School Busses - Question Period

MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development. When this government was rushing forward with the elimination of democratically-elected school boards, they told parents to trust them, that they were fixing the administrative structure.

Well, Mr. Speaker, that new administrative structure left hundreds of families scrambling to figure out how students were getting to the first day of school. Melissa Boudreau had one child whose bus to school was half an hour late while her other child was left stranded without a bus to bring him home at all.

Mr. Speaker, I know the minister has announced a review of busing, but will he take responsibility for this complete failure to keep students safe by providing parents with clear, reliable, timely information about bus routes and schedules?

HON. ZACH CHURCHILL « » : Mr. Speaker, just to be clear, we know that these logistical challenges around busing are longstanding. These are not new challenges that have been brought about by governance changes to the system. However, now that we have changed the governance of the system, the province can play an active role in looking at busing policies from one end of the province to the other, ensuring that best practices are applied. Particularly, we are going to be looking at HRM, the Liberal caucus members from HRM are very energetic in their presentations of the concerns in their communities around busing, Mr. Speaker. And we're gong to be very focused on finding solutions to those parents who dealt with worry and concern over the location of their students because we know that we need to do better. Thank you.

MS. CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, for all the government's fondness about talking about previous governments, the department has had months to fix this problem. Without school boards, parents no longer know whom to contact when there are problems. The promised provincial advisory council has yet to be appointed and new plans for enhanced school advisory councils were released last week. Parent Courtney Roobol called Stock Transportation who told her to call the school. She called the school who told her to call Stock. It does not instill confidence when something as basic as busing, getting our children to school, seems like more than this department can handle. Will the Minister today provide parents with the direct line to his office that they can use to get access to accurate busing information?

MR. CHURCHILL « » : Mr. Speaker, Stock Transportation did provide an apology to the public yesterday for these issues that happened. Also, the Regional Centre for Education has sent out contact information to every parent that will provide them a direct link to a person in their office to answer their operational questions. I do think it's important to note that, according to the region, 97 per cent of the buses did arrive on time, but of course that's not acceptable for the group of parents that dealt with delays and the students that were on buses for longer than they should have been. But the fact is we're very focused on finding solutions to this issue and because of the new governance changes that we've made, the province can actually play a role in improving that situation. Thank you.