Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of comments in no particular order. This is such a large department that it’s kind of hard to know where to start.
I appreciate Mr. Dolynny’s comments about ERI. It is a huge undertaking, and I appreciate the
Minister’s response as well. But it is a huge undertaking and I do have to say that I am still concerned that the department is trying to fund most of the changes that they’re making through the ERI Initiative. They’re trying to make those changes with money from within. If we are ever going to effect change and do it properly it needs to… In most cases when it’s a new initiative, it needs new money.
That leads me right into junior kindergarten, which was an initiative. It was funded basically from within, and I don’t think it was funded properly. It took money away from school authorities and put it into the Junior Kindergarten Program, and basically we’re robbing from Peter to pay Paul. I have to reiterate that I don’t think that a new initiative should be put into place by taking away from organizations which already have a good use for those funds.
I wanted to comment a bit on school attendance. The Minister made a statement the other day about school attendance and the importance of it. I agree wholeheartedly with the Minister. It’s absolutely important that we keep the kids in school. We’ve started on a, the royal we, the department has started on a campaign to try and increase attendance, and shortly after the Minister’s statement, Members received pamphlets and posters in our office. I looked at those today and I’m concerned about the money that we’re spending on these and whether or not it’s going to be for good value. I’m not at all convinced that posters and pamphlets are going to keep our kids in school. I think it needs a broader campaign. I believe at some point the Minister mentioned that there are many stakeholders requiring to be involved, and there absolutely does. We have to involve the parents in getting the kids to stay in school; we have to involve band councils and chiefs and local leaders in getting the kids to stay in school. I haven’t seen a plan from the department on how we’re going to do that, how we’re going to involve the people, more people than just the department in trying to increase our attendance. If we don’t have an all-encompassing campaign involving many people, it’s not going to succeed. I firmly believe that just having pamphlets and posters in the schools or in the community is not going to work.
The Alberta Achievement Tests have been mentioned. I will have a question when we get there. I’m a little confused about whether or not we are still using those tests. I thought we weren’t. I thought in this current school year that we had done away with AATs.
Inclusive schooling is an issue and particularly the funding or how the department funds inclusive schooling. The Minister has been talking about evaluating how we fund inclusive schooling for at least two years, probably more like three or four,
and we have yet to see any results of any evaluation. It has now been lumped into an evaluation of school funding in general, and that’s maybe okay, but it’s putting off again, for probably another year, any evaluation on how inclusive schooling is funded. This is long overdue. The School Funding Framework is overdue but the Inclusive Schooling Funding Framework is much more overdue, and I think we are not being fair to school authorities and children who need the biggest help, because I believe that they’re not being properly funded. Kids end up without assistance when they should have it. I’m disappointed that we are not going to see, I don’t think, any kind of a resolution to the inclusive schooling funding formula any time soon.
I’ve been talking a lot about income security in the last little while. The Minister knows that I have some problems with some of the ways that we interpret some of the policies and some of the regulations under income security. I don’t know if there is any intent on the part of the department to do an evaluation of income security. The last one was in 2007. I think it’s probably time that we did do another one, and it’s time that we compared ourselves to the rest of the country and find out whether or not we have policies which are either contradictory with other policies within government or policies which are punitive for our income support clients, because I think there certainly are some.
At committee in, well, I think it was when we reviewed business plans, committee talked a bit about Aurora College and the desire for Members to see the budget from Aurora College. I believe we were advised that we were going to see that budget and I don’t think we’ve seen it, so I will have a question when we get to that page.
I think the perspective of Members is that we give a huge amount of money to Aurora College and there ought to be some accountability from the college to the House, to the Members and to the committee that is responsible for education, which is the Committee on Social Programs. Yet, the Minister seems to say that any accountability should go through the Minister. I would disagree with him on that. I think that the college needs to be more open, certainly with Members, or the Minister needs to be more open with college information to Members, because we really have no opportunity right now. We don’t even get the budget, and we have no opportunity to have any kind of evaluation or consideration of how the college is spending their money.
I think that’s about it. I’m a little bit disjointed but I would like to just say that I’ll have questions when we get to each individual page, so I don’t need a response from the Minister unless he feels that he absolutely has to do that.