[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 19, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Could we come to order? The House of Commons finance committee is delighted to have with us a number of people who have been leaders in the literacy movement in Canada.

My understanding is that each of you will take about three minutes for an overview of your position, after which we can turn to discussion. I can assure you that everyone will have adequate time to make any points that have not been able to have been brought out during your opening remarks or during the question and answer period.

Perhaps we could start off with, from the Conference Board of Canada, Michael Bloom, senior research associate, National Business and Education Centre. Thank you, Michael Bloom.

Mr. Michael Bloom (Senior Research Associate, National Business and Education Centre, Conference Board of Canada): Thank you. I'm pleased to be here today.

I just want to spend the next several minutes saying something about why the Conference Board of Canada believes the literacy issue is an important issue. I want to do that by making reference to two pieces of work the board is undertaking currently. One of these is our Performance and Potential report, which looks at the national socio-economic performance of Canada. It has highlighted some of the key factors that are critical to Canada in generating and sustaining a high standard of living.

Among those factors that we have singled out as most important is having a skilled and literate workforce. We have at the same time identified as important the issues around the literacy of young people as they enter the workforce, and the literacy skills of our current workforce.

We have suggested that in order to increase national productivity we have to improve the skills and literacy of Canadian workers - the 12.6 million Canadians who are currently employed full-time and the many hundreds of thousands who are joining the labour force annually.

The second point is that we are currently undertaking a study entitled ``The Economic Benefits of Improving Literacy in Canada''. We are particularly looking at two things: one, the benefits to employees of having their literacy levels raised; and secondly, the benefit to employers of having more highly literate employees.

We are in the middle of this work, which will be released next May. I can say at this point that the indications we have are that the literacy of workers is important to productivity, to the success of Canadian companies, and all the signs are that it is likely to become even more important as we compete with more and more highly skilled workforces in other countries. So that's why we think literacy is important.

We think that it's necessary to pursue further inquiry into the nature of literacy in this country and what we can do to improve it.

That's my presentation. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Bloom.

From Laubach Literacy of Canada, Kenneth Mader, please.

Mr. Kenneth Mader (Laubach Literacy of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I represent Laubach Literacy of Canada, which has about 10,000 volunteers organized through 200 literacy councils in every province of Canada. We are primarily a deliverer of one-on-one volunteer service, but other things as well.

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I'll preface my remarks by stating that literacy needs to be a shared responsibility. We, as a society, need to value and practise lifelong learning. Government, business, educators, volunteers and citizens all have a role to play.

The release of the international adult literacy survey and report in September confirms that literacy has a direct effect on the ability of people and industry to maintain an economic edge in an increasingly intense competitive market. Literacy then becomes a survival skill, not just for individuals but for national economies.

We cannot be on the cutting edge when a major portion of our population has varying degrees of difficulties in dealing with the printed word in their lives. Government and the private sector must support literacy by investing resources in it. This cannot be avoided in terms of the overall health of Canada, as well as the quality of life of our citizens.

Partnerships are the key. Government needs to provide the infrastructure to support literacy. Allocating funds for literacy in the health and justice budgets, supporting the National Literacy Secretariat to directly address literacy issues in partnership with literacy providers, and providing tax incentives to stimulate charitable giving to voluntary organizations are some of the steps in solving the problem.

There is a wide range of organizations attacking various aspects of the literacy problem: advocacy, public awareness, research, as well as the service providers.

Voluntary literacy tutors play a key role by providing access to tutoring in rural and remote areas, by providing literacy effort in our corrections institutions, by developing Canadian teaching materials, and by providing free, flexible, individualized one-to-one tutoring for Canadians. Family literacy, including our innovative books for babies project, workplace literacy, and programs for peer youth tutoring, is part of the community-based solution.

All organizations are facing difficult challenges in the light of reduced funding at provincial and national levels. Combined with increased competition for donor dollars, this means that literacy organizations are being stretched to the point of leaving gaps in the services they can provide and leaving some of those in need of those services without the service.

The strength of voluntary action ultimately depends on the existence of adequate resources, financial and human.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Mader.

From the Frontier College of Canada, Mr. John Daniel O'Leary.

Mr. John Daniel O'Leary (President, Frontier College): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also like to thank all the members of the committee for asking us to be with you this afternoon.

I am the president of Frontier College. Frontier College was founded in 1899 by a group of Canadians to teach isolated workers to read and to write. Today we work in every part of the country. We recruit and train volunteers as tutors for children, teens and adults, and each year we have approximately 8,000 volunteer members tutoring through our network.

As educators today we face a challenge that the educators and teachers who came before us never had to encounter. In order to meet the great challenges of the modern economy we face an opportunity and a challenge that is unprecedented. We must provide learning and literacy for all.

I note that the Minister of Finance, in his remarks to this committee last month, pointed out that one of the main tasks of his government was to provide Canadians with the support they require to take advantage of the modern economy - in particular, giving young people the best opportunities to succeed that we can. We believe that those kinds of opportunities must include literacy action. I commend the members and this government for the work that's now being done through the National Literacy Secretariat.

How do we achieve literacy and learning for all? We achieve it by creating a genuine culture of learning. A culture of learning means that all citizens are prepared to undertake some action in support of knowledge, learning and literacy. We have come a long distance in achieving that over the past few years.

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Through the National Literacy Secretariat program, health professionals, legal professionals, and people from labour and business are all being mobilized to support this great goal of learning and literacy for all Canadians. There is now a network in place in every part of the country in support of literacy. Volunteer community-based programs, private initiatives, social service agencies and so on are all doing something in support of literacy. This is what we mean by creating a culture of learning.

We are making great progress. We need to be doing even more. I would also like to compliment the government for the action it has taken in removing the GST from books that are purchased by groups like ours, by public libraries, and other educational institutions. This is a great step in support of literacy, and we look forward to doing even more in that area as well.

We believe that additional support for the future to the NLS will enable this House of Commons and this government to go the rest of the way in achieving literacy for all citizens of this country.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, John Daniel O'Leary.

[Translation]

Our next witness is Luce Lapierre of the Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français.

Mrs. Luce Lapierre (Director General, Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français): Thank you.

My name is Luce Lapierre and I am the Director of the Fédération canadienne pour l'alphabétisation en français. We represent various agencies working in the field of literacy in French in all provinces and territories of Canada. Our mandate is to ensure a dialogue between stakeholders and to promote literacy in French. Collectively, our member agencies represent close to 40,000 individuals involved in literacy activities in French. These people make up the backbone of our network.

However, we do want to point out this number accounts for only a fraction of the people who have a great difficulty reading and writing. Millions of people take pains to avoid printed material and in the process find themselves on the fringes of society.

We are honoured today to participate in this consultative process organized by the Standing Committee on Finance. Our short presentation will focus on three areas.

Firstly, I would like to highlight certain facts about Canada's francophone population and literacy and to examine the literacy rate among francophones. I will then share with you very quickly the solutions that have been proposed by the francophone literacy network. Finally, I will speak about the federal government's role in the field of literacy based on our experience in recent years.

My presentation focusses mainly on literacy for francophones since our agency deals primarily with francophones. Later, Susan will give you a brief overview of what is happening with the Canadian public in general.

Using tables comparing francophone and anglophone linguistic groups, the Canadian Report on the International Adult Literacy Survey revealed that 25% of francophones had a literacy level that did not enable them to process information sequences in a written article on house plants, as compared to 13% of anglophones. The same table showed that 27% of francophones could not say which of four movie reviews was the least favourable.

We find these statistics alarming when we compare this type of information to other elements associated with reading and writing. It is clear that many francophones cannot read job descriptions, understand background information on a new work instrument or their children's homework or follow instructions for taking medication. This is very alarming.

These statistics are alarming because we note that overall, if we combine the two percentages, we find that 52% of francophones fall into level 1 or 2 on the literacy scale, which means they do not have the necessary skills to perform certain daily activities and especially, as John Daniel and the Conference Board of Canada representative stated, they cannot find work, fill out forms and so forth.

For the members of our network, these statistics represent thousands of persons, that is thousands of adults who make the decision to return to the classroom to learn basic reading, writing and math skills and who acknowledge that they too can learn.

The literacy efforts of the francophone network are made possible by a range of services which focus on specific individual needs. It matters little how these services are structured, but it is important for them to be varied because needs vary.

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The level of literacy services available in French in Canada varies from province to province. The quality and quantity of these services varies as well.

If you like, we could delve into this subject further during the round of questioning.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mrs. Lapierre.

Mrs. Lapierre: I haven't finished, Mr. Chairman. I am just now getting to the role of the federal government.

Literacy initiatives directed at francophones should, naturally, be carried out in the student/learner's first language. Statistics prove that the choice of language used in literacy activities is extremely important. These findings flowed from a study conducted by the International Council for Adult Education. People acquire literacy skills much more easily and quickly when taught in their first language, and once they have acquired a sufficient level of knowledge and confidence in their mother tongue, they can put these skills to good use in their second language. We feel that these are important considerations and we wanted to share this with the committee members.

Before concluding and turning the floor over to Susan, I would like to talk a bit about the federal government's role in literacy development for francophones in Canada.

Federal government literacy initiatives complement provincial and territorial activities. Our own group members have told us that in Quebec, the support of the National Literacy Secretariat has led to the development of new partnerships, and has made possible research and the publication and distribution of works on literacy.

Elsewhere within Canada's francophone community, the commitment on the part of the federal government has enabled minority francophone groups to develop their own literacy expertise, thereby allowing them to meet the needs expressed by their communities. I think this is an important point.

Today, Canada's francophone community is mindful of literacy concerns and efforts are being made everywhere, Without this support, the francophone literacy network would experience a significant downturn in its activities and in certain provinces, literacy efforts could even come to a stop.

Therefore, we believe the federal government should continue, through the National Literacy Secretariat, its involvement in this field. Its actions should complement provincial and territorial government initiatives. We believe the federal government is in a position to deliver services equitably in both of Canada's official languages. On this note, I would like to turn the floor over to my colleague.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mrs. Lapierre.

[English]

From the Movement for Canadian Literacy, Susan Sussman, please.

Ms Susan Sussman (Chair, Movement for Canadian Literacy): Thank you very much,Mr. Peterson. I want to thank the committee for having me here today. And it is especially nice to finally put a face on Ms Chamberlain, who was an active literacy worker in the province of Ontario, and Mr. Campbell, who is the elected official for my constituency, Pinewood Avenue.

The Chairman: You are so lucky.

Ms Sussman: I am so lucky. I have had the opportunity to meet with Mr. St. Denis before, so it is nice to see some faces I know will be friendly to the issue.

We are often told that it would be good if the literacy community could speak with one voice. We are four organizations here today. We are singing in four-part harmony. We have a message to say to you today that we think is consistent with words you have heard from the Minister of Finance, most recently a month ago.

Last month, when Minister Martin came to this committee he highlighted progress that has been made toward establishing what he calls the essential preconditions for economic growth in Canada. He also highlighted that the government maintains responsibility for helping Canadians adjust to the challenge of the modern economy.

We want you to think about literacy in this context. We want you to understand that a literate Canadian adult population is an essential precondition for economic growth in Canada, as Michael Bloom has alluded to in the work the Conference Board is doing and as the international adult literacy survey has demonstrated.

We want you to understand that for Canadians to adjust to the changing economy literacy is an essential prerequisite.

Before I speak to the size of the problem we are dealing with here in Canada in terms of adult literacy, I think it is important for us to explain to you what we mean by literacy so that the figures, which often have been called shocking, do not seem to lack credibility. We are not talking about the simple ability to look at this and say ``Susan Sussman'', or whatever the word on the piece of paper says. We are talking about the ability to take meaning from print information, to be able to first decode but then be able to know what that information is saying to you, so that when it's time to give your seven-year-old his Tylenol you can read the label on the bottle and know what that means; so that when you go to one of the kiosks the Canada Employment Centre has set out so that people can get information about jobs, you can read the screen and understand what that means; so that when your child brings home a note from his teacher saying come to school, we have to talk about Johnnie, you know what that means.

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When we use that kind of functional definition of literacy, the international adult literacy survey tells us that 22% of adults in Canada over the age of 16 have profound difficulty with tasks as basic as this. The study also tells us that an additional 26% of adults in Canada, while they may be able to deal with tasks as easy as that, when the information is not familiar to them, it is new content, or when the format the information is presented in is not really clear and plainly laid out, then they start to have serious problems.

When we say to you that there is a major problem in literacy in Canada today, that is the literacy we are talking about. We are talking about the ability to decode and then take meaning and be able to use the information that comes in print.

Looking at the issue from another angle, and again tying this back to the government's agenda for economic growth and prosperity, think of it this way: only 22% of the adult population of Canada appear to have the literacy skills that are going to be needed for the jobs in the growth industries for those information, high-tech, high-skilled jobs.

So if we are talking about the essential preconditions for economic prosperity and growth in Canada, we have a profound issue with respect to adult literacy.

We are here today -

The Chairman: Excuse me. Only 22% of Canadian adults have the literacy skills or the skills for the new jobs?

Ms Sussman: Have the literacy skills required. I will tell you what I mean by that. The international adult literacy survey creates five levels of adult literacy skills. Level three is considered by the seven nations that participated to be the minimum threshold for adequate performance. Levels four and five are levels at which somebody is able to take meaning from a variety of print sources, integrate that and solve complicated problems.

I am sure that if we look at the kinds of demands that are embedded in the kinds of highly skilled, high-knowledge jobs that are coming along, we are looking at jobs in that level four and five category. Only 22% of Canadian adults have literacy skills in the level four and five category.

Mr. Grubel (Capilano - Howe Sound): What you are describing is the ability to reason analytically, rather than literacy.

Ms Sussman: You are asking a good question, because if we are talking about literacy according to the definition I have just given you, which is the ability to take meaning from information and to use that information to make a judgment, then the line between literacy and thinking skills is not as black and white as simply whether one can decode and say that word. When we are talking about literacy and what the report is measuring, it is that bigger skill.

We are here to impress upon you that it is critical for the federal government not just to maintain its involvement in addressing literacy issues, which it has done up until now through the active support in what was the unemployment insurance program and through the very excellent work of the National Literacy Secretariat, but it is essential that we increase this federal involvement.

The Canadian people are going to pay for the literacy problems. Either we pay now or we pay later. Either we pay in terms of the lost productivity, the forgone taxes, the increased accidents, the increased health care costs, and the increased dependence on social assistance, or we pay in a preventative way by addressing the problem.

As we look to the future, what we are asking this government to do is to maintain and increase its level of support, and as a community singing in four-part harmony there are some issues we have identified as key priorities.

Literacy begins at home. It begins in the home. There is compelling research to suggest that what happens to children before they hit school is as much of a predictor as to what is going to happen to them in the education system as anything else. So the issue of family literacy, which right now lives nowhere in Canada, needs to be addressed.

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The second issue is the question of youth who leave school early, youth at risk, which needs to be addressed. The evidence that comes from IALS is compelling that there is a strong correlation between employability, employment, income level, workplace issues, workforce issues and literacy. As well, the needs of the workforce in the workplace need to be addressed.

The National Literacy Secretariat has made an excellent contribution in the development of materials, in the development of research and in the sharing of information across Canada, and we need more of the same. There is strong evidence to suggest that literacy in a first language is an essential precondition for developing literacy in a second language, so we have issues around that, and not just for the francophone population. In the Northwest Territories mother tongue literacy is a major issue.

Last but not least, we need training dollars. With the programs in Ontario, which is where I live, last year we served less than 5% of those people considered to have the most profound literacy problems. Our support for literacy has been cut, so we have major problems with respect to training dollars.

In summary, the international adult literacy survey presents both a challenge and, as we like to say euphemistically, an opportunity. Right now Canada sits in a pack with five nations that are our competitors, and the coinage Canada has to achieve a competitive advantage is its human capital. The thing Canada can do, if it has the commitment, is improve its human capital by addressing its literacy issues. We see a compelling vision, and that is the vision of a competitive advantage with a literate Canada. That is what we are asking this government to support.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Bélisle.

Mr. Bélisle (La Prairie): We have heard some very interesting presentations this afternoon from all of the witnesses.

My first question is for Mrs. Luce Lapierre. You mention in your submission that if we expect the problem to disappear in time, we are deluding ourselves. As non-experts in this field, we often have the impression that because the level of education increases from one generation to the next, the problem will eventually correct itself. You say that this impression is false. I would imagine that this is because children ultimately follow in their parents' footsteps. Is this indeed the case?

Mrs. Lapierre: There are a number of reasons for this. Of course, you're right. It goes without saying that if a person's grandparents are illiterate, reading may not have been encouraged as a family activity. By mentioning this in the submission, we wanted to tie in with Statistics Canada's international survey which reported that two francophones for every anglophone scored at level 1 on the literacy scale, the reason being that francophones do not have access to French schools in most provinces, with the exception of Quebec and that once they do have equal access to French schools, the problem will correct itself.

Yet, in some provinces such as New Brunswick where services have been available in French since the late 1960s and where we are talking about a population between the ages of 35 and 55, we see that these persons are now parents and could be active in the job market and that this is not always the case. We cannot discount these people. This is a problem that doesn't only concern people who are 80 years of age.

Mr. Bélisle: Yes, this is rather surprising. These persons are nonetheless relatively young.

The Chairman: Yes, indeed they are.

Mr. Bélisle: You are right.

You raise another very interesting point in your brief. I believe you used the right word on page 5 of your brief when you referred to ``bilinguisme soustractif'' or negative bilingualism, that is bilingualism which does not add to, but rather takes away from a person's first language. I imagine that this phenomenon is more prevalent among francophones in Ontario and in New Brunswick than it is among Quebec anglophones who live in an English-speaking North American environment.

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Is negative bilingualism not something primarily experienced by francophones?

Mrs. Lapierre: We were referring primarily to francophones outside Quebec, that is francophones living in western Canada and even in Ontario and New Brunswick. When we talk about the assimilation of francophones, it is clear that the person's first language is affected. What I mean is that the acquisition of new second language skills doesn't help a person maintain his first language skills.

However, this phenomenon is not restricted to francophones. I am not familiar with the English-speaking community and our network does not work directly with it. Therefore, you would have to put this question to other persons. When we talk about negative bilingualism, we're talking about something that affects francophones outside Quebec.

Mr. Bélisle: The phenomenon that you have described is very interesting, particularly as it pertains to the situation of francophones in Quebec, Canada and even North America. There is a saying often heard in Quebec which clearly illustrates that negative bilingualism is prevalent. Young people are often told that it is very important to have a strong French language skills in Quebec and in North America, because otherwise, they run the risk of speaking two second languages for the rest of their lives. They are told that if they want to learn a second language, they must start by having a sound grasp of their first language.

I think the expression ``speaking two second languages'' accurately reflects the situation that Quebec francophones face; if first language skills are weak, if no effort is made to protect one's first language, one runs the risk of speaking two second languages for the rest of one's life. The person will be no more comfortable in French than he is in English.

Mrs. Lapierre: Following up on your question, I would like to focus further on the Canada's francophone community. In communities which have homogenous francophone schools and where francophones manage their own school systems, young people will acquire sound first language skills and will acquire a second language naturally, because they will be surrounded by anglophones. This is what we call ``bilinguisme additif'', or positive bilingualism.

We are seeing more and more evidence of this type of bilingualism throughout Canada because of the efforts of the Department of Canadian Heritage and of other organizations. Progress has been made in this area.

Negative bilingualism is the result of poor first language skills and of the absence of an education system which provides an opportunity to acquire first language skills at the secondary and even post secondary levels. In such cases, the first language automatically suffers when a person develops his English vocabulary.

As part of our literacy activities, we work with people who did not have an opportunity to be educated in French up until the end of their secondary studies. They learned their French in primary school and at home. Once in high school, they quickly had to integrate English concepts. As adults, they found themselves with shortcomings in both languages.

Mr. Bélisle: Truly bilingual people are those who were exposed to positive bilingualism. The other form of bilingualism which you describe leads to assimilation by the second or third generation. We are all familiar with the history of francophones in Canada.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Grubel.

Mr. Grubel: Thank you, Mr. Peterson.

This has been very informative for me. I have now learned the reason why my students failed some of my examinations in economics. It was because they were illiterate, not because they did not study or they did not understand analytical reasoning or they did not have mental discipline.

I don't find that a particularly useful use of the term ``literacy''. I think you are depreciating the value of the entire concept if you extend it that far. All you're doing, really, is saying that some people have more education than others and only 20% have a certain level of education that we can afford and that they are capable of absorbing.

I know very little about this subject, and I am always worried when I see there is a problem. Let's say a car, coming out of the factory, is not running properly. Do we now put a lot of effort into retrofitting it, or do we go to the factory and see what is wrong with the manufacturing process that makes so many rejects?

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I have an objective question for you. Let's now limit ourselves to the bottom quintile, the worst cases of people with literacy problems the way you have defined them operationally.

Of all the people who have gone through our compulsory education system in Canada, which means they have to go to school from age 6 to 18, how many come out and are illiterate in the sense you have described? I think the term that sometimes is used is ``functionally illiterate''. What percentage of people graduating from high school in Canada are functionally illiterate in that sense?

Ms Sussman: To give you the exact percentage I would have to open up the tables. I don't have that memorized. But we do know there is a strong, but not perfect, correlation between completing secondary school and having reached that threshold of minimally acceptable literacy standards.

Another way of saying this is that the chances are considerably higher that your literacy skills are adequate if you've completed a secondary school education in Canada than if you haven't.

We also know that the higher rates of low literacy skills are in the population over the age of 45. The rates of high school completion have changed over time.

Mr. Grubel: Let me go step by step. How long have we had compulsory education in this country?

Ms Sussman: Tough question. Who knows the answer?

Mr. Mader: One hundred years.

Mr. Grubel: So if I understand your analysis correctly, the problem arises from the fact that people drop out of school too early.

Ms Sussman: Many people who have literacy problems left school before completing secondary school.

Mr. Grubel: To what age does compulsory attendance in school extend?

Ms Sussman: Sixteen years of age.

Mr. Grubel: So they would be meeting that requirement.

Ms Sussman: Yes.

Mr. Grubel: Do you think the problem of those leaving school could be solved if they had to attend another two years, and have that made compulsory? Would that solve the problem of new entrants being more literate?

Mr. Mader: I don't think I can answer that global question, but there is ample evidence that people who complete secondary education are promoted and end up being unable to read a newspaper with comprehension. They couldn't read The Globe and Mail and understand what it's saying.

We have as a representative on our board of directors one of our successful candidates, a successful learner, a school graduate. If he were here to speak to you, he would tell you that the school system didn't know what to do with him, so it moved him on. If you went back to the teachers they would say, well, he was developing as a person. Obviously, he did, but he ended up working in - and I shouldn't use this word - a dead-end job, unable to read or write.

He sought help, and through one-on-one tutoring for a couple of years he now has developed himself to the point where he can do most of the things the majority of the kids he went through school with were able to do. But he was one of those kids in school who was - and I quote - ``not a learning disability but a problem''.

Now, that is only part of it. The other thing that apparently emerges from the IALS study is that if you don't use literacy, you lose it. That to me was quite a foreign concept when I first heard it. I had to gulp a little bit and be beaten over the head by my associates to come to accept the fact that you could lose the ability to read with comprehension. But it appears many people who come through our school system end up at that point being able to read with comprehension enough to do whatever examinations are required, which have been relatively less in the last 20 years. Then, because they go to a lifestyle that does not include reading as part of the daily activity, they lose, over 10 or 15 years, their capacity to comprehend. That's quite possibly because the communication is different and so on.

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We can't escape the fact, though, that in the two bottom categories this study tells us that by whatever way they got there, approximately 40% of adults in Canada have difficulty - and I think this is the best description - reading the newspaper and comprehending what it's about. Some of them can pick out individual words, but they can't get the whole thing.

Mr. Grubel: I would like to follow up on this directly, Ms Sussman. Our spending per capita on education is among the highest of the G-7. What we have done, really, is supply lots of opportunities for people to become literate.

All your demands are to increase the supply for someone who wants literacy even more. But what I heard from you is that the demand is not there. Anybody who wishes can, by going through school, become perfectly literate. Almost anybody who wishes can go to university or college, even if you extend the concept of literacy.

What I would like to ask you, in all sincerity, is, what are you going to do to increase the demand for training that leads to increased literacy? In other words, you can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink. You put the water there. You take the horse there. Nothing is going to happen unless the horse wants to drink.

Here are all these people who are illiterate who had had the opportunity, from age six, to learn, and refused to do it. When they come out of high school, maybe they are able to learn and read, but they just aren't interested in reading newspapers.

What, in your program, will make sure these people then will actually go out and use the opportunities to increase their literacy skills?

Ms Sussman: Mr. Grubel, I'm afraid your analysis of where the problem lies isn't supported by the data. The data doesn't suggest that the large number of people who are suffering with literacy issues, the people we are talking about, had every opportunity in the world to go through the Canadian education system, make it through to the end of high school and succeed. Many of these people went to school at a time when the compulsory school leaving age wasn't 16. They were growing up in circumstances where their family needed them to be out of school and into the workforce. They had personal situations in their family lives. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to bring some of these adult students with us, but they will be the first to tell you that the circumstances of their lives when they were in school did not create fertile ground for achieving in school.

Now you may wish to punish them again. They cannot simply drop into university. They cannot simply drop into college. The don't have the basic literacy skills to do that. Unless we provide access to programs they are not going to be able to do that.

Mr. Grubel: I beg your pardon. Nobody was talking about punishing. In fact, I have a very clear conscience, living in a society that spends more on education per capita than almost any other country in the world. There is no question of opportunity.

You can give me some examples of a few individuals coming to you, saying if only they had more resources they would learn to read and write. I am not convinced that this warrants spending millions, if not billions, more on education. I believe the problem is, one, making these people want to do it - because the opportunities are there - and then keeping up with it.

I would like to have from you some ideas on how we can get people to go out there. It doesn't take that much to learn how to read and write. How long have they been in school when they go to age 16? Ten years? If they didn't learn to read and write, what did they learn? What did our schools do? I ask that question.

Mr. Bloom: I think the conditions of the discussion warrant some clarification. Literacy, as we are defining it here in the research, is not a black and white matter. You seem to be implying that you can get it or not get it.

In fact, the point of the work has been to show that it's a continuum. Everyone has some literacy. No one has perfect literacy. This approach in the research has been important because it's reflected both the breadth of literacy and the fact that it's a continuum.

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By the way, the definition IALS uses is the ability to understand and employ printed information and daily activities at home, at work and in the community to achieve one's goals and develop one's knowledge and potential. They look at prose, document and quantitative literacy. That is the more sophisticated notion of literacy we're talking about. I think the other presenters are referring to this definition.

Its value is that it shows literacy is a continuum, and also that it's a moving target. I don't want to get into a discussion about the products of the education system, whether that system in the past has done certain things. I think it's important to recognize that almost all the people who have literacy problems and who we're talking about are working now, or are in the labour force, or we would like to be in the labour force. So the resolution of their concerns doesn't necessarily lie within the education system.

Second, the research we have done suggests that jobs are becoming more complicated. They are also becoming more polarized in Canada, partly because we have to compete with other countries, as I'm sure you're aware. We have certain areas of growth in jobs in those areas. We find that the requirements for people to be literate in the sense that IALS defines literacy are growing.

So if you have the same group of people with the same literacy skills, as defined by IALS, over time they will become relatively less capable of performing within our employment market.

Mr. Grubel: That is normally called getting a higher education update to meet higher skill requirements in a globalized economy. Why you call that literacy, I don't understand.

Mr. Bloom: Just to make my point once more, we seem to have a difference in views about what literacy means. I think it's hard to have the discussion continue until that's clear. I at least want to point out to you that the definition we're using is not -

Mr. Grubel: No, I accept that, I just dispute the relevance of using this as a lobbying tool to get more education dollars.

Mr. O'Leary: If I could explain as well, Mr. Grubel, I think your point about the resources Canadians spend on education being significant is an important one to make. It's also important to note that as a result of that expenditure, we have one of the best education systems in the world. We're not here to deny that.

What has happened...and I say this in respect of an organization that has been around since 1899. Looking around this room, for most of us 1899 is our grandparents' time, not that long ago.

Mr. Grubel: I remember it - but I also lie a lot.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. O'Leary: Then you'd remember that in 1899 most Canadians, most citizens of this country, by the definitions we're using today, would probably be called functionally illiterate.

I graduated from high school in 1970. In 1970 the official drop-out rate in this country before grade 12 was 50%. Every second person left high school to work in the home, to work in the fishery, the factories, the farms. Surely I do not have to tell a group of members of Parliament that the world has changed so dramatically since that time, literally in the last 10 to 20 years...

The point I was trying to make in my presentation was that teachers and educators face a challenge that has never been faced before, to provide high-level literacy skills to virtually the entire population. Schools alone cannot do that.

It's now 4:15 p.m. Across Canada large numbers of children have left school and are going back into a community where, often, because of poverty, say, and other troubles in their lives, they are not getting the enrichment and support required to achieve success and excellence in school.

A lot of the work we do, and the work of the groups we represent, is mobilizing other resources to support the work of our schools. I am optimistic, based on how far we have come since the time of my grandparents, that we can achieve virtually higher orders of literacy for the future because of the excellence, because of what we know as educators and as teachers.

Mr. Mader: Earlier we were asked a question on how to make the horse drink. That's what we call family learning, family culture, literary culture in the home.

I'll take a minute to talk about one little program some of our volunteers came up with in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, and which we are now gradually spreading across and testing in other parts of the country.

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Something our literacy volunteers became aware of was that one of the things that caused literacy problems was that the children grew up until they got to school without an atmosphere in which reading was an important part of the lifestyle. So they devised a program to go to maternity hospitals and meet with mothers and take books to them that talked about the new child. These are books in which the nurturing process is described in the simple language, the learner's language that we use. In some cases the mother may not be literate, or in other cases may have lost some of the literacy she had when she was in school.

You cannot judge things, because it takes a generation to find out, but we believe it is important to create within the family the culture that says learning to read is important. That's part of the preventative program some our agencies are involved in. It is not just dealing with those who have a problem now, but it is trying to also deal with the way we can prevent the problem. And it is a generational transfer to some extent. There is evidence to support that.

Mrs. Chamberlain (Guelph - Wellington): Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank our guests today. I personally spent six years of my life as executive director of the Wellington County Literacy Council, and I am very familiar with the problem of illiteracy.

I spoke with you one time, John, at the University of Guelph. I don't know if you remember. It was quite a while ago, but I remember the talk we had very well.

You made the point, John, that much has changed over the last few years and we may be in a very different world today. But I think one of the things I wish to point out is that the fact of the matter is we have a large part of the population who, if they first can decode, do not understand what they decode. That is a reality.

Mr. Grubel is saying that he doesn't understand how all this happened. Is it the fault of the education system? There are a number of things.

I think one big thing is that a number of years ago reading was not valued, it was not seen as a tool that was perhaps important or necessary. Certainly we know today that it is a must, it is an essential.

But we do have a large number of adult Canadian people who do not read, who are not able to read things as simple as a street sign. I don't think there is anybody here, if you thought about it, who has never followed somebody in a store who has held out their hand and said just give me the change. If you watch very closely you know that the reason they are doing this is they cannot make change, they do not understand that process. There are people who literally order hamburgers and French fries because they do not know how to read the menu and they do not know how to order anything more.

The Chairman: I order French fries.

Mrs. Chamberlain: The chairman says he orders French fries. He loves French fries, but he does read.

The life that these people who cannot read are doomed to is really tragic.

As far as Mr. Grubel's analogy of leading a horse to the water to drink is concerned, there are a large number of Canadians who want to come forth and they want to learn. This is really the crux of what your agencies do. They provide a mechanism or a place for these adults to go.

The literacy council I was involved in did actually spread out to children. This is another strategy, and I think it is the key to this. It is another strategy if these councils are involved in training. Then children may be going to them or it may be just adults, but it allows them to have the opportunity to reintegrate, to work with people like themselves possibly, and to often work one on one. Some work is done in groups, but many times it is done one on one, which is not accessible through any system I know of at this time.

The mechanisms and the strategies that are available and offered through these councils are quite different. I think we have to come to grips with the fact that these people are in our communities. A large proportion of them do want to learn. And quite frankly, if we took away these councils, they wouldn't have anywhere to go. That is what we're facing.

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So, number one, I just want to reinforce why you're here. What I have seen in the literacy community is real. These people are out there and they do want to learn. Thank goodness we have councils like you out there to help them learn and to help them through the process.

I know that many of them have been able to get jobs after they have gone through the process of learning to read, because not only does it involve the reading component for these adults who have been left behind for many years, there are often other components that go along with that process of reading. It is just absolutely invaluable.

There was a question I wanted to ask. Susan, you spoke of family literacy that lives nowhere. I just want you to explain that comment a little bit, because I wasn't quite sure what you were referring to when you used that terminology.

Ms Sussman: With education generally within the provincial jurisdiction, the provinces tend to look at the formal education system as one that begins at age five and continues until whatever the school leaving age is, age 21, perhaps, in some cases. The provinces have not taken responsibility for pre-school education.

When we're talking about family literacy, we're talking about the support to families for work with pre-school children, for the most part, to help them acquire literacy. The parents themselves often have very limited literacy skills. We have not yet discovered a department of government that says ``This is our responsibility and we fund these programs.''

Mrs. Chamberlain: I want to also point out that these groups often do tremendous amounts of fundraising. They are very hard workers. They often get along on very few dollars. I know Frontier College has had some outstanding programs. They are just absolutely on the cutting edge of many of the new ways of doing things to help people.

I say, as a person in this government, that we can't turn our backs on literacy. This is an absolute fundamental for me. People may say it's a pet project, but I don't see it as a pet project. I just see it as a fundamental right for people to be able to get along in society. If they want to learn, we have to continue to have these kinds of doors open for them.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mrs. Chamberlain. Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Campbell (St. Paul's): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to welcome our witnesses here today, Mr. Chairman, and salute the very fine work that they do.

This side of the table understands that it is a very complex issue. It isn't quite as simple as saying that school is the opportunity for them to learn to read and write and if they don't take advantage of it, that's too bad, because throwing more money at this problem is not going to solve it.

I know enough from discussions I've had in my own riding in my own city of Toronto that unfortunately it is often the environment at home, not at school, with pressures that parents or single parents are under, like inadequate housing, job tensions, job pressures and conflict at home... It creates an atmosphere in which learning doesn't take place very easily in school, and there's no encouragement at home. It's a very complex issue. I salute you in your continuing efforts.

I heard an interview the other day on the radio that was quite startling. An individual who is now providing tutoring to others to help them to read revealed that he had lived and worked for many years as a functional illiterate and in fact had progressed quite nicely through school - perhaps some of you who are nodding heard the same interview - and held and still holds a fairly senior job in a company in Toronto. This individual explained that you could get through a lot by faking it. You know you're faking it, but it's amazing how few people realize you're faking it.

Professor Grubel might have known when his students were faking it, but -

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Grubel: I'm faking it, you know.

Mr. Solberg (Medicine Hat): You haven't fooled anybody.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Campbell: You haven't fooled me, Mr. Grubel.

This was really quite compelling. This individual recounted that he could get others to write memos and he could nod his head a lot. He knew his work but he just couldn't write. There are examples of that and Mrs. Chamberlain gave other examples where we see...

It is very distressing. I don't really have a question, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make those observations.

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I appreciate the complexity of the challenge and the importance of the work you do, and I have one recommendation, perhaps. I don't know if anyone has ever considered it. On a visit to Thailand many years ago, I was struck by the existence of an encyclopedia, the Thailand Encyclopedia, I believe it was called, in which every article was written for three different levels of literacy so that families could study together. I assumed that the children would read the simplest text and the parents would read the most sophisticated of the three levels of text in every article.

What was interesting to me was that the person who was showing me this encyclopedia explained to me that it was often the parents who were reading the simplest version and their children were growing through the other two versions. But it was a way to help all levels within a family to learn together.

Those are my observations. I don't know if anybody wants to comment.

Mr. O'Leary: Could I just respond to Mr. Campbell's comments?

The Chairman: Yes, Mr. O'Leary.

Mr. O'Leary: I had a teacher of my own in university who... Some of you may have known Roby Kidd, a very distinguished Canadian educator at the University of Toronto. When I was a young teacher first working in literacy and teaching in a prison in Manitoba, he looked at me and said ``Remember, the people you work with may not have been to school very much, but if you don't have an education you really have to use your brains.''

I think there is another point that I am sure you all appreciate. We are not talking here about intelligence. We are talking about opportunity, about life circumstances, and about, as you say, the complexities of life for Canadians and for people in every part of this country.

Mr. Grubel, we do know that in programs like the ones we operate, and in college programs and school board programs, there are most often very long waiting lists of people seeking additional opportunities to learn in the community and at the workplace. I would pleased to talk to you on another occasion and go into more detail about that and also recruit you as a volunteer tutor. I am sure you would be a very good one.

Mr. Grubel: You don't think we have a supply problem -

Mr. O'Leary: No.

Mr. Grubel: - a demand problem. You think there are all these people out there who are just eager to learn and who don't have an opportunity in our society to get themselves the skills to read a newspaper properly. You are going on record as saying that this is correct.

Mr. O'Leary: That is my experience as a teacher. Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Grubel: Obviously I live in a different world.

Mrs. Chamberlain: Absolutely.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Ms Whelan.

Ms Whelan (Essex - Windsor): Mr. Chairman, I want to raise two quick issues.

I agree with everything Ms Chamberlain said. I think where we go with literacy is extremely important. I have two quick questions.

First, you talked about training or about dollars for training, I think, Ms Sussman. I am not sure what you want from the federal government. I guess I will premise that when I ask my two questions...

You also talked about level of education. I am very concerned that we are creating a society right now that may never reach levels four and five because of so many school-age children in poorer areas of Canada not having the advantage of computers at a young age. They may never develop the fluency of being able to interpret and read the computer and interact with it. I am assuming that's what the skills we are talking about are at levels four and five, some of those very highly technical skills.

If you never start with the basics in a lower grade you will never be able to achieve what someone coming from a wealthier area in Canada will have access to. I am just not sure if we are going to start to create another class of literacy down the road.

The other thing I am very concerned about is where we are going in our education system. Primary education is under provincial jurisdiction. When I was involved in my community before I was elected, I was involved in a group that dealt with learning disabilities. One reason people find themselves illiterate and not at level four or five today is that their learning disability was never properly identified when they were in primary or secondary school.

Although they were faking it... But some of them weren't faking it. They were just not properly taught to deal with the disability they had, whether it was dyslexia or whatever. Some people can get around those things and others need to be taught how to deal with them.

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I have two concerns. First, are we creating another generation of people who will not be able to reach level four or five, even though they are going to be highly educated? Are we going to have a gap in those who are highly educated? I see that coming with different areas of ability. I see it in my community. I don't know if you see that in large cities.

Secondly, how do we deal with the learning disabilities later in life?

Ms Sussman: I would like to respond to some of the points you've raised. They are all very good ones, and thank you for that.

If I understood you correctly, you're talking about the computer haves and have-nots, and the advantages or disadvantages that will give a child when they're in school. A federal government task force on the information highway talked about a concern of further polarizing Canadians into an information have or have-not society.

The comment we in the literacy community often think of is that literacy skills - the ability to read and write, quite simply - is the on-ramp to the information highway. You can put a computer in front of someone, and if they don't have basic literacy skills, the physical machine isn't going to allow them access.

Before we worry about what's going to happen when some kids have computers and some don't, we're starting from the concern that everybody needs the skills to get on in the first place and then they need access to the equipment. So that is one issue.

The second issue I heard you raise is around the issues of learning disabilities. In fact, many of the people we see in adult literacy programs tell us or they present with different ways of learning. Some of them seem to have some very specific neurologically based difference that some will define as learning disabilities, and these programs didn't pick it up. They were educated at a time when school systems were not sophisticated to that.

Literacy practitioners are very eagerly seeking out professional development so they can work, often one-on-one, with people who have special learning needs. So the programs are responding to that as well.

[Translation]

Mrs. Lapierre: Let me simply add that in the course of our work within the literacy network with adults with learning disabilities, we observed that literacy stakeholders have developed an approach which today is used on children.

Several years ago, a book on metacognition was published. It outlines a new approach to literacy which could help primary school children with learning disabilities.

Our literacy efforts are not being conducted in a vacuum in so far as school children are concerned. Among other things, family literacy works on another level.

As for your question, namely are we not widening the gap between literate youth and those who are less so, what we are doing in fact is eliminating or minimizing this distinction between the two groups. Family literacy has a direct impact on this situation. Regardless of whether parents have reading and writing skills, through family literacy programs, children are given the opportunity to acquire these skills at the same time as their parents. What we are doing therefore is creating a learning culture, as John said in his submission.

I don't know if that answers some of the questions you had.

[English]

Ms Whelan: I appreciate the answers, and I want to say that I really am concerned about the issue of computers.

Although I understand you have to get on, I can give you an example of two four-year-olds, one who comes from a wealthier family that in my opinion maybe doesn't have the same literacy skills as another four-year-old who doesn't have that access. One becomes very adept at using a computer, and the other may not ever have a computer in their home because they can't afford it. Although both have literacy skills and they're both learning to read at the same level, and they're probably both very bright, I think there's going to be an interaction that will never get that one child to level four and five. That is my concern.

Ms Sussman: Yes, I think that's probably quite a legitimate concern.

There has been some really interesting research done on the differences between children who are growing up in homes where parents are literate and children who are growing up in homes where parents don't use literacy skills. They found that the average five-year-old coming into grade one who has grown up in a home where the parents aren't literate is coming in disadvantaged by the equivalent of 2,000 hours of one-on-one instruction in critical acquisition of literacy skills. The reading researchers ask how a grade one teacher with a group of 25 kids will ever make up for that disparity. That is pretty basic.

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You could apply the same kind of reasoning to kids who grow up in homes with computers, whose parents sit with them and show them how to access. The minute they are presented with that in school they are away at the races compared with the kids who are coming up behind them.

It is a really legitimate concern, but we are looking at 22% of the adult population who can't read with their kids or who aren't reading with their kids. That is a prerequisite to using computers with their kids, so it's connected.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Ms Whelan.

Mr. Mader: Mr. Chairman, the computer follows literacy; it doesn't lead it.

The truth is that if people become literate they will find a way to get at a computer somehow or other. It won't be true and it's probably less important at the earlier stage than it is at the grade-school level, which is when computer literacy appears to be the thing. So while it is an important issue, it isn't nearly as important as the question of the literacy to understand -

Ms Whelan: No, my point was related to the way testing was done in levels four and five, with the ability to decode and the ability to make judgments. Computers assist in the learning of those analytical skills.

Those who have the advantage of using computers at a young age versus those who don't will develop those skills much more quickly, I believe, because they're going to do it one-on-one at their own level, versus the other child who is going to be in society; that was my point.

The Chairman: Mr. Solberg, please.

Mr. Solberg: Mr. Chairman, I want to talk first about the opportunity issue that has been raised and whether or not children have an opportunity to learn.

It is my observation as a parent with two boys in school right now that there are all kinds of kids who come into the system. There are some who are very bright and disciplined, and they have no problems. Then you run into kids who are bright but not very disciplined; they don't take it as seriously. Despite the best efforts of teachers, some kids fool around for their entire career in school. They come out the other end and can't find the job they want and eventually they have to find a way to get back into school to do this. They may even have to pick up their reading skills a little.

There are also children in school who simply don't have the intellectual ability to learn despite the best efforts of teachers who work their guts out to try to get these kids to learn.

My point is that teachers do work extremely hard over the ten years until a child turns sixteen, or even the twelve years until they turn eighteen, to try to give children these skills. The common denominator in trying to teach here is the teachers. I think teachers do their best, but sometimes, for whatever reason, kids can't or won't learn.

I make the same point as Dr. Grubel. There are a lot of opportunities, but for whatever reasons, children sometimes do not seize them.

That is the supply side. I now want to talk about the demand side, which you haven't really addressed. I have not heard any recommendations so far about what we can do to encourage families to provide children with the necessary skills and environment to learn.

Children may come from families where they don't have the intellectual capacity. Sadly, that is true in some cases, a minority of cases. I don't know what you can do in that sort of situation.

For the great majority of people, there are some things we can do. The modern reality today is that many families have both parents working, which makes it difficult for them to spend the time they would like with their children on things like reading. Many times it is not their choice. People would like to stay home, but they must have both parents working or both parents even working more than one job. Maybe if they had their druthers, they would stay home.

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I want to make a recommendation to you. I believe very strongly that if somehow we could ratchet down the tax burden that people have to pay in this country, then they would not feel so compelled to have both people out there working all the time - in some cases it's six or seven days a week - to pay the bills. If you did that, wouldn't you have a situation in which families were better equipped with time so that they could spend the time with their families or children to teach them how to read and read to them when they were young?

Mr. O'Leary: You're talking, Mr. Solberg, about what we educators call family literacy. This is one of the newest areas in our world. When I started as a teacher at Frontier College in 1976, we taught adults who needed help with reading and writing; we did not work with children or families. In the last 15 or 20 years, all of us in this field have started to develop activities in this area.

We are working in two ways. We are doing things right now. There are activities going on to help those adults, the 22%, who are not comfortable reading. They are not strong readers themselves. We can show them and train them in community and neighbourhood sites and in their homes how they can work with their young children, read aloud and improve their own reading.

One of the main reasons adults come to programs like ours to improve their reading is so they can help their children. There is no question about that. That is one of the main motivating factors.

So there are programs in place right now. Again, this House and this government, through the National Literacy Secretariat, are supporting some very good research right now. There have been several conferences over the past couple of years in family literacy to look at new programs and activities in support of this area. So it is a fairly new area in the field of literacy. I think you are right in pointing out that it is largely due to some of the changing economic and job circumstances in the lives of adults in our country.

There is some good work being done, and we are working with the National Literacy Secretariat in support of that. For the future, this is definitely one of the areas that we need to develop.

Ms Sussman: Could I just add a point to what you are saying, John?

There is a funny - almost black - irony. The people who are most likely to be at home with their children now are those who are unemployed. Those who are on social assistance are the people who are least likely to have literacy skills. So you are talking about a tax cut or an advantage to people who are out in the workforce who have the literacy skills. The chances are that those children are growing up in literate homes.

What research clearly shows is that there is an intergenerational cycle of low literacy skills. It is the children who are growing up in homes with parents who don't have those skills who are most likely to have problems when they come to school. It is those parents who are most likely to be unemployed and on social assistance.

I know that our time is running short. Somehow we seem to have kind of moved over.

It is an important to look at our children to figure out how we can make that education system better and how we can make sure that more children aren't coming out of high school with literacy problems.

The fact of the matter today is that in Canada 22% of the adult population already - these are people who need to be employed and get off the unemployment and social assistance rolls - have major problems with literacy that are barriers to their participation in our economy. That is really the issue we came to talk about today. We have colleagues in the education system who are more expert on the issues of educating young children than we, but we're here to talk to you about the issues of adult literacy and the impact it's having on our economy and on economic prosperity for Canada.

Mr. Solberg: I have just one final comment. I appreciate what you are saying, which is that if somebody is functionally illiterate, then they are out of the workforce because they cannot read. Therefore, they can't transfer any skills on to their family. So they come to you and try to get help. That's great. I think most people do want to help their families.

But the point I am trying to make is that this is done anecdotally. I have seen situations in which people who are quite bright simply do not have the time to spend with their children to teach them things. This means not only how to read, but how to really understand and comprehend written material.

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I can think of a personal example. A young man who was in grade 10 was asked by his parents to read a comic book. He was in grade 10 in a middle class family, and he could barely struggle through a comic book. He is well qualified to be an MP, obviously - I anticipated what the chairman was going to say.

I found it unbelievable, quite frankly, that he would get that far, to grade 10. I attribute part of it to the fact that the family couldn't be as involved as they should have been because both people were working. This was a man of perfectly good ability, as far as I am concerned. It's an anecdotal story.

Mr. Mader: We have programs that we use to deal with part of that issue. We have a ``Summer Reading for Fun'' program, which deals with kids during the summer break when their parents are working. We run, in effect, reading camps, only that's called Summer Reading for Fun. It is a fairly large program. We had several hundred sites across Canada last year.

The other one is the first public support that Laubach Literacy of Canada ever had, which was a program called Peer Youth Training. Young people with an interest in literacy improve the reading skills of others by working with them. That program has been in place and working for 15 years.

Mr. Solberg: I understand what you're saying, but you're coming at it from a different way. You're wondering what we can do to become quasi-parents to these people. I'm saying we should do something to allow parents to fulfil what traditionally has been their responsibility.

Mr. Mader: We are in the literacy field.

Mr. Solberg: Yes.

Mr. Mader: That's what we can do. The other issue is a political, socio-economic one.

Mr. Solberg: It's literacy as well.

Mr. Mader: I don't think it is appropriate for the debate to proceed.

If it was true, you wouldn't have societies with different patterns that still have literacy problems. There are other societies that IALS identifies. We're not the only ones who have literacy problems. There is a wide range of socio-economic and political situations in that survey. You've been given one. You may want to look at it. The socio-economic issues are clearly there.

Remember also that it's a moving target. Whatever is required for literacy is a moving target. Whatever the standard is today, 20 years from now the target will be higher.

Mr. Solberg: So it is best to establish this when children are young. We have heard evidence already of that. The best return on investment, the most cost-effective educational institution, is a family that reads, I would argue. So if we can somehow direct our efforts to that, we will probably have a much greater chance of avoiding functional illiteracy rates of 20% once people are 18 years old.

Ms Sussman: I agree with everything you've said. The evidence and facts that we have suggest the problem is in the home in which parents cannot read. We don't have evidence that says the problem of the kid not learning to read is in the home in which both parents are out of work. The evidence we have is that children who are growing up with literacy problems are growing up in homes in which the parents cannot read with them, whether the parents are home or not. That is why we are trying to break the cycle.

Mr. Grubel: If they didn't have any television, what would happen? What if tomorrow we could force everybody just to watch The Learning Channel or the kinds of programs that you would put on?

Mrs. Chamberlain: You mean the Reform Party's Fresh Start?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Grubel: I'm being only half-facetious. Is there any evidence in the data that have been produced that shows a difference in a country with the same level of education in which the incidence of watching television is different?

Ms Sussman: The IALS research tells us that people with low literacy skills tend to watch more television than people with higher literacy skills. But there is a real chicken-and-egg question there. Is it because they are watching more television that they don't have the literacy skills, or is it because they don't have the literacy skills that they watch television? So we don't really have the answer, but there is a connection between low literacy skills and watching television.

Mrs. Chamberlain: But the issue stills remains that there are people out there who wish to learn. We want to have an option of somewhere that those people can go rather than just simply saying there is nothing for them and that they are doomed to never be able to read.

Mr. Grubel: Mr. Chairman, I agree with this, but this is clearly a matter of empirical judgment. We hear, as we always do, from people who come here to say that the government has to spend more money. They say to give it to them; they'll spend it very wisely, and they'll do great things for Canada. I'm just remaining a skeptic on this issue. It is not at all settled in my mind because I believe there are lots and lots of opportunities.

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I grew up in what would be considered a shack. My parents never bought a newspaper. It is possible to go through these kinds of things. My parents had only elementary education in Germany. I grew up during the war. I can tell you it is neither necessary nor a sufficient condition for all these supplies to be out there. I'm just a skeptic when I hear that more money will solve the problem.

I ask precisely, what is this community doing to stimulate the demand for the available opportunities to get the higher education it broadly defined to increase literacy? I do not see that there is a great lack of opportunity.

I think the difficult problem we face as a society - I have no answers, and that is why I ask the question - is how do we get people away from watching the football games, the sitcoms, etc., and motivate them to take the energy to go out and get the education I think is available? That to me is more crucial than throwing more money at making places available where they can go.

I would like to see the evidence from you that there aren't enough places for people to go right now who want to be educated and learn to read once they have made the decision. Give me evidence of that.

The Chairman: Could one of you respond? Luce Lapierre.

[Translation]

Mrs. Lapierre: To answer Mr. Grubel's question, if we want some evidence to support our contention, we need only look at the statistics gleaned from the international survey which show the percentage of people having difficulty in those areas that we have just listed. I think these statistics are rather revealing.

Furthermore, we referred earlier to examples which, in your opinion, are individual, and therefore isolated cases. We can't use these as proof to convince you of our arguments.

The fact remains that within our networks, in particular the francophone networks, people tell of being excluded from the learning process either because they did not get any opportunities, because of health reasons or for some of the other reasons that you mentioned earlier. In the case of francophones, the services were not available, either in French or in English, to help them acquire reading and writing skills or to learn how to use this material.

As far as your question is concerned, this is indeed clear evidence.

[English]

Mr. Grubel: They come to you and you are there.

[Translation]

Mrs. Lapierre: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Grubel: How many people are not serviced right now?

[Translation]

Mrs. Lapierre: At present, the francophone network meets the needs of 40,000 people. Approximately five years ago, we offered a wider range of services and met the needs of 45,000 individuals.

All of the groups providing literacy services report waiting lists owing to a lack of resources. Volunteers are overworked and there are not enough of them.

In some provinces, only two hours a week of reading and writing classes can be offered because volunteers are overworked. Handling a class of 30 students is a full-time job for a volunteer. I'm thinking about Manitoba where this is currently the situation encountered by francophones. An adult has two hours a week to sit down and really acquire some skills. As everyone knows, it takes much longer than this to acquire sound reading and writing skills.

This is why we argue that additional resources are needed. We want the government to support the efforts that are being made. Literacy programs are vitally important to the economy, as we are telling you today, but also for other individuals for whom...

[English]

Mr. Grubel: Thank you. That's the kind of information I was interested in.

The Chairman: Mr. Pillitteri, please.

Mr. Pillitteri (Niagara Falls): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the witnesses for the presentation.

It's not too often that I listen to Mr. Grubel, but somewhere along the line I found something in common with him, and that is attainment of education when one wanted to educate oneself.Mr. Grubel and I, possibly because we came from other countries, had something to prove to ourselves, and certainly we were searching for that education.

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Personally, I kept on reading and trying to educate myself until I got married. My wife had second thoughts afterwards. I used to put myself to sleep by reading a book, but after we got married I had to change my habits.

Let me say now that coming to Parliament I have more freedom to read than in the past.

There is something else Mr. Grubel said that we have in common. His parents in Europe only had elementary school education, and I can say the same thing. My father and mother had grade three education and had five or six children who attended university here in Canada. I think when one searches one finds education.

Recalling the late 1950s and 1960s, there are many more opportunities for one to try to educate oneself and there are more learning opportunities through night school. I went through that process also.

Today we have reached a point where integration is far greater, even on the part of the immigrants or on the part of individual Canadians here trying to integrate into the school system and get an education.

The drop-out rate for high school has kept dropping and we have gone from 50% down to 30%. I am afraid of something else. This has been quite a good conversation. We probably have not beaten it to death yet. But let me ask you a question. In a positive way, with today's changing economy, the jobs we were used to 20 and 30 years ago are no longer going to be there. How can we reach these younger people who are dropping out? Can we do it by throwing more money at them, or do we actually have to work with industry to make the best use of our dollars?

Mr. Bloom: I would like to comment on this. By the way, the drop-out rate is about 18% - 30% was a long-quoted number, but it is not accurate. Some people say it's 15% now. But your point is right: it has been steadily declining and the participation rate in post-secondary education has been subtly going up.

I think your point about how can we work with employers is an interesting one. Given the interest of the practitioners from the adult literacy area and people who are already working, it is particularly appropriate. My organization has a number of members who are in large and medium-sized businesses, many of whom have an interest in the literacy of their employees.

The surveying of employers shows that in Canada, the United States and other countries many large employers identify literacy as an issue in the workforce of their countries. Curiously, the numbers go down when they ask about literacy as a problem in their own companies. We don't know quite what to make of the data. But it is nevertheless true that a majority of employers see a problem in their own workforce with literacy. Some have begun programs to improve literacy in the workplace.

Talking about what we can do to increase the demand, I think there is a need to encourage the demand side among employers who have some resource so they can make a contribution. One part of this is to demonstrate the benefit to them. I suppose we are looking for enlightened self-interest, but we need to explore the self-interest dimension to show that there is a correlation between skills and productivity and profit for employers.

Some of them already recognize that. Syncrude in Alberta and some banks are involved in literacy programs, as well as a number of other companies. There is already a commitment, but the number of companies that are involved could increase significantly, and the kinds of programs they make available could grow.

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I think there is a potential out there for it. The key is to make the benefits clear. Similarly, right now for employees there is a general sense that we need to improve our skills. But we need to make more explicit how this works.

Perhaps as a final point, part of this is to communicate to people the way in which work is changing. People have their own personal experience, and the more people who change jobs the more there is going to be an interest in the notion of generic skills and literacy.

But there is a lag between what people know about and what is actually happening out there. It takes time to give them the skills. So I think we have to get employers on side. Literacy is an issue they can help with and it will make a difference for them. Part of it is communicating to them, sending a signal that it matters to others. We have to give them the information they need to understand the difference it can make for them.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Bloom.

We will go briefly to Mr. O'Leary.

Mr. O'Leary: I have just two comments. If I can't read well, the last person I am going to tell is my boss.

We do not have a lot of time, but to Mr. Grubel and others who want to talk about the demand issue, I must explain there is a sense of shame and embarrassment. I have been a teacher in this field for 25 years. I have never heard anyone say to me, ``Mr. O'Leary, I am illiterate.''

Canadians can be proud of some of the work we are doing at the workplace to attract people to knowledge and learning. There is a hotel just down the street from Parliament Hill where they have done some terrific work over the years in making all people feel comfortable and welcome at the workplace. Some great work can be done here.

The second point in terms of your comment about youth is the same thing. How do we attract our children and young people to knowledge, learning and literacy? I think the way we do it is to build on what we know.

I am proud - I think all Canadians can be proud - of what we have achieved in this country in terms of education for all. We have tremendous expertise. This country could be known for knowledge and learning the way the Swiss, for example, are known for banking, as I saw in a document recently.

I think we need to find ways and discover ways to attract young people to knowledge and learning. There are great examples of this. I, along with others here, will be happy to pass on some details to you about this.

Mrs. Chamberlain: Could I add to what Mr. O'Leary said?

Mr. Grubel, when I was working in this field I had a firefighter come to me. He had been offered the position of chief. He had to turn it down. He could not read. He turned the position down and then came to us for help because he did not know where else to go.

Finally, your model of tutoring one on one is now used in many high schools across Canada, particularly in Wellington County. This peer tutoring program has been phenomenal for kids in grades nine and ten who really can't read. This has just been absolutely amazing. So you people really have been pilots in the forefront of this kind of teaching. It has been marvellous.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mrs. Chamberlain. We will go to Mrs. Brushett, followed byMr. Bélisle and then Mr. Grubel.

Mrs. Brushett (Cumberland - Colchester): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.

I want to follow up on how many companies or on the examples of companies matching for employer upgrading in literary skills.

I know in my own province we are working with HRD in a many small businesses where the employer discovers quickly the employee can't decode fast enough. So we are matching time: the employer gives half of the time and the employee gives another half. They have two hours every day for literary upgrading and we have developed some computerized self-learning centres for those same types of things.

I am really concerned with the drop-out rate as well. If there were a lot of jobs, you could see it. But the jobs are not there, and they are still dropping out of school. There was a survey in the greater Montreal area including all private and public schools. There was a 45% drop-out rate last spring. This is appalling. As we move into the 21st century, what are we doing about this in terms of literacy?

People are coming to me and saying they have the opportunity to stay in school. We provide great schools. Why should we go back and educate them later in life and provide all these extras later? I have had people say this to me. I don't have an answer on why we can't somehow focus on this as educators in upgrading and literacy.

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[Translation]

The Chairman: Mrs. Lapierre.

Mrs. Lapierre: I can tell you about one initiative that our network of francophone students/learners has taken. The project takes a very personal approach and focuses on the relationship between the student and the adult who has decided to return to the classroom.

The theme of the project is ``Imagine yourself in ten years' time''. This project was launched by a student/learner in Ontario who went out to meet with secondary school students and relate to them his experiences as an illiterate person who made the decision to return to school as an adult.

This initiative had a major impact on the students he visited. They wrote letters - we received almost 1,000 at our offices - to let us know how surprised they were to hear this subject discussed, that some of their fathers had the same problems and that they wanted to discuss it with them, that they themselves had problems but didn't think that they could become illiterate or unable to manage in life if they didn't take their schooling seriously.

This project proved to be very timely. Initially, it was spearheaded by a volunteer. We are trying to expand it to all Canadian provinces. It is an interesting initiative because it targets the young person in his environment where the need is felt. Studies have shown that young people drop out as a way of reacting to a particular circumstance; they drop out of sporting or some other activities... It is how they respond to a commitment.

To break this cycle, we have to find a way to get through to the young person. With this project, we are trying to change attitudes and to get young people to recognize that school may be more important than anything else.

It may only be a drop in the bucket given the scope of the drop-out problem, but I think it is an important initiative. The work is, of course, being carried out by students/learners who have decided to learn reading and writing skills as adults.

[English]

The Chairman: Thanks very much, Mrs. Brushett. Mr. Bélisle.

[Translation]

Mr. Bélisle: The focus of our discussion this afternoon is the level of literacy. I think I can safely say that from one generation to the next or from one decade to the next, a growing number of people are becoming literate. My impression is that here in Canada and more generally in North America, the evolution of this state of affairs is linked to the entire North American cultural environment.

We are the descendants of pioneers who only a few generations ago, came here to build this country. Mr. Grubel spoke earlier about the experiences of his family who originally came from Germany. I am always amazed, on seeing parliamentarians from France, England or Germany interviewed on CBC, to note how bilingual these people are. Whether interviewed on CBC or Radio- Canada, the British parliamentarians were bilingual and fairly intellectual. The same thing was true of French parliamentarians.

When our ancestors came to this country, their main concern was to settle the land. Had they devoted their time to reading 200 or 300 years ago, I think that in many cases, they would have starved to death.

Having said this, my impression is that intellectual pursuits have never been valued here as they are in European or other countries.

Talking about family history, I was a young person, my father told me how in some families the youngest was the one to receive an education, either because his health was not good or because he was the skinniest. He would become either a notary, a priest or a doctor because his father was afraid he would starve to death. Strong, healthy persons became farmers or lumberjacks. I would say that in our collective subconscious, this has had an impact on us. Fortunately, things are changing.

I've always felt that, whether here in Quebec, in Canada or in the United States, intellectual pursuits are not given the same kind of consideration that they are in Europe or elsewhere. Just look at how much importance we award to sports, to hockey, to football and to baseball on Canadian or American television! In my opinion, this may all be related to the tremendous physical effort we had to expend for several generations. Fortunately, things are changing.

Families are starting to award more and more importance to intellectual pursuits as a result of the influence of the community or schools. We tend to value physical activities more than intellectual ones because throughout our history, we have had to survive in a hostile environment. However, I believe all this is changing, because today, we no longer talk about building a road between two villages, but rather about building the information highway. This is quite different.

The information highway demands more intellectual skills than was required of us in the past.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Bélisle.

Mr. Grubel.

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[English]

Mr. Grubel: Mr. Chairman, I hope the panel today is not getting the impression thatMr. Solberg and myself are not appreciating the work it does or that it is not necessary for it to have the resources to do that work. It's just that as a professional economist -

An hon. member: Professional skeptic.

Mr. Grubel: - professional skeptic I try to understand what the rationale is behind it and try to find out, in making this distinction between demand and supply, whether there are other sides, whether we're spending enough but maybe we ought to get better incentive structures for teachers and better incentive structures for students to finish.

In response to Dianne's point, I have friends who are highly educated and their children dropped out of high school or just finished high school when it was expected that they would go to university. The reason was quite simple. In British Columbia unionized jobs were available for the asking at $15 or $20 an hour at age 18. What they involved was sweeping the shop floor. The expectation was that in five to ten years they would be full-fledged members of the union, getting $30 an hour. At age 18 they could buy their four-by-fours. They could get married. They could take holidays. Why should they go to university?

People are maximizing what they get out of life at the minimum cost and the minimum pain. It's a pain in the neck to go to university or to graduate school. We all know that. We have done it. So people are acting perfectly rationally. From the point of view of those individuals, there also was no problem. It's only now being exposed when we say, well, you should have taken out some insurance and got some education, and you probably would have got the same wage if you had done that.

We are trying to establish in our own minds what are the answers to those kinds of questions. I hope you don't misunderstand me in questioning the value of what you're doing. I was very pleased to know that Brenda was involved in all of that. It is very important work. I hope you can get more volunteers to help with all of this.

I wish you the best of luck with this. I hope the government finances will some day get better and I will not sit here and be a professional skeptic.

Mr. Mader: The investment needed to support the kind of literacy things we're talking about is minor. The National Literacy Secretariat budget is $25 million, which is pretty minor in comparison with the kinds of money spent. We get a big bang for a small buck.

Part of the answer to your earlier question... You described the culture that we have to change. We have to make learning a part of the culture in order to prevent the problem perpetuating itself.

The Chairman: Mr. St. Denis.

Mr. St. Denis (Algoma): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you all for being here. As in the past, we've appreciated the chance to stay up to speed on the issues of literacy. I personally am pleased to be part of a government that has a secretariat, even though maybe the funds are never enough. We have a cabinet minister responsible for literacy.

Clearly it's a complex issue. Mr. O'Leary mentioned that many people wouldn't go to their boss and say ``I can't read''. The fact that there is a tremendous demand on resources now belies the fact that if no stigma were attached to acknowledging illiteracy even more people would come forward. Not only does your work help the client who needs to learn how to read but you're also making it more acceptable to admit ``I can't read''.

I had this mental picture when it comes to literacy, and I'm going to ask your thoughts on it. I think of a marathon race. After about five minutes into any long-distance race you get the first group of leading runners and then you get a second group and a third group. They tend to bunch up. I have this image of the fourth and fifth levels, the higher levels of literacy, as being one group. Then there is the level three literacy group in the middle. Then the first and second groups lag behind.

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If we leave aside the middle group for a moment, a group that can catch up to the leading group, given the right opportunities and resources, what really worries me and no doubt worries you and my colleagues here is that as the race progresses it would seem groups one and two are getting farther and farther behind. When I talk to my constituents in little meetings about adapting to the new economy and the new workplace and making sure our social programs remain strong and viable, I say in our society we can't leave people behind.

I wonder if you could paint for us in simple and graphic terms how that marathon race is progressing? Is the gap widening between groups four and five, the most literate, and groups one and two, the least literate? It isn't so much the number in the low group, important as that is, it's the gap, which seems to be stretching out. I would like your thoughts on that. And could somebody tell me the number of volunteers who make the literacy efforts in this country as strong as they are?

Mr. O'Leary: Probably the most effective advocate in support of literacy in this country, as you have acknowledged, is the minister with special responsibility for this issue, Joyce Fairbairn, whom I've had the pleasure of knowing for over twelve years. I remember when I first met her about twelve years ago, when she first began to speak out on behalf of this issue she used a very similar analogy. She said the focus of the literacy effort in our country has to be on those people at the more basic level.

Most of the work we do as literacy organizations is focused on people at the basic one-two level. There is no question the challenges of the modern economy, to use the phrase the finance minister used, are causing the gap to grow. There is no question about that. As has been pointed out to this committee, the best opportunity those people have is to improve their literacy skills in order to catch up.

On the numbers, I might ask Susan and Luce to help me. We estimate we are reaching about 10% of people who need support with adult literacy in this country. The numbers of volunteers involved in this program now are in the tens of thousands when they need to be in the dozens and hundreds of thousands. But a strong network is in place. Our efforts, I assure you, are focused on the people at the most basic levels. All our organizations are targeting those people for support with small groups and one-on-one tutoring so they can catch up more quickly.

Mr. Mader: About three years ago our organization identified the prevention role as well as the service role for the people in groups one and two. So we have been putting more effort into things such as family literacy and so on because we concluded that with the resources we could visualize we were not going to overtake it.

To move one percentage point from the first group to the second means changing 200,000 people. If you wanted to move everybody in the first and second groups up one notch, we would be talking in the millions.

The Chairman: I think the statistics you have presented to us today are shocking. Most of us have heard that 22% of Canadians are functionally illiterate. I did not realize that, and I was even more shocked to realize that 40% of adults have difficulty reading our newspapers and comprehending them; although some might say that is understandable if one considers some of the papers.

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I had even greater difficulty when you said only 22% of Canadians are in the top two of the five categories of literacy and these are the areas where we are going to have to cope with the economy of the future.

[Translation]

You spoke about the problems that francophones in Quebec and outside Quebec are experiencing and about the need for basic education in their first language.

[English]

You have talked to us about the tremendous number of volunteers you have been able to mobilize to go out and teach some of the basic elementary skills. We have to congratulate each one of you and your groups, the Laubach Literacy group, Frontier College, which I have personal familiarity with through my family, the Fédération, and the Movement for Canadian Literacy.

Mr. Bloom, this committee will look forward next spring to receiving your final report.

The bottom line is that regardless of how we got into this deplorable situation in the level of literacy, regardless of the reasons why we are here, it is evident we have to do something about it. We have to tackle this problem. Even if we were to double your resources, you would be getting to only 20% of the adults who have difficulty coping. This is not even dealing with children and changing that whole culture.

I think you do an incredible job with the resources we have made available to you. I want publicly to commend Senator Joyce Fairbairn for the public leadership she has given to this issue for so long, and to thank every one of you for what you are doing for so many people with so little from us. We need your help. Our economic future depends on it. Thank you very much.

We'll adjourn.

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