Human Resources Committee on Sept. 28th, 2006

[Wendy DesBrisay, Executive Director, Movement for Canadian Literacy]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee for the invitation to speak to you today. Excuse my voice; I hope it holds out.

I believe you have a copy of MCL's brief on literacy and employability. In a minute I'll highlight some of the points from that brief, but before I do, it would be a betrayal of the literacy community and the millions of Canadians who struggle with literacy challenges if I didn't speak to the implications of the $7.7 million in cuts to federal literacy programming announced earlier this week.

Ironically, the title of our brief is “Literacy is the Foundation”. These cuts are taking a jackhammer to that foundation. The specific area that was cut was the local and regional stream, where the National Literacy Secretariat had worked for years in building partnerships with provinces and territories and with the community to build capacity in a field that has never had the resources to be able to meet the needs. The funding support is not direct delivery—which, as you know, is a provincial matter—but outreach, professional development for educators, curriculum and materials development, research, promotion, and, as I said, the development of those partnerships that leveraged increasing support from provincial and territorial governments and businesses in the community.

The work of developing those partnerships has to be done by infrastructure organizations, which never existed before the literacy secretariat was there. The provincial and territorial literacy coalitions were told yesterday that all funding to provincial and territorial organizations and all kinds of projects was gone—with no consultation. Anyway, I don't want to go too far down that road, but literacy is the foundation of employability and I'm sure you understand why we're so gobsmacked by this new development.

These cuts come at a time when the need for literacy investment has never been greater. Four out of ten working-age Canadians have literacy levels below the benchmark considered necessary for success in today's society. Far from creating efficiencies, these cuts are dismantling the infrastructure that was built cooperatively by all levels of government and the literacy community, and they will set us back years in our ability to meet the literacy challenges of Canadians.

The cuts will hurt less literate Canadians whose access to quality literacy programming is already uneven across the country.

The cuts contradict the advice of this very committee, which called in 2003 for an end to the patchwork approach to adult literacy, highlighted the need for a national vision on a pan-Canadian strategy, and called for increased investment.

Turning back to employability specifically, the cuts also aren't in keeping with the government and this committee's goal to improve employability and grow the economy.

I will just highlight a few of the points in our brief on the relationship between literacy and employability. Today's labour market demands higher literacy skills than ever before, even in entry-level positions. Jobs that don't require much reading and writing are disappearing, while there are skill shortages in the more specialized, knowledge-intensive jobs. Due to a declining birth rate and an aging workforce, we need all hands on deck.

People with lower levels of literacy are more likely to be unemployed. That's a no-brainer, but it's a major factor in determining employability. They're more likely to lose their jobs and less likely to find new employment. Adults with low literacy skills have only a 50% chance of finding another job, even after 52 weeks of unemployment.

Strong literacy skills are needed for job-related training and advancement. Again, it's a stepping stone; you can't get to employment if you haven't had job specific training, and literacy is a prerequisite for that.

Employees with higher literacy skills earn more. Again, I know it's all simple, but the higher their literacy proficiency, the more workers are likely to earn. Among people at the top literacy level, just under a third of men, but half of all women, were earning over $60,000 a year.

Improving literacy skills has a positive effect on all aspects of a person's life and contributes to wider social benefits. The Conference Board of Canada and others have cited benefits of workforce literacy programs, including improved literacy skills, of course, but also greater employee self-confidence, better problem-solving skills, better team-building skills, increased ability to use technology, increased participation in other training, increased health and safety, and improved labour-management relations. Workers have reported being better able to help their children in school and that they get more involved in their communities.

Improved literacy is not only directly linked to labour market productivity but to federal priorities such as better outcomes for children, better aboriginal development, and better integration of newcomers. I could go on.

I have a page of recommendations specific to literacy and employability in my brief, and I encourage you to look at them later. But after the cuts announced this week, my only recommendation to you today is to do everything in your power to get these cuts reversed, not only to literacy but also to the workplace skills training strategy, which also had employability and literacy as a key focus.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. I do want to thank the presenters.

We are now going to move into our first round, which will be seven minutes for questions and answers.

Mr. Regan, I believe you are first off, with seven minutes.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The witnesses this morning have given us lots of fodder for further discussion. I very much appreciate them coming today, and I want to thank all of them for coming to speak to us. Unfortunately, we only have a short time for our discussion.

I want to begin with Ms. Regehr, in relation to the National Council of Welfare.

You talked about the cuts to the social economy initiative and the need to restore that so community centre development work and other kinds of work can be done again. Could you give us some examples of the kind of work this front link supported and the impact it had on people and their capability to achieve employment?

[Sheila Regehr]

Thank you.

My apologies, right off the bat. I can't give you specific examples now. That's a bit outside the council's mandate.

As I mentioned in the brief, the social economy initiatives are sort of multi-faceted because they allow for community development to meet community needs. They are not driven by profit motives or the objectives of some other organization outside that community.

The other really important thing that's closely linked to employability is that many of those projects then allow for on-the-job training--for example, for those who have been unemployed for long periods of time, those who are just getting back into the labour force after being out for a while, and people who are on welfare. It gives them an opportunity to contribute to those community economic development activities while at the same time increasing their own ability to continue working and get other jobs to build their skills and their individual employability.

So it has societal, community, and individual benefits.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

Let me turn now to Ms. DesBrisay and the Movement for Canadian Literacy. Obviously I share your deep concern about what has happened this week.

There is a Canadian Press story this morning that quotes Treasury Board President John Baird saying that he has to fix the....

I'll read a little more from this story than I've written down. In relation to the $17.7 million in cuts for literacy, he says:

I think if we're spending $20 million and we have one out of seven folks in the country that are functionally illiterate, we've got to fix the ground floor problem and not be trying to do repair work after the fact.

In other words, we should abandon all adults who are in need of literacy training.

I'd like your comments in relation to what he had to say.

[Wendy DesBrisay]

Well, two things come to mind. First of all, as a society, can we afford to abandon people and have them not making a contribution? I don't think so, but even more specifically, the children who are at risk of having literacy problems in the future have parents. A lot of the literacy delivery that's happening now is called family literacy. We work with the parents and the children together, because just trying to help the kids without helping their parents and building the literacy of the whole family won't work. We have to do both.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Yes, it certainly seems to me that you can't just focus on children, when you have a government that allegedly is concerned about international competitiveness, or ought to be at least. I don't see how you can when you're worried about labour shortages, not 20 years from now, when people who are now children are grown-ups, but in the short term, as people are retiring in the next few years. You have to focus on adults, who, if we can get some at a higher level of literacy--give them the opportunity to do training--can be much more able to achieve employment in today's workforce, especially with all the requirements in terms of knowledge, in terms of learning, in terms of reading manuals that are involved. And I don't see how you can do that if you're going to say we're going to forget about this whole group of people.

[Wendy DesBrisay]

That's right. Another item that came up in different presentations in terms of employability is community economic development and other kinds of community development. Sometimes people who are less skilled can find a meaningful place in community organizations and community economic projects that don't rule them out because they're less skilled.

That's why I think the federal government supporting things, acceding things, and working with the provinces and territories to build communities is really important. I think literacy programs are part of the community services that need to be built so that people do have jobs they can manage, rather than writing them off if they can't have high-level jobs.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Well, I have to tell you that this decision in terms of what it means for people who are adults needing literacy training, needing other kinds of adult learning, to me seems absolutely insane.

I have more questions. I have one minute and I want to ask Mr. Sharpe about this.

In terms of international competitiveness, you're saying we shouldn't worry too much about the shortages because they all work out. I think Canadians are concerned about their standard of living. In terms of the kinds of jobs we have and the kinds of employment we have, if people are highly trained and highly skilled and more employable at higher levels, doesn't that have an effect in terms of the question of the overall standard of living in the country?

[Dr. Andrew Sharpe]

Absolutely, and I don't think what I said contradicts that at all. Absolutely, if you want to have a higher standard of living you need higher productivity, and a key driver of productivity is the upskilling of the labour force, higher educational attainment. Canada does quite well in that regard, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

Linked to that, international experience strongly supports the view that giving educational opportunities to the disadvantaged has a positive effect on economic performance. Often the countries that have done well in terms of productivity growth have low levels of illiteracy. The great advantage about helping the disadvantaged is that you have positive effects on both equity--in other words, we're a fairer society--and efficiency, that is, these people function better and make higher incomes and improve productivity. So it's really win-win to help the disadvantaged from both a fairness perspective and a productivity perspective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Regan.

We're going to move on to the next questioner from the Bloc, Mr. Lessard.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for coming this morning and for sharing your expertise in the field. Personally, I admire what you do, having worked in the field of health and social services and on literacy. I'm going to start with some questions for Ms. DesBrisay.

Like you, we were astounded by the nature of the cuts announced. In fact, cuts were announced at the same time that a $13 billion surplus was announced. There is nothing wrong with cuts as such provided that they are justified and target programs that are not useful. However, we note that many of these programs are highly functional, they are meeting their mandate, and they are essential to the survival of work done by volunteer groups, namely in the field of literacy.

At present, what is the overall budget for literacy? What impact will the $17 million cut have on your work?

This morning, you witnessed our attempt to start an emergency debate on the topic—to my mind debating these matters is urgent—but it was refused. We wanted to hear people like you talk about it. Now that you are here, I would like to hear your comments.

[Wendy DesBrisay]

In the past, the direct federal funding for literacy through the National Literacy Secretariat was something like $30 million a year. This cut is 17.7% over two years, but we're also hearing that we can't get a clear picture of what the new budget is compared to the old one because other things have been added in.

On your question about how much it would cost, it would cost many times the amount of money that's invested, and no one is expecting that it would all come from the federal government. We need the federal government and the provinces and territories to look at what is being spent, how fair it is across the country, and what it costs.

Our field has never had regular professional development. Some provinces have some. This money that was cut--there was a call for proposals from the department with an end date of September 15, and now there is no money there to fund all the proposals that were submitted. I asked the provincial and territorial coalitions how they would have spent the cost-shared money--half from the federal government and half from their province or territory--that they've gotten in past years. The things they told me--which will not happen now because of this--are professional development, outreach, family literacy, pilot projects, and provincial conferences of practitioners. When you think $30 million--people have been asking why we still have people who are illiterate when we've been spending $30 million a year. Well, I think $60 billion is spent on education, generally, something like that, and the money that's spent on literacy at any level has been very small. We were hoping to get lots more money, not less.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Regehr, Ms. DesBrisay and Mr. Sharpe, I think my second question should be addressed to all of you. There are some areas that are difficult to reconcile when it comes to training. I quite agree with you in that training provides the foundation for any ability to function in society and to make a satisfactory contribution. In any case, training is fundamental in developing one's potential in society.

We naturally want to keep the older people on the labour market as long as possible. However, we must determine under what conditions we keep them on the labour market.

A few moments ago, Ms. Regehr reminded us of the employment insurance issue. For example, there are programs to train people aged 55 and over who lose their jobs, so that they can return to the labour market. Some people do want to retrain. However, less than 4% of those end up finding good, permanent jobs.

Have you had an opportunity to think about this issue? Are those people who remain on the labour market longer going to be condemned to less satisfying and less interesting jobs?

[Dr. Andrew Sharpe]

First of all, you asked how we could keep older workers—those aged over 55 in particular—on the labour market longer. Obviously, people are less motivated to work once they reach 65 because they receive a pension. We will not change that. People who receive a pension find it less necessary to work, naturally.

However, we should not cut benefits for seniors, nor increase the age at which seniors receive a pension from 65 to 70. What we should do, rather, is eliminate barriers so that we encourage people to work for as long as possible. That is the most important thing. We should not cut benefits for seniors with the goal of making them work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, Mr. Lessard, that's all the time we have for that round. We're going to move down the table to Madame Savoie, for seven minutes.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm happy that today I am Ms. Savoie, rather than Ms. Savoye.

Thank you for all your comments. They were very interesting.

I would also like to come back to some comments made by my colleagues. Mr. Baird's comments on literacy worry me a great deal. He said that it would be better to teach children than to waste money on adults. That worries me a great deal, particularly coming from a member of a government which says it is interested in helping families. We know that children with literacy problems, or reading problems, frequently come from families with an illiteracy issue. It is therefore difficult to tackle one problem without tackling the other. You have already mentioned that.

I think that we should recognize that, even without the budget cuts announced yesterday, Canada's literacy budget was already very low.

Could you comment on that? Yesterday, you recommended that the government try to restore the funding, but that the funding—even when restored—would be inadequate. I believe that the literacy movement has been requesting stable, long-term and increased funding to tackle the problem for a long time now. Could you comment on the lack of funding, and on the need for more funding in this sector if we are to make any genuine progress in dealing with the employability issue?

I would first like to hear Ms. DesBrisay, then Ms. Regehr.

[Wendy DesBrisay]

It's true that the funding from all levels of government has been too low. This committee in 2003 recommended, I believe they said, as a downpayment, increasing the budget of the National Literacy Secretariat immediately to $50 million a year, realizing that the federal government will not provide literacy training to people. I believe the growing thinking from many sectors has been that we need a national strategy, and that the outcome of the strategy would be that there would be core funding for literacy training as there is for other levels of education. Right now literacy organizations have to raise their own funds, and that's why having a funding program that at least helps them do outreach or get other people to try to raise money and the things you have to do besides teaching if you're going to keep an organization afloat...that's why it's so devastating.

Again, if you're asking how much it would cost, just think about how much it costs to keep a child in school for a year or to keep someone in post-secondary education. Why do we think that for a dollar per year, per citizen, we can raise literacy levels?

[Sheila Regehr]

Thank you. I'd like to comment on a couple of things and link this back to a previous question as well.

One of the things that I think it's really important to highlight is that there are a lot of studies that really show the link between the outcomes of children and the education of their parents, especially their mothers. That's been demonstrated time and time again. So if you're looking at literacy and if you're looking at a whole range of things related to that as children grow and themselves enter the labour force and become functional citizens of this country, you have to invest in their parents, and especially their mothers. I think that's clear.

The other point that I think is important to make, which we talked about in our presentation, is about low EI coverage now. Employment insurance used to be one of the really valuable routes into getting the kind of training that people needed. It wasn't just income replacement, but it allowed access to a whole range of other services that guaranteed that when you were out of a job you got the assistance you needed to help get back in and have those needs identified. And there was some regularity to that across the country. Now without that, with so few people qualifying for employment insurance, they don't get into other programs either. It's so easy to fall into welfare, and once you're there, it's so hard to get access to anything else, from literacy to skills upgrading to post-secondary education for your lifetime.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Can you give us an idea of what the impacts of these cuts might be on the ground in any one of our cities? Would that be too difficult?

[Wendy DesBrisay]

I asked--

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Because it's so difficult. We're trying to understand the impacts, and I think people in our ridings are trying to understand the impacts and how it's going to affect them, and they are worried and confused. So it would help me if you could share your thoughts on this.

[Wendy DesBrisay]

I'll tell you about Saskatchewan to start. I have some responses from most provinces. What we have heard from Saskatchewan is that after seventeen years of moving literacy forward in Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Literacy Network will likely be forced to close its doors.

In another place--I'm sorry, I really didn't have a place, but I brought a list of the things that will go down the tubes in Saskatchewan.

The support for programs for learners--this is at the coalition, and it is not teaching but more supports that allow them to go to class--is gone. They had a Learner Speakers’ Bureau, people they had trained, who went to speak in schools and to business groups that might donate money--people whose lives have been changed by literacy. So the speakers' bureau is gone.

Support for regional learner groups, which were peer groups where they could encourage each other to stay in school, is gone. Learner conference, gone. Professional development, gone. Training in family literacy is impacted. Training in understanding and respecting aboriginal culture, gone. I don't know exactly what that means for practitioners.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

You said training and family learner programs?

[Wendy DesBrisay]

It was in family literacy. I think that would be training practitioners to deliver specialized family literacy.

Another is research in practice, which is a term in our field that means we're learning to do research--practitioners are learning to examine their own work as they're doing it. It's part of learning to do evaluation and to develop systems of accountability, etc.

There are resource library services and support, implementation of literacy benchmarks, community literacy. It's development and support.

All previous work making great strides in literacy loses momentum and is in danger of falling off the radar. As the federal government--wrap it up? Okay.