When I talk about reading and literacy, people think that of course we're a literate country. Yes, we are a literate country. Only a handful of people are unable to read effectively.
I'm not talking about whether you can decode the language, though. I'm talking about whether you can read at a high enough level to critically think about what you're reading. Can you apply what you're reading here in a new situation? Can you read between the lines? Remember back in high school when we were asked to compare and contrast? Can you do that? Too many of our youth are not able to read at that level. They're not absorbing what they're reading. They're not applying what they're reading elsewhere.
Unfortunately, it's not just youth. If you are a person who has been working in a fairly routine job for a long time, you will also have lost skills. You may have had those skills when you started, but over time you have spent less time reading, thinking, comparing and having to apply your skills in new and different ways. You've lost that capacity over time.
The problem is that the economy is changing so quickly. Things are changing in jobs constantly. Being able to adapt to new processes and fluidly problem-solve, which is actually a function of literacy skills, has decreased in people at a time when we need it to increase. The skills gap that Canada has is actually growing, and it comes right back down to those basic cognitive skills: reading, writing and arithmetic.
Employers will tell you that some employees have the technical skills but don't know how to work with people. They can't work in teams and they don't know how to do customer service. They wonder what it is. These are functions of a person's capacity to read well, critically think, adapt to change and grow. That's the important piece, especially right now, at a time when jobs are changing ever so quickly.