HUMA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

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

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

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1545

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

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay (Executive Director, Movement for Canadian Literacy)

¹

1550

¹

1555

The Chair

Ms. Christine Featherstone (President, ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation)

º

1600

The Chair

Ms. Luce Lapierre (Executive Director, "Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français")

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1605

The Chair

Ms. Sophie Labrecque (Chief Executive Officer, "Fondation pour l'alphabétisation")

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1610

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1615

The Chair

Mr. John O'Leary (President, Frontier College)

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1620

º

1625

The Chair

Ms. Robin Jones (Executive Director, Laubach Literacy of Canada)

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1630

The Chair

Mr. Charles Ramsey (Executive Director, National Adult Literacy Database (NALD))

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1635

The Chair

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

The Chair

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis, BQ)

The Chair

Ms. Luce Lapierre

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1640

The Chair

Ms. Christine Featherstone

The Chair

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay

Mr. John O'Leary

The Chair

Mr. Raymond Simard (Saint Boniface, Lib.)

Ms. Christine Featherstone

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Christine Featherstone

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Christine Featherstone

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1645

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Christine Featherstone

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Christine Featherstone

Mr. Raymond Simard

Ms. Luce Lapierre

Mr. Raymond Simard

The Chair

Mr. Charles Ramsey

Mr. Raymond Simard

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

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1650

Mr. Raymond Simard

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP)

The Chair

Ms. Luce Lapierre

Mr. Yvon Godin

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1655

Ms. Sophie Labrecque

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Godin

The Chair

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

Mr. Yvon Godin

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

Mr. Yvon Godin

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Godin

Mr. Charles Ramsey

Mr. Yvon Godin

The Chair

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

The Chair

Ms. Luce Lapierre

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1700

The Chair

Mr. John O'Leary

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

The Chair

Mr. John O'Leary

The Chair

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

»

1705

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

The Chair

Ms. Sophie Labrecque

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

»

1710

Ms. Robin Jones

»

1715

The Chair

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

The Chair

Mr. John O'Leary

»

1720

The Chair

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. John O'Leary

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. John O'Leary

Mr. Monte Solberg

Ms. Sophie Labrecque

»

1725

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. John O'Leary

The Chair

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

The Chair

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

Mr. Tony Ianno

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.)

Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay

»

1730

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay

The Chair

Ms. Robin Jones

Mr. John Finlay

Ms. Robin Jones

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 012

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹  (1545)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 12th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

    Today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are proceeding with our study on literacy.

    We have with us today a number of associations. I'm going to take just a moment to introduce each of the folks we have with us in the order in which they're speaking: from the Movement for Canadian Literacy, Wendy DesBrisay, executive director; from ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation, Christine A. Featherstone, president;

[Translation]

from the Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français, Luce Lapierre, who is the Director General; from the Fondation québécoise pour l'alphabétisation, Sophie Labrecque,

[English]

chief executive officer; from Frontier College, John Daniel O'Leary, president; from Laubach Literacy of Canada, Robin Jones, executive director; and from the National Adult Literacy Database, Charles Ramsey, executive director.

    We will begin with Wendy.

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay (Executive Director, Movement for Canadian Literacy): Madam Chair, members of the committee, I'm Wendy DesBrisay, and I'm the executive director of the Movement for Canadian Literacy.

    MCL is a national non-profit organization representing provincial and territorial literacy organizations, learners, practitioners, and researchers. For over 25 years MCL has worked to support the growth of a strong and effective literacy movement.

    Like my colleagues, I'm here today to urge the committee to dedicate some of its talent to finding solutions to Canada's literacy challenges.

    You've heard that close to 8 million Canadians lack the literacy skills they need to thrive. That number may be hard to wrap your mind around, but here's what it boils down to: 3.1 million adults have severely limited reading skills. They have difficulty reading or understanding the instructions on a can of infant formula, filling in a job application, or casting a ballot. A further 4.7 million can read, but not well enough to meet the demands of today's information-based society.

    These millions of Canadians are young and old, employed and unemployed, Canadian born and immigrants, rural and urban. They're your neighbours, maybe some of your friends, and definitely your constituents. Some day they could even be some of us, because while the need for literacy skills keeps escalating, studies have shown that like muscles, literacy skills weaken if they're not used. With an aging population, this is important to keep in mind.

    Given all these realities, the need for action is clear. Over the past few weeks you've heard about the cost of inaction to our economy. In 1988 the Canadian Business Task Force on Literacy estimated that low literacy costs business $4 billion each year in lost productivity. Today this figure may be even higher.

    However, as you consider the economic impact, I would encourage you to expand the parameters of your study beyond the workplace to the workforce. This means Canadians who are currently working and those who are not. It means looking at family literacy, because kids growing up in low literacy households are at risk of facing the same challenges as their parents. It means looking at literacy's impact on some of the most pressing social issues of our time. For example, let's look at the impact of low literacy on the hot topic of health care. People with low literacy skills tend to place more of a strain on our health care system. According to a study by the American Medical Association, patients at the lowest literacy levels had average annual health care costs of almost $13,000, compared with only $3,000 for the overall population studied. This is just one example of how the social and economic dimensions of low literacy intersect and why they should not be studied in isolation.

    Despite the clear benefits of action, the existing literacy system is woefully inadequate to handle the need. Many literacy programs are struggling to meet demands with limited resources and a pool of committed but often overextended volunteers. The mostly project-based nature of literacy funding, sometimes referred to by our field as “drive-by funding”, has left little room for long-term planning.

    Some place the blame for inaction on jurisdictional constraints. Provinces take the lead in direct funding and delivery. However, since they are under no obligation to designate core funds for literacy, there is wide variation in access and conditions across the country. The federal government plays an important role by funding the National Literacy Secretariat and other initiatives. The NLS does an excellent job, but it is constrained by its limited resources and mandate.

    As far as we know, there has never been a meaningful inventory of the impact of literacy in areas where there is room for federal action, such as employment insurance, aboriginal peoples, immigration, and the national children's agenda. These are only a few examples.

    Literacy is too important to our nation not to have national leadership and a national vision. The committee could play a critical role in helping to map out this vision.

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    We don't ask that you undertake this challenge alone. Last fall, the six national literacy organizations that are here today worked together on recommendations for the federal government. You have that document. It doesn't have all the answers, but it may help to provide some direction as to where the government can play a role.

    For example, we suggest that developing a literacy strategy could begin with looking at what the federal government is already doing and what it could be doing.

    We also suggest looking at new ways for the federal government to work with the provinces to enhance literacy delivery. Precedents do exist where the federal government has been able to map out a route so that federal investments and accountability measures are matched by provincial capacity building. Examples include the early childhood development agreement and the national housing framework agreement.

    I encourage you to review our recommendations if only to help set some parameters for your work.

    At the same time, MCL is working with the field on a comprehensive national literacy action agenda. Should the committee decide to take on literacy, I'd be happy to report back to you on our progress.

    In closing, I encourage you to go where no parliamentary committee has gone before. With the committee's help, we can identify literacy solutions that will benefit individuals, families, children, workers, your community, and the country as a whole.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    Ms. Featherstone.

    Ms. Christine Featherstone (President, ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation): Thank you.

    I'm Christine Featherstone. I'm the president of ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation. We're a national charity that was founded during International Literacy Year 1990. We're the only organization in Canada with a primary mandate to promote adult literacy, family literacy, and workplace literacy.

    We do this by producing and distributing national radio, TV, and print campaigns, and through the contacts established by our board of directors and many supporters, who include senior leaders in business, labour, and media sectors.

    We raise funds in every province and territory in Canada through the PGI Golf Tournaments for Literacy, founded by Peter Gzowski, which have raised over $7 million to date in support of local literacy programs and services.

    Finally, we conduct primary research on a national scale to examine the barriers faced by adults whose low literacy levels prevent them from being fully productive workers and citizens.

    The stated goal for Canada's adult labour force, according to the Government of Canada's innovation strategy, is “to ensure Canada's current and emerging workforce is more highly skilled and adaptable”. One of the government's stated milestones that is related to this goal is to have businesses increase their annual investment in training per employee by one-third within five years.

    We need to find a way to help employers understand that investing in their workforce is every bit as important as investing in research and development, or retooling, or new technology.

    During the past year, ABC CANADA organized a series of presentations and round table discussions led by one of our volunteer board members, Dr. Tim O'Neill, who is chief economist and executive vice-president of the Bank of Montreal. That's his day job. He's really a volunteer with us.

    The discussions engage business and labour leaders in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax. For some members of the business communities, the information that 22% of Canadian adults are non-readers, who have serious difficulty in dealing with any printed material, was news to them. Some of them didn't believe the statistics at all.

    Other employers present had lived these figures. They responded from their own experiences.

    I'll quote one of the Calgary round table participants. He said “We have a literacy issue with homegrown Canadians and new immigrants. It's difficult to bring individuals up to a core level of literacy skills. Some employees use only verbal skills and can't perform when reading and writing skills are needed.”

    ABC CANADA is now researching businesses with a strong track record for award-winning workplace literacy programs to see how their success can be replicated in other settings. I'll give you some examples.

    The Canadian Labour Congress, the CLC, coordinates the literacy work group as a forum to share information and develop tools to assist labour educators in workplace literacy programs.

    The collective agreement for the Chrysler plant in Bramalee, Ontario, has literacy training embedded in the agreement.

    Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg, with 5,000 employees, has offered a wide range of literacy programs to their employees for over 12 years. In fact, they have 13 teachers on their full-time permanent staff.

    Another Winnipeg-based company, the North West Company, with 4,100 employees, is the largest private employer of aboriginal people in Canada. They were able to make a strong financial case for investing in literacy programs. By hiring locally, they decreased their costs of importing employees from the south and having to move them north. During the past decade, the North West Company has increased the percentage of locally trained managers from 10% to 32%.

    There are countless stories of these kinds of successes all across the country. What's missing is a comprehensive approach to encourage employers to implement and protect workplace literacy programs all across Canada. What's missing is a plan to work collaboratively at all levels of government instead of focusing on the jurisdictional issues that create barriers instead of bridges to a fully literate Canadian population.

    What we have going for us is this process and this committee. This is an opportunity for all of us to ensure that Canadians are equipped with the literacy tools that are central to nation building.

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    As Canadian author, Michael Ignatieff said, “You can't have a country unless everyone can read and write.”

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Madame Lapierre.

[Translation]

    Ms. Luce Lapierre (Executive Director, "Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français"): Madam Chair, members of Parliament, my dear colleagues from the literacy field, I am Luce Lapierre, President of the Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français (Canadian federation for French-language literacy). I am here today to make a similar contribution, because all of the groups here today promote the same cause, but at the same time, I wanted to tell you specifically about the problems of illiteracy among Canada's francophones. I would first like to tell you a few success stories—we have some as well— but also to tell you about the things that cause confusion or problems for us.

    The Federation is a nation-wide organization that credits its founding to the good will of each of the groups that existed in each of the provinces and territories and that of the people involved in French literacy. So our organization stems from those groups, their desire to cooperate, discuss and benefit from each other's experience. We work in partnership with our members, in other words provincial and territorial organizations, which, in turn, represent adult education centres and literacy centres. So they are also people who try to prevent illiteracy, who promote literacy in families and they are people who work on maintaining life-long reading and writing skills.

    The Federation has become particularly skilled in promoting literacy for francophones, through connecting and cooperating with provincial and territorial organizations of course, but also in promoting the importance of writing skills.

    The Federation has produced training materials for parents who are weak readers, and we base all of our interventions on research, to make our task easier and to ensure we are doing the right thing.

    The Federation solicits input from a committee composed of people with weak literacy skills. So the "clients" are members of our board of directors and help direct our activities.

    Nearly four years ago, one of our organization's initiatives was the creation of an undertaking called Communicateurs efficaces (effective communicators). It provides re-writing and communication training services to private businesses, health centres, client service centres, and various provincial and federal departments.

    Now that I have given you a brief overview of our organization, I would like to talk about literacy among Canada's francophones. According to the latest figures—unfortunately they still date from 1994, but they are the only ones I can give you— 52 per cent of Canada's francophones do not have adequate reading skills to fully participate in tomorrow's work force. Right now, these people with weak skills work in the primary sector: the fishery, agriculture, forestry, or in processing plants. Those industries are slowing down and the jobs in that sector are becoming more complex, either because of higher quality standards or because of new technologies. So it is a critical situation for francophones.

    For over 10 years now—in fact, in Quebec, it is closer to 20 years— francophones from all provinces and territories have taken action to respond to the needs of weak readers. So the success of our interventions are based on three specific elements that might be of interest to our future discussions.

    The first thing is actively offering services. What do I mean by that? I mean that we must not wait until weak readers ask for the services. We must be proactive, we must offer literacy services in every province and territory, and what interests me in particular, is that those services also be offered in French. So those services must be offered and they must be advertised.

    I will give you an example that you, Mr. Simard, are no doubt familiar with. In Manitoba, there is a group called Pluri-elles. This year, they took a proactive step by opening adult education centres, literacy centres in nearly 10 communities, and this year, the group is training 390 francophones in those centres. Last year, with fewer resources, of course, about 100 people received training. The problem with that situation is that despite the excellent work being done, funding is given for one year. It is just project funding provided by federal government programs.

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    That is an unfortunate situation because right now there is an energy in the province that could easily dissipate if we don't have a permanent structure or if we cannot offer ongoing services. So I am flagging the situation as both a solution, but at the same time a problem.

    Secondly, as an example of a success story, I would like to tell you about the one-stop-shopping formula for adult training. For minority groups, for francophones living in a minority situation, having institutions that offer continuous and diversified services to adults is very positive and ensures some continuity; an adult who starts becoming literate knows that he or she can get other services later on. So the one-stop-shopping formula is an attractive one. We have tried it in Vancouver, at the Educacentre; at the Service fransaskois d'éducation des adultes de la Saskatchewan; at Éduk, in Alberta; at SOFA, in the Yukon, to name just a few.

    The third formula that appeals to us in terms of service delivery and organizing of training is the possibility of made-to-measure training. In all of the adult education centres in Canada that we work with, training must meet the needs of adults. It must be geared to the manner in which an adult discusses his problem. Should we look at the family environment, the work environment, or yet another one? You have to be flexible and innovative in the way made-to-measure services are offered.

    Unfortunately, our interventions are limited for various reasons. I would like to draw your attention to two major obstacles. The first is there is little awareness of literacy issues among francophones. I have just given you some alarming figures, and yet, there is a need for better understanding of the situation of francophones in an anglophone environment and of francophones who live in a community where everything is written in a language other than their mother tongue. So it is essential to heighten awareness of the problem.

    The second point I would like to draw your attention to and which limits our interventions is the insecurity of the services being offered. Earlier on I gave you the example of Pluri-elles. The situation is similar in all provinces. So the federal government gives financial support to pilot projects such as the testing of teaching material. The provinces that support literacy in French are few. So there is a need to work with the provinces to solidify service delivery.

    In places where there is provincial support, training is provided under conditions that might be, at best, precarious and often limited in terms of budget, because despite everything, there can be a demand for them. So that is food for thought.

    The Federation and its provincial and territorial partners invite you to take a leadership role so that the literacy of Canadians, and especially that of francophones, improves. I have given you the gist of our thoughts. However, we are working on a document that encompasses the intervention models suited to francophone Canadians.

    I can assure you that our Federation will keep you abreast of the progress made in developing the material. You can count on us and on our members to further the discussion, and, I hope, build a strategy that will enable us to deal with illiteracy in a winning way.

    Thank you.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Madame Labrecque.

[Translation]

    Ms. Sophie Labrecque (Chief Executive Officer, "Fondation pour l'alphabétisation"): Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development, colleagues, good afternoon.

    First of all, I would like to introduce myself. I am Sophie Labrecque, Chief Executive Officer of the Fondation québécoise pour l'alphabétisation (Quebec literacy foundation). I will now present our organization, but I'll do so quickly, so that my work colleagues also have enough time to present their organizations.

    We would like to highlight six points: the importance placed on basic training for all—removing obstacles to access and perseverance; categorization of types of illiteracy—i.e., respecting diversity; types of commitment from major partners; the poor match between supply and demand; the trivialization of illiterate people's needs; the risk of forgetting the literacy basics in the continuing education context.

    I will now talk about the foundation. Who are we? The foundation, as is the case with many others, was set up in 1989, one year before International Literacy Year was declared.

    We stand apart from other organizations through our client-needs- based approach. Our mission is to ensure that all Quebec and Canadian adults have access to basic training in reading and writing. Our mandate includes the organization of benefit and community support activities, major awareness and prevention campaigns, and referral services. Of course, we also work in cooperation with other organizations whose reach extends across the country.

    The Fondation pour l'alphabétisation is the only charitable organization that measures the needs of the illiterate population on a daily basis through its referral service. Indeed, since 1990, we have helped 44,000 people through our toll-free Info-Alpha line. Further, in 2002, the foundation was given the mandate by the Quebec government to manage the provincial referral line for all basic training and continuous training needs, the adult learn- line service. That's quite significant.

    I will now speak to the importance placed on basic training for all by removing the obstacles to access and perseverance. Over the past few years, we have observed the high profile given to manpower training and illiteracy prevention. One might believe that the importance of general training for all is a value accepted by society and that, consequently, there is little need to debate the issue. But the alarming statistics on low education levels show us that nothing can be taken for granted. We must therefore, more than ever before, focus on the value of literacy.

    Currently, most training services are offered to adults in the context of programs heavily focused on labour market preparation. These programs have specific objectives for success as well as tight deadlines. for an illiterate individual trained in this context of pre-employment, the requirements and deadlines can be a barrier. Through their involvement in a program which, paradoxically, aimed to enhance their skills, individuals are placed in a situation of failure, and are confirmed in their feeling of incompetence. Consequently, we feel it is regrettable that general training for adults, and in particular literacy training, have such a low profile in policy statements concerning the fields in which government departments operate.

    Let us now move on to defining the types of illiteracy and the respect of diversity. In subsidy or policy identification proposals, there is a tendency to identify specific services with different categories of illiterate people—young people, immigrants, women, the hearing or visually impaired, or those who speak neither English nor French—with a view to providing them with specialized services. But attributing illiteracy to specific population groups look to us like a trend—not to mention an attempt—to dodge a large part of the issue.

    Our experience has taught us that inadequate basic training is not the preserve of specific groups. Attempting to explain away or justify the existence of illiterate people in society by the fact that they belong to a specific social group seems to us, in terms of acknowledging the problem of adult illiteracy, to be a step backward.

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    Types of commitments from major partners. Major partners are often involved in the context of literacy activities through philanthropic activities such as donations and contributions, marketing exchanges or purchases of services for in-company training programs. We have experience in this area because we work with major corporations, such as Domtar, Hydro-Québec, Transcontinental, Quebecor World and others. Now, tax measures imposed on businesses would help make this a true plan for social change, and would support the efforts of organizations whose mission is to come to the aid of illiterate people, who should have access to substantial financial assistance through specific programs. It's not enough to go back to school, many people also need financial help.

    The poor match between supply and demand. We fear that literacy training, as presented, will not be accessible to everyone. Surveys show that thousands of our fellow citizens have never really gained a foothold in current training systems. Being illiterate, all too often they are doomed to experience their problem in complete anonymity, embarrassed to be living in a society where they think everyone can read and write. Owing to the nature of their problem, they are cut off from the information they need to find educational resources. Some people live in highly marginalized environments, in which case the very attempt to persuade them to undertake training is an act of education in itself.

    Therefore, in our view, literacy training has to have an explicit place within society, and the means placed at the disposal of training organizations have to be geared to the different characteristics and needs of illiterate clients.

    The trivialization of illiterate people's needs. We fear that training too closely focused on employment is likely to be truncated training. Experience shows us that, in practice, the sponsor of the training, whether private or public, tends to pay out only the minimum necessary for holding a very specific job, and then considers his mandate to be fulfilled. Such training with a strictly utilitarian goal, when not built on adequate basic training, can only produce people who are barely or just sufficiently trained, exhibit little autonomy in their training process, and have little commitment to their own personal accomplishment.

    Consequently, it is our view that pre-employment training has to be built on adequate basic training, for which the necessary time has to be allowed. In our view, continuing education, which generally includes literacy, must provide adults with adequate general knowledge for them to become more autonomous and proactive with respect to their own training and their children's training. In our view, literacy training must be seen as a means of personal and social development for all.

    Our recommendations. That access to basic training be explicitly mentioned in policies, programs and other assistance measures; that the means placed at the disposal of training organizations be geared to the different characteristics and needs of illiterate clients; that training be seen as a means of personal and social development for all, and not merely as a way into the labour market; that basic training provide adults with adequate general knowledge for them to become more autonomous and proactive with respect to their own training and their children's training.

    UNESCO has just declared this the decade of literacy. It is up to you, committee members, to prove that literacy is an important issue for all Canadians. Thank you.

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[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. O'Leary, please.

    Mr. John O'Leary (President, Frontier College): Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee, and colleagues.

    First of all, Madam Chair, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear today and to arrange for the presentation in this room. A number of us have noticed, printed above us, the phrase “The Spirit of the Printed Word, l'imprimé”. That's of course very important; that's what we're talking about.

    My name is John O'Leary. I am president of Frontier College and I'm a teacher. I know I'm speaking today to several other teachers and educators. Madame Tremblay, I understand you're a teacher, an educator. I'd like to just make a couple of points about the issue of literacy that we're discussing.

    I'd like you to imagine going back to 1899, because Frontier College, the organization I direct, was founded in 1899. Looking around the room, I think most of us can reflect that our grandparents were living in 1899. I'd like you to think about your own family histories. How many of your grandparents went to high school. How many of your grandparents went to university? How many Canadians, how many citizens of that time had a chance to go to school for more than five or six years? Of course the answer is very few. My point is that until very recently the opportunity to achieve a high level of literacy was limited to a very few number of citizens.

    In 1899, most Canadians went to school for maybe five or six years, and of course then they went to work. They went to work in the fisheries, on the farms, in the home, and in the industrial workplaces of that time. These were people with a lot of intelligence, a lot of ability, a lot of skills, but very little formal education. That was the world they lived in.

    At that time, a group of university students from Queen's University in Ontario set out to fight poverty and isolation through the power of literacy and learning. They lived and worked across Canada in frontier settlements--logging camps, mining towns, fishing villages--with the working people. That was how Frontier College began.

    I'm also pleased to note that two of your colleagues in the House of Commons, David Kilgour and Svend Robinson, actually taught and worked with Frontier College's young students.

    Today we still work across Canada and we still fight isolation and poverty through the power of literacy and learning. We have 6,000 volunteers, most of whom are still university students. But we work in today's frontiers, which are prisons, shelters for homeless people, and workplaces that include farms in rural Canada and factories in urban Canada. We do a lot of teaching of people with disabilities, which I know is a concern of this committee, and we do a lot of work with senior citizens.

    The first point I'd like to make this afternoon is that we at Frontier College and my colleagues represented here, as teachers and educators, know a lot about teaching people who need and want to improve their literacy skills. The challenge we face and need your help in addressing is capacity. We are teaching too few people who have literacy needs.

    Secondly, in following the discussions this committee has had recently about literacy, I've noticed that a question has come up frequently about jurisdiction and authority in our country. I'd like to address that as a teacher, an educator.

    I think people will agree that learning doesn't occur just in a classroom. Learning begins in the home, in the family. Then it occurs at a very important place, which of course is the classroom in the school. But it continues in the community and certainly among adults in the workplace.

    What happens in the school and the classroom is quite properly, in our country, the responsibility of our provincial colleagues. But there is an enormous amount of learning that takes place in the community in the workplace. That is an area of learning that is underutilized right now. That's where I believe the federal government is playing a major leadership role now and can do even more in the future.

    I'd also like to talk about ingenuity and the tradition of education that my colleagues and I represent today, which is popular or informal education.

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    There is a great heritage in our country of people teaching one another outside of the classroom. I'm thinking of the aboriginal learning traditions in Canada. I'm thinking of the Antigonish movement in Nova Scotia, the co-op movement in western Canada, the farm forum, Télé-université à Quebec, the YM-YWCA, the labour movement, and of course Frontier College itself. These are all institutions, organizations, and movements that know a lot about teaching people in the community, and that's an area of literacy action that needs and can be developed as we consider solutions for the future.

    With my colleagues today I urge this committee to take up the literacy issue as a priority for your current and future deliberations. It deals directly with just about every other issue you will address as parliamentarians, from health, justice, and crime prevention, to citizenship, heritage matters, and indeed democracy itself. Literacy enables all citizens to fully realize their personal potential and their potential as citizens in our community.

    Thank you very much.

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    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. O'Leary.

    Ms. Jones.

    Ms. Robin Jones (Executive Director, Laubach Literacy of Canada): Thank you.

    Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members and colleagues.

    My name is Robin Jones. I'm the executive director for Laubach Literacy of Canada, a volunteer-based literacy delivery organization now in its thirty-second year. Laubach is both an organization and a successful methodology identified as one of Canada's best practices for teaching adults to read and write and to improve their math skills.

    My colleagues in the field of literacy, in various consultations, have underscored a number of issues and resources that are vital to literacy delivery, and two of these are that in literacy there are best practices and a strong network that speaks with authority and with one voice. These resources should be included in the development of a pan-Canadian literacy strategy. Another is that there is a need for a system that includes every Canadian, regardless of their literacy levels or their personal needs and goals, and that the core value of inclusion be included in a pan-Canadian literacy strategy.

    We, the literacy community, are a community rather than a system, a network rather than an entity. There are best practices, there are terrific community-based programs, there are successful volunteer organizations, and there is a seemingly endless supply of customers. We have no formal way of crediting our successes, so we are forever defined by the negative statistics: what has not been achieved; the potential students we have not reached or retained; and non-participants. But our successes are legion.

    I would like to speak on behalf of the success of the literacy movement in Canada by encouraging this committee to take on this work for literacy and to define the outcomes of our work by a measurement that is reflective of the true value of improved literacy for Canadians.

    As an example, productivity and profitability are vital to Canada's success as a nation, but they are not the defining value or the driving force of the literacy movement, its dedicated practitioners, or its students, and they are only one measure of the value of literacy.

    Improved literacy will no doubt ultimately help to achieve the goals of greater profitability. So in fact will a better formal education system. So will improved access to health care. Yet we do not tie profitability to the outcomes of the formal education system nor to health care. We expect, instead, that these systems produce better educated and healthier Canadians.

    What the individual users of these improved systems do with their improved education and better health, or what their communities and the private sector do with this greater resource, is not a reflection on the system itself, but no one doubts that Canada benefits in the larger sense.

    The literacy community produces adults who have better literacy and numeracy skills. Our product, then, is a Canadian who is already more successful by virtue of having acquired these skills. Ultimately, this will improve Canada's profitability, but tying a profitability deliverable to literacy delivery to individual literacy programs or a literacy learner would be comparable to tying profitability to health care delivery and to its individual patients. There are of course distinct advantages to workplace literacy and a need for programs, but any workplace program is, by design, exclusive of the unemployed, and by nature is exclusive of the other benefits to Canada of improved literacy.

    The yardsticks used to measure the value of literacy to Canada need to value the true results of literacy programs. To be truly inclusive and to acknowledge its impact on and importance to Canada, literacy needs to be defined as a value of Canadian society, not as a value to Canadian profitability.

    Current and potential literacy learners are Canadians from every walk of life, often employed, the heads of families, small business owners, and retired taxpayers. We could march dozens of literacy students into this room who are anxious to help put a face on this issue, and you would be charmed and you would be amazed by who they are and what they have achieved.

    But given our limitations, I would like to share a couple of examples of the true results of literacy programs. Laubach's volunteer president taught a young man named Daniel to read and write in northern Saskatchewan. Daniel is the first member of his family in five generations who is not on welfare, so a family cycle has been broken and a new family value has been established.

    In Kamloops, B.C., Angie Oman learned to read in her thirties. She won the Canada Post Literacy Award and is an invaluable role model and spokesperson who helps attract other literacy learners into programs.

    Sim Sellers of Winnipeg learned to read at the age of 67, and now in his seventies he is a spokesperson for literacy for seniors.

    In southern Ontario, Arnie Stewart has worked since his teens. He'll tell you the story of how he nearly killed himself on the job because he couldn't read the word “gas” on a pipe he was getting ready to cut with a blow torch. A member of the national and Ontario provincial Laubach boards of directors, Arnie speaks to thousands of high school students every year about the value of staying in school.

º  (1630)  

    In New Brunswick, Dorothy Silver shares her success and wisdom as a member of the national Laubach board of directors. She's currently writing a book for new readers entitled How to Live on a Shoestring Budget.

    What these people have in common, apart from at one time being among the lowest literacy levels, is that they are excellent examples of good citizenship as volunteers promoting the value of literacy and its personal rewards to Canadians. Regardless of their employability or potential impact on Canada's profitability, they are now successful and valuable citizens giving back to their communities and helping to build a stronger Canada.

    The literacy community can prove a thousandfold that it helps to create better citizens. The right to take your place as a productive citizen should be a right of citizenship. The Government of Canada is therefore the only entity that can do what needs to be done to make literacy a right of citizenship, a core value of Canadian society. By creating and promoting a pan-Canadian literacy strategy based on inclusion, supportive of best practices and research that will help all Canadians through literacy reach their highest potential as citizens, we will be providing a stronger Canada, and this should be our goal.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Ramsey.

    Mr. Charles Ramsey (Executive Director, National Adult Literacy Database (NALD)): Madam Chair, honourable members, colleagues, my name is Charles Ramsey, and I'm the executive director of the National Adult Literacy Database, or NALD, as we're more familiarly known, Canada's adult literacy information network.

    NALD uses the Internet to build community in the literacy community in Canada and to transfer resources to a literacy community, which is, in general, underfunded, under-resourced, isolated, remote, all of those things that make it very difficult to have an impact on an issue that requires a consistent, comprehensive, pan-Canadian response from all orders and related ministries of government, as well as from NGOs, business, industry, and organized labour. NALD has harnessed communications technology to serve a marginalized population, a population that is traditionally bypassed by such advances.

    You no doubt have heard much about the statistics of the issue of the literacy of Canadians. Do you know, however, that the statistics have not changed very much from the “literacy skills used in daily activity” survey conducted in 1989, to the international adult literacy survey conducted in 1994, and to the present, all of this in spite of some infrastructure growth, more and better trained practitioners, more and better trained volunteers, a higher profile and recognition of the issues, more and better resources, etc., much of which is attributable to the joint program conducted by the National Literacy Secretariat with the provinces and territories.

    The problem is that there is no comprehensive strategy to address the need, no continuum readily available for those Canadians with reading, writing, and numeracy deficits to move through a formal system into a better place either at work or in their family and community lives, a better place that most of us take for granted.

    A vast number of those with low literacy skills are employed, but there is again no comprehensive system for helping them, and, by extension, the businesses and industries in which they work, to contend with the changing demands of the workplace, both because there is no comprehensive system of upgrading and because of the nature of the workplace for many people where there are too few employees to sustain any real interventions.

    There has been no research strategy that will provide the needed guidance to enhance practice. The nature of the problem is complicated by the jurisdictional issue of ownership of education, which is assigned by the Constitution to the provinces and territories. However, the response at the provincial and territorial level is varied and inconsistent, with, in many cases, no real systematic response in place that is well enough structured to move those with the need either to further education or to the workplace, or within the workplace to provide those cast into jeopardy by a changing and more demanding workplace climate with an opportunity to sustain their livelihood.

    There is a need for leadership. We ask that, consistent with other models, the federal government take on a leadership role that will cause a pan-Canadian literacy system to take place that brings all the stakeholders into the solution.

    The literacy community in Canada has come together on this issue. We ask for this leadership from the federal government to bring the players to the table and to work for a solution that will alleviate the situation for those at risk both in terms of standard of living for individuals and in strengthening the workforce available to Canadian businesses and industries at a time when skill shortages are critical.

    Each of us here today, ladies and gentlemen, represents a broad network of people across this broad country of ours in the literacy community, and we pledge the help of those networks we represent to this end. We would be delighted to continue to work with you on this issue.

    Thank you very much.

º  (1635)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Now, members of the committee, before I turn it over to you to pose some questions, I would be remiss if I didn't point out to those of us who are here the presence of Senator Joyce Fairbairn. As most of you know, Senator Fairbairn has spent a good portion of her life deeply involved in the cause of literacy.

    Senator, we are very much appreciative of your being here today, and we know that we'll count on you over the next coming months as we study this for some valuable input into this very critical situation. Again, thank you for your continued concern.

    We'll now move to a round of questioning. I think we will have a six-minute round, and we'll start with Madame Tremblay.

    Mr. Bellemare, did you have a point or a question or do you just want to be added to the list?

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.): I want to be on the list.

    The Chair: You'll be on the list.

    Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

    Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    First of all, I would like to apologize on behalf of my colleague Monte Solberg, who is usually the first to take the floor since he represents the official opposition, but who had to leave for approximately half an hour. He hopes to come back before this round of questions so as to put his own questions to you.

    Secondly, I want to thank you for having travelled here and for having prepared to make these presentations to us here today. I have several questions, but there is one that really bothers me. In fact, I have two that I consider very important.

    Do all of you work in some kind of concerted way or are you all on parallel tracks, with the same objective, but without any interconnection? That's the first question that interests me, but perhaps the second one interests me even more; I'm not quite sure and I don't really know how to formulate it.

    By any chance, is your hope that your main objectives will some day be met and that your organizations will become useless, because we will have succeeded in eliminating illiteracy, or will we see a sort of illiteracy industry built up and maintained in perpetuity?

[English]

    The Chair: We'll start with Madame Lapierre.

[Translation]

    Ms. Luce Lapierre: Thank you for both your questions, Ms. Tremblay. I'd like to answer them quickly because I know that my colleagues would also like to reply.

    I'll answer your second question first. We've just completed a strategic planning exercise and our objective was precisely that: to say that we hope we'll see the day where throughout Canada, services will be delivered, people will become literate, and where there'll be a culture of learning that will make literacy a value as fundamental as any other, such as linguistic duality in Canada, for example, and so certain groups will be able to lay down their arms and quit having to fight all the time.

    You said earlier that you were sorry Mr. Solberg had to leave. I'm sorry too, because a few years ago, more or less the same group we have here today made a presentation before the Finance Committee. Mr. Solberg was there, and I'd like to see him again to discuss this issue because unfortunately, the situation has not been solved. As far as I'm concerned, when I'm satisfied, you can count on me to quit this business and say that we've found a solution at long last. But until that day, organizations will have to continue their work.

    I will now answer your question on concerted efforts. If you've noticed, through each of our presentations, each group has a specific feature or targets specific needs. In our case, we work mainly with the francophone clientele. Of course, it may look like we're working on parallel tracks, but I do think we're all part of the same movement which is seeking to find various solutions, because the problem is very varied. There are many solutions to be found for several types of problems, and I think that each one of our groups tries to put forward those solutions.

    I will stop there, but we are working together on these issues.

º  (1640)  

[English]

    The Chair: Ms. Featherstone.

    Ms. Christine Featherstone: I've always felt that it's the goal of every social concern or social issue in Canada to be putting itself out of business. We shouldn't be here in 10 years, there should be no food banks in 10 years, and you can go on and on. But that would be the goal: to put ourselves out of business.

    In terms of how we work as a collective, I see our six national organizations as almost segments of a pie. A couple of us take on direct service in training volunteers. Others of us take on working with the literacy field, with the practitioners and the learners. Others of us take on the national public awareness part. Each one of us is a segment in that overall pie.

    The Chair: You have about a minute and a half left, Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

    Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: If I've understood you correctly, I think that many of you—and I think it's particularly Mr. O'Leary who talked about it very explicitly—have alluded to the fact that literacy training was a sort of basic premise: if we were all literate, there would be fewer health problems, there would be less crime, etc. Could you elucidate that somewhat?

[English]

    Mr. John O'Leary: Yes. I would never claim that education or literacy will solve all the problems we face as a society, but in dealing with health matters, a big part of health education is public education and public awareness. A big part of that necessarily involves print information. So educating health professionals and helping them to present information clearly and in plain language has been a strategy that I know the federal government has adopted, through the National Literacy Secretariat, in working with Canadian health organizations.

    It's the same thing in justice, for crime prevention programs and access to justice. Again, a lot of that has to do with public education and information, and supporting the legal system and the legal profession to understand literacy challenges and to adjust their services accordingly.

    So it's attaching literacy to these other social issues, but certainly not claiming that a fully literate society would have no problems at all. I know you weren't suggesting that.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Simard.

[Translation]

    Mr. Raymond Simard (Saint Boniface, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to welcome all of you who've made a presentation.

[English]

    My first question is maybe a clarification from Ms. Featherstone.

    You spoke about four types of literacy. I just got the second two, family literacy and workplace literacy. What is the first one?

    Ms. Christine Featherstone: It's adult literacy. So that's adult literacy, family literacy, and workplace literacy.

    Mr. Raymond Simard: Okay, and is there consensus or agreement that in fact these are the three areas on which we should be focusing if we're talking about a national strategy?

    Ms. Christine Featherstone: Those are simply the areas on which ABC CANADA focuses as we develop national public awareness campaigns. We tend to stay away from the kindergarten through to post-secondary as a target group to inform about the value of reading and writing, because in theory they're in a system where they're getting that.

    Mr. Raymond Simard: Okay, and if we were to develop or work on a national strategy or national vision, is there one area on which we should be focusing? Is one of these areas more important than the other?

    Ms. Christine Featherstone: It's hard to say. They're all interrelated. You could make the argument that if you started with families, you're dealing with both the adult and the child, so that there won't be problems as they go through the school system. But at the other end we have an enormous adult population right now, for whatever reasons, that is still challenged by the printed word every single day. They are parents, they are grandparents, and they are workers, and what is the impact of not moving them forward on that literacy spectrum?

º  (1645)  

    Mr. Raymond Simard: What is the difference between adult literacy and workplace literacy? Most adults are working or not.

    Ms. Christine Featherstone: Workplace literacy simply speaks to one method of delivery. People who are currently employed, in some cases, if they're so fortunate as to have access to workplace literacy programs, can get some training that way.

    Mr. Raymond Simard: Secondly, you spoke of success stories like Palliser Furniture and the North West Company. They're both in my city. They are hugely successful companies, by the way, besides this. We were speaking of Palliser Furniture the other day. They're one of the biggest employers without a union, because they look after their people.

    Are there ways of spreading the good word that this does work, looking after your people and having strong literacy programs? Have we tried that? If we could have the business community on board, it would be huge. So is there any movement on that?

    Ms. Christine Featherstone: We're delighted you asked that question.

    Part of the reason I have those anecdotes available to me is that one of the projects the National Literacy Secretariat is assisting ABC CANADA with is, for lack of a better title, something we're calling a CEO casebook. We're interviewing the CEOs who have successful programs and who have a strong track record, such as the CEOs of Palliser and North West. We'll be interviewing them and creating a publication not unlike a business magazine, which we will distribute to other CEOs, in order to be able to make a strong case, CEO to CEO, that it's good business.

    It's one thing when you're preaching to the converted, but you absolutely have to get some support from that very top level in the corporate sector. The unions have already moved ahead in many cases in making that happen, but we have many other workplaces with many other CEOs who need to be influenced.

[Translation]

    Mr. Raymond Simard: Thank you.

    My third question is for Ms. Lapierre. It's about francophone minorities. Are the statistics quite consistent on that front? Is the situation similar throughout the country, or do we really have more serious problems in certain regions?

    Ms. Luce Lapierre: I was saying earlier that one of the deficiencies in what we do is the lack of data. Unfortunately, for francophones, we have to use Canadian data. We know the illiteracy rate for francophones throughout Canada, but not by province. Those figures are very hard to obtain. We obtained specific figures for Ontario and New Brunswick during the last survey, and we know that money will be invested in the next survey to obtain data on Franco-Manitobans as well. We may then have a more accurate picture of the position of francophones in this respect.

    Unfortunately, it can be said that francophones have a much lower literacy rate than anglophones. In the world we live in, we cannot afford to have a sub-population of francophones with this problem. So in terms of intervention, it may be appropriate to set priorities.

[English]

    Mr. Raymond Simard: My next question is for anyone.

    We speak of long-term financing. A lot of the programs are short term, a one-year type of thing. Is there an average? I know most programs are customized for the person, but is there an average time it takes to bring a person through a literacy program? Do we know if it's one year, two years, or three years? What's your best guess, basically?

    The Chair: Mr. O'Leary or Mr. Ramsey?

    Mr. Charles Ramsey: In a former life, Madam Chair, I worked with the community college system in the province of New Brunswick, and we had three levels of academic upgrading. The first level took people from roughly reading level five through reading level seven. We found that it took about 14 months for a person to achieve the reading level skills to move through that portion of the program and about the same amount of time, 14 to 16 months, to move through what we would consider to be middle school, grades seven, eight, and nine. The difference was that at the middle school level there are additions to the curriculum that didn't exist at the lower level.

    Now, this is about one system in one province at one time, and I can't speak for everybody. That's just an example of a kind of movement through a system, one I'm familiar with.

    Mr. Raymond Simard: We also spoke of jurisdictional barriers, and that is a reality we face when we deal with the provinces. Are there any recommendations in terms of how we deal with that? If we keep on producing illiterate kids and we try to fix it at the top here, we're not resolving a lot. How do you suggest we deal with that?

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: One of the hopeful signs is that some of the provinces have really good literacy strategies that have been developed in the last few years. I think it would be very useful for you to look at those strategies and see the common areas--

º  (1650)  

    Mr. Raymond Simard: Can you tell us which provinces have good programs.

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: I haven't seen their literacy strategy, but I read, from someone I really respect, that the Province of Quebec has a very good one. Saskatchewan, I believe, has a good literacy strategy, as does Newfoundland and Labrador. I know Yukon has one, but I can't comment on it.

    We really hope that someday before too long there could be some kind of an accord that would be along the lines of the early childhood development accord. It's a simple thing. If we can agree that every Canadian child should have a chance to develop to his or her full potential, surely we can say the same about Canadian adults.

    The Chair: Monsieur Godin.

[Translation]

    Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I'd like to welcome you all.

    It's interesting to look at figures but on the other hand, it is discouraging. You say that there are over 8 million people in Canada who have a problem. I think that's shameful and unacceptable. What should we do?

    There's something interesting in the foundation's brief. It says that 21 per cent of the population of Quebec and 17 per cent of the population of Canada between 16 and 65 years of age has a very limited reading ability.

    Let's look at these figures. Has research been conducted? If this rate is 21 per cent in Quebec and 17 per cent in the rest of Canada, there must be a province with a very low rate. If Quebec has a rate of 21 per cent, there has to be a province whose rate is much lower than 17 per cent. Which province is that and what has it done right? Does its economy work better which means that people don't have to become exiled and go to work in the lumber industry or the fishing industry as is the case in Quebec, New Brunswick or the Atlantic provinces? What has caused this problem in our provinces? Have your organizations tried to figure out where the problem lies? There's certainly a problem somewhere.

    Secondly, you talked about jurisdictions. I don't think the federal government is interfering in some area of jurisdiction when it seeks to help employers get through phase two of employment insurance by assisting them in providing training to their employees who have reached 50 or 55 years of age and who need programs in order to get back in the labour market if ever they are laid off. We've seen situations like that occur.

    I'd like your comments on those two issues.

[English]

    The Chair: Go ahead.

[Translation]

    Ms. Luce Lapierre: The only data available is the pan-Canadian figure of 17 per cent. That's the pan-Canadian level one. I'm no expert in statistics, but I can tell you that, unfortunately, we have very little data broken down by province. That's one thing we have to solve in our next survey. It's rather difficult to obtain provincial data. When you correlate this with other variables, it's clear that the problem diminishes from east to west, but that's a general trend and it doesn't mean that there's no one in British Columbia who has difficulty reading and writing.

    Do you understand what I mean? I wouldn't want my answer to put you in a...

    Mr. Yvon Godin: I understand, but has a study been done to find where the problem is? This is a problem for me. If the rate in Quebec is 21 per cent and the rate in Canada is 17 per cent, then which Canadian province is performing well? What is the solution? What lessons could we learn from that region?

º  (1655)  

    Ms. Sophie Labrecque: In fact, there is another province with a higher rate, namely New Brunswick. Thus, Quebec is in the second-last place. But I think that we should not look at the situation in this way, as Luce was saying. It must be seen within the context of an investigation into demographics and the percentage in relation to the sample taken from each province. This produces a ratio, so to speak, and the ratio for the first level gave a picture from the point of view of programs. Each province has specific training programs. You gave Quebec as an example. Let me tell you a little more about Quebec.

    The methods of training are very different in other Canadian provinces. Thus, it might be difficult to evaluate this. These are the only statistics we have about the situation. If we could make a recommendation, it would be that within the ongoing surveys, the literacy file should be introduced into various sectors of government policy, like economy and finance. There should always be a question about the ability to read and write. Thus, we could gather data about different targets or sectors. And then, we would be able to detect the problem.

[English]

    The Chair: We have one more, Mr. Godin.

    Mr. Yvon Godin: Let's not forget it's on my time.

    The Chair: No. We have one of the other panellists who wants to respond. I want to give her the opportunity.

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: I wanted to say that the statistics we have are based on the international adult literacy survey. There were about 6,000 people surveyed. I believe it has now been decided that the provincial samples are too small. The new survey will be coming.

    I think I heard that Statistics Canada will talk to you at your next meeting. That will help you to get more details about it.

    In the new international adult literacy survey there will be bigger samples. We can be clearer on differences among provinces.

    Mr. Yvon Godin: Okay. One of the questions I want to raise is that we have a surplus of employment insurance of over $40 billion. We're talking about jobs. We're talking about putting people to work. Here is this big surplus.

    New Brunswick is losing about $278 million a year in employment insurance benefits. They received $91 million per year to try to resolve the problem of unemployment.

    Would you recommend to this committee that we should say that Human Resources should start to look at employment insurance phase II and put more money into literacy than they are putting in now?

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: In a word, yes, what a great idea. We can leave now.

[Translation]

    Mr. Yvon Godin: Madam Chair, it is unanimous. The answer is yes.

[English]

    The Chair: Your time has run out.

    I'm going to give Mr. Ramsey an opportunity to respond.

    Mr. Yvon Godin: Did she answer the question or did I?

    Mr. Charles Ramsey: I would like to say to your earlier question, Mr. Godin, that if we kept our well-educated sons and daughters in New Brunswick, the numbers would be better.

[Translation]

    Mr. Yvon Godin: I agree with you. In our region, this is called deportation by the CN railway.

    The Chair: Ms. St-Jacques.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. First, let me thank you for having come here to discuss literacy, which is a very important issue.

    Some of you recommended that the current practices be modified. We know that we have been trying to improve the lot of these people for many years. Is there any guarantee that the new methods you propose will work? What kind of mechanisms could we create to ensure that we do not have to wait so long before we realize that the experiments have failed?

    I address this question to whomever wishes to answer it.

    The Chair: Ms. Lapierre.

    Ms. Luce Lapierre: I find this debate interesting because it also raises many questions for us. You ask whether we can guarantee that these methods will work? In my presentation, I mentioned three methods or procedures that have been used with francophones. I would like these methods to be evaluated. Currently, given the resources available to the stakeholders, we can experiment with these methods, but we can rarely make a systematic evaluation of them.

    Yesterday, we discussed the Canadian Learning Institute, whose mandate is to get an overview of various methods and see what can be done. I hope that an institute of this kind takes an interest in these practices, so as to yield practical results for the stakeholders. Concretely, when we talk about good results, we mean that a person has gotten out of a bad situation and is now able to fend for himself. We have lots and lots of success stories as examples. Unfortunately, at this time they are only anecdotal, because the general statistical data does not show any remarkable improvement. But we must be aware that with our current resources, if we can reach one per cent of the people with reading problems, we are doing well. We have far too little experience to draw any conclusions. Let me say that we must build on what we have and measure what we have. Once we have done that, we will already be halfway there. Thus, there are concrete examples of results.

»  (1700)  

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. O'Leary.

    Mr. John O'Leary: On this question of results, I want to second Luce's point, and I refer to it in my presentation as well: that the challenge we face is capacity.

    At Frontier College, as an example, last year we worked with about 2,000 adults across Canada, which is a significant number of individuals. When they come to us, each one of those people has a goal in mind. And the goal may be to improve their reading, to complete high school, to get a better job, to take a test at work. There's a goal in mind, and that's how we measure success. So when that adult student achieves that goal, that's the measurement of success.

    As I mentioned, it's about 2,000 people, and our estimate on how many of the adults who have literacy needs and who are enrolled in programs is between 5% and 10% of the total. It's very small. So I think guarantees are difficult to provide. I would encourage you, and you may have had the opportunity to do this as well, in your own riding or your own community, to visit literacy programs to see for yourself.

    You could take a page from our guest, Senator Fairbairn here, who spends a good part of her time, with her bags packed, visiting programs across the country and encouraging students, and you'll see the results there.

    I would again come back to our need for the support of a committee like this to examine how we can increase capacity to reach much larger numbers of people. I think the results are there, and I would encourage you to see for yourself in your community.

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. O'Leary, are you suggesting that Frontier College is at capacity now?

    Mr. John O'Leary: No, not at all. We are growing, and we want to be doing a lot more than we are now.

    The Chair: Okay, thank you.

    Yes.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Let me put one last question.

    Ms. Desbrisay, you said that the National Literacy Secretariat had limited resources. In your opinion, what should this organization be given, apart from money of course, so it can better carry out its mandate? You mentioned that in your presentation.

[English]

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: Apart from more money...yes.

    It's hard to think about what they can do without more money, because they don't have enough staff to do the research and analysis to answer questions, like many of the questions that have been asked, about how long it takes people to learn to read and write, or what the outcomes are of literacy programs. One of the reasons we don't have that information is because the resources are stretched just for providing the programs.

»  (1705)  

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Thus, this is basically a money matter. It is only a question of funding.

    Very well, Ms. Desbrisay.

[English]

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: There's one more comment I'd like to make about that. What I would like to see HRDC do, beyond the National Literacy Secretariat, is look at all its programs to see whether, for instance, the employment insurance program is maximizing its potential to get more people into the labour force in productive and sustainable ways. What people are doing right now is they're cycling between employment insurance, welfare, and short-term employment--bad jobs. That's one thing.

    You can look at other programs within your department and other departments that could be helping and yet they are in fact presenting barriers to people.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Madam Chair, Ms. Labrecque would like to answer.

[English]

    The Chair: Yes. I'm also going to let each of you make some closing remarks, so if you don't get an opportunity at the question part, you can use it in your summations.

    Madame Labrecque.

[Translation]

    Ms. Sophie Labrecque: Let me tell Ms. St-Jacques what kind of effort this will involve. Funds are obviously essential, and we always need funds to do more. We are doing a great deal of work in various sectors. We try to help one another, and to share information. But I believe that what is missing, apart from funds, is recognition. Nowhere can an illiterate person find recognition and acceptance, there is no place that he feels will give him a second chance. Illiterate people are victims of prejudice. You know that if we are here today, it is because we have all succeeded at least for a first time, to learn to read, to write and to make progress in school.

    Illiterate people need a second chance. They must be allowed a rest or transition period provided for in the employability enhancement or employment insurance measures. Our Info line has helped 50,000 people a year for the past 10 years. We've heard many stories. People turn up at employment insurance or try to access different measures but in many cases they have not been employed for three months or six months, they do not have the required skills. They cannot even access the first step.

    Thus, if the Canadian government launched a big campaign to raise awareness about literacy, this cause would be recognized. People who are trying to learn to read should be respected and given a second chance. I can vouch that in the field, there are competent organizations and skilled teachers who can provide this kind of service in various communities, either cultural or of another nature. It is not difficult to get a response to the offer, but recognition is difficult.

    An illiterate person at home does not know that there are other persons like himself. Let me give you an example. Imagine that you are the father or the mother in the household and that you have worked at the Boisbriand General Motors plant. Your whole life, you have earned more than $85,000 on an assembly line. After 25 years, your salary is cut and you are told to go home. You are given a reclassification test, and you get classified as illiterate. Can you imagine what these people feel when they first have to recognize that they are illiterate, and then go to employment insurance to find a job? They have to go back to school.

    Perhaps we should provide more programs to supplement the existing ones. This is not merely a money matter.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Monsieur Bellemare.

[Translation]

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

    I have a soft spot in my heart for Frontier College. Upon graduating, I wanted to do some post-graduate work. A friend of mine at university convinced my that Frontier College was the best thing going. I had only three days to really get involved, so I said, just tell me about Frontier College and I'll put in an application.

    I went up and worked in a lumberjack camp for six months. There were, some people said, as many as four hundred men in that camp. Of course, I was teaching how to read and how to count, especially how to count because on payday it was always cash. I became like a banker and was the person in charge of budgeting for a lot of people.

    The big problem I did discover after a while was there were a lot of fights in there. People would give me their money, I would put this in my pockets and borrow their ceintures, their straps, and I'd strap everything up and go to bed with an axe, just in case.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: About thirty years later I did become a director in adult education, and I established the first French adult day school outside Quebec. It now has an enrolment of nearly two thousand.

    All of this will tell you that some of us are very sensitive to what you're bringing up here. There are some items you didn't bring up, and I wonder if some of you could make comments on them. One is

»  (1710)  

[Translation]

the immigrants. There is a problem with immigration, and more particularly, with refugees. Many municipalities and provinces have complained that the federal government is letting in refugees from different countries, countries where the level of education is very low or non-existent. So, those people end up living off welfare and often end up on the wrong side of the law. How do we deal with the refugees and immigrants?

    Secondly, no one raised the issue of our corrections system. There are many illiterate prisoners who belong to groups like the Hells Angels because those groups provide them with a sense of belonging. Having been mistreated within their own families, they turn to the motorcycle gangs with whom they can feel more at home and more involved. Not one of you mentioned those groups; I imagine you all have your own areas of concern.

    Ms. Tremblay, at the beginning of the meeting, stated that you all seemed to be working in isolation. We share that opinion with Ms. Tremblay, even though we were hoping that we were mistaken and that there was a certain amount of integration within the group. I would like you to say a few words about the refugees, the immigrants and our corrections system.

    Finally, when people come to see us at the federal level, they automatically think in terms of billions of dollars. They think we are Santa Claus. We simply dole out cash. But of course, because of jurisdictional issues, there may be strings attached, and we have reached the point where we are asking those to whom these funds are granted to account for their use.

    I have given you four or five subjects to deal with. Ms. Jones, do you have anything to say that would help us with our work?

[English]

    Ms. Robin Jones: I think I can comment on your discussion of silos of different types of people who need literacy help and assure you that within our organizations it's not siloed as much as it sounds. We do work in ESL, which is English as a second language. Of course, my organization is only for English. We do have programs for people who are illiterate in their mother tongue as well as programs for people who are literate in their mother tongue. We have ways and methodologies for teaching people who are new to this country, whatever conditions they have come in under, whether they're refugees or immigrants in the regular stream. We have programs in prisons; we have literacy councils in prisons.

    I can't think of anybody who has actually recruited a council within a biker gang. It's an interesting concept, and there is no organization we will not work with. We work with community groups of every kind to establish literacy programs, so if there were a way to guarantee the safety of our volunteers, we would absolutely work with the Hells Angels as well. We generally end up working with those folks when they cross over into the corrections stream, and we do work in prisons.

»  (1715)  

    The Chair: Ms. DesBrisay.

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: I briefly mentioned in my remarks that literacy investments are investments in crime prevention, community safety, and the integration of immigrants.

    I could say more about that. I could give you fact sheets on the relationship of literacy to each of those. I certainly would be glad to send them to the committee.

    We really came here to encourage you to study the issue. We have some of the answers, but we don't have all of them.

    I want to say a few things, though, about literacy and corrections, or offenders, and about literacy and immigrants. Probably about 70% to 80% of people in prison, men anyway, have literacy problems and challenges. It has a direct relation to why they're in prison.

    I have some research here from an American corporation. It says that a million dollars invested in prison space for career criminals prevents 60 crimes a year. The same million invested in incentives to graduate from high school would prevent 258 crimes a year. Certainly offenders who are given literacy training while in prison are less likely to reoffend.

    In terms of immigrants and refugees, there is a system. You probably know about this. It's a federal system of English as a second language. It's a separate system. It's more recognized in some ways than the literacy system.

    However, I don't know everything about that system. I think the time allotted to individuals for language training is likely not enough. There's a big difference between a professional immigrant who needs to learn one of the official languages and a person who is both not literate and new to either language. We need approaches that teach both things together.

    The other even more challenging thing is that in some provinces there are policies about literacy delivery that don't allow them to teach immigrants because the province wants to keep it in the federal domain. In other provinces, it's not an issue.

    Again, that's why we feel that, after your study, you could encourage some kind of an accord with standards and guiding principles that would encourage all provinces to meet the needs of the people.

    I have one more thing. In terms of the silos, I certainly don't see us as separate. I think we're all contributing in different ways. We all have our own domains for what's needed for literacy.

    We do know that the solution isn't about money from the federal government or the provincial government. Part of it is mobilizing all sectors of society. There are models, which I'm sure you will find interesting, called learning communities, literate cities, where all the different sectors of a community, the business sector, the social services sector, and the education sector, are coming together to look at the needs and the solutions. Sometimes it isn't money that's needed, it's developing the wider will.

    The Chair: Mr. O'Leary.

[Translation]

    Mr. John O'Leary: First of all, I would like to say that I'm always happy to meet former worker-teachers—

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[English]

not old, but a former labourer-teacher. I hope we can talk about that afterwards.

    I would refer to my earlier comments, Mr. Bellemare. In terms of working with immigrants and refugees, and also working with criminals, there are effective programs in place. I could certainly refer them to you and the committee. They're too small and we're reaching too few people. It really is a question of capacity.

    I know we've been involved and have worked with the police in Winnipeg, Toronto, and several other cities, in anti-gang strategies that are often attracting young people through sports and recreation. It is very important. We encourage them to learn. If you can do midnight basketball, you can do midnight math with a laptop.

    There are effective programs like that. They're not expensive, but they're too small right now.

    As far as the federal government allocation to literacy, as I'm sure you know, there are large high schools in Toronto. Every community college in this country has a larger budget than the federal National Literacy Secretariat.

    I think if we're serious, and I know the committee is, about addressing this, the question of funding and capacity does merit a serious investigation and further investigation.

    The Chair: Mr. Solberg, I'm going to limit you to six minutes--you should have been here on the first round--and then everyone else will be restricted to two minutes.

    Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance): I've been chastened, Madam Chair. Thank you.

    I just want to follow up on the comment you just made, Mr. O'Leary--and forgive me for disappearing in the middle of it; I do apologize for that.

    With respect to funding for the secretariat, what specifically are you looking for? Perhaps that has already been addressed and I missed it, but what specifically do you want the secretariat to have extra funds to do?

    Mr. John O'Leary: In my opinion, certainly the partnership arrangements with each province and territory could use a significant amount of additional funding.

    In my presentation I was talking about the fact that when we're dealing with literacy, there are effective programs across the country that involve some of the most challenging literacy situations we face, working with middle-aged workers who've been unemployed for a long time, working with homeless youth, working with aboriginal people in rural Canada. With the support of the National Literacy Secretariat and community partners, including us, but many, many other groups, since 1988 we have set up an effective foundation across this country, but we're simply reaching too few people. We're reaching between 5% and 10% of the people we've been talking about and you've been hearing about in this committee.

    So an increase in funding.... I understand there are limits to that. That's why we're encouraging this committee to continue investigating it and to work out a funding level with us and your provincial colleagues that would enable us to make a significant impact and deal with significant numbers of people for the future.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: Sorry to jump in, but time is running here.

    You said you're reaching between 5% and 10% of the people. Is the problem one where people are demanding services and you can't meet them, or is it that the people who don't have skills are out there and you have to go and find them and bring them into the program?

    Mr. John O'Leary: I know in my organization we have had both situations. We have about 70 sites across the country. Many of those sites are overwhelmed by demand. In other cases people are reluctant to come forward.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: I just want to touch on the issue of tax breaks. I saw it mentioned in here as part of the recommendation.

    It always struck me that it would be a way of encouraging business, for instance, to have somebody on staff who can help with this. But do you have any more specific ideas on how that might work? Does anyone?

[Translation]

    Ms. Sophie Labrecque: The law of one per cent, Law 90 in Quebec, is an interesting example where businesses for which literacy or core training are not a priority—in business circles, it is preferable to speak of core training—can join with literacy organizations to work on collaborative projects. That scheme has been quite successful in staff upgrading programs. It is also a good example of a tax-based program or adjustment. But if the illiterate people who call that number could benefit, for example... People often don't have the means. That is the case for illiterate people who earn a very low wage and who cannot afford to pay a babysitter so that they can go to night school. If there was some type of tax break that we could apply throughout the country, for post-secondary education, for example, then the principle would be the same, and I believe this is something that should be considered while taking a close look at the outcome of the Quebec programs.

»  (1725)  

[English]

    Mr. Monte Solberg: Thank you.

    As one final question here--I know my time is running out--with respect to the issue of crime, if somebody drops out of school when they're 16 years of age and they are functionally illiterate and start down that wrong path, would groups like yours help somebody who's that age, or is that person, because of their age, still thought to be under the ambit of the education system? Who gets to those kids and helps them before they get involved in all that?

    Mr. John O'Leary: We do, and I think Laubach does, and there are other community literacy programs that do work with young adults and children. So yes, we do work with that age group.

    The Chair: Okay, members of the committee, I'm in a difficult situation. We have another committee that's due to start within three minutes, and I have three people who have not had an opportunity to speak.

    Mr. Ianno, could you pose a question very briefly, followed by Mr. Finlay?

    Mr. Tony Ianno (Trinity—Spadina, Lib.): Thank you.

    What I would like to see so we can look at this further is a breakdown of those silos. If I look at your rough numbers, 20% illiteracy, if I read it correctly, is roughly six million Canadians. If you take into account that half of Canada's population is Canadians with origins other than English and French--probably even more than that--and that many are immigrants of the past who have no desire to be trained because they're functioning well in their home environment, in their own language, as well as their literacy in their own language or in the English-French milieu...do you have that information?

    In other words, what are the real numbers? The Chinese community has six newspapers. Are the Chinese seniors considered illiterate when they're reading their newspapers, but they don't have any need, because they're 75 or 80 years old...? I'm just picking a sample. Are they in your stats, or do you take them out and then add other people into the equation?

    The Chair: It's going to have to be brief.

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: Okay.

    A little earlier we talked about where the literacy stats come from, and we do know that a lot of the people at the lowest level are either older people or new Canadians. I would agree with you that a lot of them may be both, and they may have found a way to exist and not be looking for literacy training. But given that both levels one and two need help, and we're right now only reaching 5% to 10%, there are still a lot of people.

    I could give you demographic information.

    Mr. Tony Ianno: If you could give us the stats, the committee can look at them and we can quantify, because the more specific and precise you are, the more the determination can be in terms of where we should go.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. Finlay, you have the last question.

    Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): I'll try to be very brief, Madam Chair, because I didn't hear a lot at the first. At the bottom of the material we've been given it mentions the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Human Resources Development Canada's “Literacy Skill for the Knowledge Society”. You say in the footnote that the second stage of the IALS will begin in 2003.

    Who instructs this? Who orders it? Human Resources, OECD, or you as a group? Where does the money come from, and who says now is the time to update this?

    Mrs. Wendy DesBrisay: You'll be seeing someone at your next meeting from Statistics Canada, and I think they'll be better able to answer that in depth. It's not us who commissions that study.

»  (1730)  

    The Chair: Is that it, Mr. Finlay?

    Mr. John Finlay: One more little one.

    In something else here it says that countries with higher literacy rates have been shown to have a population with greater social cohesion and political participation.

    That sounds like a truism. Can you turn it on its head and say countries that have greater social cohesion and political participation will have a higher literacy rate? One suggests the other, but I think it might be equally true.

    The Chair: Ms. Jones, I'll give you the last word.

    Ms. Robin Jones:

    I thought what that meant was that the greater social cohesion was the result of the higher literacy rate, not vice versa.

    Mr. John Finlay: That's what I touched on.

    Ms. Robin Jones: I don't think a country that lacks social cohesion is likely to compete with a literacy rate, so I think it was meant in the first instance, but I'm not positive.

    The Chair: I want to thank all of our participants today. I apologize to both participants and the members of the committee that time has been our greatest enemy today. I know a number of you have a number of fabulous projects going on, and I would encourage you to send any information that would help us in our deliberations. If you get it to the clerk, we'll have it distributed. I know that you would be prepared to come back again as we continue in this.

    For members of the committee, we were going to deal with future business and the report of the steering committee. Regrettably, I've lost quorum, and we'll have to deal with this at the next meeting.

    The meeting is adjourned.