ONTARIO COUNCIL OF REGENTS FOR COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
COLLEGE STANDARDS AND ACCREDITATION COUNCIL
CONTENTS
Wednesday 28 September 1994
Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology / Conseil ontarien
des affaires collégiales
College Standards and Accreditation Council
Pam Derks, chair
Arjun Rana, professional association representative
Bruce McKelvey, business representative
Walter Pitman
Charles Pascal
Bev Marshman
Penny Milton
Aboriginal Education Council
Sylvia Maracle, chair
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
*Chair / Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
*Acting Chair / Président suppléant / Présidente suppléante: Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)
*Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)
*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
*Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)
*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
*Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Cunningham, Dianne (London North/-Nord PC) for Mr McLean
Hansen, Ron (Lincoln ND) for Ms Harrington
Martin, Tony (Sault Ste Marie ND) for Mr Ferguson
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South/-Sud L) for Mr Curling
Murdoch, Bill (Grey-Owen Sound PC) for Mrs Marland
Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC) for Mrs Witmer
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1006 in room 151.
ONTARIO COUNCIL OF REGENTS FOR COLLEGES OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): Good morning. I would like to get this meeting of the standing committee on government agencies under way. We will continue our review of the agency known as the Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.
COLLEGE STANDARDS AND ACCREDITATION COUNCIL
The Chair: This morning's first deputation is the College Standards and Accreditation Council. We welcome to the committee this morning Ms Pam Derks, who is the chair, Mr Bruce McKelvey, the business representative, and Arjun Rana, the professional association representative. Thank you for being before the committee this morning. We do have an hour. How long is your presentation, do you think?
Ms Pam Derks: About 15 or 20 minutes. Is that suitable?
The Chair: What time is remaining we will divide equally between the three caucuses for questions, and we keep track of the time with a stopwatch. Please begin.
Ms Derks: I would like to thank you for the opportunity and for inviting us here this morning to outline to you the operation of CSAC, and not only the accomplishments but the challenges that face us. I know that you have been given a handout prepared by CSAC and I will not read that, but I would like to just highlight some of the portions of that particular document and then all three of us are quite prepared to answer your questions later on.
CSAC started with the initiative in 1988 that extended over two years called Vision 2000: Quality and Opportunity, which was initiated by the government to look at the mandate of CSAC, whether the colleges, after approximately 25 years, were still fulfilling their mandate and whether or not there should be some changes, renewal, reinforcement of the successes that it had and so on.
The Vision 2000 exercise was a very participatory exercise that involved not only internal stakeholders at the colleges but also many external stakeholders that are interested in the educational field. It was supported very strongly by the Council of Presidents, the council of the board of governors, the external business community, the advisory boards within the colleges and the college staff themselves. It addressed issues such as accountability, quality, consistency in program standards, and within the program standards looked at general education and generic skills.
The document that was submitted to the government in 1990 was then acted upon and the CSAC establishment board was struck. The board was tasked with looking at Vision 2000 and addressing the issues of program standards, program review, the whole issue of general education, generic skills and credentials and accreditation. The draft report from the CSAC establishment board was submitted to the college community and to the external community in February 1992.
I'd like to point out that the board was comprised of internal and external stakeholders. There were administrators from within the college system, there were faculty from within the college system, as well as business people, secondary and university participants, and very wide consultation occurred.
The establishment board report that was then the final report submitted to the minister in July 1992 was substantially unchanged from the February report, although there were alterations in the area of general education where there were some modifications made with regard to the requirements that would be made for the colleges.
In February 1993, the CSAC board was established. The minister had sent out a memo to the community, internal and external to the college system, in it established the board and basically reiterated the principles and the intent as articulated in the Vision 2000 report.
I think the one thing that we feel is very strong about the CSAC board is that it is comprised of internal and external stakeholders. We have a 20-member board which is comprised of 10 internal stakeholders, that is, internal to the college system, and 10 external stakeholders. The external stakeholders are community representatives, business -- Bruce is one of those business representatives -- and associations like the one Arjun represents. We have ensured that there is francophone representation at the board as well as native representation.
So we've tried very hard to follow through on the basic premises articulated in Vision 2000 as well as ensuring that we have as many stakeholders represented at the table as possible. We also have eight liaison representatives to liaise with particular sectors of the community that would be of importance to ensure that there's consistency, such as the secondary system, the university system, Ontario Training and Adjustment Board and so on.
The mandate of CSAC is to define credentials, set standards and accredit publicly funded college programs. In a minute I will address some of the successes and where we are in those particular areas. We approve system-wide program standard documents, and that includes vocational learning outcomes, general education learning outcomes and generic skills learning outcomes.
I'll just take a moment to point out that the phrase "learning outcomes" is particularly important and carries with it a very definite direction in what the responsibility of CSAC is. We are looking at what the graduate from the program has in terms of skills, knowledge and abilities. We are not involved in looking at curriculum, at delivery methods, at how the courses are put together, at what mix of programs particular colleges have etc but we are very concerned about consistency with regard to the performance of graduates of similar programs. So the standards relate to that particular area, not the specific curriculum that students will take when they go to a particular college.
Another aspect that we are responsible for is overseeing system-wide program review to ensure that in fact we do have consistency in the performance of the graduates who are leaving the program, and to also take a look at, are there some of the standards that in fact are not appropriate, that are not what we would like to see happening?
The staffing at CSAC: We have a small secretariat, we are currently advertising for an executive director -- as a matter of fact, it closed yesterday -- and we have two support staff and four policy analysts. We have about 11 people seconded from the college system who come in and work on specific tasks. For instance, we have five people right now who are seconded to work on particular program standards documents. That's what their background is, so they bring their expertise and work for a year with CSAC to develop these particular documents and then will return to their colleges.
I think it's quite important to note that with all committees and councils that CSAC has, we are following through with the premise of 50% internal representation and 50% external participation of the committees so that we will always have the balance between college representation and external representation.
In addition to that, we take a look at gender, regional and other issues as they are appropriate. At times, we will ask additional people as liaison to participate for a particular reason on a specific committee because they will have something additional they could bring to that particular discussion.
There are many challenges that we face, and certainly the last year has not been without its challenges and concerns expressed by the college system and trying to set up a brand-new endeavour where you don't have any policies or procedures. You are really breaking new ground within the college system and change is always difficult.
There are so many things happening at once and we're very aware of that, not just for the CSAC perspective. I know that the college system is concerned that there are so many things happening just with CSAC, but there are many other things impacting the system and we've tried very hard to keep that in mind as we progress down implementing our mandate and not requiring that everything be done at once and trying to introduce as much latitude as we can within the mandate we have been given.
So resistance to change is a real challenge and it's something that I don't think any specific individual has all of the answers to, but we're trying very hard to include as many people as we can and be as consultative and collaborative in our initiatives to address some of that resistance.
Achieving consensus is always very difficult, particularly when you're in a value-laden area such as CSAC is addressing. There are many different perspectives on all of the issues that we are involved in, not just between the board and external to the board, but within the board itself.
We've worked very hard at trying to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to have input and to work at coming to a level of consensus that allows us to proceed and get our work done and yet at the same time ensures that people have the opportunity for input and to feel they have had some impact on the decisions that are occurring.
Financial constraints both within CSAC itself, because it has been impacted with all of the cutbacks that the government has experienced as well, but also financial constraints within the college system are a real concern. All of these changes are occurring at a time when there aren't a lot of dollars. I know you've been given information on the change and the funding unit that has occurred over the past five to six years and that has had tremendous impact on the system.
We are not to be involved in implementation, nor does the board want to be involved in implementation. That is the college's responsibility. However, we see that there could be a role in a clearinghouse for information, possibly doing some human resource development in the area of what learning outcomes are, for instance, and that kind of thing. So we are struggling currently with, what can we do to support the system while these changes are occurring and yet not be intrusive in the area of implementation? We do not have the desire to be intrusive in that area at all.
In the past year we have accomplished a fair amount. Yesterday we had our first anniversary, if you like. We had our first official meeting a year ago September. I think it's quite impressive when you see the amount that has been generated from this particular council and the secretariat that supports it. In the general education area, the general education framework and goals have gone out to the system for implementation. There was a very short consultation period prior to those goals going out because we, within our mandate, had a very specific time frame that we had to meet for that particular initiative.
We did introduce some flexibility. If you compare the final document to the original CSAC establishment board document with regard to general education, you will see that we've introduced as much flexibility as we could while still meeting the mandate that we were given by cabinet with regard to what we were to do in this particular area.
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Colleges in fact are implementing general education courses in 82% of their first-year programs. We have not been pursuing this in a very rigid way. We've allowed a latitude and we've asked colleges to let us know where the problems are with regard to implementation, and we're trying to look at different strategies to help colleges address those issues and the problems they are having with regard to that implementation.
The generic skills area: The council has produced a document on generic skills that has gone out to the community for consultation. The consultation feedback should finish by the end of this week. About five months have been given for substantive feedback to this particular document and the generic skills council will then be looking at the document, modifying it and then it will be going back out to the system. We are not constrained by time or dictated to by time with this one. There isn't a specific time line with it, so we are able to do more consultation and we have a little more latitude in this particular area.
The programs standards area, vocational skills: We will be releasing this week two program standards documents. There were about 16 pilot projects initiated during the formative stages, from 1992 to 1994. Those particular documents have come forward and have been worked on. We will be working on five new program cluster areas to develop standards this year and, as I mentioned, we have secondees from the system staffing that particular area.
We have struck a college credentials committee, but we have not yet become involved in that part of our mandate to any great degree. We had decided that the other areas were a high priority to proceed on because of the time frames that were articulated as well as some of the original work that had been done.
In the future we see ourselves, as I mentioned, finalizing some of the documents, continuing working on the new program areas, looking at, how can we interact with the college system to facilitate implementation and at the same time not intrude into local college concerns or purviews, very much a supportive role as opposed to an intrusive role?
In summary, I would like to say that we feel we are very much operating in a manner consistent with Vision 2000, which did have broad support from the system as a whole. The organizational structure of CSAC is such that we have followed very much the intent of Vision 2000.
The board feels very strongly that we should be an independent body. We have not had any substantive interaction with the Council of Regents. We have been allowed to act very independently over the past year, but the perception could be that there is a fair amount of influence in that area, so we feel that being an independent body is important. It would certainly, as will Vision 2000 and the establishment board document indicated, give us a level of impartiality and autonomy with regard to any existing system.
We feel that we have made a significant beginning to fulfil our mandate, that there are not insignificant challenges and issues that have to be dealt with but that what we're doing is very important. We want to ensure that the college system can prosper and can graduate quality graduates and that we can respond to the external community that has in fact reflected a need to have some consistency. So if they're hiring graduates of similar programs from different colleges, there's at least a core of knowledge and skills and abilities that these individuals would exhibit.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Derks. We're starting today with the government members. We are rotating each deputation in turn, starting with a different party. I'd like to point that out. We're keeping a very detailed list, so we're doing it fairly. I had Mr Martin down first.
It's 35 minutes, so we'll divide that equally. How would you suggest we do that?
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): Since it's not a big chunk of time --
The Chair: Twelve minutes each?
Mr Martin: Yes.
I'm glad that you came before us today. Certainly there were a lot of issues raised yesterday around the question of CSAC, where it belonged, funding and all that kind of thing, and there were a number of assertions made by the groups that appeared and certainly by the opposition around that question.
First of all, you have pointed out that CSAC was implemented as a result of the Vision 2000 consultation that was undertaken by the previous Liberal government. I don't think there are any of us around the table here who haven't heard from our constituents that, across the board in education today, we need to have a greater handle on standards everywhere, and certainly that's the role you've been given to implement. Our government felt so strongly about that and the whole package of Vision 2000 recommendations that we've allocated $3 million per year to move that forward, and certainly some of that money is going to yourselves.
The money that you get is well used, it's necessary to do the job and it's not an empire-building exercise by the Council of Regents. I'd like you to respond to that, but I also have another question so that we can move on to my other colleagues here.
The other suggestion yesterday was that -- well, there were two or three things. One was that the Council of Regents was becoming more intrusive than it had been in the past and that wasn't the role that was envisioned for it or that it's evolved into. There was some challenge to that. You have said very clearly that you're trying not to be intrusive but simply to set up a set of standards that would guide and then to sort of monitor that as it goes forward. Is there any sense from the people who are on your board, particularly the secondees from colleges, that in fact that is the case? If not, why not, and if so, what is their thinking on that?
The other question I have for you -- there are three -- is CSAC. There was a suggestion that it should perhaps be moved from the Council of Regents to ACAATO, for example. Would that lessen the budget any? Would that make it a less expensive exercise if you moved it from one organization to another? What would your response to that be in terms of where it should be, given the arm's-length, objective view that it needs to keep of the system? Those are my three questions.
Ms Derks: Okay, I will try. The first question was with regard to the use of the dollars. We had a board meeting yesterday and I think the general feeling was that there wasn't enough, just like everybody else.
The dollars that we have are scrutinized very carefully by the board with regard to the allocation of resources for travel, for staff, for every aspect of the operation. Because we're constituency based, we have tried to ensure that there's regional representation. I represent the north, in Sudbury. We have somebody from Kenora. Travel costs are an issue, and yet we feel at this point in time that it's still very important to meet face to face because of the complexity of the issues we're dealing with. We scrutinize all of that very carefully.
To ensure that we get a very wide cross-section of secondee skills and knowledge we have several secondees who are only working with us two or three days a week. Rather than just pulling in a group of 10 or 11 people full-time, not all of those 10 people are with us full-time. Some of them are one day a week, some of them two days a week. Working with the staff, we've looked very carefully at: What do we need, how much will it cost us and how do we get the full cross-section of the skill base that we need to carry out our mandate?
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When we look at all of the committee structures, for instance, and the program area and so on, we want to have the same kind of representation from across the province inside the college system and outside. We are using teleconferencing more to conduct some of our business, to cut costs, to ensure that we can do as much as we can and address all of our mandate. I would like the other board members to respond as well, but certainly I feel that we are making the most effective use of the dollars that we have. At yesterday's board meeting we again went back and looked at it because of the most recent cut, to say, "All right, where should we take the dollars from, what do we absolutely have to do, how do we spread it as far as we can?"
I'm not sure I'm giving you explicit enough answers, but I think that as chair of the board, I feel quite comfortable in saying that we are managing our dollars very well. I don't know if Bruce or Arjun would like to comment on that.
Mr Arjun Rana: Moneywise, I think we are doing the best we can.
The other question you had asked was to move CSAC from the Council of Regents to ACAATO. I feel that CSAC should be an independent body, which it was set up to be. At the present time it certainly has the membership which is doing that. The impression must always be that it is at arm's length from the college system.
Mr Martin: So it wasn't, in your mind then, a grab by the Council of Regents to sort of build an empire. It was a very logical, well-thought-out decision to put in place this organization that will monitor and develop the standards across the province and to keep it objective.
Ms Derks: Yes, I think so. I think the other aspect to it is that part of the perception, because Richard Johnston has been acting director, is that there's a very close linkage to and influence by, the Council of Regents. From my perspective, that has not occurred. Whether it be a decision to spend money on a specific area, to send a document out to the college system or whatever, we have not had a single initiative questioned by the Council of Regents, let alone turned back or revised. From my perception, there has been virtually no involvement of the Council of Regents.
Within the contract between the Council of Regents and the government, it states that we're to be allowed -- I'm paraphrasing here obviously -- to operate as independently as possible, and we have been allowed to do that, in my perception.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): This question was raised to some degree, but I don't think we've had a full answer, and that is that CSAC would be better situated with ACAATO, the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario. Has either the Council of Governors or the Council of Presidents ever suggested such a thing to you?
Ms Derks: Certainly not to me or to any member of the board that's been brought forward to the board. I should point out that we do have a representative of both of those groups that sit on the board and attend meetings regularly.
Ms Carter: Both the presidents and the governors presented here yesterday and they both brought forward that suggestion, that this is what they would like to see.
Ms Derks: That has not been brought forward at the board level. Yesterday at our meeting -- we were having a planning meeting; we had planned this in June before we even knew that this meeting was occurring -- certainly the board endorsed the concept of an independent body, independent of any other agency with any vested interest within the college system.
Ms Carter: Would it bother you that maybe the influence of the voter was getting diluted and influence was being lost if such a change were to take place?
Ms Derks: I'm putting words into a couple of board members' mouths, so I'm a bit reluctant to do this, but I do know that on another issue that came forward to the board there was a great deal of concern that ACAATO did not represent the faculty interests and that it was a management structure. We didn't discuss that in detail, and I guess I have some difficulty in answering it in any explicit detail.
The one area we did address was the autonomy, to ensure that the integrity and the validity of whatever we do is not perceived to be influenced by vested interests within the system. That was the area of the discussion.
Ms Carter: Yet looking at it from the other point of view, it is true that you have representatives of colleges and college boards on CSAC -- I believe you mentioned that -- and I believe a lot of the people doing the actual nitty-gritty work are secondees from the colleges.
Ms Derks: Actually, I believe on the paper you originally got it said 10. Right now we have 11 secondees because one person who was full-time left and we've got a couple of others replacing that person. So by far in the staffing side, the staff is made up of faculty from the college system.
Ms Carter: So to say that you're an intrusion on the operational authority of the colleges, as was again suggested yesterday by the governors and the presidents, you would feel would not be accurate?
Ms Derks: In one way, that's a bit difficult to answer, in the sense that that's perception. Certainly there is the perception in the college community that the centralization of any of these things is an intrusion. I can't argue with that perception, because that's real.
I think what we're trying to do is to take a look at what's best for the graduates of the programs of the Ontario system, for the businesses in the Ontario community and society as a whole, and the message we've been getting, certainly from the business area and from many of the college people, is that we need some consistency and some standards.
I don't think it's right to say that it's not an intrusion, because that is perception and that probably is real. However, I think there's a real value in what we're doing because there's an objectivity to it, and I think there's a broader issue of who is served best with regard to the students and the society.
Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): Welcome to our committee. I'm glad you recognize that there's a problem, at least perceptually, with respect to the degree of intrusiveness which is being ascribed to your work by the people who work in the colleges.
We heard from the governors yesterday. I don't know, but if we have a group of unpaid volunteers who give of their free time to do work in our colleges and they express a concern -- and we're not talking about a group of people who have a vested interest -- I think we have a special obligation to pay particular attention to what they're telling us. They are very concerned about what they said was a centralization of policy development being taken, a centralization with the Council of Regents. I just want to leave that with you.
Then I want to talk about general education. You met with me and we had, I thought, a good discussion of this issue and I just want to get some of that on the record. I had the opportunity to meet with some technical faculty from Ontario colleges, I spoke at a conference which was held here in Toronto, and they expressed to me some concerns about general education. They, as they put it, had seen the amount of class time available to them to teach their technical programs eroded over the years from 30 hours to 23 hours. With the advent of gen ed, as we call it, general education, that will be further eroded to 20 hours a week.
Their concern was that this is going to detract from the barebones program they were able to offer, given existing constraints, and that the end result would be a student who upon graduation wouldn't have the skills, at least to the degree they otherwise should have, because some of that time had been devoted to general education. I want to allow you an opportunity here today to respond to that.
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Ms Derks: First of all, I'd just indicate that the requirement that went out to the system is that there be the equivalent of three hours a week, or a 45-hour course per semester, on general education. "General education" has been defined fairly broadly with CSAC. We have eight specific goals and three guiding principles. I won't go into detail, but they do allow for a fair amount of latitude in taking existing courses and reforming them into general education.
I can give you a specific example of physics. Physics as it's currently being taught would not fit the general education definition or framework that has been developed by CSAC, but if the course was taken, modified in light of the general principles and guidelines that have been outlined in a contextual basis in helping students to relate it to society, to what's happening today, in fact it could become a general education course.
I use that as an example to indicate that on the surface somebody could make the assumption that you have to take three hours a week out of every semester of every program. There are many creative activities that are being instituted to ensure that in fact that isn't necessarily the case. Some decisions have been made to do that; I'm not disagreeing with that. Sometimes it's being done in some semesters, and different strategies are being utilized in other semesters. To be quite honest, I think people have to read the document very thoroughly and take a look at their program and they will see that in fact there is a lot of latitude, with some redesigning. Some of the teachers are going to have to redesign some of the courses and do them differently, and technology is certainly the most difficult area to do that in.
One of the things we are doing this fall is, the general education council will be visiting all of the colleges to talk to them about the implementation: What are the problems they're having, what are the different strategies and creative activities that are being instituted to implement general education? We will be sharing that with the whole system so that people can take a look at how people are meeting these standards and still keeping intact the vocational quality and credibility of their program area. It's not without its problems and challenges at all, I agree 100%, but I do think it's doable.
I could just mention that my job at the college I'm from is to implement general education. It's not been an easy task on a personal level for me, for various reasons, but one of the things we're looking at is developing for nursing programs, for early childhood education, for the kinds of programs that have a lot of field placement, project-based kinds of activities that will be done when the students are out in the field. We have to be creative and take a look at how we can implement this in such a way that it is really meaningful to the student, we meet the objectives and at the same time respect the vocational needs of that particular program.
Mr McGuinty: You may be aware that there's a lawsuit in Ottawa at Algonquin College. There is a student who is suing the college essentially for breach of contract. The student is alleging: "Look, I gave you x dollars. You said you would provide me with certain skills -- I took a welder's course or a welder's certificate -- and you didn't deliver, so now I'm going to sue you." From that student's perspective -- and I think this is important for all of us to understand -- if I'm going in there and I want to be a welder, how is general education going to help me?
I guess the second question I have as well -- we've got an 82% success rate. Was not some of that achieved, though, by saying: "Look, just call the damned thing gen ed. You've been teaching it. Now we'll call it gen ed. We've got to get this thing through"?
Ms Derks: It could be. We don't have the statistics on that, Dalton, at the moment at all. I guess there are a couple of responses to the student who is suing. The original mandate of the colleges included general education, because although we were career-oriented and vocationally specific, there was always the recognition that part of the role and mandate of the colleges was to prepare someone to become a citizen within their community as well.
General education: The basic thrust of it is to help those individuals be better citizens within their community, to know themselves better, to be able to be more flexible, because all of us read the different news releases and magazines that talk about the number of careers that each person will experience in their lifetime, and certainly general education should be facilitating the movement from career to career. I don't think it's out of context or inconsistent with the general mandate of the college system from day one. Things have changed, yes, but with Vision 2000 there was the broad consultation that went back to, what should the colleges all be about? The decision was that it was still valid today, maybe even more so today.
I think for us part of the challenge is funding for the colleges. For CSAC, we're trying to fulfil our mandate. I think we can certainly support the colleges in saying, yes, it's difficult and we'd all like more hours in our program, but the bottom line is that we've been given the mandate to take a look at what this system should look like with regard to the program standards, and that includes general education.
Mr McGuinty: I was going to bring out some letters that I've received from program advisory committees and technical faculty people, but I have little time remaining. I want to move on to something else.
Learning outcome versus curriculum planning: You have indicated quite clearly that CSAC does not intend to assume a role of telling them how to get from point A to point B. "We'll just tell you what you're supposed to have when you get to point B." Can you expand on that a little bit, please? Again, as I indicated yesterday, governors in particular, and presidents to a lesser extent, are very concerned about this centralization and dictating from a body somewhat removed from the college boards.
Mr Bruce McKelvey: I'd like to speak to that, if I could. I think that learning outcomes are really central to everything that CSAC is doing and I'd just like to add that one of the aspects of the inspection of our work and what's going on is really around changing towards measuring learning outcomes, which, in a simplistic way, I look at as deciding to measure the outputs as opposed to the inputs of the learning or training process. I think that measurement process is a good one, is a correct way to be going towards, but it's very, very difficult. The implications on the system in terms of moving towards learning outcomes are profound. It means that one would have to look across a curriculum in terms of achievement of a learning outcome instead of at a particular course level. That's a very, very big change for anybody who is within the system to deal with, yet I think it is appropriate.
I'd like to just go back to the comment about general education too in a minute. It's the combination of vocational outcomes, general education, generic skills and, I believe, prior learning assessment that we're dealing with here. If there is one area of general education that perhaps one could look at and say, "Gee, it's a little bit odd," it is the only one where there is a time-based element; in other words, you must have this many courses and they must be this long. I must say that I would like to see us not necessarily exchange some of the goals and objectives of general education, but rather get them in sync with the whole concept of learning outcomes. That is where the difficulty, I think, will be within the system, and yet I think that's an appropriate challenge for them to deal with.
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Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): It's good to see you again. You must find yourself in an interesting position. Everybody has decided, and certainly Vision 2000 said, that one of the most important recommendations with regard to problems in the college system -- of course, we always talk about problems in Canada. Why don't we talk about the strengths? But we're here to find solutions to things that are of concern to us. The very first bullet was "a lack of system-wide standards, quality or planning." I don't think anybody is denying the fact that we have to have standards. In fact, the public is crying out for it. In spite of a lot of criticism and what not, I commend you for what you're doing.
The question I think that everybody would have is: Who best should do this, who should have control over it and can it be done within the existing system? I'm not an expert in this, but being heavily involved in education, I sometimes wonder -- it's interesting, because some of you are within the existing system -- I just think we've got a lot of expertise in every college. If we had gone around designing another way of doing it, it probably could have been achieved. But that's not your problem. You were told to do it, and I just want to make that clear.
But there's criticism with regard to how it's being done and the finger does point to CSAC. I think one of the main reasons is, we're here looking at the role of the Council of Regents. A number of years ago, I think it was probably 1986, it was brought to our attention actually -- I can't remember whether it was the Council of Governors, it probably was, or the Council of Presidents, but they referred to Mr Pitman's review -- and he'll be here later on this morning so we can ask him ourselves -- with regard to recommendations as to the role of the Council of Regents and clear delineation as to responsibilities, which we'll have that opportunity to talk to him about.
I think the fact that you are attached to the Council of Regents is a tremendous disadvantage for you. I don't think you should worry about where you're attached. That's not your problem; get the job done. But I think who you're attached to has been a terrific concern and I also feel that, in spite of the questions by the government with regard to empire-building, when you take a look at a base budget of $671,000 four years ago, where you added CSAC and the prior learning assessment -- and actually human resources, which I think is unfair, but it's in there -- it goes from about $1.6 million to $2.7 million at a time when everybody else doesn't have as much money to spend.
The biggest program spender, the projection for yourselves that we have, and it may not be correct, is about $1.2 million next year. People are looking at these kinds of things, especially the colleges themselves, which have been asked to take more students and spend less money, and they're particularly annoyed about more administration. I know that you too would put all your money into the front lines, so we're all on the same side.
Having given you that little analysis of where I think the issues are, I do think the criticism by the presidents yesterday with regard to the time frame for the implementation of the general education was one I'd like to hear from you on, because they were really quite concerned about that. In spite of your numbers today, they're still concerned about it. Just because people filed an idea a few months ago, but they still practically have to implement it in September, maybe it was a bit too soon. Where did this time frame come? Do you really want something implemented that isn't really well done?
Mr McKelvey: Could I speak again, just maybe from the financial side? I am external to the system, so I've got perhaps a little different perspective on it. I do believe that the investment, if you will, is being quite well spent. I'm pleased, for instance, that the volunteers aren't getting honorariums and there aren't moneys being spent that way, and most of the dollars really are either for the secondees or the travel costs. I've got a pretty good critical eye for costs.
The money perhaps could be a little differently spent, from a business perspective. I would like to see perhaps some secondees from business and industry, as well as secondees from within the system. But I don't see any extravagance going on.
The other is the attitude of the Council of Regents. From what I've been able to see over the past year or so, the Council of Regents is in full agreement that the body that we're part of should be more separate from them, and I haven't seen any indication that they're trying to control us, keep us as part of a power play or whatever. They're just sort of saying: "We've been given you for the time being by government. Our expectation and hope is that you will move on and be more independent." Everything that they seem to do reinforces that.
From my perspective as to which way that independence should go, I would say we should move further away from the system, not closer to it. My understanding of ACAATO is that it's closer to the system. If you're really looking at what employers are going to need and if employers are going to have an input into the curriculum that this public monopoly really has on education in that sense, I think you should get it further away, but I don't see that the Council of Regents is being at all obstructive on that. In fact, they are trying to facilitate it. That would be my sense of it.
Mrs Cunningham: No, I would never, ever have suggested obstructive. I think they've got stuck with something too. I would chalk this up to mismanagement by the ministry itself. They haven't taken a look at what the roles and responsibilities of the Council of Regents are and they haven't delineated them out to the extent they ought to have. They've confused matters with the last review. We'll have a chance to ask some questions in that regard. But there is total confusion in the system as to the role of the Council of Regents. I mean, if that's your interpretation, I have no problems with it. I think it should have been straightened out a long time ago.
Just to add more responsibilities to a body that already has enough to do, stick it under the budget and pass over -- I consider it mismanagement on behalf of the ministry and the government, because they should have straightened this out. That, again, is not your concern, but it certainly is mine because I get this from all sectors and so it's my responsibility to raise it as the critic.
Mr McKelvey: Just with regard to your second question about the time frame, I think the one thing that we're all -- we do feel that there is a time push and I guess we're sort of challenged by that and we're trying to deal with it. I think all of us are focusing now. We had a long discussion yesterday about our role as CSAC, how to coordinate these things, because, I have to restate again, the issue is not gen ed as distinct from generic skills as distinct from vocational outcomes as distinct from prior learning assessment.
The real issue is, how do these things comes together? We are going to see, as more, I will call it layers, come forward, perhaps individually, more concern because of the profound nature of the changes that are implied going towards learning outcomes and what that means in terms of delivery of program and evaluation of program. I think you would get agreement. We are working towards, in terms of our capacity, trying to harmonize those four streams, and that's part of what we see as our central job in the upcoming year.
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Mrs Cunningham: Who put this time frame on the general education?
Ms Derks: The time frame originally came from the CSAC board establishment document, referred to as our founding document. It was reiterated in the letter of agreement from cabinet with a very firm idea that it would be implemented. What the general education council did, and then the CSAC board, in taking a look at general education is that instead of requiring that it be implemented for September 1994 for all three years, we changed that and said that it would be implemented for the first year in September 1994, the second year in September 1995 etc, so we moved that on.
The other area of flexibility was that originally mandatory courses could not be designated as general education. They now can be as long as they are within the guiding principles and reflect one or more of the goals of general education, and that has a tremendous impact. That's a great deal of inflexibility. That's one area we're not consistent with Vision 2000 on. We have moved away from that.
The other major change is that we recognize the use of alternative modes of delivery to meet the goals of general education. Initially, the vision was three hours a week. That's a very traditional and, on a personal note, to my way of thinking, outmoded way of looking at education. We're moving much further away from having to have a teacher in front of a student as the only way learning can occur. We said that alternative modes could be utilized to meet those goals as long as, again, they're within the goals and the framework. That then allows a lot more flexibility in meeting those particular objectives, and I go back to what I said earlier with Dalton, that people have to read the document and see that there is a lot of flexibility in there and room for creativity if they wish to pursue it.
As the CSAC board, what we've decided we have to do is gather the information and get it out to the whole system and say: "Look, this is what they're doing here, here and here. Why don't we get some dialogue going back and forth?" We're looking at having a CSAC. I'm not sure if it will be on Internet or a bulletin board, but an electronic interface where people can share information on what they're doing. We don't want to intrude. It would not be us saying, this is what you have to do, but rather facilitating the colleges looking at what are some of the successful initiatives that have occurred. Yes, the time frame was very tight; there is no doubt about that.
Mrs Cunningham: How --
The Chair: I'm sorry.
Mrs Cunningham: I still have two minutes. I watched my second hand. You said we had 12 minutes.
The Chair: Yes, that's right.
Mr McGuinty: The Chair is never wrong.
Mr Martin: Are you challenging the chair?
Mrs Cunningham: No, I'm not going to say the Chair is never wrong, though. Never mind, that's all right.
The Chair: The stopwatch is here.
Mrs Cunningham: That's fine.
The Chair: I'm sorry about that, Mrs Cunningham, but I'm treating everybody exactly the same way.
Mrs Cunningham: I just started today, by the way. The government went last yesterday afternoon.
Mr Martin: So it's going to be that kind of a day.
Mrs Cunningham: It's all right. It's just that they're so interesting. I want to thank you very much for your presentation.
Interjection.
Mrs Cunningham: No, she doesn't make a mistake very often.
The Chair: I'd like to thank the deputation for being here this morning.
WALTER PITMAN
The Chair: Our next deputation that we would like to welcome this morning is Mr Walter Pitman. Good morning, Mr Pitman. Mr Walter Pitman is here as the former chair of the Task Force on Advanced Training. Mr Pitman, there is an hour for your presentation, and we would appreciate you leaving time for the members to ask questions.
Mr Walter Pitman: Absolutely. Thank you very much. I'm here actually as a kind of free flyer. I'm no longer anything. I rather resent being seen as a former anything because I feel as though my future's all behind me, but yesterday I introduced myself as a retired gentleman and I was challenged on the gentleman part, so now I'm just simply calling myself unemployed.
It's delightful to be here. I guess I've been referred to --
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): What have you done with all the hats you've worn over the years?
Mr Pitman: They've all disappeared now. I do want to say that I'm probably seen as a collegephile. I've said on many occasions that I think the development of the community colleges in Ontario is the most important development that's taken place in education in this province in the 20th century, and I still believe that.
Ironically, it's the only part of the educational system that I haven't taught in. I've taught elementary, secondary, I've taught at a university, I've taught in a polytechnic, I've taught in a graduate school, I've taught in distance education, I've tried night school -- I've taught virtually any area you can think of, but I've never taught in a community college, which perhaps may say something about what I have to say this morning.
I'm pleased that you referred to my role as the chair of the Task Force on Advanced Training. However, what I did eight years ago was perhaps even more relevant to what you are dealing with here today. At that time I was asked to say something, give some advice to the minister of the day, who was the Honourable Greg Sorbara, on the governance of the colleges of applied arts and technology. I said a great deal about the governance of the individual colleges, and I'm delighted to say that most of that advice has been followed in one way or another.
At that time, I suggested that the Council of Regents probably should be abandoned. I said that because at that time there had been very recently a province-wide community college strike, and I felt that the Council of Regents and the whole idea of province-wide negotiation was perhaps not as helpful as it might be. I came from an experience at Ryerson where we dealt with our labour-management relations in a single institution, where we've all since paid the price of whatever we couldn't agree on. I felt that that kind of responsibility would benefit the college system.
As well as that, I saw very little happening at the Council of Regents level either in future planning or in giving what one might call broad leadership. I suggested that possibly putting in another advisory board might be more helpful.
As I said in this little document, which I put out on my lap computer, my advice was not taken. It probably is very lucky that it wasn't taken because there's been a major change, I think, in the last few years in the direction of educational response, particularly in regard to two matters.
One is what is happening at the workplace, where you are now moving to corporations that have a demand for much more horizontal kinds of development where virtually everybody in the corporation needs to know a great deal more and be able to express themselves and provide leadership.
Secondly is the whole question of global competition. In fact, we're competing now even for products that are being used by Ontario citizens, competing with every corporation in the world.
I think that has a made a very real difference in what will be needed over the next number of years. This may be a long way away from your feelings about the role of the Council of Regents, but if you'll bear with me for a moment or two, I think perhaps I can find the connections.
I've been impressed by what has happened. I think it's very hard for an individual college to deal with standards and accreditation. I bring that right down to the individual faculty member. If I'm teaching history in Sir Sandford Fleming College, by definition I have to believe that the course I'm giving and the examinations I present and all the activities that take place in my classroom are exactly what's needed by every student in Ontario. How can an individual college do very much in the direction of providing provincial standards and provincial accreditation standards? It's very, very difficult.
Here in fact I think the initiative was taken by the Council of Regents in Vision 2000, which, as I've described, is perhaps the most comprehensive planning process ever initiated in this province. I think a great deal was accomplished by that initiation and a great deal is happening now, as you've just listened to over the last number of minutes.
At the same time, I think Ontario caught up with other provinces and most of the rest of the world in recognizing that prior learning assessment was justice in education. Sitting in a classroom is not necessarily the only way of learning anything; in fact, it may be the way of not learning something. I think prior learning assessment does provide intellectual justice, and Ontario has caught up in that regard.
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The third area with which I'm going to, I'm sure, bore you this morning is the whole area of advanced training. I thought a very good point was made a few moments ago when it was suggested that teachers in the colleges see every single area of employment becoming more and more complex, more demands, and therefore of course the solution is, "Take it out of general education."
The reality is that every profession is in this situation. For example, we're still teaching teachers in one year. If I look back over the last 35 to 40 years that I've been involved in education and I think of what I knew when I left what was then the Ontario College of Education and was sent out to a classroom, and what we now know 40 years later about child development, about cultural diversity, about the whole range of activities that go on in a classroom, one has to be absolutely staggered by how inadequately we train that profession. And I think you could say that now about virtually every profession.
Perhaps the response is not trying to cram more into the two-year program. Perhaps the emphasis is on, how do you add to that program, how do you add the new skills, the new experiences that need to be a part of every professional development? That perhaps has to be done in such a way, as is described here, that we find modes other than simply classroom activity. Perhaps most of all it means that we have to use all different kinds of institutions.
One of the things the Task Force on Advanced Training discovered was that in other countries they are moving increasingly to what we might call a seamless system of education, where people move from various kinds of institutions, from, you might say, distance education and open universities to traditional universities to a college or quite often a polytechnic, back to a university. In other words, you make use of every area of the institution response that that particular jurisdiction has.
Now, we in Ontario have not really developed our vocational response very effectively, compared to other jurisdictions. We don't have a system of polytechnics. If you go to virtually any other industrialized country, you'll find certainly the basic college level, you have the polytechnic level, with a degree level but more vocationally oriented, and of course you have the traditional university, to say nothing of all the other kinds of open colleges, open universities and various other forms.
We in Ontario have some kind of preoccupation with a duality. You're either a college or university, and if you fall outside either of these two areas, God help you: You end up in some morass that is really very difficult to sort out. As I watch the problems of Ryerson, as I've watched the problems of the Ontario College of Art, as I've watched the problems of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, you see the degree to which we are obsessed with this dichotomy, whereas other countries and other jurisdictions are moving across a range and a variety of institutions.
What has this got to do with the Council of Regents? Very briefly, it's this: We desperately need provincial coordination if we're going to be able to provide a workforce that can compete nationwide and internationally. The graduate of Durham College is going to be competing with the graduates of colleges and universities from Germany, from Scandinavia, from Spain, to say nothing of the United States and all the other countries that are now in the western industrialized world and, very soon, from the eastern world as well; that is, what we'll call the former Communist bloc. This is the kind of world which we have to see.
Once again general education comes into focus here. If we're going to have young people who are going to understand that world, then they have to have a broad base of general education that goes along with that vocational education. One might even say that the problems we face in the world today in terms of the deterioration of our environment, of all the directions we've gone since the Second World War, have emerged from an education on the part of scientists and of engineers which is so narrow and so preoccupied with the mechanistic view of the world that we now find that the very basis of our prosperity and our success is undermining, to put it rhetorically, the future of the species.
Not to recognize that, to say nothing of the fact that we're now realizing that maybe young people are not going to spend their whole lives at work, that their joy and their contentment and their role as citizens may very well be related to spending more and more time in education, in recreation, as well as in jobs, one hopes, in the world of the arts and various other areas of human endeavour -- as we see the recession receding, what we realize is that those very companies that are succeeding now are not hiring more people, that our unemployment is not going down substantially or dramatically in the last number of months or even the last couple of years, that in fact we may be dealing with a world in which large numbers of people are not going to be fully employed, that that is going to be the rule and not just what happens when we have a recession or a depression. So general education comes to have that role as well in terms of societal wellbeing.
What does this mean for the Council of Regents? It means that we need, at the provincial level, a higher degree of coordination in certain things, in certain areas. The strength of the college system has been its rooting in the local community. The strength of ACAATO has been its recognition of that and its provision of a role for presidents and governors. But as well as that we need a provincial response which can be worked through a Council of Regents and, through that, I would hope, a connection with our university system. Where other countries are using universities and colleges in a seamless, coordinated way, we are still -- students can't even move from one to the other very effectively. In fact, they can't even move from colleges to colleges, in some cases, or universities to universities effectively, to say nothing of universities to colleges or colleges to universities. It's unbelievable that in 1994 we're still trying to sort that kind of problem out. But once again the influence of prior learning assessment may have its effect on that problem as well.
I would suggest that, somewhere down the line, if there's one thing the education system of this province needs more than anything else it's the involvement of the private sector. That was the one thing we found in virtually every other part of the world we looked at. The degree to which the private sector was involved, both in terms of its own role in workplace education but also its relationship to the educational system, was in a sense cooperating in a way we have never been able to achieve on this continent. Here again, I think it's the continental influence that has had a great deal to do with our response here in Ontario.
I see the Council of Regents as a stepping-stone to one side of this equation. The one side, of course, is important to the local and the community and the rooting in that community, and the other side is the provincial role if we're going to provide an economy, if we're going to provide a graduating force that can face that economy and its international implications.
That's why I would say you have a difficult role in terms of looking at agencies, all agencies. What we suggested as a task force was, yes, another agency, another institute for advanced training, which would involve both the university and the college but also the private sector, as a triumvirate, in terms of what we needed to provide an effective workforce in this province.
That's a roundabout way of arriving at the Council of Regents, but it's certainly the way I arrived at it in terms of my perspective after many years of looking at the colleges and spending a great deal of time in those colleges, even though I never had an opportunity to teach in one.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Pitman. We will be starting with the Liberals.
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Mr McGuinty: Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr Pitman. I wanted to begin with the labour negotiations role played by the Council of Regents. We've had three work stoppages since 1979, I think, and the presidents have argued that the best kind of bargaining is local bargaining, and that a change should be made so that an employers' association is created and that individual colleges at least be able to negotiate some of the issues -- not necessarily all of them, but at least some of them.
There are some very compelling arguments made today with respect to the way we deal with labour issues for our primary and secondary schools. Some people are arguing, "Listen, we should have centralized bargaining, because all we do when we have local bargaining is leap-frog," that the folks in Ottawa say: "Did you see what they got in Toronto? We'll just play one off against the other. They got this in Toronto, we'll get this in Ottawa, then we can work up to Sudbury," and so on and so on. The net effect is that you have everybody getting paid or receiving essentially the same kinds of benefits, notwithstanding that you have local bargaining and different levels of resources available in each of those communities. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that with respect to colleges.
Mr Pitman: I think it's a very compelling argument, and you can also leap backwards too. If a college overcompensates its employees and doesn't have resources for anything else, it will have a deleterious effect on that college.
I've always felt in terms of bargaining that the best bargaining that goes on is what goes on between people who bear the responsibility, who pay the price. For example, if a college can't get its act together, if the management and the bargaining units simply can't get along, they could probably have maybe one strike, but it wouldn't bring the whole province down; it would bring that one college down. And the college would have only one chance, because the second time there'd be no students; in other words, the college would go out of business. So I think there's a certain element of reality in local bargaining.
I put that forward several years ago. I must say I'm surprised that this has come back again from the management, because they were as unimpressed by the argument as was the union at that time. Both felt that to take it back down to local bargaining would not be in their best interests. Maybe there's a change in the climate. Maybe it's time to at least explore this kind of activity.
It's enormously difficult to deal with 23 different kinds of colleges, with different programs. The complexity is just mind-boggling. To try to do it at a provincial level is perhaps impossible to do successfully and make everybody feel they've bought into that settlement.
At the same time, what I've seen over the last two or three years -- maybe it's because I'm farther away from it or something, but I've felt there's been more cooperation between management and the unions than I've seen before. When I did my report eight years ago, they wouldn't even sit down in the same room together. They wouldn't even carry on a conversation with me in any college or in any area of Ontario. I had to meet each one separately, because they wouldn't express themselves in the presence of each other.
I see things happening at ACAATO, which I think is much more responsive. They might not have the same kind of involvement in ACAATO as management, as has been suggested here, but I find more responsiveness to the needs of faculty and support staff than I've seen before. And certainly I think there's a feeling at the Council of Regents that there is a degree of common concern.
Perhaps the winds have changed and perhaps it's not the commanding issue that it was seven or eight years ago when you'd had, as you say, two or three provincial strikes. There hasn't been one for a few years. Perhaps we are making some real progress in this area.
Mr McGuinty: I want to capitalize on some of your experience in the broader system of education and your acquaintance with the experience in other jurisdictions. I think a very compelling argument could be made to the effect that education is vital, it is critical to society, and that it is never in the student's interests to be evicted from the classroom; that when you have to reconcile competing interests -- the interests of teachers, the interests of school boards or college management and the interests of students -- it is in society's interests that the students' interests be given paramountcy. We're not competing against each other now; we're competing against other countries, we're competing internationally. Should our teachers at any particular level, in 1994, be allowed to strike, and should our school boards and our college management people be able to lock teachers out?
Mr Pitman: I think the point is well taken. That's an issue which needs to be resolved. I think the only kind of teacher I would want if I was a student is one who felt that he was being justly treated. In some cases that can only be achieved by work stoppage.
I think the other thing too is that we have to realize that the classroom isn't the only place where young people learn. They have done studies on students who had in fact been in a school or in a school system, a jurisdiction, where there had been a strike. Within a few months, there was no change whatsoever, that is, their education had not been destroyed by not being in a classroom. I think we're overly impressed by the traditional classroom educational system and we don't realize that there are many ways in which young people can learn and could learn.
One of the best things I ever saw in a strike, incidentally, was when parents became interested in their kids' learning. They suddenly decided they were going to take over some of the responsibility that the teachers and the management had obviously shuffled off. It was magic. In that family, suddenly these parents began to realize what happens in the classroom. They looked at the textbooks. They began reading textbooks with them. I think we've never really recognized the importance of the family unit as an educational force -- if we could ever remarshal -- and the community.
We live in a learning community, a learning society, whether we call it that or not. There are libraries everywhere. There's educational television everywhere. There's everything imaginable that young people can learn from. In a sense, one could very well make the case that the school has become less and less important, you might say, as the only form or way in which learning takes place.
I would be rather loathe to suggest that necessarily a strike is an assault on students. As I say, in the long run, I would want both teachers and management to be working together, creating a context for education that's positive.
Mr McGuinty: I thought your comments about a seamless system of education were very well taken. I am and would be very supportive of any efforts to help create an educational environment where we stop compartmentalizing: "I've got my grade 12" or "I've got my OAC, so I've done it." "I'm finished with college" or "I'm finished with university," whatever. Rather, I see it as something which you -- I hate to use the expression, because it's overused, but it is lifelong learning. I don't like buying into that totally, because I think sometimes it loses its value and it becomes seen as something that's purely fashionable. We've had other trends in education over the years. It's something that I hope is not seen as trendy.
I wonder if you could elaborate on that a little bit in terms of the kinds of things that we can do in the province -- I want to allow my colleague Mr Bradley some time to ask a question as well -- in terms of reducing or eliminating some of the seams that are found at present.
Mr Pitman: First, I think perhaps what we need to do is to recognize vocational education as being important. We tend to emphasize and to celebrate academic and scholarly education. You might say workplace education has to be valued, the work of head and hand. I think that's the first stage, the point you've just made. Somehow we've got to end our preoccupation with degrees and certificates and so on.
A few moments ago I think you brought up something when the previous group was here about the problem of trying to cram all that anybody needs to know to do anything into a very short period of time. You see, if we see education as endless, as infinite, as continuing, as lifelong, then that two years doesn't become the end of the whole business.
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It was interesting that the task force spent a lot of time talking about whether we should actually in our report suggest that we get rid of degrees and have a lifelong transcript where you put down everything you've done, whether it's in formal education or whether it's informal education, and make the employer read it to find out whether you have both the experience and the learning which would benefit that particular corporation or operation. That in many ways would be the best of all possible worlds.
We came to the conclusion that it's an international conspiracy, that is, everybody has degrees. In fact, if you go to Great Britain right now, all the polytechnics are now giving university degrees and they're all becoming universities. I spent some time talking to the president of the South West Polytechnic and it's becoming now the University of Plymouth. I said, "Why are you doing this?" He said: "Because we've got to compete in the European union. We've got to compete with all those people over in Europe, so therefore we've got to give university degrees." That's the degree to which we -- our heads are hooked on pieces of paper.
The Chair: One minute.
Mr Bradley: My question relates, and I'll make it succinct, to OTAB, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, and the fact that the people in the community colleges believe to a large extent that the training role has been snatched from the community colleges and given to people outside the community college or, at the very least, their input into training programs is extremely limited now. Would you comment on that?
Mr Pitman: I wish I could, in all honesty, I really know so little about what has happened to OTAB over the last number of months that I think any comment would be probably totally erroneous. I just have not kept up.
In other words, when I was working on this task force, it was sort of just beginning and it hadn't really got itself together and it was still trying to find members to sit on the board and so on. I haven't followed up, so all I could do would be to really extend that the ideas of making this a part of a continuing education process in the province seemed to me to have great merit. But I simply don't have any idea as to what has really gone on.
The Chair: Miss Cunningham.
Mrs Cunningham: Welcome.
Mr Pitman: Thank you very much.
Mrs Cunningham: It's always wonderful to hear you.
Mr Pitman: You're very kind.
Mrs Cunningham: And you always have the same amount of enthusiasm. It's great. You never give up.
I'd like to talk to you about technical training, vocational training, the fact that I have been not been one bit successful in seven years in getting either of the two governments to look at apprenticeship-type training in our secondary schools. I still think young people are sitting around doing things that are unimportant to them and therefore not happy with their education. I think it starts with 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds sometimes because they became so bored and they also feel so unchallenged and useless that it's part of the problem in society today. But we won't talk about it unless you want to.
I want to ask you about a couple of things. Basically, you've been quoted, so I'd like to tell you what people are saying about you.
Mr Pitman: I'm not too sure that'll make me very happy.
Mrs Cunningham: Yes, it's good stuff. The Council of Governors are very concerned about the role of the Council of Regents. They did quite a little background paper and referred to the 1986 Pitman report recommending to the minister some revision of college system governance, and then they describe the amendments where the Council of Regents advisory and executive roles are: advises the minister on long-range policy and planning issues of a system-wide nature, appoints members to college boards, administers collective bargaining on behalf of the boards. Then they said that you had advised a clarity of the roles and they don't feel that clarity has been developed.
I think that's part of the problem and one of the reasons that there is, after listening to the presentations of the last two days, animosity, clear animosity. In spite of the good work that everybody's doing, there's a very difficult working relationship between the Council of Regents -- you say we should be nurturing these bodies and I agree with you, but this committee is looking at problems and how we can solve them. I wondered if you've had an opportunity to look at the current role, and do you really think it is clear, given what we've heard from both the Council of Governors and the Council of Presidents.
Mr Pitman: I think what you're dealing with is a natural tension. That animosity comes out of a natural tension between what could be called a local community role, which you of all people would regard as being very important, and what could be called the provincial role, even a national role, because I think to some extent these are national treasures as well as being community treasures. There's going to be I think a high degree of sorting out.
My sense would be that over the last few years I think it would've been very difficult for the presidents or the governors to do what's being done, to have initiated CSAC. Whether in fact it's gone far enough now as a provincial thrust to put it into the communities, I'm not sure, because the effect of local pressures and local expectations is so great that in fact it's very hard for these institutions to work cooperatively in spite of the work that ACAATO does which I think has been a splendid institution in terms of giving that opportunity to presidents and to governors.
As I say, the part that both of us are concerned about in terms of vocational education means involving the universities as well. That's the area where there's virtually nothing going on. I think I can say over the last year or two maybe something has happened with Con-nect and so on, and something is happening in the whole business of transfer, but for all the time I was -- I think I'm the only person who spent time going to the presidents meetings of the colleges and also to COU.
At Ryerson we were sort of riding two horses at that time. Now it's a university and it's all done in one area, but the fact was I could never get them to sit down together. The last time was when the present Leader of the Opposition, as a minister of the crown, tried to bring the presidents of both institutions together. We had a day at the Park Plaza, but nothing happened from it. This has happened every two or three years. In other words, there is no institutional function; there's no secretariat; there's nothing that makes this happen.
Therefore, there's no way you can bring them in. The provincial role never gets expressed very effectively and therefore the fighting and animosity gets played out in the existing institutions. You have a situation here where the institution response is not sufficient to contain the kinds of pressures of global competition and a changing economy. Therefore, the animosity gets played out in trying to force fit and trying to get things to happen at the provincial level. When, in fact, these were set up 25 years ago -- now I guess it's nearly 30 years ago -- the world was so very different.
In fact, if we were setting them up again now, surely we would set them up as degree-granting institutions so they could grant their own degrees in the vocational area, as opposed to having to go to the university to get the degree to be granted because of the work being done in the college. That's the worse of all possible worlds, surely.
Mrs Cunningham: The greatest support for your statement comes from the students themselves, especially the students who have travelled. If you live in British Columbia you get a degree if you go to a community college.
Mr Pitman: Yes. You go from a CEGEP up to a university for a year in Quebec.
Mrs Cunningham: Exactly. It's a joke. On either side of our province -- I know my own children have friends and they themselves have travelled; they think it's a joke. They think we're a backwater. They can't understand where the leadership is. You can imagine. I really like your words.
The one piece, though, that I'd like to underline is -- I don't think anybody really believes this, but I know where you're coming from -- "If Ontario and Canada are to compete -- and just as important, if citizens of the jurisdictions are going to survive in a world in which lifelong learning may replace lifelong employment as the central activity of a satisfying lifestyle" -- because that's what we really want. It's happening now. There's very little respect for it, but it's happening --
Mr Pitman: Young people are doing it with their feet.
Mrs Cunningham: And middle-aged people are doing it as an alternative lifestyle, a sense of satisfaction. I used to say the most important social welfare program was employment. I still believe that, because people want to make money to be able to support their families. I also think that where that's not possible, then the education is a very close second. But the coordinated activity is essential.
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You say -- and I'm going to go on further here -- "To do this, there will have to be an institutional response."
I would say you haven't gone far enough. I think we need government leadership. It's got to be mandated, "This is it and this is how long you've got to do it." I would go that far if I had the opportunity, because I think both of us have just waited too long for common sense to prevail, and the young people are not going to put up with it. What do you think?
Mr Pitman: I think that was the way the task force came to the conclusion. We had a terrible time dealing with this because we realized -- and this committee perhaps in a sense is the response of the public to more and more agencies being created. We came to the conclusion that there had to be some further agency that would coordinate what's going on at the colleges and the universities and, particularly, an opportunity for the private sector to become involved right at the very centre of the educational system as opposed to simply having to come and argue the case for things being done in colleges and universities. I think that's why we came to the conclusion that there had to be some kind of institutional reaction and response, which might even mean another agency.
Mrs Cunningham: On the issue of agencies, I think it's fine to create another agency as long as you don't maintain the same number. In education alone, when we were looking at the creation of the parent council, in our research we found out that there were over 40 parent advisory committees to the Ministry of Education now; and now we created a parent council. I think that's fine, as long as you take a look at your advisory committees and say: "Who do I still need? What's still useful?"
The public would like that kind of an approach, but people don't do that, because it's tough. Everybody wants to blame somebody else.
Mr Pitman: So you add on.
Mrs Cunningham: You just keep adding on. Every level of government does the same thing: school boards, municipalities, provincial governments, government of Canada. You take a look at the boards and agencies, they pay people who are particularly willing to give of their own time.
We've got a society of experts who are retiring early, who want to be useful in some way and already have government pensions, are not asking for a second salary -- but as long as they're respected, and they should be, because they've got the experience; they've been there. Anyway, we don't take advantage of those kinds of things.
I think there has to be a brand-new mindset of governance, the way we govern. Certainly, what you're recommending here is not new. It's about 25 years old, some of it.
Mr Pitman: I think I quoted it over 25 years ago --
Mrs Cunningham: You did. It's still relevant and it hasn't happened and I don't know why. I know we would have to make it happen if we were the government. That's why I ran, of course, thinking that in opposition if you gave government good recommendations it would follow them. In some instances, they have, but it's awfully slow.
I did want to ask you your opinion. I know that Dalton has already done this, but the collective bargaining, the individual, I had mixed feelings about this because my background is collective bargaining at a school board level, where I did believe in individual bargaining with each school board, and I think it's paid off very well and the track record has been reasonable.
But we have asked for a review of Bill 100. We asked for that about five years ago, because there are pieces of it that I think could be improved upon, and nobody ever wants to do that because it might create some controversy.
I was interested in your point of view because we did have a couple of the college presidents recommend that they would like to see local bargaining.
Mr Pitman: I think it's got such a long history. I was sitting in the House when the bill was put forward that virtually created a provincial employees association.
Mrs Cunningham: Really.
Mr Pitman: I remember it was Charlie MacNaughton who was presenting the bill. I remember yelling across the --
Mrs Cunningham: A Conservative presented the bill?
Mr Pitman: Indeed, he did.
Mrs Cunningham: My goodness. What a long memory some people have.
Mr Pitman: I said: "This is out of any context, this is out of any relationship to collective bargaining and any other area of education. Each university does it's own bargaining, every school board does it's own bargaining. What you are doing is doing this on a provincial basis." I said, "I think you'll live to regret this." Of course, at that time they thought they were setting up what was really a very nice, easy kind of collective bargaining unit that would certainly not be militant.
Well, of course what happened was that this bargaining unit became more and more militant, and rightly so, protecting their members in a very effective fashion.
So I don't know whether you can reverse 25 years of history in this kind of context, because that's exactly where it all began. At least I've never heard it expressed by any collectivity, for instance, that they want to do this; maybe one or two of them. In fact, I remember when I suggested it I got a round lecture by one or two of them who said that they didn't want to spend all of their time carrying on negotiations in their colleges; they had other things to do with their time.
Well, that's one view, and of course I think at that time the union representing the faculty certainly indicated that it certainly didn't want to have to try and man -- or human, I should say -- 23 different units all across the province. So with reduced resources, it becomes more and more of a problem.
Mrs Cunningham: Yes. I don't think there's an easy answer to it. I do have to say, though, in defence that they also set up collective bargaining for individual school boards almost at the same time, so they maybe were trying both approaches in Ontario. But they did set up the collective bargaining process. I like to say that every once in a while with this government, because it thinks it has a monopoly on these kinds of things. But anyway, that's beside the point.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mrs Cunningham: Is that time up?
The Chair: I'm afraid it is.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): Just on what Ms Cunningham was saying about the collective bargaining, because I remember asking the question, they didn't want total collective bargaining at the local, just their local issues.
Mr Pitman: Some parts of it, yes.
Mr Waters: They wanted to pick and choose what they wanted to negotiate and what should be done provincially.
Mrs Cunningham: Who was "they"?
Mr Waters: That was yesterday afternoon. It would be the Council of Presidents.
Mrs Cunningham: Oh, yes.
Mr Waters: They were very clear that they did not want all of it, they just wanted a little bit of it.
But I couldn't agree with you more, Ms Cunningham, on apprenticeships. I really hook apprenticeships to OTAB. I can remember a lot of discussion in our caucus as we were coming forward with OTAB. I was one of those people who stood up and said: "I don't want this to be run by the colleges and the universities, because we will not see apprenticeships if it is. The history of those two groups is non-apprenticeship."
I find it very difficult that in our society here in North America we don't value those skills, yet all of our employer groups certainly do, because they bring them in from Europe on a monthly and weekly basis even during this recession. I came out of industry. I can remember the day when my plant manager found out that his machinist made as much as he did the year before. He was somewhat shocked, and in any other society they are.
So I would support apprenticeship programs and co-op programs and indeed OTAB very much. I'm hopeful because the user group, the industries, the people who want the education or the training through OTAB, the employer groups, have more say on it than the formal education groups, and I think that that's important for a change. I'd like your comment, how you feel about it.
Mr Pitman: Well, I agree with both your comments on apprenticeship and involvement of young people. I think the point you made was that many young people at that age are not really learning very effectively. It's even been suggested that possibly what they should do is send them to cooperative programs run by the colleges and the private sector. But I think it's very difficult for many young people to feel academically motivated at that age.
It seems to me that the one economy -- and you have to be very careful looking at international education and try to pick and choose things that you want to include -- that's closest to what we need in Ontario is Germany. For a long time we followed on the Japanese, but I thought, "Why in heaven would we ever think that we could incorporate, from a culture which is so different, an educational system into Ontario that would be appropriate to Japan?" It just seemed insane. But I think the German system is far more relevant to what we're trying to achieve.
Someone said that young people at 14 and 15 are hormonally challenged. I think many of them are very hormonally challenged, and they need to be out doing things in the workplace. But at the same time, they need to be connected to the ongoing educational system. That seems to be the important thing about apprenticeship and about cooperative education.
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Mr Waters: The other thing we talked very much about through this was the prior learning assessment. I heard Mr McGuinty and Ms Cunningham both talk about lifelong learning. In fact, to me, being in this room today with you I'm learning, and I think we all are. Indeed, I think very much the mood of colleges to prior learning assessment is that learning, being out there in society and being an active part of society, whether it be your personal hours that you commit to your community or your interests or indeed your work, the interaction becomes so vital to assessing the skills and abilities of that person when they come to formal education. I'm wanting your comment.
Mr Pitman: Absolutely. I think we've got to stop using the word "education" so much and talk about learning, because education seems to be tied to classrooms and certificates and the formal, you might say, structures that really are now -- I mean, these structures were developed in an agricultural society; they were developed mostly in the 19th century. This is why the colleges are so important; they come in the 20th century. It took a long time to get them in Ontario, because they existed in other places decades before we even got into this area, and we never did get into the area, as I say, of a higher level.
What really puts me off is that young people in Ontario graduate from these colleges, and years ago at Ryerson, and have to go to the United States to get a degree and then come back to Ontario. Now, for Ontario to call itself an industrial society and sort of the centre of Canadian industrial life and to have that as the way in which you finish off your education, it seems to me just unbelievable.
Mr Waters: Two very quick questions, and then I'm going to turn it over to two of my colleagues who also want on the list. I think Mr Tibbits yesterday said that he felt the board of governors, there should be more local -- instead of looking, as CSAC is, at the provincial or the world, he was saying, "No, no, the colleges should be on a more local needs basis."
In other words, if industry A dominates your community, the college should be definitely training people for that industry. That's the opinion that I got out of what he said. He wanted to do the training locally. I have difficulty with that.
Mr Pitman: I have difficulty with it too, because I think that if you take a look at where the graduates go -- here again you're harking back to 25 years ago. When they were set up, they were set up as community colleges, and the early expectation was, we don't have residences; they're all going to be kids in that community. They were going to come from the high schools in that community, and they would in a sense be dealt with by the advisory committees and people from the industries in that community. Wonderful. That's back in the 1970s.
We're now in the 1990s, and we're moving very quickly into a global situation, where these kids are going to be working in Europe, they're going to be working on the Pacific Rim, they're going to be working all over the world. I think it's important to have a local presence. I wouldn't suggest that we simply make it that they just simply all have people from every other part of the world than the local community, but I think there's got to be a balance, and it's maintaining that balance that's going to be the success of the colleges and the Ontario economy too.
Mr Waters: On that same train -- because I didn't like the idea of it being brought down to just the locals -- we also heard from the presidents and the governors yesterday that CSAC should be under ACAATO. First off, yesterday, the presidents agreed that they're not part of the management structure, that they are indeed a professional organization, the same as the Canadian Manufacturers' Association is to that segment of our lifestyle. Do you support that type of group running CSAC or do you think that it should stay under the Council of Regents?
Mr Pitman: I'm not sure that I'd want to, in a sense, just sort of manipulate around CSAC. Now that CSAC is established and the process is now in place and everything seems to be moving ahead, my preference would be to keep it, in a sense, arm's length both from the Council of Regents as it is and from ACAATO and from government, and find ways to get more involvement of CSAC with the universities and especially with private industry. Whatever process would allow that, it seems to me, would be the one that I would certainly be supportive of.
Mr Waters: Thank you, Mr Pitman. It was a great pleasure.
Ms Carter: I really want to welcome you here, Walter --
Mr Pitman: Thank you very much indeed.
Ms Carter: -- because although you haven't resided in Peterborough for quite some time now, we still feel that you're one of ours.
Mr Pitman: Well, I was there last night.
Ms Carter: Yes, and I'm sorry I couldn't be there. I certainly welcome your vision of coordination. It is inspiring to have a presentation that does have a wider view and more philosophical content. It seems to me that we should be able to combine general academic and vocational skills in one person, that there shouldn't be the boundaries that you either come into one category or you don't.
Apparently, these days even employers are saying that vocational education is not just what they need, that they need flexibility, they need people who have those wider skills that allow them to move from one job to another and to be helpful, if you like, in a wider way. I understand also that the MBA is not considered quite so highly as it used to be. So I wonder what you have to say about that.
Mr Pitman: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I think the importance of general education can't be overstated. Several years ago, 25 years to be exact, a little book was written called Small is Beautiful. The man who wrote that book, and in a sense set the stage for the sustainable development concept which the Brundtland report came forward with, said that we have to have technology with a human face. We've had too much technology which has been based simply on numbers and on data and on a very, very mechanistic view of humanity. I think we need no more of those kinds of people.
Ms Carter: What about the elements in society that work against education? Nothing ever seems to get said about that. But as somebody who's raised children and now has grandchildren coming up, I see so many problems, you know, content of TV. Computers work both ways. They can be positive; they can be very negative too, and they can keep kids away from other things. Don't we need to consider those things as well?
Mr Pitman: Yes, we certainly do, and I don't know how you get at that. There's so much in our society which is, you might say, detrimental to human development. Television, I guess, is a good example that you've just mentioned. We virtually handed that whole process over to the marketplace. It is in the hands of the marketplace, and what we receive on our television sets is very often -- thank heaven we're moving into a multichannelled society where now at least there will be more options, as opposed to American sitcoms. But the fact still is that most people spend their time watching American sitcoms. So I think that's one of the devastating aspects of our society which is quite depressing on occasion.
Ms Carter: So we're trying to spend money on doing the positive things and we're being undermined all the time.
Just one very nitty-gritty question. We did hear yesterday from the presidents and the governors groups that came in that the College Standards and Accreditation Council belongs to ACAATO; that that's where it should be, rather than with the Council of Regents.
Mr Pitman: I'm not sure whether ACAATO wants it, to begin with. As I said previously, I think that may well be now that it's in place. Let's take this point of view: If the Council of Regents and Vision 2000 had not taken place, we would not have CSAC. In other words, it did not arise from ACAATO from the beginning.
As I say, I see very positive things happening in ACAATO, but I think in many ways it's very difficult for the leaders of 23 very different, locally based and very dynamic institutions to bring about that kind of change which means that in fact as a history teacher in Sir Sandford Fleming I'm bloody well not going to be able to teach the Canadian Constitution; I've got to teach something else. Now, that's a terrible example, but the point is that I think those are the things that happen in the staff rooms of the colleges which don't get talked about perhaps in a committee like this. But it's important because that's what in fact a real teacher is: It's someone who cares so deeply and so passionately about what they're doing that everything else that's being done really has to be second rate.
The Chair: We are out of time. We appreciate very much your appearance before the committee, Mr Pitman.
Mr Pitman: I enjoyed it. Thank you very much. It's good to see you all again.
The Chair: The committee stands recessed until 2 o'clock this afternoon.
The committee recessed from 1201 to 1408.
The Acting Chair (Mr Robert W. Runciman): At the outset, I'm going to recognize the member from Grey.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): I have some questions I'd like to table.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much.
CHARLES PASCAL
The Acting Chair: Our first witness this afternoon is Charles Pascal, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, but here because of his past experiences in respect to the Council of Regents. Mr Pascal, welcome to the committee. We appreciate you taking the time to be here. We've set aside about half an hour for your comments and hopefully some questions as well.
Dr Charles Pascal: I'm very delighted to be here. I come here with very little hair but, as you've implied, several hats: as a former college president and chair of the Council of Regents for a number of years and more recently as Deputy Minister of Education and Training.
I'm also pleased to be here simply because when Mr Davis introduced the legislation for the Ontario college system on May 21, 1965, he introduced along with it one of the great success stories of education anywhere in the world. I think all members would agree with the tremendous legacy of the now 25 colleges of applied arts and technology in Ontario.
Because you have, I am sure, many issues of concern to you and because Minister Cooke tabled an answer to the questions posed by the clerk a few months ago, I would be very pleased to move directly into questions rather than taking up time for me to give my views of the issues of today or the issues as they played out when I was chair of the Council of Regents. I would just as soon make what is a very small amount of time fully available to members, if that's acceptable.
The Acting Chair: Fine. Any member ready to proceed at this point?
Mr Waters: I'm more than willing. Mr Pascal, it's nice to see you here. I know you are very busy.
Yesterday it was brought forward by some of the opposition members about the problems at Conestoga, I guess, where indeed the present Council of Regents did not necessarily take the pick of the college for the board of governors. Earlier in the week, when we had the Council of Regents here, someone from that group, and I can't remember exactly who, said this is not the first that had happened. Looking back at your history, on your time on the Council of Regents, did you ever have that same problem come forward, and how did you handle it?
Dr Pascal: First of all, the short answer is yes. I experienced that as a former president and also as an ex officio member of that board in Peterborough, Ontario, Lindsay, Haliburton and Cobourg, Sir Sandford Fleming.
The Council of Regents has the executive authority to appoint members to the board. Out of regulatory convention over the years there has developed an implicit process of partnership in terms of how that process should work. In my day -- and I sound older than my recently achieved 50 years -- when I was chair of the Council of Regents, I think our track record was that about 90% to 92% of all the names submitted by local boards were accepted by the council, but there were exceptions made.
When I reported to Lyn McLeod, we developed in that time a local protocol so that boards would provide a profile of their communities. In the context of vacancies, they would match the nominees with the profile and they would also submit the consultative process they used. I think that's pretty much still in place. But as chair of the Council of Regents for about five years, there were instances where the match between what was expected in terms of process -- the nominees submitted and the nominees chosen were just so out of sync that on occasion the council would make decisions that were contrary to the nominations.
But every effort was made, and I have to assume that's still the case, to ensure that open communications were there such that there never was a surprise. For example, I recall many instances where there was a difference of opinion, but we established in around 1987 or 1988 the concept of a college liaison team where individual members of the council would become kind of experts in the local affairs and issues of a particular college or set of colleges in order to try to resolve all differences. However, on occasion major differences would arise and the council would use its executive authority.
The last thing I did as chair of the council was to give information to a particular college that none of its nominees was acceptable. This was after a period of about five or six years of attempted resolution to issues of making sure the nominees matched the local community. After every attempt was made to try to ensure the kind of independence, the kind of community-based input that was required and the kind of representation that should be there for a college of applied arts and technology, in fact we did impose names that came from other sources than the college.
That was the only time during my tenure where the council finally, out of basically a commitment to the people of the region of this particular college, reached for a higher good and decided to exercise its rightful executive authority, obviously seen by that local college as belligerence or abuse of power. Quite the contrary: In my own experience, that particular case study was the exception that proves the rule.
I haven't paid a lot of direct attention to the issues arising from Conestoga, but the kind of tension that comes out of the need for independence, community-based representation, sometimes will generate problems, and every effort should be made by all parties to resolve this without conducting campaigns apart from tables where reasonable people should be able to come up with a solution. When I was a college president, these issues arose from time to time, but not very often.
Mr Waters: The hearings so far seem to be dominated by CSAC. You have some expertise that very, very few people have, because it's my understanding that you actually quarterbacked Vision 2000, out of which CSAC came. There's been a lot of discussion by the governors and the presidents that it should go to ACAATO as the management group that CSAC reports to. Personally, I have some problems with that and I'd like your opinion on that. Also, while we're on CSAC, if you were to do a value-for-money audit, which I'm not suggesting we do, but if you were to look at it, are we getting good value for our money from CSAC?
Dr Pascal: The answer to your last question is that I don't know. I assume we will, that the concept is alive and well and that in fact we will be able to answer that question in a very thorough and positive fashion, but at this point in time we are looking at the maturing of an idea which was put together just a few years ago.
Just for the record, you made reference to me as quarterback. My role, as chair of the steering committee, was basically to turn on the lights and provide some resources. This was a bit of an experiment in power-sharing and partnership policy development that involved probably about 3,500 people who got to yes on this concept called CSAC.
CSAC, as you know, if it has dominated your discussions in the last couple of days -- I just came in from Charlottetown so I've not listened in on your conversations. CSAC is a really important concept in the evolution of the colleges, a very strong outcomes, standards, accreditation, orientation to quality, which was approved of by literally hundreds and thousands of the partners. It was the first time that the management of the system and the union of the system agreed on anything major and substantive other than to agree to stay away from common tables unless they had to do with collective bargaining.
Putting CSAC over with the Council of Regents is kind of arbitrary. CSAC needs to be independent of the system, but it also has to have all the partners, both within the system and outside, including business and industry and labour. As such, because the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act wasn't robust enough to have a placeholder where CSAC could be put in with the ministry at that time, it was decided that it could have a kind of independent -- I almost said sovereignty-associated -- relationship with the Council of Regents as a place to put it. If the MCU Act was robust enough, it could have gone in that direction.
To place it with ACAATO? I suppose there's lots of possibilities when one says it's arbitrary, but ACAATO does not exist legislatively, in regulation. It is a very good and important professional organization that has lots of useful things to do, especially when it comes to human resource issues related to collective bargaining. The council learned years ago to involve more actively the front-line board chairs and presidents in the process of collective bargaining.
The Acting Chair: Mr Pascal, we'll have to leave it there. We've gone over our time for the government members.
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Mr McGuinty: Welcome to the committee, Charles. Your comment at the outset about your hair reminds me of something my dad used to say. He would compare the head to the path on a forest floor: The more use each received, the less growth there was. So take some consolation in that.
I want to ask you about the approach to collective bargaining. The Council of Regents and the existing process that's available: Is that our best option? The presidents are recommending that we move to an employers' association, and I think Mr Waters ferreted out a bit more. They were prepared to accept that perhaps there are some issues, rather than all the issues, that could be best dealt with locally, on a more local level, than others. I just want to get your views on that.
Dr Pascal: When I was a college president, I was totally in favour or local bargaining. When I was chair of the Council of Regents reporting to Mrs McLeod, there was lots of dialogue around the notion of an employers' association; that is, if we were going to stay with centralized bargaining it was important to ensure that those who negotiate the collective agreement implement and vice versa, so that there's ownership, which is really a terribly important principle. Now that I'm deputy minister, of course I have no official opinion about whether we should depart from province-wide bargaining.
I can simply say that the system, with lots of pain and disruption, I think has gotten more effective over the years, and I expect it to stay system-wide. Whenever the issue of system-wide versus local bargaining takes place, you'll find about half of the college presidents in favour of it and half of them against it. It was always very difficult to get the collective to agree with one direction or another. The notion of continuing to think about an employers' association is very much a legitimate policy option.
Mr McGuinty: The governors in particular indicated that there was a lack of trust between the college boards and the Council of Regents, and that has manifested itself, according to them, through lack of communication; maybe it reached its peak over the governance issue. That cannot help but have a corrosive effect, ultimately, on the quality of education we offer at our colleges. You were there on the Council of Regents. How do you assess the situation here? There's undoubtedly going to be a certain level of tension, there's going to be that dynamic, and in the long run that's probably a healthy thing. But is this level of tension or distrust, to use their words, this lack of trust, acceptable?
Dr Pascal: I would first of all agree entirely with the last part of your statement that there is inevitably going to be a certain amount of dynamic tension. As a matter of fact, Mr Davis and Mr Sisco and the two Jacksons and others who were the founding architects of the Ontario college system in the mid-1960s talked about building in by design a dynamic tension among and between the Council of Regents, the ministry of the day and the system itself, that that would serve the college system's growth and development quite well. I certainly would agree with their vision.
I really am uncomfortable -- I mean, I have read and heard statements in our clippings service, which was set up a long time ago and still serves us all quite well. That kind of public debate, which I think sometimes is substantive and sometimes is about personalities, doesn't serve a system which, as I said earlier, deserves to be celebrated on every street corner and in every neighbourhood in this province.
To the extent that a mistrust exists, and it's not based solely on substantive matters, sure, it can cause problems. Wherever mistrust exists, it's up to the parties -- and we're talking about two other legs of the stool of that tripartite system I've described -- to resolve their trust and issues, if they perceive each other to have a problem.
I'm not comfortable describing who ought to take the lead and where the fault lies. I just think there was a consultation that was going on. Minister Cooke and I look forward to seeing what the Council of Regents advises with respect to the governance issues. We haven't seen the papers yet and it's really important for us to not overreact to others' versions of who said what to whom under what circumstances in terms of those issues. For my part, I look forward to seeing the output. That's what's important to me, and I think issues of trust and personalities have to be resolved elsewhere.
Mr McGuinty: On that issue of the governance paper, the council's to come up with some recommendations. They have not yet made those recommendations. Is that correct?
Dr Pascal: That's right.
Mr McGuinty: What will the procedure be once those are made? Will they be made public?
Dr Pascal: The short answer is that I don't know. The minister will make that decision. This is a minister who is quite open about decision-making and I would expect that, in some manner or other, he would receive the report and certainly want to ensure that the stakeholders who have various views on the issues would have an opportunity to see what recommendations would come forth. How open that process would be, in terms of whether it would be tabled with the public or some kind of further consultation with the parties, I know not; the minister hasn't decided that as yet.
Mr McGuinty: Just to go on the record, I had addressed the issue. I wrote a brief little paper called Choosing College Governors: Why We Shouldn't Use Quotas. I provided you with a copy of that, and the minister as well and the people of the council. I think the way the minister dealt with the appointment of people in corresponding positions at our universities and university governing bodies was a very good way to handle it and quite distinct from the way in which the discussion paper released by the Council of Regents, I guess a discussion paper more properly than a proposal, generated a lot of controversy. I'm sure that has been recognized. The colleges, virtually unanimously -- I understand there was one holdout -- rejected the idea that we ought to move towards a quota system.
The Acting Chair: Would you move to your question, Mr McGuinty, please?
Mr McGuinty: I just wanted to make that comment.
The Acting Chair: You've got a little less than a minute to respond.
Dr Pascal: I very much appreciate the member's comments about the university system. We hope it will work as well as some of the early reforms to representation worked in the colleges as a result of the changes that were made around 1987 to 1989, that period, with the college boards, because there is far greater representation now on the college boards than there was then.
With respect to whether or not the minister, as a result of whatever advice he does get to the issue, wishes to alter, improve or just maintain the current system, it is up to him at this point, and since we haven't received the advice, it's obviously too premature for me to comment on what he might or should do.
Mrs Cunningham: Welcome. You didn't make any opening remarks, I'm told.
Dr Pascal: It's part of my professional development improvement plan.
Mrs Cunningham: I was going to say this is the new you. We'll see.
Council of Governors' Response to COR Governance Review: That was the paper that was put forward and sent to the Council of Regents, and now the Council of Regents is going to be making recommendations to the minister. Do you know what I found out during these hearings? That people in really important positions just don't talk enough to each other. Simple little things in life, huh?
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I asked if they had a response from the Council of Regents to their submission, and they didn't. I just find it hard to believe that somebody wouldn't pick up the phone and say, "This is interesting. What did you mean by this?" or whatever. You know, like I do with you sometimes.
I just think a lot of the things that we're talking about, the biggest problems we've got, are very poor communication. Mr Johnston and I have always been very respectful of each other over the years. He got really annoyed when I accused him of empire-building. That wouldn't worry you, but it sure worried him. One of the reasons that I did that is because the Council of Regents has taken on a lot of new roles that were really rather controversial, and I can be very specific: CSAC and the prior learning assessment. There were arguments as to where they should be.
It was interesting today to hear one of all of our former colleagues in one way or another, Walter Pitman, say, "But you know, those are arms's-length bodies from the Council of Regents." He's probably right. Certainly, that was what CSAC said and that's what Richard Johnston said, but that wasn't the perception on behalf of the colleges and the boards. Maybe it happened too quickly or it wasn't explained.
In the research that was put forward to all of us, if we had read what we read and what was available to us by our researcher, Mr Pond -- and we all have to be very careful when we take him on because he's extremely non-partisan and very thorough -- on page 8 of our research service you'll notice that the base budget doesn't change much for the College of Regents from 1991-92 to 1994-95 except that for some reason the government added human resources to its budget, which doesn't help the perception, and I don't think they like it.
Dr Pascal: I'm familiar with --
Mrs Cunningham: With this table?
Dr Pascal: Familiar with the issues.
Mrs Cunningham: Oh good, okay. So you add human resources, and even Richard Johnston laughed about that because he doesn't want it. CSAC and the prior learning assessment, if they're arm's-length, and it looks like they probably are, are added into the budget. In the last four years we've got a budget going from $1.5 million to $2.7 million at a time when everybody else is being asked to spend less money and to do things more efficiently. People don't like bureaucracies that are growing when on the front lines more students are in our colleges and the colleges have fewer resources to do the work. I blame the ministry. I thought you might like to tell me why I should or should not blame the ministry.
Dr Pascal: Okay. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to respond. I guess the first thing I would say is that the Council of Presidents' submission to this committee, which I read on a plane last night, praised Vision 2000 for both process and product. The recommendations with respect to PLA and CSAC, which are two of the most important issues that the 3,500 stakeholders came to grips with, that was all signed off on by all the stakeholders, including the many college presidents and union leaders who were on the steering committee for Vision 2000.
There should be fairly widespread support for the importance of ensuring that when you spend a billion or so dollars on a system, being tough on outcomes and quality and accreditations is pretty important. The idea of CSAC I think everybody would agree is important. PLA is really designed to save the taxpayers lots of money, because it's about time, as we construct together a seamless system of lifelong learning, that people get credit for what they already know. PLA has received absolutely precious little research and experimentation in Canada, and Ontario wants to make a difference in that regard. Those two initiatives are extremely important.
As I said earlier, the location of those at the council is somewhat arbitrary. They could be located elsewhere. The most important thing, as I said about CSAC earlier, is that they retain some independence. I agree with Mrs Cunningham about perception, that for us to make sure that when we shift over things, functions, and a council evolves and does other things that it's asked to do by the minister of the day, maybe a better job is done with respect to what piece went where.
All the presidents would know quite clearly what was up and how it was done, and there should be absolutely no surprises. The human resource function coming from the ministry to the council is about collective bargaining.
Mrs Cunningham: Nobody even spoke about that.
Dr Pascal: That's fairly mundane, but it's about $400,000 worth of a shift from the ministry. Of the stakeholders being called here, most of them signed off on all of these things and most of them should know who's doing what, where and under what financial accountability mechanisms, when it was done and why it was done. I think, if I can offer a personal opinion, that because there's been a major disagreement with respect to some stakeholders on the governance issue as part of that consultation paper, other things have had a lightning rod effect in terms of the debate. I don't want to get into the debate those other parties have had because, again, my minister is waiting for the final recommendations from council on governance.
Mrs Cunningham: I go back to the communication issue on that one. I think the people should have been talking to each other before they advised the minister; I just think it's not good that they haven't. They might do it before they advise them, if they've been listening to some of us around this table with questions on the importance of communication.
Back to the other issue, you could be correct in that people were a little annoyed about the governance issue, but I really did see the Council of Presidents speaking quite separately to an issue which they referred to as operations. They were very concerned about the council being involved in academic operations, and they referred to those as CSAC and PLA, but they simply said they have caused some concern, notwithstanding the good intentions and the extraordinary efforts. There's a lot of respect. Your statement was more than correct in that everybody agrees these things should happen, but they did make, I think, an interesting comment.
They said the Council of Presidents believes that operational issues should be handled by individual colleges or, when system-wide in nature, within the ACAATO structure. They may be incorrect but they're saying they don't like where it is, so I don't know. You might say that they said consideration should be given to incorporating the College Standards and Accreditation Council and the prior learning assessment secretariat within the existing college structures.
The Acting Chair: Your time is almost up. If you have a question, you'd better pose it.
Mrs Cunningham: Do you think that could happen?
Dr Pascal: Again, as I said earlier, the location is at one level arbitrary and it's because the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act didn't allow for it to lie resident within the ministry portfolio. One could look at that again, but what's important is that CSAC have a very strong measure of independence. I don't know whether you're meeting with the representatives of CSAC. I hope they feel as though they've got a strong measure of independence. They should. It's really important. You can't have an accountability mechanism which is owned and operated totally by the system itself.
ACAATO, as I said earlier, is a really important professional development organization, but it's a voluntary association which does not exist in regulation or legislation. It's there, it's important and it could have an increasingly important role in the area of collective bargaining and human resource issues, but when it comes to accountability for program outcomes, that wouldn't necessarily be where I would place it.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Dr Pascal, we appreciate your being here and your contribution to the committee deliberations.
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BEV MARSHMAN
The Acting Chair: Our next witness is Bev Marshman. Welcome to the committee. Ms Marshman is a former member of the Ontario Council of Regents for CAATs and will impart some of her experiences for the committee's benefit. We appreciate your being here and we've set aside one half-hour. If possible, perhaps you could allow some time for questions. Please proceed.
Dr Bev Marshman: Oh yes, I'll try very hard to do that.
Your invitation didn't mention cameras. I think I'd rather face 100 engineering students than one camera, so maybe you can take that into account.
Mr Bradley: Are there cameras in here?
Ms Carter: You're on television.
Mrs Cunningham: You'll be great.
Dr Marshman: No.
I was recruited for council by Charles Pascal, to whom you just spoke, in 1987, late in the fall. He was looking for someone from a university background who also had a strong interest in education and he thought that I fit the bill. I also suspect that the fact that I happened to be female and fit his qualifications was a help, because he was looking very hard for gender equity at that time, although I suspect that from time to time, when he dealt with Penny and Laura and Jacqueline and Louise and me in one room at one time, he maybe had second thoughts about that. But it was a great group. I served from January 1, 1988, to December 31, 1993, through some very active years in council.
I think I'll skip through the first part. I understand from the schedule, which I didn't have when I made these comments, that you've been PLAed and CSACed enough today, so we'll go on to my principal contribution to the work of council, which was in the area of governance.
I started on governance almost as soon as I started on council and I chaired the governance committee from mid-1989 till the very end of my term, a total of four and a half years. The governance committee, of course, is a standing committee of council and its primary responsibility is to recommend the board appointments to the council as a whole, which has the authority to do the appointments.
What I'm trying to do here is to condense five and a half years into 15 minutes. As you can probably appreciate, that was tough to do. I'm just going to hit the highlights.
The first part of my presentation is just a little bit of history to put things into a context. Council has always had the responsibility of appointing the boards of governors. However, it has changed how it has done that over the years. Just to give a little bit of perhaps a comparison, in the 1970s the boards each submitted three nominees per vacancy to the council. There was very, very brief documentation, just a simple one-page application which in fact did not give a lot of detail about the people involved. There was one labour representative required and four members chosen by municipal governments.
Just before I started on council in 1987 and then through 1988, the first year I was on council, the college board appointment review committee developed the model for appointment of external members. I understand you have a copy of that within some of your documentation. I just appended a very, very brief summary so I could refer to the things I wanted from it. That college board appointment review committee had representation from a very wide set of stakeholders, including the council, the then Ministry of Colleges and Universities, ACAATO, the Council for Franco-Ontarian Education, the Ontario women's directorate and the multiculturalism and citizenship council. It was a very broad-based revision that went on.
The main innovation is the protocol which helps the boards to link their nominees' qualifications to the identified board needs, as well as to establish a process for identifying candidates from a broad spectrum of the community. It also dropped the four municipal seats and changed a little bit the way the labour rep was chosen, because that had no structure to it. It spelled out that the labour rep would be chosen in consultation with the local labour councils, with some input as well from the Ontario Federation of Labour. This model was approved in 1989 officially, but it was actually used from mid-1988 onward in our board appointments.
Also in 1988, council liaison teams were created for each college. This was to assist in communication with the boards and the council.
In 1989, we adopted the "n plus two" rule. I should explain what that means. If a college had "n" vacancies in any given year, then what they had to do was to submit "n plus two" names. The exception we made to this was always that if there was only one vacancy, two names were enough.
Although some colleges do rank their nominees, we have an understanding that all the candidates submitted have qualifications which fulfil our dual purposes and the board's dual purposes of achieving their goals and providing balanced representation.
Council itself, as you may know, now uses a parallel process for selecting its own members. We submit more candidates than vacancies to the ministry. They select, and then I believe they also are interviewed by the public appointments committee of the Legislature. So there is again a fairly strong parallel between the two.
In 1991 to 1993, we did a sequence of things in response to a directive from Richard Allen, who in 1991 requested that we seek ways to further enhance the diversity on college boards.
In 1991-92, we went to the various regions and held fairly substantial-sized regional meetings with all the stakeholders from that region, including boards, staff, students and faculty, and we invited them to discuss any governance issues at that time that they wished to discuss with us.
In 1992, the council convened a special meeting with just the governors to talk about ways that we could somehow collect data on representation, which is not a particularly easy thing to do.
In 1993, in our May-June round of appointments, we actually for the first time adopted a self-identification form as part of the 1993 submissions. I believe you received a submission from the council on Monday that will give you a flavour of what the data are used for. They're broken down into economic sector, knowledge and skills in a variety of areas and the ethnic, linguistic, racial and visible minority groups, so that you can keep track of the various numbers.
I thought at this point perhaps we should just see where this led. Generally speaking, there have been substantial changes in the nature of boards over the period from 1988 until the present. Despite the fact that actually a very few boards claimed from time to time that they couldn't find a good woman candidate or that seeking nominees from visible minorities or the disabled would necessarily mean that somehow they had to trade off merit in their candidates for representativeness, in actual fact the vast majority of the boards have participated not only willingly but extremely skilfully and very successfully in the quest that we've been on for representativeness. I think they genuinely understand and perceive, as the council does, that the breadth and perspective they get from that added talent only enhances their boards.
As a result of their efforts, and it has been their efforts, the boards have achieved gender parity; more than 75% of the boards have an aboriginal rep, which I think is typical of colleges' response to aboriginal needs; visible minority and ethnic representation has increased markedly since 1988. Again, you can appeal to your own stats if you want actual specific numbers for that. About half of the boards have a governor who self-identifies as a person with a disability. So while it's true that we do have a long way to go, I think college boards in fact are among the most reflective of their local communities and among the most effective of such bodies.
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When I spoke with the clerk about this meeting, the one thing she did ask me was that I spend some time telling you how the governance committee actually does what it does, so here in a nutshell is how we did it, at least while I was the chair:
-- Monthly meetings occur the night before the main council meeting.
-- The membership on the governance committee always included at least one former college board member. We considered this vital to our discussions so there was a direct link to someone with experience. Council itself in fact always has, or did in my term, three to six such people, again for exactly the same reason, to make sure there were a substantial number of people around who could give you input from their point of view, and of course the chair also served on the governance committee.
-- We also were open, in the sense that if other council members were around they often sat in and sometimes the odd board chair or governor would come as well.
-- The members prepared for the meetings by reading protocols beforehand and attempting to summarize their thoughts. We have actually eventually developed special forms for this particular purpose because there was just so much information to try to absorb. If you had, for example, 10 colleges submitting that month, each of them might have three to five candidates and each of those candidates had a CV. I would imagine, after the last two days, you can be somewhat sympathetic to that kind of problem.
-- Our deliberations were mainly informed by the protocol and by reports from the liaison teams to the individual boards involved with the particular submissions. I think the best thing probably right now is, if you could just jump to appendix B, I'll tell you briefly the parts that we were looking for from this protocol. This is the protocol, then, that was developed in 1987-88.
The model involves two parts. The first part is actually just some summarizing material -- the role of the board is outlined there -- with a particular statement which I think is critical to how boards and any such bodies operate. While it is expected that governors will bring to the board a variety of perspectives, a governor's responsibility is to the college and not to any private interest, community tie or particular sector.
This, of course, is very much how the Council of Regents also operates.
The knowledge, skills and expertise required: That, of course, is collectively, not of every individual.
The objectives of the appointment process: Part of the reason for the process that was developed was to embed a mechanism that made it automatic that a regular review by the board of college priorities would occur, to ensure that a regular look at the community's characteristics and resources would occur and to maintain links with that community.
The protocol itself is on page B2, again outlined briefly. The protocol was intended to identify and prioritize the goals of the board, based on the college's strategic plan; to identify their membership needs, taking into account their board-specific needs as well as the social objectives aimed at increasing representativeness; to establish a process for identifying the candidates; and to establish principles to guide in the selection process.
The process itself involves several points. Again, I won't hit them all. We wanted them to attempt to select candidates who meet a number of the objectives that they established in their own protocol -- that way they were getting multiple duty, if you will, from each board member -- and specifically to provide a rationale for the candidates forwarded to council.
The discussions at the governance committee were wide open, in the sense that we rarely voted except to formalize what we had arrived at a consensus on. On very rare occasions -- I can remember perhaps a handful in five years -- we actually deferred a case to council to be discussed as a whole, rather than us making a recommendation, so that we had input from everybody before we made a recommendation on that.
-- Reappointments for a second three-year term were based on a review by the board of the member's contribution. They usually did that by some sort of interview process and then submitted a little paragraph report of that to us.
-- Our recommendations went before council the day following our meeting and then council members could open the discussion as it wished on any appointment.
-- After the decisions had been made, letters of appointment were sent to those nominees selected and a letter to the board as well, indicating who was chosen, with any added comments if that was appropriate.
-- Once or twice a year, I sent a letter out to the system highlighting areas of progress and ongoing concern. What I did was, all through the year I kept track of the things that were really, really good and perhaps that we wanted to see some improvement on. We tried to include specific examples, not of course identifying the specific people or colleges involved, and the colleges generally seemed to appreciate that.
The current governance review took place entirely in the time that I was chair, so I'll just give you a little background on that.
In late 1992, the council invited all the stakeholders to the college system to submit their views on governance by spring 1993. Once we got all of those, we began to collate the information and organize the input -- at least we tried for a coherent organization. Over the fall, we sort of worked our way through four meetings of discussion on these and our discussions were informed by a wide spectrum of input -- there's a typo there. It should be regulation 770, not 7770. I hope there aren't that many regulations.
We also had the OPSEU paper, Change to Meet the Challenge; the COP/COG paper, A Green Paper on Board Governance; we had responses from boards and unions and we had responses from individual people on boards and individual people in the colleges; and of course the college council guidelines, because one of our topics was the college council.
At this point, can I just ask a general question? If you've gone through the draft recommendations in detail, I'm not going to do it again here for you, but if you haven't and would like to know the rationale behind those 10 recommendations, I would be happy to do that for you.
Response? Have you got the paper? Do you have copies of the paper? Do you have this?
Mr David Pond: They all have it.
Dr Marshman: You all have this. Is everyone very familiar with it?
The Acting Chair: I wouldn't say that. Perhaps the critics are, from the --
Dr Marshman: I'll do a rundown then.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Could you briefly highlight it?
Dr Marshman: Yes, sure. No problem.
We had a tough time reaching a consensus on some issues. That's a given because of the spectrum of responses.
The first one, as you are no doubt aware, has been the most eliciting of interesting discussions, and that was that each board should choose, in consultation with appropriate constituency groups, one member from organized labour, which is as it now stands, aboriginals and persons with disabilities. Our reasoning behind that was that it was a way to answer the minister's request for accountability which, as you know, is now built into regulation 770. So it was partly for that and partly because it would ensure the support of the constituency that you were trying to represent if you went to the constituency groups and got candidates from them.
The second one was that each board should be able to decide whether it wanted 12, 13 or 14 external members. We had two reasons for this, which are actually at opposite ends of the spectrum. One was for colleges with very large, very diverse populations that actually had said to us in their responses that they couldn't get diversity with only 12 external members to the extent that they wished. The second was the other end of the scale, with very, very large geographic domains in the catchment area but fewer people. They couldn't get regional representation. So that was the rationale for that one.
The third one was that the council, with system participation, should establish uniform election procedures for internal governors. Reg 770 is not explicit about how the manner of election of internal governors should be conducted. This was simply a recommendation that it should be made explicit.
Fourth, the addition of voice-but-no-vote observers, including presidents of electoral groups, a part-time faculty member and one additional student. This was a response on our part to strongly express concern that the current model of four internally elected members from each of the four constituencies doesn't allow for sufficient representation, particularly part-time people.
Fifth:
(a) The internal members should be eligible to serve as chairs or vice-chairs. It was felt that the internal members should be treated in the same manner as external members. Since everyone has to state conflict of interest anyhow, this wouldn't in any way change the current state of things.
(b) Presidents should be non-voting members of the board and uniform processes for appointment, review and removal should be developed and compensation packages should be reviewed. That was a response to the fact that people expressed concern to us that there's substantial variation over the system on how these things are done, how presidents are appointed, how they are assessed and how their contracts are made up and that it ought to be addressed.
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Sixth, uniform criteria for college councils. Again, this differ widely in colleges and the councils themselves requested that we look at this.
Seventh, no change to length and number of terms. The responses were about evenly divided and most people in fact were happy with the three-year term.
Eighth, the change of quorum just made sense vis-à-vis the addition of three more potential internal members, plus the problems of large catchment areas, people making it in to meetings.
Specific conflict-of-interest guidelines. It was felt that the Corporations Act guidelines are not specific enough in some of the responses we got.
Proposed changes for in camera meetings. Again, there's variation in how in camera is used by different boards.
Ninth, governor training is always an issue. This recommendation reflects the fact that many of our respondees felt that the existing training simply is not enough, especially on system-wide issues.
Tenth, the per diem was a response to a very real problem that as you try to increase the diversity of the boards, you're looking at asking people to serve who definitely can't afford to give up a day's pay to come to meetings.
Those were the draft recommendations. They were been sent out as of January 4. I'm sure you know there's been lots of debate and council is about to give its response to the minister in the form of finalized recommendations.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that serving on council was a very special thing for me. Our discussions were always really lively and reflected the very diverse skills and experience of everyone on the council. The discussions covered every angle of any issue. They were sometimes a little rowdy, but lots of humour and wit were involved and I found them fascinating. That might be because I'm an academic and a mathematician and probably our reasoning is done in a more constrained and formal way.
All three of the chairs that I served under had the very good sense to encourage that kind of interaction. It allowed for the optimal utilization of the knowledge and talents on the board. It seems to me that's the advantage of an independent board.
I also got to meet governors, presidents, faculty and staff from within the college system. I can't begin to tell you how much this changed my perspective on post-secondary education, their tremendous competence and vitality and caring about the system and about the work they were doing, and they're facing really tough challenges, as is everyone these days. I certainly am much better informed. It was a wonderful experience.
Thanks for asking me to come. I hope it's been of some use to get some facts about how we did things.
The Acting Chair: We've got about two minutes per caucus, so time for perhaps one quick question and response.
Mr Bradley: I'll ask this particular question. I fought vehemently for years against, as I'm sure everybody did, self-identification forms and now I see, in 1994, in fact before that, self-identification forms are considered to be essential when one is applying for an agency, board or commission appointment.
Do you not believe that it flies in the face of what so many people were against for so many years, and that is discrimination either because they fitted as part of a group or didn't fit as part of a group?
For instance, if I were to fill out one of those forms, I would be zero for five. My chances of getting an appointment would be severely limited by being zero for five.
Dr Marshman: When you say that, could you just tell me what you mean by "zero for five"?
Mr Bradley: "Zero for five" is a baseball term.
Dr Marshman: Oh, okay. You're talking about the specific part of it.
Mr Bradley: Yes. I'm not female, I'm not a visible minority, I'm not an aboriginal person, I'm not disabled and I'm not a francophone.
Dr Marshman: Are you ready for me to respond?
Mr Bradley: Yes.
The Acting Chair: Quickly, please.
Dr Marshman: I guess I just feel that you're probably misinterpreting. The point isn't that everyone would tick off one of those categories. The only point is that we would know how many we did have from those target groups. Nobody's going to claim that all of the members of every group should have one of those attributes. The idea is that you have a diverse set of people and that some of those people have those attributes, that's all.
Mr Bradley: That's not how it works.
Mrs Cunningham: Just in response to that -- by the way, I enjoyed your presentation.
Dr Marshman: I'm sorry I took a little longer.
Mrs Cunningham: Just to follow up on what my colleague has said, we do delineate aboriginals and persons with disabilities as part 1 of the draft recommendations, page 5.
Dr Marshman: Yes. What is your question?
Mrs Cunningham: It's sort of attitude. I think there's an attitude involved. I'm not sure to what extent when you're looking for people, even with disabilities -- and I have a disabled son. He doesn't like to always put down that he's disabled. Why should he have to do that on a form if he wants to help at the Y? But the people who asked him to be involved knew he was disabled. I think it's very difficult.
Dr Marshman: Yes.
Mrs Cunningham: It's just something to think about.
Dr Marshman: I agree with you basically.
Mrs Cunningham: He did not like it at all. He didn't want to call himself disabled, and that was that. And he didn't like to think of himself as being picked because he was disabled. He thought he should be picked because he was good at working with children. It's just something to think about.
Dr Marshman: I think you're right. It's a very difficult issue. We were given a directive to measure, to be accountable for this type of participation, and the self-ID form was a way to do it. There may be other, better ways, and hopefully we'll --
Mrs Cunningham: I would really encourage you to think about it.
Ms Carter: I want to thank you for a very thorough and reassuring explanation of what happens about these governance appointments, and I just want to ask you one question. You were on the council until recently, I understand.
Dr Marshman: December 1993.
Ms Carter: Yes. Although most appointments go through smoothly, there has always been, I would imagine, some problematic appointments. There was a suggestion at this committee that disputes were invented by the present council; in other words, that they didn't used to happen in the past.
I was just wondering whether there's always been some element of inappropriate names being received and therefore rejected.
Dr Marshman: Sure. In the original setup, council in fact didn't even have to appoint one of the three names that the board sent in. They could appoint one of those three names, and if they didn't like them, they appointed someone else that they chose.
We have tried very hard to avoid doing that. That has happened at only two colleges that I know of in the six years that I've served on council. I believe in fact in the COR paper you received on Monday that is delineated there.
In terms of other submissions not being accepted, by far the most frequent reason that we returned a submission was because it was incomplete, a CV was left out or some information wasn't given. But the vast majority -- I can give you numbers, if you want numbers. Do you want numbers?
The Acting Chair: I'm afraid we don't have time. That concludes your appearance today, Ms Marshman, and we thank you for your contribution.
1510
PENNY MILTON
The Acting Chair: Our next witness is Penny Milton. Welcome to the committee. Ms Milton is also a former member of the Ontario Council of Regents for CAATs.
Ms Penny Milton: Because I've been in these places before, for any of you to whom I kind of seem familiar, I really was Penny Moss. The opportunity to move from public life was a chance to change my name without penalty.
However, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. It's been some years since I left the council, and therefore the presentation that I want to make is about reflections on that experience, rather dealing with the specific issues -- although needless to say I have opinions about them -- that may be the reason for this particular review.
I think it's important to be here because, for me, these special purpose bodies that are created by the Legislature absolutely must be subject to periodic scrutiny, and I think that's a scrutiny that's beyond the question of auditing for financial management. These hearings provide the opportunity to in fact review the role, mandate and, importantly, the effectiveness of the Ontario Council of Regents.
I was appointed to the council in 1986 and served for the maximum six years, retiring in 1991. At various times I was a member of the former program approval committee; the negotiations steering committee; the governor appointments committee, which subsequently became the governance committee that Bev chaired; and the steering committee of Vision 2000. In that process I chaired the study team that developed the recommendations concerning college-university linkages.
In my current capacity as vice-president of an Ontario science and technology research company, I maintain links with the colleges, but they're different. I'm now the employer of Ontario college graduates, technicians and technologists, and we often use the colleges for further training of our staff. Secondly, I'm responsible for Ortech's participation in a federal technology program, a research assistance program, and in fact we've negotiated with two of the colleges, Mohawk and Sheridan, to locate one of our industrial technology advisers on that site because the colleges in many communities are central to aspects of industrial development that we work with. So I'm pleased to maintain this new operational relationship with our councils.
My perspective on the Council of Regents is informed not only by my own experience as a member, but because I've had, I think, significant voluntary, elected and appointed roles as governor, director, school trustee etc. I've also been the CEO for non-profit organizations that have elected or appointed boards, so I come to this with this variety of perspectives.
During my tenure, I saw the Council of Regents evolve from a somewhat cosy or clubby group isolated from the day-to-day challenges facing the colleges to what I believe is a vigorous organization that's clearer about its mandate. It's prepared to address issues of substance and it's able to articulate its view of the broader public interest and to keep this perspective at the forefront of its attempts to reconcile the often competing interests of various stakeholders in the college enterprise.
As just a small example of the change that happened, when my appointment was announced, I was taken out to lunch by the then chair of the council because the council members had decided that I was probably a troublemaker, being one of the early appointments of a new government, and wasn't worthy of a proper orientation program, so maybe I could be whipped into shape over lunch. I thought, "This is a wonderful introduction." However, we did have a lot to learn from each other.
The evolution of the council was not without conflict -- I think you've seen some of that here -- and we shouldn't expect it to be. But I want to emphasize that the council was not responsible alone for its own transformation. It is a creature of the Legislature and it was subject to direction from ministers. As well, governments have appointed in the last few years, I would say since the mid-1980s, new, more diverse, in my view more informed, more competent and more representative council members. The then Ministry of Colleges and Universities supported this evolution strongly by the dedication of public servants who learned to work with the council in what I regard as very successful ways. They are people who, as I see them around the Queen's Park complexes, I am still thrilled to see.
My conclusions about the four key roles of the council -- that is, policy adviser, appointor of college governors, management's agent for collective bargaining and the implementor of government policy -- actually rest on some basic assumptions that I'd like to put out to you because I suspect they're generally shared.
The colleges are public institutions. They need to be governed as public institutions and the boards of governors must be accountable for their performance to the public and to the taxpayers through their accountability to government.
The direction and management of colleges must provide for the education and training which balances the needs and interests of students with those of the broader community, which does include business and labour.
They are provincial institutions and they must be subject to governmental direction and regulation.
I'm not going to dwell at length on the role of the council as policy adviser. I think many have commented on Vision 2000 as being perhaps the best-known example of the council's policy initiatives.
What was instructive about it, myself having been party to many policy advisory processes, was that when I started the work with the study team, one quite significant member of the Ontario university community said to me: "Penny, why should I work with you? I have been part of groups time and time again and the recommendations sit on the shelf."
I said to him, "I can promise you that the way we're going to do this will result in recommendations that the government is able to adopt." In fact, the toughest recommendations for anybody to swallow of Vision 2000 happen to be the ones the government did adopt and are being implemented.
I refer you to the difference between the question in elementary and secondary debate about standards and evaluation versus what's proceeding in the colleges. I think that's a direct result of having an arm's-length body that was able to deal with the conflicting and competing interests around standards and accreditation.
I gather that one of the reasons this committee is undertaking this review is because of the issue of appointment of governors. I actually stuck on that committee for as long as I was a council member, and by the end, I thought if all of our agencies had such processes for the scrutiny of appointments, we would not have half the problems we have in the governance system across public institutions.
This was a process for all the learning we had to do that was based on the notion that the responsibility of the council was to design processes and approaches that would create competent, committed and accountable governing boards. To my knowledge, though, we've only got anecdotal opinion to tell us whether that was achieved, because I don't know many public, let alone private, institutions that actually have in place effective means of measuring their own performance. My sense is that the colleges have competent governing bodies, but as I say, that's a matter of some opinion.
The concerns about governance are not at all restricted to the colleges; they're absolutely everywhere, and they're throughout North America, not just in Ontario and Canada. I'd like to commend to you, though I won't go through this section of my brief, a new 30-minute video called In Search of Effective Governance. It's been produced by the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation, which is located in Ottawa. They did a big research and conference project with both governing leaders and administrative leaders of major public and private sector institutions across the country and have come up with this pretty instructive tape. They talk about the characteristics of effective governance.
In order to leave some time for discussion, I would just like to end with some recommendations. I'm not sure whether you're charged with making recommendations, and if so, to whom, but who would miss the opportunity? These are recommendations that I might not have made when I was on the council.
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First of all, I'd recommend that presidents not be members of boards of which they serve as the CEO. If we want effective governance, it requires the accountability of management to that governing body. It's hard for me to understand, and certainly is not a role I would ever personally play, how you both provide advice and then get to instruct the decision-makers or be with the decision-makers in accepting or rejecting that advice.
I too would like to recommend that governors be paid and that the Council of Regents, in consultation with college boards, establish guidelines for the remuneration of governors. I used to think, when I was on the council, that it was an issue of who could serve, based on lost wages and travel and such like. I now believe it's a much bigger issue than that. It's a question of accountability. It is much more difficult to hold individuals accountable for their performance when it's entirely voluntary, and that is in no way to demean or undermine the incredible contribution that volunteers have made in governance in this province. But these are public institutions that the public requires to be properly governed, and I think remuneration is part of that contract.
The third issue I would like to recommend is that a program of orientation and training on the role and responsibility of governors and on effective governance for colleges be prepared by the Council of Regents in consultation with college boards. That's also from personal experience. I could have been a more effective council member much earlier if learning by experience and watching others wasn't the only route to understanding. I think this is an important issue.
I'll briefly touch on two other issues. Collective bargaining has been studied to death. I always did and always will believe that the Council of Regents should not be the bargaining agent for the colleges, the employers should. I think the council has done the best it can to create appropriate structures and processes that give effect to the notion of the college as the employer, but it's still only second best and I would hope it's sooner rather than later that the appropriate vehicle for the employers to bargain as management is created. I know it means major legislative change.
The last issue that I'll briefly touch on is the role of council in planning and implementation. Vision 2000 recommended that the Council of Regents have the responsibility for overall strategic, not detailed, planning for the college system, not for individual colleges. I think that's appropriate. However, I have real reservations about whether the council should have other kinds of administrative or operating roles. Its current relationship to CSAC and PLAN, I think, is appropriate for as long as it is support and nurturing of startup activities. It's not the appropriate body to be overall an operating entity within the college system. For some of the reasons that Charles Pascal particularly focused on, some bodies need to be independent and their accountability needs to be through the minister.
Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): A well-presented brief. You were a former council member. In your experience, why do you think it would be difficult to find disabled nominees or recruitment of disabled people to some of the boards and some of the other agencies? Should the COR or the colleges then consult with some of the community groups or disabled organizations? I'm wondering if they did at all. If not, how do you think they could do that to get a variety of different people on the board?
Ms Milton: I actually don't think it's that difficult to find people from the target groups with the skills and knowledge necessary to be good governors. What I think our history is, is that we haven't known. The mainstream, if I can call it that, hasn't known how to make those linkages that actually identify prospective individuals. We all know how to contact our neighbours. I could give you 1,000 nominations from education, for example, because that's the community I know best and that's what our history is.
I'm of the view -- my preference is still that the college boards themselves search for nominees and that council play a supportive role in helping to identify sources, mechanisms, linkages to the communities in which they wish to find representation. I can think of no occasion and no community in this province where an appropriate range reflective of the community cannot be identified. I think it's a question of will, and do people know how to do it.
Mr Malkowski: I'll be as specific with another question then. In your own experience, did we ever go forward to disabled groups to recruit members, or at least nominees? Did they ever actually do this, were resources provided and was it successful?
Ms Milton: I'm sorry. I can't answer that question specifically simply because I left before the real push on some of these issues continued. I would say that boards should be obligated to provide the necessary resources.
Mr Malkowski: So as a COR member yourself then, it didn't happen in your time.
Ms Milton: No, I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm saying that I don't know whether in fact colleges and the council staff, for example, worked to put those connections together. I know we started to develop a resource list of associations and recommended them to the college for contacting in terms of identification of candidates.
Mr Malkowski: Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr Martin: It's good to see you again, Penny. I haven't seen you for a while. When I first got to the Ministry of Education you, of course, were part of OPSBA at that time.
Ms Milton: That's correct.
Mr Martin: I certainly saw you as a very interested, engaged and feisty individual and I --
Ms Milton: I've been called worse.
Mr Martin: Yes. We seem to be into a discussion here in a time of real change, real flux, of getting government and all the organizations connected with it to respond to the realities of today, which are less resources and more people needing to use the college system and all that kind of thing, and a Council of Regents that has been charged by the minister because of Vision 2000 to implement some new things as well. That of course brings with it the need for some dialogue.
I get the sense here that the dialogue is beginning to happen, that the Council of Regents is moving, but there are some bodies out there who, in being challenged, are having a difficult time with that. I guess my question to you is, in your experience, when does dialogue and consultation turn to confrontation and breakdown in relationship and the kinds of things that have been laid on the table, "Here is in fact what's happening" as opposed to that healthy give and take and thrust and parry of public business?
Ms Milton: I think it actually breaks down when parties decide it's time for it to break down. I'm a bit hard-hearted about some of these things, but what appear to be quite often conflicts about an issue turn out to be conflicts about who has power. In a healthy, democratic society, we should also always have those kinds of conflicts. I think we should think seriously about interfering and assuming that things might be wrong simply because two groups do not share the same perspective on questions of the allocation of power and responsibility.
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Mr McGuinty: Welcome to our committee. First of all, you've indicated in here something that I think will make our governors and our presidents apoplectic. You have indicated that, in your view, the Council of Regents has four key roles. I think we've always known and assumed and understood that they acted as policy adviser. They had a role to play in college governance and they obviously play a role in collective bargaining, but you've added a fourth responsibility. You say they implement government policy. That is certainly news to me. I think implicitly the presidents and the governors suspect that the council has assumed this new role and they are very resistant to that. I'm just wondering, why do you see it as an implementor of government policy?
Ms Milton: It doesn't implement all government policy, and it certainly doesn't implement most government policy. In fact, if you read the paragraph, I'm suggesting that its role in implementation be very carefully thought about and seriously defined. However, it is true that it actually implements regularly everything that the minister of the day writes to it and asks it to do.
There are lots of examples of it; for example, collective bargaining. Obviously, in the end, the question of collective bargaining has been of direct importance to the ministry or government of the day and the Council of Regents has received directions and then implements them regarding that matter.
I was very strongly in favour of giving back to the government an implementation role that it had once given to the council that was a most inappropriate role, in my view, and that was program approval. That was an example where the council itself said: "This isn't the appropriate role. This is college operations and so send it back."
The reason I thought about this differently now was because when we did Vision 2000, and I think as policymakers you know this, often the making of the policy has certain intents and objectives, and then when you get to the implementation stage, with the best will in the world, it doesn't turn out as what you intended because there's more to it than a mechanistic approach.
So I described the council in certain situations as being able to provide that startup, incubator, if you like -- in my sector now that's what we call it, incubation -- where you can start to deal with terms of reference, you can start to deal with memberships, all those kinds of things, working out the ground rules in what I would call a protected environment that allows for consultation, but at the same time allows access back to government if parties are not happy about the implementation activities.
Mr McGuinty: I want to follow up, because we're short on time, with another one of your recommendations. I think you indicated that our governors, who are presently volunteers, should be paid. In the discussion paper that was released by the council or the governance committee, there was also recommendation to the effect that they should be paid $125 per day. I have great difficulty with that. I think it detracts from the volunteer spirit which means there's going to be a tremendous commitment for public service to public service, the idea of public service, which is complicated when you add an additional benefit. Now there's going to be a financial reward.
Also, that $125 a day, if you start getting into that, will hardly compensate a lawyer, a doctor or an accountant. And we don't have any money. Why couldn't we go to evening meetings, for instance? Why could we not explore other alternatives without having to pay people to do work which they have been doing for 28 years very effectively on a volunteer basis?
Ms Milton: We could. What we've seen though is that -- I'm not critical of boards because this is how human beings operate. If your board has always met at such-and-such a time, there is a tendency to prefer future members who can accommodate that. That's one issue. Up in the north, I find board members who it takes almost three days to attend a board meeting in the wintertime. I don't want those people excluded.
I came across a super board member, she just was making an incredible contribution to the college system and, again, coincidentally, it was a northern college. I was congratulating her one day on her efforts and the commitment and she said, "But I'm going to have to resign." I said, "Why are you going to have to resign?" She said, "Because I can't take unpaid days off work any more and my employer wants to leave my wages intact."
So I've thought about other things, like maybe we could get employers to understand the contribution their staff are making to the public good, so could they cover their wages for the day.
The one thing we did on the council, because we were sensitive to those concerns, is once when we didn't have enough money for something we were trying to do, I think during Vision 2000 and restraint days, we all decided we wouldn't be paid any more. I'm not arguing that college governors must take pay, I'm arguing that it would be better if that option was available to boards. Mind you, I would rather that it was available then to the whole board membership, and not on a means test basis.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, Ms Milton. That concludes your appearance here this afternoon.
ABORIGINAL EDUCATION COUNCIL
The Acting Chair: Our final witnesses this afternoon are representatives of the Aboriginal Education Council. Welcome to the committee.
Ms Sylvia Maracle: I'm Sylvia Maracle. I'm a Mohawk from the Tyendinaga First Nation and I'm the chair of the Aboriginal Education Council. I'm joined by our provincial coordinator. He's a Nishnawbe from the Sudbury area named David McCuaig.
We had discussion back and forth at the Aboriginal Education Council about whether we should come, because we see a lot of our business quite separate and distinct from the work that the Council of Regents is doing, but we do have a relationship and felt that it was important to come and maybe make some comments on that relationship. Since part of your agency review we hope will be very far-looking, you might understand where some of the post-secondary aboriginal initiatives are going in the province. We have provided you with some background. I've already told you that I'm Mohawk, so whether or not I'll be confined to remarks on paper remains to be seen.
The Aboriginal Education Council was established in September 1991 by order in council. It's composed of a non-voting and, given your very recent discussion, non-paid, chair as well as a representative from each of the provincial aboriginal organizations and a member from the independent or non-aligned first nations. Those are groups who choose not to belong to an umbrella organization.
The purpose of the Aboriginal Education Council is, in our mind, to work in a partnership with the Minister of Education and Training to implement a strategy that we were involved in over a period of two years designing. We provide advice and guidance, we hope, to the minister with respect to programming, policy and service needs of the aboriginal post-secondary learners and their communities.
The other notion about the strategy is that it is currently a multi-year funding initiative that really has three principles at its heart, three goals. One is to increase the participation or retention of aboriginal people in the current system. The second is to increase the sensitivity and awareness of those institutions to our culture, issues and realities and, thirdly, to increase the extent of our participation in decision-making affecting our students. The success of our strategy will very much depend on the cooperation and participation of the institutions, and those institutions and their interrelationship with the Council of Regents will very much affect whether we are able to achieve those things.
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The Aboriginal Education Council, as a fundamental tentamen of what we're doing, requires the creation of institutional-based councils, meaning councils inside the colleges and the universities, for that matter, as well, with significant local aboriginal representation and that they have direct authority for matters related to aboriginal education. It should not be news to this committee that we have not had large amounts of success as a people dealing with the educational institutions in the province. That lack of success certainly manifests itself with the numbers of dropouts and the lack of graduates from a high school level.
Lots of our people are coming into a college environment as mature students. As a matter of fact, we know over 70% of the aboriginal people who participate are mature students. Many, many of them have dependants. They have, as well, language issues and educational resource issues; they may, as well, have cultural issues and demands that perhaps mainstream students don't always have. We've attempted, through a dialogue with the government, to create not only the strategy but a council so there's someone around who can look at changing that kind of situation, and not only have us join in great numbers and bring along our tuition but not drop out by Christmas time of the first year or go all through and not get the actual accreditation.
In order to do that, we've recognized that there's a fair bit of obligational responsibility on ourselves to create the environment, the supportive environment, so that people want to come ahead. But we also have said there needs to be the environment created in the institutions, both the institutional framework, so that everybody is thinking the same way, and inside the institutions themselves.
It's that kind of thinking that has brought us to have any involvement whatsoever with the Council of Regents. We certainly -- myself and Richard Johnston, as the chair -- have hoped that we've created a relationship; a relationship that's not always shared by the agencies and the councils that we chair. There is, as you can support, a lot of suspicion on the part of the aboriginal community that we're seen as great financial resources in terms of students, resources in terms of the strategy and in terms of other moneys you can attract to develop programs and deliver specialized services, but not always the resource when it comes to divvying up the pie that's there or establishing the priorities.
But we have created a relationship and we certainly have to say, as the chair, that Mr Johnston has been very forthcoming in terms of having interaction between the Council of Regents staff and our staff, between having the council's representatives sit down and begin to discuss some issues and in fact approaching us for advice on aboriginal representation on college boards of governors. The council has also encouraged our participation in both the standards accreditation and the prior learning initiatives that it has going. All those things are fine, but you have to appreciate that we have a limited human resource pool, nowhere near what the community college system has in this province, and that those dialogues are perhaps not as satisfactory as we would like; but at least we can say in the past several years we're at least being talked to, which did not exist prior.
We also have talked about, with the Council of Regents in a presentation that the AEC made, how they need to seriously look at changing the demographic representations on the community colleges so they reflect the communities they serve. You may have communities, as the previous speaker spoke about, in northern Ontario with very significant aboriginal populations nearby or in fact the primary target group of some of those colleges or aboriginal communities, yet you'll have one representative on the board of governors, maybe, and those kinds of discussions are things we would certainly very much want to change.
We're trying to be responsible as well to make sure that aboriginal communities are prepared to come forward. Even in this committee process, you can appreciate that one aboriginal person can feel very lonely. It isn't their system, they're coming and somehow they have to be enlightened to represent all of the aboriginal issues. They may or may not know the diversity of the community in terms of first nations' or women's issues or Metis issues or urban issues.
One of the things we're interested in doing is making sure that our community wants to participate, that they're able to, that they're skilled, that they have the knowledge and they're not just there because they represent a red or, depending on your perspective, brown portion of the community.
We certainly want to assure the standing committee that, be it from Thunder Bay to Kitchener, the Niagara Region and Ottawa, we are present, willing and capable of representing our communities. We don't need people who are put on college boards who speak on our behalf or who are so small-l liberal in their approach that they know exactly what we need and they're our champions. There are aboriginal people in communities who need to be able to do that themselves, and in fact in many communities more than one person.
We're also expecting that community colleges and COR will not simply see an aboriginal initiative, frankly, as a cash cow. We don't bring just tuition agreements, for those of us who are status Indians, from the federal government, or money from Indian and Northern Affairs or Human Resources Canada that says, "Gee, if you do an aboriginal initiative, you can have this extra support." If in fact there is going to be that, those institutions that become financially dependent on aboriginal students need to make sure they are not just taking resources from the aboriginal community but putting them back in.
The relationship between our councils and the colleges is, in the best definitions, diverse. There are a few that work very well and colleges that are really interested. The Council of Regents has largely taken a hands-off approach to this except periodically to come to us and say, "Who should the appointees be?"
The other thing you should know is that we are very interested and keen in Ontario on developing our own post-secondary institution. That may be parallel to the francophone experience you've had. While we recognize that there will be aboriginal students who will continue to attend mainstream institutions, we believe that more numbers than are currently attending will be interested in participating in post-secondary institutions, which we're interested in developing. Over a period of time, we will obviously be interested in developing a formal relationship with mainstream. It is very unlikely that we would want that institution under the purview of the Council of Regents.
We have a variety of recommendations that we think apply to the council and would improve its relationship overall with the aboriginal community. We think there needs to be, first off, a formal relationship and not one based on the goodwill of the chair. We think as well that once that formal relationship is there, there needs to be a consultation process. Very often, we feel like we're the person who came lately to the consultative processes, that we're an afterthought -- "Oh, and we should go speak to the aboriginal people or the Aboriginal Education Council." Just as we're learning to plan seriously for disabled issues and for francophone issues and women's issues and visible minorities, so should very first and foremost in our mind come the aboriginal issues with respect to community colleges and the post-secondary system.
We think that aboriginal education issues are so important that they should become a permanent agenda item of the council, lest the council try to get out of some of its duties to community colleges and say, "Oh, the AEC will take them over." We have a staff of two and half of them are here, which means only one is left in our office. Our council largely operates on volunteerism. We do, when we're in formal meetings, get the per diem that was talked about, but we also bring people from Big Trout Lake and Thunder Bay and Moosonee as well as area first nations in urban areas closer to Toronto.
We also expect that there should be an expectation that the Council of Regents confirm its support of the aboriginal education and training strategy so it's very clear it's on board, that there is a need to treat and to deal with aboriginal people differently and that it's not something that's going on over here and community colleges should pay attention to it as they will. That kind of support from mainstream institutions and advisory and decision-making bodies will go a long way to making our job easier.
We also hope that the boards of governors at all colleges will make extraordinary efforts to include aboriginal representatives. Notice we've used the word "representative." We don't want a syndrome, that I've talked about with many standing committees before, of the favourite Indian: "I know an Indian. I like what they say, so I'm going to go ask him or her to be on the committee with me." But we are talking about community representatives and the process to involve those and the kind of consultation and discussion that needs to go on.
We also expect that aboriginal perspectives will be better reflected in the curriculum materials that are used and that there are some professional fields we would target, such as social work, health care, legal studies, law enforcement. We're tired, frankly, of the theory of a conquered people, the myths we were taught from kindergarten all the way up becoming specialities at post-secondary institutions, and work should be done on that.
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We also want to make sure that the Council of Regents and the Aboriginal Education Council avoid duplication of services. Do we have to do the same things to each other all the time? We are interested, as we said, in the establishment of our own institutions. The council could come on board willingly and be interested in supporting that process and helping us, or it can become one of the biggest impediments because it wants to maintain the base it has and maintain the power structures and the imbalances that exist.
We recognize that part of your task is to look at efficiency. But in looking at efficiency you need also to look at effectiveness, and that effectiveness is, is the Council of Regents with its responsibilities able to address the aboriginal people's post-secondary education needs in this province? If it can't, then insist that it have a formal relationship with the AEC and that together we're able to go forward and make the system better for everyone. Those are our comments.
Mr McGuinty: Thank you very much for your presentation. Tell me now, we have at least one aboriginal representative sitting on the Council of Regents. Is that correct?
Ms Maracle: Yes, you do.
Mr McGuinty: Some of the issues you have raised, are they a result of there being insufficient representation on the council now, insufficient linkage with your group?
Ms Maracle: When I inherited the chair of the Aboriginal Education Council, which was when we were created, there was already an aboriginal person on the Council of Regents. That person has changed very recently, but they have no ties to the AEC. So you have two bodies providing not totally duplicate but somewhat similar services by way of advice and no relationship between the aboriginal representative who is on the Council of Regents and the Aboriginal Education Council.
Mr McGuinty: The other concern I have is, one of the things that we like to do of course is to oversimplify things. That's just a natural human tendency. We think, "Well, if we have one aboriginal person -- and they're all the same, aren't they -- then one can speak for all of them." You provided a good listing of some of the various aspects: women's issues; do they speak for Metis; do they cover all 130 first nations? How do we address that issue in terms of making sure that when there is one aboriginal representative, that one speaks or can speak properly for all?
Ms Maracle: What we've proposed is that one create institutional committees, and on the institutional committee in our strategy we recognize that we couldn't speak for everyone. So, in the strategy we said there has to be somebody from a friendship centre, somebody from a Metis local, somebody from the women's local, somebody from the area of first nations and somebody who's involved specifically in aboriginal training or education. You create that body, and from that body they would identify who would best represent them in the board of governors' process.
That is not the process that's being used. We still have institutional committees comprised of many aboriginal people from very diverse backgrounds and somehow outside of that process comes the appointment for the board of governors. Those are things we have discussed already with the Council of Regents, saying there is a better way to do this.
Community people -- and I don't want to say "community" in finite words like "community colleges" perhaps in a geographic area -- best know who might meet the maximum perspectives that we can. We believe that's the best body you go to when you're looking for aboriginal appointments to the board, as opposed to, as I said, a syndrome of your favourite Indian.
Mr McGuinty: My last question: Could you describe for us, because I think it would be very helpful, a typical Ontario college and how it is inadequate in terms of addressing the needs of an aboriginal student, why it represents a foreign place and the needs that we may not even be recognizing, let alone attempting to fulfil?
Ms Maracle: It's the substance of a great number of my presentations. In a nutshell, what people are buying into in mainstream community colleges is more mainstream values. The process that has been applied by governments in essentially attempting to civilize us as a people has resulted in our marginalization, in the dysfunction that exists in our families and communities.
We're coming to community colleges and we see a value-laden curriculum that applies very much to mainstream, that doesn't meet different target groups. We're dealing with dependence; many are young people. They're not mature students going back, although we see that number is increasing. There are not places for us. There is not a respect for our traditions and our ways.
We've really had to elbow our way in and have the aboriginal education and training strategy to use as a carrot to convince colleges that they should make spaces for native students so we can have powwows and socials and where our elders and traditional people teach; where we can say our elders and traditional people's credentials are just as important as the PhDs and the MAs who teach there; where we can say to our students the curriculum can be modified and applied in a community development norm that's appropriate to the community you come from. You may have to give the answer in class that says this is right, but if you know it doesn't apply to your community and your family, how relevant does that become?
We also see lots of evidence of racism that continues in curriculum material, in teachers and faculty presentations and is in fact systemic to the system itself. We have community colleges and universities where aboriginal students make up almost 100% of the courses to get us into regular programming in terms of getting the proper academic credentials to come in. All those things indicate to us that the mainstream college system is not meeting our needs and that we need to look at an alternative, which is the aboriginal education and training strategy, for a while until we can convince those institutions that come on board.
Mr Martin: Thanks again, Ms Maracle. It's the second or third time I've heard you and I'm always impressed with your ability to articulate the aboriginal position on all these things. I just have a question, and I'm not sure how appropriate. We're into a process here of trying to figure out how we make a system gel so that we're serving people and taking this province re its education and training needs, post-secondary, college, into the next century and reflecting the diverse demands that are on it at this point in time, the lack of resources and trying to do more with less and all that kind of thing. You've heard it all.
Ms Maracle: We've lived it since 1867.
Mr Martin: Yes, so maybe you're a good person to ask this question. Actually, the question is around process. We as a government believe in consultation, in working collaboratively with people. We feel that the community is best served when it's at some point in on the decision-making process.
The question is, at what point do those who have been given leadership stop consulting and make decisions? When do you do that? I know from some work I've done with my neighbour communities in Sault Ste Marie, Garden River and Rankin, that they consult on everything. They consult their people, they talk about it and then ultimately, in the end -- and for some of us who are anxious people around that whole process it seems to take for ever.
The Council of Regents is consulting out there right now on the question of governance. They went out to the community of colleges and asked for input on a paper they put together to generate discussion. They came back and now are putting together their final recommendations to the minister, who will then decide himself what he wants to do re that whole question. Yesterday the suggestion was that this paper should be brought back again before it goes forward.
I guess the question I would have of you is, at what point do you stop the consultation and get on with business, get on with making the decisions that need to be made so that we can offer to our communities the best there is?
Ms Maracle: I think in the case of the aboriginal community, we did our consultation and created the strategy. What we're saying with respect to our response to the Council of Regents is: "Here is a resource. We've done our consultation. You're not coming and asking us if there are new things that are being thought up every day as we're going along." But certainly when we are speaking to the community about governance, the Aboriginal Education Council can be very clear about what our expectations are both of COR and of community colleges.
We expect, while we are developing an aboriginal institution, that aboriginal people will be involved directly proportional to the population area that's serviced by that community college, and at the minimum there will be one aboriginal person. We expect that the institutional structure will respect the fact that we have created community committees, if you want, to provide that advice and direction with respect to aboriginal programming.
So, in terms of that example, I can tell you that with the leadership and the responsibilities I have, I can stand up and be very direct about what the aboriginal issues are. In terms of whether we're talking about prior learning or we're talking about the accreditation standards council, we can tell you that we are very, very diverse in our opinions of each other and that is going to take some reconciliation. But certainly we are still prepared to come forward.
You're right that we consult a great deal. That has not stopped us, however, from moving when we needed to move, and in the case of this we've developed a strategy. We have the overall way that we're going and we're finding there are some impediments to realizing the degree of success we might be able to with that strategy because the people who are seen as major players, like COR and the community college system, have not come on board and been very clear: "Yes, we don't have a choice. We do support this. It's good for all of us. We'll facilitate what we can to make sure that things occur."
We've had that extension, as I said, from the chair. That's not necessarily as strongly shared by the council. We've had some pleasant chats while they've bought lunch and we don't see the kinds of inroads that we should with respect to aboriginal people's participation, with respect to retention and success rates, with respect to changing the structure so that we feel in a collective sense that aboriginal people are more fairly represented and dealt with in that system.
Mr Martin: There's also the issue of local versus central in decision-making. I know that, again from my own community, there is an aboriginal education council in Sault Ste Marie that does some really good work and has worked through some strategies.
In terms of me representing that constituency and being here as part of the Ministry of Education, whom do we listen to? Who is it best to listen to? How is the system best served? Is it best served from the centre or is it best served from local decision-making?
Ms Maracle: We'd like to suggest we're not so schizophrenic in the aboriginal community that we're different. In the case of your example in the Sault, we borrowed one of the people from that council, as you know, to advise on prior learning, so we can tell you that the community is well represented in the process, but it takes us time. We've been affected by a colonization system that's really fractionalized us. It's taken us a long time to trust each other and it's going to take us even longer to trust you. So you're going to hear a few varied songs from us for a little while.
The Acting Chair (Mr Daniel Waters): Thank you for your presentation. There is just one more thing before the committee. Mr McGuinty.
Mr McGuinty: Earlier, I was speaking with our researcher and I thought it might be a good idea for us, in light of the fact that we will not be meeting for some time after our hearings tomorrow, to consider what we've heard here. I was going to ask that our research prepare for us for consideration at that time a summary of the views that have been presented so that it will be easier for us, to help I guess jog our memories; also given the fact that there are probably going to be a number of committee members to consider that who won't even have had the benefit of the hearings. So I was going to make that suggestion. I'm not sure if it's something that requires a formal motion.
The Acting Chair: I don't believe that it requires a formal motion, but sitting in the chair today I'll concur and will consider it so directed to Mr Pond.
Nothing else to come before the committee today? Hearing none, we are adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
The committee adjourned at 1605.