An Idea Whose Time Keeps Coming

Abstract

IN 1976 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) turned its sights on Canada's education system. The short version of their long report on our national education policies was that we didn't have any. (1) While even then provinces, school boards, and multiple education organizations were drowning in policies that addressed every imaginable education-related topic, the OECD correctly noted void at the national level. Among the OECD's member states, Canada stood alone. Every other nation, including those which, like Canada, are structured as federations, had devised vehicle for articulating, debating, and adopting national policies and for coordinating educational research and its exchange. Under Canada's Constitution, responsibility for education, with the exception of schooling for Aboriginal students living on reserves, is the exclusive purview of the provinces and territories. This 1867 division of powers had more to do with religion and language than with education and statecraft. Francophone, Catholic Quebec and Anglophone, Protestant Ontario (and, to lesser extent, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) vigorously sought complete jurisdiction over educational matters as condition of entry into confederation. The churches and their officials controlled education systems in the 19th century. Protecting religious control over schools overshadowed any drawback that might be associated with leaving the national government without voice on education. It is unlikely that the Fathers of Confederation gave much thought to what today might be called this unanticipated consequence of the British North America Act. After all, at that time education was the smallest expenditure line within provincial budgets. (2) When basic literacy, numeracy, and religious instruction dominated educational objectives, matters such as shaping and sequencing curriculum or certifying teachers were largely irrelevant. The 1976 OECD report implied that however logical--or politically expedient --the education deal was in 1867, Canada risked compromising its future by failing to harmonize its educational efforts. The report preceded the now-ubiquitous language of vision, productivity, globalization, strategic advantage, knowledge economy, lifelong learning, etc., but it nonetheless got its point across. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) seemed bit miffed that its leadership role apparently had not impressed the OECD inspectorate. Since 1967 CMEC and its small secretariat had provided quasi-national home for education discussions and initiatives that were national in scope. However, critics argued that club of education ministers was no substitute for the transparency that ought to accompany policy discussions at the national level. While individual ministers might be held accountable in their own jurisdictions, there was no collective political accountability because there was no constituency to hold CMEC to account. The OECD's report fueled this criticism, and the movement to devise legitimate role in education policy for the federal government began to gather steam. Participants attending 1981 symposium held at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University enthusiastically predicted a significant public policy shift. . . . [The] forces compelling Canadian governments to forego the facade of unaccountable interprovincial 'cooperation' via the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) [are] now poised to cause structural and political change. (3) This turned out to be partly true, and quite problematic. The federal government, led by Conservative Brian Mulroney, would soon take more active role in education, although not in the way that the Vancouver conference attendees anticipated. No national office of education would be created, no ministry or department of education established, no explicit national policies put forward, no research agenda funded, no legislation introduced or debated. …