HANSARD

and

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

Mr. Keith Colwell (Chairman)

Hon. Carolyn Bolivar-Getson

Mr. Alfred MacLeod

Mr. Chuck Porter

Mr. Charles Parker

Ms. Joan Massey

Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon

Ms. Diana Whalen

Mr. Leo Glavine

[Ms. Diana Whalen was replaced by Mr. Wayne Gaudet.]

In Attendance:

Mrs. Darlene Henry

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Legislative Counsel

WITNESSES

Department of Education

Mr. Dennis Cochrane, Deputy Minister

Mr. Gerald Felix, Consultant in Core French

Ms. Elaine Melanson, Consultant in Core French

Mr. Jean-Claude Bergeron, Consultant in French Immersion

Ms. Joanne Cameron, Consultant in French Immersion

Mr. Mark Bannerman, Manager, Federal-Provincial Agreements

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2007

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Keith Colwell

MR. CHAIRMAN: I call the meeting to order. The first order of business today is appointments of standing committees.

HON. DAVID MORSE: Mr. Chairman, if I may, we are honoured here today to have a guest from Mount Saint Vincent University who, due to a lack of female MLAs, or suitable female MLAs, had to settle with this MLA. Her name is Justine Müller and she is job shadowing today, so if you could just say hello.

I just wonder, Mr. Chairman, if it would be appropriate for everybody to introduce themselves.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That will be the case.

MR. MORSE: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome here today and enjoy your job shadowing. It's a unique opportunity to see what an MLA does in a day, especially a Cabinet Minister.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: And we have five females. (Laughter)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we'll start with introductions around the table.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We'll start the appointments. The first one we have is the Department of Education, Université Sainte-Anne.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: I so move Mr. Ian Comeau as a member of that board.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Department of Community Services, Children and Family Services Act Advisory Committee.

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I would be proud to move Robert Seymour Wright as a member of the Children and Family Services Act Advisory Committee.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Tri-County Housing Authority.

MR. ALFRED MACLEOD: I would like to move Mr. William Carroll as a member.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any discussion on the motion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. PORTER: I so move Lauren Copeland as a member of the Round Table on Early Childhood Development.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I would like to move Michael Condé and Cheryl Hodder as Directors for the Film Development Corporation Board.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The Trade Centre Limited, do you want to move those in a block or individually? Hearing no objection, in a block is fine. Mr. Morse.

MR. MORSE: I would be pleased to move Frank Anderson, Christopher Conohan, Wayne Crawley, Paul Gurr and Carole-Ann Miller as Directors for the Trade Centre Limited.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. PORTER: I so move Christine Grimm as a member of the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The Department of Environment and Labour, Alcohol and Gaming Division, Film Classifiers. Move those in a block, I guess. Any objection to that? None. Mr. Morse.

MR. MORSE: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to move Heather Goodick, James Lynds, and William MacDonald as members of the Alcohol and Gaming Division, Film Classifiers.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion on the appointments? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. PORTER: I so move Eunice Harker as the CBRM representative member for the Municipal Board of Police Commissioners. Those other two, Mr. Chairman, I believe one is for Springhill and one is for Bridgewater. Do you want all three in one, as well?

MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): Yes, I forgot to add those.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, let's do the three.

MR. PORTER: Okay, Les Nash for Springhill and Michael Power for Bridgewater, as members of the Municipal Board of Police Commissioners.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The clerk will make that correction.

The next one is Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, Certified General Accountants Association of Nova Scotia.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: I so move.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. MACLEOD: I so move Wayne Weatherbee as a member of the Embalmers and Funeral Directors Board of Registration.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Hearing no discussion, the question has been called. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. MACLEOD: I so move Arnold Fralick, Rena Langley and Robert F. Madden to the Public Accountants Board as members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. MACKINNON: I so move Julia Anne Covey as Governor for the Gaelic College Foundation Board of Governors.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Hearing none, would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

[9:15 a.m.]

MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman, I so move Peter Sheehan as chair; and Douglas Day, Ken Isles, David Murphy and Peter Newbould as members of the Heritage Property Advisory Council.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. MORSE: I may have just missed it, I'm recovering from a cold, but I didn't catch the name that we voted on for the Certified General Accountants Association of Nova Scotia. Just in case it wasn't mentioned at the time, could we confirm?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you just want to put that on the record right now?

MR. MORSE: Yes, I believe it's Suresh Coelho.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, that'll be on the record.

MR. MORSE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That concludes our appointments. Next we have in the French Language Training, Immersion and Core Programs.

Thank you very much. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, today. I'd like to start by asking all our guests to introduce themselves and we'll go from there.

[The committee witnesses introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome here again today and it's always a pleasure to have the Department of Education here. It seems we make a regular habit of inviting you, so that just shows the importance our committee members have with education in the province. I know for sure that the deputy minister has a presentation he would like to make.

MR. DENNIS COCHRANE: I'm really worried about you people, you have to get a life and talk to somebody else other than me, okay? Anyway, I am pleased to be here this morning and I'm glad everyone introduced themselves, because that won't come out of my five minutes so I do appreciate that.

As you know, French second language has been a major program in the Department of Education in the Province of Nova Scotia for a number of years. We strongly interact with the federal government, particularly the Department of Canadian Heritage, because they are the federal vehicle that tries to provide incentives, both financial and from a leadership point of view, across the country. We support, as a province, the federal goal and the federal goal is to double the proportion of secondary school graduates with a functional knowledge of their official second language by the year 2013. This means across the country it would increase the number of graduates from 24 to 50 per cent, and we will talk a little bit about that as we go further.

To meet that goal, the department is in the second year of a four-year action plan. We are also developing our strategy for the next four years, after the first four, so that hopefully we'll arrive in 2013 meeting that federal goal.

There are three main points in our strategy; first of all is to improve the core French programming. We had $930,000 last year from the federal government to put into that program, $1 million this year that we'll be working on distributing through the system and I can give you the breakdown as to where that goes in the province, and we're hopefully, obviously, $1 million next year. We're developing new programming, and as you could tell by some of the introductions, the integrated French program is part of it and we're also doing some other program development as well, in an effort to meet that particular goal.

One of the new and successful ventures in French programming is what we call intensive French, which is offered in Grade 6. Currently we have five schools that were in that project and we're actually going to a sixth school next year and we can give you the results of the pre-test and the post-test. We are into that program, as are a number of other jurisdictions in the country. We feel actually in that case the results have been excellent and we're seeing more students who are taking those particular programs, able to read, write and converse more comfortably.

The schools that are involved, the six of them, four of them are in the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board - Riverside, Greenfield, Harbourside and Bras d'Or Elementary; one is in the Strait - Mulgrave Memorial; and one new one that's just coming on is on the South Shore - Dr. John C. Wickwire. What we're seeing is a significant improvement in the results in core French programming in those particular pilots, and we expect that more boards will come forward and look for those kinds of pilots in the future.

The second part of our strategy is to revitalize the French Immersion Program. We are now providing some distance opportunities and for the first time, in September 2007, we'll have Grade 12 biology through correspondence available for immersion.

We've got some excellent exchange programs that the federal government is very involved in, both for teachers and for students. This year, for example, six students from Quebec have spent three months in Amherst and six students from Amherst will be spending three months in the Province of Quebec, as an exchange. They're actually billeted, so it's not an isolated arrival, it's someone arriving in Amherst, going to our high school and then, of course, the children will respond by going to Quebec.

The other program, called Explore, is a French language bursary program for the summer; 475 students spend the summer in an immersion camp, an immersion environment. Much of that is in the Province of Quebec; some of it takes place at the Université Sainte-Anne here in Nova Scotia. We also have 236 children from Quebec coming to English immersion through Dalhousie University. You'll see some press on that occasionally through the summer. Each bursary for those students is worth about $2,000, so it's almost $1 million spent in supporting Nova Scotia students in a French immersion camp environment.

The third part of our strategy is to increase the number of qualified French teachers, and this is a major challenge that our department is attempting to deal with. We do have some full tuition bursaries for university students who want to enrol in French teacher education, and most French teacher education in the Province of Nova Scotia takes place at Université Sainte-Anne. We do have a project we're looking at - it has kind of started, but faltered a bit at Acadia - and a number of students will go from Nova Scotia to either New Brunswick or Quebec institutions with regard to the bursary. In order to qualify, French must be the language of instruction for 65 per cent of their course load. So it's a major undertaking for students to get the bursary, but we're most anxious to support students. For that particular bursary there is a return to service clause that says they'll come back to Nova Scotia for a period of up to two years.

We also have other bursaries that provide teachers an opportunity to improve their French skills which would take place at Université Sainte-Anne, Mount Saint Vincent, Acadia and other ones as well. We also are working on on-line fluency training for teachers of French second language in the Province of Nova Scotia.

We've seen substantial growth in our immersion programs. In 2002-03 we had 10,500 students in Nova Scotia and in 2005-06 we had 14,341, which is an increase of 3,811 students. So we're seeing more students across the Province of Nova Scotia taking French immersion. However, there is always a corollary; we see less students taking core French, and that's understandable. Our enrolment is declining and if more students are choosing early and late immersion, there are less students available to actually take core

French, but we saw the enrolment from 2002-03 of 65,896 students taking core French programming dropping to 58,357 in 2005-06, which is about 7,539 less students in 2005-06 taking core French than were taking in 2002-03. But again, our school population has probably dropped from 148,000 to 139,000 as well, and of that 139,000 more are taking immersion.

As we mentioned, that is attributable to children taking late immersion, French immersion, also taking the integrated French program and so on, and we do have some competition from students who might want to choose the course that they take in junior high to Gaelic and Mi'kmaq. You can't manage to get all of them on the way through the program and so on.

We did do a survey and the survey was done in Atlantic Canada, trying to poll why students are leaving core French. The results were rather interesting, not isolated to Nova Scotia. They were concerned because of the low marks that they thought they were getting, and they thought that would have an impact on their average that they are looking at to take forward in their application to university, and that's probably not unusual. It's not just a Nova Scotia issue, it's an issue taking place in all four Atlantic Provinces and we can give you some statistics associated with that.

We've got challenges, there's no question. The federal government recognizes that and they came out with new programs, and at that time it was called the Dion plan, which was where the goal for 2013, to have our students functionally bilingual, was first put forward. As I said, we're working our way through, we're in the second year of a four-year plan and we're now developing the plan for the four years subsequent to that. So it's a major challenge and you know from your own children, or children who you might have in your constituency, there's always a debate about how much French we take, when we take it, who is teaching it, all those issues, and they are reasonable issues for you, as a committee, to deal with and we're very pleased to be here.

I'll attempt to answer your questions, but I've got - obviously you can see - a fairly strong contingent of consultants working at the department to answer any questions of any depth - not that I would just deal with the superficial stuff, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: No doubt about that. Do we have anyone who would like to ask a question? Ms. Massey.

MS. JOAN MASSEY: I'll go first, I guess.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have 20 minutes.

MS. MASSEY: You mentioned that students are leaving core French because perhaps they recognize there is a drop in their grades, but I'm not sure if you sounded really sure, concrete, 100 per cent that's the real reason.

I know when I spent a couple of years on the school board and looked at the issue of French immersion just in my district, a couple of the issues that really stood out for me was there seemed to me to be a dropout rate - I don't know if you really want to call it a dropout rate - in junior high and especially in high school, where nobody really could explain why that occurs and I just wondered if maybe it's something as simple as . . .

MR. COCHRANE: We did a breakdown and we're just looking for the results of the survey. While we're looking for it - French in high school is not mandatory, core French isn't mandatory in Nova Scotia, and therefore you've got to find a student who is quite motivated, on the way through junior high, to want to take core French in high school. When you look at all the mandatories and the demands upon the students, they look at it and think, well, if it's not their strong suit, they may choose to take one of the other optional courses and so on.

[9:30 a.m.]

It's interesting, I was telling the committee earlier, the consultants, a number of the principals came to me and said we have a really hard time getting the students in Grade 9 to take core French seriously, because they know they aren't going to take it the next year. There are all kinds of solutions to that, but they may not necessarily work or be that attractive. So a number of those things are out there.

MS. MASSEY: So that was maybe just one of the reasons why students are dropping out, because they feel their grades and because you're saying that there are demands from other - you know, their social life, too, and all these things that our high school students and junior high students go through.

MR. COCHRANE: The survey was designed to figure out why they were doing what they were doing. I had a nice little top four list of what they were for, here somewhere.

MS. MASSEY: I know in part of this documentation one of the groups that speaks out for our French students, I believe in there somewhere one of the recommendations was to make core French mandatory right through P to Grade 12, because I think you hit on one of the issues, teenagers just see themselves as being drawn in so many different directions and if they're not doing that well in that subject, then they have the possibility of dropping it. What's happened is you've spent all this time and resource from Grade 4 on and then sort of the bottom drops out of it, so I sort of saw that

as an issue in my time there. I guess I'm just wondering then, how - you mentioned there are some solutions, so what are some of the solutions that we're going to look at?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, I think one of the things we have to do is to make sure the students feel the need and therefore, as you create an environment where French as a second language is an asset, we continue to indicate that in our job searches and in our career development, and so on, that we promote throughout the Department of Education. That's one.

The other one that we have to make sure is that we have dedicated teachers who are well qualified to teach core French. It's sometimes difficult in an environment such as Nova Scotia. We were talking earlier, one of the pilots that we had in the intensive French last year we lost this year because the person, by nature, travelled to three different schools. We lost the person who had that level of qualification to stay at that particular school because they had a chance to go to one school. We know those are issues as well.

Of course we're into a debate, as you know, about physical education and mandatory credits and it's difficult. If it were mandatory in high school, we would not be able to get the staff to teach it.

MS. MASSEY: Right now in French - I mean, obviously, when you look through this documentation, a lot of the barriers that we're facing, I guess, are the shortage of French teachers, the lack of substitute French teachers. The lack of those resources are what may be part of the problem, the overall big problem. So I know in the three points you pointed out in your four-year plan, the first one you mentioned was improved core French programming, so I would assume then that's going to be part of the solution. You mentioned $1 million this year, I think?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. MASSEY: And you're hopeful that it will be $1 million next year, but you don't know for sure. You just said improved core French programming, so I guess I'm going to give you an opportunity to tell me more specifically what improvements.

MR. COCHRANE: Well, certainly the intensive French in Grade 6 is very interesting because it's really focused on an intensive period of time by which a student would take more core French. As we do that and in the particular schools we had, we did a pretest and a post-test, and we've seen a significant improvement. I think that's the kind of programming that we have to take a look at.

Now the question is, after you do intensive in Grade 6, what do you do in Grades 7 and 8? In many cases - I know New Brunswick is using it a lot as a tool to get them

ready to take it, they're doing it in Grade 5, getting them ready to take late immersion. A number of our students in the intensive Grade 6 will be looking at the Grade 7 late immersion as an option.

I think it's a question of making sure that it's relevant, that the curriculum recognizes the learning styles of our children and that we indicate it has an importance in our system. I think those are the kinds of things that will make a difference. Certainly the development of the curriculum and what we're doing is a very positive thing, with regard to core French.

Do you want to speak - Elaine - to the curriculum changes that we're looking at with regard to core French?

MS. ELAINE MELANSON: Some of the changes that we're looking at, some of the things that are already put in place are the infusion of new curriculum resources available from across Canada, and those resources incorporate what we call experimental approach, where French is not the study, it's not the object of study. It's the means by which you communicate to learn about different themes, different activities.

The resources that have been put out are really, really good and they really address particularly junior high school interests for kids, the resources on extreme sports, for example. There is a really good kit out for volunteerism that the kids - we piloted at Glace Bay High, Grade 10. Boy, it was great - the kids actually took it and ran with it and involved the whole school in a volunteer fundraising activity. So there are lots of things and they use French as a means by which to get to those end goals. Those resources, we've done a lot of work picking them very carefully towards aligning with our curriculum, aligning with our outcomes obviously, and we've seen really good results in terms of engaging kids in their French learning through those. So I'm really pleased with those curriculum resources that are available now.

It seems that the publishing companies have finally realized that teaching French by providing 150 verbs to conjugate - and some of you probably lived that experience, pages and pages of writing without the speaking part of it - is not what we're after. By making French the means by which you study a theme or a subject is really the way to go, and probably within the past four years they have really been giving us these curriculum documents we've been asking for for so long. We've seen really good results from that.

MS. MASSEY: So you just touched on, I guess, reading skills, then.

MS. MELANSON: We're literacy-based.

MS. MASSEY: Right, and did the assessments in 2006 actually show a lack of key reading skills? I thought I saw in there somewhere that in French immersion there was a . . .

MS. MELANSON: I can't address that, I'm not the French immersion consultant, so I wouldn't be . . .

MS. MASSEY: How are we doing, I guess, with literacy skills in French immersion?

MS. JOANNE CAMERON: We currently don't have a testing facility to test our Grade 6s, but we're looking at that in the future. Just from an outside observation, they seem to be doing quite well. They do very well on the English testing, even though they've taken English as their second reading language. They've tested out - they don't start English reading until Grade 3, and by Grade 6 they're reading at least at par with their counterparts.

MS. MASSEY: By Grade 6, okay.

MS. CAMERON: There certainly would be a lag in Grade 3, because they haven't had any English instruction yet.

MS. MASSEY: I mean I'm going to go way out on a limb here and just say, you know different times - we spend time in schools - you'll hear teachers, especially the French teachers, say we should be studying French really in Primary, at the very beginning, if we want students to really feel so much more comfortable with it. We all know Grade 4, especially nowadays - kids just seem to be aging faster, I think, than when we were in school. Is that occurring anywhere else, or is it before Grade 4?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, some jurisdictions, I think New Brunswick core French starts in Grade 2 . . .

MS. CAMERON: Grade 1.

MR. COCHRANE: Grade 1, is it? So it depends on the jurisdiction, it depends on the availability of staffing and so on, but there's no question that the earlier there's an exposure to the program, and so on, the better. That's why early immersion in Nova Scotia actually starts in Primary, whereas early immersion in New Brunswick starts in Grade 1 - it doesn't start in kindergarten.

MS. MASSEY: I guess one of the - it's sort of like the way we look at French in Nova Scotia, is that it's a program. That's what you hear from parents who are involved

and think it's such a great asset - it's still looked at as a program that can be cut, right? And I guess . . .

MR. COCHRANE: I don't think we look at it as a program that can be cut. I mean, it starts at Grade 4 in Nova Scotia. I think our biggest problem is we sometimes look at who might be available and the timetable to teach it, and that's one of the - it's like we used to focus on health that way and I'm sure that those of you around the table who were teachers knew often what happened to Grade 7 Health in the timetable. If you were upright, you could be assigned to teach a period or two and we used to treat it that way. I think that sometimes at the lower levels it may happen with regard to core French and that's a concern that we have.

I know in my own experience one year I taught Grade 3 core French and I said to the staff, I didn't do any damage but I'm not sure that I did a great deal of good. So I think we have to always look at where we teach it, what kind of program we're teaching and the availability of people to do that.

We eventually will have to reflect on where we start. I think we have to eventually reflect on where we start early immersion and late immersion as well.

MS. MASSEY: And that's part of the whole neighbourhood school, which I think is something that probably in our constituency offices we hear a lot of that. When people just assume that they have a child and they just think oh, you're going to be going to a neighbourhood school, they're not aware that's not the way the programming works. It often works when the more students are in a class, the better it's sort of for French - you know the more students in the overall system makes it better for that purpose, I guess.

It's just that when parents call you and they can't believe they've had to basically camp out in their car overnight to get in a lineup the next day to be first in line for these few spaces, then not be guaranteed that they're going to be anywhere near their own neighbourhood and the bus rides are long for the students. So just getting down to a personal level with the parents and feeling for these issues that they have to go through - your kids aren't hanging out necessarily with the same children that they are in the neighbourhood when school is out and these sorts of things. So it is trying. Building a community when you're busing your students out somewhere else to take part in a program - I'm just wondering if you can speak to that.

MR. COCHRANE: Well, we prescribed the entry point at Grade 4 and it's something I think as we look at, you know, the things like the surveys and why people are continuing it and why they aren't, I think we have to reflect on the resources we have.

As you know, the whole debate about the time to teach and the time to learn is pretty active out there and we have a pretty aggressive curriculum, and it's a question of

how much time you have in order to take what subjects at what grade level and so on. These are all a balance and right now Nova Scotia - and for a number of years - has decided that it's Grade 4. We can reflect upon that and we probably will. As I said, we'll reflect upon when you start late immersion, too. In fact, I have some thoughts on that.

So I think we have to take a look and constantly be reviewing what our needs are, what our society is asking for.

I found that - just to give you while you're here - on the statistics about why the students stopped taking core French. This was an Atlantic survey and they had some focus groups; basically 37 per cent of the students who stopped taking it said it was too difficult. You don't always have a choice of taking something difficult, so I guess in this case they said hey, I find it tough so I'm not going to do it. Another 37 per cent felt that it had an impact upon the grade average, as they looked at applying for university; 36 per cent talked about the lack of success that they felt; 28 per cent said about a large class size.

MS. MASSEY: How much was the lack of success?

MR. COCHRANE: The lack of success was 36 per cent; others felt that more courses were relevant to their future, 21 per cent felt that; and then 10 per cent said it really didn't fit into their schedule, which I thought was interestingly low, from all the other debate I hear.

One of the other things they said, they asked the questions on how to deal with that, and 62 per cent disagreed that it should be a mandatory course in high school. Another 71 per cent agreed that if they thought French would improve their job prospects, they would take it. So they haven't yet got the connection in our society. Also 31 per cent said they would take it if they thought that studying French would have a bearing on their personal career plans, so it's kind of related to the one above, and 41 per cent said they would take it if they wanted to become bilingual. So it was interesting to take a . . .

[9:45 a.m.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could interrupt you for a second, could you please table that report for all committee members?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, we will, we've got it here.

MS. MASSEY: Very interesting, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all of those who have come in today to present, both from the Department of Education and the federal representative as well. We're pleased to have you here. I'll share my time with Mr. Gaudet, so I need to cut right to the central questions that I have to ask.

First of all, I would contend that we're well off the track to meet the goal of 50 per cent with functional French by the time they leave school, in 2013. In fact, the department has done really, I think, a poor job in laying out a plan and establishing first and foremost the teaching staff that would be required to pick this up and do this kind of implementation - especially when we're now looking at about six years - in order to achieve this goal. If we get to one-third - 33 per cent - I'd say that will be really an outside shot.

I'm just wondering, what more can be done in terms of the teacher training and recruitment? You know we have boards that don't go beyond recruiting from Sainte- Anne's. How can they possibly ever have enough people to do the kind of job and the kind of work that needs to be done? I'm wondering if the province is actually - if the Department of Education has done enough. I know you're talking about a bursary program, and so forth, to look at Moncton and Quebec, but boards don't seem to be taking too much initiative here. I see a head nodding "no", but I've had it right from the curriculum people in AVRSB, so take it for what it is.

MR. COCHRANE: I don't disagree with your first comment, that we're not likely to meet the goal. I kind of take a little umbrage with your second comment, that the department has done a poor job, and I think the people behind me might want me to say that on their behalf and that's fair. There's no question that we have to do recruitment, and one of the reasons for our early job fairs is to get out there and recruit people to come and teach in the Province of Nova Scotia. We did actually conduct a job fair on two different occasions at the University of Moncton and went to the campus and our boards all went and tried to recruit people. We also, of course, attempt to get students who are from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick who may have gone to Central Canada, and so on, to come back.

The Université Sainte-Anne - we have done some interesting things. They now have the right to provide the consecutive program that we didn't have before - no, the concurrent program. We allowed them to have a different program in the Bachelor of Education than we do in our other three institutions, because we recognized that there were some issues. We do support them heavily financially and to a different extent than our other universities, because we're trying to make sure that we have French teachers trained. They now have a facility in metro which I think will be much more attractive to some of the students to take the Bachelor of Education program in French because the Beaufort site, which is shared between Collège and Université, is all Université now.

We have done a number of things. There were 18 core French teachers trained as mentors in 2006; 50 teachers in the last two years received a Certificate of Participation with regard to PD opportunities. We are now developing a video to help our teachers with regard to simulations in the classroom in dealing with a second language. We've got $30,000 that we support about 170 teachers taking PD and methodology and language.

There's no question it's a challenge and it's a challenge sometimes to get fluently bilingual people to come and work in Nova Scotia, or particularly if you look at French First Language. They are used to an environment where the theatre is offering something in French, the radio stations in French. So we have to look at some of our barriers that aren't financial and aren't from the point of view of training.

I think the boards are trying harder now to recruit, we recognize that we need people and we're trying to get out early and make offers. One of the things that I've encouraged the boards to do is take a bit of a risk, make some contract offers in January, February and if you overshoot your mark, I'll deal with it and I've told them that. So don't worry if you hire 10 and you end up needing nine, we'll find work for the other one, don't worry. So we're trying to be more aggressive about that and I think the boards are recognizing that as well.

The other problem we have is sometimes you'll hire someone to teach French as a second language and it's a very rigorous schedule. A core French teacher - the number of students you see and the number of classes you have, sometimes then because of our pecking order - will then opt to teach something else because it has a different flavour and it takes a certain level of devotion to want to teach core French. So these are all factors that we're trying to deal with.

I think we're making some really good overtures, I think we're making some gains. The problem you mentioned in your first point about meeting the goal - this is a problem across the country and it's interesting when you read what they announced when they announced that goal, and I was looking at it. It says that the strength of the plan relies on a number of measures, a set of measures, and quite frankly our plan that we developed for the first four years does deal with a set of measures. It talks about no one thing in isolation will have the desired impact, so it's got to be curriculum, it's got to be focused, it's got to be important, it's got to be support for teachers - it's got to be all those things. All those things combined will help us meet the goal.

On the first page of the document, on Page 7, it says, if the plan succeeds, all Canadians will benefit; if the plan succeeds, the portion of highschool graduates with command of both our languages will increase from 24 to 50; if the plan succeeds, the federal Public Service will be an example in terms of respecting linguistic duality. When you put that many "ifs" in your document, I think they also recognize 50 was a goal. We

don't think that any jurisdiction across the country is probably going to reach that, and we're all working toward it, but 2013 is a short period of time and it's pretty aggressive.

We think we're making some gains; our number of students that are up in French immersion helps. Even things like functionally bilingual, like what level is that and these kinds of things are quite nebulous. It's just an interesting exercise that I think when it came out, it was, here's the target, here's the goal, let's everyone work toward it, but I don't think anybody is going to be negatively evaluated if they don't meet it because it was pretty aggressive. That means that of our graduating class of 10,000 a year, 5,000 would have to be functionally bilingual - pretty aggressive. You're in Kings West - I don't think you saw 50 per cent of the kids.

MR. GLAVINE: Let me follow up with that. This year, if central office had gone ahead with the plan that they proposed, would you or the minister have stepped in to deal with the French immersion question, because there's no question that with centralization it would have retrenched. I mean, I had at least 100 e-mails from parents who said, I cannot physically drive my child from our community school, our local school, to these regional centres.

We were on the verge of regressing and, I thought, one of the most abysmal moves I've seen out of central office in a decade. Would you have stepped in?

MR. COCHRANE: We were following the question very closely in Annapolis Valley and as those of you who perhaps weren't as close to it as the minister and the member, they were looking at centralizing some of their course offerings because of - they said - difficulty in attracting staff.

We were watching it very carefully, but those decisions rest with boards and the minister intervenes cautiously, generally after the board has had a full opportunity to hear the communities and make some decisions. In that case, the board, I think, heard loud and clear from the community and made a decision that didn't cause any intervention by the department.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaudet.

MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go to the deputy - you indicated in your opening comments about the federal goal, trying to increase the numbers of our graduates either taking French courses or graduating, functioning bilingually.

I'm curious in knowing what kind of incentives, what kind of promotion is being done across the province, with the help of the department, with working with the school

boards, to try to encourage our students to take up French courses, probably throughout high school?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, as I mentioned, there were three basic strategies inside of our plan. One, of course, was to improve the core French programming, to revitalize some of the French immersion programming and the last one, of course, was to increase the number of qualified teachers. Who wants to - Gerard.

Gerard has been developing the plan with the boards and so on, remember this is the second year of a first four-year plan and a subsequent four-year plan after that.

MR. GERALD FELIX: Well, basically the vast majority of our students are in the Core French Program in the province, so if we're going to effect any change in that number or get close to that target, that's the group we have to zero in on. Now, given that core French is compulsory from Grades 4 to 9 in our province, that's a large group of students because they have to be there. So while they're there, what kind of experience are they having? Is it a successful experience? Are the teachers frustrated with the results that they're running into?

From our experience to date, with the intensive French program at the Grade 6 level where we're looking at introducing a literacy-based program with differing strategies for getting students to speak, to use the language for authentic purposes, where they're seeing the value, that's an important factor. What do we value about our Core French Program at this point in time?

So we need, at an early age or at an early stage, with our Core French Program, to give those students and those teachers some success, some strategies, some training, so we're going to use that intensive French program. Given that we put in new resources in the core French area, that's made some change; the material is up to date and a greater interest to our young people today. But in terms of instructional strategies, we need to employ the kinds of things that will enable the students to be able to use the language to say that they have success in communicating.

So we're going to attempt to use that experience in our province, which as the deputy minister mentioned, we have four classes, and we've had tremendous success in the Cape Breton area where we have four of those classes, where we see students in an intensive period of French instruction. It's kind of like a mini-immersion, whereby in that case they have intensive French for five months of the year. It can be the first five months or the last five months.

In that period of time - and we're just getting to the assessment phase of that where we have pre- and post-oral interviews - we're seeing students advance remarkably, based on a scale that we're using for an oral testing scale that we're using for New

Brunswick which has been in place for some years, and we're finally getting some data on our core French students, even though it's a small number at the moment in Grade 6.

The intent in our plan is to go further than that. We need to know where our core French students are, in terms of their ability to use a second language. So our plan is to use that instrument so that we can go and find out where our core French students are in Grades 6, 9 and 12, so that we have a base to start off from, not just openly say, well, they're not doing so well. That's not good enough, we need to know, do we have an instrument that can be more precise, to let us know where they're at so we can start from that point in time?

So basically that's very exciting for us because we want to start from a point of success, to spread that to our Core French Program, because if those students, by Grade 9, haven't had that experience of success along the way, why would they want to take core French in Grade 10? There's no reason, because they don't have to, first of all, so why would they?

We have to give them a purpose or reason to want to continue. From what we've observed in the classrooms with those students and that experience in Grade 6, we see the enthusiasm but we see the ability to have - for a stranger like myself to walk into that classroom after even a month - they can actually carry on a conversation with me, not memorize phrases or vocabulary that aren't really part of their life, but those little things that can make a big difference if we're persistent and it's well planned out. That's one of the bright issues that we see, along with the financial support we're getting from the federal government, I mean it's tremendous.

In terms of teacher training, preparing a teacher for that program, they spend a week in Montreal to learn the techniques, the approaches, the strategies that are important to put in place for that success. We have administrators who are invited to find out, well, how does this work in my school, because obviously the biggest challenge to an administrator is how do I set up my timetable? I've got this class that I've got to prepare five months for and then I've got to change my schedules and I've got to find a teacher to do that. So it's very challenging for them. So they're involved in the process, they're showing how it can be done and with the support from federal money, if they need extra funds, it's available.

[10:00 a.m.]

So our intent in all of this is to have at least one program, one class in every board in our province to have that experience so that they can draw from locally-grown experience. Oftentimes we talk about what's going on in B.C. or Ontario, here we have a chance to talk about what's happening in Nova Scotia. At this moment we have three boards that have that kind of experience on their doorstep. If we were to go to Cape

Breton and speak to the central office staff in Cape Breton in particular, they are extremely pleased at the results going on there. Hopefully we could spread that to the other boards and see what that experience brings, so we can have a chance to move that forward to all our core French students and maybe get closer to that target.

MR. GAUDET: I have another question. Looking at that target by 2013, I'm looking at the high school level either for people who are in Core French or Immersion Programs. Are all courses at the high school level - I'm thinking of physics, chemistry and I heard in your opening comments that you talked about biology - are those courses available in French? I'm thinking, if they're not, chances are that arriving in Grade 11 or 12, some of these students are going to switch back over to English programs, English courses. So if we're trying to meet a target four years down the road but at the same time the courses aren't available for these high school students, we're not going to meet those targets at the end of the day. So I'm just curious, are those programs available?

MR. COCHRANE: All the courses - an immersion student who goes into Grade 10, 11 and 12 would not take all their courses in French. There would be a certain number available to them and the ones that we have (Interruptions) Jean-Claude, don't be shy.

MR. JEAN-CLAUDE BERGERON: Basically at the immersion high school level, it's about 50 per cent of the courses and there are many initiatives of high schools happening in many mandated courses. So basically Mr. Cochrane has mentioned that there are some issues finding qualified teachers for the advanced math and physics and chemistry.

We're noticing in the province that I don't think there's any, for example, physics offered in French. There's a bit of chemistry left over, there have been some there. What's happening with the IB, for example, might change that a little bit where the IB is starting, where students might be able to take - and some accommodations have been made for French immersion students - to be able to be successful in taking the IB diploma and the French Immersion Certificate where we're noticing, locally for example, that biology and chemistry will be part of the picture and we're just starting this year with that.

So basically, you're right, in terms of availability of courses and a variety of subjects, certainly math up to Grade 10 is available province-wide and biology and science up to Grade 10. After Grades 11 and 12 it drops, in terms of the sciences. We have a lot of social studies, language arts, law, all these courses and, as I said, some school boards offer some chemistry and some math but it's not as - I think the biggest problem that we hear is that basically there are no qualified teachers available for these subjects.

MR. GAUDET: Are some of these courses available on-line? I'm looking at chemistry or physics.

MR. BERGERON: What we started this year, we had requests for this and we're looking and we consulted with the consultants across the province, and the answer we received was that demand was there for biology, like a correspondence course for example, so that's where we're starting. Obviously the issue of making new programs available and translating them takes quite a bit of time, so we have basically analyzed if it was beneficial for immersion students to do the course by correspondence or on-line. We're noticing that the support system that's there for the correspondence courses would help students meet the outcomes and also keep the language element present. So we're going in that direction to support the students who wanted to take as many courses as possible.

You're right, French immersion students usually want to take as many courses in science and math and music and physical education and all that, and it's sometimes now, with IB, hard to juggle all these courses, so that's what we're trying to offer them, as many ways to reaching our goal, that 50 per cent is still part of the goal, and correspondence and on-line courses is one way of helping.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired. I'll come back to you later. Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a few questions and I'll be sharing my time as well. How many French schools in the province, all-French schools?

MR. COCHRANE: French First Language, there are 19.

MR. PORTER: Yes, and just the one university, Université Sainte-Anne?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, correct, Université Sainte-Anne.

MR. PORTER: Okay, and going back to this number again, I want to just touch on what some of the others have discussed and that 50 per cent number by 2013. I think it's probably, in reality, not 50 per cent, from what I'm hearing here today. What is the reality, Mr. Cochrane, do you think?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, certainly if you look at our numbers in the past, and it was an interesting statistic that I was looking at with regard to Nova Scotia and the number of students in immersion, chances are the percentage of our students in immersion on the way through will meet the goal, they'll be functionally bilingual, they'll be able to function in French.

If you look at our enrolment in immersion in Nova Scotia, that's 13,753 in 2003-04, so we've gone up since then. That was 9.6 per cent of our students so that group will be fine, and that's probably a higher percentage now than it was then so they should be okay.

We had about 47 per cent of our students enrolled in core French, that's because it's from Grade 4 to Grade 9 mandatory and then the high schools obviously drop off. What percentage of that 47 per cent would be questionable when you look at whether or not they're going to be functional? These are English students taking core French and the 9.6 per cent were immersion. So we're probably - and I'm out there probably, we're probably going to be 20 per cent, 23 per cent, if we're lucky, and that's probably not vastly different than most jurisdictions across the country are beginning to report. I'm just guessing at that but certainly the 9.6 per cent should be fine.

Then a number of those students who are in core French would be acceptable and then, of course, the other thing is that all of our students in the French First Language Program will be functional.

MR. PORTER: You talk about in Grades 4 to 9 the core being mandatory, so to get to Grade 9 is there someone there in Grade 9, a counsellor, a teacher or somebody saying these are the reasons to keep taking French, what are the incentives? So when my child gets to Grade 9 in a couple of years, what is she going to be told with regard to French language? She likes French, but are we talking - okay, there are employment opportunities, there are travel opportunities, whatever it might be - what are those?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, as I mentioned in those statistics earlier, if we can convince them that it's important to their career, a huge number would take it. If we can convince them that in Nova Scotia society and inside of Canada it's important to be bilingual, it'll also increase.

You have to make it relevant to the students' own goal and their game plan and where they want to go. That's difficult to do, but certainly the Grade 9 core French teachers would be encouraging our students to go on into high school and take core French. We have a significant number that start in Grade 10, but that number decreases significantly as they move through the system.

I'll just give you one board, your own board if you'd like for an example. In Annapolis in 2003 we had 1,036 students in Grade 9 core French, it was mandatory. When they got to Grade 10 the next year, that number dropped to 234 and by the time they got to Grade 11 and the next year, that number dropped to 95. So they're starting out in Grade 9 and they're looking at their opportunities and for all those reasons I talked about earlier in that survey, they're starting to drift away.

If you look at the Grade 10 one, which is probably even more relevant, let's look at Halifax. In Grade 10 in 2003 there were 670 students taking core French in high school. The next year, when they got to Grade 11, they had dropped to 254, then they dropped again as they went on into Grade 12. So it's getting increasingly difficult to convince them that it's part of their career path and part of their goal.

It's not unusual, this is not a phenomenon isolated to Nova Scotia. When I taught Grade 9 in New Brunswick I had a huge number of kids who came from French First Language into the English school system because they wanted to go to English high school or go to English university, and there's still some of that out there.

As we expand, though, our French First Language offerings, we should be able to offset a bit of that, and as we provide more bilingual opportunities in high school and university, we should also be able to offset that. It's a major effort to convince students that to them it's going to help them meet their career plan, their life plan and so on.

MR. PORTER: Would it be fair to say, after that stretch of Grades 4 to 9, that these kids feel they are comfortable enough that they don't need to go any further for those opportunities? The gentleman behind you is shaking his head no, but . . .

MR. COCHRANE: I don't think so. I can hear them shaking. The ones that feel that go on and take it.

MR. PORTER: Continue on in French. Okay, interesting numbers, they are quite staggering, actually.

You talked a bit about the qualified teachers, obviously we don't have enough and a bursary program and opportunities in New Brunswick and Quebec. How many student opportunities are there for those bursaries, whether they're here in Nova Scotia or whether they're in New Brunswick or Quebec, what are the numbers? You didn't really hit on the numbers there.

MR. COCHRANE: The numbers who were taking it? Mark.

MR. PORTER: The number of opportunities, not so much who are taking it - how many opportunities exist?

MR. MARK BANNERMAN: Under the national programs that are administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage, they invest an enormous amount of money to bursaries, several programs across the country. Probably the most popular one in Nova Scotia is what they call the Explore Program, which was formerly called the Summer Language Bursary Program. It is a five-week program where anglophone students would

study French in another part of the country, primarily in Quebec. There are 8,800 bursaries given out every year nationally and we have 450 bursaries.

I should add that Nova Scotia probably has the highest number of applications for that bursary per capita. I think we're number two in the country, after Ontario. So we give out 450 bursaries, randomly, to students to take a five-week intensive French Immersion Program, primarily in Quebec but we also send them to Université Sainte-Anne and, in turn - it's an exchange program. Université Sainte-Anne brings in students from P.E.I., Quebec goes to Dalhousie, students go to B.C., so there are 8,800 students at any given time moving around during the summer and the Spring taking French courses across the country.

We have no problem meeting our quota, so we give out 450 bursaries every year, without exception.

MR. PORTER: Are these English-speaking totally, with no French, or a mixture?

MR. BANNERMAN: A mixture; some are fluent, some have absolutely no French. They start at Grade 11, the students who qualify have just finished Grade 11 or Grade 12, or are post-secondary students.

MR. PORTER: Some could possibly have no French, though, going into that program.

MR. COCHRANE: Well, they'd have core, they would have had some core . . .

MR. PORTER: So they wouldn't be going in there cold then, I guess is what I was wondering . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Not totally cold.

MR. PORTER: And how much, was my next kind of follow-up, could you possibly learn in five weeks? I think probably quite a bit, from one of the one-week camps and two-week camps I've seen in the summertime at Université Sainte-Anne.

MR. BANNERMAN: Surprising, especially where there is no English spoken and you're kicked out of the program if you speak English. I think there are two or three warnings, they have a whole policy there.

This is right across the country, there are 22 participating post-secondary institutions in that program.

MR. PORTER: How many - I'm thinking about post-secondary and Université Sainte-Anne specifically - would all of the applicants applying for Université Sainte-Anne have a French background or would there be some beginning, applying with none?

MR. BANNERMAN: To this program?

MR. PORTER: No, to Université Sainte-Anne.

MR. BANNERMAN: I think you have to have some function in French in order to take a B.Ed. or a B.A. or . . .

MR. PORTER: That would be compulsory then even to . . .

MR. COCHRANE: It's a fairly attractive program for immersion graduates and they will go and be quite able to function and so on, and on to a B.Ed.

MR. PORTER: And the immersion is five weeks. How long is the immersion program there now, at Université Sainte-Anne?

MR. BANNERMAN: Well, there's the 100 days during the year and then there's the five weeks in the summer.

MR. PORTER: The other question was with regard to - I think you mentioned, Mr. Cochrane, on-line fluency training. I'm interested in hearing a little bit about that. Is that like an audio-visual, how does that work?

MR. FELIX: Well, two years ago we went ahead with trying to again reach our teachers who are presently in the classroom teaching core French or French immersion - it's all French second language. One way we thought of, well, what can we use technology for to engage those individuals who would have an interest? So we entered into an agreement with the CSAP Technical Department where they were using an Interwise platform to deliver interactive meetings and so on.

[10:15 a.m.]

We sent out an invitation to all our French second language teachers in the province to see if they might be interested in participating in a synchronous experience on-line, using this platform where the groups would be limited to 12 participants because we had only so many seats that we had access to. So they would meet as a group and under the facilitation of a professor from Acadia, in this particular instance, and it's still ongoing. The first year we had 24 individuals from across the province who were engaged in on-line chats, so to speak, but it wasn't just chat, it had to do with them being

able to identify their particular needs, from a language perspective, whether it be written or oral language.

The professor who was involved and engaged with them would try to delineate what areas of language he would try to improve with them collectively, so it wasn't a program that they were registering for. It was for only six weeks, twice a week for six weeks for 45 minutes after school, so it was between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. that they are committing to, at no cost to them, although the department is paying for the seats to use the Interwise platform. That's the experience we've had.

It's in its second year and we had the participants divided into three levels, where they self-identified themselves as either beginner French individuals or intermediate or advanced. So far this year we had four sessions, one beginner group session, we had two intermediate group sessions and one advanced. Actually two sessions were completed last Friday.

The feedback from the teachers is very, very positive in terms of that interaction, because there's a little bit of anonymity in this experience because they're not face to face with anybody but they're using the language. They have to submit written reports or documents or homework and they're engaging each other as adults in a platform where they're listening to each other speak and they're having the opportunity to improve their own competence in the language itself so that hopefully it's being translated to the classroom.

That's one way that we've been experiencing engaging teachers who are presently in the system. They're there, they're in the core French classroom, they are classroom teachers who have been given the task or given the job to teach core French to their homeroom and sometimes it's not their strength, the second language. We have to reach those teachers and give them every opportunity possible. So that's another possibility that we provided for them on-line and there is tremendous interest for it.

Yesterday I met with the professor from Acadia and we're looking at, okay, is this going to go on sporadically or do we have a plan for that? Our plan for that is part of the new plan we're working on for the next four years and we're looking at continuing that and even increasing it to the point that some teachers have indicated an interest that they'd like to have an intensive interaction on-line during the weekend. So there's interest there and we're going to explore how much interest there is and how many people we can attract again to have an opportunity to improve their own language skills.

MR. PORTER: My final question, I guess I would leave it open to any of you, is there a better way or another way to teach Nova Scotians French?

MR. COCHRANE: I think we're finding good results with the intensive French in Grade 6. I think there's always a debate, when do you do it and how do you follow it up? The core program gets to a lot more people. We have an immersion entry point in Primary and an immersion entry point in Grade 7. I would think that the late immersion entry point might serve the population better if it were a bit earlier. We're looking at these and we constantly review what we're doing and recognizing our situation.

We are looking at some other things, we are looking at the grade configurations in Nova Scotia schools and if we do make some changes in that regard, then there's a good chance to align the entry points to a different configuration. So we're constantly looking at where the best place to provide the most intensive amount of French instruction would be. So far the experience has been very positive with the intensive French and we're pleased about that.

We have fairly good results with immersion, both early and late, so we're pleased with that and looking at how we can expand that and how we can increase the number of students enrolled.

MR. PORTER: Thank you. I'll pass it on if there's any time left.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have four minutes.

MR. MORSE: Four minutes, okay. Well, first of all, as a student who stuck it out through Grade 12 . . .

MR. COCHRANE: This was just a couple of years ago?

MR. MORSE: Oh, probably 10 years ago. In spite of knowing that taking French was going to hurt my graduation average, I am pleased to say, Mr. Chairman, that somewhat to my surprise, I understood the deputy's opening salutation.

MR. COCHRANE: It was pretty basic.

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, would you please strike the deputy's response. (Laughter) I also want to report that by and large I can understand most of Joe Clark's speeches in French.

MR. MACKINNON: They're fairly basic too. (Laughter)

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, would you please strike the member for Pictou East's comment.

My first question, Mr. Chairman, to the deputy, of course, is does that make me functionally bilingual?

MR. COCHRANE: No. We're still grappling with the definition of functional. You know we see it all the time, there's a different federal list, there's a different provincial list, there's a different list that we have in schools. It's always a question.

I think it really comes back to your comfort level and your ability to deal in a second language with a certain amount of comfort. I often joked that when Jean Chrétien became Prime Minister, I became bilingual. But nonetheless, it depends on what is functional. It's even a question we use in English about literacy; some would say you are literate if you can read the newspaper, which is allegedly written at the Grade 8 level, and that's a measure. You know, we think people are well beyond functional at that point. So there's no real definition and it is something we constantly grapple with.

The feds used to have an A-B-C/1-2-3 classification.

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to point out that the deputy gave the right answer and if I was grading him, I would give him 100 per cent on that one because I am not functionally bilingual.

MR. COCHRANE: I think there are other markers out there.

MR. MORSE: Not on this one, you were absolutely right, Mr. Deputy. However, I do not regret having stuck it out in Mr. McKinley's French class and it does provide somewhat of a basis, which means that instead of being totally lost when the conversation switches to French, I may pick up snippets, which is better than none.

Now another question, and you may have already answered this question by your student enrolment stats after Grade 9, but given the lack of French teachers, or seeming lack of French teachers that has been mentioned already by a number of speakers, would it be more beneficial to concentrate more on the core French Primary to Grade 12, as opposed to French immersion, especially when you see the students take French from Grade 4 to Grade 9 and then they drop it and they don't have the benefit of having Mr. McKinley's Grade 12 French, which may stick with them to some degree for the rest of their life, or at least until they're 52?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Deputy, your answer is going to have to be 30 seconds.

MR. COCHRANE: I think we have to offer a menu of programming that meets the students' needs and their abilities. I might like everyone to take advanced math but I know they can't, so we offer regular math and advanced math and each person chooses the level that is going to meet their demands and their needs and their comfort level. So

we offer that in French across the province. The mix is not bad, it's just a question of the degree to which it is offered and the number of people taking it.

MR. MORSE: I think that's an appropriate answer, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm very pleased to have Deputy Cochrane back with such a solid contingent today.

MR. COCHRANE: I didn't know I had this many either, until I got looking.

MR. MACKINNON: I really appreciate that. Mr. Chairman, I'm willing to share my time, providing the deputy has short, punchy answers to some of my questions.

First and foremost with me is the situation in 17 of our 18 counties, we're facing significant to severe out-migration. Is there a shortchanging of rural Nova Scotia in relationship to core and immersion?

MR. COCHRANE: I don't think we have the offerings that we might like in immersion in all parts of the province, it's a critical mass question. If you have a class of 10 in Grade 1, how do you balance that between an immersion class and a non-immersion class and the critical mass? That's one of the reasons why late immersion is fairly attractive because by the time they get to late immersion, they've probably been consolidated at the junior high school or middle school level. That's where core French is fairly attractive, because we can offer it across the board even if you don't have necessarily that critical mass. It's a question we face every day as we look at the urbanization of our province.

MR. MACKINNON: So it's safe to say that metro Halifax is being better served than rural Nova Scotia?

MR. COCHRANE: I would say in the offering of immersion but other boards have been very innovative and Jean-Claude is back there wanting to give an answer. Boards have been innovative in how they deal with it. Do you want to comment?

MR. BERGERON: I would say that from the course offering and the teachers available and the programs and the way they're being implemented in all the different school boards in the province, I would not agree with your statement. I would say that probably rural school board students have just as many opportunities to be successful in learning a second language, because of the resources available. We've put a lot of resources there and we are certainly encouraging teachers to stay in their area, if they are

from there, and this new plan that we're starting in terms of getting bursaries for teachers, we will encourage teachers actually to stay in those areas for two or three years, actually.

So no, I wouldn't say that Halifax students have an advantage over rural students at all, in second language.

MR. MACKINNON: That was more of a question than a statement, I was digging for the correct answer, thank you.

MR. BERGERON: I would say pretty much in the province everyone is treated equally there.

MR. MACKINNON: Deputy, I know you're very familiar with the system in New Brunswick. Having a bilingual province next door to us, how far behind are we to New Brunswick and what about the role of Policy Statement 309 in New Brunswick?

MR. COCHRANE: Certainly in French First Language, it's a lot easier because the population is more concentrated - it's in the Acadian Peninsula, it's in the Moncton area and so on, whereas our French First Language is pretty well spread across the province. We've got some pockets where we have a larger percentage, that makes it a little easier there.

I think probably the presence of French First Language individuals makes it easier to perhaps appreciate French second language through core, because there are more opportunities go to an event that might be in French or to listen to French radio or pick up a French newspaper, those kinds of things. So the environment perhaps makes it a little easier to teach French second language.

I don't think they've been able to take advantage of it to more than the extent than what we're trying to do here in Nova Scotia. It may be a little harder sell in Nova Scotia to convince the students that having a second language is crucial to their career path and so on; whereas New Brunswick, because it's an officially bilingual province, probably sees more of that.

MR. MACKINNON: The return to service clause, how successful is that and what penalties exist for those who don't comply?

MR. COCHRANE: I'll let the consultants speak on that one. That's a huge debate that we have to have and I keep saying to my colleagues, particularly in Health and Agriculture - interesting because the Veterinary College is an issue - very difficult to find an incentive, particularly in the medical professions, that would be attractive enough to keep someone here if they wanted to go somewhere else.

[10:30 a.m.]

I have a different view than most people on return to service. My view is if you want to sit in Nova Scotia's seat, you commit to come back. Other people believe you've got to give something in addition to that. Well, I can tell you that $10,000 to a medical doctor who might want to go somewhere else, there's nothing we can do, other than a moral obligation that they've signed something and want to stay. We have to work at that.

In this case I don't think we've had a huge problem. These are teachers in our system who want to enhance their qualifications and therefore, they're more than likely willing to stay. (Interruption) That program hasn't started yet.

So I don't think it will be difficult in the sense that they're here and we're trying to provide some assistance for them to do their job more comfortably and better, but it's always a debate. We're talking to the med students and I know a number of you have debated about the student loan and not paying while you're a resident, we're such a small piece of that big financial picture. But we're trying and we've come up with a solution, I think, but it's always difficult - less difficult probably in education than it is in the medical profession.

MR. MACKINNON: One of my three children, after graduating from Saint Mary's, went to Université Sainte-Anne for two years and is bilingual. Another is a graduate with a B.Ed. from St. F.X. with sort of a 100 level French and is presently substituting every day and sometimes is called out to teach French immersion and it's a very difficult task. How difficult is it to get substitutes with fluency in French?

MR. COCHRANE: Very difficult. If they're teachers in Nova Scotia and they have a good command of French as a first language or second language, they have a job. It's very difficult to get people who want to substitute - young people who want to do a full-time career because they have the opportunity. Our best draw is people who don't necessarily want to work full-time but have the second language or first language ability. It's a little easier to get them and they're willing to do it and that's what they want to do. It's a problem in every jurisdiction in the country to get substitutes who are well qualified in French as a first language or a second language.

Yes, everybody's got it. I used to use the warm, vertical body theory when I called, which is if you were a warm, vertical body and you were willing to come into that classroom, I'll hire you for the day.

MR. MACKINNON: Looking at the goal of 50 per cent, a doubling by 2013, what is the level of fluency that makes one part of that 50 per cent?

MR. COCHRANE: That's a good question and the definition that we really don't have and hasn't been determined what you measure. We have a program that we're measuring the Grade 6 intensive when they leave and it comes from a scale of 11 through to 17. But as I said, there's a different federal scale, there are a whole number of different scales as to what is fluent. They say functional, I guess is the word they're using.

MR. MACKINNON: That's it, I'm going to share what I have left and hopefully he'll get time of his own later.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker, you have about three minutes.

MR. PARKER: Okay, I'll try to make it quick. I was going to ask you, in all the programs that we have and there are quite a number - we have core French, we have the extended core French, we've got early immersion, late immersion, now intensive French - do we have too many? Are there too many programs out there? There are five or six different types of programs and they all have a particular function, but is there a better way to do it than six different programs?

MR. COCHRANE: I don't know who wants to jump in - Gerald.

MR. FELIX: Given that they're different, they have different structures, we know that relative to any mass of students available in any given community, you may not be able to have access to a French Immersion Program but you may be able to offer, if you have the staff and the interest, integrated French at the Grade 7 level. So that's two courses that are taught in French. So even for the community that may not want a full-blown immersion program for their children but want a bit more than what core French could offer, it's an opportunity where it can and where there is interest. So there are optional programs to give as many possibilities to parents in the different communities as possible.

Now all of them in their own right produce different results, or different levels of competence that the children might get as a consequence of that.

MR. PARKER: I think I heard earlier something about the Grade 6 intensive French program, it's only in three different boards?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. PARKER: Do we have enough federal funding? I'll ask Mr. Bannerman - are there enough federal dollars coming in here to expand that to all the boards in the province?

MR. BANNERMAN: Well, I think the pilot projects are actually provincially driven. These are not federal dollars that are being invested into these pilot projects, am I correct?

MR. FELIX: The plan for that intensive French program is not to create those classes throughout the province. It's to have enough experience in that environment, in that structure, so that we can take what is working and what's giving success to our students to improve our Core French Program. It definitely was never intended to have an intensive French program in every community, because you wouldn't have enough personnel to cover that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired. Mr. Glavine.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very quickly, I'd like to preface my questions with the fact that I was an administrator at West Kings High School when we introduced French immersion at the Grade 9 level, and last year to go back and see 13 of the 21 graduate in core French was just thrilling to say the least.

However this year, I think we took a step backward because in the Grade 9 French immersion, there are 36 students and I've heard so many stories through the year of disappointment. So I feel that we make a step forward and then we just don't follow up with the kind of resources that are really going to help those children. I mean, on a class basis, they can only get a maximum of two minutes of personal interchange with the teacher and this is so limiting, and next year I'm sure that in Grade 10, the number who will go to French will be cut dramatically. I think we have to be really cognizant of that.

So I ask the question for everybody here, is the money targeted? Is French immersion, French education, targeted funding?

MR. COCHRANE: Do you want to explain where it starts? Who wants to take on the one - the originating class is the one that we fund all the way through the system. (Interruptions) Our total federal program, by the way, is about $32.2 million over that period of time; about $14 million of it goes to French second language, the other money goes to French first language.

MS. MELANSON: The school boards, when they see a need from the community or a request from the community, apply under what is called a French Special Project. They apply to establish usually a class in a particular school where the community has shown that they'll be supporting that program. We need to know that that's sustainable in a long-term fashion.

It's very disruptive to a school or to a community to have an immersion program that starts in Primary and peters out at the end of Grade 2 or Grade 3, it's really difficult. We asked for a community to make a commitment to long-term sustainability of that program. That project is usually approved at our level by our director, whose name is Anne Baccardax and the funding is provided for that and that funding goes toward a teacher's salary and also resources. That program is called the lead class, the first one established in that school.

We make a commitment to fund that lead class from there to the end of Grade 12 in immersion. We follow them year after year. We do follow-up - it's there to see that the kids are progressing the way that they should be.

Now the next year, as another Primary class comes in and our lead class moves on to Grade 1, the board undertakes a commitment to fund that next year's class. We provide resources when we do central purchasing and, of course, we distribute those to that class but we don't take on the responsibility.

MR. GLAVINE: It's good to hear you say that because that's why it was so disappointing; there were two Grade 6s, two Grade 7s and two Grade 8 classes. Now we lump them together at Grade 9 - 36 - and I've had account after account of the difference between their middle school experience and their Grade 9 experience, even though they have great teachers. So there is targeted, then in relationship . . .

MS. MELANSON: There is targeted funding to support this class.

MR. GLAVINE: So actually, a school board then can really work counter to the Department of Education and say, we really don't have enough money to fund a program and not really reach the mandate that the Department of Education is trying to strive for.

MS. MELANSON: If they so choose to do so.

MR. GLAVINE: Okay, thank you very much. In terms of - is there any special certificate now for somebody who does graduate with core French?

MS. MELANSON: No, there isn't, not for core French.

MR. GLAVINE: I know in the old program, when a student did six high school courses in French, I know there was a real sense of achievement among high school students when they were able to reach that accomplishment. I just wondered, do we need to build in those kinds of external incentives? It is something that they can really say when they apply, for example, to post-secondary that they do have this certification and also again, looking down the road, as potential teachers and so forth, would have that designation.

The other thing that I observed, when you say that 71 per cent of the students in the survey did not see the job success relationship with taking French - maybe it was around 71 per cent - I've been in about 10 or 12 junior and senior high schools since September, and I certainly haven't seen any poster or anything to say that here are the kinds of opportunities if, in fact, you have some French coming through high school.

Now in my community, kids, especially those associated with the military, really see a connection because I'll tell you, those who get promotions are generally bilingual today, especially up the ladder. I just wonder if we couldn't do a better selling job in the high school, in junior high, to say to students - here are the openings, here are the opportunities if you have French when you come through.

MR. COCHRANE: Certainly the partnership we have with Canadian Parents for French, they do promotional materials as to the benefit of taking French as a second language and we support that. In fact, there are partners in a lot of these projects we talked about - the summer camps and so on. They are partners in a lot of those and they deliver them on our behalf.

There's no question, if you live in an area where there is a large number of federal operations, you do see the benefit of it as a result because a number of the requirements - and that you may get in New Brunswick and it comes back to the question earlier because there is the public service exercise there with regard to being able to serve both elements of the population.

In Nova Scotia, I think we're making some gains. I think the Act that went though the House with regard to Acadian French language services, and so on, will begin to make people realize that there is a significant benefit, even in the public service of Nova Scotia.

MR. GLAVINE: With that, I'll turn it over to my Acadian colleague.

MR. GAUDET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start off by - I think, Deputy, you indicated in your comments earlier that French is mentored between Grade 4 and Grade 9?

MR. COCHRANE: Correct.

MR. GAUDET: I guess my question is, are there enough French teachers across the province to meet that requirement, to offer French courses?

MR. COCHRANE: There are enough people teaching French to meet the requirement. Whether or not they're qualified to the extent we might like, who wants to - nobody. (Laughter)

MR. GAUDET: I'll withdraw the question. (Laughter)

MR. COCHRANE: I think it was a language problem. (Laughter) Go ahead, Elaine.

MS. MELANSON: Core French is offered in all of our schools, where it's supposed to be from Grade 4 to Grade 9. We do know that, we have statistics that are submitted by schools and it is offered. A lot of that comes down to who is teaching it.

If you have a school board whereby the Grade 4 classroom teacher is obligated to teach core French, and that is the case in several places - whether that's a school decision or a board decision - that does create problems because you have somebody there for whom that may not be their strong suit. They signed on to teach their math and social studies and science and all, as a regular Grade 4 classroom teacher, and all of a sudden they find core French in the mix and they might not have had any opportunity to use French since they dropped out of core French in Grade 9 or since their high school experience. That does create a problem in terms of how that teacher is working to promote the language and to use the language with their students.

It's not fair to say that they don't do a good job, because a lot of them do and a lot of them work very hard at it. It's just a matter of, sometimes, boards make those decisions based on the funding that they have available and their hiring and their staffing. That's not necessarily the best decision to make for a student in promotion of second language, but those are the realities of what boards have to deal with sometimes.

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. GAUDET: My next question, and I'll come back if I get time on what resources are available, but I want to focus on early and late immersion. Recognizing sometimes decisions to offer these programs are based on numbers, how many students are entrusted at the same time requests are coming from parents and students? I'm just trying to understand why we aren't offering, right across the board, early immersion throughout all the school boards. I'm trying to get a better sense of why we are basically offering early - and in some places late - French immersion.

I know my two boys followed the late immersion program in Amherst, but why aren't the early immersion programs available right across the board?

MR. COCHRANE: If I follow your line of questioning - and I'm going to get myself in trouble so I'm going to be careful - quite often, it's a question of critical mass. You may end up, as I said, with 10 children entering Primary and you're going to have a class, but do you have enough to split it again and then do you end up with a P-1, 2, 3?

Sometimes a board will look at their circumstances and at the Primary entry point, there won't be enough. But by the time they get to Grade 7, they've moved from four elementaries into a junior high, and therefore you probably have the critical mass and enough to offer a class in late immersion, or maybe two classes. So each board has to look at their demographics and where their children are. If it were only one choice across the province, it would be very difficult to make it at Primary.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired. Mr. MacLeod.

MR. MACLEOD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome all. Just to follow a little bit, if I was a teacher and had my education degree and I ended up in a situation where I had to teach core French, could I get any help from the Internet or the department? Where do I go, because I'm in that situation and I want to do the best job that I can?

MR. FELIX: Probably the first line of support that they would have access to, or should have access to, would be the French coordinators or consultants. So the request would come from within. Following that, as I previously mentioned, there are opportunities for them to go to summer institutes that we're putting on for various language developments, where they can go to French communities, where they can participate on-line now. We have a number of them from Cape Breton that are involved with that.

Part of the in-servicing that we do where we bring together the French teachers who are often isolated in different schools, where they can just sit down with their colleagues and hash out what they're doing and what they can do better and actually speak with adults because they often tell us, this is one of the few opportunities where I have a chance to use the language at the level of another adult - they're always talking to students.

So it's providing that kind of support for them, along with resources, of course, but it's that actual use of the language that they need to have in their life, if they don't so choose personally to listen to the French radio, watch French television and so on. Those are opportunities and some individuals take advantage of all those possibilities. That's what is available now. That is the group of teachers we have in our system at the moment who need that kind of support.

MR. MACLEOD: I guess just to go one step further, a lot of the hirings and assignments are made in August and so you don't have the ability to take a summer course, what do I do?

MR. COCHRANE: They shouldn't be hiring you to teach core French or French second language in August and assign you to that class. It could happen and we'd do the

best we could to support you, but they would never or should never have you in a French immersion classroom - maybe a grade French core, but even then it would be a question of the board having to do something quite drastic.

MR. MACLEOD: We'll change the topic. The pilot project that you mentioned, it seems to be having a lot of success. How did you choose the three boards to take part in that particular project?

MR. COCHRANE: My sense is when they came forward and they knew we had the option, they looked at it and said, gee, we'd like to do that. As I said, we expect that a number of them are going to come forward in the future and say, we'd like to have an intensive French program in Grade 6. Cape Breton obviously expressed an interest and we saw four of the six schools actually that are in Cape Breton. So it depends on the interest of the board, the supervisory staff and then again, the teacher involved in the classroom. As I said, we lost one of the schools because of the transfer of the teacher, and the new teacher came in and didn't have the comfort level perhaps with the intensive offering that we would like.

MR. FELIX: Maybe I could just add that about three and a half years ago the department executive, the Director of French Second Language Programs, presented this notion because it started off, it had its beginnings in Newfoundland in 1998 as a research project. There are two research individuals who are involved with this project since and it has grown throughout Canada. There are over 10,000 students who actually have participated in this intensive French program. Presently in Nova Scotia, in those four classrooms, we have 157 students; four classes come from Cape Breton and it looks like the indications from there are that there are going to be two new requests coming out of a different area in the Sydney area. So it is growing in interest.

What is most amazing in the whole experience is that administrators, teachers and parents are seeing students in a program that wasn't so popular or so attractive or so successful in the past where they're seeing students enthusiastic, parents very pleased, administration less frustrated with lineups at the door, because of discipline issues probably. We're seeing an experience there that we would like to capitalize and use what is happening there to shore up our core French program in all our boards.

That seems to be where we need to begin; we need to begin with some sort of success if we're going to motivate and interest students, they have to have that kind of thing, success going. Otherwise they're just going to turn off the tap at the end of Grade 9 and that's going to be done, it's finished, unfortunately, because we do have individuals who will go on to Grade 12 and it will open at least that door a bit more for employment purposes, communication purposes and so on, because our young people travel a great deal more than we do, of course. It's a benefit, it's an asset, it's a tool in their toolbox that will benefit them somewhere.

MR. MACLEOD: Is this the first year for the pilot?

MR. FELIX: It's the fourth year, the fourth year from Sydney and now we've built an expertise with the personnel. Actually one of the teachers from one of those classrooms has been recognized to train other people from across Canada. In Sydney a year and a half ago we had visitors from the Yukon who were trying to prepare to implement some classrooms in intensive French. They came to observe our classrooms in Sydney and they were very impressed with what we have going here at the moment.

MR. MACLEOD: So we're into the fourth year, then the ones that were in the first year have made it to Grade 9, and onwards, I hope. So how many are still very interested in their French and taking the French, basically?

MR. FELIX: In the Sydney area, as Deputy Minister Cochrane mentioned earlier, it happens the way it has been set up so far, or it has been happening in the Sydney area, that a vast majority of our students are going into a late immersion program that might be nearby because you might have four or five feeder schools and they're all feeding into Malcolm Munroe, for example. In that school, there are over 50 per cent of the students enrolled in a late immersion program and that's a school with about 600 students.

There's a new class in Bras d'Or that we have this year whereby ordinarily the students would go to an English school with no French Immersion Program, and we're hoping to work that experience or hoping to have the opportunity to work with them to prepare the teacher and the students who will move on to Grade 7 in TL Sullivan. But not too far from TL Sullivan, there's a school in Sydney Mines that offers late immersion.

Now what we have to be able to discuss with parents or the board, at least, is to show that there is a follow-up to this group of students and it's not necessarily late immersion. That's not our purpose, to prepare our students through this program for a late immersion program. Our intent, again, is to improve our core French program and that's where we need to do the work because we need to answer the question, where are they going after that? Are they going to lose what they gained? They could - in some cases where you have a classroom where you have three feeder schools, some students have the experience of intensive French and the other two groups don't, what do you do there?

There is some reckoning, there is some work that has to be done with that. So again, that's why it's still in the pilot stage. We need to get out the quirks and the difficulties that that can bring.

In New Brunswick, they are fully into the follow-up stage in Grade 6, Grade 7 and Grade 8. They're using materials that are being developed to ensure that the

materials are used to support that kind of approach, or the different strategies we're trying to build in. Here in Nova Scotia, we're going to be part of that - even this summer. We're going to host a three-day institute for follow-up to the intensive French program where we're hosting people coming from New Brunswick and across Canada, those who will want to come this far east.

We're getting involved in that next because the follow-up is tremendously important. If it's not a late immersion program, then what is it? If it's just a regular core French program, what's going to change and are we going to lose what gave the students a boost at that point in time? So that's very important for us and that's one of our major focuses this summer.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired. Would the department like to do any wrap-up comments?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, thank you. We appreciate very much the interest in the program that we offer and it may cause a little confusion when you look at the number of options that we have, but we do try to fashion the options that we have to the communities and the needs of the communities that are determined by the board. Ideally, it may be great if every student could enter into early immersion, but we just don't have the numbers and the personnel. So there are a number of options out there that are designed to respond to the needs.

I think what we also have to do, back to the question of the survey, is how do we make sure that people understand that this is a tool in your toolbox that will make you more qualified for employment, to keep a job, it will fit with your career path, that there is somewhere to go post-secondary and so on.

I do want to comment that we have a huge number of very devoted teachers out there. Sometimes you don't necessarily want to be assigned to that particular subject in that particular school at that moment but we try to support them, the boards try to support them, a number of them take advantage of opportunities that we do present. We do have a huge human resource issue when it comes to French second language or French first language in this province. We're trying to deal with it.

The ideal answer will be when our students can come through the public school system in Nova Scotia, then go into post-secondary in Nova Scotia and come out and teach French first language or French second language. We've got a lot of people working very hard to make that happen in every classroom throughout the province. So thank you very much.

I want to thank everyone who is with me today. I didn't mention from the Gestapo, the communications person Kevin Finch, to make sure I don't get in trouble.

(Laughter) Kevin is here, and Gilles Le Blanc is our Executive Director of Acadian French Language Services. As you said, someday another interesting topic would be what Nova Scotia does for French first language in our province, through the CSAP and through Université Sainte-Anne. So thank you very much for allowing us to come.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Any brief comments before we go? Our next meeting is March 27^th. We're going to be talking about boards, agencies and commissions again, appointments, and the Nova Scotia Book Bureau.

If there are any witnesses that you would like to see besides the Department of Education at these, I think it would be appropriate, because it's nice to get both sides of these stories rather than one side. Although the department always has very accurate information, it would be nice to have others. So if the members have any of that, they could forward it to the clerk and we'll make sure those people are invited.

A motion to adjourn is in order.

MR. MACLEOD: I so move.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We stand adjourned.

[The meeting adjourned at 10:59 a.m.]