Tuesday, May 16, 1967

going to comment briefly on the educational estimates, and I commend the Minis- ter of Education for getting a fairly ample appropriation for this Department. No doubt it is an important department and one where an expenditure of money will tend to bring in revenue and assets in the years that lie ahead. I would like to point out to him that I do not feel that he has dealt justly with the Universities of the Province with respect to the amount of money that has been appropriated for their use. Last year $551,300.00 was spent on Universities; this year he is estimating 1.2 mil- lion to be spent in this way, but then that five hundred and fifty-one thousand last year was in addition to $550,000.00 which they received directly from the Federal Government. So the overall expenditure last year was 1.1 million by the Governments on behalf of University education in this Province and if you subtract that figure from the present estimate. you find that the Budget for higher education in this Pro- vince is only gone up by $119,000.00. When you consider, Mr. Speaker, that the pres- ent administration is receiving 1.6 million revenue from Ottawa which is to be used, according to the terms of reference, for post-secondary education, and when you con- sider of this 1.6 million you have to give them credit for $550,000.00 which came directly last year, it leave over a million dollars extra revenue that this Government is receiving from Ottawa which is supposed to be used for higher education in the Province. When you consider that only $119,000.00 of it is ear-marked for higher education, I am sure that the Universities will be sure to say that they have been short-changed, and I think the Provincial Treasurer will be charged with short- changing universities in this Province and as the President of one of the Universities said the other day, he would be waiting on the doorstep of the Provincial Treasurer. He hoped that themeeting would be more profitable than it had been in the past. I am sure that he was referring to the situation where $981,000.00 which was re- ceived from Ottawa for higher education has been diverted to other uses. I am glad

to see that the teachers salaries have gone up by a million dollars, (Applause) to al- most five million dollars.

In 1959 I can remember the Budget for teachers salaries was a million dollars, one million dollars, in the last eight years the Budget has increased 500% for teachers salaries, this is a tremendous amount of money, and still I am told that at the present time many schools are having great difficulty holding their teachers because of the higher salaries that are paid in other Provinces. This is a serious situation and one in which I sympathize with the present Minister of Education, because I know that there is not a great deal he can do about it. I was speaking to a teacher the other day who is teaching here in the Province. She is going up to Ontario to teach next fall and her salary is going to increase by $3,600.00. She is qualified in Home Econo- mics, and she is receiving a fairly good salary here, but next year she is going up to Ontario to be married and she is going to teach school in a small town and will receive $7,600.00 or $3,600.00 more than she is receiving at the present time. We find that in the school supply that after the splurge last year, which by the way the $400,000.00 that the Minister spent on school books, I think probably he took this money out of some other part of the educational Budget, that he is going to spend $270.000.00 or $54,000.00 more than was estimated last year. On vocational we had an estimate last year of 1.4 million, this year it is forecast at 1.1 million or $838,000.00 less expenditure, another instance where the vocational program seems to be under- going a process of being short-changed. The Regional High estimate is up $200,000.00. I notice the Minister of Health has left his seat, he might lose it to if he keeps on speaking like a Member of the Opposition here. I was going to give him an invita- tion to come over and make his speech from this side of the House when he speaks again, because I think he made about as good an Opposition speech as I have heard in this House for a long time, but he did mention the fact that in the LaZerte Report that we had rushed ahead a little too quickly and established Regional High Schools where the Report did not recommend them. Now. I take exception to that fact be- cause I don’t think we did that at all, except in one instance. You can’t say that the Department officials, the Minister, and others involved did not advise these people very strongly not to go ahead with the establishment of their school, but to co-operate with at least two other regions and establish one school. But nothing could be done; they were bound and determined that this was the procedure they were going to fol- low and it was worked out on that basis. However, we realized at the time that Dr. LaZerte recommended these centers for schools, he recommended fourteen of them. I think there were fifteen established so we only stepped out of line by one school. In fact, when you looked at the committee on re-construction that met in 1945 they

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