ON THE RIGHT TRACK TO BETTER EDUCATION
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VICTORIA -- One sentence in the Royal Commission report on education describes the quintessential purpose of education.
"Achievement, in the minds of many with whom we spoke, was the essence of good schooling, schooling that would allow youngsters the express their understandings and innermost feelings, to ask imaginative questions, to discriminate wisely among choices, to acquire a sense of the consequences of action, to know their culture and the culture of others, to enjoy their own and others' sensibilities, to make their way in the world, and, ultimately, to contribute to a wider social, economic, and spiritual good of the community."
This one sentence is a profound part of the commission report. It expresses sentiments embraced by enlightened people ever since Petrarch ushered in the period of renaissance humanism in 15th century Italy. Good to see that 20th century royal commissions are still guided by those principles.
But since general reassertions of humanistic thinking weren't laid down in the commission's terms of reference, let's go on to some of the nuts and bolts of the report that is to serve as a blueprint for British Columbia's education system for some time to come.
Commissioner Barry Sullivan started his project from shaky ground. Nearly half a million youngsters are, at the moment, depending for fulfilling and rewarding lives on an education system about which few people have much good to say.
Today's relatively well-educated generation has few difficulties spotting weaknesses in any structure, and even fewer communicating its impressions about those weaknesses, but ironically, it has great difficulty providing answers. Hence the Royal Commission on Education.
The commission's findings, provided they are acted upon, should go some distance in providing solutions to at least some of the problems our system of education is facing now and will, most assuredly, face as we prepare ourselves for the third millennium.
I will not go into too many details of the report's recommendations. These you will see and hear debated at every level and in every communications medium during the months to
come. Instead, I would like to touch on some of the fundamentals to which the commission subscribed in arriving at its recommendation.
The commission, for instance, concludes that the basic purposes of education should remain unchanged. The first of these purposes is the provision of custodial service, places where children can spend time in relative safety, while family members work; the second major function of the system, according to the commission, is to attune children to the values and norms of their society; the third and unarguably most important is to educate children.
"These social functions are carved in the granite of tradition and will remain an essential part of any mandate for schooling, however they are described. Schools, as they are constituted in our culture, can never escape such responsibilities, which remain fundamental to the very nature of the institution," the report says.
One of the major and potentially disastrous shortcomings of our education system, according to the commission, is its apparent failure to provide children with dreams and aspirations for the future.
"What was troubling to the commission was the number of youngsters who expressed no goals for themselves. This was more apparent in children from disadvantaged rather than advantaged backgrounds. Life for many of them was characterized more as an unfolding of events than as a journey toward a distant but partially visualized destination," the report says.
The commission advises against saddling the school system with a broad range of responsibilities for children's developmental problems. Such problems, the report says, should be dealt with by other agencies, although the school might serve as the coªordinator of the necessary services.
The curriculum comes in for some sharp criticism. The commission considers it too inflexible. To provide better service, the commission recommends that children be assessed at the entry level and directed to programs for which they are best-suited. At the grades 11 and 12 level, the commission urges greater diversity of courses.
The commission predicts a teacher shortage as the "echo of the baby boom generation resonates in the system." During the next 10 years, the commission estimates, 3,600 additional teachers will be needed, a number that far exceeds the available pool of unemployed teachers.
The report even ventures ever so briefly into the realm of politics, pointing out that the goal of improving the education system may be difficult to achieve "in a province long noted for its political fractiousness."
But achieve it we must, the report concludes.
Amen to that.
SOCRED PRAYER: PLEASE DON'T LET IT SNOW
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VICTORIA -- There's nothing the Vander Zalm government dreads more than the prospect of heavy snow and ice in the coming winter. The Socreds' very survival could depend on just what kind of winter wonderland British Columbia is going to be.
By the time the snow falls, the province's entire highways and bridge maintenance will have been privatized, and the government's derriere will be on the line.
A cold winter with lots of snow could do the Socreds in. If the new, private-sector guardians of our highways fail to deliver the service we've been accustomed to, British Columbians could be very miffed.
The program of privatizing the maintenance of highways and bridges is well under way. The first contract went to a group that calls itself the Victoria Highways Maintenance Corporation. It will look after the highways on southern Vancouver Island.
Principals of the group are John Chew, owner of an excavating Company, Allen Vandekerkhove, owner of the Payless Gas Company, Ray Cunliffe of Delcan Corporation, Art Kool of Aral Holdings and Roland Beaulieu, a former car dealer who sold his business to Jim Pattison.
For $29.9 million, these gentlemen have agreed to keep the highways and bridges of southern Vancouver Island free of ice and snow and in good driving condition for a year.
With all respect to the government's enthusiasm for privatizing and selling everything that isn't nailed down, that agreement falls short of the big savings the government has led us to believe will be achieved if the private sector looks after the highways.
According to the highways's ministry's own estimates, the cost of maintaining the highways and bridges of southern Vancouver Island would have been $31,9 million. True, a million bucks saved is nothing to spit at, but we haven't saved it yet.
Ever heard of cost-plus, the catch-all for unforeseen circumstances? You will. Maybe not with respect to the cost of maintaining highways in the warm climate of the south, but certainly up north, where the weather is less dependable.
One of the reasons for privatizing the maintenance of highways was to reduce the annual budget deficits and perhaps even pay off the province's accumulated debt. At a savings of $1 million in each of the 28 contract areas, we are not going to pay off a lot of debts.
The premier told me earlier this year that he's quite aware of the dangers inherent in this privatization experiment. He admitted that the government could well face defeat over this issue. He's betting on a mild or at least normal first post-
privatization winter, and that's a reckless bet. A couple of good blizzards in northern B.C. could play havoc with the best intentions of the private sector to do a good job on our highways. They simply don't have the experience the highways ministry has amassed during decades of battling the elements.
The highways ministry also wasn't hamstrung by the need to turn a profit. It could draw on additional funds during particularly bad winters. The same goes for the private sector. It, too, can and will ask the government for more money to deal with extraordinary circumstances. But no matter how justified these requests for additional money might be, they will look bad. The public won't be amused.
The one thing that might help the private firms get over the rough spots during the first few years is the expertise of the staff. Part of the privatization agreements is job security for employees.
The agreement covering southern Vancouver Island contains job offers for all 88 regular employees at their present position and salary. The company has also agreed to guarantee successorship for the B.C. Government Employees Union and to give employees any wage increases and fringe benefits the union may negotiate on behalf of government workers over the next few months.
But knowing how the private sector operates, I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for the job security of former highways employees past the first year. Nor would I put any bets on future wage increases for a while.
After all maintenance responsibilities have been transferred, the highways ministry's most important function will be to monitor the performance of the private sector. From then on, the government's fortunes ride on good weather.
Former highways minister Alex Fraser has said the government could lose at least a dozen seats, maybe as many as 15, over this move. Even allowing for Fraser's own axe-grinding, his predictions may well turn out to be right.
As for my own hopes, they're in total conflict with those of the government. As an avid skier, I am looking forward to a banner year for snow.
POOLE PACKS HIS BAGS
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VICTORIA -- The last copy of the ombudsman's report on the Knight Street Pub scandal had barely rolled off the Queen's Printer's presses when David Poole, principal secretary to Premier Vander Zalm announced his immediate resignation.
How the mighty have fallen. For nearly two years, Poole spread fear and apprehension throughout the public service. Cloaking himself in a piece of his boss's mantle of power, Poole brought a whole new meaning to the concept of political hack.
During his unbridled and arrogant reign, Poole did everything to dismantle the traditional power structure in British Columbia.
Whatever had remained of the public service's impartial role as servants of the public, Poole -- at the bidding of his master -- has destroyed.
Deputy ministers no longer reported to their ministers. They answered to the premier -- through Poole. He summoned high-ranking public servants to his office to give them their marching orders. His word, he made it clear, was the premier's command.
During the abortion controversy, Poole took it upon himself to make policy announcements in the premier's absence, a duty that should clearly have fallen to another cabinet minister. When the government announced its socalled regionalization program, it was
Poole, not the premier, who explained it all to reporters at a press conference. At the time, I wrote that Poole's role in the affairs of this province held grave dangers. I referred to his machinations as "abuse of power behind the throne." At the same time, the Vancouver Sun ran a detailed story about what a wonderful guy Poole was.
But once in a while, justice prevails. It did in this case. In the end, Poole proved no match for the harsh and demanding requisites of applied Machiavellianism.
The first sign of Poole's declining fortunes came with the revelation that he had pressured the B.C. Enterprise Corporation's board of directors into meeting with Peter Toigo, a friend of the premier's, who had expressed an interest in the former Expo site. That was blatant political interference in the affairs of a supposedly autonomous Crown corporation.
The premier tried to take his protege off the hook by saying that Poole had done nothing wrong. What Poole had done for Toigo, he said, should be done for anyone expressing an interest in doing business with the province.
The excuse didn't wash with Grace McCarthy, then minister of economic development, responsible for the BCEC. She abruptly resigned, citing political interference from the premier's office and demanded Poole's head on a platter.
At the beginning of June, under increasing pressure from his own cabinet and caucus, the premier finally clipped Poole's wings. From now on, Poole was to confine his duties to constituency work for the premier. He was still the premier's political advisor, but his influence over the public service was over.
It was a demotion Poole couldn't ignore. Soon after, he announced his resignation, effective September 30. Then came Ombudsman Stephen Owen's report on the Knight Street Pub controversy. It sealed Poole's fate. Accused by the people's official watchdog of "inappropriate political interference," Poole decided to depart from the scene immediately. I don't think he even waited long enough to be pushed out.
If we needed further proof of Poole's unbecoming conduct in his job, he delivered it in his own words. The following excerpt from the ombudsman's report gives an account of how Poole perceived his duties, and why he phoned Bert Hick, general manager of the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch, to ask if the premier's former campaign manager, Charlie Giordano, could be placed on the list of companies allowed to conduct pub referenda.
"Poole did recognize that such a telephone call from someone in his position might influence the decision maker but maintained that the decision maker could still independently come to his own decision.
"He explained that if he did not respond to political or quasi-political approaches made to him, there would be no reason for the existence of his office."
How do you like that? The premier's chief political advisor considered it his major duty to exert political pressure on behalf of the government's friends. That's hard to beat for sheer gall. Perhaps obtuseness is the better choice of word.
When Poole first announced his resignation, he said it was all getting a little too much for him. His family, he said, was distressed because they were reading all those awful things the media were saying about him.
Well, cry me a river. As Slaw Rebchuk, a Winnipeg alderman in the Sixties and master of the mixed metaphor, used to say: "You buttered your bread, now lie in it."
OUTLOOK FOR SOCREDS GLOOMY
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VICTORIA -- After a few days of pondering the future at its meeting in Courtenay, the Social Credit caucus has reached a truce, albeit an uneasy one.
For the moment, Premier Vander Zalm is safe. His loyal caucus supporters are still unwavering in their support, the undecided have given him another chance, and his opponents are relatively mute. And that gives Vander Zalm a bit of a breather after months of political turmoil.
The caucus meeting went about as good as the premier had a right to expect. At the same time, I don't see how it could have gone any worse.
Anyone who expected Social Credit MLAs to call for a leadership review was dreaming. Not that a lot of them would cry over Vander Zalm's departure from the political scene. If it could beaccomplished without a major bloodletting, they'd turf him out tomorrow. Political reality rules out that possibility.
Imagine, if you will, a party dumping a premier in office. To my knowledge, it's never been done before. The consequences to the party would be disastrous. And even if such an attempt were made, who could succeed him?
Vander Zalm's most outspoken opponents would be unlikely candidates. Grace McCarthy is getting a bit long in the tooth, and Brian Smith has lost whatever lustre he had over the stupid spy caper.
Bud Smith might be a possibility, but the best he could hope for in the aftermath of a coup d'etat would be to occupy the office of premier until the next election. At that time, he would almostcertainly be relegated to the job of opposition leader.
No, the Socreds really have no choice. They have to stick with Vander Zalm. For better or for worse. The uneasy truce of Courtenay was inevitable.
We'll probably never know what exactly was said during the caucus retreat, but from a few comments of the premier's opponents we can assume that the discussions were, at times, pretty stormy.
Everybody who had a gripe about the premier's leadership voiced it -- loudly and clearly.Fear for the future runs deeply, these days, in Socred ranks. And if they couldn't dump the man who, in their opinion, had placed the party's future in jeopardy, they could at least give him a tongue-lashing he'd never forget. By all accounts, that's exactly what they did.
What happens now is largely up to the premier. If he can change his leadership style to the satisfaction of his caucus, he may stay out of trouble. If he continues to traipse blindly through political mine fields, we probably won't have to wait long for the next explosion.
The outcome of the caucus meeting in Courtenay has also set the tone for the Social Credit Party convention in October. Some of the traditional sweetness and light will be missing when Socred delegates gather in Penticton, but a leadership review can now be ruled out.
All of which does nothing to improve the long-range outlook for the government. It is as gloomy as it was before Courtenay and will probably be no brighter after Penticton.
As things stand now, a Socred victory in the next election is hard to conceive of. There's only one person who can restore voter confidence in the Socred party, the same one who shattered it -- Premier Vander Zalm. And past experience would lead one to believe that he'll fail at that task.
For a while, the storm that's been raging around the premier will probably die down, but for how long? Can a man who once accused his colleagues -- some are now serving under him -- of being gutless cowards keep his tongue in check?
Can a man who ignored everybody's advice on the abortion issue place himself permanently under the constraints of his caucus and his party? Can a man who said there's nothing wrong with helping friends get through government red tape change his way of thinking? It's doubtful, to say the least.
Sooner or later, the premier will become embroiled in another controversy. As before, he will not consider it even remotely possible that he might be wrong. And as before, his intractable stand will cause his party's fortunes to sink even further.
At that time, the shaky truce reached at Courtenay will collapse, and a lot of Socreds will say they should have dumped Vander Zalm when they had a chance.
The truth is they never had the chance. From the moment a euphoric convention anointed Bill Vander Zalm at the Whistler leadership convention, the party was married to the man, for better or worse, in sickness and health, until an election doth them part.
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