A7

LISA KEENAN
COMMENTARY

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"The court case created the possibility for the collaboration that occurred and I think it turned out to be the best political advice we ever got."

Education Minister Kelly Lamrock

Well, so much for the "silent majority"!

Regular readers may recall that it was only weeks ago that the Graham Liberals were forcefully talking about all the support they had from the mass of New Brunswickers who, on issues like early French immersion (EFI), don't bother to write letters to the editor, or call up their MLA and express their opinion. The education minister and his proponents regularly invoked the solid support of the hushed throng as the reason for not listening to their critics, especially parents groups who were appalled at the government's lack of consultation in its decision to scrap EFI. After all, the reasoning went, why listen when the vast "silent majority" has stands behind you.

Given their previous position, this week's decision to revamp EFI, to allow students to start in Grade 3, rather than Grade 6 as the minister decided in March, is a bit of a head-scratcher. Did someone in the premier's office crunch some numbers and figure out that popular majorities aren't that common anymore, the last one happening in 1999? Did they notice that in the last election, more people actually voted for the other team, or was it something else, all together.

In all likelihood Minister Lamrock and his colleagues finally realized that the initial consultation process was flawed. After all, when the "silent majority" won't stand behind a poorly constructed policy, who will?

Reading the government's second attempt at French Second Language reform, one is struck by a few things. First of all, the decision makes no real effort to describe why the third grade is a better starting point for immersion than the sixth grade (or the first grade, for that matter). There is the usual bafflegab about giving the students who just finished kindergarten first choice at whether or not to enter immersion in Grade 3 (which makes sense only if you ignore the fact that the minister has just taken away their choice to start immersion in Grade 1) and some words about improving second language skills through phys-ed. But for anyone looking for a simpler immersion regime, Mr. Lamrock's leaves something to be desired. The new plan, if it survives, will actually be more complicated than the system currently in place. Under the Second Lamrock Plan there will be more entry points for students to enter French immersion, more outside performance testing (which should eat up the education budget), and a heretofore-unknown qualification for students who don't make the grade at the end of high school, referred to as an "official certificate of proficiency." Which raises an intriguing question; will the minister be including certificate holders in his target of 70 per cent success? If so, isn't he rigging the game?

Which all may be for naught because, despite the minister's best efforts to double-down with their new policy, the long-term likelihood of the plan carrying on unreformed seems remote. A future education minister may tweak the policy here and there. A future government may start over entirely. If the minister's decision is to start immersion in Grade 3, as opposed to Grade 1, and appears to be little more than an effort to save face, future changes seem quite likely.

The most interesting development arising from the EFI volte-face is the complete and utter repudiation of the government's approach to the whole issue of implementing changes. Not the for the first time, the Liberals have put forward a controversial policy (think the polytechnics) and then retreated in the face of criticism; Public consultation is not this government's strong suit, no matter how many consultants it hires.

However, from the beginning of the EFI debacle, Minister Lamrock served more as a lightening rod for his critics (parents, for the most part), than as a politician seeking accommodation. From the outset (which included commissioning a flawed report) the minister telegraphed that it was his way, or the highway, to other stakeholders. He truncated public consultations, kept a report with contrary findings tightly under wraps, and attacked his critics from the outset; accusing parents of small children of being elitists and not Christian. From the start his department used the full force of the provincial advertising budget to talk over the heads of the affected parties. And, in the end, he "came a cropper" a cropper who will probably be conveniently shuffled in the near future.

It's not often that you hear an elected politician thanking a judge for saving the day, but that's what Mr. Lamrock did on Tuesday. It was well-deserved praise. After all, it's not every politician that can fritter away a very strong hand, especially when he has the backing of the silent majority. There are many lessons to be learned from this entire spectacle for governing parties of every partisan stripe. Not the least of which, to paraphrase a recent famous ad, a lesson in humility is "a terrible thing to waste."

Lisa Keenan of Saint John is a lawyer and the former president of the New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party. Her column appears on Friday.