Africentric Learning Institute shut out of education funding

Education Minister Karen Casey released a review of her department's African Nova Scotian services this week, and it continues a controversial legacy of the previous NDP government.

The review looks at the role of the Council on African-Canadian Education, and the controversial relationship between the Africentric Learning Institute and the Delmore Buddy Daye Learning Institute. It concludes that the Council on African Canadian Education (CACE) has exceeded its mandateand has no legislated authority to hire staff. Casey says the department will no longer fund the staff positions at CACE.

• Read the court's decision

The review follows a court decision in August that cast the Education Department in a bad light. It stems from a judicial review launched by the AfricentricLearning Institute, and supported by CACE.

Both organizations came out of the Black Learners Advisory Committee Report of 20 years ago. The BLAC Report pointed to systemic racism in the provincial education system, and outlined a need for a curriculum that reflected African Nova Scotian perspectives and experiences.

The Council on African-Canadian Education was then set up to advise the education minister on African-Nova Scotian issues. CACE later set up the Africentric Learning Institute, with funding from the Education Department.

"It was meant to be a research institute that was for the people, by the people run by the people," said Tracey Jones-Grant. "It would offer programs, opportunities for research, educational opportunities, focused on African-Canadian history and culture, but from an Africentric perspective."

Buddy Daye debate

The community discussed naming the institute after Buddy Daye, among other prominent African Nova Scotian leaders, but the community does not have a tradition of naming its institutions after individual people, said Ken Fells, one of the authors of the BLAC Report. Daye, a boxer, was prominent in education circles, was the first African Nova Scotian sergeant-at-arms in the Legislature, and ran for the NDP in the 1967 provincial election.

Ultimately the community decided not to name the ALI after Daye, because they wanted the institute to belong to everyone in the community.

According to the judicial review decision, filed in August, the creation of the Delmore (Buddy) Daye Africentric Learning Institute came directly from the department, under NDP Education Minister Ramona Jennex.

In the summer of 2012, Jennex "indicated that her department would not fund ALI unless it bore Buddy Daye's Name," Justice Arthur LeBlanc of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia found.

Paul Ash from the department first went to the Registry of Joint Stocks, and tried to change the name of the Africentric Learning Institute, which had been incorporated as a company, in order to keep it arm's length from politics. He was told he wasn't allowed to change the name, because he wasn't on the board of directors.

He then tried to create a separate company called the Delmore (Buddy) Daye Africentric Learning Institute. He was told he couldn't do that either, because the name was close enough to the existing ALI name that it would cause confusion.

According to the evidence, Ash then asked for a private meeting with the registrar. The registrar said that she did not normally take such meetings, but would do so because of Ash's position with the government. Minutes after the meeting, the registrar reversed her earlier decision, and allowed the new company to use the name Delmore (Buddy) Daye Africentric learning Institute.

Registrar acted improperly

Justice LeBlanc found that the registrar acted improperly, and ordered that the name of the DBDLI be changed. It's now called the Delmore Buddy Daye Learning Institute.

He also states in his decision that Ash and his group tried to "take over" the ALI, before creating the new company.

The new Delmore Buddy Daye Learning Institute is closely aligned with the Education Department, and as such is unlikely to produce the independent criticism of the education system that the authors of the BLAC Report imagined.

The arm's length ALI no longer has any funding from the department.

"The department has no relationship with the ALI," said Casey, the current Liberal minister of education.

And the Council on African-Canadian Education is facing the imminent loss of the staff that supports its volunteer board, because the department says there is no legislation giving CACE the authority to hire staff.

Asked about a May1996 letter, written on the education minister's letterhead, that explicitly authorizes CACE to hire two staff,Casey said, "That may well be;I don't have a copy of that letter. What we did this summer was to look at the legislated authority."