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?