HUMA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 6, 2003

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1525

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.))

Mr. Michael Bloom (Director, Education and Learning, Conference Board of Canada)

The Chair

Ms. Kathryn Barker (President, FuturEd Consulting Education Futurists Inc.)

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1530

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1535

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1540

The Chair

Ms. Linda Shohet (Executive Director, Montreal Literacy Centre)

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1545

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1550

The Chair

Ms. Susan Pigott (Chief Executive Officer, St. Christopher House)

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1555

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1600

The Chair

Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Michael Bloom

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Michael Bloom

Mr. Peter Goldring

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1605

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Michael Bloom

Mr. Peter Goldring

The Chair

Ms. Linda Shohet

The Chair

Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.)

Ms. Kathryn Barker

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1610

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Ms. Linda Shohet

The Chair

Ms. Susan Pigott

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1615

Ms. Linda Shohet

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ)

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1620

Ms. Linda Shohet

Mr. Michael Bloom

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1625

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Ms. Susan Pigott

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1630

Ms. Linda Shohet

The Chair

Mr. Tony Ianno (Trinity—Spadina, Lib.)

The Chair

Ms. Susan Pigott

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bloom

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1635

The Chair

Mr. Raymond Simard (Saint Boniface, Lib.)

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Ms. Linda Shohet

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Kathryn Barker

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1640

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Susan Pigott

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bloom

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Ms. Linda Shohet

The Chair

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1645

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Michael Bloom

Mr. Peter Goldring

Ms. Kathryn Barker

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1650

Mr. Peter Goldring

Mr. Michael Bloom

Mr. Peter Goldring

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1655

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale, Lib.)

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Ms. Linda Shohet

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1700

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.)

Ms. Kathryn Barker

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.)

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1705

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Ms. Kathryn Barker

Ms. Linda Shohet

»

1710

The Chair

Mr. Michael Bloom

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

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NUMBER 011

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 6, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

    The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call to order the 11th meeting of the Standing Common on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

    We are continuing our study on literacy in the workplace, and we have with us some expert witnesses. From the Conference Board of Canada we have Michael Bloom, the director of education and learning; from FuturEd Consulting Education Futurists Inc. Kathryn Barker, who is the president; from the Montreal Literacy Centre Linda Shohet, who is the executive director; and from St. Christopher House Susan Pigott, who is the chief executive officer.

    Ms. Pigott, I understand you need to leave by 4:45, so I'm going to ask members of the committee, after we've heard all the presentations, if you have questions that are specifically directed to Ms. Pigott, to let me know, so that I can ensure that they are posed before she has to depart.

    Without further ado, I would call on Michael Bloom. I think the clerk has told you you have approximately five minutes for your presentation, to leave time for our questions.

    Mr. Michael Bloom (Director, Education and Learning, Conference Board of Canada): Thank you.

    I'm here to talk about workplace literacy and to explain why the Conference Board of Canada thinks there are compelling reasons to investigate workplace literacy. Workplace literacy is a serious issue that affects the well-being of individuals, organizations, and the country as whole. I think most of the people around this table will be familiar with the information from the International Adult Literacy Survey about the literacy performance of Canadian adults in the labour force, which shows that two-fifths or more of adults 15-65 have significant literacy problems. This is not an insignificant phenomenon for our economy and the well-being of the people of the country. Literacy is crucial to productivity and competitiveness in Canada, and there is a logic to this. We depend on creating value in the form of better products and services, the kinds that are sought after in global markets. That's a key to our success economically. Workers with the right knowledge and skills are essential to this value creation, yet many workers lack the skills they need to contribute fully and for personal success.

    An important part of the solution is skills development for them, learning in the workplace or for the workplace. Literacy skills are the essential foundation people need for learning. Without these skills, workers and would-be workers find it difficult to learn job-specific skills, gain communication skills, acquire the capacity to solve problems, and gain the technical trades and advanced skills they need to apply in their work. Therefore, any major strategy for building skills to improve productivity and innovative capacity in our workplaces needs to start with workplace literacy. This improvement, if forthcoming, will yield important benefits to individuals, unions, and employers, and I'm going to mention some of these. These are not exhaustive, but in the interest of time, I'll highlight a few, based on our research findings.

    Among the important gains for individuals are higher income, job security, promotion, more training and development opportunities, and a higher job satisfaction. Employers gain productivity, reduced error rates, higher quality of work, accuracy, which is crucial in ISO certification, a range of improvements in performance, better health and safety for their employees, and ultimately, increased profitability. Unions, we found in studies in Canada and the United States, gain because their members benefit, and thereby the unions gain relevance for their members, and that engenders stronger support for union activities. As well as the productivity and competitiveness gains, workplace literacy yields important benefits for health, justice, immigrants, aboriginals, and labour market transitions, for adults as well as youth.

    One of the key questions is why business does not invest more if it's such a good thing, because the majority of investors do not invest in this way. There's a combination of reasons, and I'll just touch on a few. Employers lack awareness and do not understand the business case for workplace literacy; they often see the costs of investing, not the benefits. They do not yet see the costs of not investing, the opportunity cost. They do not know how to take effective action, even if a case is made. They do not know who can help them, whether they be education partners, training experts, governments, communities. And they do not know how to measure the success of their investments; they don't know when they've done a good job of this. These are obstacles. I suppose a further one would be that in the view of some employers, if they invest in people, people can walk, and there's a challenge about that. Despite the fact that the research in Canada and internationally clearly shows that the loyalty and the connections engendered by literacy training far outweigh the increased marketability of the employees, this is still an issue.

    So change is possible, change is necessary. Our view is that this committee could play a crucial role in raising the profile of the issue nationally with employers, employees, and the public. It can also help inform government policy to promote and support greater investment in workplace literacy, which will benefit individuals and businesses in Canada. For these reasons, the Conference Board encourages this committee to take up further study of the issue and examination of workplace literacy in Canada.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Ms. Barker.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker (President, FuturEd Consulting Education Futurists Inc.): Madam Chair, committee members, esteemed literacy experts, thank you very much for this opportunity to be here.

    I have prepared two items for you today. One I hope you've already received. It's Lessons Learned in Adult Literacy, a study produced by Evaluation and Data Development, a branch of HRDC. As well, I have prepared a paper, which I would like to very quickly go through today; I will not be reading it all to you. While we are focusing on workplace literacy, I want to speak much more generally. I know you will find workplace literacy in what I have to say. First, I'd like to make four key points about the literacy issue, and then I'll move into policy options I would commend to you.

    First, literacy demands are growing and changing. They are the foundation of citizenship and lifelong learning in work, both in the present and in the future. Democracy depends on literacy, so we cannot set it aside.

    Second, regardless of our very best efforts in adult literacy, and many of us have been involved in this field for many years--more than 20 for me--the statistics have not changed. Michael Bloom told you what those figures are, and they haven't changed, we haven't been able to move the marker, so we have to reframe what we're doing and rethink how we deliver literacy programs and services. That's without taking anything away from the supreme efforts of the National Literacy Secretariat, which has done so much work to raise the issue.

    Third, the Canadian education system does nothing to contribute to solving this particular problem and, in fact, contributes to it. We have to take into account our public education system and the opportunities that exist to link what happens in that system to the situation adults find themselves in.

    Finally, we don't need to do any more research to take action. We have years of research and we know how to teach adults, we know so much about literacy, and we know where those people are. We need to take action now.

    So those are the four key points I wanted to make. Now I would like to set out seven options for action.

    The first is to start with Lessons Learned, a study I had the privilege of doing for EDD, which required me to look at formal evaluations of literacy programs, policies, and practices over the last 10 to 15 years, synthesize them, and see what we had learned from all those endeavours. In the long process we went through we synthesized to seven key lessons learned. My first policy recommendation to you will be to start with those. The Government of Canada has paid for that work, and it is as solid today as it was when it was done.

    The first of those seven lessons is that adult literacy programs benefit both individuals and society, but these benefits have not been fully realized because of insufficient levels of public interest and political support. They do good, they just don't do enough good.

    Second, experiences suggest how to design and deliver quality adult literacy programs, but conditions don't always exist to allow that to happen consistently or systematically. We know what quality looks like, we have enough good practices, and we need to gather them together and use them as requirements for designing and delivering literacy programs.

    Third, while evidence suggests considerable advantages in using learning technologies, some question their effectiveness and appropriateness. So the opportunities of using the Internet need to be expanded in this particular case.

    Fourth, adult literacy programs aimed at specific target groups appear to have better results, but such programs are not delivered consistently in an effective, efficient, or equitable manner. So clearly, there's a huge challenge right there.

    Fifth, barriers facing adults in need of literacy upgrading limit their capacity to enter and remain in literacy programs. Obviously, the flip side is to remove the barriers. We know what they are, so let's address and remove the barriers.

    Sixth, it is important that adult literacy learners have a say in policies and programs, so include the learners as consumers, clients, and customers.

    Seventh, more systematic evaluation of adult literacy policies, programs, and practices is needed to increase accountability and to improve the knowledge base in the field.

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    So those are the seven lessons that came from all that literature on the evaluation of literacy programs, policies, and practices. The report said three things. It said we should create a comprehensive, consensus-based description of best practice in literacy programs and use that as a set of guidelines for planning and evaluation purposes. Second, literacy should be embedded in all social policy. Third, the lessons learned should be addressed as challenges, each one individually. It's not tough to do.

    So that's the first policy option I would suggest to you. The second is to focus on federal policy, the area over which you have jurisdiction. Literacy is not a discrete public policy area. The skills and resources required by individuals can and should be linked to all human resources, economic, and social policy. Therefore, one option is to embed literacy in all existing social policy, the other is to create new policies.

    Embedding the existing policy is to use the kinds of lenses that have already worked. As an example, gender-based analysis is used as a lens to filter and to look at existing legislation and policies. A second, of course, is the plain language initiative. Then we could create new lenses that link to literacy, and one might be a learning analysis lens that says, in this new subject area or in this content area we're working on or in this public policy area what is the learning that Canadians need to acquire and how is that best achieved? That becomes a part of a new kind of policy development.

    I've suggested other ways of enhancing existing policy, and we could also create new policies. We know, as an example, that the designated equity-seeking policy has worked to the advantage of persons with disabilities, women, first nations, and visible minorities. It is entirely possible that you could do what we do in word processing, a search and replace. If you take out “women” and add in “poor”, or you take out “persons with disabilities” and put in “persons who have inadequate life-long learning skills”, or you put in “unemployable industrial-age workers”, we will have new designated equity-seeking policies that have the same advantages of providing both carrots and sticks to help solve a problem and increase the possibilities. I'm not saying replace them, I'm saying add to them. We know how to create policies to address disadvantages. The individuals in contemporary society who have inadequate literacy skills clearly are disadvantaged in the knowledge-based economy, so it's no stretch to think about creating policies that reflect that same successful process.

    The third policy focus might be to target those in need and to treat them like customers and clients, to give them vouchers, to ensure that the very best products and services are available for them. The role of government, of course, is to make sure the quality of programs is excellent, the barriers to engaging have been removed, and incentives are real, not imaginary. It's not enough to say, your life is going to get better, or, you'll get a better job--that doesn't really happen for people. The incentives we provide have to be more tangible than that. Once we have those carrots in place, sticks may be applied, such as sanctions for non-compliance. We have literacy programs across the country, people are not showing up to them, but if all of the carrots are in place, it's possible to think about some of the sticks. Another might be that people have to be encouraged to recognize that literacy is not just a right, but a responsibility of citizenship, and if there are programs, it's their responsibility to somehow get connected to them. But that, I suppose, is down the line.

    I would encourage you to think about focusing on formal learning. There's an opportunity to create new systems for adults, like second-chance schools or on-line tutoring or workplace schools. We have existing models that make that possible.

    As federal finances are distributed to the provinces for adult learning, primarily post-secondary education, with no accountability measures, and adult learning needs are not being met, it would be timely to create a Canada Learning Act. The purpose of the act would be to achieve the same five goals as the Canada Health Act, but I don't think we should really talk about that today, because it's being hotly debated as we speak, I imagine.

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    We need to focus on the future. We have a perfectly fine industrial-age education system, we just don't need it any more. We need a system that's focused on the future and is knowledge-based. I've listed for you in my paper the 11 attributes of a knowledge-based learning system: it is holistic, open, individualized, responsive, cyclical, learner-enabling, and so on. The way to achieve that might be to institute something like Socrates Canada. I know the minister has announced the Canadian Learning Institute, and it's a great start, but as I understand it, it is examining the present, and I would encourage us to think more about the future. I think Socrates Canada, based on the model of the European Union Socrates, has great possibilities. Clearly, literacy has to be embedded in all of them.

    We need to focus on change more than anything else, setting firm numerical goals and timeframes and measuring progress towards achieving them. We need to reframe the issue. We need to stop using the deficit model of skills acquisition. We need to stop focusing on what people can't do and focus on what they can do. Inherent in all the practices of human resources accounting and human capital management are the tools and processes to do that. We need to study and demonstrate return on investment and fiscal accountability in our programs.

    There is a seventh option, and that is to do nothing. It's very unlikely that the people who need these programs are going to wise up and demand them, so it is possible to do nothing, but I wouldn't recommend that.

    I have set out then the notion that we need to take short-term and immediate actions. We have to stop saying to the world we have horrible literacy problems in this country. It's not good for economic investment, it's not good for our image in the world. If we have a problem, let's focus on the solutions. The three things we need to do right away are create a consumer protection bureau for learners, to make sure the products and service they get are of the very highest quality, create the Canada Learning Act, and establish Socrates Canada, with a focus on creating a preferred future for us all.

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    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Barker.

    Ms. Shohet.

    Ms. Linda Shohet (Executive Director, Montreal Literacy Centre): Thank you very much.

    Some of my comments are probably going to dovetail neatly with some of the things Kathryn has just said.

    In 1999 the United States National Center for the Study of Adult Literacy and Learning, NCSALL, at Harvard University asked me to write a chapter on the history of adult literacy and basic education in Canada for one of their research volumes. They specifically asked me to create a grid comparing a list of factors across the 13 provinces and territories. It was impossible. I had a hard time convincing the editor that these data were not available or comparable across Canada and that the only literacy data that could be compared were from the International Adult Literacy Survey, IALS, of 1994.

    The IALS has probably come up repeatedly in the hearings you've been holding for the past week. It's played a very important role, aside from giving us comparable data. It has also helped spread a new enlarged understanding of literacy as something more than an absolute condition. A person is not either literate or illiterate. It's one of the great differences

[Translation]

between the words “literacy“ and “illiteracy“.

[English]

Literate and illiterate are no longer the terminology used by most people in the field in the English world. Literacy is now conceived of as a continuum of abilities to decode, understand, and use print. The IALS divided the continuum into five levels. This can help explain the statistic that 43% of Canadians are at literacy levels one and two. That does not mean 43% of Canadians are illiterate, it means 43% of Canadians have varying degrees of difficulty understanding and doing tasks that demand a level of literacy above those. Most researchers agree that many of our daily tasks and most workplace tasks demand level three or more in today's world. When you include numeracy, the mathematics equivalent of literacy, and note that the results were even lower than for reading, you begin to recognize why literacy is such a serious issue for industrialized, print-saturated countries like Canada and other OECD nations that participated in the IALS.

    Of these countries Canada remains one of the few not to have a national agenda on the issue, which has been acknowledged as essential for economic, social, and political development of these countries. In January 2001, just over two years ago, when the United Kingdom was preparing to launch its national strategy for adult literacy and numeracy, 15 international experts were invited to a two and a half day meeting with the cabinet minister--note, a cabinet minister--who had been named specifically to the basic skills dossier and the government staff who were mandated to implement this strategy. I was the only Canadian there. They asked each of us to respond to a draft of their strategy and to give them an overview of the national policy in our respective countries, highlighting models in three specified areas that might be adapted to a U.K. context. The minister sat with us for the full two and a half days and asked difficult, probing questions. I had to say that Canada had no national policy, but did boast many exemplary program models scattered across the country. Notes from the presentation are on the website for my organization.

    I chose this example for today specifically because the U.K. has taken the boldest steps on adult literacy of any OECD country. While I fully understand the differences in jurisdictional structures between them and Canada, I would nevertheless say that any longer-term study done here would have to look at the models the U.K. has created and the principles that underpin them. The key principle is coherence. They've involved other government departments, they've crossed social sectors, they've identified the neediest populations as the initial targets. These include youth at risk, prison populations, immigrants, and more. They have 10 target populations they've identified, and they've built in continuous evaluation.

    The program they've undertaken is respectful of what people can do. It positions upgrading as an opportunity, an enhancement, not a response to deficit, which is one of the points Kathryn just made. They've also linked everything they're doing to all the qualifications and standards that currently exist in the country, which is no small matter, and they're trying to reduce the number of qualifications to a more manageable number. They've also linked it to a standard they call “investors in people”, which is an ISO-like standard that relates to human resource development. The benefit of this is that it asks organizations to undertake to invest in their people from the bottom to the top. When they undertake to become an investor in people and become certified as such, they have to show that they have acknowledged the needs of every single worker in the organization, from janitorial staff to the CEO, and they have to show that they've undertaken initiatives to respond to the learning needs that have been identified. Only then do they get the certification as an investor in people.

    It's quite a fascinating model. Michael has participated with me in inviting people from there to present in Canada, and they came back and said, no, it wouldn't work in Canada, it's not a manageable model for Canada, but I beg to differ. I think there are aspects of it that could be used in Canada. I'm going back to the U.K. next month to participate in one of the first research meetings they're holding to look at the progress they've made in the two years since the strategy has been implemented.

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    In Canada now I think we're looking to the federal government for vision and leadership on adult literacy. The message came through quite strongly in the past year. It has certainly come through very strongly, I think, in the way the national organizations have grouped together and made their voices heard, and I think it came through very strongly at the national meeting on innovation in November as well. If literacy is actually seen as the foundation for lifelong learning--and that's the catchphrase on everybody's lips today--it has to be conceived of as something larger than an educational issue. It needs to be addressed in many different ways. It has to respond to the diverse needs we face in this country regionally, linguistically, culturally, and otherwise. I don't think anyone pretends that it isn't a complex issue, but there are many potential roles for the federal government that won't trespass on jurisdiction. And there are precedents, a couple of which, again, Kathryn alluded to, so I don't need to repeat them.

    The federal government can certainly work with the literacy community to help create a framework for equitable access and for consistent standards for adult basic learners through provincial cooperation. Frameworks such as the national children's agenda certainly point the way in this direction. The federal government can audit departments of the federal government and produce an inventory of programs and policies that currently affect literacy. There are a large number of them. There is money being spent in many other places, besides the National Literacy Secretariat, where literacy is involved or embedded, but nobody has an inventory or an overview of what those are, so there certainly could be an audit done. It's a horizontal issue that cuts across government departments, but no one can currently identify all the places where it has been embedded in policy, let alone the places where it needs to be embedded in future policy. We know Health Canada, Communications Canada, Justice, and Industry Canada all have policies in place that involve literacy. Is there a central repository where one can actually find all those initiatives outlined? I don't know where that is. What impacts have various federal policies had on literacy provision in the provinces, some negative, some positive? We know the transfer of training dollars had impact. We suspect that the Labour Market Development Agreements did. We need coherent data on that.

    I've only touched on a few possible roles for the federal government and haven't even mentioned what I always call the other side of literacy, which is the accommodations that need to be made for those people who either will not learn or cannot learn to read at a higher level, and we will always have people who fall into that category. They still have the rights of citizens. These are important roles that can be played by a federal government.

    If you should decide that you are going to study this further, I'm quite sure there are any number of knowledgeable colleagues from across the country who would be willing to come and sit with you for more than five minutes, maybe for two and a half days or more, as long as would be needed to lay the groundwork for a long-term commitment. National strategies can't be built solely on projects, which is the way we're trying to do it now. Commitment will have to be marked by drawing on what we already know, by coherence, by collaboration, and by capacity building.

    I have some material with me that I know I'm not going to be able to distribute, because I come from an English-language organization and our publications are English, but I would certainly be more than pleased to leave copies with Danielle, and if anybody wants to look at them, they can do that. And they can certainly contact me at any other point if they would like to know more.

    I thank you very much for the invitation.

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    The Chair: Great. Thank you.

    Ms. Pigott.

    Ms. Susan Pigott (Chief Executive Officer, St. Christopher House): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, committee members. I'm very pleased to have an opportunity to speak to you this afternoon.

    I have to say at the outset, I am not a literacy expert like the others you've heard from. My job is to run a multi-service agency in the downtown west end of Toronto. We have a literacy program at St. Christopher House. We have had a formal literacy program since the seventies. We have had an interest in helping people acquire the skills they need for daily living since 1912, when we first started out as an organization. I'm not going to speak specifically to workplace literacy, but again I think the comments I'm going to make are germane to that topic.

    Most of the people we see at St. Christopher House are working-class folks from a variety of different cultures. Most of our literacy learners, about 65%, are employed. They're employed in jobs where they can get by at this time, cleaning houses, working in construction. Many of them come to the literacy program because they want to move on and up in their careers. I concur, obviously, with Michael's observation that it's very difficult to move up and have much of a career without having more than basic literacy. They come for all kinds of other reasons, though. A tremendous impetus is working with their children, reading to their children. We've actually found that by the time most people's children turn three, they suddenly realize they have to stay ahead of their kids.

    We have always tried to take a lifelong learning approach. We're funded by the ministry in Ontario, which is moving very much towards tying literacy to an employment orientation. We're pushing back hard that we would rather maintain a broader lifelong learning approach, for a couple of reasons.

    About three or four years ago we realized that many in our community were seriously in danger of being totally left behind in the Internet world. You're probably aware of the work that's been done by the Office of Learning Technology at HRDC, which started off looking at the digital divide and is now looking at the dual digital divide. The experience has been that in partnership with Industry Canada, when they put CAP sites across the country, a certain number of people, even people who've had difficulty getting into the Internet previously, have moved on and learned about the Internet and what it can do. But there are a persistent number, the bottom end of the dual digital divide, who have not. We were fortunate to be one of the first community-based agencies to get a CAP site, and we put it in beside our literacy program. Over time it's become a component of what is becoming a lifelong learning centre at St. Christopher House.

    In the last year and a half we've started to become aware of another serious basic skill issue that is very much related, and that has to do with what some people are starting to call financial literacy. I've spent a great deal of time over the past couple of months trying to bring this issue to the attention of government officials and politicians, as has my colleague at Social and Enterprise Development Innovations, Peter Nares, who runs the IDA program for HRDC across the country. We have both become acutely aware of the extent to which the basic literacy level needed to navigate the financial services system and the income tax system in this country is well beyond a great number of people. This is starting to have some very serious ramifications.

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    As the federal government is starting to deliver more and more income benefits to people through the tax system, it's incredibly important that people understand this, and they don't. We've been trying to work with CCRA on this. I think they are aware that there is a customer service issue--that's how they see it. In our community tax filers are just doing a booming business. People will get their income tax forms, they'll take them to a tax filer, they'll pay a fortune--it fluctuates, but it's usurious. This practice, I think, we'll see continuing to grow. There's a tremendous amount of money in it for the tax filers, and it's confounding the strategy of the federal government to transfer benefits to people through the tax system.

    The other thing that's happening is that just as middle- and upper- income people are starting to depend more and more on accountants and financial planners to make their own arrangements on assets and finances, because the financial services system is so confusing, there is no proxy for people who are at the low-income level. That's why we're seeing a proliferation of cheque-cashing outlets.

    This is another issue in our community that we're trying to tackle. We've made great progress, in partnership with RBC, piloting a new financial transaction outlet, thereby, I think, helping the largest financial institution in the country achieve its goal of making financial services more accessible. That's their job, not to do the kind of literacy work that needs to happen to help people. For example, if they're partnering with HRDC in an individual development account program and they're starting to build up assets, they don't know what to do with those assets, they don't know how to make sensible decisions, and this is not about budgeting--poor people we work with are among the best budgeters in the world. I'm talking about the financial services world that even middle- and upper-income people are increasingly having difficulty with.

    The three programs are more traditional literacy, teaching people to learn to read and write, combined with the Industry Canada funded CAP site, which is providing Internet access for people who until recently didn't even know what the Internet was, combined with our fledgling program on financial literacy. As a threesome, they are starting to make a very interesting intertwined program and, in my view, are beginning to constitute the nub of a lifelong learning centre. I think this is something the federal government, particularly HRDC, ought to give some consideration to, experimenting with some of these lifelong learning centres in low-income, high-risk areas across the city. That's not meant to put this issue ahead of the issues my colleagues have raised, it's a view from the ground up.

    I'll conclude by supporting Kathryn Barker's point about embedding--I haven't heard this term before-- literacy in all new initiatives: what basic skills is a person going to need to work with this? And I'll just remind you again that as the federal government has moved from handing out cheques to people to giving people tax credits, people don't know this. If they don't know it when they go marching along to H&R Block and sell their income tax forms, they can be tremendously taken advantage of. So this kind of thinking has to go into all government initiatives as they become increasingly complex and automated and rely more on things like the tax system.

    I'll conclude there. Thanks for the opportunity to meet with you.

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    The Chair: Thank you. I'm just wishing we had hours more time.

    We're going to start with Mr. Goldring.

    Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, ladies and gentleman, for your presentations. It's very interesting.

    I do agree with Mr. Bloom. Workplace literacy cannot but help a person to advance in their working career. But the others have mentioned things like financial literacy and other forms of literacy, and we're talking about literacy now on several different levels involving all forms of people in the community, whether it's in the workplace or in poverty areas, areas of low income.

    We still get back to the basics, a yardstick, a measurement whereby you can quantify and work through this to see how you're progressing. We seem to come back to the one basic survey of 1994, the International Adult Literacy Survey, and I really would like to see the basics of that, the type of questioning. It's my sense that the survey was not about workplace literacy per se or financial literacy, it was more about writing skills and comprehension skills, and I would like to see that as a basis. Also, Mr. Bloom, you talked about workplace literacy testing. Is that another testing level that has been formulated or formalized?

    Mr. Michael Bloom: Let me say something, if I may, about the International Adult Literacy Survey. That survey initially involved eight countries and grew to 22, and it's now in its second round, involving even more countries. It was on examining the literacy of people in the context of documents that were from workplaces. So it's what some people call functional literacy, literacy related to performance of work. The domains in this thing were actually derived from the United States government's work in the NAAL study, which was completed in the early nineties, though not published until about 1998, for political reasons, because of sensitivities on the findings. It is available now, however.

    Mr. Peter Goldring: Has that testing been repeated?

    Mr. Michael Bloom: Yes, it has. In fact, Scott Murray, who was director general at Statistics Canada, was very much involved in that, and Statistics Canada was probably the most important of national organizations involved in that work. So you can get very detailed information from them about the content of the questions, the logic of it, the validation processes. Canada was exceptionally detailed in its work. We had a higher sample size than most countries, and we divided our sample up in special ways, so we are very much up on that.

    My sense, from talking to people in other countries who are experts in this area, is that the results of the IALS study are highly reliable, more so than any other study undertaken. However, I also want to observe that I have found a degree of scepticism about the results in many thoughtful people. It's not a matter of their not being interested, but that they are so surprised by the results. The Government of France was initially so offended by the French results that it refused to allow them to be released. The view was that it was impossible for these results to be correct, because the people of France were better educated than that. Eventually they were released.

    Mr. Peter Goldring: Well, there is scepticism. I have no knowledge of how the testing has been conducted. We see the goal being to achieve a 10% reduction in illiteracy, I suppose you would say, over a certain period of time, and when you identify ten million people as being at the category one and two level, is it your intention to focus on a goal of moving one million people up into higher categories? There has to be a cost to this, and even if you cost it at $1,000 a person for 50 hours of instruction to move a person through this period, sooner or later we have to talk about the dollars and cents in this. Are we really looking at a program here that will need funding in the neighbourhood of $2 billion.

º  (1605)  

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: Yes. I'm the person who set those goals in my papers. I said there is a real cost to all of that, it is extremely substantial, but there's a cost to not doing it as well. It's a public policy discussion you folks have the responsibility to undertake.

    Mr. Peter Goldring: But in order to go down the road of exploring the cost--and certainly there will be benefit for it--we have to get back to the relevancy of it and we have to know where we're starting from. We get right back to a good understanding of what that international testing level was. In these reports there's discussion of developing our own model of it that would be specific for Canada, and I would think you start from that basis and then explore what you can do with it.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: As a point of clarification, the way the IALS works is that each country undertakes a process to create a valid testing instrument that uses documents from that country, and then the different documents that are being used are carefully compared and tested to ensure that the results that you get in Canada and the United States or Canada and the U.K. can be compared. It is a very sophisticated process. And you can get the details of this, you can get great detail, hundreds and hundreds of pages, if you would like. It's readily accessible.

    Is your question whether the whole literacy issue is founded upon sound empirical evidence?

    Mr. Peter Goldring: Yes.

    The Chair: I think, Peter, that will have to wait till the second round.

    Linda, you looked anxious to respond.

    Ms. Linda Shohet: I don't think anybody at this point is actually calling the findings in other countries into question. They've been accepted as reasonable data. That's the reason other countries have undertaken policies or strategies. It's being done in Britain, it's being done in European countries, it's being done in Ireland. It's very widespread, and they will tell you that the initial impetus was looking at the IALS data. The IALS data have been absolutely correlated to countries. So if they used a medicine bottle as a task, the medicine bottle that was used in the Netherlands was a Dutch medicine bottle, not an American medicine bottle or a Canadian medicine bottle. They definitely used structures and format people were familiar with in the country where they were doing the testing.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Madame St-Jacques.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the witnesses for being here today to give us their testimonies.

    Ms. Barker, my question is more particularly directed to you, but the others can answer too. In your document, you mention that literacy has been a concern for the federal government for 14 years, but that the situation has not changed at all. I was wondering if you could point out the reason or reasons for that failure, so we can avoid repeating the same mistakes. As well, if we take new measures, how can we make sure they are efficient? Could we set up an audit mechanism? How could we make sure we will get results and not have to wait another 14 years to realize nothing worked?

[English]

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: The problem is that we have taken a negative focus, we have focused on what people cannot do. So we talk in this country about a skills shortage, people who can't read and write and people who don't have skills for certain occupations, when we don't even know what people can do. So it's easy to switch gears here and say, let's do an inventory of the skills and knowledge individuals and communities and whole industries have in them and build on that. The method by which to manage that is human capital accounting, using something like a digital learning record, the opportunity to first assess where we are at, plan for it, and manage it. A place to begin to create that learning record might be the IALS survey, because it does describe some of the categories of literacy. But then we have all sorts of other data at Human Resources Development Canada about various skills required for all sorts of occupations. We have the measures. It's easy to start with benchmarks and to show a positive change in a very short period of time, in my view.

º  (1610)  

    Mr. Michael Bloom: Respectfully, I question the premise that we haven't improved. We have only one really broad set of data, the IALS data from 1994. We will have more in the next couple of years, they're doing some initial testing. It's not possible to say with certainty that we haven't improved. I would be surprised if we haven't. The overall indications in the educational system are generally that we're doing somewhat better than we did before. So I think we should be realistic.

    Probably the bigger issue from our perspective is that we have to improve quite a lot to keep our relative advantage in the world. We have always had very well educated people who have been capable of producing a lot of value, and that's why we live well. To maintain that advantage, we have to get better and better, and that's the bigger issue I think. But there are successes out there in this country.

    The Chair: Ms. Shohet, would you like to respond?

    Ms. Linda Shohet: I certainly agree with Michael. I think, when we do the tests, we're going to find there's been very little movement, to be honest with you. But I think that in the long term, in a country like this one, what has to happen has to happen both federally and provincially. It can't be a federal undertaking alone, because the federal government does not have a mandate to work in certain areas. So it most certainly has to be something that's done in cooperation with the provinces. All the educational input has to come at a provincial level, a lot of the structural, systematic things have to happen at a provincial level. Currently, we don't have systems in place. At every other level of education there are systems. For adult education in this country there is no system, there isn't any system from one part of the country to another. So I really think at some point we will have to convene provinces and sit down and talk about what this means. Most provinces have an interest in this issue. Quebec has one of the most forward-looking policies on adult education and adult literacy now to be found anywhere in the world. It's only a policy on paper, but it is one that really should be read very widely across the country, because it is absolutely spectacular.

    So I think we can start from things we already have and see if we can't broaden that conversation, see how much commonalty there is at the table. I think it has to happen at more than one level.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Ms. Pigott.

    Ms. Susan Pigott: I can't really speak to the global scene, but I would just point out the issue of increasing complexity, that the challenges of just participating in day-to-day life, with automation, with the things people need to equip themselves with to manage, are formidable, particularly for people who have only basic literacy. My interest is always with people who are poor, have only a marginal attachment to the labour force, and find it increasingly difficult to get any traction to move ahead. They can't take advantage of some of the things we know are there for them, because they don't understand them, they don't know about them. So it's an outreach problem or an embeddedness problem, but it also is partly the need to invest skills in those people, so they will be able to take advantage of these things. We're all facing this, but again, think how many services the average middle-class person purchases, accountants, tax planners, legal help, just to navigate and get by, and these kinds of services are not available to people who can't afford them. So it's investing to keep up as much as just a flat investment.

º  (1615)  

    Ms. Linda Shohet: There is a question of how many people actually use programs that are in place. I think you alluded to that before. There are an awful lot of programs that don't have participants in them, and there have been studies done of participation and non-participation. Why do people actually seek out programs of this sort, and why do people we think should be in those programs choose not to go to them? The findings are quite telling. We did one of the finest studies right here in this country in the last couple of years on participation and non-participation, funded by ABC Canada. One of the things they found was that the main motivation for people who were seeking a program for only 26% was job-related, while for 17% it was upgrading and retraining. That's 43%. All the rest were motivated by personal well-being, daily social or family reasons, or just a desire to learn more, for general education.

    This is what people are telling you, so you need to listen. You talked about being client based. You need to listen to what people say they want and what they say they need. You can't compel people to take programs they don't want, and some of the people who look at the programs need to look at marketing strategies, they need to look at segmented markets and ask who the markets out there are, what they want, and whether the programs we currently have are the ones they want. You can't try to sell them a program they don't want, you need to develop programs that respond to what people tell you they want and need. That's a big issue.

    The Chair: Mr. Bloom.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: I spoke about why business people are not investing, and my colleagues have mentioned some of the reasons individuals are making choices. So why is it that many individuals are not choosing to invest in literacy for themselves, when they need it? We found that the problem is international. In a study we did of the United States, where we looked at the data from their NAALS and IALS work, we found that 40% of the Americans, approximately, have low literacy skills, levels one and two, that is, real problems in the workplace. Those 40% were surveyed about whether they thought they had a problem with literacy, and 80% of the people with low literacy thought they were good or excellent. The same people were asked whether it mattered, and 80% said it didn't matter anyway. Yet our research shows that for males and females alike, if you have high literacy, you will earn two to three times as much money in a lifetime. They were absolutely wrong about themselves, and the data are there. There's a better correlation with income based on literacy level than there is on educational attainment, yet the people didn't appreciate it.

    There is a push and a pull here. You need a demand from employers. We need to encourage that demand, and also create demand in employees or would-be employees, so that they understand what's in it for them. I know economic issues aren't the only thing and the family-related benefits are important too and the social elements and the job system and health, but just the economic case should be compelling to people. The work regarding the workplace is on both sides of the table. The employer and the employee need to be reached in a significant way.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Madame Guay.

[Translation]

    Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I too want to welcome you to the committee.

    Obviously, literacy is a need. I have spoken on this issue last week in the House. It is a need and it should also be a priority. We should not forget that people who have literacy problems are isolated. Often, you have to reach out to them. They are alone at home and are so isolated that they are difficult to find and to reach. We have to find ways to do it. It is often done through groups because for people in their 40's or 50's who have not had a chance to learn and to study, it is not easy to go back to school to learn basic skills.

    I know that in Québec, we have found a way to reach people in their milieu through the CLSC, through programs that try to involve them and break their isolation. But it is not always easy. I am convinced that the other provinces don't always do it.

    Literacy is also a provincial issue. In Québec, it is in French, and in the other provinces, it is in English. We cannot have the same programs; that would be impossible. We should build on what already exists. Some provinces have set up programs which are much more sophisticated than others. They have different aproaches and cultures. For me, it is a priority. We should not do again what already exists. On the contrary, we should try to complement what there is.

    I wonder if the federal government has allocated sufficient funds to literacy. What should be changed? A while ago, you spoke about the 43% who have a literacy level of one and two. I would like to know what those level one and two mean. Also, what is the difference between level one and two in the workplace? What has to be done to reach level three and find a meaningful job, as you say? I would like to have these questions answered so that the committee members know exactly where they stand.

º  (1620)  

[English]

    Ms. Linda Shohet: These are not simple questions. Level one has been defined as people who are barely literate. They can decode words on a page and read something that is very simple, but can't derive an enormous amount of understanding from it, and probably can follow one simple direction. They are not people who read or find reading pleasurable. They are probably people who never look at a newspaper, but derive most of their information from other media, from radio or television. At level two you have people who can read a little more, but still can only read fairly simple structures and probably do not find reading a very pleasurable experience; they can still make more sense of it than people at level one. People in IALS were not totally illiterate--if they were illiterate, they couldn't do the IALS test--so the levels we're talking about totally exclude people who were not literate at all, and the estimate there is that about 2% of the population may fall into that category. So we're talking about people who can already decode words on a page.

    However, in today's world being able to decode some words on a page is not going to get you very far. You're not going to be able to do very much with it. People in those two categories can't use inference, they can't take two pieces of information that are separate, put them together, make an inference from it, and then apply it. There's a difficulty in applying anything that involves bringing in information from another source.

    The easiest group to work with are people in group two; obviously, it is much easier, as you can move them much more quickly into level three, than with people at level one. People at level one are a very difficult group, and in some places, to be honest, they are actually being excluded from the initiatives. They would be a lot of Michael's clients, they would be a lot of Susan's clients, and in some places they are being forgotten, because they're saying, we can't do anything with them fast enough or in a way that can be measured quickly enough to justify an investment. That's a social and political decision that's been made. It's not simple at all.

    But there could be other kinds of interventions and other kinds of supports that are less costly. It might be the place where you want to use the volunteer sector more effectively. You might want to use the volunteer sector more at level one, to give people enough time to get to a point where they could move on. Once people reach a certain point of independence, they can move on on their own.

    I think Michael was dying to add something.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: That was a good description. With those skill deficiencies at level one and two, most people have significant difficulty performing a job well. The people at level two are typically employed, but they don't perform their jobs as well as they could. There's a significant gap, because of their literacy, between what they're doing and what they could do. There are 17% at level one, 26% at level two. The level three folks are the largest group. They're capable of performing well in most mainstream jobs, but not high-end jobs. The fives are a small enough group that they're generally aggregated with the fours, and they comprise about 16% as a group. So if the twos, that quarter of the adult population, could be moved up the continuum a bit into the threes, that would have a huge impact in work.

º  (1625)  

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: Individuals who have literacy problems are found in clusters, and the IALS study is good at showing us where those clusters are. It helps us understand levels of literacy, but it also tells us who we could target if we were serious about targeting. You asked what the federal government can do, and it would be, in my view, to target what we already know from the IALS to be the pockets where literacy problems are most rampant. They are in the prison system, on the native reserves, and in the inner city with single mothers. We know that stuff, and that's why I said we don't need to do more research, we should do something with them.

    The second quick point I would like to make with regard to workplace literacy is that it's absolutely not going to happen that employers are going to pay to help people to move from levels one and two to three and four. They will turn and look at us as literacy workers or as educators and say, listen, these folks had one chance at the public education system; if they didn't learn, it's not my fault, it's not my problem. Furthermore, we have enough unemployed people in this country that I can just go and get somebody else; I don't need to institute workplace literacy programs. There's a huge resistance to that, and we know the majority of employers in Canada are actually small and medium-sized companies. They'll just go and find somebody else. They don't need to be engaged in workplace literacy. So we have to really rethink how it is that we expect employers to be engaged in this problem, because they're not going to offer programs, it's not to their benefit, especially if they're foreign-owned companies.

    Ms. Susan Pigott: To build on something Linda said, I actually can imagine that employers would be interested in levels two and three. I think they wouldn't, from my experience, be interested in level one, because we know most people who employ office cleaners are not going to be bothered trying to work on literacy.

    I spoke in my opening remarks about this concept of lifelong learning centres, and I would see these in the voluntary sector. Our literacy program is almost entirely done with volunteers. It's the model where you pair a learner with a volunteer, and it works very well. It means we can have two staff and 60 learners at a time. We use 800 volunteers across our agency, and we're not alone; you folks are well aware of the leverage in the voluntary sector. I think situating things like a lifelong learning centre in high-risk, high-need areas attached to the voluntary sector does two things. It leverages the volunteers and it overcomes the problem raised earlier about outreach, something voluntary sector organizations are very good at. We have lots of human resources with our volunteers. We're extremely good at going out and finding people. And if you have a successful voluntary sector organization, it's an easier place to come for help with things like literacy.

    The multi-pronged strategy has been laid out well by Kathryn in her opening remarks. All I'm trying to argue is that there's a great place for work-related literacy, but there is also a need for community-based lifelong learning centres. Once again, it's not just reading and writing, but does include things like Internet access and financial literacy, and you're already, as a federal government, well invested in this. The urban CAP sites are a perfect little model. Industry Canada thought, we're just going to put CAP sites in libraries, that's it. I think successfully, many of us pointed out to them that there are some people who, literally, never go into a library. If you don't have a literacy level, why will you go to a library? So if those are the people you are worried about, in that the Internet is bypassing them entirely, let's experiment with trying to get it closer down to the community.

º  (1630)  

    Ms. Linda Shohet: May I?

    The Chair: Okay, but then I'll have to move to another. Even before I do that, Susan, I'm afraid you're going to leave before I have an opportunity to mention that as a committee, we did a great deal of work on GIS and the fact that a large segment of the population were not receiving their GIS. I just want the committee to know that it really is the work you did at St. Christopher's that got this ball rolling and drew the government's attention to the fact that we weren't doing enough to ensure that those who should have been able to avail themselves of the GIS weren't. I just wanted to publicly make that comment here.

    Mr. Tony Ianno (Trinity—Spadina, Lib.): I would just like to add that since St. Christopher House comes from the great riding of Trinity-Spadina, I'd like to recommend that you and the committee consider any other pilot projects that would be worthy of consideration in Trinity-Spadina. St. Christopher House and other organizations would do a fine job. Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ianno.

    Susan.

    Ms. Susan Pigott: Thank you for the comments about the GIS. That has been one of the most satisfying pieces of work we have undertaken in a long time, primarily because of the responsiveness of HRDC. We saw the results of the report that was sent by the officials to the minister. And your outreach strategies have really worked well, so congratulations back.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Michael.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: I'm more optimistic than Kathryn about the capacity and willingness of business to invest in workplace literacy. The Conference Board of Canada has for the last six years been running an awards program for workplace literacy. We give out awards for small, medium, and large businesses. To give you an idea of how practical this can be if the employers understand it, I'll give you a little capsule. Russel Metals from Nova Scotia has 70 employees; 26 of them have participated in the workplace education program, and 60% have got a GED, high school equivalency. The program involves a literacy component, and it was designed because they had to reach a ISO-9000 quality assurance standard to keep functioning. They realized they had to upgrade their people and initiated this program, with great success. The benefits to the employer, as we identified in studying them, were that they greatly improved their job-related training, which was crucial to reaching the quality standard, and because they enhanced the literacy of their people, they reduced the error rates and reduced turnover of staff, which they didn't want, because they needed people they could rely on to produce high-quality the first time; and they greatly improved the morale of their people, which also contributed to those people staying in the jobs. The employees got better communications and teamwork skills and increased self-confidence. They feel they are being developed as individuals, not just as workers. So the program has benefited the employer greatly, and this is common with literacy.

    Some of the best workplace literacy programs, as opposed to literacy programs that are for people who aren't yet in work or haven't got the basics, actually interconnect workplace literacy with other kinds of development, and they often aren't called literacy programs. They have a variety of names, like intermediate communications, a name that doesn't have a stigma, but it has an literacy component in it. Typically, if you embed a literacy component in the programs, the literacy is very much integrated with what you do in work. So it makes sense to the employers and it makes sense to the employees. Part of the problem with literacy is that people who are working and are invited to join a literacy program may not see the point of it, but if it's contextualized for them properly, they will go in and they will do well.

    We've just published, in December, a study from the United States looking at joint union and business programs. We were looking at the culinary sector in Las Vegas, the Hospital League, the health care workers in New York, and the Alliance, which is the people in telecommunications, very large programs, over 100,000 people in each. The people ranged from physicians' assistants and licensed practical nurses to housekeeping. The housekeeping people, who are often Hispanic or from other countries and may be literate in another language, but aren't literate in the language in which the business is being conducted, often didn't understand what they were doing in the context of work in the hotel. Through literacy training, they began to understand they were part of a team of people. They were also able to learn how to perform their jobs more efficiently. I didn't know this, but if you figure out how to clean a hotel room properly, logically, you can do it faster. It makes sense, and I'm going to try to apply that at home soon. So at each level, if you make sense of it for people, you can go forward.

º  (1635)  

    The Chair: If you figure out how to do it at your house, can you come to mine?

    I'm going to move on. I'm going to give each of the panelists an opportunity at the end, if they haven't had a chance, to make some comments.

    Monsieur Simard.

    Mr. Raymond Simard (Saint Boniface, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I guess my first question was just answered by Mr. Bloom. I was going to ask you if you had success stories, examples of companies that had really worked on their human resources and improving the literacy level. But has anyone gone a step further and measured the economic benefits? It seems to me that would be extremely helpful for us to sell to other companies, because in the end, that's often what companies are looking for, the economic benefit of all this.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: HRDC has some pilot studies of return on investment in training. Some of that is basic skills or functional skills level. It's all very tentative, in that we're developing models. When you try to apply the concept of ROI as an accounting principle to something like education and training, it's difficult, but it is doable, and I would argue it's absolutely necessary to make those arguments. Yes, many employers can be convinced if they see the dollars and cents, but they mainly--and I guess I'm the cynical one in the crowd here--do it when there are government dollars to make it possible for them to do it. Otherwise, they don't do it on their own. They can't afford to do it in this economy.

    Ms. Linda Shohet: I would fall somewhere between you and Michael. I think there are a lot of instances today where the need is coming externally. When people need to qualify for international certification of some kind, that becomes the impetus. When there's an impetus, it really does suddenly change, as for anybody. It's the same for anybody who needs to learn: when something changes in their life and they can no longer do something they need to do, that's the moment of change. When you ask people who come to programs what happened, they'll almost always say something changed, and they'll identify something that happened to push it. The same thing has to happen for employers as well. Otherwise, you're right, it's government incentives or something. There actually have been studies of business programs that have been subsidized, and when the subsidies were stopped, the programs were stopped. So there has to be something extrinsic to the business that is going to keep them doing it.

    Mr. Raymond Simard: From the last committee meetings with witnesses, I think we all agree that literacy is a problem in Canada, but we don't address the cause a lot, and if we're going to invest a lot of energy and funds fixing at the top what we've created, if we don't fix the problem, are we continuing to put out a bunch of illiterate people? If that's the problem, I think we have to spend some money at the bottom end. Although Canada is known to have one of the best education systems in the world, what the heck is going on? Can you answer that for me?

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: You're absolutely correct, the problems continue. It's been noted by the minister and others that young people still leave the school system with inadequate literacy skills. There are lots of great things we could do. There's better readiness for children before they get to school, and that's very much linked to the child poverty issue. That's easy, that's straightforward, it's doable. We can and should be doing those things. There's the need to refocus how we are teaching and learning in our public education system. We have a model from the past that we simply don't need any more. We have opportunities to teach learning and embed learning throughout the curriculum and enforce the need for different kinds of literacies throughout that system. It requires, as Linda has pointed out, a conversation with the provinces, but if we wait for that to happen, it won't. There's a terrific opportunity for the federal government to take a lead with this Canadian Learning Institute, show great progress, good innovations, and lead by example.

º  (1640)  

    Mr. Raymond Simard: So you see a partnership between the federal government and the provinces, basically, as an option.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: Where it's possible, yes.

    Mr. Raymond Simard: I think Ms. Barker spoke of incentives, carrots for people. The feeling I got is that it's difficult to attract people to these literacy upgrade classes. At my end of the world we've had organizations offer them, and the demand has been huge. We can't keep up. Has that been a problem across Canada? I know we could set up community literacy organizations and they would be swamped.

    Ms. Susan Pigott: We certainly have a demand we can't meet in our area. Our colleagues in the field in Toronto, in lower-income neighbourhoods, have the same experience.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: If you look at the dollars being spent on public education in Canada and compare the dollars being spent by everybody on literacy, even if you stretch that to include a broad range of training programs in the workplace that aren't called literacy, the spending on public education is $60-plus billion, the spending on all literacy in the broadest sense might be 10% of the training dollars in Canada, and that would only amount to something like $500 million a year. So our investment in human capital formation, to use the jargon, is far higher for public education and generally for the under-25s, under-30s certainly, than it is for adults.

    We do continue to produce people from high school, college, and even university who have literacy issues, alas, but if you look at the distribution through the research, the older people are, the more literacy problems they have. That would be comforting if we were going to count on an enormous number of youth entering the labour force to replace all those folks, but we know the demographics. Many of the people who have significant problems need to remain in work for a long time, so an investment in those people is going to yield a benefit.

    The Chair: You alluded to the amount of money spent in the system. Do you have any dollar figures?

    Mr. Michael Bloom: In the workplace?

    The Chair: Yes.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: Well, it's a tricky thing. We do a training survey annually and we analyse. But what is training? There's a pot of money in most workplaces we survey, and people say, we have this much in our training development budget. For Canada maybe that's in the order of $5 billion a year altogether, of which only about 1%, maybe 2%, is labelled specifically for literacy and basic skills. But I'm stretching it out to say some of the other things they're calling communications, problem solving, team building, and so on actually have a literacy component in them. Even if you stretch it, it's only maybe $500 million. If you narrowed it to just literacy stuff, we're probably talking under $100 million that's specifically labelled in the workplace.

    The Chair: What do you think the public spending on literacy might be?

    Mr. Michael Bloom: I don't have a number for that. I don't know if my colleagues do.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: I don't have a number, but I know it's reduced in British Columbia. This government cut that budget completely, so whatever it was, it's less now.

    Ms. Linda Shohet: That's one of the problems in this country, you can't actually pin that figure down. That's what I was trying to do, that's what they were asking me to do in 1989. What's called literacy and what has literacy components built into it don't match from one province to another. In the United States at least part of the money for literacy comes through title grants from the federal level, and all states have to report in the same categories. So even though states may have other programs that are funded in other ways, you can at least compare across those data and know you can compare one state to another. We can't do that in this country. You could go mad trying to figure out what is literacy. Some provinces had enormous amounts they said they spent on literacy, and when you actually went in and started to take it apart, you found there were all kinds of programs in there that were not literacy programs. They were something else, but they sounded like or had a small component that was literacy. So when they aggregated it all, they said, this is what we spent on adult literacy. If we could even find some common ground for reporting and sharing data on some of these things, it would be an enormous step forward in this country.

    The Chair: Mr. Goldring, and then Mr. Mahli.

º  (1645)  

    Mr. Peter Goldring: Thank you, Madam Chair.

    It might be interesting to apply that literacy test to high school students and see how they would compare on all levels, thus testing our educational system nationally, at least once. It seems we've had knowledge of this since 1994, a serious problem, and it'd be interesting to hear from the educators' point of view what they're doing to address it. Are you aware that the educators are stepping up to this problem at all? What are they doing? Maybe you could give me an idea where a typical grade 10, say, would fall on this literacy scale.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: As a research person, I would have to say no one has ever attempted this, so I would be guessing to give you an answer. I would say a grade 11 student today, one in the middle of the distribution, would be at the lower end of the threes, but please don't quote me in the papers. I've actually--and probably everybody here has--tried the questions out myself for Canada, just to see what they're like. I encourage you to try it, it's interesting. I didn't get it officially done, so I can't say what my literacy level is.

    Mr. Peter Goldring: Given that it would be in the low end of the threes, which sounds manageable, and we're talking about such a high number in the ones and twos nationally, it doesn't seem that's coming from our education system. Perhaps there's a large number of people here in their forties, fifties, and sixties who have been through an earlier education system and haven't had the benefit of upgrading.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: That's part of it, but it's perhaps not correct to assume that it's not coming through the education system. As Michael said, the average of grade 11 might be a level three. It's important to remember that the IALS was created as a way of getting away from the notion of grade-based reading. We used to measure what level people were at by their grade level. We'd say grade 2, grade 3, grade 4, and we found that this was awkward and inaccurate. Then IALS was based on functional reading tasks, another way of thinking about it and measuring. You're asking us to go back to a situation that, as researchers, we tried to get away from. What is grade 11 reading, what is grade 12 reading, what is university-based reading? As we watch our school system as it operates, people with difficulties get sifted out. So it's really the achievers who can get to that level, get through, and get to university, and all along the way there is carnage.

    I was a high school English teacher. I passed a young woman from grade 10 to grade 11 in English class and two or three years later signed her up in an adult literacy program at a community college. I had no idea she couldn't read. I was there teaching social studies and English, but I didn't see if she could read. We're given one chance in the public education system. You learn to read in grade 1 or grade 2. The grade 3 teacher says, I don't teach reading, I assume you know how to read. The system doesn't have the capacity to stop and work with individuals, and they find phenomenal methods of coping and getting around the system. You can actually pass a high school class by just being there.

º  (1650)  

    Mr. Peter Goldring: Because we're basing this entire thing on a set of testing standards, we should not only develop this standard, if we want to Canadianize it, but also ask our educational system to be part of this testing. I would think the educational system would be the number one place to start in making real improvements on the ground.

    With Mr. Bloom's comments on the businesses, I totally agree. I was in manufacturing, my own business, before, and I welcomed the employees' taking the initiative to upgrade, because that's technical literacy on the job site. Coming here to the Hill is a real learning curve. So there are technical aspects and a learning curve for here too, as well as for every manufacturer and business. I certainly think businesses would participate. You would have to craft, first and foremost, most of it as a national standard, but some segments of it would be directed at that specific business as technical requirements. Is this being looked at now from a business aspect? The testing that was being done at that one business, is that an across-Canada type of literacy program, or was it specific for that one firm?

    Mr. Michael Bloom: The GED is a standard used in other countries as well; it's a high school equivalency standard. The ISO you're familiar with as an international system, private, not run by government, but nevertheless widely recognized.

    I want to make an observation on this point. Just after I finished my PhD, somebody gave me the Harvard University entrance exam for 1899--I was a historian at one time--and I tried it. I failed most sections. I was perfect on some sections, but I couldn't do Greek sight translation--I could do the Latin, but not the Greek--I couldn't do the German, and so on. What I learned from that, other than to be humbled a bit by the recognition of how little I knew, was that was literacy for the upper middle class and upper classes in the eastern United States in 1899; if you couldn't do those things, you weren't literate enough to enter your place in society, and as that was an elite place, obviously, that was an elite literacy. On the other hand, I thought about it a bit afterwards, not to just try to make myself feel better, and I thought there were things I learned doing my PhD, and even before, doing my first degree, that are important to us and are not on that. If we could move them to now and give them our entrance exam, they would fail it as well. So the nature of literacy evolves as the society changes and the economy changes.

    A great many people who got jobs in the past were functionally literate, when they got their work. If they were working in a lumber mill or in manufacturing, whatever, and they got their job in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s, they were, in fact, literate for their place and time and what they did.

    Mr. Peter Goldring: One of the things I have observed with, for example, the summer temporary employment program for students is that 75% of the organizations that apply are non-profits, and only 25% are for-profit businesses, and that's very striking. The reason is very obvious: the businesses aren't aware that program is available, and it isn't posed to them in simple terms that they can very easily and readily take advantage of summer help. I would think the same thing applies here. To bring it to businesses, it has to be very well defined, very well promoted, and show some cost benefits. What was the cost advantage to that employer for the 70 employees from the government contribution? And how did they find out about that program?

º  (1655)  

    Mr. Michael Bloom: I'm not sure this particular program got any money from the government. They were recommended for an award, but it wasn't a government program. There are many programs run by businesses on their own, without government money.

    Russel Metals figured out that this is a way of solving a problem of theirs, but for every Russel Metals there are 10 or 20 others that don't figure that out, don't know about it. I don't want to pre-empt your inquiry, and I hope you will pursue it and figure things out, but if you have a national approach, there has to be a huge awareness raising component, there have to be ways to make it easy and rational and logical for business to be engaged in it. Typically, people in business are practical folk. They try to do things that make sense to them and they think they can do. They'll take a certain amount of risk, but they want to see where they're going. So maybe that's one of the things you can help do, develop a national approach that will make it realistic for business to become more engaged, so that we go from the Russel Metals and, on the big end, the Honeywells, the National Sea Products, the Valleyview Villas, the Norandas, and all the companies that are doing things to the over a million companies in Canada who may have a need--many do have a need. That's the challenge.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Malhi.

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    In so many communities non-profit organizations run the literacy programs and seminars, with the help of governments, and I notice that participation in those programs is very low. How can the government and the communities bring awareness to the people and encourage them to have more participation?

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: I have one solution for that, and it goes back to that discussion of the digital divide, linking the literacy problem to other areas where there are opportunities for learning. The government has been very successful in getting Canadians to use information communication technology, by promoting the information highway, SchoolNet, the CAPS, all those. That policy initiative has been incredibly successful. All we have to do is link literacy to that kind of initiative, and it's as simple as making laptops and computers more available.

    Having said that, I have real reservations about expecting the volunteer community and employers to take responsibility for this. It has to be a much broader and more comprehensive strategy. I've been at this business for at least 20 years, and nothing has changed. The conversation we're having here today we had 20 years ago. This is a chance for some bold, exciting new action, and I would encourage you to think outside the box and do something different from what we've already been doing.

    Ms. Linda Shohet: I'm going to take real exception to the last comment. I think a lot has changed in 20 years. We have a knowledge base we did not have 20 years ago in this country. We have a core of expertise we did not have 20 years ago. I think we have some models. Michael, with all due respect, apart from Russel, we have whole sectors that have models of how you set up workplace literacy that works. In Manitoba you have it, you have a cooperative model between the manufacturing sector and the union sector. If you're going to look at workplace models, you'll have to look at what we already have. Certainly, you're not going to start from the bottom up and not from the places that have already found out how you do it. In British Columbia you have SkillPlan, which started in the construction sector. There are some of these things that can work through sector councils. There are a lot of ways into this, and we've already found some of the ways in.

    I agree with Kathryn that the answer to this is not to rely on the volunteer sector. This is not a charitable endeavour. We're talking about the future of a country. The volunteer sector has a role to play, but it isn't the primary role, and I don't believe you rely on the volunteer sector to be the primary providers of what's needed in the country. They need to play a supporting, auxiliary role, and we need to support them in the places where it's needed, but if you actually have a strategy or a system or an agenda, you know what those roles are and you know how they mesh with whatever else is in place and the places that people can go to get help. I certainly don't think the volunteer sector can carry the load.

    In answer to the question, I'm not sure that all volunteer programs don't have participants. Monsieur Simard talked about programs that do have participants. I think it varies from one part of the country to another and from one region to another, and I think quite often it's a match between resources and need. Sometimes there are programs where the need isn't great, and sometimes the programs that are in place don't match the need there is. I don't know that the volunteer programs, until now, have been very successful at measuring what clients need, going out and doing an environmental scan and saying what the needs are. Most of them have programs, they're set. They say, we offer this program, we offer this method, and then let people come. If nobody comes, they say, oh, look, we're offering this and nobody comes. Well, maybe the people don't want that method, maybe they don't want that program. It doesn't mean those volunteer programs could not meet needs, but I think they need to be flexible as well.

    A lot of shifting and a lot of support needs to happen, but I really do think something has changed and we do have a lot more to build on today than we would have had 20 years ago.

»  (1700)  

    The Chair: Mr. Finlay.

    Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the witnesses for everything they've told us this afternoon.

    I don't want to prolong things, but, Dr. Barker, when you mention the grade 11 girl, you bring back memories. Having been in education for 33 years as an English teacher myself, I can remember my shock when a parent whose daughter had been a very good student and gone through the school I was at came to see me and said, what can we do? Shirley is failing in first year university, but she graduated from high school with 85, or whatever. Fortunately, I was able to go to the board psychologist and get him to talk to her and advise her, and the university had an assisted learning centre for this kind of person.

    So it doesn't just happen between grade 5 and grade 8 and grade 11 or grade 12, it happens between secondary school and university. I have a daughter-in-law who's employed at UBC teaching engineers how to write in first year of university. The educational system does a great job, but there are all sorts of ways people who slip through the hoops. The girl I mentioned, probably because she was a good little actress, could memorize lines, she did a beautiful job, but when it came to writing a 13-page essay on something or other, she had no idea how to organize it. Her father was tearing his hair out. He'd get her all the books, they'd sit, she'd look at this and that, and then he'd say, how are you getting on?. She wasn't getting on at all, she didn't know where to begin. So we've got a real problem here.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: I hope we don't fall into the trap of blaming the education system, because that doesn't really get us anywhere. We know what the solutions are, we just need to dig down and actually do them, but in a non-confrontational fashion.

    The Chair: I agree.

    Mr. John Finlay: I hope we could have a copy of this IALS test. Dr. Bloom tried it, maybe some of us would like to try it.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: It's very interesting.

    The Chair: Mr. Bellemare, you haven't had an opportunity. Would you like to pose questions?

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.): Yes.

    We've gone all over the map and the waterfront. We've talked about dysfunctional people, youth, adults, learning skills, non-learning skills, basic education, fitting into the community, and so on. There are sensitivities. There are provincial problems. A lot of people say, just give us the money and shut up, and we want to do something more than just giving money. You have an opportunity right now to say, here's where you should concentrate. We can't swallow this ocean of information you've given us and go into the outreach programs

[Translation]

to bully the people in Québec, for example,

[English]

or those who are very possessive about their area of responsibilities. Where can the feds help where it will make a change, where Madam Barker later on will say, yes, the federal government has created a mechanism where there will be change? I know you've mentioned bold, exciting action, but these are just three words. What the hell do they mean? What exactly do you want us to do? Perhaps there is one little thing we could succeed in doing and you'd say, it was worth my while to go to Ottawa; at least they've done this, now it has to function across the country,

[Translation]

in every province.

[English]

What is it?

»  (1705)  

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: For me, it would be the notion of a learning record, a system whereby each person had the opportunity and the responsibility to keep a running list of all the things they know and can do, starting really early, going through the education system, right through adulthood, so as to focus on not what we can't do, what we have to learn, but what we already can do and what we have learned. At the end of a class, at the end of a course, at the end of a year, we would say, this is what else I've learned and can do. Start to build up a set of competencies or human capital that focuses on the positive rather than the negative. The one thing you are able to do is better understand the notion of--and it isn't just jargon, as Michael has indicated--the human capital assets system of building on the acquired skills and knowledge and holding learning systems accountable for adding to that, so that when we put people into programs--

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: I'm looking for what we can do, aside from giving away money.

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: Help to understand what that tool is and disseminate it broadly across the country.

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: How do you do that without bullying the provinces, at least in their minds?

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: We already have leverage, as an example, through sector councils, through the funding that goes to literacy organizations, through good partnerships with the CNEC. There are lots of points of entry for partnerships to simply change the focus.

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Then how do you audit that?

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: How do you audit that?

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: You have all these nice programs, and you say, give them money to support them, but are they doing a good job?

    Ms. Kathryn Barker: It is auditable.

    Ms. Linda Shohet: I don't think this is a quick fix, there's one thing we can do. When you go into something like this, you need to take the time to study it. I say that with some reason. In every country where something reasonable has been done there was study put into it. There was at least a year and a half to two years of study preceding each of the big national strategies. And when they come out, there was coherence to what they did. There were standards in place and there was accountability, because there were some outcomes that were demanded. So I think it has to come with a set of desired outcomes and some agreed upon way of measuring those outcomes. Then you need to keep monitoring yourself. Are we doing it? Does it work? If it doesn't work, can we readjust it?

    I don't think anybody has the answer. That's why the Brits have undertaken an eight-year initiative, and they are just constantly monitoring. They have these 10 target groups. I think you need to choose. You need to decide where the greatest need is and where we could have the greatest impact. I don't think you can reach everybody at the same time. I think choosing those populations is the way. It doesn't mean we don't do anything else at the same time, but it means these are the places where we're going to make a special effort and we think it can be measured. I think that can be done even in the context of the country where we're living. I don't think it's that difficult.

»  (1710)  

    The Chair: Mr. Bloom.

    Mr. Michael Bloom: The answer is not simple, and many sound points have been made here. The capacity to bring about change in workplace literacy does not lie in the voluntary sector. They're doing what they can, and they're doing good things, but they're pretty well at their limits. It lies really with business and government to do something, with some help from post-secondary education perhaps. The United States is not a perfect system by any means, but their Workforce Investment Act, which is up for renewal now in the new budget, delivers funds through both the Department of Labour and the Department of Education, about $5 billion a year; they have $4.5 billion through Labour and half a billion through Education. They are attempting to do some things nationally, even though education is a state responsibility.

    I think the real place for opportunity is the workplace, on a pan-Canadian scale that focuses on people in work. There's a legitimate role for the federal government there, and there is a lot of interest in the provinces in finding ways to connect to that. Some of it is through the workplace, some of it is through post-secondary education. The colleges are very interested in being deliverers of programs and finding a role there. So there are institutions to build on.

    I'll close by saying I agree with the point Linda makes. Coherence is crucial, it shouldn't be just piecemeal, and Kathryn's made the same point. We all agree it needs to have some coherence, and bold vision if possible. Don't go back to the same old place, don't go back to the voluntary sector and expect them to carry the load; they can't do it. Public education has an impact on the youth coming through, K to grade 12, but one heck of a lot of people in this country are finished with the earlier parts of public education. You can do something to bring them into that system again, but for the most part we need a national strategy that says there is a real issue in workplaces and there's a huge role for business and government, with some partners.

    The Chair: I can't think of a better place to wind up.

    I want to thank all of you for your very thoughtful presentations. If we were looking for a reason to study it, you certainly have given it to us today. As we carry on--and I'm assuming we are going to carry on; it's certainly my intention to try to persuade anybody who hasn't already been persuaded that we need to do this--we may be asking you to come back and participate in some fashion. Again, I thank you all very much.

    Meeting adjourned.