We've been asking this ourselves, those of us who've been in workplace literacy for the last twenty years. It has always been difficult to get employers to the table, even when you show the investments.
One thing we would suggest--and this came out of the round tables--is to look at the 1% training levy in Quebec as a way of providing a pool of funds. Employers there have to spend 1% of their payroll on training, and if they don't, it goes into a fund. Some of that is also for literacy. That would be really worth investigating for the rest of Canada as a strategy.