Thank you, Chair.
On behalf of the Winnipeg School Division, I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology for the opportunity to provide feedback on the potential impact to student learning as a result of any revisions to the Copyright Act, specifically the requirements of section 29 on fair dealing.
It is my understanding that the framework for the review should include the educational needs and interests of indigenous peoples as part of reconciliation, as well as supporting Canada’s two official languages, French and English, in terms of access to materials in all forms, as identified in the Copyright Act. The Winnipeg School Division has some very key information to share to that end.
The members of the board of trustees are concerned that revisions to eliminate the fair dealing provisions would have a severe and negative impact on the ability of our teachers to provide our students with extensive and complete classroom resources, both digitally and in print, due to the inability to incur additional costs to access materials for—similar to the University of Manitoba—our 33,000 students throughout 78 schools.
Winnipeg School Division is one of the largest employers in the province, and the largest and oldest school division in Manitoba. The division provides educational programs and supports for more than 33,000 students, from nursery school to grade 12, including adult programming.
The demographics of the Winnipeg School Division are in exhibit A as provided. The division serves a significant number of families who live in poverty: over 50% of the families have incomes below the low-income cut-off. Indigenous families, such as my own, represent approximately 27% of all families with children in the division. Almost 50% of all immigrants who arrived in Winnipeg in the past five years live in the division's footprint, and 42% of elementary and 44% of secondary enrolment in the division experience high student migrancy levels.
We’re proud to offer educational programs and related services to students from nursery to grade 12 in regular elementary and secondary classes as well as alternative, advanced, and language programs. We have a wide variety of programming in place for students with special education and behavioural needs. We're committed to lifelong learning and offer programs that allow adults to continue to learn and enrich their lives and adolescent parents to succeed as parents and as learners. New Canadians and students and families from a variety of diverse cultures are also supported with programs in the Winnipeg School Division to help ensure success in our schools and our communities.
Student wellness and development is another priority that is evident in programming, such as school therapy and counselling services.
We've implemented a wide variety of initiatives to support indigenous education for both students and our staff. Indigenous programming and curriculum education initiatives are woven throughout nursery to grade 12, across curricula, across the Winnipeg School Division. Some examples include elders in schools, including our traditional knowledge-keeper and divisional elder; programs that include indigenous music, visual arts, dance; indigenous games, athletes, and role-model studies; star blanket math, and I could go on.
We also offer a number of language programs such as French immersion, but also bilingual Cree and Ojibwe programming, and bilingual Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Spanish. We also, of course, have English as an additional language to over 7,113 students.
The primary responsibility of our board of trustees is to ensure that all students receive the highest-quality education possible in our schools. As you can appreciate, in order to achieve these goals and foster academic, physical, social, and personal growth, teachers require access to a variety of educational materials to create engaged learners. For example, teachers need to incorporate current resources on human rights, poverty, equity, and sustainable development, including reconciliatory actions, and these resources might only be available online, in news media, or in digital formats.
Students need to be able to synthesize and present their discoveries using digital and video technologies and to express their viewpoints through creative arts and performances.
Students also need to be able to manipulate and reformat resources, as allowed within the Copyright Act, for educational purposes.
Along with this overarching responsibility, our board of trustees must provide responsible stewardship of the financial resources entrusted to it and must work in partnership with families, communities, and other organizations in ways that impact positively the overall well-being of children and youth. The federal government must be a partner, not a barrier, to this work.
As the division serves a very diverse and unique community in which education is critical for the success of youth, many programs and services are provided that are not currently funded by the Province of Manitoba. The costs for the various programs and services that our division is not required to provide within the Public Schools Act total over $14 million, and that is provided to you in exhibit C.
The division relies on the revenues raised from property taxation to offer unique programs and services for students. Of our funding, 60% is provincial government; the other 40% is raised through property taxation in Manitoba. In an urban indigenous city like Winnipeg, the Winnipeg School Division also has a story to tell this committee on the impact of the federal government's chronic underfunding on reserve, the pressures that this segregated system has had on our school, and the history of colonialism. Thanks to Murray Sinclair, our proud independent senator, there is an increasing public awareness of the deplorable living situations on reserve and a growing awareness of the impacts of poverty, poor housing, sanitation, and five generations of the Indian residential school, and we're only beginning to realize the costs on school systems, such as the one I represent in the Winnipeg School Division.
Many increased costs in school divisions' operations are beyond the control of school boards. Changes in student populations and enrolment due to immigration or refugee crises, for instance, changes in needs and expectations, as well as new provincial policy directions and legislation, arbitrated salary awards, and inflationary increases for services and commodities have significant financial impacts for school board budgets and implications for property tax levels.
The Winnipeg School Division recognizes and values the provisions of the Copyright Act, as expressed in federal law. Our commitment to honouring the rights of copyright holders is a priority for educators. We have done our part. We promote copyright provisions and invest funds annually through licences, ensuring copyright holders are compensated for use of work for SOCAN, the National Film Board of Canada, and Re:Sound, etc.
I am hopeful today that the information shared will demonstrate that substantial revisions to the Copyright Act and the principle of fair dealing would have a devastating impact on a school division like ours and the ability of our teachers to provide students with current extensive teaching resources, especially in digital and non-traditional formats.