HUMA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

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

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, May 6, 2003

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1530

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

Mr. Paul Cappon (Director General, Council of Ministers of Education (Canada))

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1535

The Chair

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

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

Mr. Paul Cappon

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1540

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

The Chair

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Paul Cappon

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1545

Mr. Monte Solberg

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.)

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

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1550

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

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1555

Mr. John Finlay

The Chair

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon (Lac-Saint-Jean--Saguenay)

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon

Mr. Paul Cappon

º

1600

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon

The Chair

Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Lib.)

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Ovid Jackson

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1605

Mr. Paul Cappon

Mr. Ovid Jackson

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

º

1610

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

º

1615

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Paul Cappon

The Chair

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

Mr. Paul Cappon

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Mr. Paul Cappon

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

The Chair

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

º

1620

The Chair

Mr. Paul Cappon

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 028

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, May 6, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

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

    Welcome to the 28th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

    We are winding up our deputation portion of the literacy study we're doing, and we've saved one of the best for the last.

    Mr. Cappon, you have to understand that we've had many good ones, and I don't want to in any way slight those. I think I probably could have said to each of the ones who were in front of us that we've saved the best for the middle or the first, or whatever, but we've been very pleased with our deputations to this point, and I know you won't disappoint us.

    So without any further ado, I will let you introduce yourself. I find that most deputants, after I have introduced them, have already prepared text and they introduce themselves again. So I'll leave that to you.

[Translation]

    Mr. Paul Cappon (Director General, Council of Ministers of Education (Canada)): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I'm Paul Cappon, Director General of the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada which calls itself the coast-to-coast voice of education because, as you know, it's the Council of Ministers of Education that coordinates Canada-wide policies in the matter of education and which, internationally, represents Canada in the area of education.

    That said, we work closely with our different partners at the federal level, but the council is made up solely of provincial and territorial ministers.

    I was asked to address the whole matter of adult literacy. I will be referring to two documents that you may have received already. One is called Working Together to Strengthen Learning and Labour Market Training. That document was prepared by the Ministers of Education and the labour market ministers of the provinces and territories. The other document is an analysis we prepared at CMEC concerning the literacy loss in Canada among the population aged 20 to 65.

    You'll find that I can give you a lot more information about the problem than solutions today, but we will still have to talk about solutions as well.

[English]

    Let me begin by talking a bit about the diagnostics, the problem of adult literacy in Canada as we see it, and in the workplace in particular, which I think is the focus of your work here.

    The news isn't particularly good. As I refer to the document on literacy loss in Canada among the population age 20 to 65, if we compare the situation in Canada with the situation in other countries in OECD, we don't appear to be doing particularly well. The document that I think has been distributed or is available for you--our own analysis in working with Statistics Canada--shows basically that the average Canadian worker begins to lose prose literacy, which is the essential skill for the workplace in whatever occupation one might have, at the age of 20.

    One could argue, and certainly ministers of education would argue perhaps, that the education systems are doing their job up until the end of formal schooling, but perhaps the workplace is not responding in the way it might.

    The analysis that you find in this very short document compares Canada with Sweden. It uses the international adult literacy survey, and I put emphasis on that because these international comparisons we find particularly useful at the council of ministers.

    That survey establishes five levels of literacy, and according to OECD and the literacy survey one needs to be in the third level, so at a medium level of prose literacy to be able to make a full contribution to the labour force in whatever capacity one is working in.

    We find that not surprisingly Canadians with a post-secondary education lose their prose literacy skills relatively slowly. Canadians with no post-secondary education lose their literacy skills very quickly indeed, far more quickly than in most countries in the OECD, such that by the time an average Canadian worker is 40 years of age, his or her prose literacy skills are already below the acceptable level at which he or she can make an adequate contribution to the workforce, to the labour market.

    If you compare that average Canadian worker with the average Swedish worker, which is a comparison we've used in the charts in this document, you'll find that the average Swedish worker will continue to have literacy skills at an appropriate level until the normal age of retirement at age 65.

    What that means is that Canadian workers, and therefore Canadian productivity, appear to be at a significant disadvantage when compared with other developed countries in the OECD, and therefore that must have, one could argue, an impact on productivity in Canada.

    So that, in a nutshell, I think is what the data tells us, as we've worked with Stats Canada. I think a conclusion one might draw from that is we don't have adequate systems of workplace training and literacy in the kinds of places where people will go to work once they've finished their formal schooling.

    I can just briefly mention some of the things the provinces and territories are working on and that are reflected in this document, “Working Together”. This document is not a response to the federal skills and learning agenda because it's been elaborated separately from that agenda, but it is very much in line with the kinds of things the Government of Canada has been talking about.

    It's a joint piece of work by the Forum of Labour Market Ministers and the Council of Ministers of Education, and it sets out four areas in which we think we need to work in a priority way to strengthen the workforce and to improve literacy.

    So the four areas are as follows: strengthening workforce development; enhancing post-secondary learning capacity--and in that regard, may I say we believe we have a serious problem of capacity. Even though accessibility to post-secondary education may be seen by Canadians as a significant problem, you still need to have the places even if they can afford to attend. The third area in which we want to see priority work is encouraging full labour market participation of underrepresented groups. The fourth is providing Internet access online learning across Canada.

    The only area I have time to mention today in terms of the workplace literacy issue is strengthening workforce development. We have offered in this paper to enter into a cooperative relationship with the federal government in this area in particular. I'll just mention two highlights and then I'll stop and we can answer questions.

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    We think that two areas in particular need to be emphasized in our relationship with the federal government: one, partnerships with employers; and secondly, the issue of literacy and essential skills. We feel you're on the right track if you're focusing a lot of attention on literacy skills in the workplace.

    We believe we need systematically to enter into relationships with employers in both the public sector and the private sector that will provide incentives for those employers to provide the possibility to workers to enhance their literacy skills. If we don't move in that direction, and very cohesively, we argue, and very consistently and resourced appropriately, we will continue to see the kinds of results we're seeing, which are not very positive in terms of workplace literacy.

    I'll stop there, Madam Chair, because usually in sessions like this it's the question and answer period that's most interesting.

    The Chair: I can guarantee it will be.

    I'm going to start with Mr. Malhi. Then I'll go to Mr. Solberg.

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

    What extent of the present educational system is contributing to this country's low literacy problem?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: I think the education system of the country, if you mean the formal education system, is not the main problem. That argument is supported by the fact that the OECD test, which is a standardized assessment of 15-year-olds in 30 OECD countries, shows that Canadian students rank second among the 30 countries in the OECD countries for reading levels, for reading skills. So it doesn't appear to me to be so much a problem of the formal K to 12 education system. I think something doesn't happen after they finish school that should happen.

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi: What are the steps being initiated for emphasizing the needs for adult literacy and essential skills development? What role do you think Canadian learning institutions should play in a pan-Canadian literacy and essential skills development system?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: I think we need a more cohesive system, one in which we work together between the primary and secondary levels and then the post-secondary levels and also with the workplace. I think we need to take advantage of the ability of governments to have a good relationship with the private sector to provide some kinds of incentives for people, for employers in particular, to offer the possibility to their employees to maintain their literacy skills.

    Often it's because employees aren't challenged to use those literacy skills that they lose those skills. We know that with literacy the expression is, if you don't use it, you lose it.

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    Mr. Gurbax Malhi: Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Malhi.

    Mr. Solberg.

    Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    Thank you for your presentation. Just following up on what Mr. Malhi has asked about, I'm wondering, do you have some ideas on specifically how the government could incent business, for instance, to be more proactive about providing opportunities for people to sharpen their skills on the job?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: There are several ideas that are current in other OECD countries, which I think we need to look at. Those ideas usually involve incentives, as you mentioned, for the private sector but also the public sector, allowing people time away from work to improve their literacy skills, but also, and this is quite important, making the possibility available to them in the workplace in a very systematic way.

    It doesn't appear to be very effective just to say to people, “Well, we'll give you an hour off sometime and you can go do whatever you want”. I think you actually have to bring it to the workplace. Those countries in which they've been successful have done that.

    Something else that is important, which is perhaps not in the area of incentive to the employer but more in the area of more general support in the culture, is that countries that do well in literacy and maintain the literacy skills have lots of libraries, lots of reading materials, and lots of encouragement for families to provide support.

    It's remarkable that in the tests we did--this is going beyond your question--the OECD test on reading showed that the family support system, taking your kids to libraries, reading to the children, discussing things at the table, were almost as important as socio-economic status in terms of how well people did. We need to do more of that, I think--give those supports as well as giving supports to the private sector and the public sector employers.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: So if you're bringing training, I guess it is, or opportunities into a workplace for people to sharpen their skills, I would think that would be mostly larger companies that are doing that rather obviously. I wouldn't think it would be very small companies that do that.

    Do you have some specific examples of how that might work? Is there a particular country or a particular company that does this very well and would be a model?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: I'd hesitate to single out a particular company, but the Scandinavians do very well in literacy--all of the literacy surveys--and I think they do it because they will encourage even small companies, by different kinds of incentives, to allow their employees time to improve their literacy skills, but also because they challenge those skills in the workplace, which is just as important as the incentives. In other words, they make sure people are reading; they make sure people are challenged by the kind of work they do.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: I can see that, but I'm not quite sure how that would work. Help me out with this. Say you're a mechanic in a garage somewhere for a car dealership. How would that work? How precisely would you encourage mechanics to start to read more and to keep their literacy skills sharp?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: You have a culture in the company whereby any worker who has difficulty or thinks he might have difficulty with whatever phase of reading is able to identify that, without penalty, to a supervisor who is very sympathetic, instead of being judgmental, and who is connected immediately to a system, a provision of educational services, let's say, in a college or a polytechnic. That person can connect immediately or fairly immediately to get support and be in a system at no cost to that individual.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: Have you thought much about the types of incentives you could use, something through the income tax system or maybe some kind of EI rebate? Have you really given that much thought?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: We have certainly given thought to EI rebates and we've given thought to EI. In fact, one of the issues we want to discuss with the federal government is whether the EI system can be used in relation to the kinds of incentives that need to be offered.

    Now that you've asked the question, let me just take it a step further and say that the provinces and territories can't do this on their own because of the financial burden. This has to be in partnership with the federal government. But both with respect to taxation and with respect to EI, we need that kind of partnership.

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    Mr. Monte Solberg: Thank you.

    The Chair: I'd like to follow up on the EI. Can you give us a preview of what you might be asking the government to do in terms of how it uses EI?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: I think it best probably to quote from the document you have, so let me do that.

    Under “Enhancing Labour Market Development Agreements”, we say :

Increasing EI Part II funding by about $700 M to the maximum allowable under the EI Act. This would allow provinces and territories to assist more people by allowing the citizens to benefit from increased access to programs designed to provide them with the skills and knowledge necessary to compete in the new economy;

    I think the point is that we have community colleges, we have polytechnics, we have all kinds of educational institutions that can be our partners, provided there is this flexibility in terms of how that funding could be used for an educational purpose.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Finlay.

    Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    The comparison between Canadian and Swedish workers is fascinating.

    Why do you think Canadian workers lose their literacy skills so much sooner over time and they don't hang on to it nearly as long as the others?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: If you look at the graphs, you see that you begin at roughly the same place as in Sweden, and you're protected from loss of literacy by the fact that you have a post-secondary education. That's because the people who have a post-secondary education are encouraged at the workplace to read and to use their literacy skills. The people who don't have a post-secondary education are not. The question I was asked a few moments ago about what a mechanic would do is a good example of that. It doesn't seem that those kinds of people are encouraged to use those skills.

    So the reason we fall behind is because we don't have comprehensive programs of workplace literacy, and we don't have those programs because we don't have the infrastructure for them and because they're very expensive.

    Mr. John Finlay: And because we've concentrated a good deal in industry on making it simple. Mass production doesn't lead to thinking on the job very much, does it?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: We find now that the subtlety and the complexity of the skills that are required for workers are quite high. There aren't really many unskilled jobs left any more, outside the McDonald's kinds of things. In terms of production facilities, you need a pretty high level of literacy. Even a mechanic, actually, needs to be pretty good at reading.

    It isn't so much that the work has been simplified. I think the work seems to be more complex than it's ever been before.

    Mr. John Finlay: Why doesn't that translate into a preservation of literacy skills? At the third level it's partly...that's the--

    Mr. Paul Cappon: It doesn't because, as I say, we don't have the programs in place. In fact, what's happening instead--which is what I'm worried about--is that our workers, because they don't maintain those literacy skills, fall below the level at which they can make a good contribution to their workplace. So they lose the very important competencies they need in order to be productive. That means our workers will be less productive than the workers in Sweden because they don't have that level, and you need to be more and more literate as time goes on and as the complexity of production increases.

    It isn't just the workplace. I mentioned the general culture, the general availability of reading materials, the number of newspapers we would have that would be available, how people read or don't read newspapers or other kinds of written materials in Canada compared with Scandinavian countries. So there's a general background in terms of the culture that in North America is not favourable, but beyond that in the workplace itself.

    We need a pan-Canadian approach to this because a province can't do it on its own. The companies are national and international, aren't they?

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    Mr. John Finlay: Many of them, yes.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Many of them are, the bigger employers, so we need approaches that could be done on a pan-Canadian basis as well. That sort of matches what the economy looks like. And some provinces perhaps can afford incentives better than others can. If you just went on a provincial system of incentives to workplaces, to employers, you would find you'd presumably have more of a migration toward richer areas.

    Mr. John Finlay: I have no problem with that. I just don't see that in industry. Change is going to have to be made in the management level of industry. They're going to have to be the people to understand they'll get a better product, or better help, or fewer accidents and so on, out of more literate or skilled people. If they don't challenge them at that level, then obviously it's going to go--

    Mr. Paul Cappon: You know, that's a very interesting comment, because when you look at the employability skills the Conference Board has developed and you ask individual employers, you see the skills they want are basic skills, like literacy skills. They can train people in their own trade, in the business of the company, but they want those skills. So they know those are important, and yet the incentives aren't there to maintain them.

    Mr. John Finlay: I wonder, too, about our leisure time activities. A lot of the reason must be our lifestyle, if you like.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Yes, but every other country has that problem as well. You mean television, Internet, and those kinds of things?

    Mr. John Finlay: Television, Internet, libraries, sports, and pastimes.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Sure, there are all of those factors, and those are the sorts of cultural factors I mentioned. That's part of the cultural background. But the question then is, if you build it, will people come? I guess there's a bit of a risk involved there, and I'd like to think people will come if you build it.

    Mr. John Finlay: I hope you're right.

    I was at what they call in my riding a Canadian challenge. It's a museum school that has a day, and Saturday was the day, and they have a challenge for students who are interested, in every school in the county. It's sort of like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, or some of these shows on TV, where you have categories, and people compete for the right answer.

    These students went through 24 questions, and then somebody got 45 out of 50. The questions that had more score, were a bit more difficult, and two or three of them.... It was really quite fun. But the adults were challenged to do it first, so they had a round with the parents.

    The fellow sitting in front of me was very good, and he got most of them right. On the side, we got four or five right. I said to the fellow in front of me, “Do you listen to the CBC?” He said, “Yes, always”. His daughter won the contest. He was a mechanic, or a farmer or something, a very normal sort of human being.

    I thought maybe that's right, because I listen to the CBC when I'm driving the car. I get a lot of information from it, which I'd never get, I don't think, from the western music station or many of the other radio stations, where all they do is play music, give the news, the sports scores, and so on. But I thought there must be some reason he knows these sorts of literary questions, history questions.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: He probably reads, as I said, on the side.

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    Mr. John Finlay: Thanks.

    The Chair: Mr. Gagnon.

[Translation]

    Mr. Sébastien Gagnon (Lac-Saint-Jean--Saguenay): I was leafing through your document. Maybe you could help me, for example, with regard to your possible involvement with the provinces, Quebec, for example. I don't understand this very well and I'd like you to put it in the proper context. I was elected a few months ago--I'm new here--but I don't really understand how you can get involved in literacy in Quebec.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: I think that Quebec's approach isn't very different from that of the other provinces, in other words they're trying to cooperate and work together with the federal government to tackle the priorities we've identified together and we've listed here and which are shared by all provinces. So that's why we're talking about strengthening workforce development. We're talking about enhancing postsecondary capacity education system. We're talking about providing Internet access for on-line learning. So I think that Quebec does agrees with all those priorities. The question we have, in a specific field like literacy, is this. How to do it and what is the context of the partnership we'll be creating with the federal government? How can we work together while respecting the jurisdiction of each one of the entities?

    Mr. Sébastien Gagnon: I understand the Quebec government structure concerning its educational system and in your conclusion I saw that you were saying the federal government has the necessary financial means available to help the provinces to meet the challenges. We also got data from Statistics Canada, a few weeks ago, showing Quebec's progress as compared to some other provinces. I attribute this success to the commitments it made during these last few years. So I would invite the federal government to pursue in that vein and give the Quebec government the financial means it has available so that it may continue its action in its jurisdictional field of education.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: That's the position Quebec always puts forward in our discussions and I think you'll find it reflected in the document. It's because the provinces can't go alone on this without the federal government's financial help since it's a huge challenge and the stakes are high.

    What is delicate isn't the choice of priorities, because we agree. This document pretty well looks like the one the federal government produced. The question we now have is as to how to go about it. What are the rules of the game? How are we going to develop this partnership? On June 5 and 6, I mentioned it to the Chair before, there will be a meeting with Ms. Stewart and the Ministers of Education from all the provinces and territories, including Quebec, as well as the ministers responsible for the labour market in each one of the provinces. I hope that we'll be discussing that matter there as to how the financial support will be provided and on what terms. Different provinces will no doubt have different points of view, but we do have to agree on a broad approach. In this document, we simply stated what priorities are shared by the provinces, not how we'll develop a partnership with Ottawa.

    Mr. Sébastien Gagnon: I found there were major elements in the document that showed how important the problem is but we also have to find out how to go about it. As I was saying before, and I'll repeat it, we were quite satisfied with what we had done. So why go looking for extra solutions? As you've said, as a matter of fact, we shouldn't forget that 50% of taxes paid by the people of Quebec are collected by Ottawa. So one might think that if we want to improve the performance in terms of literacy, it's important for the federal government to send those funds to the provinces, including Quebec, so that they can find a solution but also to avoid duplication in that jurisdiction.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Actually, and it is mentioned in the document, each one of the provinces and territories have practices they find valid and which, in our opinion, deserve greater federal support. We'd like to bring these to the attention of the government. So we're asking for a support that will recognize those practices.

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    Mr. Sébastien Gagnon: Thank you.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Jackson.

    Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Lib.): Thanks, Madam Chair.

    It's interesting. I'm a former mechanic, and when you were talking about a mechanic I was wondering whether you were talking about a mechanic or a grease monkey. There is a difference. Mechanics in today's world work in very sophisticated environments. When you start your car up in the morning, you turn the ignition key on. There's an oxygen sensor in the exhaust that says there's oxygen. There's a temperature sensor that tells you what the temperature is. There's a thing called a manifold absolute pressure sensor in the intake manifold. And the computers, one, two, three, four, five or six of them, have to adjust what's called a stoichiometric ratio, which is the correct ratio between the amount of air required for a certain amount of fuel. They're very complicated concepts, so they have to read. In a lot of cases they actually have these satellite programs that come down at the dealership.

    So I would say it depends on who you're talking about in today's world. You won't want to take your car to a grease monkey.

    Having said that, there's no question there's probably a difference between reading.... Maybe literacy entails reading, learning the concepts about drama, about history and wars and various other things. And somehow in our society there probably is a small group of people where maybe not everybody gets into that kind of atmosphere. So the challenge then has to be that at the workplace perhaps some of these things have to brought in.

    My question is this. There would have to be a correlation between the person who actually keeps these literacy skills...and I would suspect it starts even before they're born, from their parents reading to them while they were in the womb and playing classical music. It all stems from reading and the love of reading. I don't know, but once the person matures--I don't want to say five years old or whatever because those are the most crucial times of the child's history--when they become a teenager, if they never really got into reading, can you really get them into some of these concepts?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Just before answering that question, I have to tell you that when I was a young man I took a course in automobile mechanics and I failed the course. I went into medicine and that was easier.

    There's actually a lot of research on the issue of the brain and when you can be susceptible to getting the skills and the habit of reading. You're right, we used to think about ten years ago--and there's so much brain research that's going on right now, it's fascinating stuff, and I follow a lot of this because I'm really interested--that if you didn't have it by the time you were five, it was game over. But now we think the brain is very plastic and that you can actually learn anytime, at any age, and it's not all over if you haven't got it when you're five, including in terms of reading. In fact, it now is suggested, in terms of language, that it's actually easier to learn grammar in another language when you're older than it is when you're a young child, when it's easier to pick up the vocabulary, like when you're ten or eleven.

    Nevertheless, your essential point is right. Even if we do think the workplace...that doesn't compensate for things we might not do early in life. There's no doubt that we need to invest a lot in creating the conditions for learning even before pre-school. I think what that says is we need a comprehensive learning system from beginning to end of life; that is, we have to go beyond the industrial model where you used to learn from six years of age to sixteen years of age and the rest was no learning at all, that you started with a blank sheet at age six and then whatever you knew at sixteen or eighteen was all you were ever going to know.

    I think what we're saying now is that we have to go well beyond that. To go well beyond that means we have to invest, I would argue very heavily, in learning outside the formal school system, including the workplace, but also, as you say, in the early stages of life.

    Mr. Ovid Jackson: The trick then has to be outside of the box. In some of my experiences--I wouldn't say all--employers don't necessarily want to give people the skills, which people are tested on, simply because sometimes to get a job done, somebody could just show you what to do, and if you do enough repetitions of it, you would do it properly without knowing all the concepts as to why you do that.

    When I travelled with the Prime Minister to Africa, they had some problems with AIDS. They brought in a group of people to try to educate truck drivers as to how not to get caught up with the foxy ladies along the route, or what have you, and to keep family values. It was interesting. It was actually a play, a dramatized play, and everybody became involved.

    Maybe those kinds of concepts outside of the box are what you have to do in terms of telling the stories and then getting them interested in that and getting them into that.

    I think my colleague, John Finlay, was right when he said that our lifestyle.... Even if you follow the pattern of young people today and try to compare it to when we went to school...you had a lot more time where you had a chance to read a book. There is so much distraction now, and more time is spent just being entertained than reading. For reading you literally have to turn the TV off.

    I know my daughter used to get hired a lot by a lot of people because she was one of the few people who would go to a home, babysit, and read a book to the kids, and not have to worry about turning on the TV.

    What do you think about that?

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    Mr. Paul Cappon: I think you're entirely right. We have to be far more creative than we were when education was an assembly line.

    Your colleague, Mr. Solberg, when he asked the question about the kinds of things we could do at the workplace...one of the things is to have partnerships with creative originators of learning materials that would really be of interest to people, not just because it's something you have to learn, but it will actually capture their attention--entering into those partnerships with creators of learning materials who know what the interest of those kinds of people might be.

    It is thinking out of the box that we have to do here and not just having a bunch of people in seats being lectured to. That's not a system that's going to work. It's going to have to be very interactive. It has to appeal to those people.

    Just to give you a further example of that, one of the reasons it appears in school systems that boys are so far behind girls in reading--which they are--is because the material doesn't appear to appeal to boys. Until we make it appeal to boys, they're not going to read. Just as in your case, if somebody in the workplace has material being foisted on him that's not particularly interesting, he will reject it and he'll do whatever else.

    So you're quite right. We have to be out of the box and very creative in our thinking. That does cost money, however.

    I keep coming back to that, don't I, Madam Chair?

    Mr. Ovid Jackson: The money is fine. Again, I used to be a high school teacher.

    The trouble with money is you need the money, but you have to get the right recruits. For instance, I used to go into what I call master teachers' classrooms. These are the people who use a lot and they don't necessarily get rewarded. They don't become the principal, they don't get into a category four, or what have you. The people who recruit for this job have to be those outside-of-the-box people because they do magical things, and they will be able to do that kind of stimulation. But it won't be the ordinary person who will be able to do that. They will bore people to death.

    Anyway, that's just a suggestion.

    Thanks, Madam Chair.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Agreed.

    The Chair: Just before I turn it over to Madam St. Jacques, I have a couple of things I had written down that I wanted to ask you about.

    You talk about wanting to increase the amounts allowable under part II to $700 million. What do you think the provinces would bring to the table as a result, if we provided that increase?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: We'd have to enter into a negotiation for sure, so I can't answer that in absolute terms. It might also depend on the capacity of each of the provinces, individually, to be able to respond to that.

    I know there's a strong feeling that the employment insurance is supposed to be about employment; it's supposed to be about engendering the capacity in the individual to be employable during time off work. So that would be a logical extension of the use. But I can't say what amount of money the provinces would provide. Obviously, that would be part of the partnership, and we would have to come together on it.

    The Chair: Do you think they would support an expansion of the sector councils to permit the use of EI funds to provide literacy and essential skills training?

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    Mr. Paul Cappon: We've had some discussion about the use of the sector councils, and we probably will with Minister Stewart when we meet her again next month. I think they're open to all kinds of suggestions. You're asking me about how we do it, which is the important question. We agree on the what, it's just the how, and I haven't heard any of the provinces close their minds to any of the possibilities about how to do it.

    I think it would be useful for the federal government to put some proposals on the table about how it would be done and how much money would be involved.

    The Chair: The other thing is a number of our witnesses have talked about the need for a pan-Canadian approach, that the provinces and corporations, the private sector, can't do it on their own, that we need to look at this. In doing so, I might suggest that we need some national assessment tools. I guess I'm wondering if the federal government has agreed to fund the pan-Canadian assessment program, and, if so, how much?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: The pan-Canadian assessment program is only for secondary school children. At the moment, the contribution of HRDC is about $1.6 million per year for SAIP, the current version of the pan-Canadian assessment program, and it has not YET agreed to fund PCAP, the successor to that. It hasn't said no, but it hasn't said yes either to continuing funding there.

    Frankly, if we lose that capacity, we won't know how well our kids are doing in reading and writing and mathematics and science on a pan-Canadian basis. So I think it would be unthinkable that we wouldn't continue to do that.

    Furthermore, if we lost that capacity, we'd probably lose our capacity to compare with other countries in the OECD, just at the time when we say we need more objective evidence of how we're performing in relation to other countries.

    I know you haven't asked this, but I'm going to raise it anyway. People say that since the provinces declared that education is in provincial jurisdiction, then why wouldn't they pay for these tests themselves? The answer is in two parts. They do pay, in part, for these tests. It's a lot of work that goes into it, in addition to the cash.

    Secondly, there is no political accountability for Canada in education; there's only political accountability at a provincial level. So to ask provincial ministers to pay a lot of money for pan-Canadian work in education is asking more than usually will be done.

    The Chair: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if you were helping us draft recommendations, then the continued and increasing financial support in these assessment tools would be on your list of recommendations?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: That's an easy question to answer. Yes, indeed. I would say in the first instance that the federal government should at least continue to support PCAP at the current level, if not more, as well as the international assessment through OECD that we do.

    We're also thinking about expanding PCAP to other areas in the social sciences and the humanities, which can be tested. Some people have strong feelings that we have a bias towards mathematics and science and that we should be looking at these other areas, like citizenship, Canadian history, and others.

    I also think the federal government should give more support to the research we do, which is very insignificant research, national research, on education, which drives policy, so that we can have evidence-based decision-making in educational policy. The thing the federal government has to come to grips with then is understanding that it's doing that in the national interest, not because it has a lot of visibility, because of course it has no seat at the table of the council.... But I think it's very important that you continue to support these processes.

    The Chair: Well, we seem to be on a roll. You said you were going to talk about some of the problems when you didn't have any solutions. You've given me some pretty good recommendations up to this point. So I guess I'm going to ask you now, if you had a second or third one, what might they be?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: For adult literacy or more generally in learning?

    The Chair: You choose.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: There are so many. Let me talk about the most important.

    We have many regions in the country in which the school population is declining so badly that schools are closing, in almost every province, even in Ontario and Alberta. When you lose your public school, you can lose the community. Even in the areas that don't have declining school populations, the role of the public school is declining in society because of the demographics. People just don't have the same vested interest.

    What we really need are schools that are open 16 and 18 hours a day, which are the centres of the community. So can we have some assistance in informal education and non-formal education that could help us integrate informal and formal learning systems? That's a huge issue without the federal government interference in education, but thinking about that issue and how it can support the provinces in that particular area is very important.

    A second very important area is adult education. The OECD has done a review of adult education in Canada and has found us to be fragmented, incohesive, and incoherent, because of the problems between the levels of government, and that includes the issue of workplace literacy. So we need to become far more cohesive about how we do that.

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    Mr. John Finlay: Why? Were there problems? I didn't catch what you said.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Why? Because we don't have agreement across levels of government about how adult education should proceed, and we don't communicate well about that. And there's duplication and repetition at various levels. We don't have a properly defined role for the private sector in adult learning. There are just a lot of problems. I refer you to the OECD report on Canada for adult learning to see what those are. I think we need to do a lot there.

    The other issue, the one we've been talking about, the main focus of your work, is working with employers to provide workplace-based training, and not just for literacy but for training in the workplace, because if we don't get that, we will just continue on the trend I've been outlining today.

    So those would be my three big recommendations outside of what we've just said.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Madame St-Jacques.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Good afternoon, Mr. Cappon. I'm sorry I missed your presentation, but I was welcoming young students from my riding who were here to learn more about political life. It was important for me to meet them. When you consider the high rate of dropping out, I think we have to really pay a lot of attention to them.

    The questions I wanted to ask have already been asked. And perhaps you've even answered the one that I will be asking because I missed part of the meeting.

    In the area of research in literacy, who, in your opinion, should assume responsibility? Should it be the Canadian Institute on Learning or should we leave that aspect to the provinces?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: We already have a Canada-wide program on research in education and that's a partnership between ourselves and Statistics Canada. It is quite underfunded, the financial means are few, but I think we're doing good work. When I arrived at the council, seven years ago, there was no such research program in education, but we set it up and it's an interesting one. The matter of literacy and models and best practices is one that is very important. The system is already there; I think that it should be given more support.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: So, give more money to make sure that we manage to...

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Yes, but it's not a matter of giving the money to the provinces but to the Canadian Council on Education Statistics which is a partnership between ourselves and Statistics Canada. It's not simply a transfer of money to the provinces for purposes that remain to be determined by them later on. It's really something within a series of objectives that are very clear.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Thank you very much indeed.

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. Gagnon, did you have anything?

    Mr. Sébastien Gagnon: No thanks.

    The Chair: Does any other member of the committee have something?

    Do you have some additional closing remarks?

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Only this. First, I'm very pleased that you are studying the question of workplace literacy. I feel I haven't provided the sort of detailed and exemplary responses that some might have liked in terms of exactly what you do in X, Y or Z situation, but I think when we have an agreement to work at an issue and derive approaches, we can get down to more detail. But I do think you're focusing on a very important issue.

    I also think, Madam Chair, that you yourself have identified that you can't really work on this in isolation; it's with a continuum of learning, and we have to look at all of that continuum. I hope the levels of government are going to be able to come to some agreement about the how, because I think we agree on the what.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    We are going to do our utmost to provide a report that is at least a starting point for working together with our partners, both private and public sector, on an issue that is arguably one of the most pressing that faces Canadians. I think it's misunderstood, and I don't think people understand the level of--I don't want to say illiterate folks out there, but those who certainly haven't reached their full capacity. I think as a society it's incumbent upon us to make certain that everyone is able to participate in the fullest and most productive way possible.

    I'm looking forward to the good work of our two researchers, who will now take the reams of paper that have been presented and all of the testimony and try to craft a report for us to look at.

    Mr. Paul Cappon: Best of luck, and thanks for inviting me.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    The meeting is adjourned.