. In this legislation, because of the way it has been phrased, there is a rebuttable presumption that the siblings and the family can show, with evidence, that they are at arm's length, that they're not precluded from doing so.
G. Plant: In the example given by the member, that still wouldn't be sufficient because, of course, the example given is of a two-person corporation and all you need to show is 50
[ Page 6063 ]
percent. It's hard to know where to begin with this one. Maybe I'm wrong in that, because all the 50 percent figure does is refer to the election of directors. Let me begin by saying this. I am concerned that the ingenuity of the draftsperson of this section, however extensive it may be, will not hold a candle to the ingenuity of the designers of corporations who have in front of them and constantly before them issues around successorship; who should be in charge of a company as a company grows, matures, ages over time, passes from one generation to another; estate planning considerations; income tax considerations; a whole host of considerations around the designing of corporate structures; who should have preferred shares, who should have common shares; who should be entitled to vote and who should not be entitled to vote; whether the preferred shares have automatic right to share in income; whether the common shares have no entitlement to dividends. All of these kinds of things are very fundamentally a part of the way in which corporations are now being designed, particularly in cases involving families, where there's an intent to give certain powers and rights and responsibilities to a spouse and other powers and rights and responsibilities to children and to make provisions for grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and so on.
You could quite often have situations where brothers and sisters are together in a business enterprise, and one or the other incurs obligations of maintenance payments that turn that person into a debtor and then engage all of these provisions of this bill. I am skeptical that the language of 14.3 is enough of a protection from the risk that either the director or in this case the judges will start to interfere with the business decisions made by people who manage and run corporations for the benefit of the shareholders of those corporations, in order to enforce maintenance orders.
Let's be absolutely clear. What's not at risk here, in my mind anyway, is simply the issue of whether or not you might upset the little mom-and-pop store and drive mom or pop out of business. What I'm concerned about is ownership of family enterprises in British Columbia that control assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars and employ thousands and thousands of British Columbians. The courts are being given extensive powers here to interfere and intervene in the affairs of those corporations indirectly by the enforcement procedure mechanism -- or at least it looks that way to me.
I don't want to overstate the point, but someone said to me, in sort of a casual moment, that it was an interesting exercise in entirely rewriting the law of corporate finance in the Company Act for two simple provisions in the Family Maintenance Enforcement Act. Again, that may be overstating it, but I don't think it's entirely beyond the realm of speculation here.
Let me just add to the poignancy of this. When we're dealing with sole-owner corporations, we're talking about a non-optional situation -- that is, the director simply wades right into it, and that's what happens. But when we're dealing with the corporations that are caught by 14.2, we're dealing with a situation where maintenance orders may not even be enrolled in the program. Or maybe we are; I don't know. But we're giving the creditor the power, under a maintenance order, to go to court and essentially ask the judge to make an order which puts at risk, potentially, all of the business planning of a board of directors of a significant corporation. Maybe I'm getting this wrong. Maybe I'm misreading this, and if I am, I invite the Attorney General to correct me.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I don't believe that the corporation would be caught by surprise. There would be a garnishing order, and they would have received notice of the attachment under this part. If the hon. member looks at section 14.2(2)(b)
I'm not as worried as the hon. member is. The member expresses the concern, and I share the concern, that we obviously don't want to be causing problems for financing arrangements that may need to be made. But where you have large corporations -- and you have hundreds of employees in large corporations -- I am certain that under those circumstances, we are not going to have shareholders who own a few shares and aren't individuals of means. I can only assume that people who own substantial assets, either through corporations or otherwise, would very rarely be delinquent under these circumstances. These sections that we are now adding to this legislation would give them a further incentive to make sure that they continue to pay.
G. Plant: I suppose I'm with the Attorney General in expressing the hope that some of the problems that I've talked about don't arise. I may be less of an optimist. It may just be because in my personal past life as a litigator, I've been in the middle of too many family feuds in which the husbands and wives who are having a hard time collecting maintenance from recalcitrant spouses, irrespective of the amount -- and in some cases the amounts are rather large -- aren't terribly interested in the corporate solvency of a business. Their agenda may well be to sabotage that, and that's fine. The two of them, in those circumstances, can fight it out with each other all they want. My concern is more for the innocent bystanders who may be ultimately affected by that.
So again, it comes down to 14.3 and whether the court will actually exercise the powers it has under that section to ensure that whatever enforcement measures are taken, they are taken in a way that does not pose a significant risk to the continued solvency of the corporation. That is a phrase which will require careful consideration, and I'm sure the courts will do their best to give effect to both the principles of the bill and the needs of businesses. I didn't want the moment to pass without ensuring that the Attorney General understood that these sections as drafted are fraught with peril, shall I say.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: If I might say it differently, they are far-reaching. There is no question about that. They are intended to send a message that maintenance obligations are very, very important, and we're not going to allow people to hide behind corporate entities or corporate veils.
G. Plant: I'm going to move on to section 14.4 and ask questions about the annual default fee. This is intended as an additional incentive to debtors to assure that they honour their obligations under maintenance orders. The Attorney General knows that I'm all in favour of that, generally speaking.
I think there are two questions that I want to ask. The first is to make sure that my understanding of the way this works
[ Page 6064 ]
is right, and then secondly I want to ask about what the amounts are that the Attorney General has in mind. Now, the question about my understanding of how this works is fairly simple. Am I right that this fee would only ever be imposed after the debtor had essentially paid all of the maintenance that was in arrears? It would never be levied on somebody who was in arrears in their maintenance payments. Is that correct?
[9:00]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, it would only be collected once the arrears have been paid.G. Plant: So the fee could be levied or imposed before arrears had been paid but would only ever actually be collected after all arrears are paid.
All right, then the next question, which I already talked about a moment ago, was the amount of the fee. I know that's to be set by regulation. I wonder if the Attorney General can now give us some indication of the range of prospective fees. I've heard the number of approximately $400 used, and I don't know if that's a number that's within the range or not, but it's certainly a different number than if the number were $4,000 or $40,000.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: This would obviously be established by regulations, as the hon. member knows, and there would be a full debate. I understand that there is a provision in the existing regulations that the costs of enforcement can be awarded up to about $400. That may be the maximum range that we might be looking at. I also understand that the default fee would be imposed only once there have been two defaults in one year. I don't know whether that's in the act; it would certainly be in the regulations. The intention is that one would have to default twice to have the penalty or the fee imposed.
The ranges we might look at might be a maximum of $400 or might be less than that. I don't have any idea at this point what those ranges would be. I understand that in the current regulations, section 15 says: "If satisfied that the debtor who is a party to a proceeding before the court could have avoided defaulting under a maintenance order, the court may award as costs against the debtor a fixed sum of $400 in favour of the following
G. Plant: Thank you, that's helpful.
Let me make this point. I think that I and, I suspect, most if not all members of this House share with the Attorney General his view that the obligations of maintenance and support for children and former spouses are primary obligations in one's life, and everything that can be done to encourage those obligations to be discharged is a good thing -- or nearly everything that can be done.
It is the case, however, that the real world includes a large and occasionally unwieldy program called the family maintenance enforcement program, and it's a world that includes a large and sometimes unwieldy judicial process that sometimes people fall behind. Never having been in that situation and, hopefully, never having to come close to that situation, I can only approach what that must be like from a fairly abstract perspective. I'm sure I'm inclined to think that no one should ever fall behind in maintaining payments of maintenance obligations, but I suspect that occasionally it happens through no ill will or bad intent on the part of the defaulting payer.
It may happen twice in a year, and it would be unfortunate if this fee were imposed in all those cases, even where that might cause hardship. I guess I make this comment because I'm cognizant of the fact that once a set of rules is in place in a fairly large bureaucracy -- for want of a better term -- there can be a loss of flexibility and a certain rigidity that mean that things are only ever done a certain way. Once the second payment is not made -- boom! -- the obligation to pay the default fee arises. I can imagine that in nearly every case, that will be quite appropriate. In nearly every case where the default fee ought to be paid, it ought to be paid because someone has been negligent in honouring their obligations, but that may not always be the case.
This is where I'm getting to, I suppose. I hope that this is an issue that the Attorney General will monitor. On a regular basis his ministry will examine the extent to which the payment of this fee is working or not working and be prepared to consider reconsidering it if it turns out that it's causing unnecessary hardship and not in fact having the effect which it is intended to have.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, certainly I'd keep those remarks in mind. I want to tell the hon. member that I'm very concerned about mere technical defaults resulting in a penalty being imposed. Let's say someone is in default for not paying the maintenance on time three times in a year. He or she is late by one day each of those three times. I'm sure the director would use his or her discretion under those circumstances, and that shouldn't be considered a default. I think it's important for us to apply common sense to these issues.
I also want to point out to the hon. member that I wanted to make sure that if and when the arrears are reduced or cancelled by the court in a subsequent application subsequent to the penalty being imposed, the court has the discretion to reduce or cancel the penalty default fee, as well. We wanted to make sure that that provision was in the legislation, because I am concerned. And it is there: it's subsection (6)(c).
G. Wilson: I just have one brief comment because I think it's important for the record to be aware
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, it goes to government. It is intended to go towards defraying the costs of this program, which are about $8 million or $9 million a year, which we spend on collecting about $80 million or $90 million a year for needy spouses and children.
G. Wilson: The second issue has to do with section 4, section 14.4(8), which makes reference to subsection (4) and section 6. As I understand this, what it's saying is that in the event that an order has been given, essentially the debtor is liable to pay the government the annual default fee for the calendar year. If a court reduces or cancels the arrears under that maintenance order, the annual default fee is still owed unless the person is on B.C. Benefits income or is in the Youth Works program or the disability benefits program. In other words, if the court reduces or cancels the arrears, you still owe the money to the government. Am I reading that correctly? That's the way it seems to me.
[ Page 6065 ]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: This section 6 refers to the section 6 of the legislation -- not the subsection of this section. That is, if the order is withdrawn from the family maintenance enforcement program and there has been a penalty or fee levied, that fee continues to be owed despite the fact that the order is now withdrawn.
G. Wilson: I appreciate that. It clarifies that considerably, because it didn't seem to make sense that if you were forgiven, you would still have to give the money to the government. So I appreciate that clarification.
Sections 4 to 10 inclusive approved.
On section 11.
G. Wilson: I just want to make sure that under section 11, section 26.1(5)(a), the language "liens for wages due to workers by their employers" is encompassing enough to include all the liens, including the employment standards
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, hon. Chair, this refers to what might be construed as a lien under various pieces of legislation, such as the Employment Standards Act, the Labour Relations Act, the Industrial Relations Act and the like. There is no obligation to file a lien per se.
G. Wilson: Just for certainty, then, it's my understanding that any wages owed is an automatic lien and that this does not take precedence over it. Is that correct?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.
Sections 11 to 14 inclusive approved.
On section 15.
G. Wilson: Section 15 deals with section 43 with respect to the freedom-of-information and protection-of-privacy question. I'll just register my concerns, the same concerns that I had before. I would echo those concerns again, because it strikes me that while in this bill the level of sensitivity of information may not be as great, it is critically important that we do protect and provide that protection for people with respect to matters that are personal to them, that this information is not easily available. I have concerns with respect to the provisions with respect to section 35.
[9:15]
G. Plant: There is, I think, an additional issue here. I don't mean to add to or detract from what the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast just said about section 35, but when we go to subsection (3) of what will become section 43, there is a new provision that is part of the expansion of the -- shall we say? -- carrot-and-stick approach to family maintenance enforcement, which allows the director to disclose to reporting agencies the fact that a debtor is in arrears under a maintenance order.I'm not certain what the government has in mind when it says that this form of disclosure will only take place in prescribed circumstances. What are the kinds of circumstances that the minister foresees may be prescribed?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: For instance, one of the circumstances might be the amount of arrears and how long they've been adding up. I'm sure that the director is not going to run to the credit-reporting agencies the instant that somebody defaults on the first or second payment. I would suggest that as we consider the prescription around this, there would have to be consistent behaviour that's not acceptable -- for instance, if somebody without any reason whatsoever continues to neither pay any attention to the payments nor make the payment, let's say for two or three months, and makes no efforts to approach the director or approach the courts for variation.
G. Plant: The Attorney General going into this process would go in on the basis that he's hoping to create a set of rules that would limit the circumstances in which the director could exercise this right and would limit those circumstances to circumstances where it was really quite entirely appropriate that this kind of disclosure be made, given the fact that the debtor appears to be acting in a way which is contumacious, if you will, of his or her obligations. Is that a fair summary?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, that's a fair summary, and if the hon. member, obviously, reads
G. Plant: Yes, I had noticed that, and I was just enjoying that fact and therefore making sure that we all paused. I must ask the question, because I don't have it in front of me. The minister, in answering that last question, spoke about the circumstances being prescribed by the minister. Are we talking here about regulations by cabinet or regulations that the minister has the power to make?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: My apologies -- the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.
G. Plant: See, it is good that we spend time on these things.
The last question I have is this: has the Attorney General undertaken any consultation with credit-reporting agencies to see if they are in fact willing to assume this new burden, and what is the outcome of those consultations?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: There has been some general consultation. The credit grantors generally have expressed an interest in getting this kind of information. More importantly, we as government have expressed an interest in giving them this information to add as an incentive to those who need to pay more attention to the obligations for maintenance.
Sections 15 to 19 inclusive approved.
Title approved.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.
Motion approved.
[ Page 6066 ]
The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.
Bill 32, Family Maintenance Enforcement Amendment Act, 1997, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed on division.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I call committee on Bill 40.
MOTOR VEHICLE
AMENDMENT ACT (No. 2), 1997
Sections 1 and 2 approved.
On section 3.
G. Plant: Last year Bill 9, section 2, gave the authority under the section being amended from the superintendent to ICBC. Bill 40 repeals this and now gives authority from ICBC to the minister. Can the minister explain the rationale behind the second amendment?
Hon. L. Boone: You did such a good job last year, member, that we responded to your concerns that were raised in this Legislature. We changed the act to respond to them, to deal with some of the concerns you had about ICBC having control over some issues there. So we moved it to the minister.
Section 3 approved.
On section 4.
B. Barisoff: I have just a few questions here. During the first phase of this merger, Bill 9 gave authority to both ICBC and the superintendent to seize plates. Bill 40 repeals this now and gives authority solely to ICBC. Can the minister advise the House why this was further amended, or perhaps outline the logic as to why this amendment wasn't introduced during the first phase?
Hon. L. Boone: This is one of many different sections that were actually removing the superintendent's ability to do this, because it had to do with vehicle standards. ICBC now has that authority.
B. Barisoff: I'm concerned, as several of my colleagues were during the first phase of this merger. As you know, we were quite concerned last year, when the merger took place, with the amount of power being placed in the hands of a commercial Crown corporation. This particular section doesn't change the power that was given ICBC during the first phase. I just want to read into the record my concern over the fact that ICBC, a commercial Crown corporation, can direct police officers to seize plates. In my estimation, I think it's simply bad policy that the Crown corporation would be given this kind of power.
Hon. L. Boone: This is actually a very simple process. If somebody has committed an offence, then ICBC has the right to ask that the plate be turned in, but it would have to be an offence that was done beforehand. So ICBC would ask that the plate be returned. I'm sure that the hon. member would appreciate that anybody who has committed an offence should in fact have that plate returned.
Sections 4 and 5 approved.
On section 6.
B. Barisoff: I know the minister is wondering, but
Again, given that section 25 was amended during the first phase, can the minister outline the logic behind the second further amendment that gives the power to cabinet to make regulations under this section? Why wasn't this amendment made during the first phase of the transfer?
Hon. L. Boone: This is a phase-in process. Last year was the first phase, and this is the second phase of it. It has allowed us to work in the process, to work ICBC in and to generally phase out some of the aspects of the superintendent, so it's a logical process that's taking place here. It's just the phasing-in that we've done over a two-year period rather than doing it all at once.
[9:30]
Sections 6 to 8 inclusive approved.On section 9.
B. Barisoff: I can't let the minister off that easy. I think this is another area where
Hon. L. Boone: This is not really placing ICBC in a conflict at all. After an inspection is done by the roadside and it's determined that a vehicle has not met the requirements of the inspection, then ICBC -- which is now the licensing authority -- directs the superintendent not to issue a licence. Again, it's just as a result of the inspection. If the vehicle passes inspection, then they get a licence; if they haven't passed inspection, they don't get a licence. It's very clear, and it's not a conflict whatsoever.
Sections 9 to 11 inclusive approved.
On section 12.
B. Barisoff: I'd like to make a comment. I'm wondering why the minister has amended it to read that it's less than five years, rather than the one-to-five. Is there a reason behind that? Would we be looking at the issuance of a licence that would be for less than one year for any particular reason?
Hon. L. Boone: The term of the driver's licence is routinely five years. This section allows shorter-term licences to be issued to drivers who are re-entering the licensing system after a prohibition for a serious driving offence -- drinking and driving, for example -- or when a driver has a medical condition that may change so as to affect driving within a shorter period than five years. The need to relicense at the end
[ Page 6067 ]
of a short term can then be used as a trigger to reassess the driver and re-tailor the licensing privileges according to performance or changes in fitness and ability to drive.
B. Barisoff: I think that maybe the minister missed my point. I understand that when we look at this amendment, it has been amended from one to five. I understand what the minister is saying: that it's from five downwards. I'm just wondering why we would be looking at issuing any licence that would be less than one year. It gives ICBC or the minister the leeway to issue a licence of less than one year, and I'm wondering why the change was actually made. I know why we're at the five. I'm just wondering why we didn't go from one to five, or that kind of thing.
Hon. L. Boone: This is to enable the superintendent to issue licences in terms of less than one year to prompt a follow-up for a driver's safety record or medical condition as is warranted. If somebody has a driving condition or a medical condition, then the superintendent may want to check up on that person in a period that's less than five years. I think we can all recognize that it's something that is in the best interests of the driving public and is certainly for the safety of all the people out there on our highways.
Section 12 approved.
On section 13.
B. Barisoff: Referring back to section 12, I understand what the hon. minister was saying, but I just couldn't understand the logic with the one year taken away. I guess the argument that I can make on section 13 runs through a lot of them, so I'll just put it back on the record again. This is another section granting this unlimited power to ICBC, and I'd like to have it on the record that giving this kind of power to any Crown corporation is something I fear is going to come back and bite us at some time in the future.
Section 13 approved.
On section 14.
B. Barisoff: I'm just curious about what kind of information-sharing goes on between ICBC and the RCMP with respect to traffic offences and licence suspensions.
Hon. L. Boone: Both organizations have always had access to information about suspensions and convictions.
Sections 14 to 19 inclusive approved.
On section 20.
B. Barisoff: I think the minister thought that maybe I'd had a long weekend and wasn't paying attention there for a while. They were going through there too fast. I'd like to make a comment on section 20.
Motor Vehicles keeps very detailed and extensive records on drivers. I and my colleagues are concerned, as most British Columbians should be, that ICBC, a Crown corporation that has a lot of sweeping power over their lives and livelihoods, holds these extensive records and is able to use them to its advantage in any matter it deems necessary with respect to the provisions of licensing and insurance. Maybe the minister could comment on that statement.
Hon. L. Boone: This section doesn't grant any more ability for ICBC to get any more information than it has had in the past. I would just like to point out to the member that Saskatchewan and Quebec already have situations with their insurance corporations similar to what we have here, so it's not something new we're doing here. I don't think we'll find any radical changes to the system, just some efficiencies.
Section 20 approved.
On section 21.
B. Barisoff: On section 21, I understand the logic behind this amendment, but I have some concerns, as well, regarding the application process and cost recovery. The onus is on the lot operator to notify the owner of the car. Could the minister approximate how many days in total a lot operator, under this amendment, would have a car in the lot from the beginning of the impoundment with the 30 days after the application process and approval?
Hon. L. Boone: It is 30 days for the period, then a 30-day wait and then whatever period of time it would take for them to dispose of it after that.
B. Barisoff: Could the minister clarify what is intended in the section by the words "dispose of"?
Hon. L. Boone: To sell a vehicle.
B. Barisoff: Given that the act stipulates cost recovery to be the logic here, could the minister explain the process if the disposed vehicle generates more than the cost of the lot to keep it? Are such questions part of the application process?
Hon. L. Boone: Any cost over and above what would be given to the operator of the towing company or the place that the vehicle was impounded at would actually return to the owner of the vehicle.
B. Barisoff: That's good to hear. If somebody happened to get a Saab 900 -- I'm just using that as an example -- towed away or something and they happened to be on holidays or were gone for a couple of months somewhere, they would surely want to get the excess cost of what it might sell for on the lot.
Carrying on, I noted in the summary that the bill will precede implementation of the second phase of the merger. When exactly can lot operators be expected to follow this new 30-day rule?
Hon. L. Boone: As soon as the bill is passed, this section comes into force.
Sections 21 to 23 inclusive approved.
On section 24.
B. Barisoff: Referring back to that other one, if I don't talk too long, it will pass sooner than we expect, eh?
Just to clarify, this section provides for the application fee for various appeals at show-cause hearings. Am I right? Was this cost recovery deterrent-focused?
Hon. L. Boone: Perhaps you could clarify. I'm not quite sure what it is you're referring to here.
[ Page 6068 ]
B. Barisoff: What I'm referring to is the cost recovered. Is it -- I don't know how to put any simpler -- deterrent-focused, in that we don't want it to happen? Is the cost recovery of the vehicle laid out in such a way that it makes it a deterrent so that we wouldn't have to do this?
Do you understand where I'm coming from with this? When I say deterrent-focused, what I'm reflecting on is that as a cost recovery program, are we making it so that they don't have to go and pick up these vehicles? Or is it structured in such a way as to make it that we don't want the wreckers doing this? Are we wanting to make sure that people get their cars off the road rather than put them into this situation?
Hon. L. Boone: We seem to be at cross-purposes here with this particular section. Section 24 actually deals with the show-cause hearings and appeals of ICBC's licensing decisions. It doesn't have anything to do with the vehicle impoundment. I'm not sure which section you are talking about. Section 24 deals with show-cause hearings.
B. Barisoff: I'll just read this over for a second. What I'm getting at is that if you read in section 24 it says: "
[9:45]
Hon. L. Boone: This section refers to a show-cause hearing where you're taking a licence to do business away from a particular company and you're giving that company the opportunity to come to a show-cause hearing to argue against having that licence removed. I'm not sure if your question has anything to do with that particular part of what I'm talking about.B. Barisoff: Coming shortly after the impoundment, I thought that show-cause would correspondingly affect the impoundment part of it. What I was looking at was: when you're appealing to the minister, could you be appealing the impoundment part of the charge, also? It's that following in the sequence of where it was coming from in the bill, I just assumed that it was part and parcel of what was taking place there.
Hon. L. Boone: The appeal process for vehicle impoundment was in a previous bill, Bill 25 in 1995. This show-cause strictly deals with businesses and their licences and, if they have had a licence removed, the ability to appeal that decision.
B. Barisoff: Getting back to where you are -- I guess we're getting close to being on the same wavelength here again -- is there a fee that is going to be attached with anybody that makes an appeal to the superintendent?
Hon. L. Boone: The Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council has the ability to set a fee. That has not been set yet.
B. Barisoff: There is no fee that's been set, so we couldn't
Hon. L. Boone: I can't presume what cabinet's going to recommend. Cabinet would be making a decision on this once the bill is passed, but we wouldn't be making the decision until such time as the bill is passed.
B. Barisoff: Would the minister then be recommending to cabinet that the fee would be set in such a manner that it would warrant people to do it? I guess I'm just looking for some kind of insight on where the minister might be taking this to make it fairer to the taxpayers of British Columbia, so they know whether
Hon. L. Boone: As with most fees, it's not a deterrent. Such a fee would not be a deterrent, but the fee would be there to cover some of the costs of the hearing. It wouldn't be an exorbitant fee to stop people from going to a hearing, but just to cover some of the costs.
B. Barisoff: I think we got back to answering some of the questions that we originally focused around this whole section. We got a little bit lost in where we were going.
I guess that probably satisfies what I was looking for there -- just making sure that it was more of a cost-recovery type rather than a deterrent-focused fee, where people wouldn't go and appeal even if they thought they were right, because the costs would be too prohibitive.
Sections 24 and 25 approved.
On section 26.
B. Barisoff: I'm just curious as to the rationale behind giving to cabinet the power to make these regulations. While I'm certainly not disputing the fact that anything about the transport of dangerous goods is extremely important, could the minister explain this decision for me?
Hon. L. Boone: It was previously the superintendent who made such regulations, but there is no other Crown corporation in the country that has the power to make regulations or make laws such as this. Therefore that power has been retained by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, which is cabinet.
B. Barisoff: No, I do understand that. I was just concerned about why it was different and why there weren't any other items that might be. So there will be no regulations that ICBC would be
Hon. L. Boone: Yes, cabinet or the minister. That's right.
B. Barisoff: Is there any particular reason that they just mentioned dangerous goods on highways? Is there a particular reason for singling out that one particular item?
Hon. L. Boone: This just transfers the standards to ICBC while keeping the lawmaking power with government.
Section 26 approved.
[ Page 6069 ]
On section 27.
B. Barisoff: I've got a number of questions here on section 27. Just to clarify, it is my understanding that here ICBC is given the authority to appoint employees as peace officers to enforce this act, the Motor Vehicle Act, the Highway Act, the Motor Carrier Act, the Motor Fuel Tax Act, the Commercial Transport Act, the Transport of Dangerous Goods Act, and any regulations made under them. I'm just wondering what kind of enforcement activities these employees of ICBC will be doing. For example, are these enforcement activities outlined specifically in these various acts?
Hon. L. Boone: It's not ICBC that empowers these individuals. They are the same enforcement powers that they currently have, but they will now be empowered by the Attorney General. They are doing exactly the same things that they have in the past, only they are gaining their power through the Attorney General's ministry.
B. Barisoff: Can the minister indicate whether these will be primary or secondary enforcement functions of these employees of ICBC?
Hon. L. Boone: It will be primary, and they currently have the same power. So there are no changes in terms of the amount of power that they have. It's just who actually gives them their powers. In the past it was the superintendent of motor vehicles who gave them those powers; now those powers come from the Attorney General.
B. Barisoff: Under section 37(2) of the Police Act and section 210(3) of the Motor Vehicle Act, to which this section refers, the minister must set standards for training these employees. When this act makes reference to the minister, can I assume that this is the Minister of Transportation and Highways or is it the minister responsible for ICBC?
Hon. L. Boone: I'm sorry, but the House Leader was really annoying me back here and talking to me at the same time. I am really apologetic because I missed what you were saying. Could you please repeat your question?
B. Barisoff: I'm sure that the House Leader will make a public apology to us for interfering with this important
An Hon. Member: Scintillating debate.
B. Barisoff: That's right. I'm sure she wants to get out of here in the next little while.
Under section 37(2) of the Police Act and section 210(3) of the Motor Vehicle Act, to which this section refers, the minister must set standards for training these employees. When this act makes reference to the minister, can I assume that this is the Minister of Transportation and Highways? Is the Minister of Transportation and Highways responsible for ICBC?
Hon. L. Boone: It's actually the Attorney General who would be setting the standards.
B. Barisoff: And what kind of standards are required here?
Hon. L. Boone: It would be training as an enforcement officer and training as an inspector under the Motor Vehicle Act. These are training standards that would be established by the Attorney General.
B. Barisoff: Noting how punctual I am at times, and to make sure that I end the bill right when it should be ended, I would suggest that sections 27 to 48 can be passed. It's 10 o'clock and we could just
Sections 27 to 48 inclusive approved.
Title approved.
Hon. J. MacPhail: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.
Motion approved.
The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.
Bill 40, Motor Vehicle Amendment Act (No. 2), 1997, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.
Committee of Supply A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Hon. J. MacPhail moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 9:59 p.m.
The committee met at 6:40 p.m.
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
EDUCATION, SKILLS AND TRAINING
(continued)
A. Sanders: We had finished off before dinner talking about examination marking. For the benefit of the minister, who I
[ Page 6070 ]
My colleague from one of the Vancouver ridings -- Vancouver-Langara -- and I are both going to canvass English as a second language. I had said that I would come back to this, based on the availability of people from the other House who wish to speak about it. What I'd like to do in this area is look at the overall issue. Rather than question the minister on the minutiae of the issue, I'm going to tell him what I know, and then he can tell me whether he agrees with it in terms of the British Columbia situation.
The member for Vancouver-Langara has a very great interest in this area because of the large and significant population of English-as-a-second-language students in the ridings in Vancouver, Richmond and Surrey. My interest here, albeit that of the critic for Education, is less in terms of the perspective of what I have to deal with in my own riding. All of us who live in certain areas are very much affected by the local flavour that we experience. The minister himself will be very much aware of northern issues, whereas those who come from the lower mainland will be much more interested in ESL.
When we look at British Columbia, we lead the country as a destination point for those wishing to immigrate to Canada. In 1996 we received a full 22 percent in terms of all immigration. Approximately 50 percent of the newly-arrived to British Columbia do not speak English. While the federal government provides resources for adult language classes, they maintain that it's the province's responsibility to teach English to children.
These policies have had an enormous impact on existing ESL programs. In British Columbia 97 percent of all ESL students are located in only eight districts, placing severe pressures on existing programs in those districts. In boards such as Vancouver, 49 percent of students require ESL -- in a recent meeting I went to in Vancouver, I was told it is now 51 percent. Adding Richmond, at 42 percent, and Surrey, at 25 percent, all are finding it difficult to stretch their resources to meet this demand.
The problem is compounded by recent funding cuts to ESL programs. Vancouver spent $1.3 million to assess 5,429 students in 1995-95; for the 1996-97 year, it made do with $791,000 to assess 5,952 students. Clearly, with 11 percent of British Columbia's school children enrolled in ESL, a major crisis faces our ability to provide ESL in our provincial school system. Although ESL costs have strained most budgeted provisions, there are economic advantages for B.C. For instance, since the majority of immigrants -- 80.3 percent -- come from Asia and with the expectation that Asian-language ability will be increasingly valued in the future, some experts suggest that we may wish to rethink our approach, from English as a second language to English as another language. This was outlined by Kim Bolan in the Vancouver Sun on May 13, 1997, in a very interesting article.
[6:45]
Surely the ability to speak English and an Asian language will be beneficial for many newcomers as they become established in our business community. Immigration to British Columbia has resulted in an increase of 334.5 percent for ESL programs, and all factors indicate that the demand for ESL will remain high for years to come. It is essential that our province is able to meet this demand.Hon. Chair, what are the facts in looking at ESL, once we look at an overview? As best as I can ascertain -- and again, ministry staff can either concur with or debate these facts -- we seem to have 18,339 new ESL students for `97. This is up from 15,618 in the previous year. Eleven percent of B.C.'s kids are ESL.
This year $1.5 million was cut from the $3.9 million budgeted for testing and assessing ESL. There's a big problem in Vancouver, where they deal with 500 new students requiring assessments for ESL in each month. In Vancouver somewhere between 49 and 51 percent of kids need ESL help, and there are 42 percent in Richmond and 25 percent in Surrey. In Vancouver there was a decremental decrease, from $1.3 million to $791,000, to assess somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5,952 ESL kids, which was up approximately 400 children from the year before. These are the statistics on ESL, as best as I can glean them, in the provincial education circumstance.
I would just like at this time to allow the minister the opportunity to either question or comment on the facts on which I would like to base our discussion.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I thank the member for her comments -- a very supportive view towards English as a second language in our public school system. I too have found myself defending this program and asserting its importance for public schooling in our province and for ensuring that the children of recent immigrants have a full opportunity to learn and prosper in their new country.
I have little to quarrel with on the general facts that the member has outlined. I would point out that the reduction in funding that the member is talking about is actually an additional grant that was instituted back in `92-93, at a time when ESL was growing very rapidly in the province and the total number of ESL students was growing very rapidly. The grant was originally instituted as a temporary measure to help school districts gear up to deal with a sizeable number of ESL students. During the early years of the nineties, that growth was indeed rapid. Enrolment in ESL programs rose from 41,482 in `91-92 to 70,142 in the last school year, so there was a very significant rate of growth. We are anticipating that the rate is slowing; it has slowed in recent years. We are anticipating that enrolment and funding will increase 1.62 percent next year, so it's slightly less than the overall rate of 1.8 percent we're anticipating for the school-age population. We still have a significant number of students -- over 70,000 -- which we anticipate will increase to 71,700 in the next school year. We have continued throughout this period to fund school districts a large additional amount for each ESL child that they identify -- $955 per child. So the total incremental amount that school districts are anticipating receiving in the coming school year, in these estimates we are debating, is an additional $69.838 million.
The other grant, this additional grant which was set up, as I said, in the early nineties to help school districts actually get up and running as major ESL providers, will remain at or close to last year's levels at around $2.4 million.
V. Anderson: To follow up on the discussion of ESL, it's interesting that on the one hand, we realize the extra number of students and their desire to learn the English language, and on the other hand, we discover from many of these students that they're the top scholarship winners in many of our schools. They're the A students. So both ends of the scale, the struggle coming in and the product, are amazing because of the industry and willingness to work. Whatever benefit we can get at the beginning, we're certainly getting the results at the other end. I think we always need to bear that in mind.
Maybe that's even more reason to go back and ask what the nature of the ESL program is, as well as the dollars that go with it. Let me use an illustration. I think we are all very much aware that in most cases one of the largest factors in the student's ability to learn and grow in their education is the
[ Page 6071 ]
ability of their family to read to them at home. It seems to me that one of the areas we've overlooked is the relationship of children and adults as family units to deal with the language and the cultural transition. I would ask the minister if the programs we have at the moment have taken the family context into account in curriculum as well as ESL, and the connection that the students will do as well as the families are doing and the families will do as well as the students are doing.
Unless we bind that together somehow in our educational curriculum, as well as ESL, I think we're really missing the boat and not getting the use out of the money that we should be getting. For instance, my son-in-law, whose first language is French and who is himself a teacher, commented that in some ways it's better to have the youngster grow up being read to in the initial years in the language that they know and then learn their second language later on when they have already developed the ability rather than the other way around. What I'm raising with you in having ESL as part of the total curriculum of the school is: what has been done to integrate the languages that a student may have with their family and the ability of the family to share in the educational process?
Theoretically, we've always said that the school is a supplement and a complement to the family, who are the chief educators. Yet we seem to be doing education apart and separate from the family, and it shows up very much in ESL. So I'd ask: in this curriculum development of relating ESL and language training to family educational training and their part in the school system, what's happening in the educational system at this point?
Hon. P. Ramsey: What I'd say first of all to the member is that surely support in a student's home for what happens in school is a large component of success for all children -- ESL students or others. That's surely been my experience as an educator. I could almost tell which children had a supportive environment for education at home.
It becomes more difficult in ESL. Yet I think the commitment to education from immigrant communities is -- it seems, at least -- even stronger in some cases than in the general population, and the valuing of education and higher education is even stronger. That does lead, as the member noted, to some considerable success for children of immigrants and ESL students on provincial exams and on scholarships.
The member asked specifically what we are doing to make sure that ESL is part of a focus of what we do across the piece. One thing I would reference for the member is that as we have gone and developed instructional resource packages for each subject, one of the major cross-tabs that is looked at there is English as a second language. That's one of the things we try to build into each of the IRPs as we go, so that this focus is there. Now, of course, it's used by and of interest to teachers who have ESL students in their classes, and less so for those who don't.
The other thing the member talked about that I just want to dwell on is this idea of formal outreach to students' families. Most, if not all, ESL programs seek to have outreach from schools to families, and these have even more, should I say, focused outreach programs than schools have for the general student population and their families. That is essential. The reality seems to be that there are some correlations there, yet some students do extremely well even if the home environment may be speaking largely another language than English. So I don't disagree with the member that an ideal world would have students involved in learning English in and out of school and in a home environment. Not all immigrant families can necessarily support that. Where it does occur, I think schools seek to enhance and encourage it, and it does add to students' learning.
V. Anderson: The place in the local community where the interaction has been most helpful is the community school -- and we have examples of some of these in the lower mainland -- where adults are coming into the school facility as well as the students, so there's a lot of interaction taking place. I've approached this from the point of ESL, but it could be from other places as well. Is there a movement in the ministry to encourage and move in the direction of more community-school type of programs so that more of this natural interaction is taking place?
[7:00]
Those of my generation will remember that the school was the community centre, and that's where the whole community interacted. All kinds of interactions took place. It seems to me that this is still a very important front of education and socialization, and the most effective way this has been done is through community schools. Is there a movement in this ministry to encourage this, support this and help this grow further? Or is there a cost savings, from the ministry's point of view, to in effect discourage it?Hon. P. Ramsey: I thank the member for his thoughtful comments, and I agree with much of what he says. The budget for the community schools initiative, which until this year was within this ministry, has now actually been shifted to the Ministry for Children and Families, although I think they still contract with us for delivery. Oh, with the school districts for delivery -- excuse me.
The budget is currently at $5 million to support some 70 community school initiatives across the province. I agree with the member that it's a very worthwhile initiative. I know that the Vancouver school board and others use those sites in many cases for adult ESL as well as for regular studies.
V. Anderson: I'd like to tie this into a little extension for the urban area, if I could, because you can't deal with one part of the urban area without dealing with the others, and you can't deal with ESL now without dealing with an area's concerns about poverty, special needs and children with special handicaps.
Let me just use Vancouver as an illustration. If I understand it -- and perhaps the minister would correct me -- the financial cap in the Vancouver school system of students with special needs is at 4 percent of the student population. The actual percentage of the student population with special needs is 8 percent, so we're meeting only half the need, if I understand it correctly, and this therefore impinges upon other budgets.
Is the minister able to correct me on that? It's my understanding that 4 percent is the cap, whereas 8 percent is the actual population of special needs children within the Vancouver school system.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I have some corrections to make to your understanding, so I wanted to make sure I was getting as informed as I could by my staff.
[ Page 6072 ]
We fund special education for the school boards largely by having the school boards identify children who fall into particular categories within the special education rubric. For instance, there is a small number of children in any district who are really small in number but very high in needs, and the school district receives quite large funding for each one of those children. It's up to $30,000 apiece.
There are others with severe behaviour patterns, and they are another category within special education that is funded as children are identified. There's another category of severely handicapped that is again funded separately. Within the area of moderate handicap, there is a large category called high-incidence, low-need special education. That and only that portion is indeed capped at 4 percent.
We're saying to the school districts that they can't claim that more than 4 percent of their school kids fall into that category, the theory in a way being that that is really almost an open-ended category that could go on forever. It deals with everything from a mild difficulty in mastering material to a mild behaviour problem -- to whatever.
If we add this up for the '97-98 year in Vancouver's reporting of its special needs children in all the categories I've mentioned -- not just that high-incidence, low-need category -- they are identifying 7.1 percent of their school-age population as requiring special education funding of one sort or another. That is the amount we are funding them for.
V. Anderson: Part of the reality in the urban setting -- special needs is one area we're talking about, and ESL is another -- is that because it's an urban setting, there are services and facilities in the special needs area. It may be medical facilities. With ESL, it's job facilities, job opportunities, housing and multicultural societies. There's a greater collection of the total population who come there, and these add on to each other.
The other one that adds on -- and I'm wondering if the minister has a percentage on this -- is that a higher percentage of students who are living below poverty levels also come into the urban area. You would have aboriginal children who are in the area, and you would have people in single-parent families who are in that situation. You would have some immigrant families. You would have a larger collection or percentage of population who are low-income and who come there, because they can survive in a way they can't someplace else. That's just another factor. Has this factor in the population been taken into account, percentage-wise, the same as special needs, ESL and others in the urban area?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The member is accurately characterizing our response, through formula and through targeted programs, to try to deal with the special needs of Vancouver and other urban districts, which are dealing with a large percentage of ESL students, by having funds follow the students. The same is true of special education.
Therefore the member is right that there are some special ed children who are resident in Vancouver and attending Vancouver schools because they and their family are taking advantage of other health or social service facilities that are available in that municipality. The same thing, I just might say, also happens to be true of Prince George relative to some outlying areas in the northern part of the province. So that is true. That's why it's very important. The formula recognizes that fact and has funding follow the students, by asking the school district to identify them and apply for funding for the children who are there.
The case is different with general levels of poverty, though as the member knows, we have established not just a community schools program but other programs that are targeted at some of the children from families that are having difficulty just struggling economically. I'll mention the school meals program that we've budgeted at $14.3 million for the coming year, the Kids at Risk program and, of course, the inner-city schools initiative, which is around $5.5 million. So the total of all of these is in excess of $20 million
I asked the staff for a breakdown; they don't have it by district. But they say that of that money, over $20 million, the majority -- let's say roughly $10 million or more -- goes to Vancouver very specifically to help with some of the problems that you've described and that surely this government is aware of.
V. Anderson: Yes, I appreciate that. I realize it happens in Prince George and Prince Rupert and anyplace where there's a collection of people who move in for a variety of reasons. It happens in Burnaby and New Westminster. So it's not just in Vancouver; it's in the other areas, as well.
But what I'm trying to get at is that you take the ESL programs which are concentrated, you take the special needs programs which are concentrated, you take the poverty programs that are there -- when you take each of these, the collective is far greater than the individual parts. The sum is greater than the total, than if you add each one of these. I'm asking: when you take these together, does the formula take into account how these accumulate on top of each other and therefore create a greater difficulty in managing?
Let me ask about another problem, which is coming up now with the cutback in the staffing of schools at the principal and vice-principal level. You would think we would learn from the experiences of the U.S., who in many ways go through the problems before we get them. They also go through some of the good things before we get them. I learned that years ago, when the harvesters used to come up from the southern states. The combine machines would come up and finally end up in Saskatchewan. Everything seems to work that way.
One of the realities that the urban schools are facing is a lack of security in the schools. The more the principals and vice-principals are taken into teaching positions, not being available for meeting the individual needs about poverty, language, special needs -- not only of the students but of the teachers who have to work with those and of the families, who come to the school because of the special concerns they have with their family tensions -- the kind of work the principals have done over the last number of years in dealing with family and family tensions
[7:15]
What is being done in the formula or the planning, taking each of these into account, to give more support time to principals and vice-principals and therefore to the school, when counsellors and aides are being cut back and the pressure is being increased? Has this been taken into account?[ Page 6073 ]
The larger the circumstance, the urban area, the more this is true. Would the minister be able to respond to that category of security, which is becoming a major concern?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Just let me say this in a general way. I don't want to appear to be combative or confrontational.
A. Sanders: Oh, come on.
Hon. P. Ramsey: No, I don't.
But I will say this: the comparison with the U.S. bothers me. I took my teacher training adjacent to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the sixties. As part of that, I did spend some time in some of the inner-city schools in Milwaukee in the sixties. We are a long way in this province from anything that approaches what happened with the collapse of public education in some of the inner-city schools in the States, and I'm only talking of the sixties. That's before the real impact hit in the U.S. and led to the crisis in public confidence in public education, particularly in large city schools in the eighties in the U.S., as a result of huge government reductions in service to those very vulnerable populations.
I've visited schools in Vancouver and have seen some of the difficulties that people are struggling with. They are difficult. I think we should be cautious about what is an attractive comparison to the media, but there is little relation to the actual objective facts of what services are being provided for children in inner-city schools in Vancouver or other urban areas and of the crisis in some inner-city schools in urban areas in the United States.
The member asked: what is the total impact on funding and services in Vancouver when you start adding up ESL, aboriginal education, special education and poverty factors? On the one hand, there is no magic in the formula that provides some sort of additive or cumulative or multiplicative impact here.
Let me, just for the member's interest, refresh his memory on what the budget for Vancouver actually contains. It is a large budget -- a total of $338 million. Of that, $26.7 million is the additional grant for ESL students -- not available for districts that don't have high numbers of ESL students. The special education grant is $33.9 million -- not available to districts that don't have an equally high level of special needs students. The aboriginal education component is relatively small: $1.6 million. Vancouver doesn't claim a lot of aboriginal students; it's around 1,600 aboriginal students out of their whole population. And then there are the inner-city programs, the school meals programs and others, which conservatively add another $10 million to the budget in the Vancouver school district.
So at a rough calculation -- when I add those up very roughly -- I get a figure that says that we're supporting or recognizing the difficulties that Vancouver is facing by somewhere in the neighbourhood of $70 million to $72 million that it would not be recognized for if it did not have those issues with it -- which amounts to about 20 percent of the school district budget.
So this is a significant recognition and investment in trying to help those who are most at risk and having the most difficulty benefiting from our school system. I recognize, as the member said, that there's always concern about whether enough is being done. I would simply like to put on the record the very substantial contribution and recognition that the province has made.
V. Anderson: I appreciate that. My use of the U.S. reference was only to highlight the question of increased recognition that I hear from everywhere about security and the cutback in supervision time by principals and vice-principals in the school, who have largely been our protection for dealing with all of these other issues that I talked about. This cutback is certainly a concern in the community at large, and I hear it regularly from people.
Two other side bits of that and then just a couple of final questions. The ministry has made education -- I grant, prior to this minister becoming the Minister of Education -- from the cradle to the grave. I think education is for all of life, and I think that's the way it should be. So I have no negative comment on that; that's positive. When we talk about children and adults in ESL, it's all his responsibility in my view; it's a seamless web that he can work with.
One of the promises that has been made in the last number of years by previous Ministers of Education is in the area of increasing support for technology. That's just another one when you have a community with poverty, you have a community with ESL, you have a community with special needs -- all of the other groups we've talked about. Another area where people were promised advances but are discouraged at the moment is advances in technology. Some was done outside of school funding, and that's being threatened by what was discussed earlier. What aspects of technology are available not only to the urban schools but across
Hon. P. Ramsey: About technology -- who knows? Maybe our successors in this job will be doing questions and answers by entering questions into a database that exists, and you can simply call it up and find out all these figures. But in the current environment, a minister will have to suffice.
The following sources of funds are available. First there's $10.7 million in technology grants. This is currently in its third year of a five-year program -- a commitment of over $50 million which was announced by the government. Each district files a two-to-three year technology plan, and then funds roll out. The grant for the Vancouver school district that the member's asking about is around $942,000 in the coming year, which is pushing 9 percent of the overall budget. In addition, school districts can spend up to 20 percent of district learning resources to support technology. The overall budget in Vancouver for learning resources is around $2.7 million this year, so they have access to significant money there. In addition, we're working hard to be able to provide the provincial learning network for a hookup in the '97-98 school year and make sure that students have that resource available. Actually, in terms of that piece, urban districts are doing relatively far better than rural districts. There are still some 140 schools in the province that can't get on the Net, even if they wanted to, because the telephone facilities are not what they should be.
Technology is becoming more important. Part of that is, of course, having teaching staff that are familiar with and users of the technology, and progress is being made there. Grades 4 to 5 teachers are now e-mail and Internet users, so we've made some strides in that in the last little while. In all those areas, some progress is being made.
I would say, also, that for a district like Vancouver that clearly has a significant corporate community, that clearly has areas of very high income and resources, I think the district can do a lot in reaching out to partners in the municipality to assist with technology acquisition. We're looking very hard at how we provide some opportunities for corporations to dis-
[ Page 6074 ]
pose of unwanted technology assets that may not be the Pentium Plus that you need for your high-end application business but will do just fine for a class that's learning basic word processing -- and making sure that some of those linkages are there. Clearly those linkages -- or the opportunity for those linkages -- are there in Vancouver, as well. I think one of the challenges that the school board has -- and it's a hard one -- is to make sure that public funds and the technology they can acquire flow to areas where opportunities for partnership with private partners for increasing technology may be more apparent. Have I said that right? I think so. Here's the poor; here's the rich. These guys are going to need some help in buying the computers; maybe they can get some private-public stuff that'll get this going.
V. Anderson: I agree with the minister on working with the businesses in the community. There's a lot of interaction already. Most schools are in partnership with businesses in the city and have been for some time, and that will continue to grow from both sides.
My final question would be: in the light of all this, could the minister explain to me why I get two sets of figures? One of them is all of these, showing that a place like Vancouver is that much richer from the ministry than they've ever been before. On the other hand, taking the number of students and the needs, I hear from the Vancouver school board that they received $92 less in total per student in the current year than they have previously. That's in the opposite direction. Could the minister help to clarify for me why these two separate figures are there?
[7:30]
Hon. P. Ramsey: I will just walk the member through some of the details that the formula takes into account. Some go up and some go down every year, as the critic and I have discussed repeatedly, because of the $27 million efficiencies requirement that I placed on school boards. That's translated in per-student funding to a $43 decrease. That's clearly not the same all across the piece, and there are vastly different changes.So let me just run through several of the factors that have influenced the overall Vancouver budget this year. The budget for career programs actually declined by $617,000. I assume that's because of declining enrolment, in that it is strictly an enrolment-driven figure, and actually, the per-student funding for career programs went up this year. ESL went up -- not as much as one would have expected -- around $133,000. So it's pretty much a flat number of ESL students in the district this year. Salary adjustment: the net amount went down because of changes in salary.
The Chair: Sorry, minister, we have a division in the main House, so we'll take a short recess and reconvene immediately after the division.
The committee recessed from 7:34 p.m. to 7:42 p.m.
[W. Hartley in the chair.]
Hon. P. Ramsey: Let me run through this quickly. The member asked why the Vancouver school board had a $94 per-pupil decline in the '97-98 year. There are a whole bunch of different lines here. I quoted some of them: a decrease in funding for career programs; a slight increase in ESL. Three went down significantly. First, a salary adjustment. We give salaries, really, based on the distribution of teachers on the salary grid. There was a decrease this year; that had a significant impact on the per-pupil amount.
There was another significant decrease in the growth and facility grant, which is given to high-growth districts. Vancouver has been growing remarkably fast; that growth is projected to slow in the coming year. So nearly half of that grant -- over a million dollars -- was not included; that had a downward pressure on the amount per pupil. And finally, like all the other school districts, Vancouver had its portion to pick up of the efficiency of 0.77 percent across the province. Add all the pluses and minuses, and the funding allocation is down $1.9 million year over year. And the per-pupil amount is down, as well.
V. Anderson: If I would be able to get a copy of the listing, I would appreciate it, so I would have the accurate figures. Thank you very much for your responses.
A. Sanders: To look at a couple of the issues that the member for Vancouver-Langara brought up and to give the critics additional insight into those two areas
[7:45]
One of the important things that the member was alluding to is, in fact, that administrators spend as much of their time supervising students as they do teaching them; that curriculum implementation and supervision of teachers are activities where administrators have much less time to devote than they did, say, ten years ago; that quite commonly, even during midday on a camera day -- sort of a snapshot of the life of an administrator -- only 7 percent of administrators are away from their workday, which was a ten-hour day, for more than a 15-minute period. So there seems to be an incredible amount of increased stress in the job of what we would describe as administration.An article written by a gentleman named Noel Harron in the June '97 Adminfo, which is the vice-principal/principals' journal, states:
"B.C.'s two largest school districts -- Surrey and Vancouver -- have mushrooming safety problems that trustees in both districts are either reluctant to acknowledge or give the appearance that they wish the issue would go away. Given the huge demographic shifts and enormous social pressures in both of these districts, the social realities of the '90s point to added, not diminished, pressures on safety and security matters. The recent national census confirmed that greater Vancouver is now the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan area. It is widely expected that next year's census will underline in the metro area the dramatic increase in urban poverty currently impacting on schools."He then goes on to say:
"In these circumstances, any weakening of the school's safety and security infrastructure -- be it the loss of support staff such as staff assistants, special education aides or vice-principals' and principals' time -- increases the strain on maintaining a safe and secure environment for children."He then says:[ Page 6075 ]
"With regard to the [position of vice-principal], it is sad to see the two largest school districts in B.C. literally trashing the position of vice-principal as we know it in the latest round of budget cuts. In Vancouver, almost all vice-principal positions will be reduced to an 80 percent teaching, 20 percent administrative assignment, while in Surrey, all elementary vice-principals now teach full-time. From an administrative perspective, the task of the vice-principal is untenable in these circumstancesForget about leadership training programs and all the rest; most who are in are trying to get out of this particular job.. . . . "
He goes on to talk about the erosion of the elementary school vice-principalship, the dramatic increase in teaching principals -- as of September, 50 principals in Vancouver and Surrey will have teaching responsibilities -- and how this will alter the safety factors in school, in addition to who will be responsible, who will be the ones steering the ship, if we use that metaphor with the school
So I think the hon. member's comments, in terms of looking at the legal implications under the School Act for those who are in the administrative positions, along with how reports like the Bognar report show these people are spending their time
Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll separate out several issues here. One is the role of vice-principals. I must say I come from a district that hasn't had an elementary vice-principal in many years. Many school districts are like that across the province. There are various staffing models that school districts choose, various mixtures of asking principals to be teachers as well as administrative officers, and it's appropriate for school districts to make those decisions. I come from a district where the decision was made some time ago to not have vice-principals in elementary schools. It seems to have worked fairly well.
The other issue that I think is a serious one is about the safety of our children and how you need to have people in school not necessarily charged with it, but just eyes and ears around. I must say that the number of staff in schools that I find now compared to the number of staff that were in school when my oldest son entered school nearly a quarter of a century ago -- let's call it 20 years ago; in rough figures -- in the late seventies is significantly more. There are more staff in schools now. Part of that, of course, is because class size, as a result of teacher bargaining, has experienced a decline over the past 20 years. Part of it is because of the growth in ESL and people helping out with that; you have more staff in it. The most significant portion of it is because of the great attention we've devoted to special education and the number of people that work in our schools there. In many areas we have more staff in our schools now than we had 20 years ago.
The other issue that I just flag for the member
I must say I have another sort of layperson's reaction, far more than anything else, and that is that surely security is -- I mean just absolute physical security -- one great concern. I surely recognize that there are schools in our province where that is a major concern of teachers, students and parents. Surely, while we want staff to be overseeing it, we also want those who actually have professional expertise in that to be informing the decisions and the design around security measures.
A. Sanders: Just two comments in response to what the minister said. I too would concur with the minister that there are more staff around schools than existed two decades ago. I don't think there's any question of that. I think it would have been very common in the seventies, if not always the case, to be in your classroom as the instructor, on your own without anybody else. I have not been in a classroom -- and I have been in many in the last year -- where there were less than two adults who were in some kind of responsible role.
I would argue, however, that there is another change that has occurred, which I do think needs to be looked at. That is that although there are more adults around, I find less people in charge and I find less focused administration. In other words, quite often the principals of the schools I have been in will be doing anything from cleaning out the toilets to mopping up a spill outside of one of the portables. So I do see a shrinkage in what my usual experience had been as to what an administrator did in his time. It used to be that he or she was the principal, and that was it. I don't think I have met a principal in the last year whose total responsibility was administration alone. Most of them now have some teaching portfolio.
The other thing I think is important there is that although there are more adults in the school -- and I see that as a good thing -- I find that those adults have way more to do than they used to. I have been quite surprised to see half of the children in a classroom on some kind of pill. The teachers seem to be administering or sorting out or bringing forward some parental initiative. I think we have to look at the whole picture before we ascertain whether things are better or worse than they used to be. We all tend to do that because we all went to school.
Just briefly, I want to close on that one issue that had been brought up by the member for Vancouver-Langara. The other one that the member for Vancouver-Langara talked about, of course, is ESL and obviously so. It is a very, very important issue in his district.
I want to just ask a couple more questions of the minister, because I think they need to be on the public record. These are questions, again, that come to me from the person who takes the time to write. One, I guess, would have to be: what is this minister and this ministry doing to push the federal government to give us some kind of financial help with the circumstance of an increasingly large number of immigrants who require the services of our schools to a very significant degree and the lack of support we get from federal government on this issue?
Hon. P. Ramsey: As the member opposite knows, the Premier recently concluded an agreement with the Prime Minister just prior to the recent federal election, an agreement for the provision of $61 million over three years aimed at immigrant settlement, some of which is in recognition of the particular pressures under ESL. That will alleviate some of our own pressures in continuing to fund ESL at the level that we are.
[ Page 6076 ]
A. Sanders: Is the minister making direct suggestions to federal Immigration as to what would be helpful to us in British Columbia with respect to the financial pressures that the high levels of immigration create?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I suspect I will join a long line of Ministers of Education who have made this case to the federal government. It is an issue that surfaces occasionally at the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada, as well. We're not the only one affected by it. As we've debated in this chamber, we're probably disproportionately affected by federal lack of recognition and support for ESL.
A. Sanders: Another point on ESL that the member for Vancouver-Langara brought up, which I think is really important and is something that I have experienced this year, is that the member was talking to the minister about the necessity of family involvement in ESL as a potential benchmark for the success of ESL and the integration of English into the daily vocabulary.
One of the things I've noticed very significantly in this member's school district is that in past years, if you were in a Vancouver school that had a high population of immigrants, you would still have English as a second language, but in the hallways English was the language you predominantly heard. It was very interesting for me to be in Vancouver schools and find that I was the only person speaking English during all of the time off. If the families are also speaking other languages at home, this would be pretty well equivalent to why our kids in B.C. don't speak French all that well, even though they've taken it up to university level. The only place they're doing it is in the classroom. They're not doing it in the hallways, they're not doing it with their peers, they're not doing it at home, and they're certainly not doing it in their business.
This is, I think, one of the things that I've noticed to be very significant. If the families are not involved and there isn't that community effort to make English the language spoken at times other than in that one classroom, one hour or one day of instruction, you're really not going to be very successful at getting English to be the language of choice.
With regard to that, the Vancouver school board
"Consequently, this would have serious implications if the actual September 30 enrolment numbers are over the capped level. It means that districts will be expected to provide education to those students over the capped level without funding provided by the ministry. This would require the district to reopen its 1997-98 budget to redirect resources from educational programs and services which are already underfunded.He goes on to say that not only will enrolment be capped for ESL but, as we've discussed already, a 47 percent reduction in ESL turnover grant will be experienced, and the 1997-98 preliminary funding allocation announced in March included a reduction in funding for career programs. So I'd just like the minister to have the opportunity to respond to this letter from Mr. John Cheng."You also stated that the projected enrolments are realistic and confirmed by the districts. It should be noted that although school boards confirmed the projected enrolments, the projections are based on information available in February 1997, seven months before September's school opening. The accuracy of the projected enrolments depends on factors such as immigration and student migration [and other factors] over which the boards have no control
. . . . "We also wish to bring to your attention that capping of career programs and ESL enrolments does not meet the spirit of the government's intent 'to establish alternate accountability mechanisms so targets and the cap can be removed in 1998-99.' "
[8:00]
The Chair: We have a division on a title in the other committee. We'll reconvene following that division.The committee recessed from 8:02 p.m. to 8:10 p.m.
[W. Hartley in the chair.]
Hon. P. Ramsey: In response to the member's question about the Vancouver school board's correspondence on caps in certain areas, the overall amount of money for ESL that I referenced earlier, $69.338 million, is indeed the maximum that I have available to spend this year. We have estimated that enrolment growth will increase 1.62 percent, and that increase is included in that figure. We believe that we will be able to fully fund ESL population growth within that amount. The same is true for the other areas that the member referenced.
A. Sanders: I just want the minister to have the opportunity to answer the questions of the Vancouver school board. I'm just finding out where I was before I was interrupted.
There's one small point I'd like to bring up just for a change in venue and to make sure that everyone's awake. One of the very good teachers in Vernon, Mr. Tom Williamson, sent me a letter this summer saying:
"Just a short note regarding smoking in schools. We are discussing making Vernon Secondary school a non-smoking school. At present there is no policy from the board. Perhaps the Minister of Health, in conjunction with the Education minister, can declare all schools in British Columbia non-smoking. Some help would be appreciated. I hope this idea doesn't cause any problems."It certainly doesn't cause me any problems, and I just wonder if anyone has made any suggestions like this to the minister at a time when we are finding increasing numbers of public spaces being designated non-smoking and when the government has declared war on the tobacco industry, whose primary goal is, it seems, to get young people smoking. I wonder if the minister has any comments on this particular letter.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I must say that personally I really support what the member and her correspondent are saying. I must also say, though, that I think local school boards are in the best position to assess the impacts of such a policy and how it might best be implemented. Therefore at this point I plan to leave that decision-making authority with school districts, urging them all to follow the example of many schools that have already done this. I think it is a sensible policy. It's even, I might say
I'll tell you one story. This was done at Kelly Road Secondary School in my riding. Some of the students and some of their parents objected because they established a no-smoking zone in a three-block radius around the school. At the end of the day, the decision received wide support, and it is now the way that school operates. It can work in lots of places in the province.
The Chair: Members, we have another division in the main House. So we will reconvene following that.
The committee recessed from 8:14 p.m. to 8:26 p.m.
[ Page 6077 ]
[W. Hartley in the chair.]
A. Sanders: I'd like to spend some time talking about independent schools. Again, just to frame up where my thoughts are coming from before I ask some questions, I have a few remarks.
Although the majority of British Columbia's school children attend public institutions, there are a large number who attend private schools. During the 1996-97 school year, a total of 57,000 were enrolled privately, compared to 663,775 who attended public schools. It is in the government's best interest that these schools remain active, as their presence reduces the overall responsibilities and costs to the ministry.
There is a certain amount of interministerial support in public schools that bypasses private systems. For instance, the Ministry of Health, in cooperation with local districts, provides immunization, speech pathologists and other health services. Children enrolled in private schools do not have access to these essential programs. Grants for computers and accreditation are also unavailable to private schools.
Teachers, the strength of any school system, face their share of frustration when they make the decision to work in an independent school. Their professionalism is doubted by the College of Teachers of B.C., who would rather not issue permanent certificates for at least two years after they leave the public system behind. As well, although universities recognize teaching practicums done in private schools, the College of Teachers does not.
I think there are some statements in those thoughts that need to be addressed by the ministry. My first question to the minister is on total enrolment: does the figure I have given reflect the accurate enrolment for 1997-98 in B.C.'s independent schools?
[8:30]
Hon. P. Ramsey: Any projection is, of course, just an estimate. I can tell the member that this year's enrolment was 55,866 and that there is an anticipated increase next year. So the member's estimate is in the ballpark of what the ministry is projecting. There are 350 independent schools in the province. The total funded enrolment in groups 1 and 2 was 52,709 last year. I'll just make one quick comment. Yes, independent school growth has increased since 1991-92 by about 30 percent, but its market share has grown by less than 1 percent over the same period.A. Sanders: If the increase from 1991-92 has been 30 percent with a flat perspective in the market share, what kind of increases of that total have we looked at in the last year?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Our estimate is that from 1995-96 to 1996-97, the increase was 7 percent.
A. Sanders: Of that percent, how much does the ministry feel is due to population increase and how much of that is possibly parental preference for the choice of independent schooling?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I think we just had a conversation similar to the one we had before on the same question, when I said to the member that we're not sure we can give an accurate account of which factors led to an increase of the independent school population or in which segments of it. For the member's interest, one of the breakdowns the ministry does have is where enrolments are within categories of independent schools.
The largest is the Roman Catholic school system, which enrols nearly 21,000 students. The Society of Christian Schools enrols 8,300. The British-model private schools are around 5,800, and those all have their own little organizations among themselves. Then there are the non-aligned schools, which include everything from Montessori to Sikh to Seventh-Day Adventist to Waldorf, and that category accounts for 20,700.
A. Sanders: I read a paper earlier this year from the B.C. Teachers Federation, called "Education Funding: A Brief to the Government of British Columbia from the British Columbia Teachers Federation." In that paper, there were several facts about independent schools that I want to have clarified for me. The first one is a comment that said that actual government grants to private schools increased by 47 percent, even though funded enrolment to these schools increased by 32 percent. I found this statement quite misleading, and I wonder what the minister's comments on that particular statement might be.
Hon. P. Ramsey: On the surface, this assertion appears correct, but it doesn't tell the full story. This brief fails to acknowledge that the per-student cost in the public system, on which the independent grants are based, rose by 6.9 percent in the same period. If the figures are adjusted for that amount, then it shows that the grants to independent schools increased by 36.5 percent, not 47 percent, against the 32 percent enrolment increase. That's still a difference of 4.5 percent, and that differential is accounted for by an internal shift within the funding categories for independent schools, which the note failed to take into account. Funding of group 3 schools was discontinued, and many of the schools in that category were upgraded to qualify for group 1 status at 50 percent funding. That accounts for the differences the member has talked about.
A. Sanders: I think it's really appropriate and important for all of us to bring forward our own points of view. That's how things get done, but as the minister has pointed out, the factors are misleading. I was hoping that the minister had been aware of that from looking at those figures independently. As he has mentioned, grants to independent schools rose more than enrolment because grants to public schools also rose more than enrolment.
He put it in different words, but that's basically what he said. To have public documentation that's accurate in all senses is to state things -- but also to tell what you're not stating. As the minister has pointed out, the proportion of the enrolment in independent schools in group 3, which used to receive 10 percent, and in group 2, which receives only 50 percent, are also factors that changed the difference between the 47 percent and the 32 percent that were suggested. If we have clarified the misleading information in that particular public document, then I feel happier recognizing that the minister has in fact recognized it himself.
In terms of independent schools, special needs in the independent schools are an important topic. The 50 percent schools or the 35 percent schools in the two independent school categories receive their funding calculated on the public school base from which the cost of educating students with moderate to severe needs has been removed. My question to the minister is: what was the ideology of that decision? Where did that originate, and why is that the case?
[ Page 6078 ]
Hon. P. Ramsey: Based on the history of enrolment in independent schools, it was determined that enrolment of special education students, particularly high-need special education students, wasn't as significant in independent schools as it was in the public school system, and therefore it's not included in base grants. There is, however, a fund of $3 million available within the independent schools budget for dealing with high-need special needs students. It's available to independent schools on the same basis as for public schools. The same criteria apply.
A. Sanders: If we started out by saying that independent schools didn't have the same number of children with moderate to severe needs, we certainly would have made sure that they didn't -- by not funding them. I am aware of the $3 million fund they can draw from, but I think the question still remains. If we are not funding equitably for special needs students at independent schools unless they have moderate to severe disabilities, we are going to have a discrepancy there. Does the minister feel that the additional fund that is available would be adequate to cover that discrepancy?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Let me try again. The high-incidence special needs cost is built into the base grant for the calculation. The number of low-incidence, high-cost is allocated to the schools very much the way it is to the public school system, and we do believe that $3 million will prove adequate for requests made in the coming year.
A. Sanders: If all children in independent schools were brought back into the public school system, what would be the additional operating cost to the Ministry of Education?
Hon. P. Ramsey: It would be an additional cost of $200 million.
A. Sanders: I've seen different figures for the suggested answer to this question, and they've been as high as $315 million. So I'm just a bit concerned about the low figure.
Hon. P. Ramsey: That's the figure between what we currently pay to independent schools and what the total bill would be if we were funding them as public schools, which would be around $325 million. So the difference between that and the current budget is just a touch over $200 million.
A. Sanders: And what would be the additional capital cost to house those children?
Hon. P. Ramsey: More than a debt plan could sustain, hon. member. I suspect anywhere up to $1 billion.
A. Sanders: A very large number. What percentage of the capital costs to independent schools are provided by government?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Zero.
A. Sanders: So I guess the punch, and I think what the people in independent schools really want to know, is: is there any political will by the minister to decrease the current funding to independent schools? If so, why, and if not, why not?
Hon. P. Ramsey: There are no current plans to make substantial changes.
A. Sanders: I thought I would use some of the vast neuronal power in this room and discuss the evaluation and accountability structure of the ministry, now that my colleague from Delta South is here -- and Delta North. I'm just trying to find my page here.
[8:45]
Specifically, hon. Chair, we were looking at several of the accountability structures and frameworks within the ministry. I have a number of questions concerning the OCG report. However, I would like the opportunity to provide my colleague with time to question the minister, and I will fit my questions in around questions that he does not ask, so that we don't have duplication.F. Gingell: There are going to be a lot of gaps that April is going to fill in afterwards.
The ministry has traditionally evaluated the performance of the education system in terms of input and process management. However, this approach does not demonstrate the degree to which the ministry is achieving its stated goals. While the province has demonstrated a relatively good performance, this approach does not enable absolute evaluation, nor does it provide for direct accountability in a system that continually requires more for less costs.
The OCG refers to a comprehensive, results-focused framework as including an alignment of activities and authority and related accountabilities, for the ministry and school boards; a statement of the intended results of the education system in measurable terms; the alignment and integration of ministry systems to support achieving, measuring and reporting intended results; and an evaluation of results achieved and action on those results to improve performance where necessary. The comptroller general's report suggests that, as a start, clear and distinct performance expectations should be developed for the ministry and for school boards. Do you agree?
Hon. P. Ramsey: In general, we agree. That's why a definition of the roles and responsibilities of ministry and school board is one of our initiatives this year. We have already held one forum between this ministry and school districts in the province to begin discussion on roles and responsibilities. It's the clear intent here that responsibility flow from a role in the system.
F. Gingell: I take it from that that the purpose of this forum is, first of all, to define the role of the ministry and the school board separately and distinctly, and that this forum is the opportunity for stakeholders of different types and sorts to get involved in the process. Could the minister advise the committee which stakeholders have been represented, and if there has been an invitation list? I mean, have you specifically brought in certain stakeholders, or have you opened it up to everybody?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The invitees to the first forum are the major partners within the education system, and we expect to consult with that group of interested parties.
F. Gingell: Can the minister tell me who was included?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Starting with the most important people: students, teachers, principals and vice principals, secretary-treasurers, superintendents and trustees, and ministry staff. Oh, and parents.
[ Page 6079 ]
F. Gingell: But it was an invited list, and MLAs were excluded.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I only got there for an hour of it, myself.
F. Gingell: I wasn't actually going to follow up that line of questioning, but I understand that the official opposition Education critic specifically asked if she could attend and was refused, which surprised me. I wonder what particular policy or practice from the Ministry of Education decided that was an appropriate course of action for the ministry to take.
Hon. P. Ramsey: There are lots of forums for those of us involved in political life to discuss the roles that we feel are appropriate for various partners in the education system. This is an opportunity for the partners themselves to discuss it.
F. Gingell: I must admit the answer surprised me. I would have thought that the minister would have encouraged MLAs who, after all, do have a role as the representatives of the citizens of this province -- both parents and taxpayers -- and that you would have welcomed this opportunity to increase the MLAs' understanding of the issues. One goes to these forums usually not to speak loudly but to listen hard. So I am surprised that the opportunity was missed.
Off on a new subject, I understand that CUPE was invited. The B.C. Teachers Federation was invited but they refused to come, because they didn't have enough representatives compared to other people at the forum. I'm sure if MLAs had been invited, whether they were critics or not, you would have found a great number of MLAs from your own side of the Legislature. You have teachers. You've got school trustees sitting on both sides. We all bring to these issues our own particular prejudices and knowledge. I'm surprised that we weren't invited, and I would like, if I may, to encourage you -- because I am sure this is an ongoing process -- not just to let us come, but to encourage participation in the future.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I assure you that had invitations been given to MLAs, there would have been very few attending. It took place during the legislative week. I know for a fact that there would have been few or none from our side of the House, and given attendance patterns, I suspect the same might have been true of yours.
F. Gingell: Well, one of these days the minister will learn that the art of politics is to put out lots of invitations when you know that they can't be accepted.
Moving along, there is a forum to talk about, first of all, the differentiation of the roles and responsibilities of the ministry and school boards. Having done that, you will want to put in writing what the objectives are, so that we understand what these bodies are supposed to be doing. Have those been defined? Has any paper been put out?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The results of the forum are being captured now in a discussion paper. That work is ongoing, and we expect it to be available and ready for distribution to anybody who wants to take a look at it this fall.
I will ensure that in the future the member is invited to all the events that he can't attend.
F. Gingell: I'm sure you will include all my compatriots and colleagues, as well.
The forum is going to give the ministry a plethora of ideas that come from these various groups. In the end, the minister is responsible for defining the policy that determines what the ministry does and if times are going to change, what school boards do. What kind of time frame do you see for getting that next step done?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The discussion paper I referenced is one part of what we need to do. The ministry hopes to be winding up the results of the forum -- the discussion paper, the responses to it -- and options for my consideration and cabinet consideration late in `97 or early `98. There may be some other work that needs to be done before we're prepared to move forward with either the regulatory or legislative changes. So if it does result in that sort of change, we're probably looking at the session in `98 or possibly `99.
The other piece of ongoing work here, hon. member, is phase 2 from the office of the comptroller general. The comptroller general's involvement in this did not stop when he provided the report on accountability to me this spring. His office is now actively engaged in going out and talking to school districts themselves about how they measure accountability and what mechanisms they have and then measuring what his office feels are gaps in that -- the strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement. So he's not even going to be reporting back on that piece of work until at least the summer or the fall of 1998.
This reminds me in some ways of some of the work I was involved with in the early days around looking at accountability measures in the college system. The initial work started in 1989, I think, and really resulted in some accountability frameworks and measures six or so years later. It took a while. This, too, will take a while. That doesn't mean that everything waits until the last tile falls in place, but I expect the total process will take a couple of years at least.
F. Gingell: The comptroller general's report has a date on the front of it of June 1996. Your letters that came out with it, it seems to me, were dated May of this year. Can you tell the committee what transpired between June of `96 and May of `97, and was it in the ministry's possession during that time?
[9:00]
Hon. P. Ramsey: June '96 represented the end of the review period, the sort of data-gathering the OCG did. Following that, a draft report was presented to ministry staff. There ensued, obviously, a lengthy period of work with the ministry to make sure that all the facts were in place and that every "i" was dotted and every "t" crossed, since this is a comprehensive analysis of the operations of both this ministry and the entire K-to-12 education system. The final report of the OCG was submitted to me on March 26 of this year, and I released it to the public on April 10.F. Gingell: It's interesting to note that I was advised by our critic that the B.C. Teachers Federation didn't attend this forum. The response of the B.C. Teachers Federation to the report is vitriolic in parts -- highly critical of the whole thing. Recognizing that any successful undertaking is a mix of all kinds of partnerships and cooperations, does the minister have any concern, or has it caused you to have second thoughts about this program, in light of the response of the B.C. Teachers Federation?
[ Page 6080 ]
Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, the member asks if the reaction of the B.C. Teachers Federation to the OCG report has caused me or the ministry to say that we don't wish to pursue measures of accountability or quality assurance. The short answer is no, although I would point out for the member that at the time I released the report, I too was critical of some aspects of the methodology and the findings in it.
I'll give the member a couple of examples. The report relies overly much, I believe, on one aspect of what our public schools do -- academic attainment. I'm not sure it pays adequate attention to other things which the school system needs to be equally accountable for: namely, how well students are being prepared to assume a role, not only in post-secondary education and a career, but as citizens, as members of the family and as members of the community -- a huge range of other roles that we expect them to carry out as responsible adults and members of our society. So I'm a little concerned about that.
More specifically, the report does in places
I'll give you a couple of examples of what I mean. There's a portion of this report which says that the office of the comptroller general can't vouch for the efficacy of the school meals program. Because you can't actually measure -- the report says -- whether the school meals program has had any measurable impact on the performance of students, we therefore shouldn't assume that the school meals program is a valuable adjunct to the education system. Well, my response to this, I admit, was perhaps a bit flip, but I suggested we could starve a group of students to death and see how they did, and thereby have a control group as our base. Now, I don't think the OCG meant that, but I must say that the application of a strict methodology to programs such as that or the inner-city schools program -- another one that the OCG singles out -- struck me as less than the wide-ranging examination of what public accountability means that I would expect.
So I think the member knows that I share his interest in accountability. As I've already said, there is lots of excellent work here in the OCG report that I think we can build on and advance. There are parts of it that I'm concerned about.
The other thing that I think led to some of the reaction that the member talks about is the fact that, in some ways, this came out of nowhere for the great majority of people involved in public education. The ministry knew about it, because they're working with the OCG on it. The OCG knew about it and some other agencies of government did. But it was pretty much a ministry-OCG-based project, and school boards, teachers, support staff and others were involved peripherally, if at all. Therefore I think we do have a real challenge here, as we work with this huge enterprise called public education, to assure them that while we have no intention of backing away from this, we very much want to secure their support because we need them involved in determining what the right measures of accounting are for the expenditure of tax dollars on public education.
F. Gingell: I think that we all recognize that education is a very wide-ranging subject, and there are things that can be measured easily and things that are more difficult. I'd like to suggest to the minister that, in dealing with an issue like school meals, it may be appropriate to go and talk to the provincial health officer and see what kinds of thoughts the provincial health officer has on the subject. It may be something that's measurable in six months, a year, a year and a half or two years
The OCG's report makes a number of recommendations. I'd like to go through those. There are not that many. I appreciate that some of them may be things that you have already decided, and others are things that you haven't.
The comptroller general's report distinguished between the role of the ministry -- to provide central direction to the quality of the education system -- and the role of school boards -- to deliver educational programs and be responsible for student learning. Is that the way the minister sees the separation: the ministry concerned with central direction and quality; school boards responsible for delivery and student results?
Hon. P. Ramsey: In general terms, yes.
F. Gingell: One of the things that has changed dramatically in the last 15 years is the authority and responsibility the school boards have over budget decisions -- ranging all the way to even having it taken away from them -- and how much money they're going to spend. The ministry's ever-increasing direction in the area of targeted funding removes more and more the authority and responsibility of school boards to make decisions. I get concerned, and I'm sure you do, too, minister -- or the Chair; in fact, you both get concerned -- that the more targeted funding you have, the more you're into supposedly one-size-fits-all.
Has the ministry come to any conclusion as to, first of all, whether it should change the current legislation that removes from school boards the ability to make a decision on gross budget levels? Secondly, have you made any decisions about reducing the role of targeted funding, as recommended by the office of the comptroller general?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I just want to confirm a couple of things. First, as far as the ministry setting overall expenditure levels for a school board, what the ministry actually sets is what the provincial contribution towards school board operations will be.
F. Gingell: Then you're going to go by referendum.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Various school boards, as the member knows, have embarked on revenue-raising projects ancillary to this, whether it's continuing education, visa students or whatever. But I take the member's point that these are a small portion of their overall expenditures. I could reference their ability to raise funds through referendum, which has not been used successfully.
But in general terms, no, we do not intend to change that primary way of providing funding. It is, as I've discussed at length in this committee before, an ongoing task to make sure we're distributing funds equitably among school boards, because one size does not fit all. The challenges that the
[ Page 6081 ]
Vancouver school board faces are not those that are faced in, oh, say, northern Vancouver Island -- very different sorts of challenges.
On targeting, though, the member may have missed one of the announcements that I made around the '97-98 budget, which was that I was prepared to remove targeting for special education and aboriginal education, and the administrative cap, providing that we had in place better measures of quality assurance or accountability than we now have in place -- because what the member and I sort of share at a philosophical level about this I surely found to be reality when I talked to practitioners. There are very few who believe that simply targeting special education funding or funding for aboriginal education ensures quality of services delivered to those individuals.
Therefore we've struck three committees in the ministry this year -- one on special ed, one on aboriginal ed, one on administrative capping -- that are charged with coming up with the good measures of accountability. So this is some of the work, hon. member, that we're pursuing this year.
I've issued the challenge to the system, to say my goal is to remove that targeting in the '98-99 school year. But I must have better measures of accountability, and the challenge is to get them. So we are moving aggressively away from the sort of input-only measure -- surely one measure, and it will remain a measure -- to look at what we're getting out of the system and what the actual results will be.
[9:15]
I'll give you one example whereWe have what I would describe as a very serious problem in aboriginal education in this province. We discussed earlier the completion rate for the general population in public schools, which is in the high 70 percents, depending on how you measure it and what period. For the aboriginal community the figures are reversed. You probably have 30 percent or fewer of first nations students completing school in a timely fashion.
A. Sanders: One out of four.
Hon. P. Ramsey: One out of four, yeah, it's the same range -- depends on how you measure it. But the member opposite is right, one out of four. I consider this totally, absolutely unacceptable. So we must find ways of dealing with the concerns that I think everybody has -- that the aboriginal community certainly has.
While the aboriginal community feels that the targeting was a good initial step towards getting some of these issues addressed, they too recognize that it hasn't worked to address some of the systemic issues around school completion rate for first nations children. They have -- we all have -- a lot to gain if we start measuring and demanding accountability and quality of education for first nations students on some other basis than simply how many dollars we put into aboriginal education.
The other thing -- I want to sort of link this back in -- is that these three committees are in place. We're working on other measures. The BCTF, as well as the other partners, is working on the committees and is represented on them.
F. Gingell: I'm pleased to hear that. But you have to go back to the original concept that it's the Ministry of Education's responsibility to be sure and to be the authority on the issue of quality. Then I suggest to the minister that it's the Minister of Education who has to come up with those quality measures. You really do want the person who is responsible for delivering the goods or making the decisions to determine what the measures are.
Some outside party is going to subsequently pass on whether or not those measures are appropriate. But it's the people who are involved in the process who have a better understanding about what's measurable, what's important and what's relevant, because people from the outside may very well not come up with the same criteria. It's the minister's job to come up at least with the first blush of how you will measure quality. Then it will be the school districts' job to report back to you on what their results are.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I think I heard the member actually arguing for the structure I've put in place. I've got three committees, each chaired by ministry staff who will be presenting their recommendations to me. Each of the committees seeks to involve those from the field who are involved in the actual delivery, to ascertain as best we can what are the actual measures of effectiveness and quality of delivery that could and should be measured. I think I hear the member supporting what we're doing.
F. Gingell: We always support what the minister does on the rare occasions that he gets it right. Joking aside
Interjection.
F. Gingell: Get to the bottom of the list.
The Ministry of Education contracts with what are described as organizations for the delivery of educational services. At the front of the report there's a listing of those types of things. The comptroller general's position was that these services are presently delivered to schools and school boards but contracted for by the ministry. His position was that he thought it would be more appropriate if the party who was receiving the services were to do the contracting. I wonder whether any decisions had been made about that for the near future.
Hon. P. Ramsey: This is an issue that's still under active consideration. I'll present the member with the two sides of the argument. He's already talked about one. It's that school districts are net receivers of these services; therefore they should be given all the funds and acquire the services where they wish.
The other argument is that the minister and ministry have overall responsibility for curriculum implementation and professional development across the system: we don't have 59 different curriculums; we have one. We don't have 59 school systems; we have one. Therefore there are some things that cut right across the piece, and the ministry should assume the leadership role in making sure that implementation occurs. So this is one of the issues that is still under active consideration. I expect some of the responses to it to flow from the discussion on roles and responsibilities.
[ Page 6082 ]
F. Gingell: When you enter into these contract arrangements that will, for instance, develop a curriculum, is there a series of measures or criteria set up at that starting point, by which the programs will be deemed, after a reasonable period of time, to have been planned, developed and implemented successfully? Is that presently being done, or is that something that is yet to come?
Hon. P. Ramsey: In our contract arrangements, we have measurable achievements, completion of which is required for payment of the contract.
F. Gingell: So I take it that where you talk about completion, you're talking about the completion of the package -- the package not having been opened and fed to students yet -- to see the quality of the results of academic attainment at the end.
Hon. P. Ramsey: There are some steps here. I mean, one assumes that you've got
I think what the member's referencing is: "So, having done all that, I'm now measuring the results against that." That's the larger challenge, and the OCG has a lot of recommendations to make about how you attain that. I think the member knows that there is a fair bit of both cross-province testing of academic outcomes and international testing of outcomes from curricula. B.C. students perform extremely well on a world scale against most of those measures.
F. Gingell: The selection of learning resources is currently administered by the learning resources branch of the ministry. The comptroller general recommends that the branch prepare a limited list that identifies the one or two resources that best support the curriculum. In addition, the OCG recommends the ministry undertake a study of district posting practices to determine whether savings can be realized by central coordination. To what extent are these recommendations being acted upon?
Hon. P. Ramsey: There were two issues that you asked for response on. First, on the OCG's recommendation that in production of lists of recommended resource materials the ministry look at smaller lists rather than larger ones, that is the direction that we are moving in. The second one was the issue of what purchasing issues the ministry could be a lead and facilitator on, and the ministry is pursuing that with the Purchasing Commission.
F. Gingell: Before we finish this evening I have some questions relative to the report that was done on school district postings, so perhaps we can come back to that in a few minutes.
The comptroller general's report gets into all the issues to do with testing. This, of course, was what really caused the problems to a great extent with the B.C. Teachers Federation. He pushes strongly for the establishment of provincial performance standards or targets for achievement. I appreciate that there are some now, but clearly he's talking about a great deal more. Has the ministry arrived at any conclusions as to whether you want to beef up and regularize more provincial testing standards?
[9:30]
Hon. P. Ramsey: The short answer is no, we have not reached a definitive response to it. I think the member is right, in that the office of the comptroller general makes a very broad range of suggestions and, sometimes, some very specific suggestions on which we and our partners in providing education need to determine whether they are, again, the right measures of the right qualities at the right time. I imagine there are some in here on which, at the end of the day, we will say, "Yeah, that is right," and probably some others on which we will say: "We don't see the cost-benefit or the appropriateness of this suggested measure."F. Gingell: The comptroller general's report gets into the issue of trying to get some take on the way students' report cards are in different schools for students accomplishing at the same level, I think. The OCG recommends that school districts could compare summaries of actual student achievements -- for example, documented on report cards with provincial standards. I presume they're getting into the issue of, when a parent gets the report card, particularly if they've come from another district, are they seeing a level standard of reporting? It's a difficult issue, but a critically important one.
Do you have any proposals for moving in this direction, seeing what can be done? Or is this something that would tend to be dealt with toward the end, having got some other standards more clearly established first?
Hon. P. Ramsey: There are probably no pieces of paper more avidly pored over, particularly in children's lives, than the four report cards during a year.
F. Gingell: Mine never were; I used to burn them.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Before you showed them to your father?
F. Gingell: Absolutely -- if I didn't, my father would have burned them afterwards.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Hon. Chair, we have just ascertained why the member opposite is so concerned about accountability issues. Having avoided it for all of his public schooling, he now wishes to impose it on the province.
All joking aside, hon. member, I raise that for a very simple point. While we seek to improve accountability for what goes on in schools and reporting to parents and to taxpayers generally, I think it is well to note that we do put out a minimum of four reports per year on what is happening in our children's education. They have some general guidelines and it's a fairly comprehensive system for what happens, and it sort of regularizes that reporting and accountability function. I just want to mention that as one of the things that we have.
If I understand the member accurately, he is asking how we could set and measure standards in various courses so that reporting across the entire province would be referenced to
[ Page 6083 ]
the same criterion across the piece, so that the parent would know that when Judy gets a B in biology 12 in Dawson Creek, it means essentially the same level of competence as when Joe gets a B in biology 12 in Victoria. There's a lot of work to be done there, although I'm sure the member knows that there's a raging battle on normative versus criterion-based referencing within the education community itself.
I would also say to the member that we do have at least some measures that demonstrate that there are not huge variations. The way that's done, of course, is through provincial examinations, which do show a high degree of correlation between high attainers in one district and high attainers in another, low attainers in one district and low attainers in another. So there are, through the measures we have now, some general assurances. We can say to parents that children's education is to similar quality across the province.
But I have accepted the challenge of this report. This is clearly one of the main challenges. It's particularly important in a culture where children don't necessarily start and complete their schooling in one district. In fact, that's probably more the exception than the rule these days. So it is important that we have measures of quality that go across districts.
F. Gingell: The discussion that we've had has accepted as a premise that it's the school board's responsibility to deliver programs and that they have to have some flexibility and responsibility for doing that. That means, as the OCG writes at the end of that section 4.2.2: "
Hon. P. Ramsey: Look, again I want to reference the base from which we're starting and which the comptroller general is dealing with -- that is, a common curriculum across the piece. This does give the school boards their responsibilities and the ministry and minister, essentially, a far greater ability in ours to measure and assure quality than we would have if we had 59 different districts with 59 different curricula. So the essence of what the OCG is recommending, as I understand it, is that we look at the learning outcomes in these curricula, which, again, are standard across the province, and restrict in some way which are the key ones, so that we can have some assurance that the key outcomes in chem 11 in Nakusp are going to be the same key outcomes of chem 11 in Terrace. We don't disagree at all, and we are moving in that direction.
F. Gingell: That moves us from worrying about how students are doing into the issue of worrying about how teachers are doing. The office of the comptroller general recommends that the ministry introduce indicators of the direction of student achievement or student growth as one of the measures of teaching performance. What has the ministry done in relation to this recommendation on the teaching performance side?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I don't have a clear response tonight that would be definitive for the member on this issue. There clearly are differences in attainment within different classrooms across the province. It has always been a matter of much debate within the education community to what extent those are student-based, curriculum-based or teacher-based. It's clear that there is a mix in there. How you tweak out which are the important measures and make sure that you've got the right indicators of progress and the right references for what classroom teachers do is the real trick. I must say that as phrased, I find the OCG's recommendation a bit too sweeping to deal with. I think we need to spend some time talking with our partners about precisely what his goal is and what our joint goals should be.
F. Gingell: Recognizing, as I'm sure the minister does, the wonderful opportunities that are open to a child in a classroom with a teacher who is committed, enthusiastic, bright and makes learning fun
Just as we finish up, I wonder whether the minister would like to talk for a moment on the issue of ensuring the standards of quality education in the classroom.
Hon. P. Ramsey: In two minutes I'm sure I can dispense with that -- something that's probably occupied most of my professional career and now occupies me as minister.
I think the member accurately describes the situation out there. I think that the vast majority of teachers in our public school system meet his first description of people who are committed to the children that they serve and educate, committed to the role of a teacher in the school system, see themselves as serious professionals dedicated to education, and are really very idealistic about their work. By and large, the results in our classrooms are good. I needed to say all those things as preface.
The real difficulty comes in -- and I've seen this in my own 20-some years in the classroom -- where this year's star in the classroom may be next year's dud, and this year's dud may be next year's star. I look back with a bit of chagrin -- not to put too fine a point on it -- on some of the early classes I taught. I learned, teachers learn -- they get better sometimes. The world is changing out there, and I think our challenge, both at the ministry level and at the district level, is to spend a lot of time giving teachers the tools and skills that they need to cope with a rapidly changing student population, a rapidly changing curriculum and increasingly complex societal demands on what we expect from our education system.
[9:45]
I think I'll leave it there. I think that is our challenge. In our conversations so far we've sort of focused on the evaluation. So how do you measure who's a good teacher and who's a not so good teacher, and how do you help those who are struggling? Let's turn the challenge around, because that's the only way that we will be able to work in partnership with educators -- teachers -- to make sure that we have the right supports in place to help all teachers become the enthusiastic, committed people that we want to have working with our children.F. Gingell: I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 9:46 p.m.