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.