Hansard -- Thursday, April 1, 2004 p.m. -- Vol. 23, No. 5 (HTML)


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page

Introductions by Members		10061

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		10061
	Vaisakhi Day
	P. Sahota
	Volunteerism in Tri-Cities
	K. Manhas
	Methamphetamine use
	L. Mayencourt

Oral Questions		10062
	Government spending on health care advertising
	J. MacPhail
	Hon. C. Hansen
	Funding for Picasso Cafe
	J. Kwan
	Hon. S. Hagen
	Mining activities in parks
	P. Nettleton
	Hon. R. Neufeld
	Safety of Trans-Canada Highway between Pritchard and Chase
	K. Krueger
	Hon. K. Falcon

Tabling Documents		10065
	Simon Fraser University Surrey Central City Campus Major Capital Project Plan

Motions on Notice		10065
	Powers of Crown Corporations Committee (Motion 107)
	Hon. G. Collins
	Referral of reports to committees and powers of Public Accounts Committee (Motion 108)
	Hon. G. Collins
	Powers of Health Committee (Motion 109)
	Hon. G. Collins
	Powers of Finance and Government Services Committee (Motion 110)
	Hon. G. Collins
	Powers of Education Committee (Motion 111)
	Hon. G. Collins

Second Reading of Bills		10067
	Water, Land and Air Protection Statutes Amendment Act, 2004 (Bill 16)
	Hon. B. Barisoff
	Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2004 (Bill 18)
	Hon. G. Plant

Committee of Supply		10070
	Estimates: Ministry of Human Resources (continued)
	J. MacPhail
	Hon. S. Hagen
	L. Mayencourt
	V. Roddick

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		10088
	Estimates: Ministry of Education (continued)
	Hon. T. Christensen
	J. Kwan

Hon. S. Brice: I have the pleasure of introducing a class in the House today not only from my riding but also from my neighbourhood. I would like to introduce the 27 grade 5 students from Lochside Elementary School who are here with parents and their two teachers, Ms. Rowena Keeb and Ms. Donna Thornton. I would ask the House to make them welcome.

K. Krueger: In the precinct this afternoon is someone who is making her very first appearance ever in the precinct. Her name is Johanna Weir. She is a brand-new baby born to Sarah Bonner, the managing director of our caucus, and her husband, Patrick Weir. Would the House please make Johanna, Patrick and Sarah all very welcome.

P. Nettleton: I am pleased today to introduce to the House Mr. Joe Foy and Mr. Ken Wu, representing the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. Please join me in welcoming these gentlemen.

P. Sahota: On April 10 the lower mainland will see thousands of people coming together from all over North America to celebrate one of the most important religious holidays of the Sikh faith, Vaisakhi. The Premier, my colleagues and I will be attending many of those celebrations for this special day. Vaisakhi, commemorating the founding of the Khalsa, is built around the values of universal justice, tolerance and shared prosperity. Festivals and celebrations like these allow us to reflect on the contribution that the Sikh community has made and continues to make to British Columbia.

People from the Indian subcontinent have been in Canada for over 100 years. From those earliest days the pioneers have worked hard to contribute to this country. Today the descendants of those pioneers are prominent in business, medicine, education, law and politics. By sheer hard work and determination, they have given their children better futures than they would have had anywhere else in the world.

Canada has given people from all over the world a home to call their own. Those from India, particularly, feel a special allegiance and loyalty to this great country. People like Baltej Dhillon, the first Mountie allowed to wear a turban; Shushma Datt, a pioneer in media; pioneers in forestry like Asa Johal, Herb Doman, Jack Uppal, the late Tera Singh Ghog and Norm Sangha; and people like Justice Wally Oppal.

This year something special is taking place on Vaisakhi, and it is because of a special individual. Burnaby resident and Rotarian Anup Jubbal is president of Canadian Eyesight International. Because of his leadership, Canadian Eyesight International has treated over 100,000 people in India. In the spirit of giving back and in the spirit of Vaisakhi, Mr. Jubbal's organization has teamed up with Dr. David Neima and Dr. Amrik Panesar. These eye doctors will be conducting free eye screening and eye checkups on Sunday, April 11, at the Ross Street Sikh temple.

I want to thank all the organizers for offering this service to the community and for their humanitarian work that they have undertaken in India. Today I salute and applaud the dedication, determination and perseverance of Mr. Anup Jubbal and all the pioneers. Happy Vaisakhi.

K. Manhas: Today I am proud to announce what promises to be a new institution in the Tri-Cities. Our community's first-ever Volunteer Fest will be held at the Coquitlam Centre on Saturday, April 24. The event will showcase the various non-profit and volunteer-intensive groups and clubs that build the fabric of our community, keep it safe and increase the quality of our life and our environment. It will highlight the important work done by volunteers in our region and will celebrate the many positive changes individuals can make by taking active roles in their community and their neighbourhoods. It is volunteers that bring out the best in a community and make it the best it can be.

I want to thank all the dedicated volunteers out there for making a difference and setting a great example, and I want to encourage more people to do the same. My colleagues in the Tri-City caucus and I have been working alongside the community volunteer connections, the society for community development, Arts Connect and the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce. Each of our municipalities has expressed support and is considering financial and technical support.

I want to thank the member for New Westminster for showing a great example that has inspired us. I want to thank our major sponsors for supporting and promoting the event and allowing us to make it happen, including the Coquitlam Centre, the Tri-City News, the Coquitlam NOW, Visual Planet Design Group and others yet to come.

I'd like to encourage any person or organization interested in participating or sponsoring the event to contact Cathy Lister at the community volunteer centre or to contact my constituency office or the office of any of my Tri-City MLA colleagues to get registered. Space is limited and is filling up very quickly.

I want to encourage everyone to come out to learn about the organizations and clubs in our community that make it great, and I want to encourage every individual to get involved in some way. Take a little bit of time out of your busy life to get involved in something

I hope Volunteer Fest on April 24, to be held this year on the last day of National Volunteer Week, will become a catalyst for a stronger, more involved community for Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra.

L. Mayencourt: There's an enemy that has invaded our streets and our homes in British Columbia. Last year that enemy killed too many people in our province, and in the first three months of this year we're on pace to double the number of deaths as a result of this enemy.

The enemy I talk about today has street names like crystal, ice, glass, meth and shard. It's a drug called methamphetamine. It's cheap, it's toxic, and it's very addictive. It can induce violent and psychotic behaviour in users, and it can cause lasting brain damage and even death.

The United Nations estimates that worldwide the number of people who have used crystal meth in the last year is 34 million. Combined with its sister drug ecstasy, global abuse exceeds that of heroin and cocaine. In my own city of Vancouver, 71 percent of the street-entrenched youth have used crystal meth, and a shocking number of high school students across this province have experimented with it.

We as a government are moving against this enemy. This government is committed to action, and this government is committed to helping the casualties of this drug in our cities. I'm proud to say that this government will be co-hosting a western summit on methamphetamine with a methamphetamine response committee out of my neighbourhood. We'll bring together health care workers, social service providers, policy-makers, community organizations and law enforcement to develop a collaborative and holistic approach to addressing the use and production of methamphetamine in western Canada.

When we merged health services and addiction, we made a conscious choice. We recognized that issues around addiction are medical. By including social service providers, community groups and law enforcement in this summit, we recognized that the solutions to the crystal meth problem need to be both short term and some long-term strategies, and that these solutions are for the health of our young people and of our community.

J. MacPhail: You can't turn on your TV, open up your mailbox or read a newspaper without being inundated with an avalanche of charts and graphs designed to pick a fight with doctors, with nurses and with health care workers. Millions of dollars are being spent on these ads. But to date, the government refuses to tell the public how much this is costing the taxpayer.

To the Minister of Health. Cast his mind back to his briefing books. Can he remember the section on advertising costs, and can he tell us how much his government is spending on health care costs? Just how much are these costing taxpayers?

Hon. C. Hansen: If you go back to the last year of the NDP government, they had budgeted about $23 million for advertising across government. Our budget is actually down fairly significantly from that. The total cost to all of government, for all ministries, for the advertising that's done through the public affairs bureau is about $19 million. Included in that is all of the costs of the health ads. It does not come out of the health care budget. It comes out of the public affairs bureau budget.

J. MacPhail: So $19 million in advertising. I expect there's a little twisting on his comparison to previous years, but this government likes to pick and choose its facts. That's for sure.

How about a chart showing how wait times for surgeries have skyrocketed or one detailing the huge increases in unemployment last month or a paycheque chart showing how paycheques have gone down under the government? Or how about a chart showing how little time the Premier spends in the Legislature? I'd like to see that chart. Or how about a chart like this one…

J. MacPhail: …that shows deputy ministers in British Columbia are the highest paid in all of Canada? To the Minister of Health — I'll send the chart over to him — maximum payments for deputy ministers, highest in all of Canada, at the same time that he's cutting wages for working people. How about replacing a chart attacking nurses with this chart on deputy ministers' salaries under his government?

Hon. C. Hansen: The good news for British Columbians is that B.C. has led Canada in job creation in the last two years together. If you compare that to when those members were in government, when we saw job declines and jobs leaving British Columbia…. For the first time in years we have seen people coming back to British Columbia because of the opportunities in this province, as compared to that government when people were leaving this province. You start looking at economic growth in this province today, where we are not yet number one but we are getting there, and contrast that to when the NDP were in power, when we went from the number one economic growth province

J. MacPhail: I notice the minister didn't want to actually address the question, but let's see what the unemployment rate was in May of 2001: 6.8 percent. What's the unemployment rate now? It's 7.9 percent and about to go up. Seriously, seriously, the chart, the chart… It's so accurate. Deputy ministers in British Columbia get paid more than anywhere else in all of Canada — more than Ontario, more than Quebec — and the number of deputies that this government pays has skyrocketed since they came into power, but you can't find that anywhere in their ads. Nowhere. Absolutely none.

The minister says the health care ads are all about getting the facts out. Well, if he were telling the truth, he'd make an honest effort at getting his facts out. The minister won't tell us how much the health care ads cost. Is he saying that he can't isolate out the cost of the health care ads, or is he simply keeping it a secret because he's embarrassed about putting health care money into ads that simply don't tell the real truth about where their government is putting money?

Hon. C. Hansen: There's actually quite a contrast to the advertising that we're doing. We're actually providing factual information to British Columbians about their health care system — unlike the ad I remember where when this member was the Minister of Health in this province, she actually put herself in the ads. You know, talk about self-promotion. I can assure the member that there is not one dollar out of the Ministry of Health Services budget that is going into any of the health ads that you have been seeing on TV or in terms of the information that's been in the papers.

J. Kwan: While the government spends millions on useless partisan advertising, extremely useful programs for street kids and other kids — youth at risk — are being axed. I want to ask the Minister of Human Resources about the closure of Picasso Cafe because of his elimination of $180,000 in government grants — the cost of one deputy minister. The Picasso Cafe has been an institution in Vancouver's west side for more than 15 years, helping hundreds of troubled young people improve their lives. The cafe had to shut its door, leaving these young people outside in the cold. The government is heartless — we know that — but these young people are very hopeful that it is the case that the Minister of Human Resources…

J. Kwan: …will have a heart. Will the Minister of Human Resources agree to go back to the table with the Picasso Cafe to work out an arrangement that keeps the cafe open and at-risk youth employed?

Deputy Speaker: Leader of the Opposition, would you please come to order. Let's hear the minister.

Hon. S. Hagen: The Picasso Cafe themselves have said that they want to get out of the restaurant business and into the job-training business. The reality is that we're still delivering services to these students in Vancouver, and we deliver these job-training services through MOSAIC, Immigrant Services Society of B.C., Vancouver Eastside Educational Enrichment Society, the YWCA…

Hon. S. Hagen: …the N.V. Food and Service Resource Group. I can tell you that we spend $6 million a year delivering these services to the people who need these services in Vancouver. Included in those services are basic life skills, a job search skill, specific skills training, job placement and follow-up supports. We believe that, for anybody, a job is always better than welfare.

Deputy Speaker: The member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant with a supplemental question.

J. Kwan: Yes, a job is always better than welfare, and that is what Picasso Cafe was doing before this government cut its grant — a grant of $180,000. That's why they're closing.

Vancouver's downtown east side is one of our province's poorest communities and harbours many young people facing incredibly difficult challenges. Already two out of three safe houses for at-risk youth on the downtown east side have been closed. Part of our job here is to ensure that these young people are given the chances and opportunities they need to find success. The Picasso Cafe is all about giving troubled young people with no work experience a chance in life, a chance to develop life skills they otherwise would not have been offered.

Again to the Minister of Human Resources: let's put the partisanship aside. On behalf of these young people, would he please announce in the House today that he's going to take steps to find a way to keep the Picasso Cafe open and running for troubled young people?

Hon. S. Hagen: What I am pleased to announce to the House today is that this government has actually spent $300 million on job-training programs over the last three years. This government does recognize that many of the youth participating in that program have specific barriers to employment. That's why we're providing services to these young people through the Vancouver training-for-jobs program, the community assistance program and the bridging employment program. This government is committed to performance-based contracts for job training, and the Picasso Cafe is perfectly welcome to bid on any of these requests that come out for future contract opportunities.

P. Nettleton: I would like to ask the Minister of State for Mining to clarify the Moving Forward 2006 provincial parks development policy proposal being considered by the Premier and caucus. When I first received access to a leaked e-mail document being circulated in caucus on Monday, I thought it was an April Fool's joke. Then I thought it must be a sign that freedom of expression is finally being allowed in caucus for such harebrained schemes to be distributed among members.

P. Nettleton: A scheme seemingly intended to rip up and sell off portions of our provincial parks, including Windy Craggy and the world famous Tatshenshini provincial park, for the benefit of the mining industry — this despite the government's new-era commitment to ensure that parks are safe from mining and logging.

Does the Minister of State for Mining personally support the mining of provincial parks? I hope he has the courage to stand up and answer.

Hon. R. Neufeld: It's a pleasure to answer this question. Our policy in this government is that there is no mining in parks of British Columbia. We committed to that during the election under the leadership of Premier Campbell, and we'll continue moving forward with that.

But the thing that surprises me is that it took this long for this member to realize that you can come up with ideas in his caucus and actually talk about them. That's the April fool's joke we see here today. He just woke up to that thing.

K. Krueger: During the Leader of the Opposition's harangue, I was thinking about Mike Harcourt's promise to four-lane the Trans-Canada Highway from Kamloops to the Alberta border and thinking how, when she was….

K. Krueger: Three women from my constituency were killed last summer in a motor vehicle crash in the area of Hoffman's bluff on the Trans-Canada Highway. Those three women died because when that member was Minister of Finance, she failed to put money into keeping Mike Harcourt's promise. We have deadly dangerous stretches of the Trans-Canada Highway through British Columbia, and seven people died in that area — the area from Pritchard to Chase — last year. That member did not put money….

K. Krueger: That member heckles me while I'm talking about women who have died in my constituency because of her negligence. I've been very concerned about this for a long time.

Deputy Speaker: Order, please, member. Leader of the Opposition, please come to order.

K. Krueger: I've been working on this issue for years. I know that our government plans to do something about it. It's an expensive fix. When these people were spending $363 million on fast ferries, when they sunk $300 million into a defunct pulp mill, when they did all these things, they weren't thinking about the safety of my constituents.

K. Krueger: I'd like to know from our Minister of Transportation: what are we going to do about Hoffman's bluff and this dangerous stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway?

Hon. K. Falcon: I do know that the member for Kamloops–North Thompson and, indeed, the Leader of the Opposition would love me to correct one little piece of information there. Actually, the previous govern-

ment blew almost $500 million on the fast ferries, and I know we wouldn't want to lowball that number.

Actually, as the member for Kamloops–North Thompson knows, safety is the number one priority for the Ministry of Transportation. Shortly after I was fortunate enough to assume this position, the member for Kamloops–North Thompson was very expedient in visiting my office and bringing to my attention the real challenge with Hoffman's bluff, and I appreciated that.

I am pleased to let the member know that that particular section, which is about three kilometres of the No. 1 highway, is going to have some improvements undertaken immediately. We will have those improvements completed by the summer. Those improvements will include median rumble strips, double-solid centre lines, and increased signing and repaving. That will be some very positive news in terms of reducing crashes, and I think it will also make the road safer for those New Democrats who are trying to rush down to join the Liberal Party.

Hon. S. Bond: In accordance with section 14 of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, I am pleased to table the Simon Fraser University Surrey Central City Campus Major Capital Project Plan.

Hon. G. Collins: By leave, I move Motion 107 standing in my name in the Votes and Proceedings. It's the appointment motion for the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations.

Hon. G. Collins: I move, with leave, Motion 108 standing in my name in the Votes and Proceedings. It's a motion that refers the reports of the auditor general to the Public Accounts Committee and charges the Public Accounts Committee as well.

Hon. G. Collins: I move, with leave, Motion 109 standing in my name in the Votes and Proceedings. It is the motion to charge the Select Standing Committee on Health.

Hon. G. Collins: I move Motion 110, by leave, standing in my name in the Votes and Proceedings. It is the motion to appoint the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

Hon. G. Collins: By leave, I move Motion 111 standing in my name in the Votes and Proceedings. It's a motion to charge the Select Standing Committee on Education.

Hon. G. Collins: I call second reading of Bill 16. As well, I call Committee A. For the information of members, they'll be continuing the debate on the Ministry of Education.

Hon. B. Barisoff: The amendments contained in this bill continue to modernize the province's environmental management. They improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a number of ministry functions. These changes have been developed on the advice from solicitors and the Attorney General, who have been working with my staff in the ministry on general review of the legislation. The review of this has been going on for the last three years, and a number of major legislative changes have come out of that review.

Some of those changes were enacted last year, and the process of change is continuing this year. Given the size and scope of changes made last year when we replaced the 20-year-old Waste Management Act with the Environmental Management Act, some fine-tuning before the act is brought into force should be expected. The amendments I am introducing today focus on authorities under five statutes: the Environmental Management Act, the Integrated Pest Management Act, the Ecological Reserve Act, the Park Act and the Wildlife Act.

The Environmental Management Act and the Integrated Pest Management Act were introduced and enacted last year. These changes represent a continuation of the development and fine-tuning of these new statutes in order to ensure a smooth transition when they are brought into force. Changes to the Park Act, Ecological Reserve Act and Wildlife Act will harmonize certain compliance authorities in those acts with the new features contained in the Environmental Management Act and the Integrated Pest Management Act.

In addition, the proposed amendments will make a number of other changes to bring these older statutes up to date and to provide clear language and address questions of interpretation. Changes to the Environmental Management Act will clarify conservation officers' authority to provide compliance and enforcement services under various government statutes with approval of the Solicitor General through the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

This provides much greater flexibility to the conservation officers as circumstances change over time, amends the definition of the term "conservation officer" in the act to ensure that special auxiliary officers do not unintentionally receive the general powers of conservation officers, and clarifies the circumstances under which search warrants may be issued. These changes will reduce the likelihood of constitutional challenges.

Changes to both the Environmental Management Act and the Integrated Pest Management Act will limit the application of provisions of the Offence Act to instances where property is seized as evidence as part of an investigation of possible or alleged offence. The Offence Act requires that the items seized by peace officers be brought to the attention of a judge. However, this judicial reporting requirement was never intended to apply to the taking of samples for regulatory inspection and monitoring purposes.

The amendment will ensure that the Offence Act reporting procedures will not apply to routine taking of samples for inspection purposes. This will greatly relieve the administrative burden that would, without amendment, be created by the Environmental Management Act when it's brought into force.

Changes to the Wildlife Act will revise the definition of "resident" in the act to clarify that to qualify under this definition, persons must have lived in the province for a certain period of the year leading up to the date in which the application is made. They will clarify that section 75, "Accidental killing of wildlife," is intended only as a reporting requirement and does not in itself authorize the killing or wounding of wildlife. Any accidental kill such as an animal crossing a highway must be reported to a constable, conservation officer or regional office.

Finally, the following changes will apply to the Environmental Management Act, the Integrated Pest Management Act, the Wildlife Act and the Ecological

Reserve Act: delete redundant instances of the phrase "and the regulations" occurring after the phrase "under this act" to avoid any unintended judicial interpretation of the redundant phrase; harmonize the limitation periods for laying charges under the acts by amending the relevant provisions to provide for a limitation period of three years from the time of the offence or 18 months from the time the alleged offence comes to the minister's attention. This will provide certainty regarding the time limits available to initiate prosecutions and will reflect consistent policy.

This province needs clear and consistent environmental legislation. These changes are important steps that improve the legislation of the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection — make it more responsive. They promote greater efficiency and provide improved clarity. These changes ensure consistent stewardship of our natural resources for all British Columbians.

Hon. B. Barisoff: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 16, Water, Land and Air Protection Statutes Amendment Act, 2004, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

This is a miscellaneous statutes amendment act, and as is the usual practice in the case of omnibus legislation, I will provide an overview of the changes in the bill. I expect that if there is any significant debate about those changes, we can have that debate at the committee stage when we proceed through the bill on a section-by-section basis. Let me provide an overview of what this bill will do. Rather than do it numerically, we'll do it to the extent possible by subject matter or by category.

First, in order to facilitate the coming into force of the new Business Corporations Act, this bill makes minor housekeeping changes to that Business Corporations Act, the College and Institute Act, the Private Managed Forest Land Act, the Royal Roads University Act and the University Act. These are primarily cross-referencing changes in keeping with the fact that the name of the old Company Act is being changed to the Business Corporations Act.

Second, a minor section reference error in the Community Care and Assisted Living Act is corrected.

Third, consequential to the repeal of the Community Financial Services Act — the act which established the Four Corners Community Savings institution in the downtown east side of Vancouver — amendments are proposed here to the Corporation Capital Tax Act; the Finance and Corporate Relations Statutes Amendment Act, 1999; the Financial Information Act; the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act; the Interpretation Act; and the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), 1999.

Let me say something about the repeal of the Community Financial Services Act. The Four Corners savings institution, sometimes called Four Corners Bank, was established in 1996 to provide banking services to the residents of the downtown east side of Vancouver. Unfortunately, although the government has given Four Corners every opportunity to succeed, including investing $11.6 million in it to date, the institution continues to incur ongoing losses. The bank was supposed to become self-sustaining after five years. It's now year seven, and that still hasn't happened. Indeed, with Four Corners' assets sinking close to the $5 million minimum required to operate a financial institution in the province, the bank is at risk of being shut down by the Financial Institutions Commission.

It's our government's commitment to use tax dollars efficiently, productively and effectively. From that perspective, no government could ask — and this government will not ask — the taxpayers of British Columbia to support an enterprise which, sadly but unfortunately, is realistically unsustainable. Accordingly, we are left with no viable alternative but to close the bank.

However, that is not the end of the road for those who have depended on the bank's services. The government will continue to support those who are working to improve living conditions in the downtown east side of Vancouver. Four Corners clients have been informed of the closure, and bank staff have been assisting in transferring accounts and helping people make other banking arrangements. Letters were sent to bank patrons. Signs were posted throughout the downtown east side, and ads were placed in Vancouver-area newspapers. Ministry of Human Resources staff have worked to ensure that clients are aware of the range of options available to them.

We are especially pleased that VanCity Savings is collaborating with the Portland Hotel Society, a local community service society, to operate a branch of VanCity in the downtown east side. This government has been assisting VanCity Savings in every way possible in order to ensure a smooth transition from Four Corners to the new Pigeon Park Savings branch. I am confident that every effort is and has been made, and will continue to be made, to minimize the impact of the bank's closure on its clients and on the community it has tried to serve. As I've indicated, however, the institution is unsustainable, and because of that, government has no choice but to close it.

Bill 18 also makes a change to the Crown Proceeding Act, transferring the responsibility to report to the Legislature on payments made under that act to the Attorney General from the Ministry of Finance. This

legislative change will better reflect the existing ministerial responsibility for expenditures under the Crown Proceeding Act.

Bill 18 corrects minor drafting errors in the Health Professions Amendment Act, 2003, an act which enacted significant changes to the Health Professions Act in response to the recommendations of the former Health Professions Council.

Next, Bill 18 amends the Hydro and Power Authority Act to increase B.C. Hydro's business flexibility and to eliminate duplication and overlap. These changes will allow the corporation to become more efficient and cost-effective, and will also assist the corporation and government to implement a provincial energy plan by supporting low-cost electricity.

Bill 18 also makes three distinct additional changes to the Interpretation Act, which is the provincial statute that provides guidance for interpreting other provincial statutes. These changes include the addition of a new provision to clarify what is to happen when a bill is set to come into force on a date that is earlier than the date on which that bill receives royal assent.

The changes in the Interpretation Act also change the definition of "newspaper," which is a longstanding definition found in the Interpretation Act that is then relied upon by other statutes where there are statutory obligations to publish notice of pending transactions or activities. The operation of that definition and the wording of the definition, as it has existed for many years, have limited the definition of "newspaper" to publications that had subscription lists or were paid for; that is, where you had to buy the paper.

The newspaper business has changed a lot over the past number of years in British Columbia, and the result is that across the province there are many, many very valuable community newspapers that are, to all intents and purposes, distributed free of charge. That's certainly true in my community of Richmond. We have two very good newspapers: the Richmond News and the Richmond Review. They're both newspapers that land on my doorstep and on the doorsteps of many people in Richmond at least…. I think it's twice a week for both papers. They've done so for many years. I don't pay to receive them, but they are very important tools for communication in my community. They are important vehicles for learning about what's going on in the community and a very valuable way to reach the citizens of my community.

What we're proposing here in the change that is part of this bill is to change the definition of newspaper so that it no longer excludes these community papers. That will allow people who have to publish notices of things in newspapers a wider range of choice in where they are to publish and, in some communities, will ensure that the notice will actually be published directly in the community where notice needs to be given.

I've already referred to the change in the Interpretation Act which eliminates the reference to Four Corners from the definition of "savings institution."

The Jury Act has long contained disqualification provisions — provisions that limit the ability of a very small group of citizens in the province to serve on juries. Usually we're talking about people who have law or administration of justice responsibilities. What we're doing in this bill is amending the Jury Act so that employees of the federal Department of Justice are disqualified from eligibility to sit on a jury. We're also clarifying that with respect to jury eligibility, employees of youth custody centres will also be ineligible. And I think there is a regulation-making power being introduced to ensure that as the federal government or this government reorganize themselves from time to time, we have the ability to, by regulation, make the changes necessary to ensure that justice system personnel who ought not to be members of juries because of their jobs and their work are not eligible for jury service.

Bill 18 makes a minor housekeeping change to the Land Title Act by removing a reference in a particular section to the Attorney General and replacing it with a reference to the word "minister." The result of this change is that the section will be read to mean the minister responsible for the section, and at this point that means the Minister of Sustainable Resource Management.

In addition, Bill 18 makes minor changes to the Social Workers Act. These changes focus on the Board of Registration for Social Workers and ensure that that board does not unintentionally lose jurisdiction due to vacancies on the board. It also extends the appointment of board members from one year to maximum three-year terms.

Bill 18 also amends the Tobacco Sales Act so that it fits better with recent amendments made to the Tobacco Tax Act. The Tobacco Sales Act's definition of the word "authorization" is altered to reflect the use of that term in the Tobacco Tax Act.

Bill 18 makes changes to the Trinity Western University Act regarding the authority and mandate of Trinity Western University in Langley. This amendment is intended to streamline the degree program review process for Trinity Western's academic, baccalaureate and graduate degrees. This change ensures consistency with the government's recently enacted Degree Authorization Act and helps government meet its commitment to a more efficient and integrated post-secondary education system.

The Workers Compensation Act is also changed by Bill 18, in three distinct ways. First, given the high volume of cases handled by the review division, the chief review officer is given the power to delegate her duties to staff with the appropriate limitations and conditions.

Second, a past drafting oversight will be corrected in that workers and employers in the commercial fishing industry will be given access to the new workers compensation appeal system, including the Workers Compensation Appeal Tribunal, on the same basis as other workers and employers in British Columbia have access to that system.

Third, the bill removes an unwieldy requirement that the Workers Compensation Appeal Tribunal must

not retain a health professional to provide independent assistance or advice if that person has treated or is treating a member of the worker's family. Instead, the tribunal will be required to meet the standards set by another provision, which is that a health professional not be used in circumstances that could result in a reasonable apprehension of bias. That general principle is sufficient to ensure that the system has integrity and that health professionals are not, in effect, arbitrarily restricted from providing assistance or advice in cases where that assistance or advice may be helpful.

Finally, Bill 18 validates a bylaw that was enacted and ratified by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists back in 1992, before the provision of the Engineers and Geoscientists Act authorized that bylaw to be made.

Hon. G. Plant: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 18, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2004, 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. C. Hansen: I call estimates debate. For the information of members, we'll be debating the estimates of the Ministry of Human Resources.

J. MacPhail: Thanks to the minister for giving me the chronology of time limits materials posted on the ministry Internet site. We ended off in discussions around the manual amendment, letter No. 16, and the e-mail of February 10 on case management process. I was asking the link between the two.

Hon. S. Hagen: The question posed by the Leader of the Opposition regarding whether employment and assistance workers have tools/information/instruc-tions available to them regarding application of time limits policy. The member referred to an e-mail ADM message "case management process" from ADM Alison Meredith to all regional services division staff. The e-mail refers to details of the interview and related case management processes and can be found in a practice advisory posted on the field guide; URL address — Web link — is listed.

The member infers that this URL is not available, and thus staff do not have the information required to do their jobs. The URL links to an internal ministry intranet site with access limited to MHR employees. The link is live and available to staff with correct access authorization, which includes MHR field staff. The field guide is an internal tool with access to all related documentation, template letters for staff to use and links to the legislation, regulation and policy manual. The electronic field guide provides an excellent tool for staff to use to ensure information is current and accessible. The newly introduced electronic on-line resource guide will provide even more state-of-the-art electronic information tools for employees.

The question: is practice advisory still being applied in the field? The answer is yes. Standards require that employment plans for clients at 24-month eligibility time count are reviewed every 30 days.

J. MacPhail: Good. Thanks. The policy manual amendment letter No. 16, I want to…. Perhaps the minister needs to isolate out portions of his answer for this. It said that the purpose is to introduce important changes to the B.C. employment and assistance program effective February 6, 2004. It concerns employment obligations, and it states that changes have been made to three sections of the manual.

Can the minister outline what those three sections are and the nature of the changes?

Hon. S. Hagen: The first one is part 6, section 1, the application and employment plan. In order to continue

receiving assistance, clients who are expected to work must also continue to meet the employment-related obligations as set out in section 13 of the Employment and Assistance Act, section 12 of the EAPWD Act.

Secondly, under part 6, section 5(a), clients must be advised of the conditions of the employment plan and that complying with the provisions of the employment plan is a condition of eligibility. Clients must also be advised of their employment-related obligations as set out in the EA Act, section 13, and the EAPWD Act, section 12. Refer to part 7, section 7, eligibility employment.

Thirdly, part 7, section 6, eligibility and sanctions. Sanctions for employment-related obligations — sections 9 and 13 of the EA Act and sections 9 and 12 of the EAPWD Act. Clients with employment-related obligations are required to fulfil both the requirements set out in section 9, EP; section 13, employment-related obligations, of the EA Act; and sections 9 and 12 of the Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Act. A client can be non-compliant due to their failure to meet employment-related obligations — for example, fails to demonstrate reasonable work search or non-compliant due to their failure to comply with the conditions of their employment plan; for example, must attend school in the evening and does not fulfil the employment-related obligations; for example, fails to demonstrate reasonable work search. Then the sanctions for both sections 9 and 13 apply concurrently.

Note that there may be legitimate situations in which the conditions of the EP prevent the client from meeting the conditions of section 13 of the EA Act. For example, the client is attending a full-time, short-term course leaving very little time to search for employment.

The wording of section 9, "subject to the conditions of an employment plan," means that section 9 takes precedence when the two are in conflict. Thus, if meeting the conditions of an EP causes non-compliance with section 13, sanctions should not be applied. Refer to EP standards, sections D(1)(a) and D(2)(a).

If the client is declared ineligible under both sections 9 and 13 and appeals the decision, two separate requests for reconsideration forms, HR100s, are required.

Applying sanctions. Sanctions are applied from the date non-compliance is determined and continue until the sanction time has elapsed. For example, if a client reapplies for assistance one week after they are determined ineligible under section 13, they continue to be ineligible until the one-month sanction period has elapsed. However, if the client reapplied for assistance three-months after they were determined ineligible, then the sanction for section 13 would not apply as the one-month sanction period had already elapsed.

J. MacPhail: Is there any way the minister can kind of boil that down into plain English? It's not a criticism. I just….

This is public information. I'm pleased to share it with you. I don't know how I can boil this down into plain English. It is very bureaucratese, as you can see.

J. MacPhail: Let me approach it this way. If one takes away the sanction aspect of it — I assume the sanction is that you no longer can collect welfare — what else has changed? Those seem to be pretty familiar — to me anyway, but maybe I'm wrong — requirements that have been in existence for quite a while.

Hon. S. Hagen: Let me try this. This describes employment plan versus employment obligations. This may help. If you look at requirements first, under the employment plan…. When required, all clients with employment-related obligations are required to comply with the condition of their employment plan. The employment-related obligations, then, under that are: all clients with employment-related obligations are required to (a) accept suitable employment, (b) not voluntarily leave employment without just cause, (c) not be dismissed from employment for just cause or (d) demonstrate reasonable efforts to search for employment.

Under the sanctions part of it, under the employment plan part again…. Non-compliance for failure to meet conditions of an employment plan results in ineligibility for assistance for the entire family unit. Under the employment-related obligations part of that, under sanctions…. Non-compliance for failure to meet employment-related obligations (a) results in ineligibility for income assistance, disability assistance or hardship assistance for a specific time period; or (b) results in rate reductions dependent on family composition.

J. MacPhail: What kind of family unit would be subject to the two-year time limit, given the 25 exemptions?

J. MacPhail: So that would mean a couple. Are there any kids that would be affected by this? I'm curious. The minister just read that if one person of the family unit falls out or has sanctions laid against him or her, then the entire family unit is ineligible. What if any children could be involved in that situation?

Hon. S. Hagen: As long as one in the family unit is compliant, a couple would not be affected by time limits, and that includes a couple with children as well.

J. MacPhail: The manual amendment states, as I understand it, that the changes relate to the importance of monitoring. Can the minister explain how monitor-

ing takes place now on these matters in comparison to how it would have been carried out before? What are the changes?

The Chair: At this time I would like to just take leave of the chair to make an announcement. Present with us in the gallery is a group from Garibaldi high school, which is the school in the riding next to me, from the member for Maple Ridge–Mission. It's a school my daughter graduated from two years ago. I would just like to introduce them. There are 39 students from Garibaldi's grade 9 and 10 class there, also accompanied by Ms. Gibeault, Mr. Hausknecht, Ms. Williams, Mr. Bikic and Mr. Zuchetto. Would the House make them welcome.

Hon. S. Hagen: The employment plan is the new part under BCEA, or B.C. employment and assistance. It depends on the actions identified in the plan. Whether it is reviewed once a month or once every two months, it depends on the work done between our front-line worker and the client for reviewing and completing the plan.

J. MacPhail: What's the change in caseload, then, for financial assistance workers to carry out this new workload?

Hon. S. Hagen: This can be carried out because the caseload of employable clients is on the decline and has declined by 70 percent.

J. MacPhail: No, I'm asking what the caseload is per FAW who has to carry out what the minister describes as new work.

Hon. S. Hagen: I'm informed that we don't have that broken down. It depends on which office it is, and I guess there are a lot of variables. We don't have that information.

J. MacPhail: Is it that the minister just doesn't have it here or that the ministry doesn't keep track of it? They used to. It was a major component of deciding the work of an FAW.

Hon. S. Hagen: I'm told that we don't track that or keep track of that any longer.

J. MacPhail: Well, then I expect that the minister was accusing me of sort of taking the word of one FAW on the radio this morning and was saying that I was out of order for taking that FAW's word that the pressure was on. How can the minister possibly know whether front-line workers can carry out in a proper monitoring fashion these — as the minister has described — new requirements if there is no monitoring of the workload of FAWs?

Hon. S. Hagen: Regional executive directors monitor and allocate the cases to the front-line workers in each of the PWD offices. Depending on the office type, the regional executive directors are responsible for that and monitor it.

J. MacPhail: What's the range of caseloads per FAW? What's the smallest caseload level, and what's the highest?

Hon. S. Hagen: We don't have that information, but we can get it for the Leader of the Opposition.

J. MacPhail: I'm really trying to get at what all of these changes are meaning for people on the front line and clients as well. This is why I'm exploring all of this. If the government is sincere about moving people from welfare to work, then these employment plans which the minister seems to claim are new…. I think the only aspect of this that's new is the penalty associated with it being harsher than it was before. People did get removed from welfare if they weren't looking for work or had an employment plan. I'm just trying to figure out how this is going to work so that it's effective, at least toward the government's goals.

Let me ask some specific questions on how it will work on an individual basis. At the level of an individual financial assistance client, what must the client demonstrate in an employment plan in order to prove her eligibility for continued assistance? What are the details?

Hon. S. Hagen: The ministry has had a 70 percent decline in clients in the expected work category and an overall caseload decline of 35 percent. This has obviously created more time for the front-line workers to work with clients.

J. MacPhail: Well, that's only true if there is the same number of FAWs. That's why I'm asking the question. The FAWs have been laid off; offices have been closed. That's all I'm asking, but my question actually had moved on.

Shall I repeat my question? I said: at the level of an individual financial assistance client, what must the client demonstrate in an employment plan in order to prove his or her eligibility for continued assistance? What does an employment plan look like?

Hon. S. Hagen: I will read into the record again, for the benefit of the member, key messages of the part on employment plans:

J. MacPhail: Then it's retroactive. I'm trying to figure out what's changed as a result of this exemption being put in place. My experience is that these employment plans have been required all along. Is that not correct?

J. MacPhail: That's what I'm getting at. What's changed here with these new rules? Is it just the sanction that has changed? All those issues that the minister read into the record have been in place for years — constantly evolving, but employment plan requirements in place for years. There was also a requirement for an employment plan, if one was employable, or else you didn't get welfare. You got cut off welfare.

I'm trying to figure out what's changed here. Is it the sanction that has changed?

Hon. S. Hagen: Under B.C. Benefits there was no employment plan. The employment plan in place now is a service screening tool and is an employability profile that assesses the client's ability to work.

J. MacPhail: We actually have a couple of FAWs monitoring the debate, so we'll see what they reply to that.

Every single one of the requirements that the minister read into the record was in place when I was Minister of Social Services, so I'm not quite sure what the minister's talking about — that the employment plans weren't required. Maybe they had a different name, but we had people dedicated to this. It's not like the experts aren't watching.

Let me ask this, then. What are the penalties — the new penalties and sanctions — now, as of this morning? How has that changed?

Hon. S. Hagen: I'm told that when the member opposite was the minister, there were no employment plans in existence. The other tool that is being used is the service screening tool I described before.

J. MacPhail: I just find that unbelievable. I really find it unbelievable that the bureaucracy is alleging that. I really do, and I take offence to it, quite frankly. The front-line workers will tell you differently, and they're monitoring this. In fact, we actually had financial assistance workers dedicated as consultants to develop employment plans for clients. There was a specific category of them, so I don't know how…. I don't have any idea what the minister is alleging there.

Let's go to the penalties and sanctions, then. How has that changed under this government?

Hon. S. Hagen: I'm told that when the member opposite was the minister, there was nothing formal with regard to an employment plan, that not every client was referred to a training consultant. That has changed. Now every client has a file, and every client is referred to a training consultant.

J. MacPhail: How many training consultants are there, and what's their caseload?

Hon. S. Hagen: Every worker works with clients on employment plans. We're getting the exact number, but it is approximately 1,200 workers.

J. MacPhail: This is my third time asking this question. How have the penalties and sanctions changed?

Hon. S. Hagen: One of the changes is that there is a stronger emphasis on seeking work. We've asked to have the way it was done when the member across from me was the minister compared to how we do it now, and we'll provide that in writing.

J. MacPhail: I am asking about penalties and sanctions. I understand that this is difficult, because it's a highly technical area, but the February 6, 2004, manual amendment makes references to penalties and sanctions. What does it say about penalties and sanctions? Are those new penalties and sanctions, and if so, how are they new?

Hon. S. Hagen: There were no new sanctions introduced on February 6, if that's the question you're asking. The new exemption, the twenty-fifth exemption, has the effect of extending people past their time limit as long as they are seeking work. The sanction is not applied in these cases.

J. MacPhail: Is that what the amendment to the manual made on February 6 says? It makes reference to sanctions and penalties. Is the reference that the exemption precludes people from sanctions and penalties?

J. MacPhail: How does caseload reduction get monitored? How does one know that one is meeting the target for this year's budget cut of almost $80 million? Does it just happen?

Hon. S. Hagen: My staff at headquarters monitor the numbers on a monthly basis through the administrative data provided by the management information system. We then look at it on a regional basis, on a monthly basis.

I just want to remind the member opposite that the intent of time limits is not a punitive thing. What we're doing is trying to encourage people to get into a job, to get into work. The principles that guide time limits are the principles of reasonableness, fairness and common sense.

J. MacPhail: British Columbia is the only one. There is a good reason for that, and it is because Canadians actually believe in a social safety net and payment of last resort.

How many people are expected to be excluded from the two-year rule as a result of the 25 exemptions?

Hon. S. Hagen: We don't know the exact number at this time, but the projections are that the people who will be sanctioned or removed from welfare over the period of the next year, starting in late April, would be…. Our estimate is 339 people affected. I'm hoping the number will be lower, because I think what's happened, even in the last two months, is that this has spurred people into getting into the workforce.

J. MacPhail: Well, we have no idea whether they're getting into the workforce or not, and the minister's own exit surveys demonstrate that. We'll get into caseload questions in a minute.

The minister said there is no incentive or target. Does anyone in his ministry at any level get performance bonuses?

Hon. S. Hagen: The deputy minister in my ministry receives a performance bonus.

J. MacPhail: Upon what basis is a performance bonus awarded to the Deputy Minister of Human Resources?

Hon. S. Hagen: There is no target in the deputy minister's plan for caseload reduction. There are a number of items, though, including the ministry achieving its allocated budget.

J. MacPhail: Yes. I'm not picking any aspect of bonus for the deputy minister, but the budget reduction is about caseload reduction. There's no other way of achieving the budget reduction — or is there?

Hon. S. Hagen: Yes, the reason our budget is coming down is that we have fewer people on our caseload.

J. MacPhail: Well, that's not true yet. That's not true. The $79 million is a cut for this coming year. Let's look at some of the information for the caseload. Can the minister tell me what the caseload for social assistance for the province is right now? The most recent figures I have are for February, which is fine.

Hon. S. Hagen: The latest numbers we have that are posted are January '04. The total caseload, January '04, is 114,674.

L. Mayencourt: I would like to get back to some earlier questions regarding disability. In an earlier question the minister indicated there were roughly 9,000 new applicants or new recipients of disability benefits in British Columbia. I'm wondering how many individuals applied for disability under this new form of benefits.

Hon. S. Hagen: In that time period there were 19,019 applications received, and 77 percent of those, or 11,777, were approved.

L. Mayencourt: I would like to ask the minister just for some historical context. I mentioned a little earlier about schedule C. Schedule C was to help individuals living with catastrophic illness meet their needs in terms of medical care, bottled water and so on. I understand that in the period of time between 1996 and 2001, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 600 individuals applied for schedule C, and many of those individuals were granted schedule C by tribunal. I wonder if the minister can tell me how many of those tribunals or those orders for schedule C the Ministry of Human Resources appealed.

Hon. S. Hagen: This is before my history, obviously, or my time in the ministry, but I'm told that under the previous administration these requests were mostly turned down. All cases that were turned down went to appeal, and nearly all were won at the appeal.

J. MacPhail: It was 114,674. Can the minister break that down for me in terms of the categories of social assistance? And if he could just read it slowly, please.

Hon. S. Hagen: Under temporary assistance, 47,178; persons with disabilities, 51,448; persons with persistent multiple barriers, 11,615; children in the home of a relative, 4,433 — for a total of 114,674.

J. MacPhail: Could I have that by category? The areas that I'm particularly interested in are…. Well, no, I should not. I'm interested in all of them — if the minister could break them down, please.

Hon. S. Hagen: These will be read out in the same order as the other ones were. The first one is 84,505; then 4,433; 14,733; and 62,808.

J. MacPhail: I'm referring to a monthly statistical report dated November 2003 that I got from the website. That's the document which I'm comparing. It just goes up to November. That's why I'm asking for these additional cases.

It's as the minister says. It is temporary assistance cases, then persons with disabilities and then PPMB — that's persons with multiple barriers, etc. I'm just looking at the trend here.

I could do my math quickly, but what portion of the client base now are children under the age of 18?

J. MacPhail: Sorry — 600 children under the age of 18 in the whole caseload?

J. MacPhail: No, I don't mean independent living. Sorry; my apologies. I meant total. How many children, whether they be…? I was going to ask that question separately. So there are 600 children on independent living. Fair enough, but….

Hon. S. Hagen: I apologize for that. The other number that you want is 42,962.

J. MacPhail: The independent living number. That, I understand, is children who are under 18, but someone has assessed them to be able to live on their own and, therefore, collect social assistance. What is the change in the number of people on independent living — calendar year '01, '02 and '03, please?

Hon. S. Hagen: We don't have those numbers; we'll get them. But it has declined.

J. MacPhail: Last year there was a report by Family Services of Greater Vancouver that 15- and 16-year-olds were being diverted to welfare. The reason why I was asking that question beforehand is because last February there were 22 16-year-olds and one 15-year-old receiving income assistance, and the previous minister said that was not an increase. I'm just wondering what the numbers are now.

J. MacPhail: In terms of the way the exit surveys are done for the minister, I had previously asked the ministry for statistics on the number of people who are unable to access financial assistance — for instance, those who apply and are turned down. I've never gotten that information. Is the ministry tracking the number of inquiries or cases opened but never followed through?

Hon. S. Hagen: These are called pre-applications. We don't have them, but we'll get them for you.

J. MacPhail: That's good. We have asked for them before, so I really would appreciate getting those numbers, if I may.

We've had a bit of discussion about the reduction in the budget — the $79 million for budget reduction for temporary assistance and then the employment programs reduction of about $39 million. I want to ask the minister: how much of his budget reduction is encapsulated by office closures?

Hon. S. Hagen: The amount attributed to office closures — including salaries, benefits and capital — is $10.2 million.

J. MacPhail: I'm talking about the year '04-05. The minister nods that he is as well. What will be the reduction in full-time-equivalent staff?

Hon. S. Hagen: We've already accomplished our reduction in staff. There will be no further reductions in the '04-05 fiscal year.

J. MacPhail: I'm referring to a link from the minister's website called "2004 Information for Clients," and it's entitled…. There's a listing of service delivery changes by date. For instance, it says: "March 19, Service Delivery Changes." It's all under the headline of "2004 Information for Clients" changes.

It says "Service Delivery Changes." I want to ask the minister about whether the changes are a reduction, a relocation or a closure. Can we start with March 19, "Office…."

I'm wondering. Maybe the minister can just find that. I can do it verbally just by asking the office locations, or the minister may have the website. It's not necessary. Do you want me to start by just asking the various offices?

Hon. S. Hagen: We have a list of the offices that are closing, if you'd like.

J. MacPhail: All right. The minister has offered a list of the offices to close. I'll ask later for a list of offices relocating, if any.

Hon. S. Hagen: There are 26 amalgamations or closures of offices. All of them are amalgamations except Parksville, which is closing. The other amalgamations are occurring in Nanaimo, Campbell River, Sidney, Victoria, Vancouver, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Abbotsford, Surrey, Burnaby, Kelowna, Cranbrook, Vernon, Kamloops and Prince George.

J. MacPhail: When the minister says it's an amalgamation — for instance, Prince George — what's amalgamating?

Hon. S. Hagen: An example would be in a community that has two offices that are amalgamating into one.

J. MacPhail: What guidelines for closure were put in place in terms of client access to an office?

Hon. S. Hagen: I think the Leader of the Opposition's question was: how are clients getting access to information? I can list a variety of ways.

The ministry continues to deliver essential programs and services to clients through the use of new technology and more efficient practices, which of course frees up workers to spend more time with clients on employment plans. The ministry's electronic services provide all British Columbians with 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week access to B.C. employment and assistance information through new telephone and Internet services. The automated telephone inquiry at 1-866-866-0800 offers British Columbians toll-free access to information about ministry programs and contacts. Ministry clients issued personal identification numbers can use the system to access information about their own income assistance cheques.

Electronic services allow individuals to complete their required B.C. employment and assistance orientation session on line. Individuals may also enter personal information into the on-line income assistance and child care subsidy estimators and receive a rough calculation of their eligibility for assistance. The ministry continues to effectively serve clients in remote areas of the province, where offices have closed, through a telephone service centre. Those individuals have access to electronic services as well as a line that connects them directly to ministry staff.

J. MacPhail: How often, on average, is a client required to attend at an office, and then how often do clients, on average, actually attend an office? They are two different things.

Hon. S. Hagen: I know the member opposite asked two questions, and the answers are different, but they're also different according to the category. If you look at persons with disabilities, they don't have to attend an office very often, if at all.

It might be once a year that they have to do a financial document or assessment, but it may be that if they're severely disabled, the worker may go to their home and do that, so they may not have to come in at all.

With the employment client, it can be done by phone or by coming into an office. In some remote communities, it might be done at a government agent's office. The government agent can, in fact, deal with the client. It might be once a month in that case; it might be once every two months. But it can be done by phone,

J. MacPhail: If a person is required to attend at an office and doesn't, is there a penalty?

Hon. S. Hagen: Again, it's very individualized. If a person misses an appointment or doesn't come in when they're supposed to, then the worker tries to contact them by telephone or however. If they can't contact them, then their cheque will be held in the office until they get in contact with them.

J. MacPhail: My constituency office is at Nanaimo and Hastings in Vancouver. I don't know whether my riding is an exception or not, but my constituency assistant opens up my office to people on social assistance for phone use, computer use and fax use to communicate with the Ministry of Human Resources. I must tell you that there is a huge demand for that. It's a proper service that the constituency office should offer. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. There's a huge demand. But what that also means is that people who are on social assistance don't have their own phone, fax or computer.

Is there ever a time when a person is penalized? Is the only penalty that they have to come into the office to pick up their cheque?

Hon. S. Hagen: I'm told that that is the only penalty. If they can't get in touch with them, then they would have to come into the office to pick up their cheque.

J. MacPhail: In the latest article I can find in the newspaper about office closures, there was concern raised by some local politicians in Colwood and Langford. They're having three neighbourhood offices of the Ministry of Human Resources closing effective today, and several councillors — Cynthia Day being one — are raising concern about the closure of the offices. When the ministry closes offices, do they sit down and talk to the local service agencies or local politicians?

Hon. S. Hagen: Our staff don't talk to councillors, but they certainly talk to staff in the municipal office to ensure that the service is carried out. I know in the case of Langford, the MLA was out talking to the Langford council very recently.

V. Roddick: We as a government stated time and time again that we would not impose cookie-cutter methods in delivering services and that common sense would prevail. The people of my riding of Delta South naturally move north-south — i.e., to White Rock or to the Richmond-Vancouver area — hence the arrangement that Delta Hospital actually has made with Richmond General Hospital.

Delta South, though, has been rounded up into the Fraser region — their offices are in Surrey — to report to for all Human Resources services, including training, retraining programs, etc. This means a two-hour bus ride and SkyTrain transfer each way. To attend the same series of offices or programs or whatever in Richmond or Vancouver, it's a 20- to 30-minute single bus ride each way.

I know the regions are funded separately, but surely to heaven, common sense can prevail here and some arrangement could be made to allow my constituents reasonable and timely access to services provided under your ministry by taking a leaf out of the Delta-Richmond health accord.

Hon. S. Hagen: I thank the member for her question, and I can assure her that in our ministry, common sense always prevails. Our offices and regions are contiguous with the Ministries of Health and of Children and Family Development. If there is an anomaly there that isn't working and if you bring it to my attention, I'll be happy to look into it.

L. Mayencourt: Just getting back a little bit further to the disability issue. I need a bit of a refresher here from the minister. I had asked two separate questions. One was dealing with schedule C, and I think the minister said that there were approximately 600 applications for schedule C, approximately 600 approvals and approximately 600 appeals by the ministry. In other words, the ministry said: "No, we don't want to pay this money to these individuals." Upon a tribunal reviewing those requests, the clients were actually awarded the benefits. Have I got that right?

L. Mayencourt: In other words, the previous government's Ministry of Human Resources, as a matter of course, appealed all schedule C applications. I know this is before your time as Minister of Human Resources, but these individuals would be people living with HIV/AIDS, with cancer, with Lou Gehrig's — people that really needed extra income in order to meet their medical care needs.

How long would it generally take from the time that they were approved by the Ministry of Human Resources to receive the money — or rather the time in which they were approved to receive the money — to the ministry appealing that? Do you know what the time frame was? How long did that take? In other words, how long were they waiting to get the award they were entitled to?

Hon. S. Hagen: That program was called the monthly health benefit, and the appeal process could take six to nine months.

L. Mayencourt: That is the kind of information I had been hearing in my community, and I think it was one of the things that really provided me with an impetus to get involved in this, because I saw that as a fundamental flaw in the delivery of services to Ministry of Human Resources clients.

A few minutes earlier I asked the minister…. There's been an increase of roughly 9,000 new clients eligible for the new disability under the Employment and Assistance Act. He gave me an indication of the number of people who have applied, and approximately 77 percent of those individuals have been approved. Is that correct?

L. Mayencourt: Of those 77 percent that have applied, did the ministry appeal any of their awards for enhanced benefits for disability?

I want to tell you that I witnessed, in my time in working in the AIDS and cancer world in Vancouver-Burrard…. For many years I helped individuals with schedule C, so I'm acquainted with the kind of agony and despair and worry and delays that affected those individuals. It's nice to see that this government has, I think, a more humane and compassionate approach to dealing with individuals living with those disabilities.

Mr. Chair, I would like now to talk a little bit about an announcement that I had the opportunity to make in the downtown east side this week. I'm sure it got a little bit of air time. The minister was unable to be with us at that announcement, but I know it was a demonstration of his commitment to that community. I would like for him to say…. Why did you come up with $3.25 million for the downtown east side employment programs?

Hon. S. Hagen: I appreciate the member for Vancouver-Burrard raising this, because it is an important agreement, the Vancouver agreement — $3.25 million. It's also a partnership approach. It involves the federal government, the city of Vancouver and the province of British Columbia. It's really a way of trying to solve some of the problems faced by our most barriered clients.

L. Mayencourt: As the minister knows, although I represent the riding of Vancouver-Burrard, I am quite often in the riding of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, and it's because I like the folks down there. I really enjoy spending time with them. I see some of the challenges they face. I have been at times critical and at times very supportive of the Vancouver agreement. I see some really strong pieces to that arrangement and some weaknesses as well.

I know that our government had committed $10 million earlier this year, plus the $3.25 million that was announced just this week, and I know that the feds have put in $10 million to that same program. All told, we've got about $23.5 million that has been contributed by the two senior levels of government. I wonder if the minister can let me know how much the city of Vancouver has contributed to the employment program.

Hon. S. Hagen: The funding from the city of Vancouver, I think, is focused on some of the other issues like homelessness, while our money is focused on employment. But it is very, very important. Since I've become the minister, I've met with many, many city councils and councillors and mayors from around the province and other agencies. It's important that we work in a partnership. You know, there's a limited amount of money, and we want to make sure the money is going to the people who need those resources the most. I'd be pleased to get the member more detail on the city of Vancouver's portion of the funding.

I just want to talk a little bit more about the Vancouver agreement. This will assist about 700 clients in that area to move towards sustainable employment through a combination of individual assessments, coordinated case management services, skills training targeted at growth sectors — for example, construction — and post-employment supports. This strategy will unfold over a three-year period due to the multibarriered nature of the client group, which I talked about before. We will also release an evaluation report at the conclusion of this demonstration project, which is important. This report is anticipated to provide valuable insight into which services are most effective in assisting the multibarriered to become more self-sufficient.

L. Mayencourt: I had the opportunity to visit with some of the folks that are actually affected by this grant. You know, when you look at it, I think there are 5,000 residents in the downtown east side that are dependent on ministry supports. We're really looking at about 15 percent of those people and saying: "You have the desire to get into a training program. We're going to help you with this." I think the unique thing about this particular program that is so inspiring to me is that it's not merely job training. It is recognizing that job training is a pathway to a job.

In the case of people like Fast Track to Employment or the Cook Studio Cafe or Tradeworks, this is truly the kind of work that they are doing. They are helping people with developing skills so that they can be prepared to go to work. They are developing in them conflict resolution capabilities and helping them deal with some of the issues of just, you know, getting up for work on time. Then they're training them. Whether they're training them to be a warehouseman or a framer or a chef or a courier or any number of those jobs, they're actually spending some time with them and getting them trained for that job. Then they go through about an 18-month mentoring or supportive job placement.

The idea behind this program that I just think is marvellous — and it's refreshing and new — is that it's not really about inputs. It's not about how many people or how much money we're putting into it. It's how many jobs we are going to end up getting out of it.

Now, I don't expect that we'll have 100 percent of those 700 people getting back into the workforce, but I do know that with the kind of goals and the kind of people that are there championing this whole effort, those kids, those young people, those elder residents…. We have people in that at Tradeworks, for example, who are 54 years old. I mean, those people are going to have an opportunity to build a great life for themselves, so I really applaud the government for its involvement in this.

I also applaud the efforts of the other levels of government. As the minister said in his comments, we can't do this alone. Whatever the differences I may have with the Vancouver agreement from time to time, I recognize that there are some people that sit at the table there from the city and from the federal government, who have a huge commitment to that neighbourhood, and I'm glad we're at that table as well.

I know that later this week there will be a management committee of the Vancouver agreement. Obviously, you've committed $3.25 million for the employment programs. To what extent do you report to that management committee, or is someone else from the province responsible to do that?

Hon. S. Hagen: Yes, my ministry does have direct representation on there, and the person representing us at that table is the assistant deputy minister of employment and labour market development.

L. Mayencourt: That's great. I think the management committee plays a pivotal role in how the $3.25 million is going to be allocated, and I think it plays a pivotal role in how the $20 million that was committed last year is allocated. God knows, we can really make some great strides in the downtown east side with the right people at the table, and I'm glad of that.

I know I've had the opportunity to take your deputy and other members of your staff to see organizations like United We Can, which provide very low-barriered employment for people. We have people that go out and pick up cans in alleys, and they're making a living from that. They're building their own source of income, and so United We Can plays a great role in that community.

Fast Track to Employment is one program that I want very much for you and your assistant deputy minister to be familiar with. I think it holds a certain extra promise for that neighbourhood and probably for other neighbourhoods that face similar challenges. I want to push that a little bit and tell the minister a little bit about that.

Fast Track to Employment is an organization that has gathered together 90 individual businesses from the lower mainland, from Vancouver. They're businesses like Borden Ladner Gervais, which is a law firm. Another law firm is Fasken Martineau. We have VanCity. The Ministry of Human Resources even does some catering through it.

Basically, what Fast Track to Employment has developed is a portal — a place on the Web for an individual company that wants to give back to the community, that wants to support people who are low income, that wants to support people in employment programs and trying to make a better life for themselves. They can go to that portal and say, "I need to buy flowers, so I'll buy those flowers from this group that's training people to be florists in the downtown east side," or: "I will buy my courier services from this courier company that's in the downtown east side."

This portal is a really exciting thing. Sometimes websites and all that aren't nearly as exciting as the Web designers think they are, but this is exciting. It reaches a business community that has a social conscience, a social responsibility to those that are less fortunate. They want to support those that are less fortunate, and this is a vehicle for letting them do that.

I would very much like to take the minister and his deputy along to see the folks at Fast Track to Employment, to visit some of the services that are down in the downtown east side that are just blossoming, whether that's United We Can, Cook Studio Cafe, Fast Track to Employment — any number of these things. PEERS, for example, helps young women and men that are in the sex trade develop their work skills.

I'd like very much to do that. I want him to know that in my meetings with those groups in the last few weeks, they are so appreciative that our government has made this commitment. I know that many of them wrote to the minister last week, because they copied me on it, but I think it would be just great if we could take an afternoon one day and take a walk through there and have those people talk to you directly. You'll see the people, the lives that are being changed in that neighbourhood. It's very heartwarming. It's very touching. It's very humble. It's important work that we as a government must do, and I'm glad we're doing it.

Hon. S. Hagen: I'd just like to reply to some of those comments. First of all, absolutely, I'd be pleased to go with you one afternoon and visit some of those areas. I am going to spend some time in the middle of the night with the Vancouver city police, as I've done with the Victoria police. I've met with PEERS Victoria but have not yet met with PEERS Vancouver. I would be pleased to do that.

I also want to tell you that Fast Track to Employment will certainly be able to put a proposal forward for funding from part of the $3.25 million provided through the Vancouver agreement.

J. MacPhail: Well, let's continue along the line of employment programs. Can the minister say what the total budget for '04-05 is for employment programs?

Hon. S. Hagen: The total for '04-05 for employment programs is $71.475 million.

J. MacPhail: The budget last year was $110.108 million, so what employment programs are being cut or contracts expired?

Hon. S. Hagen: I'd be pleased to answer that. I just want to point out to the member that while the budget was $110.108 million, that amount was not spent. The amount that we anticipate will be spent is closer to $83.938 million.

J. MacPhail: Does that mean that there was no requirement to spend the $110 million?

J. MacPhail: Okay. There are two parts to the question. What was planned to be spent that didn't need to be spent in '03-04 — what employment programs?

Hon. S. Hagen: The two main underexpenditures were training-for-jobs and the job placement program.

J. MacPhail: Okay. Well, what are the various kinds of employment programs? The minister mentioned the training-for-jobs program. That was underspent. What's the nature of that program, and can the minister predict why it was underspent?

Hon. S. Hagen: The training-for-jobs program was a new pilot project that was implemented. The training-for-jobs program provides clients with short-term skills development training and other supports required in order to obtain and retain employment. Approximately 4,572 clients were served in the first year, and approximately 1,631 clients will be served in the second training term. The ESL component will serve 231 clients.

J. MacPhail: So it's being cut by half, or there's a prediction of an uptake of half of what it was for the last year. Could the minister give me an example of what kind of client is enrolled in the training-for-jobs program, and for how long?

Hon. S. Hagen: A couple examples. One would be the HardHats program delivered by Destinations. The other would be the…. I can't remember what the name of the program is, but they were training young people to work on Mount Washington, to deal with skis, some mechanical things like ski bindings and that sort of thing — where they train people and then place them in a job.

J. MacPhail: Well, let's take that in two parts. Is that a wage subsidy program?

J. MacPhail: Well, then maybe the minister could tell me how it operates. Does the person stay on social assistance and work for the person? The minister said: "And then they're placed in a job." After the training is over, is the person guaranteed a job?

Hon. S. Hagen: There's no subsidy. The client gets trained, and then they get a job. In the case of the one that I saw in the Comox Valley, they all got a job with Mount Washington. I got a report back a few weeks ago, because I was interested in seeing what had happened to them, and most of them were still working on Mount Washington or in other jobs. I think one had left the province.

Hon. S. Hagen: The bridging program is for clients with more barriers. It assists survivors of violence and abuse to overcome employment barriers that prevent them from making successful transitions to sustainable employment. The program assists participants to deal with issues in order to enable them to move towards independence and self-reliance and, eventually, to reduce their dependence on employment assistance or funding under youth agreements through the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

Hon. S. Hagen: The bridging employment program has three components. One is community bridging, one is special bridging, and one is former sex-trade workers. That's the type of program that PEERS — for instance, PEERS Vancouver and PEERS Victoria — would deliver. It's really, I guess, to help them overcome their barriers, which in some cases were through experiences of violence or abuse, so they can move towards finding and maintaining employment.

J. MacPhail: PEERS is a bridging program, as I understand it, and the ministry is saying it's funding that bridging program. What's a job placement program?

Hon. S. Hagen: The job placement program was implemented on July 1, 2002. Under the JP program, as they call it, ministry clients are referred to contracted service providers who place clients in jobs and support them to become independent of income assistance.

There are four service providers currently who deliver the JP program, and these were chosen through a request for proposal process: WCG International, which is Job Wave; Grant Thornton, which is Destinations; Kopar Administration Ltd.; and ASPECT, which is the Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training.

J. MacPhail: Do all financial assistance clients who are employable get referred, or clients with multiple barriers? Do they all get referred to some sort of train-

Hon. S. Hagen: Yes, the EAWs refer all clients who are in the expected-to-work category to job placement programs.

J. MacPhail: All employment programs — the full budget that's going to be this year, $71 million — are in the form of private contracts. In other words, there are no government-run employment training programs. Is that correct?

J. MacPhail: Given what's happened in the Ministry of Children and Family Development, what performance-based contracts does the government have with these agencies? What's the detail for ensuring that there's value for money?

Hon. S. Hagen: Job placement contracts are performance-based, as she said. The service providers receive milestone payments over a period of time based on the accumulated months of client independence. The success of the JP program is measured by the ability of clients placed in employment to become and remain independent of employment assistance.

J. MacPhail: What auditing measures are in place, or accountability measures? Who looks after that inside the ministry? What official? Are there public reports of accountability and performance measures of this $83 million for the last fiscal year?

Hon. S. Hagen: The assistant deputy minister of employment programs is responsible for the delivery of the job placement programs. The ministry receives monthly reports as to who is achieving independence from those deliverers. Job program providers also are in regular contact with the EAWs, and each of the regions has assigned liaison staff to the program deliverers.

J. MacPhail: Is there any link provided between the exit surveys done by the ministry and the statistics collected within the agencies?

Hon. S. Hagen: The exit surveys are completely independent from the information that is received from the job placement providers.

J. MacPhail: Okay. Well, that's interesting, because I was looking at all of the anecdotal evidence on the website. It actually says that the job placement statistics, the record of this government since it took office, are that 26,774 people have been placed in jobs. That's up until last month. The 85,000 people who have left the welfare rolls haven't gone into jobs that this minister can account for. He can say that less than a third of the people who have left the welfare rolls have gone into jobs.

I also wanted to ask the minister this question. Does this number of people that he says have gone into jobs — 26,774 between June 2001 and February 2004 — refer to the number of people who have stayed permanently off welfare or only people who have found at least one job during that period of time?

Hon. S. Hagen: I just want to qualify one of the comments that the Leader of the Opposition made. That was with regard to the 85,000 figure, which is the reduction of people on income assistance, and related to the 26,000 or 27,000 that have found jobs through our job placement projects, I guess.

People who have been on income assistance also find their own jobs without having to go through the ministry, so there's a portion of that difference who are in the workforce because they actually went out and got their own job. They weren't placed in a job-training program by the ministry and then trained for a job.

In answer to the member's question, the clients that are placed in a job, which is what that number of 26,000 or 27,000 indicates…. If they lose a job or the job disappears, then they come back on income assistance, but they stay with the job placement program. In other words, the caseworkers monitor them and stay with them. So if something happens, they have a place to come back to. They have a person to come back to, and they are assisted by the job placement people in the ministry to find another job.

J. MacPhail: My question was that the 26,700 people who the ministry says they've placed in jobs…. Could that include the same person being placed in two different jobs with a period of social assistance in between?

Hon. S. Hagen: Good question. It doesn't count as another placement. Those are people who have jobs, and if they go into another job, they are not added to that list.

J. MacPhail: Given the fact that the ministry itself is claiming that 26,774 people have been placed in jobs as a result of their programs, how is it — and the exit surveys don't come anywhere close to suggesting that they've examined more than a third of the people in exit surveys — that government can make this statement?

"Refinements in Employment Programs." This is a fact sheet that I just pulled off. "Nearly 85,000 people have moved off income assistance into employment." What's the basis for that statement?

Hon. S. Hagen: The vast majority of those clients go into work. However, the other reasons that clients

will leave the income assistance rolls are, for example, education, marriage or family changes.

J. MacPhail: Well, there's a new concept — marriage, and you don't have to work. That's a new concept to me, and I'm 52 years old. I don't think that concept has been around for a while — that marriage precludes work or employment. But hey, this is a different government. There's no question about that.

Well, the fact of the matter is that the government has no proof for its statement that 85,000 people have moved off income assistance into employment. I think it detracts from the government, by making the statement. They can claim credit for what they can claim credit for, but why exaggerate?

Now, also on this same fact sheet…. I'll just read this into the record. It says: "Over the next year the ministry will be consulting with service providers and stakeholders to further develop its employment programs. Based on these discussions, it's anticipated that the ministry may adjust funding and introduce new programs that are responsive to clients' needs." What does that mean?

Hon. S. Hagen: As the numbers on income assistance decrease, then we get down to people with more and more barriers. We have to make sure our programs are working so that those people can take advantage of the programs even though they're multibarriered.

J. MacPhail: What's the consultation process that the minister is going to conduct?

J. MacPhail: I want to raise a matter that's important in my riding at a minimum, and that is the community assistance program. At least one of my neighbourhood houses used to conduct the community assistance program and has lost the funding. The community assistance program, as I see from the ministry's own fact sheet dated February 25, 2004, is one of the ministry's employment programs for clients with barriers to employment — just the kind the minister just mentioned. The program was designed to support greater self-reliance and community involvement for these clients through services such as life skills and pre-employment training.

The CAP contracts were scheduled to end yesterday. Did they end, and what's the plan for carrying on the community assistance program?

Hon. S. Hagen: Eight of the 65 agreements will wind down as of April 30, the end of this month, and the 57 remaining contracts have been extended to November.

J. MacPhail: What's the status of the community assistance programs at the Kiwassa Neighbourhood House? I'm told that the three were cancelled — the youth intervention program, the employment support program and the Youth Spot contract. I'm sorry; that was held by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, which is in my riding.

Hon. S. Hagen: We only show two Kiwassa projects; at least that's all I can see. One was reduced by 15 percent because the uptake was low, and one was eliminated because of either low usage or they didn't meet the criteria of the program.

Let me read to you what the ministry uses as criteria for extensions: "Contract extensions are based on actual program activity levels, emphasize pre-employment and life skills supports for BCEA clients, and eliminate duplicate services that exist elsewhere in the community."

J. MacPhail: Yes, I said the third program was Youth Spot at Frog Hollow, which is a neighbourhood house — I corrected myself — and that it's being cut. Perhaps the minister can actually list for me the eight programs that are not being extended. Could he also tell me what the annual budget is for '04-05 for community assistance programs?

Hon. S. Hagen: Before I list them off, the budget is $5.2 million. We are going to consider these programs as part of the redesign for more barriered clients, and there will be discussions held with the providers.

The ones that are being discontinued are in Nanaimo. The Salvation Army, for — did you want the budget commitment for '04-05? — $13,042; the Richmond Youth Service Agency Society, where the budget was zero for this upcoming year; the Kiwassa Neighbourhood Services Association in Vancouver, $5,460; B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, $10,827; B.C. Wheelchair Sports Association, $1,172; Olive Branch Consulting, $14,315; WISH Drop-in Centre Society, $10,544; and the Kitimat Community Services Society, where the budget is zero.

J. MacPhail: Sorry; I thought it said all but eight. I asked for the eight that weren't going to be extended. The minister says that was their budget, and they're now not being extended — or what?

Hon. S. Hagen: Yes. As I mentioned before, they were extended one month to April 30, so that budget amount that I gave you was for the month of April.

J. MacPhail: Discontinued. Okay. What were the criteria for choosing those eight for discontinuance?

Secondly, the budget for the community assistance program in December of 2002 was $9.25 million. This year it's going to be $5.2 million. Is it safe to say there

Hon. S. Hagen: Of the eight agencies mentioned, two agencies agreed that they would not be continuing. The other six didn't meet the criteria which I read out previously. The extensions on the other ones go to November 30. In between now and November 30, there will be discussions held with the providers to make sure we are delivering the programs that are needed for the more barriered clients.

J. MacPhail: Well, I have an updated bulletin — updated March 29, 2004 — from the Ministry of Human Resources, talking about persons with persistent multiple barriers. Why was it updated March 29? I can't find anything here that stands out in terms of a more persistent approach on behalf of people with multiple barriers, so what's the basis behind updating this on March 29?

Hon. S. Hagen: On that particular one the dental limits were adjusted upwards from $250 a year to $500 a year.

J. MacPhail: A person called into my office when the matter of diet allowances was being discussed, and I'll just read this into the record. It was delivered about a half-hour ago. It's from a person who has hepatitis and is diabetic, and he applied for a diet allowance two months ago. He asked his worker why it's taking so long, and his worker said that all of her diet allowance applications are taking forever — and much, much longer this year than last. She showed the client a large stack on her desk. What is the average time a diet allowance application takes for filling?

Hon. S. Hagen: A worker does the decision on a diet allowance based on a doctor's recommendation, which should not take very much time at all, I'm told.

J. MacPhail: That's why there's a disconnect between people who are watching this, including EAWs and clients, and what the minister is telling me. Let me ask this. This person has hepatitis and is diabetic and has a medical note — a doctor's note or a doctor's diagnosis — for both of those. Why would it take two months and still be not filled?

Hon. S. Hagen: Now I guess I have to change my assumption as to what you were talking about. I assume now that you're talking about the monthly nutritional supplement. Is that right? That's not what you asked me before. Anyway, if that's what you're talking about, it is more complicated. It's done centrally. There may have been insufficient information on the form. There could be any number of reasons why it takes extra time.

J. MacPhail: Sorry; what people call it in the vernacular is the diet allowance. There's not a nutritional supplement and a diet allowance, I don't think. They're the same things.

J. MacPhail: Well, then this is a diet allowance that I'm talking about. It's a diet allowance for a person who is diabetic and has hepatitis. That's what I'm referring to. That's what the question is about.

Hon. S. Hagen: If it is a diet allowance, in fact, then that decision is made by one of our workers at the regional office.

J. MacPhail: What's the average time for filling? The EAW takes the application and then sends it to the regional office for approval. This has now taken two months.

Hon. S. Hagen: I'm told that the worker at the local office has the authority to make that decision and make it virtually immediately, as long as she has all the correct information.

J. MacPhail: All right, that's great. I'll put that to the test over the weekend. The person is already on disability, and I don't think you can fake diabetes and hepatitis. We have a perfect case here, and we'll see how it turns out.

I want to return to my last area of exploration in this area. Let me just ask one question before I turn to the Review of Eligibility for Disability Assistance, the auditor general's report. The prevention, compliance and enforcement branch of the ministry has what budget?

J. MacPhail: Is the budget increasing or decreasing? Is it suffering a cut the way every other aspect of the budget is?

J. MacPhail: What are the outcomes of the prevention, compliance and enforcement? What's the record for, let's say, 2003-04? With a $10.1 million investment, what's the payoff?

Hon. S. Hagen: The total savings from these initiatives are $47.3 million for '03-04.

J. MacPhail: I want to spend my remaining time on a review of the eligibility and disability assistance.

The disability review was undertaken, according to the government, to comply with the new Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Act. The new act made it mandatory that everyone who was receiving assistance under the former act satisfy the new conditions of eligibility. The opposition, along with others, asked the auditor general to do a review of this program, and on February 24 of this year the B.C. auditor general released his report of the disability review process.

The auditor general, as everyone knows, is an independent auditor of the Legislature. He is charged with ensuring government accountability and performance, and he had quite a damning report of the disability review. I will read into the record the auditor general's general conclusions on the eligibility review for disability payments. Page 2:

I know that the minister and all of his government caucus members say: "Oh, look, we're putting more people on disability." Well, that just begs the question of why the review was done in the fashion it was in the first place, because the people who are now eligible — the increasing number of people eligible for disability payments — don't have to anywhere near complete the 23-page form that was the subject of the review. So they're apples…. Well, they're not apples and oranges. They're exactly on point. There was no need for the review in the first place in the fashion that the ministry did the review, and more people are eligible to prove that point.

Now, I want to address specific aspects of the auditor general's report and see how the ministry has learned or changed. According to the auditor general's report, the ministry considered six options to meet the act requirement, and all of this I'm quoting from the auditor general's report:

The auditor general reports that the ministry chose option 5, reviewing all recipients over a three-and-a-half-month time frame.

I doubt that the ministry can deny the six options, because the auditor general got that information from cabinet documents and ministry documents. What was the decision that led the ministry to choose option 5?

Hon. S. Hagen: It's important to note, as I think the member opposite knows, that under the legislation the ministry must rescind a client's designation where the ministry has evidence that the client no longer meets the criteria. At the same time, the process must be administratively fair, treat new and existing clients the same and meet legislative requirements.

Option 2 failed the administrative fairness test. Any clients rescinded in the first batch would not be given the same months of assistance as clients rescinded in batches 2 or 3.

Option 3 was proposed because of concerns that the ministry would not be ready for six months. More detailed planning confirmed that a delay was unnecessary.

Option 4 was rejected because it was realized that many medical practitioners would likely complete both the physician's section and the assessor's section.

Option 6 was rejected as not meeting the requirements of the act. The PWD clients being transitioned from the old act to the new act meet the initial and continuing conditions of eligibility. Additionally, a five-year review period would significantly prolong anxiety for clients.

Hon. S. Hagen: The decision was reached by ministry staff based on the analysis.

J. MacPhail: Given the auditor general's report and the requirement under the act to do a review, what's the new plan?

Hon. S. Hagen: The question was asked about the review process from now on. Under the new legislation, the PWD designation may be rescinded. The ministry will review files at least every five years to determine ongoing eligibility for the designation.

When a client is originally designated PWD, the ministry will establish a review date and review type based on the information provided at the time of the application and considering the likelihood of improvement in the client's impairment and related needs. Minimal reviews are given to clients with permanent, profound impairments resulting from severe medical conditions — for example, quadriplegia, sensory loss, developmental conditions. It is unlikely that these clients will need to be contacted. PWD designation will be confirmed and a new review date established.

Partial reviews will be set for those clients whose impairments and needs may improve — for example,

recently diagnosed chronic degenerative conditions where remedial treatment may be possible.

J. MacPhail: Well, it's interesting that that meets the test for the act now, and yet it didn't meet the test for the act previously. Of course, the reason for that is because the original goal of the review was to save money — was cost-cutting.

On page 20 of the auditor general's report it lists the ministry's reason for choosing option 5 over the three-and-a-half-month time frame. It said, first: "It was important to ensure that a recipient met the new requirements in a timely manner. Otherwise, the minister might be considered to be in contravention of the act." There's no evidence that the minister would be in contravention of the act.

The second reason is that the "time frame would cause less recipient anxiety than either a shorter or longer time period." So clearly, the ministry was wrong on that one. They extended the deadline by three months from January to March.

In light of the fact that halfway through the review the ministry had to extend the deadline anyway and that the ministry was getting feedback about anxiety and removed many clients — about 5,000 — from the review, why didn't the ministry at that time reconsider the entire review and move perhaps even to option 2?

Hon. S. Hagen: Two reasons. The first reason is that the new act required everyone to be reviewed, and the second reason is that there was incomplete information in many of the files. Many of the files were empty. Now that we have that information, it will be much more efficient to do the next reviews.

Hon. S. Hagen: There was insufficient information in 19,000 out of 62,000 files.

J. MacPhail: Yeah, and that's the basis on which the minister chose the 19,000 files to do the review.

I don't see any requirement in the act about the time period required to do a review — none. In fact, it's clear that the minister now says that people with disabilities who are eligible can have a review done within a five-year period. So there's nothing in the act that required the minister to do it within a three-and-a-half-month period. Of course, perhaps the reason why there was "insufficient information" was because the person had a very clear disability and everyone understood the nature of it.

The third reason the ministry gave for doing the review the way they did was that "doing all reviews at once rather than in batches or over a longer time frame was a more equitable approach." How does the minister say that is more equitable than perhaps doing a gradual review process?

Hon. S. Hagen: Legally, it is different for clients who have been granted the PWD designation than those being transferred from the old act. In addition to that, in developing the designation review process, the ministry was concerned that if the reviews moved too slowly, the uncertainty associated with assessing eligibility would cause prolonged stress for clients. The ministry believes that taking a more gradual approach beyond the 12 months of the review would have unnecessarily increased and prolonged client anxiety.

J. MacPhail: Well, indeed, the exact opposite happened, according to the auditor general — that the nature of the review conducted by the ministry added anxiety and stress. That's his conclusion.

Now, the fourth reason the ministry gave for doing the review in the fashion they did was: "The costs associated with assessing recipient eligibility would not have been materially different under another option because most of the costs were to pay for physicians, assessors and adjudicators, and these would have been incurred regardless of the option chosen." I mean, that actually is a basis for a reason for doing a gradual review process. If it costs the same, why fast-track the process and compound the distress that disability recipients were forced to go through — according to the auditor general?

Hon. S. Hagen: The answer to that is because a prolonged approach would actually create more anxiety.

J. MacPhail: Well, in fact, the minister had to extend the review process. In question period on February 24 of this year, the minister defended the fast-track disability review process. He stated this: "The ministry undertook the report after consultations with medical professionals and community advocates, who agreed with them that the time frame was absolutely correct."

Now, the minister defends the original approach, and then the ministry had to extend the deadline for the review by three months. So it doesn't make any sense at all to say that the time frame was absolutely correct.

When were these consultations with medical professionals and community advocates carried out, which led to option 5 being chosen?

Hon. S. Hagen: The extension was for two months, and that was to give health professionals more time during the spring and summer of '02, before the review, to complete the consultation.

J. MacPhail: My question was: when were the consultations with medical professionals and community advocates carried out, which supported option 5?

J. MacPhail: Who was consulted? Which medical professionals were consulted? The June 10, 2002, document — the leaked ministry document — shows

that the community groups consulted were B.C. Persons with AIDS, Canadian Mental Health Association, B.C. Head Injury Association, B.C. Paraplegic Association, B.C. Coalition for People with Disabilities and the B.C. Association for Community Living.

I'll be asking the minister which of those actually agreed with the nature of the review and the time frame. Then I would like to know which medical professionals were consulted and agreed with the time frame — the original time frame.

Hon. S. Hagen: People consulted included the professionals in the health authorities and the Ministry of Health and also the B.C. Medical Association.

J. MacPhail: Amongst the community advocacy groups, the BCMA and the health authorities, who agreed with the disability review to be conducted under option 5?

Hon. S. Hagen: Advocate groups, of course, wanted the status to be permanent and didn't want a review, which is not surprising. I can say that the ministry made every effort to assist clients in the process and to provide supports to aid them in filling out their PWD review form. These included a contribution agreement with the Canadian Mental Health Association to establish outreach services to assist clients in completing the PWD review form, a contract with the Vancouver coastal health authority to provide outreach services to assist clients living in Vancouver's downtown east side, together with toll-free telephone numbers and inquiry numbers.

J. MacPhail: Yeah, we know that the ministry spent $5 million on this review. We know that; the auditor general said that. We also know that as a result of the review, 46 cases were closed. That's it. The cost per case closed — just ministry costs — is $105,847.

Mr. Chair, let's do some more math. My staff did some wonderful tables up here as a result of the figures put in the auditor general's report. I will say that I was shocked to hear the Minister of Finance say on the February 25 Voice of B.C. interview that he thought the expense was worth it, and he also said that the auditor general was wrong. Isn't that wonderful. The Minister of Finance attacks the auditor general and says a $5 million expenditure under the disability review was worth it.

Here's what happened. Most disability recipients had their eligibility status confirmed without having to provide any additional proof of their disability; 43,227 out of a total 61,932 people on disability assistance did not have to provide additional proof. That left 18,705 people who were asked for additional information to quantify their disability. That number included clients with developmental disabilities, paraplegia, total blindness, profound deafness, double amputation, quadriplegia, Alzheimer's, ALS, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and wasting syndromes such as AIDS. Of this 18,705 figure, 5,629 had a primary diagnosis of mental illness.

After the ministry — which made all of those people start the adjudication process — had received an adjudicated 903 completed forms, all confirming their eligibility, the ministry exempted the remaining 4,726 people with mental illness from the review. It was clear that there could have been a simpler, better way to do the review — take a sample, test it and then extrapolate from that sample. So that's a conclusion that the auditor general came to.

I wonder why there was no similar exemption made for other disability reviews, given the very low number of ineligible cases.

Hon. S. Hagen: The auditor general's suggestion is equivalent to conducting the review in batches — one of the options rejected by the ministry, as the ministry believes it was not equitable to assess clients in phases. In other words, a sample approach would not meet the administrative fairness test. The ministry would be required to rescind the PWD designation of any client found ineligible through the sample. Subsequently, using a longer-term approach, as suggested by the auditor, would mean that some clients would be affected up to two years before clients who otherwise were similar in all respects except for the random placement of the review in the sample.

The ministry did not consider this approach fair or easily understood by its clients. The ministry also believes that this approach would unnecessarily prolong client anxiety, as decisions would be implemented over a year-and-a-half-to-two-year time frame. In addition to that, the design of the designation review was not focused on cost savings. Options for completing the review were assessed not against cost savings but against the key considerations of fair and equal treatment of new and existing clients, administrative fairness, compliance with the ministry's legislated mandate to determine individual eligibility, concerns of client anxiety and manageable process. Of the $5 million cost, almost $3 million of that went to medical professionals for client assessments, which have given us the information that we now have and that we needed in each individual client's file.

J. MacPhail: Is that the ministry's current view on the auditor general's report? Is the minister saying that's their current view, after reading the auditor general's…? In other words, they're still fighting the fight. Is that what they're saying? How can the minister stand up and say it wasn't about cost savings after reading the auditor general's report?

The ministry's own document of June 10, 2002, estimated that 9,130 people would be found ineligible. That's their own document. It turns out 46 were found ineligible. The ministry is now fighting the auditor general's report, agreeing with the Minister of Finance, I guess, that the auditor general was wrong and that the $5 million was a good investment.

They will have to live with that. They have saved not an iota of grace or recouped an iota of fairness or integrity for people with disabilities if that is their current position after the auditor general's report. What the auditor general said was: why not try a core sample the way they did with the people with mental illness? If it worked for people with mental illness and wasn't administratively unfair, why couldn't it work with other people with disabilities?

It just doesn't make any sense, what the minister just said. I'll tell you, Mr. Chair, if it is this ministry's position that the auditor general was wrong and that there was no other way to do it and that the millions of dollars spent on the review was a good investment, they will never have any integrity or trust amongst people with disabilities again, because the report put to bed all of those issues that the minister just raised.

Why is he pursuing this? Why can't the minister stand up and say: "We learned a good lesson, and we won't do it in that way again"? Is it a problem to admit to that, or is he going to fight the auditor general all the way? Oh, by the way, is this going to be a trend with this government — to reject the auditor general's report? I guess they won't be able to raise an auditor general's report ever again on anything, then, will they?

Hon. S. Hagen: I want to read into the record an opinion from the Times Colonist newspaper, dated Wednesday, August 13, 2003. It's headlined "Disability Review Worth the Angst."

Having read that editorial, Mr. Chair, this government and the taxpayers of British Columbia spend approximately $500 million a year on these programs. I think it was worth an investment of $5 million, which included bringing the files up to date, to make sure that $500 million annually is spent with the people who need it the most.

J. MacPhail: Mr. Chair, that editorial was done before the auditor general's report, and in fact, if the minister would actually read the letters to the editor in response to that editorial as well…. I'm talking about the auditor general's report. Clearly, we're going to end up these estimates with this Minister of Human Resources learning nothing from the auditor general's report — absolutely nothing — and fighting it all the way.

There's $105,847 of taxpayers' money spent per person found ineligible — per person. How shameful. And the minister reads an editorial that was challenged by its readers in letters to the editor, which was written a full six months before the auditor general's report — a full six months. We end these estimates with the minister not learning one single lesson from that review. It is shameful, and they will pay a price for that in terms of how they are viewed amongst a community of people with disabilities.

Hon. S. Hagen: I move the committee rise, report resolution and ask leave to sit again.

Committee of Supply B, having reported resolution, was granted leave to sit again.

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

Hon. T. Christensen: I'll reintroduce my staff just so that the record is clear as to who's here. I'm joined by my deputy, Emery Dosdall; Keith Miller, who's the director of funding; Rick Davis, who's the director of superintendent liaison; Ruth Wittenberg, who's an assistant deputy minister in management services; as well as Pat Brown, manager of budgets within the Ministry of Education.

J. Kwan: Just prior to the lunch break I was asking the minister funding formula questions. Specifically, we were talking about the possibility of the minister looking into a model for funding courses instead of on a pupil basis. Does the minister know if there are any models anywhere that are using that kind of funding formula?

Hon. T. Christensen: Not that we're aware of. I don't think I want to oversell the concept. It's a very preliminary idea. It stems from the desire to offer a broader range of choices to students and to allow students, particularly in their more senior grades, to take on a little more responsibility in terms of the direction of their own education. There's no question that it's a novel idea, and it's something that needs to be very, very thoroughly considered before we would go down that road.

J. Kwan: I would anticipate, then, that the minister will advise us in terms of the progress. Or if I could ask the minister to advise us in terms of the progress on that issue, I would appreciate that.

We also talked about funding issues. I put on record a number of school districts where their funding had gone down. The minister went through the entire list, actually, where funding has gone down or up for each of those school districts. I do want to focus in on some of the specific districts as an example, or issues they have raised with the opposition.

Let me start with school district 73, the Kamloops-Thompson school district, which made a presentation to the standing committee on finance and governance, to the government. In this presentation they state…. I'll quote parts of it, because it's quite a lengthy presentation. I'll just quote parts of it and get the minister's response.

School district No. 73 strongly recommends that the provincial government review notional funding plans before proceedings any further with them. This is their request to the Committee on Finance and Government Services. I would like the minister's response.

Hon. T. Christensen: When the funding formula was changed, it was changed to recognize that what we want to fund is students rather than space. The wording of the submission that the member read out suggested that perhaps money was taken away in the course of doing that. That's not the case.

What the funding formula does is take the overall dollars available and figure out how they apply from one district to another. Rather than applying them based on the space that a district might occupy in terms of its schools, the funding formula has very deliberately been changed to be based primarily on the number of students in the district. Then, as I indicated ear-

lier in the estimates debates, there are some other additional factors that come into play. The dollars that were there funding space have actually been rolled into the overall pupil grant, which as I indicated earlier, is increasing.

I can say, as well, certainly in respect to school district No. 73, that notwithstanding a projected decline of about 500 students for this next school year, they're seeing a budget increase this year, or an operating grant increase, of just under $700,000.

As well, I can tell the member that I was in school district 73 on Monday of this week and had a good meeting with a number of representatives from different groups in that district, including the PAC, school trustees. I had a good meeting with a number of teachers from Kamloops-Thompson Teachers Association, principals, vice-principals, folks from the first nations community. It was a good, broad-based meeting.

From those discussions, my impression was that things are actually moving forward quite well in school district No. 73. While they do need to work hard to manage their budget, they're doing an able job of doing that and moving forward into next year. They're confident they can continue to improve upon the very good job they're doing in delivering education services to the students in that school district.

In respect to school district 73 specifically, in the discussions I had there earlier this week, I was certainly left with their advice that they're doing a good job of delivering education services in that district.

J. Kwan: On the question around notional funding plans, what are the minister's plans for notional funding? The presentation from the Kamloops-Thompson school district also asked about that question. Particularly, they recommend that the provincial government review the notional funding plans before proceeding any further with them.

Hon. T. Christensen: Last year we asked school districts to notionally allocate funds to each school so that there was some transparency in terms of what dollars were going to each school. We think that's important for school planning councils, then, to have some idea of the dollars at each school and how they can move forward with improving achievement within a school, within the budget context. There is certainly no plan to require districts to fund schools on an individual basis, but we think it's important that there be some transparency in terms of how a district is budgeting amongst the schools within that district.

J. Kwan: Are there any plans for the provincial government to review the notional funding plans before the government proceeds with them?

Hon. T. Christensen: There is no current plan to change the current policy. We do want school districts to be open and transparent in terms of how they're allocating dollars among schools so that we can see, and so that people within the district can see, where the dollars are going within a district and also so that we can see how dollars are being focused where they've identified a school that is perhaps in need of putting a little extra effort into assisting its students to achieve.

J. Kwan: I just want to put on record what the concerns of the Kamloops-Thompson school district are around the notional funding formula. I mentioned the concern about the possibility of it eliminating the district's ability to utilize funds in emergency situations. They also raised the issue that notional funding may create conflict amongst parent groups — i.e., people who pay more taxes will expect more finances to be directed to schools that their children attend — and that notional funding is going to create a huge accounting problem, especially on the issues around how to address utility costs, maintenance costs, travel costs for outlying schools and special needs children costs. I just want to highlight these concerns from the school district's point of view for the minister's attention.

Let me turn to another school district that has raised issues, again, to the Finance Committee. I would like to get the minister's response with this particular school district's concern. This is Okanagan-Skaha. In that community, here are some of the issues they're saying around the funding freeze:

They made a number of recommendations. The presentation is quite long, so I'm not going to read the whole thing, just highlight some pieces of it. They made recommendations to the Finance Committee: lift the funding freeze, increase funding to reflect the reality of increased costs, adjust the funding formula, replace the grant for rural schools and save small communities, reduce or eliminate the funding for independent schools and ensure that spending priorities have a direct and positive influence on services to students in the classroom.

Hon. T. Christensen: Could the member just clarify who that submission to the Finance Committee was from?

Hon. T. Christensen: The reason I asked for the clarification was that, actually, Okanagan-Skaha is an-

other one of the districts I have been fortunate enough to be able to visit. I think it was about the second week of February, so it was early on after I had been appointed minister. Again, at that district we had a good round-table discussion that included a representative from the Okanagan-Skaha Teachers Union as well as…. Certainly, there were school trustees there and principals and vice-principals.

What I came away from that meeting very impressed with was the number of initiatives that the Okanagan-Skaha district was taking in respect to literacy and numeracy. They've put a real focus on those issues in their district, and they have literacy and numeracy coordinators that are working throughout the district to really improve upon their student achievement in those areas, and they're getting great results.

I also had the opportunity while I was in Okanagan-Skaha to visit…. Well, I call it the shark tank, because that's what the students called it. It's a new middle school. I think it's Skaha Lake Middle School. Again, there I just came away incredibly impressed with the school facility that was there. It was a new middle school that was offering just a broad range of opportunities to the students there. I was very impressed with the dedication and the hard work of the teachers I was able to speak with at the Okanagan-Skaha school.

Certainly, the information the member has indicated was presented to the Finance Committee by the Okanagan-Skaha Teachers Union isn't what I heard from the school district directly when I was there in February. Rather, I encountered a school district that certainly acknowledged and told me that they had had challenges in terms of working through their budgets the last couple of years but were very complimentary of the government's focus on student achievement. The superintendent there told me very specifically that the government's focus on student achievement had really driven down to that district and school level and that they were having great success at the school level in all of their teaching staff and the others involved at the school really focusing on how we ensure that our students are doing well.

While I certainly recognize that year over year school districts have budgets to manage and, like at any level of the public sector, there are always challenges in how you allocate your budgets, my impression was that Okanagan-Skaha was doing an excellent job of that.

J. Kwan: I don't want to dispute whether or not school boards are doing a good job. I know that they do the best they can under the circumstances, but it doesn't actually change the fact, as we established earlier, that we have a situation where there are increased pressures well above and beyond the funding increases in education from the government. I think we've established that previously.

To just highlight that notion for the minister again, here are another couple of excerpts of articles and comments from the public around that. From the Times Colonist on February 12, 2004, a headline: "School Funding Hikes Faked, Say Teachers, School Trustees."

Just as one other example in terms of how school trustees see the lay of the land, from Prince George — getting away from the capital — here is another piece that ties into, again, the pressures that schools are faced with. Prince George Citizen:

Again, increased costs in terms of increased pressures. That's what people are faced with and the reality that they have to cope with. So while, yes, it is true that school districts are managing the best they can…. The minister said he visited the schools and a number of different districts, and they appear to be doing quite well — quite well in the context of what they are faced with; keep that in mind. Notwithstanding that, I think the valid concerns of lack of funding in education still stand. That is still an issue.

The other issues here that have been raised, aside from the specific funding formula question…. They also talked about the request to reduce or eliminate the funding for independent schools. I would like the minister to comment on that recommendation as well.

Hon. T. Christensen: The member has raised a number of points in her remarks. Clearly, the member has certain information that she's relying on. I'm relying on the discussions I've had with school districts, the discussions my ministry staff have had with school districts and the work the ministry has done in terms of reviewing the cost pressures that are out there. As I indicated earlier, I think the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and I disagree in terms of the impact of those pressures. We're confident within the ministry that the funding we are adding to the operating grants over this year is sufficient to allow districts to deal with those pressures fairly.

I do want to clarify in terms of the text the member read. I think it was from the Times Colonist, quoting a

representative of the Victoria school board. The throne speech did announce $313 million over the next three years. The consequence of having three-year service plans that this government introduced is that at any point in time, when you look three years forward at what is going to be spent that is new — three years forward — you've actually already disclosed two of those years. They would have been disclosed in the previous year, because you're always talking about three years.

We could talk in circles around that for hours, I suspect. The reality is that there are $313 million new dollars coming into the Ministry of Education budget starting right now. In '04-05, starting today, there's an $83 million increase. A year from now, on April 1, 2005, we'll have a further $60 million increase. Then on April 1, 2006, we'll have a further $170 million increase. There is, certainly, that additional $313 million, which is new money compared to what was there in the '03-04 fiscal year.

The member also commented, in terms of my visits to school districts, that I may be finding that districts are doing quite well, in the context of what they face. What I'm finding with school districts and looking at the data available to the ministries is that school districts are doing very well and improving on the most important measurement, and that's student achievement. That's what the system, overall, is about. We can always talk about the budget pressures. As I've indicated, I recognize that there's a whole range of factors that come into play each year when any level of government is doing its budgeting. It is clear, when we look at the trend over the last few years, that the focus on student achievement is bringing results and that our students are doing better.

With respect to the issue of independent schools, the funding formula for independent schools — the 50 percent for category 1, 35 percent for category 2 and zero percent for categories 3 and 4 — is well established. I believe it was established under the previous government, and we have no plans to revise that.

J. Kwan: The minister argues, and I suppose, yeah, we could probably argue, about the government's funding increase and what it really means for school districts until the cows come home, I'm sure, and then beyond. There is definite disagreement in terms of how the minister sees the situation, how the opposition sees the situation and, perhaps mostly importantly, how school trustees see the situation. They are the ones who have been charged with the responsibility to allocate those dollars to the various different schools in their own district and are therefore faced with these very difficult challenges of having to make decisions, quite frankly, of what programs to cut because of inadequate funding in education.

Almost across the board we have comments that have been collected in the media — comments from various school districts, who basically outlined their disagreement with the minister's take on things. I understand the minister's job is to spin what the government has given him in terms of the message, but the interpretation…. I always say this. Actually, I say this to my husband, even, from time to time. That may very well and fine be how you see things, but the question is: how do the people who receive what you're saying feel about it, and does that ring true? This is what I often call the head-nod test. It's how the people in the community have been impacted and whether or not they're in agreement with you. If they're not, then there's something that you need to look into to see what's going on. It makes for interesting conversations, I'm sure, between my partner and me. Having said that, the same theory applies here, and that's the trouble we have.

Let me put on record a couple of other comments. I thought this one was particularly interesting; it was really a different light of putting things. It rings true in a very creative sense. This is an article dated March 2, 2004, in the Province. The headline is "B.C. School Boards Required to Do a Lot More with Much Less." Again, I won't read the entire article, just part of it:

It sounds very nice in one context, but when you dissect it down, it means something else. That's my own edification, but I think this is what the story is here, in highlighting that.

The last bit that I put on record, of course, is a cut of $3 million from the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which adds onto the funding shortfall that Vancouver is already faced with. I think, actually, that was very nicely put in terms of illustrating it in a different context — the issues at hand here.

Another area…. This actually came from an individual's submission, and it's for the school district of Port Moody. Again, it's a lengthy submission, so I'll only highlight some of the issues raised in the submission in the area of Port Moody.

Hon. T. Christensen: I want to refer, first, to the remarks the member made in terms of the Province newspaper column. I remember reading the story in the newspaper. It actually wasn't a story by a reporter for the newspaper; rather, it was a guest column from a parent within Vancouver. The analogy the writer made in terms of how the funding works was completely wrong. We did send a letter back to the newspaper indicating that, but I can't honestly recall whether it was printed.

To say that the $1, $1, $1 adds up to $3, if we use that same sort of calculation, the actual increase we would be claiming would be $539 million. It's $83 million in the first year; it's $83 million plus a further $60 million, for a total of $143 million, in the second year; and it's $83 million plus $60 million plus a further $170 million in the third year. It's important that we be clear that we're not counting any of those dollars twice. There's more being added into the Ministry of Education budget in each year.

I do also want to comment that the member suggested that the information she's hearing is different than the information I'm hearing. I'm certainly hearing from some districts that they face challenges. Unfortunately, in some cases I'm hearing that more through the media than from the districts themselves, but we're also hearing from districts that are doing quite well with their budgets and actually are in a position to say that their budget picture looks rosy. The most dramatic contrast in the province, at this point, appears to be between the Vancouver school board and the Surrey school board.

Surrey school board is, again, not telling me directly but telling the media, so I'm reading it in the newspaper, that their budget picture for next year looks rosy and they're pleased with how the funding formula is working and with their ability to move forward with a number of things they want to do to improve student achievement.

On the other hand, Vancouver school board is again telling the media and folks in Vancouver that they are projecting a significant budget deficit this year. The Vancouver school board will be funded $377 million in the 2004-05 school year. That's $10.2 million more than last year, a 2.8 percent increase over last year in their operating funding. They've seen an 8.8 percent increase over the last five years and are dealing with issues of declining enrolment as well.

Part of the challenge, to be right upfront with the member, of dealing with issues around the Vancouver school board is that on a consistent basis since 1992 the Vancouver school board has said to government as it's preparing its budget: "We're going to have a huge budget deficit." I think in some cases that has ranged up to $25 million, yet in no year did they ever run a budget deficit. So obviously, there's a disconnect between what they were saying initially when they started their budget process and then where they eventually get to. Further, during the 1990s there were a number of districts that did, in fact, run deficits. It's only since our government became government that we've tried to clamp down and ensure that districts are being financially well managed and that they are not continuing to run deficits.

That, in many cases, does mean some hard work on behalf of ministry officials working with districts to try and address those challenges. As I've indicated earlier in the debates, I'm very much looking forward to meeting with the Vancouver school board. We're trying to set those meetings up to try and answer, to my own satisfaction, what the great differences are in terms of the Vancouver school board's challenges versus the Surrey school board's challenges. My interest is to ensure that we're meeting the needs of students around the province and ensuring that we can continue our strong trend of improving student achievement in the classroom.

In terms of the member's further remarks with respect to the Coquitlam school district, I haven't heard directly from the Coquitlam school district. At this point, they are certainly seeing an increase in their funding next year of about $5.5 million, so a very significant increase. They've got a small decline in student enrolment of about 450 students.

Again, I was in the Coquitlam school district a week and a half ago and had a chance to spend some

time at Riverside Secondary School. I came away incredibly impressed with the work being done in that school. They had some very innovative programs — their information technology program — that I had actually heard about initially from a student who couldn't say enough positive about the innovative work being done at Riverside Secondary to ensure that students get exposed to programs that are preparing them well for their time after they graduate from high school.

The member and I are apparently hearing different things from different school districts. My goal remains to continue to increase the Ministry of Education budget so that we can increase those operating grants to school districts and to continue to work with school districts to ensure that they're focusing their dollars on improving outcomes in the classroom.

J. Kwan: I wasn't actually going to go to the Vancouver school district just yet, but I think I will, given that the minister has highlighted them in terms of some of the background information.

Before I do that, let me just counter the minister's statements around school districts' comments and the ongoing dispute, it seems to me, about the increase in funding in education and what it really means in the community and how it's broken down. Various school districts, through media reports, have said that, from various school trustees…. They have actually disagreed with the minister's notion of the $313 million of new moneys into the system, and I put some of that on record.

This comment actually comes not from the individual school district but rather from the representative of all the school districts. This is, of course, the B.C. School Trustees Association. It's a recent report as well, so it's not outdated — February 12, 2004. Here's what they have to say. The headline reads "Trustees, Teachers Claim Schools Shortchanged" — officials dispute the $313 million is new money.

That's from the B.C. School Trustees Association on behalf of the trustees. I think that in that context…. As I said, I have many media clippings and comments from individual school trustees or associations. The BCSTA is disagreeing with the government's notion and their analysis of what the funding increase really means — how much is new money, what is not new money and so on. I just want to bring that message to the minister's attention.

I want to turn now to the Vancouver school board situation. The minister says that the Vancouver school board in all its years — while they're claiming that they have a deficit — have never actually ran a deficit and actually came forward with surpluses. In fact, I just met with the Vancouver school board representatives during the March spring break week off. I forget when that was, exactly, now. It seems like very long ago, but I think it was only a couple of weeks ago, wasn't it? I just met with them, and the fact that they've told me is that this year they are faced with a $670,000 deficit, so it isn't true that they're coming in with a surplus at all.

I have more to say about that, but let me just put some of the information they provided me with on the record. The 2004-05 picture — what does it look like for Vancouver school board? "For 2004-05 the Vancouver school district is faced with a further funding shortfall of $11 million, including a $2.9 million reduction" — which is a 36 percent reduction — "in funding from the Ministry of Children and Family Development for programs for children at risk, including inner-city schools, school meals, community schools and school support." I know this doesn't fall in this ministry directly, but it certainly impacts the schools and the students that this minister is responsible for.

Also, for information: "While recognizing that the recent increase in the provincial funding is a starting point, significantly more education funding is required in order to prevent further cuts to services and programs for students and to begin restoring programs and services lost during the last number of years." They actually say that, and this is their calculation and the situation they face.

Student funding. While the government says, yes, they've given an increase in the budget for the Vancouver school board, they say that the per-student funding increase is $181 per student. That is true, with the increase in funding from the provincial government. What is also true is that the per-student cost increase, which includes a number of things that we talked about earlier — MSP premium benefits, support staff salaries, teachers' salaries, hydro, etc. — is $336. When you do the calculation on this basis, you have $155 worth of difference in terms of increased pressures per student in the Vancouver school system. That is a $155 pressure that would yield $155 worth of per-student service reductions because they're required to balance the budget. So that's the lay of the land in Vancouver.

What do they have to do in dealing with that? They've actually been working on…. This is the draft that they had, as of two weeks ago anyway, about what programs they would have to cut. With an $11 million shortfall, some of the things they would have to cut…. Actually, there are many things they have to cut, but let me just put this on the record. They would have to eliminate continuing and international education. They would have to eliminate and make reductions in the services provided in that area. They have to reduce advertising, which would reduce the visibility of pro-

grams to prospective students, which of course, also impacts their bottom line. They have to eliminate positions and to reduce supply and expenses in their own facilities, which also raises issues around grounds safety in the schools themselves. They have to eliminate a variety of learning information technologies, aside from staff support in the school system. They would have to eliminate library services, learning and information technologies, school-based technical support, tech centre supplies, elementary and secondary library resource materials, and computer hardware allocation, just to name a few of the things in the learning information technology area.

They have to eliminate principals and vice-principals in both elementary and secondary schools. They have to eliminate part of their gifted programs — reductions in the gifted program area, which provides support to gifted children — and, of course, a reduction in staffing that impacts class size and, therefore, the learning environment for students. Counselling services, child abuse prevention programs, even bus fare support, athletic support for elementary and secondary schools, youth and family worker expenses — those are a few things they also have to deal with. Counselling services, as I mentioned, are critical, but they have to eliminate some of those as well.

The inner-city school funding, which I know doesn't fall under this ministry but nonetheless impacts the entire learning environment…. In the MCFD funding cuts, of course, the meals program and the counselling supports, getting parents involved — those kinds of programs are also being threatened because of the $3 million cut in that area. Those are just some — I haven't put all of the cuts they're faced with on the record here — of the cuts.

That's the lay of the land with Vancouver, even with the increase in education funding. The net result is — and the bottom line, I think, comes back to this — a $181 per-student funding increase in the Vancouver school board, when you account for the pressures of $336 per student, nets to the negative of $155 per student.

Hon. T. Christensen: I don't think we can have a debate about the Vancouver school board budget, because we don't have the Vancouver school board budget before us. I've indicated that certainly I'm planning on meeting with the Vancouver school board, and I'm looking forward to those discussions around their budget.

I do know this. The Vancouver school board has a pretty consistent record in terms of its approach to its budget situation. It's worth noting that the Vancouver school board has no responsibility for raising the money it wants to spend and that the province, while it has to raise all the money, then doesn't specifically decide how it gets spent within the school board. Some might argue that there's a pretty big disconnect there between where the money's coming from and who gets to make the decisions about how the money's spent.

If we do look at the history…. This is part of what troubles me in terms of trying to understand what's happening within the Vancouver school district. Within the ministry there's a long history of having submitted budgets under protest. In 1997-98 there was a budget submitted under protest requesting at that time, in fact, a $3.9 million deficit. Once the year was completed, the board actually reported a $3.9 million surplus. In 1998-99, the following year, the board initially requested a $17 million deficit. At the end of the year a $2.2 million surplus was reported. In 1999-2000 the district identified that it was in a deficit situation of a little under $12 million. At the end of that year there was a $3.3 million surplus.

In 2000-01 the Vancouver school board, in January of 2000 — halfway through the school year — claimed they were going to end up with a $5.2 million deficit, and a $2.1 million surplus was reported. In 2001-02 the board reported that it was going to need to provide $4.4 million from internal sources to balance its budget for that year yet at the end of the year reported a $6.3 million surplus. In '02-03 the board presented a series of funding shortfall scenarios which suggested an overall shortfall of about $20 million, and at the end of the year an $11.8 million surplus was reported.

Then this week I read in the media or see in the media that the board is now proposing to take $2.4 million out of a rainy-day fund, essentially, that had been set aside to cover unforeseen expenses to then contribute to this year's budget. There's a long history here of claiming there are a great deal of problems and then, at the end of the year, finding that there are surpluses.

It does raise the question…. I'm not sure what this rainy-day fund is and how much is even in that fund. I think there are some legitimate issues to talk about in terms of the Vancouver school board's budget. I do know that they're equitably funded in relation to all other school districts in the province, yet at least from what you can read in the media, there appears to be a greater difficulty there in terms of making funding decisions than elsewhere.

I also know that the Vancouver school board, very rightly so, has held a number of public information sessions over the last few weeks in its work to come up with its final budget. My understanding is that it's taking that public input into account in terms of moving forward. As I've said on a number of occasions, I'm very much looking forward to having that discussion with the Vancouver school board and the ministry staff so that perhaps we can all gain a better understanding of what's going on there.

I should also note that notwithstanding this history of…. I suspect what the member opposite would suggest as well. To meet those budgets, they've had to make a number of cuts. If we look at the results for the Vancouver school board in terms of the achievement of its students, they continue to improve. We know that

the completion rate for all students in the Vancouver school board has risen from 77 percent to 79 percent between the June 2001 graduation date and June of 2003. We know that for aboriginal students the results aren't nearly as good, but significant improvements are being made. It's improved from 19 percent to 28 percent in 2003. In relation to where it was, at 19 percent, that's actually a considerable gain, and I know that the Vancouver school board is working hard to make further gains there.

Among the Vancouver school board's ESL population, it's gone from 77 percent to 79 percent between '01 and '03 in terms of completion rate, and similarly among the special needs population within the Vancouver school district. They've increased there from an 18 percent completion rate in 2001 to a 23 percent completion rate in 2003. Notwithstanding the Vancouver school board having to struggle with its budgets, they continue very much to be able to improve student achievement.

Similar results show in terms of how Vancouver school board students are doing on provincial exams relative to students in the rest of the province. In almost all cases, they're right in the same place where students in the rest of the province find themselves.

J. Kwan: Let me just say a number of things in response to the minister's comments. First of all, the suggestion that the Vancouver school board does nothing in revenue-generating — to try and fund some of the programs that they provide to the students — is absolutely untrue. That's misinformation that the minister has provided. The Vancouver school board generates in revenue close to $1 million in international education student fees, as an example.

Another example. The school board actually owns some properties in and around Vancouver. I know they have sold off some properties for one-time funding to assist in budget crunches, but of course, those are only one-time funding situations. They still do have some other properties that they have not yet sold and which generate rent — you know, revenues, in that way — and then that goes to contribute towards the education services that they provide.

I'll tell you another example. The Vancouver school board actually bought a building in which they house themselves now so that they don't have to take the administrative costs and the rental costs and leasing costs, etc., in having to have a building to house themselves and to do the work that they do. That's also out of the pockets of the Vancouver school board. So it's absolutely untrue to suggest that they have no revenue-generating opportunities, because I know that they try as much as they can and as best as they can to offset the costs.

I know, as an example, on the school meal program they offer meals, hot lunches to students in a variety of elementary schools — especially in alternate schools — and secondary schools in the school system. Parents have an option to pay $30 per month to cover the costs of the meals in elementary schools and $60 per month for high schools. Now, parents are not made to pay for these fees, but they're asked to pay if they can afford to pay.

But now, they're in a situation because of the elimination of the $3 million in that budget where they're contemplating whether or not they have to force parents to pay. If you don't pay, the child doesn't get the meal, which goes contrary to the whole notion of providing for needy kids who, in their family homes, don't have enough to eat or enough dollars to support the food that the children need.

Those are the things that they are contemplating. So it's not true, first of all, in terms of the fact that they don't make any money to try and offset costs. That's one thing.

The other thing, just for the minister's information…. They are looking at other areas in terms of revenue-generating opportunities — night school, summer school and, again, international fees. They're looking to see whether or not there's an opportunity there to increase fees by 2 percent for night school and international and summer school by 10 percent, as an example, to generate $100,000. Seniors' discounts for continuing education courses — they're even contemplating whether or not they should do away with that. They, of course, worry about declining enrolment and the opportunities for seniors to participate, but they're looking at that as an option to generate $27,900.

The continuing education and the GVDES student supplies fee, which charges fees for supplies, etc. — they're looking at a $170,000 increase for that. The rental rates for school facilities, gyms and what have you, those kinds of things — for a rate increase of $75,000 in terms of revenue generated.

The point is there are a number of areas where they are trying to see if they can raise funds. Notwithstanding that, they are going to be faced with a budget crunch, and the budget is about…. I think the best way to highlight it is about the per-student funding. Yes, the provincial government gave them a $181 per-student rate increase, but the actual cost per student, in terms of basic things — and I'm talking about teachers' salaries, support staff salaries, MSP premiums, hydro, insurance and inflation, those things…. The increase in cost is $336 per student, which nets, as I mentioned, $155 per student in terms of shortfall.

In the previous years, which the minister talks about in terms of how they've always balanced the budget, and in fact came up with a surplus…. As I said, I met with representatives with the Vancouver school board just a couple of weeks ago. They are faced with a $760,000 deficit from this last fiscal. Now they're struggling with trying to deal with budget cuts ranging from $9 million to $11 million.

That's the Vancouver situation. I don't doubt for a minute, and I hope that the minister does not doubt for a minute, that all of the school districts, including the Vancouver school district, are trying to do the best they can under the circumstances. They are faced with very difficult decisions of having to cut valuable programs

that directly impact the students' learning environment, whether it be teacher support staff, ESL support staff, counsellors or teacher-librarians, or even books in the libraries, as an example. These things are hurting students in a great way.

I hope the government can find a way to actually fund the increased pressures that are fixed costs. The school boards have no choice but to face these fixed costs. It's not about discretionary moneys here. They can't just decide to turn off the heat in the school in the months of winter. They have to heat the school, and that's just how it goes. These fixed costs formerly were funded by government, and they are not now. That increased pressure is even more dramatic as it stands for Vancouver.

That's the Vancouver situation. Now I do want to ask this question in relation to the MCFD Community LINK moneys. I know that it's not this ministry, but it ties right into the impacts of students, so I do want to get the minister's take on that. That funding impacts the learning outcomes for students significantly.

Given that there is a $3 million cut in Community LINK programs for Vancouver, is the minister taking any action to address this issue with his colleagues in government? Is there any chance anywhere — perhaps from this ministry, because some people have been calling on this ministry to resume the Community LINK program — to fund that $3 million shortfall?

Hon. T. Christensen: As the member rightly pointed out, the Community LINK funds are within the Ministry of Children and Family Development. I assume the member has canvassed those issues at some length with the Minister of Children and Family Development in those estimates. There is not a plan within the Ministry of Education to move that block of programs or funding back into the Ministry of Education.

J. Kwan: Yes, I canvassed this issue at length with the Minister of Children and Family Development to no avail — I must say, with great disappointment. Would this minister advocate within the cabinet table for the government to reinstate the $3 million shortfall for Vancouver?

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, I'm continually, as Minister of Education, advocating for us to be taking steps that will encourage students to do better in school. I have no plan on changing that in terms of my approach to my responsibilities as Minister of Education. But as I indicated earlier, with the pocket of money that is Community LINK funds, there are no plans for the Ministry of Education taking on that type of programming.

J. Kwan: Yes, I understand that latter point, that the ministry will not be taking on the Community LINK program. I understand the point, also, that the minister will be an advocate for students. But I'm being very specific here about this particular set of funding.

In fact, I actually see the member for West Vancouver–Capilano here. Yesterday I put on record his statement that he shared with me, for he has links in East Vancouver. He went to Florence Nightingale — he lived in East Van in his young days — and his late wife went to Mount Pleasant school. Both schools are in my riding. Both schools are faced with many, many challenges, and the Community LINK funding programs assist the students in a great many ways. In fact, I would almost even say that the member for West Vancouver–Capilano's statement has raised the benefits of the funding these schools receive and how it helps the students in a more eloquent way than I could do and have been doing in the Legislature here.

It's not a partisan issue. That's the point here I wish to make. We see value in these programs from a government-bench MLA and also from the opposition and from the community point of view. But in spite of all that appeal to the Minister of Children and Family Development, I think, basically, that all our appeals fell on deaf ears. It was very unfortunate, in terms of that.

My specific request to this minister is — and I take the minister's word that he will advocate for children around the cabinet table…. Will he advocate for the cabinet to reinstate the $3 million for the inner-city school funding Community LINK program for Vancouver, specifically?

Hon. T. Christensen: I don't tend to advocate on behalf of any particular riding or school district specifically — other than my own, in my role as MLA for Okanagan-Vernon.

What I'm concerned about, always, is programs that are out there that are having an impact on student achievement. I know that certainly the Minister of Children and Family Development is very interested in programs that have proven results in terms of ensuring that students do well or that children do well and flourish, in her previous role as Minister of Education but also in her role as Minister of Children and Family Development.

As the member knows, each ministry is allocating resources in the way that it best can to meet those overall goals. Certainly, I will continue to look at how all resources are being allocated and speak up when I think they can be allocated in a way that will better meet the needs of students and, certainly, of children.

J. Kwan: I must admit, I'm somewhat disappointed with the minister's answer with respect to that. Advocating for Vancouver in this instance is not about picking a favourite out of all the different school districts. What the government has done is this. They've taken away inner-city school funding, Community LINK funding, from Vancouver to distribute to other school districts that also need the money. I'm not disputing the need of other districts and other students across the province who need the money. I think that in this instance, where these kinds of programs…. They have a proven track record in terms of assisting students, and

this program for Vancouver was really pioneered in Vancouver and is now being modeled elsewhere in different locations.

They have well over a ten-year track record on this. They are award-winning nationally and recognized internationally. People come to Vancouver to see how they deliver this program, and people invite staff from the Ministry of Education and from the school board to go to other jurisdictions to talk about these programs, etc. They have a proven track record, and it does help the schools. Clyde Hertzman, in fact, was just at a conference that I was at that was put together by parent advisory councils about early childhood development. It very much centred on the work, the successes that are produced by the Community LINK program, as an example. It has a proven track record. Experts say it.

I'm by no means an expert. I'm only saying what I have received in terms of information from these experts in the community — that these programs are working. To be honest with you, the Minister of Children and Family Development, it appears to me, is not in the habit of listening to anyone except for perhaps herself and the spin doctors with the government. That's just an observation. I'm hoping that this is different with this minister. I'm really hoping that it is different with this minister.

The commitment I ask is this. Having been a minister before in government, yes, it's true that we sort of looked towards the issues and concerns within our own riding, absolutely, first and foremost as an MLA. Then, in our capacity as ministers, we looked at the issues around our own portfolio, absolutely, and that was our first responsibility as well. But around the cabinet table, as colleagues come around with programs…. I believe it's still the case with this government that we all sit around to talk about what they're doing, what this person is doing, what they're funding, what they're cutting, etc. We have a collective discussion about these things, and if you disagree with one program or direction or another, you voice those concerns. What I'm asking the minister to do is be the advocate for this program and for all students. It so happens that it's just that Vancouver is faced with a cut.

I'm advocating for all students where they need this kind of funding — for this minister to be that advocate. I don't get the sense that the Minister of Children and Family Development will be that advocate, and we know that these programs impact learning outcomes for the long term in the school, therefore the educational success of students is very much tied into this funding. I'm hoping I can find an advocate somewhere around the executive council who will take up this cause.

Hon. T. Christensen: I hope I didn't leave the member with the impression that I wouldn't support a program simply because it was successful in Vancouver. My intent was that my approach, generally, is that I'm looking for programs or areas of expenditure that can be applied broadly around the province to improve results around the province. Certainly, we can learn from what's going on in one part of the province versus another and then try and spread that success around.

I know that with the Community LINK funding, the goal has been to try and ensure that the funding is going equitably around the province. I take the member's point that in doing that, it means a redistribution, and that creates some challenges. Certainly, I'm familiar, or I'm becoming more familiar, with the work that Dr. Hertzman's doing and have had, in fact, a good meeting with him and find that work very instructive in terms of what can be done to try and improve student achievement.

I will continue to look at that type of work and those programs and try to see where we can be working to ensure that we're not leaving students behind and ensure that we are doing what we can to make sure all students have an opportunity to do well in school, because that is…. My goal is to see that students do well in school.

J. Kwan: The minister didn't answer my question. All that I'm hoping to find is somewhere — it almost feels like a bit of a wilderness out there amongst the government executive council — for someone to be an advocate on this issue.

The whole notion about equitable distribution of inner-city school funds or Community LINK funds is very misleading. In fact, I put on record yesterday the information from a former principal of inner-city schools in Vancouver who is now currently a school trustee on the Vancouver school board. He was actually one of the first people who rallied everybody together to begin putting together inner-city school funding through a variety of means until government funded it. That's Noel Herron — among many other of his former colleagues — who did this work.

I put on record about him refuting the government's notions of equitable distribution and so on and so forth. In fact, the Minister of Children and Family Development went as far as to say that the Community LINK program — it formerly was called inner-city school funding, and I still use that language…. She went as far as to say that the fund and its distribution were set up for political reasons only. It simply is not true. There's no partisanship about that fund at all.

All that I was really hoping for is for the minister to say, "Yeah, I will be the advocate for students for that program," because that program has been proven. That's why other districts want it, as well, as the demographics of other districts change. I fully support other districts getting that money. I don't dispute that. Where I do dispute is for the government to take moneys from needy children from one district and then put it in another. That does not help anybody in terms of a successful outcome, at the end of the day.

Anyway, I'll let the minister ponder this. I could keep on asking him. I suspect that he will keep on evading the questions that I put to him. As I say, there's no point in doing this till the cows come home. You can only beat a dead horse so many times — until even your arms get tired.

I'll leave that with the minister, but I will urge the minister to do this one thing, if he will. Yesterday I was actually…. My full intention was to put on record a letter that was given to me by counsellors who provided these programs to students and statements that the students have made — their home life, their situations that they're faced with and what the counsellors are trying to do. Those are the real-life situations that we are faced with in Vancouver. Those counsellors, as a result of the funding cut, have lost their positions. They no longer assist these children with these kinds of problems.

I was not successful in putting on the record the entire statement. It's about a page and a half long, separate statements with no names attached, about these situations. I think I went as far as four or five of them, and I got very emotional. I was not able to complete that. The Chair did agree that he will ensure that Hansard puts the entire document on record. I would urge the minister and his staff to read that and to take to heart the message there, because it really is about the children. There is no politics, from my point of view, on this issue. I would urge the minister to do that.

I'm going to move on. I'm going to let that dead horse go for the time being, and I'll come back to it another day.

Following with Vancouver…. One of the things that has been raised by the Vancouver school board folks is about the ESL student funding. The ESL student funding is being delisted if their non-grade report card says they're doing well. That is to say…. One example: if I would exist in the school system today — although I know I'm much, much too old to belong in the school system in that sense…. Take, for example, your math score. You're doing well in math, let's say, but you're not doing so well in English. Because your report card says that you're doing well, when you sort of look at the global picture in that way, then you as a student — your funding — will be delisted. The school board will see that your ESL funding will be delisted.

A case in point is that I actually did do quite well in math. Some members may well dispute my accounting abilities today, but set that aside for the moment. In my earlier days I actually did quite well in math and so on, but my English suffered, because that was a brand-new language to me. I still have to, some days, learn how to pronounce certain words and so on. My English skills weren't as high. If that situation exists — and it is existing amongst many students today in ESL environments — they will be delisted, at least according to the Vancouver school board situation.

That means the delisting of $1,100 per student per year for the school board, which is a significant impact for the budget for school boards in providing ESL support for students. I'd like the minister, first of all, to comment about that and, if in fact that is true, whether there's any way to actually look into that and not really allow that kind of policy to carry forward.

Hon. T. Christensen: The province funds ESL students for five years. The research shows that's appropriate in terms of allowing the child to move along. The district itself will then decide, within that five years, when to delist a child — as requiring ESL or not. I don't know the policy in terms of the Vancouver school board or how they make those decisions, but they could, in theory at least, delist a child after three if they felt the child didn't need the extra support.

Provincially, in terms of how we fund each school district, we looked at the research, and that indicated that the appropriate thing to do is to look at five years. The districts determine whether or not the child should get that support. They then tell us how many ESL students they have. The province funds it, and we do periodic audits to make sure the districts are complying with those requirements.

J. Kwan: Is the delisting only on the basis of a five-year limit? The school board representatives I met with were very clear that the delisting issue is such that now the ministry looks at — what do they call it? — non-grade report cards. If it indicates that the student is doing well — that is collectively, as I mentioned, looking at math and all the other courses, etc. — that automatically changes the thing so that somehow they don't need ESL support anymore, which is not the case. I can assure you, having been one of those kinds of students before — although the formula system was different — that I always did quite well, but my language was not up to par. My English was not up to par.

Hon. T. Christensen: The district may be making that decision, but the province isn't making that decision in terms of the report cards. The district may. Now, it may become relevant, in terms of the province, when the province conducts an audit in terms of the number of ESL students that a district is claiming. As part of that process, the auditors may look at a series of report cards to see how the students are doing. If the student wasn't doing well in language, then they wouldn't be delisted. That's from the province's perspective. We're not looking at a report card average and saying: "Well, you have to remove that child." Our interest is to ensure that the child gets the five years of ESL support, provided the child needs it.

J. Kwan: I would ask the minister to specifically raise this matter with the school board folks when he meets with them, because my understanding in my conversation with them is that that ain't so. There is great concern there. I hope it is the latter. I hope students are not getting delisted if their English and relevant issues to ESL barriers…. They're not penalized in that way.

The minister actually brings up another point, and that is the notion of auditors. My understanding is that school boards are literally being harassed by auditors, in terms of going through their books and trying to find a way to take moneys back now. I know the auditors actually come in from the Ministry of Finance. I've had several reports now from a variety of districts about that harassment mentality from auditors from

the Ministry of Finance going in to check school board books, which really is, again, not conducive to the purposes of delivering education services and enhancing learning environments. I know the Minister of Finance is desperate for cash, but for heaven's sake, if harassment is their approach to dealing with school boards who are just trying to deliver a service, that's really, in my view, inappropriate. I wonder if the minister will look into that harassment mentality.

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, in my experience, I've never met anybody that's too happy to see the auditor arrive. I do know that the Vancouver school board did express some concerns with the audit that was undertaken there, and the ministry has agreed to redo that audit. There is a second audit team going in to ensure that those results were appropriate.

What I think the member needs to recognize, as well, is that the audit process doesn't save the ministry any dollars. What the audit process does is ensure that the dollars that are allocated for specific purposes, like ESL or special needs, are distributed fairly. If the ministry goes into a district and finds that they've been overstating, for example, their ESL students and as a consequence receives money back from that district, that money then just gets redistributed to the other school districts in the province. It's an in-and-out process, so there are no savings to the ministry through the audit process. It's simply to ensure fairness among the districts.

In this case, with the Vancouver school board, we've put a second audit in because of the Vancouver school board's concerns about the first one.

The issue is that if we're auditing for the purposes of making sure that dollars are spent in the right places and so on, that's one thing. Doing it diligently is one thing, but doing it with a harassment mentality, I think, is quite another, and that's what I'm hearing in terms of that kind of concern. I would ask the minister to look into those kinds of complaints that have surfaced from the school districts.

Now, I do also want to raise another issue related to the auditing concept, and that is in the area around continuing education. Is it the case that the ministry now will not pay for a student in continuing education if they do not complete the year's program? I know of a lot of students, and particularly students from my own district…. Lord knows that their lives are challenged with many, many things: childhood traumas to poverty — you name it. They're faced with these problems. A lot of times, in spite of best efforts, if people try to go back to gain their education, they may not succeed, and then they have to drop out. It doesn't mean, though, in those instances that school boards haven't had to pay to provide the services to these students. They advise me now that if a student does not complete their program, they're not funded by the ministry, and that creates a big problem.

Hon. T. Christensen: I do want to agree with the member that certainly a harassment mentality in an approach to an audit would be wholly inappropriate. I can assure the member, based on any direction I'll be providing to auditors, that they'll be professional. I'm satisfied that within the ministry our audit experience, to the greatest extent, has been positive. Our auditors have been diligent and have done their job, but they've been very professional in doing that.

With respect to the member's specific question around continuing ed, the ministry has historically faced a challenge with continuing ed, in that you are often dealing with a difficult student population. What the history of continuing ed programs and funding has shown is that you have a number of students that will enrol, may only show up for a couple of days and then aren't there anymore. To try and alleviate some of that problem, the ministry has indicated that we will be moving towards a 50-50 funds split that accounts for students at the beginning but also accounts for students at the end. We're optimistic that that will encourage districts to adopt, or certainly look at and hopefully adopt, a number of strategies and innovations to try and see how they can ensure that they're able to carry students all the way through.

The end result of those students enrolling and perhaps showing up for a day or two and then not completing is that those resources are then going into that continuing ed program rather than being able to apply them somewhere else within the school district. We're definitely trying to ensure that there's a little more accountability there to ensure that students are completing those programs.

I certainly acknowledge the member's comments that these can be a difficult population to deal with, and it's a population that often is dealing with a number of other factors in their lives. It will take some innovation to try and ensure that we're getting those students through once they start.

J. Kwan: Is there a time limit, then, in which funding would continue for a student's enrolment? What I'm trying to say is this. If the minister's suggestion is that for continuing ed some students show up once or twice and afterwards they don't, and therefore they're not funded…. Is there a cut-off time which the minister would apply to determine whether or not a person would be funded? Or is it that as long as they don't complete, then they are not funded?

Hon. T. Christensen: The plan is to fund 50 percent when the student registers and attends the first class and then 50 percent when the student completes the class.

Hon. T. Christensen: Yeah, the second 50 percent when they complete the class. It won't come into effect until the 2005-06 school year, so about 18 months or so from now.

J. Kwan: Then it seems to me that, obviously, the minister actually sees the logic in the issues that have been raised and there is an attempt to adjust that funding formula accordingly. Why 2005-06? Why not now?

Hon. T. Christensen: There is a wide range of information system requirements we actually have to adjust for over the next year. That's really the holdup — to get the ducks in a row in terms of the information requirements so that we can track these students. As I think both the member and I agree, they can be a difficult population group.

J. Kwan: But isn't that information tracked by the school board in terms of the attendance and who shows up as the classes are going on? The teacher, presumably, tracks the attendance record.

Hon. T. Christensen: The history of these types of continuing ed studies has been that the districts essentially have…. The student has registered. They've got the money from us upon the student registering and attending the first day, and then that's been the end of it. There hasn't been a great deal of reporting back at the end of the year.

We've got some districts that are doing courses on a quarter system, some doing them on a semester system and some doing them on a full-year system. There's a wide range of things going on in terms of continuing ed. By implementing something that requires some follow-up at the end of the year, what we've found in discussions with districts is that it actually presents a pretty significant information and recordkeeping challenge. Rather than rush it through and have a bunch of difficulties in September of '04, we thought it was prudent just to put it off a year and make sure that we do have all of the systems requirements in place so that we can do this effectively. There's no sense in moving ahead with the proposal unless we know we can actually track it effectively.

J. Kwan: Why not put it as an incentive system for those school districts? "If you can actually come forward with full documentation about attendance and so on, then you can have your full funding. If not, then it's back to square one," as an example. It could be a scaling of when the implementation could kick in, subject to the diligence on the school board side.

J. Kwan: My God, I am in total shock. I can hardly think straight. I'm getting answers from the minister. He's saying: "Yeah, I'll take your suggestion, and we'll check it out." I hardly know what to do. Maybe I'm not doing my job.

Okay. I do want to put this letter on the record. It was given to me by a parent who's not in my school district. It's about the whole issue of balanced budgets and the threat of deficits and so on and so forth. I think this parent also puts it very well about the situation in Vancouver. Let me just put this on record for the minister's information. It's actually written to the Premier, dated March 12, 2004.

This is a letter in response to the Premier, actually, and not from my riding, that was brought to my attention by parents that I met in the community. I think that really highlights the issues around balanced budgets, deficits, the need to cut the shortfall in education in a very succinct way from a parent's perspective — again, the head-nod test, as I called it earlier, in terms of what the community thinks.

We've dealt with a number of issues in Vancouver. I'm going to save the seismic issue for last. Vancouver school folks also raised that, but I'm going to do that as a separate issue under seismic. Let me just get back to some of the other school districts here.

District 19, Revelstoke. They also wrote a letter to the former Minister of Education, once again raising concerns about lack of funds — let's just put it that way — in the education system. They raised the concerns in this context: "The board of trustees of school district 19, Revelstoke, wishes to bring a matter of concern to your attention with respect to the funding formula changes that are proposed for 2005-06. Our specific concern is around the change to the low enrolment factor." In fact, there have been several letters, by the way, written to the minister and also to ministry staff about this issue.

I think the point is this. In the case of Vancouver, they raised the low enrolment issues. The reduction in funding — the amount does not necessarily match the rate of reduction in enrolment, as one example. In other situations, even if you don't deal with that and set that aside for a moment, as I mentioned earlier, enrolment declines…. Just because it happens in school districts doesn't mean that school districts can do away with the services for the students.

They happen all over the place. It's not neat and tidy in one classroom so that you can just say: "Okay, we'll eliminate that classroom." The services still need to be provided. The costs are still there. It doesn't help the situation get any better. I think that's the issue that Revelstoke is raising under district 19.

Hon. T. Christensen: Declining enrolment, as we've discussed already, certainly is a factor for a number of districts. It's a greater factor in some more than others. That's precisely the reason that we've got built into the funding formula a buffer for declining enrolment. If the decline is more than 1 percent, the district is still funded in the year that they've suffered the decline at 50 percent per student who isn't actually there but was there the year before. So it does provide a buffer so that they're not faced with an immediate, dramatic decline in funding.

We find in a number of districts — Revelstoke being one of them — that have actually provided…. I think in Revelstoke's case, they would have lost about $221,000 as a consequence of the number of declining students. But with the buffer, that adds about $150,000 back in, so it's actually helped to bridge that.

There is no question, though, that declining enrolment is a challenge. It's fair to say it's a bigger challenge in small districts, too, particularly in communities that aren't close to a neighbouring community. Revelstoke falls into that category. I think the technical review committee has benefited from the input of Anne Cooper, the superintendent in Revelstoke who sits on that committee. That's precisely why we want representatives from around the province on the committee, so we ensure that we can take into account the specific circumstances of some of these relatively unique districts.

J. Kwan: I'm glad that the minister at least acknowledged some of the challenges around declining enrolment. Previously all the former minister would say is: "We are paying for declining enrolment. In spite of declining enrolment, education funding is going up."

The minister actually shed some light in terms of how that formula works on declining enrolment. Even then, though, the challenge still exists — 1 percent, and then 1 percent or more…. Particularly, it's a greater challenge for smaller communities in schools, because the population base is already small, as it were, and to just sort of go above that 1 percent…. It may be difficult. But still, the decline in their enrolment, even below 1 percent, makes it just as difficult, if not greater, for the school districts to deal with it.

And then, yes, there is a buffer to deal with that. It's still not the full funding, though, and the services, at the end of the day, even though there is a declining enrolment, still have to be fully provided for, for the students in the districts. That's the challenge the school boards are looking at. Certainly, I would hope that the minister, through his technical review committee…. I think he said that they may be looking at revising further the declining enrolment question, especially in the rural communities, where the economy is so very challenged.

Let me move to school closures. With the 90 schools closed in the last two years, it meant that a total of approximately 14,000 students had to relocate. This year there are another 27 schools already slated for closure. I have a list here in terms of the schools that have had to close or are slated to close, and I'll put that on record in a moment. The total number of students involved in the closure of these schools, then, is 5,051, so we're nearing 20,000 students in all who have had to relocate schools since two years ago.

The issue, of course, is a bit of a hypocrisy, really, when you look at it. When the government ripped up the class size clause and clauses with limits on the number of special needs students in a class out of the teachers' contracts, the government sold it based on the need for flexibility. The government used it as an example over and over again that the limits mean that a student could be forced to move to another school or be denied a space in their neighbourhood school if the class size limits were rigid. Now we have nearly 20,000 students who've had to move — and every expectation of more to come and being forced to move into neighbourhood schools.

What are the schools that are new, in addition to the 90 schools previous, in the last two years — the 27 schools? They are in the district of Bulkley Valley, Chandler Park Middle School — 359 students will be impacted and forced to move. In the area of Campbell River, the school called Robson Middle School, 484 students will be impacted; Rockland Elementary, 232. In the Cariboo-Chilcotin area, Bridge Lake Elementary, 45 students impacted there; in Forest Grove Elementary, 81 students impacted; and Buffalo Creek Elementary, 60 students impacted; Wildwood Elementary, 70 — for a total of 236 in the Cariboo-Chilcotin area.

In greater Victoria 649 students impacted from two schools: Richmond Elementary, 321; and Hampton Community School, 328. In the Kootenay-Columbia district, Rossland Secondary, 433 students impacted. In Langley, Otter Elementary, 122 students impacted. In Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge Primary School, 74 students impacted; and Meadowland Elementary, 93 students impacted — for a total of 167 from that district.

In Nanaimo-Ladysmith, Waterloo Elementary, 93 students impacted; Princess Anne Elementary, 104; and École Harewood School, 111; Princess Royal Elementary, 75 students — for a total of 383 impacted in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith district. In the Nicola-Similkameen, Riverside Intermediate, 93 students impacted. In North Van, a total of 330 students impacted — Westover Community School, 188; Monterey Elementary, 68; Maplewood Community School, 174.

In Okanagan-Skaha, Nkwala Elementary, 289 students impacted. In the southeast Kootenay community, 756 students in total — Pinewood Elementary, 198; Max Turyk Elementary, 208; Amy Woodland Elementary, 355. In Surrey, 295 students impacted — Fleetwood Elementary, namely. Then in Quesnel, 103 from West Fraser Elementary.

These are the new schools that are closing, and that brings it, in conjunction with the last two years, to a total of almost 20,000 students who have no choice and no flexibility about going to their own neighbourhood school. They are being forced to go to another school district outside their neighbourhood because their school is closing. I'd like the minister to address this issue, please.

Hon. T. Christensen: School districts actually don't report to the ministry what schools they're proposing to close until June, so we don't have a definitive list from them. Certainly, there has been a good deal of speculation in the media and reports in the media from school districts in terms of schools they may be considering closing.

Part of the challenge is that if we look at enrolment and look at what the projected enrolment is for the 2004-05 year, we will have seen by next fall a decrease of 30,000 students in the system over the course of the last five years. That simply means you don't need nearly as much space to serve those students.

What we've found happening in terms of school closures in the last few years…. Yes, we did give school districts the autonomy to make those school closure decisions. They don't need sign-off by the minister to do that. I know that in the past, they did need sign-off from the minister. It has been suggested to me that in the past, a number of schools that probably should have closed because of declining enrolment and in order to operate a district efficiently weren't closed for political reasons.

I can certainly recognize that would be tempting. As a politician, the last thing you want to do is make a decision to close a school, because quite rightly, we all have an emotional attachment to the school that either we attended or that our children attend. That's a good thing in the sense that it shows the importance schools play for people.

Previously, when there were restrictions on closing schools without the minister's approval and when the funding formula actually funded space rather than focusing resources on students, what we found was that we were funding empty space. Now there's no incentive to keep unnecessary space open. There's no question that means that school districts have, in fact, played a bit of catch-up in terms of the number of schools that they've closed. Combined with the declining enrolment, that has created a number of school closures.

To be clear on what's happened to date since the 2001-02 school year in terms of school closures, we know that in 2002-03, some 55 schools were closed. Eleven of those, however — involving approximately 2,800 students — were closed due to capital projects for replacements or additions. The remaining 44, which have approximately 5,100 students, were closed due to declining enrolment.

In 2003-04, which is the school year that we're currently in that will end in June, an additional 56 schools were closed. Nine of those schools, involving approximately 3,500 students, were closed due to capital projects for replacement and additions. The remaining 47 of those, which involve about 6,800 students, were due to declining enrolment. The member has referred to a number of schools, and the ministry doesn't have that data from those school districts. We expect that in June.

We know there's a projected further enrolment decline of 8,500 between this June and next September in terms of the number of students graduating out of grade 12 and the number coming in to kindergarten. That presents a significant challenge in many school districts. There is also the challenge — and it's reflected somewhat in terms of the number of replacement schools and additions — that in some districts, even though they are seeing increasing enrolment, the nature of the student is changing.

That's in the sense that the students are getting older. You've got more in the senior grades and fewer in the elementary grades. You need a different building structure and a different physical plant to serve the needs of secondary students, or older students, than you do for kindergarten and elementary school students in those schools. There's definitely a shift, and that's creating some changes. There's no question of that.

J. Kwan: With the list I put forward, I just want to be clear: these are the schools that are likely going to close. Some of them have not yet closed, but that's the information we've received. They are schools that are under threat for closure. The number of students that could potentially be displaced is over 5,000. That's significant.

I think there are some schools the minister has mentioned as a result of capital project issues, but for the most part, they are as a result of closures. It might have to do with declining enrolment or some other reason, but, primarily, I think I heard from the minister it's declining enrolment. I think the point to raise here is this. We have canvassed declining enrolment and its impact in a variety of forms already, recognizing once again that school districts, because of the limitations in funding, may be forced to have to close schools and therefore displace students.

On the question around choice and flexibility that the minister — and particularly the former minister — likes to suggest exist for students, I would argue that here we have a substantive number of students who have no choice for themselves because of forced closures, because of budgetary constraints. That's the reality we're faced with.

According to the information that I have, between the years of September 2001 and 2003 — the 2004 numbers are not out yet — the student enrolment decline is only about 2 percent overall, when you look at it. Yet we have a situation where we have a reduction in percentage of teachers by 7.7 percent. In the special education teachers area this is a reduction of 17½ percent; teacher-librarians, to the tune of 23.4 percent; counsellors, 9½ percent; continuing education teachers, 34.5 percent; career program teachers, 27.4 percent; ESL teachers, 20 percent; clerical support staff, 10.2 percent; and administrators, 4.1 percent.

In that context once again, budgetary constraints are also reducing the services provided by critical staff within our education system to students. I just want to bring that to the minister's attention and look at the issues in that broader context as well.

Hon. T. Christensen: The government has put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that we're able to provide students with choice and that we're able to provide districts flexibility in how they deliver education services. We have very intentionally removed a number of the barriers that were there that really didn't give school districts a good deal of autonomy in terms of how they focused their resources.

I can tell the member — again, based on my experience visiting some schools in the province — that sometimes when you close schools and consolidate those students so there's a greater number of students in one location rather than spread out among two or three, you actually improve the number of courses that can be offered at the school. At the secondary level, in particular, the school can provide a much broader range of course offerings to a student body of 1,000 students than it can to a student body of 500. Districts are, in some cases, making those decisions.

I was at Harwin Elementary School, one of the first schools I was able to visit. This is an inner-city school in Prince George. In fact, Prince George is a district that has had to deal with a very, very significant decline in student population. Harwin Elementary this year is actually the student bodies of what were previously three different elementary schools, and those students are thriving at Harwin Elementary. The staff are certainly dedicated to them and working with their needs. It's a school that had the physical capacity to have three schools come together, so really, it was only in the neighbourhood of one-third full prior to that point.

One of the benefits the principal pointed out to me in terms of those schools coming together was that they now had the resources of three libraries all in one. While there was some duplication, it very much broadened some of the resources within that school.

While I recognize that school closures can be very difficult to deal with — and as a parent, I certainly can imagine the difficulty of dealing with a school closure — in some cases it may be more difficult for the parent than the children. I know that with my own children, they sometimes seem to adjust to things a lot better than I do. It's an emotional thing to deal with, and it does mean a different situation for people.

With respect to teachers and specialist teachers…. Again, the government very deliberately removed the number of collective agreement requirements in terms of certain student and teacher ratios, with the intent

that school districts would have the ability to decide how they want to adjust their staff within the district to try and meet students' needs. That has resulted in some changes.

It has resulted, in some cases — when we look at efforts around literacy, for example — in districts saying that they would put resources toward a literacy support person. That person was then a support person to other teachers within the schools, to try and ensure that literacy is something that's being focused on through a number of grades rather than relying, typically, on a teacher-librarian to focus on literacy, or one or two other teachers in the school. So some of those are having positive results in terms of the focus on student achievement and ensuring that those literacy skills are coming along.

I can tell the member that overall, when we look at the total number of students in the system and the total number of teachers, the pupil-teacher ratio in the 2003-04 year is 17.5 pupils per teacher in the system. In 1997-98 it was 17.2, so there hasn't been a dramatic fluctuation in terms of the pupil-teacher ratio. The government very deliberately legislated class size limits in the K-to-3 sector, reflecting on the research there is in terms of the importance of class size limits in those early grades in particular.

J. Kwan: The minister says that school closures, in some cases, have made it better for the learning environment for students, because schools are able to pool their resources, etc. That may be the case, although I've heard a lot from the parents' side in terms of the concerns around school closures. I think it's more than an emotional attachment for the parents.

There are a number of factors that impact parents, as well, as they take their kids to school, especially in rural communities. Weather conditions, the amount of time a child spends on travelling, the distance the parent has to take the child — those kinds of things all come into consideration. Those are other impacts.

And it's true. It's fair enough to say that children are very resilient. Make no mistake about that. They certainly are, and I think the younger they are, the more resilient they are. But having actually been a student, not because of school closures but just because of my family situation at the time…. It was such that, as an immigrant child who came to Canada back in 1975, at age nine, for elementary schools, I went to four different ones from grades four to seven.

I can tell you, moving schools is a traumatic experience. Yes, you recover from it — surely, you do — but still impacts are huge as you readjust, as you start to make friends again. All those kinds of things impact students in great big way. I'm sure the minister knows about that, so I don't need to go into detail about those kinds of situations.

Those are the challenges that school districts are faced with. It does beg the question of — again, in smaller communities — what it means when schools have to close. As I said earlier, communities are defined by a number of different infrastructures, and the school is definitely one of them in terms of the community and that neighbourhood's identity, along with hospitals or health care centres, courthouses, police stations and community parks. Those are the things I think define communities and neighbourhoods in a very distinct way. One could also understand the emotional attachment for your whole neighbourhood, when you lose your school, as an identity issue point of view and how that impacts it.

Of course, the challenge here is that school districts are faced with having to close schools, not necessarily for reasons other than the fact that they're faced with budget constraints. If that is the factor that motivates and forces school districts to make these decisions, then you have to ask the question: is that in the best interests of the children to begin with? And shouldn't it be the other way around?

If school closures come about because that is in the best interests of students all the way around, that's one thing, but people are forced to make the decisions to close schools because they have no other option other than to do that. They don't have the money to fund it. That's another story, and that's the issue I would like to bring to the minister's attention for his contemplation in terms of budgets and the funding of education.

Supports for students with special needs is another area. In addition to school closures, I mentioned, as well, the percentages of various support staff in the school system that are decreasing. The issue around special needs is one I'd like to put some attention on at this point. One of the pressures facing teachers is the increase in students with special needs in their classrooms at the same time as resources to adequately support the learning of these students have disappeared.

The number of students formerly identified as having high-incidence special needs, excluding gifted, has declined by nearly 10 percent since the changes in funding. The target of funding for the high-incidence students was eliminated from the funding formula by the current government. Having no specific funding targets for these students and reductions in the staff who carry out the assessments of special needs have combined to produce this 10 percent drop over two years in the numbers of students identified.

The FTEs for special needs teachers, as I'd mentioned earlier, have actually been reduced by 17.5 percent. Education in the classroom, not only because of this situation, has not only impacted the children who have special needs support but also the other children who don't have special needs, because of this decline in special needs staff in the classroom. It impacts all students because of that change. First of all, I'd like the minister to comment about the special needs staffing level question as well as the targeted funding for the high-incidence ratio question.

Hon. T. Christensen: With respect to the high-incidence students, there used to be a category or fund-

ing for high incidence. Essentially, the way that worked was that the districts would list all the students they considered to be high incidence, and they would submit the list to the ministry. The ministry would provide a block of funding of up to 2 percent of the other total-pupil funding. The reality in the way that worked is that all districts would claim the full 2 percent, because that's where you capped out, then the list of students would actually be even longer.

Districts can still identify high-incidence students. That 2 percent of funding has just been wrapped into the overall grant with the changes to the funding formula, so they haven't lost anything. It's just that they don't have to report to the ministry who's a high-incidence student and who's not. They can certainly add those labels if they want to in terms of their own district, but there has been encouragement not to label students but rather to just identify what their needs are and then adjust the resources to meet them.

In terms of the specific categories of special needs students that do attract very specific additional funding, there are three different levels. Level 1, the dependent, handicapped and deaf-blind, are funded at $30,000 per student. Level 2, which is moderate to profound intellectual disability, physically disabled, chronic health impaired, visually impaired, deaf, hearing-impaired and autistic, are funded at $15,000 per student. Level 3, which are students requiring intensive behaviour interventions or who have a serious mental illness, are funded at $6,000 per FTE.

That generates total special needs funding, at least in this last year, of $231 million that then is distributed amongst the school districts. That number will fluctuate depending on the number of kids that fall into each category. It's not a number that's in any way capped. For the member's benefit, I can tell her that those per-student amounts certainly are something that are under continual review. They will be increasing in the '05-06 school year from $30,000 to $32,000 for level 1, from $15,000 to $16,000 at level 2 and from $6,000 to $8,000 at level 3. So there will be additional funding for each of those students.

I can also tell the member that we know in terms of school district staff that we've seen an increase of about 500 education assistants, which typically are being assigned to assist with special needs students. That's between 1999-2000 and 2003-04 — this current school year.

I can also tell the member that at all levels — provincial, district and individual school levels — we want to ensure that people are looking at the needs of special needs students and ensuring that we're all doing our best to meet those and that there are those levels of accountability. I think, as the member knows, special needs students are entitled to an individual education plan, and certainly the expectation, the requirement, is that parents are consulted in developing those plans and that school boards are obligated to provide appropriate programs. We don't direct how they do that, but in looking at the accountability contracts when we're going out and doing district reviews, we're watching and having discussions with school boards about: "How are you meeting the needs of your special needs students?"

I know the member also commented on the impact of a special needs student in the classroom in terms of the resources to support that special needs student and also the impact it has on the balance of the class. I think all of us can understand that yes, there is going to be an impact. There are going to be some positive aspects of that in terms of the other children who aren't special needs being exposed to special needs kids and the need to be comfortable with one another and to understand one another. There's also going to be an impact on perhaps the challenge of teaching the entire class, depending on the special needs student's particular special need.

We've provided to districts this additional funding, as I've said, which will be increasing, and then we expect districts — and schools, for that matter — to be looking at individual classes. Really, the support that's needed in a particular class is going to depend on — and this is a generalization — three primary factors: one is the particular need of the special needs–identified student; the circumstances of the remainder of the kids in the class, including how many are there and what kind of background they have and what sort of challenges they present to the particular teacher; and it's going to depend on the teacher. We certainly expect principals, when they're looking at establishing their classes, and school districts, when they're monitoring all of that, to be looking at those factors and ensuring that they're doing their best to get the right mix in a classroom so that both special needs students and the remainder of the students in the class can all thrive.

J. Kwan: Well, yes. I think that school districts and the teachers and principals within the schools try to do the best they can — make no mistake about that — to put the right teacher in the right class with the right mix, and so on.

In addition, just by way of a comment, I've met with folks who've told me that not only are we dealing with a reduced number of support staff to deal with special needs kids — because of, again, funding pressures and closures of schools and those kinds of things, declining enrolment and what have you — they often have split classes as well. Then you throw into that mix a couple of ESL kids, and you literally have a class of many different demands. The teacher's ability to cope in those circumstances becomes increasingly difficult. No matter how innovative and wonderful the teacher might be, those teaching environments are very challenging for both the teacher and the students. I would venture to say that that may not be the optimal learning environment for students, whether you're special needs, ESL, regular class, split class or whatever the

case may be. That's the slippery slope we're entering into in some of these cases.

I do want to raise this question with the minister as well. The targeted funding for high-incidence students was eliminated from the funding formula, and the minister said that that's been rolled into the per-pupil funding. The trouble with that concept is that from the government's point of view, everything is rolled into the per-pupil funding along with these increases and increased pressures and so on and so forth. But when you look at the per-pupil funding, the funding increases don't actually match all these added pressures, and here is yet another added pressure, really, if you will, in terms of high incidence.

The suggestion that the per-pupil funding takes care of all of these things starts to wear really thin, if it hasn't worn out already, on the basis of all these increased pressures — the increased costs that I mentioned earlier, that we talked about earlier. Now we're talking about increased pressures in the high-incidence level and some of the other pieces. You can't keep using that increase in education funding to take care of everything, because as I say, that argument has really been worn thin to the point where, I venture to say, it has no credibility whatsoever. It certainly is not reflected in the classroom in terms of basic needs to meet the needs of the children.

Let me just put on record…. Here is some information for the minister to digest, and here's how it is put forward. Teachers believe that many more students exist in a grey area, meaning that their needs have not been formally identified but they require extra assistance that is not provided. Teachers note that the composition of classes has become more difficult as limits to the numbers of special needs kids in each class were removed.

That's from a teacher's point of view. This actually came from a report — sorry, I'm trying to find out where the report was done — in terms of surveying, talking to teachers and so on about how they feel and what is going on and how things compare with these changes. The increased pressures are enormous.

Let me just stop there and ask the minister a couple of questions. One is that the minister says there are increases in the funding formula for special needs children in the different categories. The increase the minister talked about — when will that come into effect? That's my first question. Have the moneys for the special needs kids funding-formula increases been announced, or is that part of that general increase that was already announced by the government, or is this new money? I'm talking about real new money, not the kind of real new money that we talked about earlier, which turns out to be not so real and not so new.

Then my last question to the minister is: has the minister identified that he'll be evaluating the categories of special needs and so on? Is there any move or inclination for the government to look at this notion of high-incidence in terms of identifying it?

The teachers worry…. I've heard it from principals in my own community, as well, in getting out there to talk to parents and principals and teachers. They tell me that a lot more children now are falling into this grey zone. Their special needs are not high enough to fall into the categories that have now been designated by the government. These grey-zone kids are suffering because they don't have the assistance or the supports that they need in the classrooms.

Hon. T. Christensen: I can confirm for the member that the increase in terms of each of the level 1, 2 and 3 specials needs comes into effect in the 2005-06 school year. School districts are aware of that already. When we make the announcements for their funding grant, we're trying to give them three years out, so they found out about it last year.

Again, those are based on estimates of the number of students who will need it. The actual figures will depend on the number of students that are in each of those categories. That overall funding does fall into the overall grant that goes to school districts.

Hon. T. Christensen: This year it'll be part of the $3.875 billion that goes to school districts. Next year it'll be part of the $3.895 billion that goes to school districts.

I want to correct something I indicated before. I think I said that the high-incidence had previously been capped at 2 percent. It was actually 4 percent — just so the record's clear on that.

The change around the high-incidence hasn't created a pressure that's unfunded. The districts were claiming the full 4 percent and simply providing a list of the high-incidence situations to the ministry. They can still do that on a local basis. All we've done is said that the money that was targeted there by the ministry becomes part of the overall grant to school districts. No money's being taken out.

We're continuing to increase the overall grants year over year. Then we trust the professionals within school districts to determine how to best allocate those resources within the school district to meet the needs of those high-incidence kids.

Certainly, we've moved from a situation where every time something new came up, Victoria would create a new fund and target funding, and you'd have school trustees who really didn't have much discretion in terms of how they were managing their district and the resources that the province gave them. We've said

that we want them to have considerable autonomy. That's in response to school districts telling us they want autonomy to make those decisions. Then, at that individual school district level, the professionals there can make those decisions.

From a ministry standpoint, we've continued to try to ensure that within the government's fiscal ability, we're increasing the Ministry of Education budget. We're being successful in that. As we now get to a balanced budget in this year, moving forward, we actually have much more opportunity to continue to increase the allocation to school districts and to ensure that they are in a position to strongly meet the needs of their students.

The reality is that in the past we haven't been in that position without continuing to put the province further and further into debt, all of which eventually catches up with you. Now that the province is moving and getting onto a much more sound financial footing and now that we're moving school districts through GAAP to get them onto a much more sound financial footing, as we move forward and as the province's finances improve and we have surpluses, we can invest those in education. The government has been consistent in saying that it's fully our intention to invest funding and additional funding in education, because we do recognize the priority it is.

We don't plan on investing in a piecemeal fashion, where we're targeting a bunch of funds. Rather, we'd like to increase the operating grant to school districts so that they can choose within their district how to allocate those funds to best improve upon student achievement within each school district in the province. We'll have that discussion with them and monitor their progress through continuing accountability contracts and district reviews.

J. Kwan: Let me put to the minister these issues that I've raised. The minister says that the special needs funding for high-incidence has been rolled into the per-pupil funding. Let me stop there and ask the minister a question. What was the high-incidence funding per student prior to the formula change?

Hon. T. Christensen: I don't have those figures available. I think ministry staff could probably dig back a few years and find it. I can tell the member that certainly when we look at what the overall per-student funding average was in the province five years ago, say — so that's 1999-2000 — we know that the per-student funding then was $5,983 on average. That would include the high-incidence funding. It would include ESL; it would include special needs; it would include aboriginal students. It would include everything that was a factor in the funding formula at that point in time divided by the number of students.

If we now move forward to this last year, we know that the per-student funding, including all those categories — everything that's in the funding formula — has increased to $6,529. We project, based on projected enrolment for next fall, that it'll go up to $6,748.

Again, it's not a case of having removed the money and placed it somewhere else in government. The amount of money that goes to school districts has remained constant and has increased. The difference is that it used to go to them in a broad number, a long list of specific categories, and we've said we're going to back away from that. We're going to provide one big category, the basic per-pupil grant, which is going up to $5,520 next year. Plus we're then going to add to that — certainly for ESL students, for aboriginal students, for these three levels of special needs students — an adjustment for the declining enrolment, an adjustment for unique geographical factors, a very small adjustment for home schoolers.

J. Kwan: The average number that was used for the purposes of this calculation — is it an average across the province, or is it an average across the district? Where did that number come from?

Hon. T. Christensen: It's an average across the province. If you look at any individual district, the actual average is going to vary because of those unique geographic factors, the declining enrolment factor, the number of ESL students, the number of special needs students, the number of aboriginal students, the number of home schoolers — although that wouldn't make much of a difference, since there are only a very few.

I think when we look back and compare it to what the member was talking about before, with the high-incidence children, it doesn't actually make a difference, because the vast majority of the school districts were actually claiming the full 4 percent cap. That has actually just rolled over without any real impact in terms of the dollars going to the district to serve the needs of those students.

J. Kwan: I'd be interested in some information from the minister — I can appreciate that he may not have it with him — and that would be the high-incidence number in terms of what that funding would be. Second would be the total budget that was funded for the province for high-incidence students — if I could get that amount so that I know what it is.

I'll tell you — and it was a criticism of the previous administration, as well, with the 4 percent cap — that as the minister has identified, virtually all school districts had maxed out that 4 percent cap. People have actually said over and over again that that cap is unreasonable. There are more students who are in the high-incidence category, yet the school boards can't get more support because it was capped at 4 percent. There was lobbying of the previous administration to eliminate that cap of 4 percent.

I'm not necessarily convinced, based on the minister's arguments, that rolling the high-incidence dollars into the per-pupil funding actually fixed the problem. I

think it's an effort, in some ways, to try to disappear the problem. It just rolls the students into all of the general population so that those issues are not highlighted in terms of needs.

As identified by the teachers on the ground who are teaching these students…. Again, this is what I call that head-nod test. They have this range of kids in there. Some of them are high-incidence but don't have identified special needs in the categories the ministry has identified, so they are not able to access further support for them, but they do demand more support, if you will, than a non-high-incidence student, by way of an example. Throw into that mix some other kids in terms of split classes, ESL, etc., and in the midst of all of that, increased pressures, as well, on school boards in terms of fixed items such as teachers' salaries and utilities. In the classroom the teachers are faced with a situation where they have fewer resources to deal with all of these demands, which then makes the classroom even more challenging than it was.

I might even be able to buy part of the minister's argument — had the fixed pressures that were imposed on the school boards been completely offset — and be able to say: "Okay, you know, we rolled all the high-incidence dollars entirely into the per-pupil funding, etc." I might be able to see part of the minister's argument on that basis, but the reality is that when you have both of these pressures mounting in terms of fixed costs pressures imposed by the government as well as the changing demographics in the classrooms, those pressures, added together with reduced resources, would net a reduction in resources in the classroom, therefore compromising the learning environment for the students.

It's something I've heard over and over and over again. Special needs is certainly a critical area in terms of supports in the school system for these children.

I can use one example. I have a little baby girl. She just turned one, and she's a thriving little girl. It's great being with her, but some days, I've got to tell you, I feel like I need three people to help me out with just one little baby. She's running around. She's doing all this stuff.

I just can't imagine being a teacher, full of kids and trying to manage all the differing demands. It's very demanding. I would urge the minister to actually review that entire funding formula for special needs kids with an eye to recognizing the high-incidence levels that now take place in our complex societies and the demands that are in the classrooms.

Class size, class composition and student-educator ratio. Here's the latest information I've obtained on that. The ministry data shows that the average elementary class size has been creeping up over the last three years, from 22.51 in the year 2001-02, to 23.11 in the year 2002-03, to 23.16 in the year 2003-04.

In addition to that, changes in the nature of the student-teacher relationship are evidenced in the dramatic increases in the student-educator ratio. In the 2001-03 school years we saw increases in the student-educator ratio climbing from 16.38 in 2001-02, to 17.8 in 2002-03, to 17.26 in 2003-04. The student-educator ratio included administrators as well, because administrator numbers have climbed, while the number of teachers has been cut. The student-teacher ratio has increased even more than the student-educator ratio. Just so we know, there's a slight skewing of those numbers, taking into account the educators. Again, comments from the minister.

In a complex environment where you have the student-to-teacher ratio climbing and then you have more complex classes in terms of the mix of classes, you have, I think, kids in the category of high-incidence that are not recognized. More kids, according to teachers, are in this grey area where they don't have additional support, in a climate where special assistances in the classrooms are being eliminated because of funding pressures. These are the changing times that teachers are faced with in the classroom. I would venture to say that with all of those kinds of pressures, it doesn't make for ideal learning environments for kids. In fact, I would argue that it's reduced in terms of the learning environment for children. I would like the minister to comment about the student ratio.

I remember when the member for Delta North was on the Education Committee with me. I asked the question, given that in his previous life he was a principal at a school in his own district: what is the optimal number in terms of student ratio? The member said 16, if my memory serves me correctly.

J. Kwan: It is serving me correctly. It's actually moved quite far away from that ideal number. Back in 2001 it was 16.38; now it's 17.26. Instead of moving into that optimal space, we're moving further away into less optimal spaces with more complex classes. Comments from the minister, please.

Hon. T. Christensen: The member has raised a number of points there. We do know that in terms of administration versus teachers, by giving school districts more autonomy in terms of how they determine the roles of each of their staff members, what we found is that we do believe there's an increase in administrators who are still teaching a good portion of the time. Somebody will be appointed a vice-principal. Upon being appointed a vice-principal, they fall within the administrator category, yet they may still be teaching half a teaching load or even more than half a teaching load. That does sort of skew the results a little bit, and that certainly is a trend that staff have identified in terms of discussions with districts.

I think the member commented, as well, on the need for special assistants in classrooms. I indicated earlier that the data the ministry has shows that the number of education assistants had increased by 487, I think — somewhere near 500 — in the last three years. Districts are actually hiring EAs to help assist them.

With the student-educator ratio, if we look at 17.26 — I think that's the number the member gave me in '03-04 — that's actually right on the halfway mark between the number for '01-02 and '02-03. The reality is that those do fluctuate a bit. There is some question within the ministry as to whether somebody who's appointed the vice-principal — the example I gave before — whether their teaching time would actually be included in the calculation of that student-teacher ratio. Depending on what's happening around people being part-time administrators but categorized as administrators, that may skew those results a little. I don't think the member can suggest that there's a dramatic change there.

Similarly, I think we all recognize that class size is an important issue, particularly in those early grades. That's what the research tells us. That's the exact reason the government took the position that class-size limits in kindergarten through grade 3 should be legislated.

I can tell the member, from my own experience in visiting schools, that that actually creates some challenges in some schools. I know when I was at Hixon Elementary, which is a small rural school about 25 kilometres south of Prince George, one of the issues the staff at the school spoke to me about was that because of the class-size limit, they actually had to hire an additional teacher to teach a small group of I think it was about eight or nine kindergarten children. In terms of the staff getting together and the administration within the school and parents in the community, they felt they would rather have taken those dollars that provided for that kindergarten position and used them to provide other staffing resources within the school and then combine those kids and teach them in a different fashion.

When we impose rigid class-size limits…. I know this was a complaint when they were in the collective agreement, and it's a continuing complaint from some typically smaller schools in smaller communities. Now that those class-size limits are legislated, it does certainly restrict flexibility, and some would argue it does not give an individual school the flexibility they would desire to apply the resources their school has available to them in the way they feel would best meet the students in their classroom.

I think it's fair to say that the Hixon situation is a relatively unique one, because it is a small rural school. We do need to recognize that, ideally, we would have strong guidelines in terms of class size that school districts would work very hard to meet but that we wouldn't impose rigid limits, because it does undermine the ability of the professionals within those schools and within those districts to say: "You know what? For this student body this is how we should apply our resources to best meet their needs and to best allow them to obtain the best achievement in school."

J. Kwan: I do want to highlight a few things the minister said in response to the issues I've raised.

On the student-teacher ratio: with the government's change in taking out class sizes from the collective agreement, instead of seeing a trend of moving towards the optimal number of 16 in terms of ratio, we're actually seeing a reverse trend of it going up. In the 2003-04 year it's 17.26. If, theoretically, what the minister says and the government's theory works, we should be seeing a reverse trend on average, but we're not. We're seeing a negative trend in terms of a larger ratio on student-teacher ratio.

That optimal number is one that we should strive towards, but we're not seeing results in that direction. It does, then, bring into question this whole notion of allowing this so-called flexibility to actually achieve the goal of optimal class size in the teaching environment, in the learning environment, for students. That's one point.

The second point…. I might have misspoken myself. I think I said special needs assistants. I should say that the shortage of…. There's been a decrease in specialist teachers, which cost more, in the system to provide support to the special needs kids. In replacement, the school board tried to compensate that by bringing forward education assistants. Yes, there is an increase in special needs assistants, but special education teachers have gone down significantly. I might have misspoken myself. I can't remember. I might have mixed up the term.

So there's the difference. According to the information I have, special education teachers have actually declined 17.5 percent with all these changes. This is between 2001 and 2003. Again, the pressures in the classrooms…. Without these specialists, if you will, in the classrooms, there is a significant impact for students.

I want to raise these points with the minister. I'm hopeful that the minister, through his technical review committee or some other format, will be looking at revising the supports for students, particularly students who have special needs — not just them, but rather students in the entire classroom so that both sides could benefit with a reduced ratio and stronger supports with a different mix in the classroom.

Let me see if I can try and bring up another issue. ESL staffing is on the decline. The number of students funded for English as a second language decreased by 22 percent in the year following the funding cap in 1999. This was not because students needing ESL support disappeared but because the funding had changed, and there was a cap that was put on funding ESL. While the number of ESL students identified for service declined by only about 1 percent over two years, there was a 20.3 percent decline in the staffing — falling from 1,016 to 809.

Between the years 2001-02 and 2002-03 secondary school students identified as ESL declined by 7.6 percent. Between 2002-03 and 2003-04 the numbers declined by 4.2 percent. At the same time, the numbers of both kindergarten and elementary ESL students actually increased while total enrolments of all students decreased.

Again, the stats…. Given this so-called flexibility that the government has put in place, it appears to me that it's creating a situation whereby you have an in-

crease in the population base among ESL students while the supports — that is, in the classroom, the teachers with ESL training, etc. — have gone down. Again, it raises the question in terms of optimal learning environments for both ESL students and non-ESL students and of teaching environments for the people who teach in the classrooms.

Hon. T. Christensen: I think it's difficult, when we talk about what's an optimal learning environment. The member used the example of a class size. I think the number was 16. The reality is that the optimal class size depends on the teacher. It depends on the class, and it depends on the subject area. In some subjects — the one that comes to mind for me is band — the more the merrier, in many respects. I may not feel like that, depending on how well they play, but as they get better, the more the merrier.

It is a very fluid issue from one class to another. Similarly, in terms of the specialist teachers you want to use in a particular school with a particular student body, it's going to depend on where a school and a school district have identified their greatest needs. Certainly, I would not be in favour at all of going further and imposing class-size limits. Nor would I be in favour of going further in terms of imposing specialist teacher ratios.

My focus is to ensure that we are encouraging districts to look at how they best improve student achievement. My further focus, as we move forward year over year and as the province's finances continue to improve, is that I push hard, as minister, for additional funding for the education system.

Thankfully, that's not a terribly difficult task in this government, because my colleagues on the government side all recognize the importance of public education and are strong supporters of public education and, on a pretty consistent basis, come and say to me: "You know, we need to push to add dollars to our education system and to assure them that we'll get those dollars to districts rather than keep them in Victoria and to try to a large extent to hold school districts' feet to the fire to make sure that they're applying those dollars in a fashion that is continually improving student achievement."

I think the fiscal situation in the province over the last number of years has required all of us to make some pretty difficult decisions. That, certainly, has stemmed down to school districts, which have had to make some difficult decisions.

We've done a good job in maintaining education funding, and now we're in a position to increase it. And we're doing that. On a year-by-year basis, as we've found savings in the ministry, we haven't kept them within the ministry. We've actually got them back out to school districts, through the one-time grants, to recognize that they do have pressures. Hopefully, that will alleviate some of those pressures.

What I'm pleased we've seen is a continued improvement in student achievement. As I have the opportunity to visit schools and school districts, I'm finding that around the province districts are focusing on some things that I think we can all agree should be priorities — literacy being one of them.

There's a wide range of programs in different schools and different districts around the province where teachers, principals, vice-principals and administration staff at the school district level are working with the community at large. They're working amongst themselves. They're working with parents to try and ensure that there's a strong focus on important areas like literacy. They're broadening that as they see the need arise.

We've created a very concerted focus within the education system on what steps are necessary to improve student achievement. As we move forward and as dollars are available and as we put additional funding into the education system, I am greatly optimistic that we're going to build on this foundation of a focus on student achievement and see some incredible things happen in this province in terms of improving on our students' outcomes.

That will simply continue a trend of what this province has accomplished in public education — that is, that we've got a public education system that's second to none in the world. I think we've got a great deal to look forward to.

J. Kwan: I am noting the time, so I'll just make some final closing comments. Unfortunately, I was hoping I would get through all my questions. I haven't, so we will have to come back to our estimates debate. Let me just close with a couple of comments that the minister had made.

On the issue of maintaining education funding in spite of having to balance other issues that the government is faced with, let me just say this. Certainly, a large segment of the population would say that the government did not maintain education funding from the point of view of what's going on in the classroom. You cannot say that you maintain education by just looking at the numbers in and of themselves. You need to go beyond that.

That brings us back to the whole notion around increased pressures. When you look at the increased pressures that school districts are faced with, the dollars — again, on a per-pupil funding basis — have actually gone down in the classroom. In that sense, education funding has not been maintained in the real sense where it counts — in the classroom. First off, I want to say that.

The other issue, which the minister's raised several times now…. I let it go the first time, but I must rise to take issue when he says that in spite of budget cuts, student achievement is going up. There's a lot of dispute with respect to the measurement of achievement. If achievement is going up with budget cuts, it's not a sign to say: "Oh great. Let's go and cut more." I worry quite deeply when the minister uses that argument as if to say budget cuts equal improved achievement.

Let me say this as well. Improved achievements…. I know this from the Vancouver schools standpoint. The

Community LINK money — I said I was going to stop beating a dead horse, but I feel compelled to bring it back up one last time for this reason only. The records and the statistics show that the Community LINK programs actually help children achieve better outcomes — the very thing the minister praises and wants to arrive at from a Minister of Education's standpoint. Yet we have a ministry that's going to be cutting that funding. That very thing — those programs — has been linked to student achievement with a positive trend for students' outcome. We're losing that money in Vancouver, and I worry that the trend that has been established over the more than ten years since the program has been set up will now have a reverse trend if there's not some way to find money to continue that funding.

The last thing I want to raise is this, and it's again tied into the MCFD moneys. The experts who've done research in this area…. I don't have my documentation with me. It's with my MCFD binder. Again, just going by memory, there was a research study done by a PhD student who I think graduated with her paper. This individual presented her findings in an inner-city school environment where she studied and followed students.

The individual actually discovered that what enhanced achievement in terms of achievements for students and student outcomes was based more than anything else around two factors: stability in relationships, to be built in the environment for the children; and trust, that the person has a trusted person to go to in dealing with issues on an ongoing basis. In fact, the more trusted persons that exist in the child's environment, the more likely the student's outcome would enhance and improve even more.

That was a study that was most recently done in an inner-city school in Vancouver. I think it was Hastings School where they studied this for a couple of years and made these findings.

Student achievement is important, but the issues then raise the question of what helps students to have this environment of trusting relationships, trusting adults and stability. They found that in an environment where…. A lot of times with families where they are challenged, they don't have that from the home front, but they have that on the school front. Those programs and the funding of the FTEs, the teachers, the specialists, the counsellors and so on…. They are the people who provide for that foundation of trust and stability in relationship-building for these children. Therefore, they have the optimal opportunities to maximize their potential. That is the issue around education in terms of this funding.

I'm going to leave it at that. I feel very strongly about this issue, but I will let it go because it's time to wrap up the House. I'll move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

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