Monday, June 6, 2005
Seven
Land Acquisition and
Development
Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): Mr. Speaker, the government report on the illegal activity by the Seven Oaks School Division was a whitewash. The government basically refused to look at the inaction and the mishandling of this situation by the Minister of Education. In fact, in responding to concerns and allegations raised by a citizen from Seven Oaks, the report says that the Minister of Education signed a letter that was incorrect and inappropriate. Given that the Minister of Education has assured us that he fully understands The Public Schools Act, I would like to ask the Minister of Education why then would he sign a letter that was supposedly incorrect and inappropriate.
Hon. Peter Bjornson (Minister of Education, Citizenship and Youth): Mr. Speaker, this particular process was raised in the Estimates process where the member from Russell, a former Minister of Education, identified that that was the process, indeed, and that once a concern was raised the appropriate protocol would be to send that letter to the department officials for response. That was the procedure that we followed.
Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I was very concerned with the outcome of this particular situation and we have taken measures to address this. Part of the recommendations that have been brought forward through this 30-day review have been to address the way communications are handled from the Public Schools Finance Board to my deputy's office.
Mrs. Driedger: Mr. Speaker, well, it certainly questions the credibility and competence of this minister if he is going to sign anything that crosses his desk without independently thinking about it.
Mr. Speaker, the report confirms that the Public Schools Finance Board was fully aware and condoned illegal activity by the Seven Oaks School Division. It also confirms that taxpayers' money was put at undue risk.
The Public Schools Finance Board is appointed by the NDP government, and, in fact, most of them are NDP supporters who donate thousands of dollars to the NDP. Mr. Speaker, there has to be consequences for their disregard of the law.
I would ask the Minister of Education today if he is going to do something effective about this and if he is going to replace the Public Schools Finance Board. His government did not hesitate in the past to deal with the Morris-Macdonald School Division when there were problems there. What is he going to do about his Public Schools Finance Board?
Mr. Bjornson: Mr. Speaker, the recommendations are very clear in the report that has been conducted or the review that has been conducted and the recommendations that have been brought forward with the report with respect to having the guidelines clarified with the Public Schools Finance Board with dealing with the PSFB on an annual basis and addressing landholding issues. Certainly the other three recommendations are very clear with respect to how we will make sure that this particular situation does not reoccur. I will be meeting with the PSFB to discuss my expectations around this matter.
Seven
Auditor General's Review
Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): Mr. Speaker, his expectations should be very clear and very definitive right now. The parallels between Crocus and the Seven Oaks School Division are very troubling. We see organizations with strong ties to the NDP that did not know how to do their jobs, that did not protect the interests of taxpayers. We have a report that basically ignores the gross mismanagement of this issue and the negligence of this Minister of Education in how he handled this particular issue.
Mr. Speaker, to ensure a full, complete, independent and unbiased report of the illegal activities by the Seven Oaks School Division and the condoning of illegal activity by the Public Schools Finance Board, will this minister turn this file over to the Auditor General today?
Hon. Peter Bjornson (Minister of Education, Citizenship and Youth): Mr. Speaker, the report also refers to the fact that there is some suggestion by the Seven Oaks School Division that there was a profit of $700,000 to be made. That number has not been verified. Because that number has not been verified, we have asked for an external audit of all financial matters relating to this issue. That is what we will be doing.
Tuesday, June 7, 2005, 9:00
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY
Concurrence
Motion
Mr. Chairperson (Conrad
The floor is now open for questions.
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): My first question to the Minister of Education deals with a follow-up to one that I asked him earlier on in Estimates. This relates to the drop-out or push-out rates.
Knowing what is happening with the number of children who are dropping out is pretty darned important. When I had asked this question in Estimates, the minister was not at that point able to give me up-to-date statistics on the situation in Manitoba. I wonder if the minister now has up-to-date statistics for the last several years.
Hon. Peter Bjornson (Minister of Education, Citizenship and Youth): Yes. Thanks for the question. We will be releasing a report that will indicate the push-out rates or the school-leaving rates. From what I recall from memory, actually 2004, the graduation rate was, I believe, 80.7 percent. That is one of the best graduation rates that we have seen in a while. I will have all the specifics of the last five years, I believe, outlined in that report, and that report is being released very soon.
Mr. Gerrard: Can the minister provide details on when that report will be available? Will it be available before the House recesses?
Mr. Bjornson: Usually,
this report is available in, I believe, April. This year,
what was unusual about the report being released was the desire to put
the
Mr. Gerrard: I would certainly appreciate that. That would be helpful. It is, you know, important information for us to know. That report, I gather, has the last several years in comparisons.
Mr. Bjornson: I believe it has the statistics for the last five years.
Mr. Gerrard: It would be very useful to have the report as soon as possible. Even if those statistics, as a starting point, could be available even sooner, that would be helpful.
* (09:10)
Mr. Bjornson: It appears, Mr. Chair, that the member can have the report right now.
Mr. Chairperson: The
report is now available and is being moved from the minister to
the Member for
Mr. Gerrard: I thank the minister for his prompt action. This is something new for the Education Minister, so that is good news.
While I have a quick glance over this, I will ask the minister a question on a slightly different subject, and that deals with the report which came out very recently on the matters in the Seven Oaks School Division. Clearly, one of the things that were indicated in that report was that the minister had signed a document which was inappropriate and should not have been signed by the minister, should not have been drafted by the school board or the Public Schools Finance Board.
I would presume that the minister would be offering an apology in terms of having signed that when he should not have signed that. Is that correct?
Mr. Bjornson: Well, let me say this. I have said, and I will repeat what I said in the House and in Estimates and the hallway in the scrum, that I am the first to admit that, with some very specific allegations, the advice that I did receive was quite ambiguous and, in hindsight, I should have asked more specific questions.
Having said that, the member from Russell had asked me about this particular situation in the Estimates process and how this came to pass, and at that point I advised the member from Russell that once I had received this letter from a concerned citizen that raised these allegations, I forwarded that letter to the appropriate department and the appropriate personnel, as is protocol, and when I received the advice as to the fact that–pardon me, when I received the advice from the project leader through the Public Schools Finance Board executive director and the letter that is also vetted through the Public Schools Finance Board chair, there was nothing in that response that would indicate to me that this is anything other than the ordinary disposition of property.
The reference to a local development issue that the letter referred, the individual who brought the concerns forward, was consistent with my experience on municipal council and the fact that local municipal councils and school divisions do enter into agreements around development for a number of different reasons, whether it is drainage issues, whether it was constructing a berm, as we did in Evergreen School Division's agreement with the town of Gimli at the time to mitigate the impact of the new school beside a residential area, sidewalk issues, these are all things that are quite consistent with local development issues. Having said that, that was the impression that I had from receiving that advice, that this was nothing other than an ordinary disposition of property.
Mr. Gerrard: Let me go back to the high school completion. The numbers here are: '98, 76.1 percent; '99, 73.2 percent; 2000, 75.3 percent; 2001, 75 percent; 2002, 74.3 percent; 2003, 79 percent; and 2004, 80.7 percent.
It is true that there
has
been a modest increase here, and that is certainly encouraging. The
80.7
percent, in terms of comparisons with other provinces, if my
memory serves,
would suggest to me that we are still in need of significant
improvement in
Mr. Bjornson: Thank you for the question. I, too, am encouraged to see the graduation rate has increased. There are a number of different ways which provinces do measure graduation rates, and as such a comparison from jurisdiction to jurisdiction does not always give a fair indication of graduation rates. Having said that, our efforts to improve graduation rates are multifaceted. We recently launched the Aboriginal Academic Achievement action plan, as there has certainly been a concern over the graduation rates among the Aboriginal peoples. We are conducting research into successful projects around Aboriginal education and looking for some of the missing pieces. We are trying to engage Aboriginal parents in their children's education, as parental engagement in the educational process contributes to students' success.
We recently launched a new ESL, English as a Second Language, initiative, as new learners, new Canadians do encounter certainly a number of difficulties in bridging language gaps and comprehension. That certainly can impede success. So we are engaged in that particular process.
We have literacy and numeracy initiatives as well that are a result of our assessment and systemic picture, trying to engage students earlier and encourage students' success earlier in their school careers, as well as a technical-vocational initiative, where we know that all learners do not learn the same way so it is incumbent on us to provide as many different opportunities as possible for students to succeed. Certainly that has been my personal philosophy around the education system, is that we need to provide as many opportunities for our students to succeed and succeed on their terms, thereby making schools more exciting environments for students to learn.
There are a number of initiatives that are underway right now, and I know that we will see some very positive results from those initiatives. I should also mention, with low SES considerations, that we have launched a community school initiative to partner with a number of different community partners who are all there for the best interests of children and advancing their engagement in the community and the community that is the school.
Mr. Gerrard: I thank the minister. I am going to direct questions now to the Minister of Family Services because you have a committee. When my colleague, the MLA for Inkster, is back, maybe just before noon, we could have an opportunity for him to ask some more questions.
Mr. Bjornson: I thank you
for the questions.
Tuesday, June 7, 2005, 14:20
ORAL
QUESTIONS
Seven
Auditor General Review
Request
Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): Mr. Speaker, despite the insistence by the Minister of Education, the Seven Oaks School Division Superintendent Brian O'Leary, the disgraced campaign manager for the NDP, despite their insistences that the illegal land development by the Seven Oaks School Division made money, it appears that the report put out by the Minister of Education shows otherwise. The division's own June 4 documents suggested that they overestimated their revenue by nearly $1 million and that their losses could actually exceed $200,000.
Now the Minister of Education wants the school division to audit themselves. Well, it is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. I would like to ask the Minister of Education today will he call in the Auditor General to do a proper, full, complete, unbiased review.
Hon. Peter Bjornson (Minister of Education, Citizenship and Youth): The recommendations that came forward as a result of this review were that the Seven Oaks School Division was to extricate itself from the development process once it had met the requirements under the legal agreements that they had entered into. The second recommendation was that an external audit of the financial situation around this development issue be addressed. We are expecting compliance. We have asked that they engage in this process.
As I said to the member during the Estimates process, the review was going to be done within 30 days and the missing answers to the questions about this review were that there were some outstanding issues with respect to accounts receivable and accounts payable. That is why we have asked for an external review.
* (14:20)
Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): Mr. Speaker, there are no assurances from hearing the minister answer that because he is the one that has been out there touting that they made money on the deal. In fact, his own report is now saying that that is highly unlikely.
Mr. Speaker, prior to the completion of the 30-day whitewash report, the minister indicated that the department had a legal opinion about whether this was illegal or legal, and they also had a financial review done of Swinford Park. He assured us that those documents would be part of this review and they are not part of the review. They are not attached to the review and, in fact, when we requested them by freedom of information the minister's office refused to give us those documents so that we certainly do not have a full picture of what should be part of that review.
I would like to know if the minister would agree today to table those two very important documents.
Hon. Peter Bjornson (Minister of Education, Citizenship and Youth): Mr. Speaker, during this discussion around this issue, yes, there were documents that had been prepared, third-party documents. Were they part of the review? Yes, it was relevant information that was part of the review. As per the FIPPA request, the member was provided with rationale as to why those documents were not provided.
Auditor General Review
Request
Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): Mr. Speaker, this is looking more and more like a cover-up. That review is nothing more than a whitewash to protect this government and all their NDP friends.
Mr. Speaker, this report does parallel Crocus in an alarming way. A runaway administration, unlawful activities, a total failure of oversight, inflated valuations and a whistle blower dismissed by a Cabinet minister, this report confirms that taxpayers' money was indeed put at risk. These same people who put it at risk are now asked to audit themselves.
Mr. Speaker, I find that totally absurd and ask today if the Minister of Education would ensure that this big mess, this file, is turned over to the Auditor General for an unbiased review.
Hon. Peter Bjornson (Minister of Education, Citizenship and Youth): Mr. Speaker, the member perhaps did not hear my response where I said that we have asked for an external audit of all financial matters relating to this issue.
Also, the individual that was responsible for overseeing the review has impeccable credentials. He has worked in the Department of Education long prior to our term in office. I have absolute faith in the process that was engaged in to deliver this review, Mr. Speaker.
Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Bjornson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We also had support from the Department of Finance where needed, where the expertise exceeded the abilities of the individuals in the Department of Education. There were a lot of people who worked very hard on this report, and we have requested an external audit of the financial issues around the Swinford Park Development.
GRIEVANCES
Mr. Speaker: The honourable Member for Charleswood, on a grievance.
Mrs. Myrna Driedger (Charleswood): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to stand and have some time to address some of the outstanding issues of mismanagement by this government. I do not often stand and grieve in terms of what the government is doing, but there are so many things that are happening right now that it certainly begs some comments on the record about this.
There are many areas that the NDP government is demonstrating its inability to manage, and while I will focus largely on education, I do also want to indicate that health care certainly is in crisis, in many instances put in crisis by this government because they refuse to look at some options to deal with the long waiting lists particularly in orthopedics.
We certainly see in Agriculture a number of areas of mismanagement by this government, particularly in dealing with the BSE issue.
In Family Services, we see some gross mismanagement, and I would even say negligence on the part of this government in dealing with some incredibly serious issues where red flags have been going up all over the place, and we have got a Minister of Family Services (Ms. Melnick) that basically is disregarding all of them.
Certainly, with the whole issue of Crocus, we have heard how 33 000, 34 000 Manitobans are being fleeced by this government and losing tens of millions of dollars because we have a government that did not heed red flags that were waving in front of their faces for a couple of years.
With education, we also see red flags in a number of instances actually in education, and retired teaches were even pointing out some more this morning that this government is basically ignoring all of these warning signs that have been coming their way.
We should not be terribly surprised though because this government has been warned in the past about a number of issues, and I can refer to just a couple of those issues that I had warned the Minister of Health (Mr. Sale) about over the years, and those were the red flags that I waved in front of his face on the ER crisis and on the cardiac surgery crisis. This minister had at least a year's warning on each of those. He had time to act and do something about it, and instead he chose to ignore those warning flags that were put in front of him at that time in health care, and he only rose to the occasion, and did not even do that particularly well, but rose to the occasion after people started to die, and it is unfortunate, because in cardiac surgery I think it is just gross mismanagement and negligence that 11 people have to die before we have a government that stands up and reacts to anything related to the cardiac surgery crisis. With the ER crisis, it took people dying in the ERs, and mothers losing their babies, miscarrying in the ERs, before this government took any of this seriously and acted.
So there seems to be a trend in this government of mismanagement and a wilful disregard for red flags that are put in front of them and a wilful disregard for people and issues that are brought forward to them that they should be taking or making more time for and paying more attention to.
I imagine some of that could be happening right now because the government certainly does seem to be tired. They are extremely disorganized, and I have to say if it was not for our House leader in the last few weeks, we would find this government in absolute disarray because they are not managing the business of this House. They are not managing what they are supposed to be doing, and it is only by the grace and good will of our House leader that things are moving in this Chamber and in this House.
We have got a Premier
(Mr. Doer) of this province right now running all over
This morning and last evening was a perfect example.
We have just heard a private member's statement from the Liberal member that talked about some of the aggravation that this government caused people last night in committee when we had three major bills before a committee with over 60 presenters, and, somehow, NDP math made them think that, well, maybe, they are going to get through this in a period of about five and a half hours of committee. Why they would even possibly insult people by making them come in and sit there and, in fact, as it was pointed out by retired teachers this morning, half of the room was left standing because there was no room. There was not enough room for people to sit down. We had a room overflowing with people because this government could not get its act together, was so poorly organized, that these people were forced to stay here last night until 1:30 in the morning, and then come back at 9:30 this morning, and then again at 6:30 this evening. It was only by suggestions by this side of the House that there were more people accommodated in trying to give them a better comfort level in terms of presenting.
But, Mr. Speaker, I am
rising today to grieve the actions of the Minister of Education (Mr.
Bjornson).
Now, as this session draws to a close, I know a lot of Manitobans are
going to
reflect upon what has been
an absolutely disgraceful performance
by this minister. This session, we have seen this minister
misunderstand his
own bullying legislation. This session, we have seen this minister
mislead the
House regarding the Seven Oaks School Division and the
Despite the many pronouncements of the minister regarding the Safe Schools Charter, we found that he knew very little about his own legislation, and this was his own first piece of legislation as the Minister of Education. You would have thought he had a little bit closer ties to it in understanding it, and a commitment to pass it through, but he brought it forward, and then totally forgot about it. To begin with, we learned that the legislation is not even in place, and that we are still waiting, according to the minister, for regulations on certain sections. Well, even one of his own officials said that regulations are not needed, that that act, once passed, should have been fully implemented.
So, when the minister was questioned about how many schools had codes of conduct, the minister did not know. Considering that the legislation said that codes of conduct were to be immediately put into place, this minister did not know when asked about this a year later. For a whole week, every time the minister opened his mouth a different number came out of it. Further, the answer he gave when he was in the House would change when he walked out of the House into a scrum. This whole affair was a confusing and disappointing one. Manitobans deserve better out of their Minister of Education, and this NDP government.
Sadly, we were only at the beginning of the minister's misadventures for 2005.
Mr. Speaker, on May 2, the official opposition raised some serious questions about the actions of the Seven Oaks School Division. It appeared as if the division was risking taxpayers' dollars to develop a residential community. At the time, little was known about the issue, except that the division had partnered with the Lombard North Group to develop between 70 and 100 lots, it appeared, and that local taxpayers had been footing the bill of about $2 million.
* (15:40)
The minister stood in his place in this House and said that he was not even aware of the issue. He said that this was the first he had been made aware of it when asked the question in the House. That the minister would be unaware of such a scheme seemed fairly unbelievable, but you had to give the minister the benefit of the doubt because it was just a few weeks earlier that this same minister did not know the finer points of his own Safe Schools Charter.
However, Mr. Speaker, the next day we learn that the minister was aware of what was going on in the Seven Oaks School Division, that he had known about it for a year and he had learned about it because a citizen sent him an e-mail of concern about the illegal land development that was going on and being conducted by the Seven Oaks School Division. So what did the minister do? He said he understood his own Public Schools Act. If he understood his own act, he should have known that that was a very serious allegation that came forward, and he should have paid more attention to it. Instead, it was just easier to pass it off to the Public Schools Finance Board to craft a letter for his signature.
Mr. Speaker, the Seven
Oaks School Division then was spending $2 million of taxpayers' money,
and what
were they spending it on? This coming from a school division that has
almost
the highest education property taxes in
Eventually, the minister relented and asked his deputy minister to investigate the issue. Of course, the investigation was set up in such a way as to protect this government and to protect the minister because it did not go as far as it should to look at the whole mess. The ministers were all in the mess, and nobody should be surprised at the report that came out. It is nothing more than a whitewash that ends up asking more questions than it does provide answers.
Of course, it did state that The Public Schools Act had been contravened, but we knew that already. It did not take an Einstein or a brain surgeon to be able to read the legislation and know that that was illegal activity. When the minister got that e-mail he should have known about it. What we did not know though, and we still do not know, is the role that the minister played in this and whether or not he is responsible in any way for this mess. The minister does not want to get to the bottom of it. He basically passed off all of this on to the Public Schools Finance Board. That in itself begs a lot of questions considering that the report says that standard operating procedure was not followed at any step, none. The entire handling of the matter was, and I quote, "highly unusual."
I do give credit to the deputy minister for digging as much as he could in 30 days to put this report together but what this report needs is certainly somebody else that can spend much more time and get into all of the facts and get to the bottom of this. I think what the department did, with the short period of time they had, was probably the best that could be done in 30 days. They have pointed to some very, very serious concerns that need to be addressed.
Particularly, what needs to be addressed is the role of the Public Schools Finance Board in this. We know that the board is appointed by the government. We know that this board is made up of some very strong NDP supporters. We know that the majority of people on the board are big donors to the NDP party. This group, supposedly, considering what their role is should have known that what was happening was illegal, but they encouraged this every step of the way. They approved it every step of the way, as Mr. Brian O'Leary has indicated.
He said that Mr.
Zaidman
is the chair and Mr. Nicholls is the vice-chair and the others on the
board
knew and condoned what was going on in the Seven Oaks School Division.
Well,
what was going on in the Seven Oaks School Division was actually
illegal. The
Public Schools Finance Board even toured
Now we have a Minister of Education (Mr. Bjornson) that is not prepared to do anything. This Minister of Education needs to take some responsibility for what is happening in that department instead of allowing all kinds of people around him to pull his strings and behave like a puppet. He needs to definitively do something that addresses the disregard that the Public Schools Finance Board had for the law, but also, the information that they withheld from the Minister of Education. By the time they finally got information, there were months and months and months before they passed it on to the Minister of Education. Somebody here is not doing their job, and we have a Minister of Education that has not been willing to address this Public Schools Finance Board, who should be fired, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The honourable member's time has expired.