Evidence of meeting #151 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
I would say it's a significant number of them. Most of them are also parents of students in our K to 12 system that are receiving the LINC instruction.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
So they are in high school and they also have children at a young age. Is that what you're saying? Or are they adults who are going back to high school to complete it?
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
The LINC is providing the language training for the parents.
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
The other ones have students in the K to 12 system.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
Okay. I got you.
If the students are in school at the time, is it that they cannot attend the classes during the day and therefore need childminding? They have to do them after school hours?
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
I think the childminding offers them the ability to attend during the day and someone is minding their children.
Am I confusing the question?
Liberal
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
Is it pre-school that you're talking about?
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
Yes.
You said some of them are in K to 12. I'm saying that if the child is in K to 12, then they don't require childminding.
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
They are in school. Right.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
What I want to know is how many of the adults requesting LINC training require childminding while they are taking classes?
Assistant Superintendent, School District 41, Burnaby School District
I would say that it's 80% or more.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Green, with the Toronto District School Board, you talked about problems with busing and problems with funding.
Can you tell us whether the influx of illegal asylum seekers has affected the Toronto District School Board?
Senior Manager, Business Development and Community Services, Toronto District School Board
I can speak about the LINC programming. If a person is illegal, they wouldn't qualify for the programming. They would be handled by the provincial funding, which is held by another department.
Our department oversees the federally funded language instruction for newcomers to Canada.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
So the federal government doesn't provide funding for language.
Senior Manager, Business Development and Community Services, Toronto District School Board
They provide it for language for those who are eligible, so convention refugees and landed immigrants.
Conservative
Senior Manager, Business Development and Community Services, Toronto District School Board
Correct.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Can you elaborate on funding for the Toronto District School Board for language training and anything else?
You threw in busing. Maybe you can talk about that, not with respect to the province but to the federal government.
Senior Manager, Business Development and Community Services, Toronto District School Board
I can speak to the most recent three contracts for the federal government. They have been at the same level for each of the three years. However, if you look at rental costs as an example, our rental costs have gone up in the neighbourhood of between 10% to 20%. Our staffing costs have gone up by about 8% to 12% over that same period of time.
As we look at 13 sites, about a few hundred staff, the 5,000 learners per year, it's quite a significant operation. As these costs escalate, we need to find ways to continue to be more efficient in terms of how we provide the operations.
Something we have done is to increase consolidation of locations. We were at over 20 sites; we have gone down to 13 sites. We've been able to harmonize some costs that way. We've reduced some supervisory costs as a result because we have fewer locations for physical plant to oversee.
We continue to try to innovate and find ways to do more with the existing finances, but, of course, that is an ongoing challenge.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Are you able to tell us how much you're short, if we could talk in those terms? That might be difficult, but we could try.
Senior Manager, Business Development and Community Services, Toronto District School Board
For the coming year, for example, we're going to be closing one location. Had we another million dollars, we'd be able to keep that going.
