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Hon. David Newman (Deputy Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I wonder if there is leave to waive private members' hour in order for Committee of Supply to sit until 6 p.m.

Madam Speaker: Is there unanimous consent of the House to waive private members' hour to permit the Committee of Supply to sit till 6 p.m.? [agreed]

Mr. Newman: Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Minister of Seniors and Urban Affairs (Mr. Reimer), that Madam Speaker do now leave the Chair and that the House resolve itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.

Mr. Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 254 will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training. When the committee last sat, it had been considering Item 16.2. School Programs (c) Assessment and Evaluation (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $5,149,700 on page 47 of the Estimates book. Shall the item pass?

Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): At the end of last time, we had been discussing examinations and examination results. The minister indicated that he wanted to make the examination system better-known publicly, and I had asked whether he would consider tabling all of the examinations which have been given to date. The minister I think wanted to consider that, so I assume that is where we can start.

Hon. James McCrae (Minister of Education and Training): I thank the honourable member for bringing us up to date where we were. Indeed, we were talking about making samples of past examinations available for the honourable member, and that is what we are going to do.

While we are getting those documents together, I have some documents to table respecting aboriginal language instruction. This document is dated 1992-93, but it is revised in 1996 and 1999. It sets out the school divisions, the schools and the numbers of students in those schools. So I am going to table that information.

I have another document that I would like to table for the honourable member entitled Aboriginal Education and Training Human Resources Development Training. One of the elements of the aboriginal education and training strategy is to provide training for all Manitoba Education and Training staff designed to increase sensitivity and operational ability to meet the program needs of aboriginal students. The document goes on to talk about initial training and about sessions that have been conducted for various staff of Manitoba Education and Training. Level II training discusses resources related to training. So I am going to table that for the honourable member.

There was also a discussion about Manitoba Aboriginal Head Start programs. Approximately 560 children are enrolled in 14 Aboriginal Head Start programs and six satellite programs. An average of 30 students attend each centre. Numbers are greater for centres with satellite programs. Ninety-five people are employed in both full- and part-time positions. I have here a list of directors and sponsors for all Head Start programs for the northern region, the Parklands region and the Winnipeg region. I will table that information for the honourable member.

I have a training manual that is made available to the co-ordinator for local marking, as we discussed yesterday. This is related to Grade 6 English language arts, and this is the training manual made available to the co-ordinators by the department. As we discussed yesterday, this information is the subject of a couple of days of training for the co-ordinator. The co-ordinator then returns to his or her division and conducts half-day seminars for teachers using this manual. I have the same information for the Senior I mathematics standards test, and I have it for English.

I also have Séance de formation des coordonateurs de la correction B l'echelle locale pour mathJ matiques de secondaire avril 1999. So that is the same thing for the franH aise.

I have for the honourable member the Senior 1 Mathematics Standards Test for January of 1999, which gives the honourable member a picture of exactly what the students were dealing with in January.

With respect to the January 1999 English Language Arts Provincial Examination–there is a lot of information in this next tabling. It is a Provincial Summary Report, Senior 4 English Language Arts Examination; the Provincial Examination Administration Manual for Super-vising Teachers; the Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination Checklist for Supervising Teachers; the Senior 4 English Lan-guage Arts Provincial Examination Preparatory Readings. In this case, the theme is Respon-sibility.

We have Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination Student Responses to Readings, the theme being responsibility, and the date of January 12, 1999; a document entitled Your Process Writing Task; Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination Process Writing Student Response Booklet, the theme being Responsibility, January 1999; the Official Answer Key under that theme; Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination for January 1999. There is a Rationale Booklet for Exemplar Paper #1, Reading Component, Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination, January 1999; a Rationale Booklet for Exemplar Paper #2, Reading Component, Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination, January 1999; and a Senior 4 English Language Arts Provincial Examination Process Writing Exemplars, January 1999.

That is all part of this one package that I am now tabling for the honourable member in triplicate.

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The next tabling contains the following infor-mation: Summary of Results for the January 1999, Senior 4 Mathematics/Mathématiques 40S/40G Provincial Examinations; the Provin-cial Examinations, Mathematics 40S January 19, 1999; Mathematics 40S Answer Key & Common Errors, the Provincial Examination for January 19, 1999; Provincial Summary Report, Mathematics 40S, January 19, 1999; Mathe-matics 40G Provincial Examination, January 19, 1999; Mathematics 40G Provincial Examination Formulas and Tables, 1999; Mathematics 40G Common Errors and Answer Key Provincial Examination, January 19, 1999; the Provincial Summary Report for Mathematics 40G, January 19, 1999, in triplicate.

The next tabling, Mr. Chairman, is the summary comments, Grade 3 Mathematics Standards Test, May 1998; the English Program; Information Bulletin, Grade 3 Mathematics/ Mathématiques Standards Test–1998; Grade 3 Mathematics/Mathématiques Standards Test–1998; Administration Manual for Supervising Teachers, May 26 and May 27 of 1998.

Then there are samples of student responses: Provincial Summary Report, Grade 3 Mathe-matics Standards Test, English Program, May 26 and 27, 1998; the Grade 3 Mathematics Stan-dards Test Answer Key and Scoring Rubrics, May 26 and 27, 1998; the Grade 3 Mathematics Standards Test, May 26 and 27, 1998. Then the same information is printed in the French language. That is the information the honour-able member was talking about to which I did not have a chance to respond in full because we needed to gather all this information up. We also ran out of time. Six o'clock came along, and the Chairman does not allow any latitude whatsoever. At six o'clock, everything stops, and now I think we are basically caught up where we are supposed to be.

Ms. Friesen: I thank the minister for tabling all that. I am interested specifically in two or three of the areas, and I wanted to, before we move on in this section, just ask some questions about it. The three sets of material on examinations that the minister has submitted are now public documents since they have been tabled. Does the minister have any way or any objections or any policy whereby these can be put into public libraries?

I suggested this to the Minister of Education a number of years ago. It is a common practice in British Columbia. It is actually the most active part of the library. If you go down to the Vancouver city library, there is a whole section of the library which has back papers, has back answers. They are standard. They are there for all students to see and their parents. It makes transparent, makes public; it creates a public record throughout the province.

It seemed to me a very good idea and one that would be easily done in Manitoba. You could also put the same kind of thing on the Web, but having it physically available in local libraries seems to me quite useful. The minister at the time said that she would look into it, but nothing further happened. So I am making the suggestion again and seeing if the minister could find some way to do that.

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Mr. McCrae: We have no concerns about making these documents available to the public, as we have tabled them here. They are obviously already public documents, so that is not the issue so much as the mechanics of actually stocking libraries. I do not know what all is involved in that. We are indeed looking at doing just that, but I am not able to give the honourable member a cost estimate of doing that.

These documents are available from the Textbook Bureau. They are in all schools now. Libraries, that is something we are pursuing, as I say to the honourable member. Making it available on the website is not as easily done, I am told, because of copyright issues involved there, so we are not making the commitment about the Web. We are saying that we would like to make them available to public libraries. We are in the process of finding out what all is involved in doing that.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the minister could clarify for me what the problem is in copyright terms. If it is available as a tabled document, if it is a public document of the Crown, why is there a copyright issue when it is put on the Web? Secondly, it would seem to me that the simplest way of getting these to public libraries and/or to school libraries is simply, when you send the exam to the school, you send them a couple of extra copies and say: hold these until a week after the exam. Please put them in your public library. Please put them in your school library.

Local schools have that kind of access. It does not seem to me a difficult issue. It has always puzzled me why the previous minister simply was not interested in doing it. It seems to me a cost-effective, public, transparent way of ensuring that people understand the examination process.

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, in order for us to use this material, we make agreements that only so much of this material is the subject of those agreements. That implies that there is a copy-right commitment there that ought not to be breached. So I think that covers the question with respect to the Web, unless we wanted to renegotiate. We would have to find out what that would cost, and if we wanted to renegotiate those things in order to put it on the Web, then the copyright holders would have to be consulted, and it would have to be the subject of an agreement.

With respect to schools, yes, the honourable member is right about that, that it is a simple enough thing for schools to make this material available to local public libraries. I am just simply wondering what we need to do in order to go ahead with what the honourable member is suggesting. I do not know the nature of the discussion with the previous minister, so I cannot really comment on what the honourable member has said about that, but this is public information paid for with public money, and I tend to agree with the honourable member.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I can understand that there may be some difficulties with the copyright agreements in the English language exam, but where would the copyright problems be in the Grade 3 math or the Senior 1 math or any of the mathematics exams? Are they not entirely composed and produced within Manitoba by the Manitoba Department of Education and its advisory committee?

Mr. McCrae: Yes, anything of this material that we are able to make available and put up on the Net, I am committing that we will do that, too. It is just I am holding back just a little bit because I am not aware of all of the implications. I cannot just make commitments without understanding what it is I am committing to, but to the extent that we can make public information available to the public that is the result of the public's money, that it would be my intention to move in the direction of placing it for public view on the Net.

Ms. Friesen: With reference to the English language contracts that are made for copyright, is there an estimate, an average price that the department pays each year for that? There are different choices each year. Is there a budget for that, and how much does the government pay?

Mr. McCrae: I think at this point with this question it would be best for me to take it under advisement and ask the department to undertake a review of the questions that are being raised here with a view to compliance with what is being asked for here. I think that it is not so much the money. It might be some amounts of money but not such large amounts that it would really be a big problem when contrasted with the requirement, in my view, to be open with public information on the one hand and to be helpful to people on the other hand.

So I think it may be that this might be the subject of a letter the honourable member might want to write to me somewhat later on in the year to find out how we are doing with this as a commitment that I am making.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I will certainly remember to do that in a general sense, but I did ask a specific question of how much money is paid on average, and I understand you may not have the information here–how much money is paid for the agreement with various authors for poems, pieces of literature, for the English language arts exam? The reason I am asking it obviously is, is there a difference between how much you pay for the limited rights that you believe that you have now and the broader rights that would enable it to become part of a public package? I mean, are we looking at a great deal of money? Is it only a small amount? So that is the reason I am asking it.

Mr. McCrae: We do not know if a blanket approval would be a lot more costly or whether it would even be a possibility. The honourable member is simply going to have to allow us a little time to get back to her with this response.

With respect to the cost per test, that is something we can table for the honourable member, and I undertake to do so.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask a couple of things about material the minister has just tabled, and it is for clarification. The minister tabled something on Manitoba's Aboriginal Head Start Programs, and one of the questions I had asked about this in the beginning was the funding of these, because something the minister had said implied that there was provincial funding in it. There is nothing in what the minister has tabled which indicates any kind of funding at all, although it does say that the program consultant is with Health Canada.

So I repeat my question: Is there any Manitoba provincial funding in Manitoba's Aboriginal Head Start Programs, or is it all federal funding?

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Mr. McCrae: Since these are federally funded programs, we do not recall the honourable member asking about the funding part of it. But it is our understanding that these are all federal.

Ms. Friesen: I just wanted to clarify that. The other piece that the minister tabled on Manitoba Schools With Aboriginal Language Instruction, the minister has provided a list of schools which have some aboriginal language instruction. But what I had asked for was how many students were actually taking language instruction. This was one of the three or four major thrusts of the Native Affairs Directorate. My questions were directed at how many students were being affected by this, and it is not possible to tell from the list that the minister has offered here.

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, in order to complete the undertaking that we made for the honourable member, the specific information she is talking about is still being worked on, and it is still to be made available to the honourable member.

Ms. Friesen: I notice at the end that no information has been available for this preparation from the Manitoba Association for Native Languages, and I wondered why that was the case. Is there not a grant from the depart-ment to the Manitoba Association for Native Languages and is there a reporting mechanism within that grant, or is it in another department?

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, I do not think we grant to the Manitoba Association for Native Languages. In any event, even if we did, not all agencies which are the recipients of grant monies from the government are required to provide activity reports–not all. Some are, depending on the nature of the arrangement.

Ms. Friesen: So there is no grant to the Manitoba Association for Native Languages from the Department of Education.

Mr. McCrae: We will check, we are going to check that out, but we do not think there is a grant going to the Association for Native Languages.

Ms. Friesen: I wanted to raise some issues about the English language exams that I believe have been raised with the minister by letter. It is quite a long letter. It was addressed to the previous minister and it–no, sorry, that is an enclosed letter with it. It is addressed to this minister, and it is signed by Deborah Schnitzer of the English language and literature discussion group, which includes members of the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg as well as some teachers, and it attaches the Manitoba Association of Teachers of English letter to a previous minister. This document raises a number of issues, and I wondered if the minister had yet responded to it and whether he had the opportunity to look at some of the specific issues that are enclosed here.

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, we have not to this point responded to that letter. We are analyzing the contents of the letter in preparation to make an appropriate response.

Ms. Friesen: It seemed to me that one of the important issues that was raised by this study or sharing of assumptions and ideas amongst English teachers is that the provincial examination for Senior 4 English does not emphasize the study of literature, primarily poetry, fiction, drama, et cetera. It certainly requires analysis of that, but it is not curriculum based, and it does not enable students across the province to have the common basis of certain authors, historic and contemporary, that they have had in the past, not necessarily in the recent past but certainly at other times. I wondered what the minister's response was to that.

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What you are testing is a standard of writing and a standard of comprehension, written not oral. There is not the particular sense that students have to have a body, a core of work of particular authors in the English language. I am not necessarily speaking of Shakespeare but of the many authors who are being dealt with throughout the Commonwealth, many different kinds of English writing that are increasingly being considered important, and that our students are not necessarily–some may, some may not, but the test is not directing teacher's attention towards that particular changing nature of English and English studies, something which I think would have great benefit, particularly in multicultural classrooms.

Has the minister looked at that? It is obviously a basic issue of dealing with a standards test rather than a curriculum-based test.

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, the English language arts curriculum does not now require schools to study a common body of literature. We want to respect the diversity represented within our schools and therefore use a resource-based learning approach allowing schools to select literature from an approved list suitable for their students. The test is and will be curriculum congruent.

Ms. Friesen: One of the arguments that I found in this particular paper to be most telling is this one, and I want to read it into the record: the study of literature is important for all students whatever their goals are after high school. Literature is a highly valued asset in Manitoba, a crucial element in a culturally rich standard of living that Manitobans cherish. Literature is not only one of the most rewarding expressions of culture; it is also one of the most accessible to those who may be financially disadvantaged. If we de-emphasize or undervalue literary study in our schools, either in the curriculum or in our evaluative practices, we are, in effect, denying students this privilege. It goes on to talk about the study of literature, nourishing cultural awareness, et cetera.

New Directions has made a different choice. I would reject the minister's argument that the study of a body of literature chosen from many sources is one that is necessarily restrictive. I do not think other provinces find that, and I wonder why Manitoba has made what seems to me a relatively narrow approach to the testing of cultural understanding, literary understanding, as well as, the basic skill understanding which is what the tests at the moment are dealing with.

Is the minister prepared to consider a wider approach, a broader approach, to the English language exams that might include not just examination of particular writing and com-prehension skills but would also enable students to deal in their studies, particularly in the Grades 11 and 12 era, when they have a very different cognitive level and are able to debate and to discuss literature across the curriculum and on the basis of their own experience?

Mr. McCrae: Well, I guess without being too cute, I would have to say that I agree with everything the honourable member said except for those things where we disagree. I mean, she makes a lot of points that really make good common sense, and I do not argue with that. However, one of the areas maybe where we disagree is this point she has made about the narrow approach being taken in the tests. It can be argued and is argued that the test is not narrow, as suggested by the honourable member. It includes a variety of works, poems, short stories, articles, letters.

I do not think that what the honourable member said about the test versus her point of view, I do not think those things really do, I do not think they are exclusive one from the other. I do not think New Directions has made a different choice, as the honourable member suggests. There is no doubt in my mind that literature is an extremely important, extremely enjoyable and enriching part of our experience. It certainly forms part of our culture. I do not care how technological we get, there is always going to be lots of room for literature.

The choice in the classroom is left to the teacher. English teachers are people who have education and experience, and one of those things they also have as a result of all that is some judgment. There is no prescribed list that all teachers have to use, and the study of literature is certainly not devalued in any way in the curriculum which is part of New Directions. I think that it is in that area where I disagree. When it comes to the value of literature as part of our learning experience, you cannot place a dollar value on it. But when it comes to the enrichment of the human experience, I do not know, how do you measure that? I do not think it matters. If you think it is important, which I do, then I guess you have your own personal ways of measuring things.

In my personal experience, literature formed an important part of my education experience, and it has been important to me ever since, off and on over the years, mostly on. I have enjoyed the ability to learn from and to enjoy as a pastime literature of various types. It is a required element of the English language arts curriculum. Requiring specific literary texts is not a required element of the curriculum, however. Manitoba's approach to resource-based learning aligns with the approach used within the western provinces and territories. Respecting the diversity of our peoples is central to our approach, and literature would be essential to building that kind of respect for the diversity of our nation and the people in it. We want to facilitate schools in selecting from a range of literature approved so students can study aboriginal literature, the literature of western Canada, Canadian literature, Shakespeare, et cetera. This approach predates New Directions going back to the early '80s.

So I hope that responds to what the honourable member has said. As she spoke, I could not help but think that is just what I believe in, what people I work with believe, but conclusions are sometimes different, the conclusion that we arrive at, but that is not unusual either. I think people are like that. They can look at the same thing and come to a different conclusion.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think the issue that concerns the people who have prepared this for the minister–and I am sure he will recognize it when he comes to prepare his final reply–is not that literature is not there in the curriculum. Of course, it is, but the issue is that it is not being tested in the instrument that the government has devised for testing and that the test inevitably may be undesirable but inevitably it is going to focus the attentions of both teachers and students perhaps to the detriment of the other part of the curriculum. That is the general point I think that this particular group is making. It may be that we will simply have to agree to disagree on that.

I had a couple of quite specific issues that the people raised in this letter, and I do not know whether the minister wants to take them one by one. They are questions of fact I think. Let me start with the first ones. On page 6, they say that students have realized for example that they can avoid the provincial exam by taking summer school. Is that the case? What gives rise to that assertion? Maybe I will list the others so the minister's staff could look at them.

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Still on page 6, Manitoba Education and Training has not published any official information about key exam elements. For example, there is no definition of what constitutes an acceptable editorial or persuasive essay. They have yet to publish as well–and this is written only I think a month ago–a list of the range of forms on which students might be expected to be evaluated. So that is No. 2. Number three, Manitoba Education and Training has never provided teachers with a list of the literary terms a student should be responsible for. They make some points generally about how there can certainly be disputes and different interpretations of literary terminology which students are responsible for in the exam. This is my numbering, by the way, it is not the numbering within the paper. I am pulling out some very specific elements, and it seemed to me that there must be specific answers on.

Finally, they talk about nowhere on the exam paper are students told the level of the question but that they are being marked on a Level I response, at a Level II response, and yet nowhere on the exam paper are students told the level of the question, and they give an example. For example, on the January '99 exam, two questions ostensibly at Level II were considered to be fully and completely answered by direct quotation or straightforward identifications, i.e., Level I answers. They argue that this kind of inconsistency poses problems for students, teachers and evaluators. Those seemed to me very specific issues. Does the minister or the minister's staff here have responses to that?

Mr. McCrae: Normally summer school is for students who have failed their courses and need to attend summer school in order to get a pass.

Ms. Friesen: The minister's word "normally" may be right, but in fact I am pretty sure that there are students who take summer school because "they have not been able to fit X or Y course into their program," or some students who want to get ahead on the next year, or some students in some of the schools I know who have part-time jobs and who are trying essentially to get the Grades 11 and 12 by combining regular school plus summer school. The minister might be right normally, but I do think there are, in many areas of the province, occasions where that is not the normal situation. So could the minister tell me whether those students are in fact avoiding the provincial exam by taking summer school?

Mr. McCrae: Just on the summer school question, I guess you can go through your year, and if you do not make it in a particular course or you need summer school, as the honourable member pointed out, to make up a course, I guess summer school has always been there for those types of purposes. I guess the question that is bothering me a little bit is, I am trying to figure out where the honourable member is taking me with this discussion. Is it that she wants to have more tests? Because I understood that she did not like the tests in the first place.

An Honourable Member: You see, you have made that assumption.

Mr. McCrae: Well, no, I am asking, because I did not make that assumption. I am–

An Honourable Member: You have made that assumption all the way through.

Mr. McCrae: I am curious here.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The minister was attempting to answer a question, I believe, and I would ask the minister to continue with his response.

Mr. McCrae: Thanks. I do not really think the member did anything that bad, actually, Mr. Chairman, but thanks for keeping us on the straight and narrow anyway.

No, I think that with the honourable member's position being not terribly favourable of the provincial exams, she is hardly going to be suggesting that we have them for summer school as well. She can correct me if I am wrong about that.

We think that only a handful of students actually do this on purpose in order to avoid all the trauma or whatever that we have been hearing about.

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We just want to be assured that summer school is not being used in some way that is inappropriate or that is not supported by our wish to achieve equality in a firm way of giving students credit for courses completed. There might be a handful of students that are doing this, but I do not think it should be viewed as a major issue or a major problem. That is as much as I can say about that.

It does not seem very productive to be going and deliberately getting yourself into summer school, having gone through the course of study all winter, simply to avoid an exam. Those people, it may be that they have other problems too. They might be good candidates to be exempted from the exams in the first place, because students can be exempted under certain circumstances.

There was something I should have said also in response. The provincial test accounts for 30 percent of the mark at the Senior 4 level. That means that 70 percent of the student's final standing is determined at the local level. That is where, if the honourable member has concern about literary issues, that can be addressed, if it is felt that the provincial aspect of it does not do a good enough job. It was never put forward to be everything. I think that some people are under that impression, that the provincial exam is everything when really it is not. We do not want to say that it is not a significant part of the requirements to get through school, but I think that when 70 percent of your final mark is determined at home then maybe that is where the latitude, the flexibility is there for issues like the kind the honourable member is raising.

Now, you have to remember too, the honourable member is an educator and is conversant with these things, but I will bet you if she had this debate–and my predecessor was a teacher, and I think one or two of her predecessors were teachers as well, and maybe they are like farmers, I do not know. I am told by some of my farm friends that if you have two farmers you might get three opinions. Well, I do not know if that is true in the teaching profession. I do not even know if it is true in the farming one, but the point I make is that the kinds of things the honourable member is bringing forward may be as she sees it or some of the people that maybe she consults with, that some of them feel that way. There are other opinions, too, and I think the Education department does its best to reflect what is felt to be a good consensus of highly skilled and educated people, and I do not think they have missed the mark.

The honourable member may have reason to argue that point, and she can do that. But I am really not in a very good position to engage in a debate about what percentage should be literary and what percentage should be some other aspect of English language arts education in a given year, so that is why I need a little help from time to time from the people with whom I consult, and it is a good debate to have. I just do not know if I am the one to have it with.

I think the debate has been had in developing the language arts examination. The debate has been had in developing the other tests that are put in front of our children, and the debate is carried on amongst people who are very, very knowledgeable on what is the appropriate thing to be doing. No doubt it is going to be a debate on an annual basis in respect to what kinds of questions ought to be asked in these examinations.

Anyway at Senior 4, the tests count for 30 percent, and the test does not even pretend to examine the students on all aspects of English language arts. We have always said that we want to test for–we want to know about process skills in reading and writing with our students. We want to know, I guess to put it simply: when they come out of Grade 12, can they read and can they write? There was evidence that some students in Manitoba maybe were able to read and write at that level but not at a very high level, not at the level that one might reasonably expect of a high school graduate.

So I would think that our tests should be trying to find out those kinds of basics. Then, with respect to the other 70 percent, that is where the latitude should come in, and the issues raised by the honourable member might well come under that 70 percent. To the extent that they need to be in the 30 percent, I guess then we need to have a debate around this table, but that is why I am fortunate to have people from the department who are a little more know-ledgeable in respect to these matters.

I have a lot of respect for anybody who is an educator because these are important things that we are doing in relation to young people in Manitoba, so they are good discussions to have. But we think it is the provincial department's business to know how the students are doing at these levels in respect to process skills in reading and writing. Beyond that, we need to leave to local school divisions the right to test or to instruct with respect to 70 percent of the effort here that should be done locally. We believe that testing is very important, and our exams and their percentage value support that. Here again it was once proposed that there should be more than 30 percent, and I think the debate went the way it did in recognition that there is a need for there to be flexibility in what we put before the students.

We have produced a support document related to the existing curriculum that provides a range of student writing samples, and it is marked by Manitoba teachers and rated high, medium and low and with rationale for the ratings. I hope that gives the honourable member a little bit of an idea of how I view this, and I do it after some considerable discussion with educators, including the honourable member.

Before I complete my answer about the levels, the question levels about which the honourable member asked, I should go back to the Manitoba Association for Native Languages and correct something I said to the honourable member. This part of the department, the K to 12 part, does not grant money to that agency, but the other part does, the Training side.

We have checked, and the Manitoba Association for Native Languages does indeed not receive a grant from the Education part of the department, but it does receive $73,000 from the Training side, Continuing Education, to assist the agency to organize the delivery of aboriginal language instruction in Winnipeg and other communities. For example, it advises and assists Winnipeg No. 1 Division, the University of Manitoba, Red River College, and continuously updates and compiles standard reference work such as dictionaries, grammar, provides translation services and acts as a clearing house.

So I did not mean to mislead the honourable member. Certainly, this part of the department does not grant money to the agency, but the other part of the department does.

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With respect to these questions, the question the honourable member was asking, saying that students are not told what level their response is supposed to be at, as I understand it, a Level III question is a really hard one. It is harder than a Level I question. It is an evaluative type of question for which a simple answer simply would not do, and, by contrast, a Level I answer calls for a more simple, perhaps short type of response.

Why are students not told what level that question is? I guess what I would think is that you read the question; that is the one thing the teachers taught me, is read the question. Do not get so interested in what level it is. If you read the question and the context in which the question is asked, if you have done your homework and you have done your studying, you will be able to answer that question.

The questions, by the way, are pilot tested with students. This is what I am advised, that if you simply answer the question, then you should not be so concerned about whether it is a Level I, Level II or Level III. If it is a hard question, maybe you can assume a number of things. You can assume that you did not study that part, your teacher did not teach it to you, or you missed school that day, or that it is really a hard one and you better spend some time and do some really good thinking. That is my rather simplistic way of looking at things. But it is not felt that it is necessary to state up front that, watch out, this is a Level III question, for the reasons that I have given. All questions are pilot tested in advance of the administration of the test, and any questions that do not pass muster in the pilot testing stage are not used in the exam.

A little bit more on this point, why do we not define in terms like modes of response or editorial in the exam, and I am advised that the answer here is fairly straightforward. These are terms used in the curricula. It is expected the meaning and the use of the terms would have been taught, and students are, by the way, permitted to us a dictionary or a thesaurus during the writing portion of the exam. I hope that addresses some of the concerns the member was raising.

Ms. Friesen: It deals with most of them, although I have difficulty with the answer the minister gave on the Level I, II, and III. Certainly that is the answer you have given. The one other part was the people writing this said that the Manitoba Education and Training has not published any information about key exam elements, for example. There is no definition what constitutes an acceptable editorial or persuasive essay. Is that the case? Have there not been examples given? Are there not examples provided in the department's response to the teachers and hence presumably to the students the following year?

What I am reading from represents a joint committee including post-secondary students, University of Winnipeg, English Faculty, Manitoba high school teachers, administrators, adult educators and program developers. They began meeting in December 1997, which I think would be after the department decided to move back from the 50 percent allocation of marks for this exam to the 30 percent, so that the minister's answer on local versus central allocation of marks would have been part of the discussion. The minister's answers may not be the ones that apply at this point, but I am simply putting the issues that they have presented. The most general one was the issue of literature versus the skills and the argument that the exam itself may, in fact, be not by design necessarily but may be narrowing the range of things that are being taught. Then the specific questions, of course, dealing with summer school and what information is provided about the nature of the exam.

Just to conclude, does the minister have anything on what kinds of definitions and what examples are offered to teachers and students of what constitutes acceptable editorial or persuasive essays?

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Mr. McCrae: I think it is important to note that when I did all those tablings a little while ago, I tabled a lot more than what I think we talked about. We talked about tabling the tests. I tabled a whole lot of other information, and I did that because I wanted the honourable member to know that a lot of things happen besides putting a test in front of some students and thereby challenging that student and challenging the teacher and all of those negative things that we have been hearing about the whole issue of testing in our schools. Much of the material that I have turned over to the honourable member should help me to answer the questions that she is raising right now. For example, about the examples. There are examples in that material that can be relied on.

With respect to many of the questions the honourable member asked, the answer to those questions is in the curriculum itself. Then there is all the support documents and support resources that are made available to teachers, so that they can teach that curriculum. Examples of student work with scores awarded are also made available to teachers. So I think the key here in this whole discussion is that even though I think we acknowledge in one area or another, there were things we can approve on as we moved into New Directions. We did those things. We did it because it needed to be done and because we wanted teachers to know that we understood what it was that they were going through. It must have been quite a change for teachers operating under the old system to be asked to review and learn about all these new curricula and to look at all the supporting documents. I do not know if everybody did look at all the supporting documents, but I think if they were reviewed, much of the answers to the questions being raised by the honourable member would be answered by doing that.

Definitions are part of the expected goals and objectives of the Senior 4 curriculum. A Senior 4 student upon completion of a Senior 4 credit is expected to know, understand and be able to apply these terms. As I say, we have produced the support document as I referenced earlier. Our exam packages themselves contain previous tests with examples of tests marked and scored.

I get a sense that there is the information that is needed to address in an effective way the whole scenario of New Directions. The information is there. I have heard criticism from some that in some cases we got the supporting information to teachers a little later than they might have liked in order to prepare themselves. Now, maybe that is valid. This is something that I have raised with the department. I think the department had a lot of things to do too, and they were trying to get their work out in a quality way, but I think that that is behind us. I think we are giving the teachers the time they need to adjust to new curricula coming on in the future.

That is an important thing that has been raised. I think we have tried to be responsive to that as a genuine concern. So I suggest, maybe the information I provided to the honourable member, she may have seen much of it already through some other sources. That is quite all right. But I think if it is your job to teach a curriculum and that information is there, a lot of the teachers, probably the majority, will have very diligently been going through all that information. If there is somebody who should be offering some advice about how best to go about getting through all the information–I saw a photograph in one place where the information was taller than the teacher when you added up all the different curricula. So which document do you go to first? That sort of information would, I am sure, be helpful and may well be there and available for the field.

There is a lot of excitement about the curriculum. It is generally felt to be excellent. That is the word that is used most often. I do not hear "very good" or "good." I hear the word "excellent," and there is a fair amount of excitement. As Manitoba's teachers get a little more accustomed to New Directions, I am finding that there is more enthusiasm for New Directions as we move forward, because I think everyone agrees with the basic fundamentals of what we are trying to do. There are exceptions to that of course but, generally speaking, the real people out there in the real world are beginning to embrace New Directions with a little more enthusiasm than I think we experienced at the first.

In this regard, I have to hand it to my predecessor for having the strength to get us through that particular period in the development of New Directions because, in a lot of ways, I feel that I am the beneficiary of some good work that was done before I got here. It was not easy. There were criticisms. I know that I get criticisms too, so my predecessor would not be necessarily surprised about that. I know that any time you try to break some ground or new ground or make an improvement, that means somebody is going to take it that, you know, I have been doing something wrong because you want to change it or you want to make it different. Maybe that is just human, but it certainly never was intended by anybody, my predecessor, myself, the government I represent or anybody in the department, to make some negative comment about members of the teaching profession. That was never the intention whatsoever.

I am sure the teachers, the ones I know, taught me to strive to make things better all the time. That is what progress is all about. We were talking about English language arts a little while ago. My favourite person, one of my favourite, I had a lot of favourite teachers, but one of my favourite ones was an English teacher. I just disagreed with him so profoundly about one or two matters and yet that teacher did so much for me. I just disagreed with his view. I thought English was like my view of mathematics. I thought like mathematics, they tell me there are questions and there are answers. I used to think there were questions and impressions in math, and I had it brought to my attention that, no, that might work in language arts, but it does not work that way in math.

I took my impressions to language arts, and they were not always the same as the way the teacher interpreted them. We had some very good friendly arguments about that. I grew and learned in the process, but I still think I was right on one or two things, even after all these years, but it is not important enough to go back and refight those fights. I just think though, that if all the teachers were 100 percent aware of all of the assists that are available to them in the implementation of these curricula and if they had made use of all of it, there is no doubt they would be busy people. I have no doubt about that. But they would be very comfortable with what is trying to be accomplished. They would be very comfortable, I think, and fulfilled in the conduct of their work because, as I understand, what I have been learning, the curriculum and the accompanying resources work well together if they are used as designed. Again, I think that it can be a very fulfilling experience, but I am not going to deny that it is going to have teachers very busy in order to implement these curricula effectively.

We believe anyone who has seen or taken the time to find out what we make available to our teachers will realize the quality of the tests and the ways that we enable students and their teachers to succeed. We do not just throw them to the wolves. I think we have been accused of that, and I do not think it is fair criticism. I think that, again, it is always so confusing. Are there interests other than the best interests of the children here? Am I naive for asking that question? But that is what strikes me sometimes is that there might be some interests other than the interest simply of doing the best thing for our students. So maybe I am deliberately a little bit naive sometimes, but on that score, I got a sense that there are other forces at work here besides just a genuine altruistic wish to do the right thing for the kids. It is really hard to pin that on any-body because somebody who has an axe to grind with the government can find some way to do it without being seen as having the wrong intentions.

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In any event, coupled with the realization that we do not pretend that our tests are a complete picture on assessment, by no means, and we have tried to make that point over and over, that the tests are not the be-all and the end-all. I am moved to observe that teachers administer tests on a fairly regular basis, some of them. I remember some teachers who do administer tests much more often than others. It is a style or a way of going about the business of finding out whether the lessons are getting through to the students. Teachers make tests of their own performances, their projects, port-folios. In the event, we are not the only show in town, is the point I am trying to make. The provincial Department of Education and Training, in my view, is a very important part of the show, but we are not the only show in town. I do not want anyone to assume that these tests are the complete picture, that there are a number of pillars in New Directions. You have got to remember, we want to see parental involvement, we want to see good-quality curricula, and we want to see tests that show whether or not those curricula are quality, and whether they are getting through.

Local assessment and local ways of knowing about how and what our children have learned are very important, and we have heard that, that teachers will tell you, we know the kids very well, but I think in order to have a consistency, in order to generally raise the overall level of the quality of the education our kids our getting, you need to have some kind of consistency. I guess there are analogies. Analogies are always dangerous, but there are analogies in other professions, and best practices show up in other professions, so the next thing you know, all of the professionals in that particular field are using those best practices. Well, is this not a way for us to bring about the best practices that we can, the best curricula, and the best way of getting them across? Never is it going to be a substitute for the genuine chemistry that happens between a given educator and a given child. I do not know if that will ever change. I hope it never does, because that is really, really important in the educational experience, too, but it is not the whole story, is it? There is another teacher who may or may not agree with me on this, but there he goes. [interjection] That particular teacher agrees.

In any event, I guess what I am not doing a very good job of, but it is to say that there is a lot of support out there that before coming into the department I did not know all that support existed, and now I am learning about it and I am very pleased about it. I hope that the members of the teaching profession are aware of the supports that are available, and make use of those supports as and where appropriate. I do not mean to imply that it is 100 percent perfect, but it is good, and the teachers I have spoken with tell me it is good. There were a few of them said, you know, there was quite a lot in a relatively short period of time, and I am sensitive to that. I can understand that. I get a lot of work sometimes and I simply feel like I am over-whelmed, and it is a little bit of a helpless feeling, especially if you are a professional. No professional wants to feel helpless, and I understand that. So I think that we have tried to make some appropriate responses to concerns like that, and we will keep listening in the process of the ongoing implementation of curricula in Manitoba.

Ms. Friesen: So the answer was that the writers of this document should look at the process writing exemplars, that would be the parts of the material tabled the minister would be referring to.

Could I ask the minister another point that arises from the letter, and that is: what post-secondary representation is there on the test advisory committees? I am including both college and university.

Mr. McCrae: I am asking for the department to provide me with a profile of a given committee membership to give the honourable member a sense of it. I am just getting that compiled now.

Mr. Chairman, because we believe that it is important to have these tests designed by people who have a good understanding of the curriculum, post-secondary representation on that aspect we do not feel is necessary or appropriate. We do want, however, to have post-secondary representation on our steering committees; for example, the English Language Arts Steering Committee, which makes curriculum and assessment recommendations. That is the right place for somebody representing the post-secondary sector.

The Interorganizational Curriculum Advisory Committee, which deals with broader questions of curriculum and assessment, that, too, is the place where there ought to be representation from the post-secondary sector, and there is on that particular committee.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, can the minister tell me who is the post-secondary representation? Well, maybe we should just look at the whole committee rather than singling anybody out. Does the minister have a list of these advisory committees in curriculum for both language arts and mathematics?

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Mr. McCrae: We will table specific lists of the two committees that I have named tomorrow.

Mr. Chairperson: Item 16.2.(c) Assessment and Evaluation $5,149,700–pass; (2) Other Expenditures $5,214,700–pass.

16.2.(d) Program Development (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $3,164,200.

Ms. Friesen: I notice that there is an increase of three personnel here in the Professional/ Technical, and I wonder if the minister could tell me–sorry, four, I think. It goes from 30 staff years to 34. Could the minister tell me how those people are to be employed? Have they been hired yet? Are they transferred from another section of the department?

I understand the minister is going to get a response to the staffing question, and we had agreed at the end of last time that we would look at an earlier question I had raised about Desktop Services. What I had asked for was an update from last year's questions when there were many new appropriations and Estimates in this area. What I was interested in, as I had mentioned last time, is an update on what has happened and how the costing of this new contract has been allocated throughout the department.

Mr. McCrae: Just before we move on to the desktop issues, the honourable member asked about Salaries and Employee Benefits, no? [interjection] Yes, four new staff. Here is what they are doing.

These four staff people, who are new, relate to a new project called Curriculum Information Technology Integration. We want to integrate technology into everything as much as we can. These staff are responsible for infusing our new curricula, beginning with K to 8 English lan-guage arts, math and science, with information technology. That will be an interesting project. I do not know where all of these people get all their skills, but we sure have a lot of skilled people. As the member pointed out earlier today, we do not have enough, but we have a lot more skilled people than I even knew existed. That is the answer to that question.

Ms. Friesen: To follow up on that, I notice that it is listed on page 57 and in the anticipated developments. Is the minister saying that all four are to be devoted to that project in the K to 8 area? Could he give me some sense of whether this is a continuing project? Is it some-thing that is time specific, will be completed in two years? Is it preparing software or is it preparing instructions to teachers on how to integrate curriculum?

Mr. McCrae: If I could answer that in just a little more detail which will break it out a little bit more for the honourable member, this is the Curriculum Information Technology Integration Project.

The Curriculum Information Technology Integration Project, formerly Curriculum Multi-media Integration Project, was initiated to support teachers in their selection and integration of information technology in core curricula as outlined in Technology as a Foundation Skill Area–A Journey Toward Information Technology Literacy, 1998, and to ultimately integrate technology as one of the four foundation skill areas into Manitoba curricula.

Integration of information technology with curriculum provides Manitoba teachers with strategies that help educators achieve the information technology outcomes found on the information technology literacy continuum contained within Toward Information Tech-nology as a foundation skill.

The goals of the Curriculum Information Technology Integration Project are: first, to provide an electronic resource that assists teachers in integrating information technology outcomes with core curricular outcomes in Manitoba curricula and in tracking and reporting integrated outcomes across all grades and subject areas; second, to develop and deliver a professional development implementation process supporting teachers in their integration of information technology; and third, to develop student information technology literacy competencies through their use, management and understanding of information technologies.

Presently, members of the Curriculum Information Technology Integration Project development teams are designing and developing suggestions for instruction and assessment which integrate information tech-nology outcomes found in the information tech-nology literacy continuum with identified core curriculum outcomes in Kindergarten to Grade 4 for English language arts, mathematics and science curricula. These activities will become part of a Curriculum Information Technology Integration Project on-line electronic resource.

I am going to say C/MI, which is short for Curriculum/Multimedia Integration Project. As C/MI, Senior 2 Science 20S, Senior 3 Physics 30S, Senior 3 Chemistry 30S, Senior 4 Chemistry 40S, Senior 3 Biology 30S, Senior 4 Biology 40S, and Senior 4 Physics 40S transitional curriculum documents have been integrated with information technology. This integration involved the identification and field testing of information technology resources and Internet links that were then included in the suggested learning resources. Suggestions for instruction and assessment describe how these learning resources can be used. The Curriculum Information Technology Integration Project will be an ongoing project. We will need to keep the curriculum currently being infused with technology, that is K to 8 science, English language arts, math, currently, and over time, and will need to infuse additional curricula with technology, that is S1 to S4 English language arts, maths and science and Kindergarten to S4 social studies.

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So all of that is to describe what it is that this project is about. I do not know how you could ever say it is not going to be ongoing. I think it is going to be ongoing to keep that as an essential part of our learning, to infuse everything we do as much as appropriate with a technological integration, because that is the way the world is these days.

Ms. Friesen: So, essentially, it is providing the resources, assessing the resources, enabling teachers to find new ways of assessing the use of these resources, but it is not actually the production by the department of a new package, a new piece of software itself that could be distributed elsewhere.

Mr. McCrae: We will produce support tools for teachers in two electronic formats out of this project: on-line support and CD-ROM support in K to 8 English language arts, K to 8 math and K to 8 science. These electronic support tools will provide additional help to teachers with ideas related to the outcomes in these curricula in terms of suggestions for instruction, suggestions for assessment, suggested learning resources like software, for example, on-line support. I mean, can you just imagine what is available to us and imagine how did we manage before we had that in terms of on-line support? It is something that can be changed, added to on an ongoing basis. I think CD-ROM support is also important, but on-line support seems to me to be the most living kind of support that we can make available.

Ms. Friesen: I know that the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux) wants to ask some questions and that is fine, but we had earlier agreed that we would look at the Desktop Services first, and I know that the staffperson has been here for a while. So maybe we could do that and then move to the member for Inkster. [interjection] Well, I keep repeating it, so it is actually taking root.

The issue is–and I am asking for an update as we agreed to at the end of last session yesterday–on the Desktop Services initiative of the government which has required particular outlay on the part of each department and the allocation of those new outlays to different sections of the department. We spent some time on it last year, and I was looking for an overall update. I notice the actual section we are on now increases from $87,500 to $194,000 which is interesting, but I raised the question the first time that it came up in the Estimates but was looking for an overall presentation. So simply an update on what has happened and where has the money been allocated or how has it been?

Mr. McCrae: In November of 1997, the government awarded a five-and-a-half-year contract to EDS Systemhouse for the provision of desktop management services. The Depart-ment of Education and Training was transitioned into this new outsourced environment over fiscal year 1998-99. Here are some facts and figures for the honourable member, and I am going to make a tabling in a few minutes, as well.

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One thousand and fifty work stations were transitioned over an 11-month period, a huge undertaking. In Winnipeg, there were 865 and in the rest of Manitoba there were 185. A total of 2,250 devices were transitioned. These were devices like work stations, printers, monitors, et cetera. Forty-five offices were transitioned, 19 in Winnipeg and 26 in the rest of Manitoba. All departmental employees have access to a work station including a standard office suite, word processing, spreadsheet, et cetera, e-mail and Internet access. Each departmental employee was provided with an opportunity for four days of training in the new environment. The 1999-2000 estimate for the operation of this initiative is $2,798,800 including provision for new staff years. Annual amortization costs on a four-year basis for the new equipment and infrastructure upgrades is $1,537,500. That is some back-ground information for the honourable member.

Now this is a breakdown of what I have just said on a program-by-program basis. I am not going to go through each of these documents. I am going to leave it for the honourable member to do that. This is annual charges by device type, and it talks about the different types of the PCs, the laptops, the monitors, the printers and other equipment, and then there are annual charges by the type of service. The types of services would be Internet services, additional support, e-mail, PDN, telecommunications–that is the other part of what I am tabling here. Then we are going to do desktop unit counts, and that gives you, for example, the Native Education Directorate. It is mixed in with subappropriation 16.1.(c) and there are seven seats there and five of them have PCs, one laptop, four monitors, one printer, for a total number of units of 11 in the Native Education Directorate. You go down the list and it will tell you all about it.

Then the last page of this tabling gives you a list of all office locations in the province of Manitoba at which all of these programs are located. So I am sure it is of assistance to the honourable member; she probably does not have any other questions now with that particular tabling.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, yes, it certainly will take me a while to absorb it. What I am interested in is the principles by which the department has allocated the costs in this area. Is it then on the basis of personnel? You talk about a certain number of desktops within the department and money for training and money for services. When we look, for example, at this line that we are on, School Programs, and it says $194,000, perhaps you could give me an example of how that number has been arrived at and maybe assure me that that is the same principle that is used elsewhere in the department.

Mr. McCrae: The reason for the difference there, as the honourable member has not heard, is that we were dealing with half the fiscal year, and this year we have to deal with the whole year.

Ms. Friesen: And I am assuming that that also takes account of the increase in the number of staff in this area as well. Okay. The department, before this new contract, had, I think, a plan to renew equipment every four years. I think there was a four-year rotation or maybe it was a three-year rotation. I do not remember. Can the minister tell me in the new contract how that rotation is dealt with? Is there a formal plan for rotation and updating of equipment or is it something that is going to be done on an ad hoc basis. I do not mean that in a derogatory sense. I mean it in the sense of as new things become available.

Mr. McCrae: Whenever it is required to undertake a full desktop renewal, every four years, as pointed out, it is amortized over time. So everybody gets it all at once. It is not a question of assigning a certain priority treatment to one program or branch. Everybody is to get the same treatment and all at once. Now, that is not physically possible, but within a reasonable period of time, to make the desktop adjustments, by the time that the four years has elapsed you have paid for it, because it is amortized over that period of time. So basically you are ready to enter into a new four-year contract for equipment and services that are equal throughout the whole government. So it is not a question that anybody is getting a higher priority. They are all getting the same priority.

Ms. Friesen: Just to clarify, when the minister says amortize, does he mean then that the department or the government owns the desktop computers, the actual hardware? Is that owned by the government at that point, at the end of four years?

Mr. McCrae: We do own them. We just amortize the cost over four years. My question is similar to the member's, I think, you know: then what happens?

Ms. Friesen: Again, just for clarification, does that mean that at the end of four years the equipment that the government owns will be available for schools and for other institutions as the equipment has been from the previous round. Of course, I am assuming, I expect we all are, that there will be considerable updates in the equipment that will be advisable.

Mr. McCrae: I think, Mr. Chairman, that we will have to look at that in a similar way to what we have done with our Computers for Schools and Libraries program. If what everybody is telling me is true, the technology that exists today will be certainly either dated or obsolete four years from now. With a little bit of work we can make the equipment that we have suitable for things like schools and libraries, but we are likely going to need to keep this investment going in order to ensure that our government offices can be up to date with respect to what is available out there in order to run an efficient and effective public service.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): I did have a number of questions, and I would ask for the minister to possibly give a little bit of leeway–or members of the committee–given that we do not necessarily have the same opportunities to be notified when we are on a specific line or to ensure that we are on the exact line that we should be. If the minister does feel it is absolutely inappropriate for me to pose the line of questioning that I am going to be posing, he can just advise me of that at the onset.

Mr. McCrae: My only comment is, for the honourable member's convenience, and taking account of the ability of the department, if the honourable member can be flexible too, I certainly can. I know that his questions may not be on the line that we are dealing with, and I do not mind about that, as long as he does not mind waiting a day or so for a detailed response, which we can make available to him. If we have the answer at hand, we will give it to him, but sometimes–it has worked with the honourable member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) and me–if I do not have the answer immediately available, I undertake to make it available.

Mr. Lamoureux: I thank the minister for his comments.

No doubt in education there are many different areas or issues which one can address. For this afternoon, what I wanted to focus in on is an issue that was brought to my attention a number of months ago from a constituent. It was a constituent which I have a deep amount of respect for who brought me into a conversation when I was over at a restaurant in the north end in which we talked about standard exams and how standard exams are in fact administered. What I wanted to do at this point was to go into the administration of standard exams and possibly get some more details so that my constituent's requests of trying to get a better understanding of the situation–we can at least expand on what has taken place to date.

To start off, I realize that there are standard exams. I believe it is 3, 6, 9 and 12.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. Before we proceed with this, could I have the committee's unanimous consent to revert to a section, line 16.2. School Programs (c) Assessment and Evaluation in order for–

An Honourable Member: On the same point of order.

Mr. Chairperson: There is none. Is there unanimous consent of the committee to revert back?

An Honourable Member: I do not see a need to. No.

Mr. McCrae: The reason I raise the point of order is to remind you and the committee that that has been passed. I do not think the future of these Estimates relies on the answers I give to the honourable member for Inkster. He wants to ask some questions. We have passed it. Let us leave it passed, and if we have to give leave, give leave to allow the honourable member to ask his questions. Is that okay?

Mr. Chairperson: That is the process in terms of what we are attempting to do, to allow the honourable member for Inkster to ask the questions, but we do need leave of the committee to revert back in order that the member can ask the questions.

Ms. Friesen: On the same point of order, it seems to me that it is not necessary to revert back. The minister has been very flexible in earlier sections of the department in answering questions that have broad range over the department, today was flexible in answering a department-wide question under a particular section of Program Development. So I would view this as simply asking the minister questions on education that could be done under many lines, and the minister is flexible. Some ministers are; some are not. At the moment, this one is. So it seems to me, why not?

Sorry, I am not putting the point of order very well, but just my impression.

Mr. Chairperson: I thank the honourable minister and the honourable member for Wolseley for their advice with regard to the point of order. My instructions are that this line has already been passed, and accordingly we will need unanimous consent of the committee in order to revert back.

I seek the guidance of the committee in terms of what they want to do, but those are the instructions that have been given.

Mr. Chairperson: The honourable member for Inkster, on the same point of order.

Mr. Lamoureux: Yes, just in order to facilitate the committee, Mr. Chairperson, what about if I were to ask for leave to ask questions of this particular nature as opposed to asking for leave to go back to a particular line, just to ask leave of the committee to continue on this line of questioning at this particular line of the Estimates, if that would help?

Mr. Jack Penner (Emerson): With a smile on my face, Mr. Chairman, on the same point of order, I might ask the question: might it be in order to move a common-sense motion?

I would suspect that if one really perused Hansard and searched very diligently, I think one might find that there were significant amounts of debates and discussion that had taken place over the history of this building that would reflect the essence of the relevance of the Estimates, and need not always–even though lines had been passed–have followed as critically as one might want to the issue at hand. Therefore, I would suggest that, if we really allowed ourselves a bit of diligence in this matter, if we allowed the department to assume its role in giving good sound advice to the minister, and if we would listen very carefully to the questions that are being put by the member opposite, I think we would then realize that it might in fact be useful to continue the debate in the manner that we have and resume a bit of flexibility in the process.

I would suggest that maybe even the Clerk's office might bend a warm ear to the suggestion that we not revert back or not change our mind on the line that had already been passed, assuming as I said before, that we could in fact just hear the question and maybe let the minister answer in his own way the question that had been put. I think then in that manner, we might well accommodate the ongoing orderly discussion I have heard so far in this committee. I think that what this process is all about is if we can get the information from the minister and the department on the operation of Education as a whole.

I think regardless of whether a line has been passed or not is not what we really need to be debating here, but it should be that the information be readily available to the members. I know that there are some members at this table who cannot always be everywhere at the same time, because there are not enough of them to cover all three of the committees. When there are only two members in a given caucus, it is somewhat unreasonable to expect that they would have the ability to be at all the debates at the same time. Therefore, I think there needs to be some diligence shown by the Chairman. So, I would beg that he would make some change of mind, maybe not of heart but of mind, to allow for the debate to continue in the manner that we have without reverting back to the issue.

Now, I would say, though, at the same time that when issues of importance come up during the discussion and the debate within any committee, there should be a significant amount of attention paid to all of us that are members of committee and/or members of caucuses, members of government. When an issue might be heard or dealt with, we might make every effort to be there in order not to cause the Clerk's office concerns about proper procedure. Proper procedure is extremely important in these committees. I think we have seen from time to time when issues have been allowed to get out of hand and proper procedures have not been followed what that can lead to.

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I think the member asking the question in all earnestness was only attempting to gain the kind of information from the minister that would help him determine whether their position as a political party could be maintained in relevance and maybe even in support of the budget. I know they did not vote in support of the budget but might in fact help him change his mind that, in future, they might have also a change of heart and therefore see the benefits of the Education budget as has been set by the minister and the department. Therefore, maybe the need even for an election might be averted. They might pass a resolution. The opposition members might consider passing a resolution or maybe even a bill suggesting that there need not be another election for the next five years and that we can just continue on providing good government, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairperson: I thank all honourable members for their direction and suggestions and advice. I think in order to facilitate, if there is a willingness by the committee, that the honourable member for Inkster–we do need unanimous consent–be allowed to ask any questions with regard to the Estimates pertaining, and we do not necessarily have to revert back, as long as there is unanimous consent of the committee. Is there unanimous consent of the committee? [agreed]

Mr. Lamoureux: Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, and I thank the honourable members of the committee for that. As I indicated, I bring this particular issue up primarily because of a constituent of mine who I met with. I was brought into a conversation in which the very important issue of standard exams and the administration of standards exams was the topic area.

What I wanted to do first before we go into the specifics, a number of questions in regard to the policy of the government. From what I understand, it is 3, 6, 9 and 12, even though from a party level we have a great difficulty with the standards exams at the Grade 3 level. I am going to forgo the discussions I had with my constituent, and that being the government obligates school divisions to conduct standard exams. What I am interested in knowing, when government makes the statement that you as a school division will administer a standard exam, then what obligation does the school division have, and how is that in fact carried out?

Mr. McCrae: Speaking generally, as the honourable member has asked that I do, it is true that the New Directions that came down something over four years ago brought in a system of standards and curricula and a system of testing as well in Levels 3, 6, 9 and 12. The Public Schools Act bestows on the provincial government the right and, we felt, the responsibility to mandate certain things. Through that instrument, the department mandates the various curricula for the various subject areas and also imposes or calls upon school divisions operating under The Public Schools Act to administer the tests, and that administration, the right of that, is in The Public Schools Act.

In addition, the power to count these tests and the results of these tests as a certain percentage of a mark is also within the administrative power or within the power of the provincial government to do. In doing that, it is also incumbent on the government to provide assistance and support to ensure that the administration of these initiatives is carried out in an effective way. That is why the government makes available various supports, including documentary support and money to assist divisions in carrying out this mandate that we have asked them to carry out.

Mr. Lamoureux: So The Public Schools Act is what then gives you the legal authority to go to a school division and say: we want you to administer standard exams. Then there are some resources that follow that mandate in order to allow for the school divisions to administer it. Does the government not set up criteria on how those standard exams would actually be administered?

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, yes, to all of that. The department, having mandated standards tests, provides the leadership in order to get the job done, and that calls for lots of services to be made available to school divisions in the carrying out of the work. That includes pulling committees together to design tests, to design curriculum. It includes the province taking a role in the Western Canadian Protocol group, which consists of the four western provinces and the territories. I guess it is three territories now. Are all three involved?

So we are now at the position in that, with a lot of people's demands over the years for something a little more common across the country, we have gone some distance to achieving that. We do not have all the provinces in Canada in this consortium or this protocol, but we have made significant headway by getting the four western provinces involved. There is progress being made to include other provinces as well because Canadians are a mobile lot, even though the honourable member and I have been fairly stationary for the last number of years. Canadians do tend to take advantage of all of the wonderful regions of our country, but so many of them end up right here in Manitoba or end up returning to Manitoba because of things like this.

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This whole idea of having standards and finding ways to assess our performance is something that appeals to Manitobans. They are happy to be able to say that they live in a province where we now have standards, uniform ones, that can be measured through this testing scenario. Indeed, the province is able to set the test dates, and we do that. We give advance notice of it, to set test specifications and to give detailed direction, to maintain security around tests and that includes confidentiality, which means keeping tests under secure conditions with bundles intact, with cellophane wrappers unopened and all of those sorts of things that you need to do to ensure that those students are given any kind of unfair or inappropriate advantage. Adaptations are certainly permitted, as well, to take account of the various circumstances of various students in the system. Test booklets, directions are given as to how they are to be delivered and to whom. In short, there is a lot of detailed information that has to accompany a testing initiative which is province-wide in its scope and deals with hundreds of thousands, I guess, of students across the province in the various grade levels. So, yes, the province does have the right and the responsibility to administer this program in an effective way, and that includes, as I say, setting of dates and that sort of thing.

Security is an important thing. We do not like to see, would not like to see breaches of security, either intentional or otherwise. That is why it needs to be clearly spelled out and that we need to make appropriate information available. We think we are on top of that situation, but you know if the honourable member's constituent has some information that might help us improve the situation or if there has been some breach that we are not aware of or something like that, I mean, I do not intend to engage in any witch hunts or anything, but it is important to the integrity of whole thing and the fairness for everybody that the rules that are a necessary part of the implementation of this type of program that those rules be obeyed in a uniform way or be observed in a uniform way. So, yes, the province does have the power and in this day and age, I suggest, the responsibility.

I think Manitobans were demanding something along this line in our education system. Post-secondary institutions and em-ployers in the province had identified or helped identify because I think that the department personnel were aware and some of my colleagues were certainly aware, as I was, that we needed to move forward with New Directions in education in order to be responsive, not only responsive, but also to be well positioned to take advantage of changes going on in the global economy in which we all live.

So there is a general answer for the honourable member. If there are specifics, I would be happy to look at that too.

Mr. Lamoureux: Yes, Mr. Chairperson, I do want to get into some of the specifics, but prior to doing that–and I do appreciate the answers thus far–in listening to the minister, I agree that it is critical in terms of the integrity of the administration that there needs to be a sense of fairness. What I was looking for from the minister, he gave in the response when he indicated to the committee that this department is ultimately responsible for things such as test dates, test specification, providing test booklets for information purposes.

The part that I want to focus some attention on is the maintenance of security or protecting those exams. This is the area in which my constituent, who happened to work at a particular facility, raised the issue with me and asked if I would, in fact, bring it up. The question that I would ask, again being somewhat general here, is if there is a breach of security of the exams. The minister made reference to is it Saran Wrap that they wrap the exams in and they are not to be opened?

I take it at some point the exams leave a facility, and I would make the assumption that they are sealed in some way and then they have to be distributed out to the many different schools. When the school receives the document or the boxes full of tests, what are they actually receiving? How do we ensure that the security of those boxes are, in fact, in place between when the school receives the boxes from wherever they come from, I do not know, to the actual administration of those tests to the students the day that the student has to write the exam? Can the minister kind of fill in that gap for me, that gap of time?

Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, indeed the honourable member is right with respect to the maintenance of security. The Department of Education goes to significant lengths to ensure that security is a priority concern, not only of the department but of everyone else involved in the chain right from the time the test is designed by the team involved with that to the printers, the steps that need to be taken by the printers who produce the tests, the way they are wrapped and counted and boxed and all of that. In the chain of people involved in this, from the time it is transmitted from the printers in a wrapped, bundled form to a given school, at the point it arrives at a given school, the principal of that school is responsible for the security of the test materials.

If any of that material from that point should get into the wrong hands, it is pretty obvious what is wrong with that picture. From the point that it arrives at the school, it is the responsibility well pointed out and well stated, well documented, that the principal of that school is required to follow certain protocols or measures to ensure that none of the rules are broken. If there is any incident of breach of security, we require a report about that as a start, from the supervising teacher involved as well as the principal who, at the school level, is the ultimate person responsible. We then might follow up, depending on the report and the details that are provided to us in order to ensure–I think The Public Schools Act bestows on the government the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that these aspects of the testing program are carried out in a way that does no disservice to any student or any person in the whole chain.

When we are dealing with professionals, I think there is a certain wish on the part of the department to rely on the integrity of professional people, that there not be any breach of the rules of security. The rules are there for a good reason. If there is any link along that chain that is weak or has done something wrong, we need to know about that. If there is any evidence of anything like that, we need to have it thoroughly looked into.

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Mr. Lamoureux: The minister said that ultimately when it gets to the school, then it is the principal's responsibility, the exams themselves. Two questions come out of his response. First of all, are there some sort of guidelines that the principal has? For example, can the principal look at the exams in advance? What sort of restrictions are placed on a principal at a particular facility? That is one question. The second one is, the minister made reference that what we rely on is the principal and the supervising teacher to report any breaches in the security measures, protecting the integrity of the final exams. Can he expand in terms of: what does he mean by a report? Is there a written paper that goes with this that every principal or teacher has to fill out saying that it was not a breach? What sort of report has to go back to the department, or do they only send a report if, in fact, there has been a breach?

Mr. McCrae: I understand that there are very, very clear directions accompanying the packages that are wrapped, that they are not to be unwrapped, that the packages then go to the supervising teacher. The supervising teacher is the person who directly administers the test to the students. The tests are to be placed in front of the students unopened. I take it that they are to be opened when the supervising teacher says: All right, begin. At that point, then the tests are opened. They are not to be opened previous to that. If that happened, then it would be appropriate that a report be made to the department about such an incident. Those instructions are very clear for principals throughout Manitoba.

Mr. Lamoureux: What, in law, or what is the Department of Education able to do if in fact then they are made aware of an incident and it is demonstrated that there was a breach? What could happen? What authority does the Depart-ment of Education have to ensure that some sort of disciplinary action is in fact taken if there is a breach of the security?

Mr. McCrae: I will ask for that information to be made available but, before you get to the point where someone has been found to have committed a breach like this, you need to ensure that you are observing some form of process which involves a fair kind of investigation. Given that I do not believe that this is all run by only one agency, i.e., the Department of Education, I do not know how we would manage trying to run the whole system without input from the school divisions, very important input in terms of the ongoing education of our kids.

But, if there is an allegation of a breach, then it is somebody's responsibility to ascertain whether there was a breach or whether it is just an allegation. Therefore, that implies some sort of investigation should be undertaken. In these circumstances, it would be appropriate for that breach to be reported. I think that is called for, for that to happen in the very clear directions. The department then could either conduct an investigation of its own, I assume, or ask that the school division involved or the principal, I suppose, depending on the circumstances–the department could ask that an investigation be conducted and a report made.

Now, if the investigation was conducted by the department, I guess the report could be made to the assistant deputy minister responsible for the school's program division, or if it is a case of the department asking the division to cause an investigation to be engaged in, that a report could be made available to the deputy minister. That would be my understanding.

Now, I do not want to get ahead of myself, but the honourable member is asking about process here. In the case of an allegation, let us say you have gone all the way to the point where the department has conducted an investigation. I guess if there is found to be cause for concern or if an allegation turns out on investigation, prima facie at least, proven to be true, there are sanctions available under The Public Schools Act. A charge of unprofessional conduct could be preferred against a person who has a teacher's certificate, for example.

You know, school divisions, like muni-cipalities, are creatures, are they not, of the provincial government. They exist because of the existence of The Public Schools Act. So in that case, I mean I am talking about very rare circumstances, but, I mean, there are pretty serious sanctions available to the public in cases of breaches of what is essentially The Public Schools Act, when you are found to be in a position where your conduct has been accused of or found to be unprofessional.

So there are significant powers here. We use those powers, hopefully, in very rare cases, because as I have pointed out in the House, it is not my intention to run the affairs of school divisions. But the whole issue of standards and testing and New Directions is a provincial initiative. We want to ensure that the initiative is carried out with integrity, and if there were serious breaches along the way, we would like to get to the bottom of it and have it handled in an appropriate fashion.

Now, upon receipt of the report of an investigation, I guess it depends what is in that report, whether there is any suggestion of wrongdoing or a breach of the rules or unprofessional conduct. Then we go from there. But we have to make sure the process plays itself through and that due process is done. That is a concern, that due process is achieved in all cases. That is why we have, in the criminal courts, long drawn-out trials to ensure that due process is something that we are all entitled to and that we all get.

Mr. Lamoureux: In the past couple of years, and I do not know if the minister will have the specifics on it, the actual numbers, but how common of an occurrence is it where you will get a report from either a teacher or a principal where there has, in fact, been a breach of security of the standard exams?

Mr. McCrae: Since the introduction of New Directions, I am aware of only one allegation of a breach of security in regard to the testing program.

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Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairman, did the department investigate that particular breach, given that in four years we have only had one? Was that something then that was initiated, an investigation from the department?

Mr. McCrae: The allegations about which this one matter is the subject involved a report by a supervising teacher who informed the Department of Education that in the package of booklets which forms the test there was one booklet missing. There was a brief investigation done at that point by the department in relation to the allegation made. As a result of that brief departmental investigation, the department last fall directed the school division involved to conduct an investigation into the allegation raised initially by the supervising teacher.

At this point we have not yet received a report of the investigation by the school division involved. I am advised that the deputy minister will be calling the superintendent of the division involved to inquire about the status of the investigation.

Mr. Lamoureux: From the department's perspective, the disappearance of one booklet not being there or the supervising teacher making note of the disappearance of one testing booklet, would he classify that as a serious violation of security for that particular exam?

Mr. McCrae: Let me just preface my answer by saying that considering the whole environment required to have a testing system that has integrity in it, any alleged breach that has any credibility to it should be taken extremely seriously, and that is I think what we do. It is important for me to add that the supervising teacher in this or in all cases is required to make out a routine report of the way the test went and that it would have been in that reporting scenario that the allegation first arose.

I do not mean to imply, and this is according to information that I have had made available to me as a result of the initial investigation, that the test booklet is missing, because it is known where that is, but I do need at this point to say that we simply need to get the report in from the school division. I do not know why we do not have it yet. The request for it was from last November, and I do believe that it is appropriate that the deputy minister should be calling the superintendent of the division involved to inquire about the status of the division's investigation. If it takes all this long time to conduct the investigation, I guess we need to know: why is it taking so long? We are entitled to ask that. I think that is what the deputy minister should be doing.

Mr. Lamoureux: I suspect that I am familiar with this particular incident, what I was told. It was a while back when the issue was raised with me first. I did find it difficult to see what had taken place as a result of this booklet disappearing for a short time span or whatever happened to the booklet. I do not know, I do not want to claim to know what actually happened to the booklet, but what I can convey to the minister today or this afternoon is that it was actually a very innocent breakfast meeting I was at at Garden City Inn. As I was walking out I was then approached by someone that used to teach at the school that is in question, if we are talking about the same school, and I believe we are, in which I was brought into the conversation.

There are other concerns that were being raised that I think the Department of Education should be at the very least aware of if it is not aware of. From what I understand, there was all sorts of disciplinary action that was taken against the teacher that filed a report. I do not know whether or not those disciplinary actions had anything at all to do with the standard exam. I cannot say. He or she might have been a pathetic teacher. I do not know for what reasons this particular individual had disciplinary actions taken, but in the breakfast meeting that I had–and there were a few other teachers at the same school that were very clear to me in the way that they had portrayed it, is here is an individual that had the courage to report a violation or a breach of security on standard exams which this government has mandated that the teachers administer, and the perception that they had was that the disciplinary action was as a direct result of what had taken place. Now, I did not take a note of all the teachers that were around that particular breakfast table, but I do know one of the teachers, the one that had actually encouraged me to participate in the discussion.

So there are really two issues here. One is the integrity of the administration of our standard exams and the position, and the second one is the position in which we put professionals by having to administer those exams. What happens as a result of administering those exams, this department, I believe, has to take some responsibility. I was told that there was an investigation. I thought that the school division, quite frankly, had made the initial investigation, but the minister indicates that the Department of Education made the initial investigation and then asked the school division to make an investigation.

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A lot of time has lapsed since our hearing as to what actually took place. I do believe, at least I am told, that it has dramatically changed the lives of more than one individual as a result. It is a very difficult issue for me to address because I know a number of the school trustees and I have a great deal of respect for a number of the school trustees, and I know it is a sensitive issue for the school division. I know some of the other individuals who are involved, some of whom I have, and have had in the past, respect for. So it is a very difficult issue that needs to be addressed, and I am addressing it in this fashion because I do believe that this is having an impact not only on individuals but also on the integrity of the way in which we administer standard exams, and because The Public Schools Act is what mandates or allows this government to do what it has done, it has to take responsibility for it.

To that end, a lot of time has lapsed since the school division has not given–or it has not been able to provide a report. I would look to the minister and ask for a commitment from this minister to report back in short course or in an expedited way as to what is the current status of that report. I think that there are a number of individuals who are interested in knowing what actually did take place and to what degree the Department of Education or the school division, whoever, is going to take responsibility for what obviously appears to be a violation of the security, because the department itself has had some feedback on the particular incident to the degree in which they have actually asked the division to look into it.

So there is something there. What we need to do, because of the impact that it has on the integrity of our system, of the administration, and because of the impact it has on real people, Mr. Chairperson, I think that there is a need for the Minister of Education to report back as quickly as possible on this particular issue. If he does not want to bring it back to the committee, because I have been very reluctant to throw names and throw the schools' names and so forth, I would be more than happy to have the discussion in a nonpublic record initially at the very least. I cannot guarantee that I would keep it in complete confidence if I believe that the minister is in fact at fault and should be doing more, but I would definitely let the minister know that that was the case prior to us going into a sort of detailed discussion.

But the big push is that there is an impact, and I think that we need to address the issue. It is an issue that is important not only to me but very important to a constituent who has lobbied me significantly to raise this issue, and that is the reason why I brought it forward today in the fashion that I have. I look forward to having more dialogue with the minister, which could possibly be more detailed dialogue depending on how quickly the minister could give us a report on that investigation.

Mr. McCrae: I certainly understand the sensitive nature of some of the matters raised here by the honourable member, and I also understand the importance of preserving the integrity of a public system in our education system, a public program. I am at a loss, though, because I cannot respond–and the honourable member has been good enough, at this point at least, to leave names and dates out. I do not think we need to leave dates out so much. It involves the testing session back in 1998 this time of the year. So it is a year old now. But I guess, when you have an investigation, one allegation can sometimes lead to another and that one needs to be investigated.

I can understand the school division involved taking appropriate time to do a thorough investigation; however, I do think that it is also appropriate, after the passage of a significant amount of time, that the school division involved who has been asked to conduct an investigation–it could have been done a different way–but asked that an investigation be conducted and here we are seven or eight months later, and we still have not heard anything. It is appropriate, I suggest, that I ask the deputy to inquire as to what is the status, not to get involved in it at this point. Having done a preliminary review, the department advice was that we should ask the school division to conduct an investigation.

I guess it is true to suggest that as the investigation that was being conducted by the department unfolded, more information or allegations came to light. Some information, of course, is in the category of rumour, but again do you just cast everything off as rumour or which allegations do you take seriously and which ones do you say, well, they are just driven by somebody who wants to do somebody else some harm or just wants to be engaged in gossip and rumour. I want to be assured that it is being done right and that it is being done thoroughly, but I have not heard anything at all. So I need to know the answers to those questions, and if there is any problem in that way, in those areas, then we will have to take it from there. Things can be complicated in these matters, but the purview–oh, and then there is always legal implications for people who get involved in allegations of wrongdoing.

Having said all that, I think I want to say to the honourable member that the supervising teacher involved has a duty. The member referred to the courage, and yes, it takes courage sometimes to do your duty, but it is the duty of a supervising teacher to make a report on the conduct of a test administration including perceived irregularities or whatever. So that is how this all came about, but I certainly have sympathy for the teacher who finds him or herself in that kind of position where there is an irregularity or a perceived one or a suggested one or some kind of evidence of one, the allegation of one, who is working in a school environment and has to file a report like that. It puts that person into a very difficult position.

It is like analogous to the honourable member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk) knowing that a colleague, in an extremely hypothetical situation, has done something wrong and the appropriate thing to do would be to do something about it. Well, it is hard. These are difficult, difficult circumstances; on the other hand, if somebody is out there doing wrong, something needs to be done about it.

At this point I appreciate the honourable member raising it. I think it is important to ensure that we have integrity in the administration of this testing program. I am troubled, not that an investigation takes so long, but that I have not heard anything since having asked that an investigation be conducted by the school division in question. It troubles me that I have not had a call or a note saying, you know, we are still working on this. Hang in there. We have come up with various allegations that require further investigation. I have not got that even. So I am asking the deputy minister to follow up on the request that he made last November that an investigation be done. It was November 20 to be exact. Perhaps I could return to the honourable member with information about what the status is, if I am able to share that with him.

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I did not want to leave the impression we have heard nothing because that is not quite correct either. There has been correspondence back and forth between this division involved and the deputy seeking clarification of what it is that the department wanted to have investigated and various questions along the way. But, when I say we have not heard anything, we have not heard anything about actually where they are at with respect to this investigation, if there is any idea if they are getting anywhere near the conclusion of it or anything like that. I do not believe that it is appropriate, having turned an investigation over to an agency, to meddle in the investigation itself. On the other hand, some kind of status report about where we are at would be helpful, and it would not be inappropriate for the deputy minister to contact the division and find out where we are at with that investigation.

I do not know where it goes from there until I know what the results of the investigation are, but we do have at the departmental level, I guess in a preliminary way, we came up with sufficient information to cause us enough concern that we, without dismissing matters out of hand, were asking the division involved to conduct a full investigation into the matters complained of or reported on. We also felt that in fairness to the division, they would be interested in knowing what had been made known to us in terms of allegations being made, accusations being made, and in fairness, that this is what we have heard, so will you find out what it is about, you know, that type of thing. So, once I know anything more, I will report to the honourable member about it.

Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairman, I was actually going to stop, but the minister hit a few key words and those were: it is the teacher's duty. I had made reference to courage, and I really believe that it was in fact a courageous act for anyone in a situation where it could ultimately be to their detriment.

I would like to bring an analogy, if I may. If I work in a factory and I am part of the designers or work as an architect, and I see one of my supervisors doing something that is not proper, then I go to my boss and I say to my boss, look, this is what the supervisor is doing, chances are my boss might give a slap on the wrist to the supervisor for doing that. But then a month later, if I am sweeping the floor, whether that was because I informed the boss, whether it was right for me to be shifted down to sweeping the floors from doing my architectural work or not, if I believe that as a result of what I did, I am now sweeping floors and a number of my peers believe that, what message does that then send to my peers?

I believe at least at the group discussion that I had, that that was a part of the concern. That is part of the reason why, as I say, the timing is relatively important here because it is having an impact on the lives of more than one individual, more than the individual who was directly involved. There are others that are indirectly involved, and that is one of the reasons, again, because I would be wrong in not stipulating that the primary concern that I have is more so as the Department of Education, if you mandate something to a school division because you have the legal authority to do that, you also then have to take the responsibilities of your actions.

That is ultimately what we are asking the Department of Education to do, and that is to take responsibility for what has actually occurred. The best way you do that is you ensure that there is a sense of fairness and that justice ultimately prevails. This is a minister that used to be the Minister of Justice and is somewhat familiar with the idea of natural justice. Again, I do not want to necessarily be saying that there is a ton of corruption and that something has to be done. I think that there is an onus for us to ensure that due diligence is given, the division is provided an opportunity to be able to report properly, but we also have to recognize the harm that has been caused and ensure that we are doing what we can to ensure that it is resolved as quickly as possible.

I very much would appreciate some sort of feedback from the Minister of Education as to what sort of response, more so with respect to the timing. It would be wonderful, for example, if we could continue the discussion at a later time, whether it is in concurrence or whenever, when we know what the report actually says.

On that note, I appreciate the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) providing me the opportunity to ask the questions this afternoon.

Mr. McCrae: I think that, well, I was listening carefully to what the honourable member said, and I do not think we disagree about the meaning of the word "courage." The analogy the honourable member made certainly causes one to think carefully about our duty, and it does indeed call for some courage sometimes when there are implications. When you do your duty, sometimes there are implications that you did not expect. Be that as it may, I do not want to get into details of a matter that is under investigation. The allegations are of significant concern, serious enough concern that an investigation is called for. It is not something you should just brush off. It is not something the department just brushes off, and it is not something the school division should brush off. I assume that by asking the deputy minister various process questions about the inves-tigation, I am assuming today that the division is taking its responsibility seriously.

So, as the honourable member said near the end of his comments, when I know something that I am able to share with him, I will do so because I know that there are people approaching the honourable member with questions and concerns. It is unfortunate that matters from time to time arise, but if you want to run a system with integrity, one that is designed to be of benefit to the public and fair to everyone, then you have to have rules. If there are allegations that someone has broken the rules, then you cannot just brush them off, you cannot just pretend that nothing has happened because, as the honourable has pointed out, sometimes there are implications for people. Sometimes they are very serious ones, and they can be very hurtful indeed. I am not unmindful of that.

You do not have to live in a rural area where everybody knows everybody and everybody talks about everybody else's business. You do not have to be in that kind of neighbourhood to have serious matters of concern being discussed on the street and in the restaurants and that sort of thing. The honourable member for Emerson (Mr. Penner) probably knows that, as does the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pitura) know that too.

I can only assure the honourable member that we are showing sufficient concern, but I would like at the same time to have at least some kind of update as to where we are. Some investigations take long, some of them do not. I guess I need to know a little more about the situation with this particular investigation. Sometimes it is not appropriate to share very much information until an investigation is complete. If that is the case, I will tell the honourable member that and hope that he will understand, if not, then he will say so, which is fair. That is certainly fair.

This is in a part of the city of Winnipeg that the discussions he has had, I assume, revolve around issues related to that particular part of the city of Winnipeg. People there, like everywhere else, are entitled to know that the system that they have working works fairly there as it does everywhere else. If it has not been, if there is any suggestion that it has not been, and if there is any evidence to back up that suggestion, it should be thoroughly investigated. As I stated a little while ago, the potential sanctions, should there have been any irregularities or any improprieties, can be very significant.

The Public Schools Act of Manitoba sets out the scenario, sets out the chain of authority. The Department of Education under the Constitution of Canada is bound to oversee the education of our people. Within that framework, we have school divisions.

Now, in New Brunswick, they have basically got rid of school boards, and there is talk that that is on people's minds here in Manitoba too. Well, I think that school boards are elected people and they have responsibilities. Under the rules of The Public Schools Act, the ultimate responsibility rests with the Department of Education. I intend to carry out my function as minister of that department. So I will be expecting a report in the very near future from the deputy minister on what he has heard from the school division involved in this matter.

Mr. Chairperson: Is there a willingness to call it six o'clock? [agreed] The hour now being 6 p.m., committee rise.