Human Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the study of employability in Canada will commence. I would like to take this time to welcome all our witnesses this morning. We've been travelling across the country to talk to people about employability issues. Earlier this week we were in St. John's, Newfoundland. We proceeded to Halifax, and then yesterday to Montreal. Now we're in Toronto for two days.

We'll start with Ms. Kennedy.

[Bonnie Kennedy, Executive Director, Canadian Association for Prior Learning Assessment]

Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bonnie Kennedy, and I am the executive director of the Canadian Association for Prior Learning Assessment. I would like to begin my remarks with two questions for panel members.

First of all, I would like to ask you to reflect upon your current skills and abilities and try remember whether you acquired them in school or learned them as a result of work and life experience.

The second question I would like to ask you to think about is an iceberg floating in the waters near St. John's, Newfoundland. Apparently only a small part of icebergs, perhaps 10% to 25%, can be seen by the naked eye. The rest is under water. If you could picture the iceberg and consider the visible part above the water as representing formal credentialed learning and the submerged part as representing experiential or informal learning, would you want to explore a process that helps adults uncover the submerged 75% of their hidden skills and abilities?

If your answer to the first question was that you learned from experience rather than school, and if you think Canada as a nation could make use of all the experiential learning hidden inside every Canadian, then you understand the premise upon which prior learning assessment and recognition is based.

Prior learning assessment and recognition--the acronym is PLAR, and I will continue to use that acronym--is the process of identifying, documenting, and evaluating informal learning acquired through work and life experience. It challenges the notion that the only learning that really counts is that which is taught in the classroom. PLAR is a bridging and transitioning tool that enables adults to continuously build on their past learning accomplishments and to have their learning recognized in the workplace, in academic institutions, and by occupational bodies.

Many Canadians have had the privilege of completing an apprenticeship, college program, or university program, but many more have not, because of financial difficulties, personal challenges, lack of interest during teenage years, and/or family responsibilities. Those without a credential often label themselves as “stupid” because they do not have a piece of paper to prove their competence.

Imagine what would happen if a PLAR process were readily available, so that people could prove their experiential learning by getting recognition and credit for what they already know and can do, thereby reducing the time and money required for credential completion. Imagine how useful it would be to an employer to have a PLAR system that could assist in determining levels of workplace competencies.

PLAR is an innovative system for measuring experiential learning and represents a significant departure from our traditional education and training systems, which have been designed primarily for children and youth. This is why PLAR needs your support and nurturing. Adults have a lifetime of learning experience, the value of which is significant for our economic growth and social cohesion; it is the hidden iceberg of adult learning, which can be uncovered through PLAR.

What is the Canadian Association for Prior Learning Assessment? CAPLA is a national incorporated not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to adult learning and to formal recognition of learning achievements by employers, colleges, universities, and occupational bodies. It has been operating since 1994 and undertakes PLAR research, professional development, workshops, and conferences; hosts online communities of practice; and assists practitioners, adults, and immigrants looking for ways to improve learning recognition assessment in Canada. We have over 300 members across the country and abroad.

How and when is prior learning assessment and recognition used? PLAR tools can be used by business and industry to determine what a person knows and can do when diplomas and degrees may not tell the whole story. Essential skills for the workplace can be demonstrated and measured in flexible yet rigorous ways using PLAR processes.

Sector councils use PLAR to assess competencies. Colleges and universities can use PLAR to determine if someone should receive academic credit for their experiential learning if it is considered to be equivalent to classroom learning.

Such academic credit for prior learning can dramatically affect the time and costs associated with obtaining credentials, thus making a return to formal learning more appealing. PLAR can also be used to assess workplace skills of immigrants to Canada and is an important addition to international credential assessment services available in a number of provinces in Canada.

Asking someone to demonstrate their knowledge and skills or to produce an evidence-based learning portfolio are effective ways of assessing prior learning. Learning portfolios have a variety of uses that include self-assessment, career planning, personal professional development, and preparation approved competencies for employment and job search. Wherever and whenever a standard is established, learning can be evaluated against the standard.

However, without a reliable prior learning assessment and recognition system in place, evaluation and recognition can be subjective, unreliable, and non-transferable.

Why is PLAR an important employability strategy for Canada? The recognition of prior learning is a critical component for the development of Canada's labour force and for capacity building in our communities. However, before we can utilize the existing knowledge and skills of our citizens and newcomers, we must discover what those competencies and talents are. Likewise, before working Canadians can increase their own employability, they must reflect, articulate, and document their knowledge skills and abilities, which takes time and effort.

What needs to happen? First, I think we need to ask some fundamental questions. Would Canada benefit from having a PLAR system and PLAR services to help mature Canadians and immigrants articulate and prove the depth of their learning? Is it enough to simply look at academic credentials alone as proof of learning? Can Canada afford to waste the knowledge and skills of its citizens at a time of skill shortages across the country, by not assessing and recognizing prior learning? Should adults be required to start at the beginning of a pro forma or university program each time they want to go back to formal learning?

If the answers to some of these questions are yes, the standing committee may want to consider the following suggestions: the development of a pan-Canadian adult learning assessment and recognition strategy; the establishment of national standards and guidelines for prior learning assessment, in order to ensure quality practice, transferability, and mobility; and the provision of core and targeted of funding for prior learning assessment and national leadership in this area.

Prior learning assessment services will enhance employability for the individual for the paid and unpaid labour force, and for Canada as a whole. Without it, we will be wasting our most valuable natural resources: the skills and knowledge of our citizens.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Kennedy.

So that you know, we did get your brief. When it is translated, it will get to all the members.

[Bonnie Kennedy]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Who is going to speak from the next group, Mr. Santacruz or Mr. Deenen?

[Victor Santacruz, Executive Director, Canadian Nursery Landscape Association]

I'll start.

Thank you, and good morning. My name is Victor Santacruz. I represent the Canadian Nursery Landscape Association.

I'll tell you a bit about our association. We're a not-for-profit ornamental horticultural association. We are the association in Canada. We represent over 3,300 member companies, and we date back to 1922.

As for our industry, we are part of the ornamental sector, representing nursery and floriculture. We are the nursery side, which is also the single largest sector in horticulture, with over 9,000 ornamental products, representing a farm gate of over $2.1 billion annually. Our sector provides value-added dollars, so at the consumer level it's estimated that we represent over $12 billion of the Canadian economy.

Our industry has absolutely no government production subsidies, and we employ over 200,000 people. We're also the fastest-growing sector in agriculture, growing over 8.7% annually over the past few years.

To put it briefly, a lot of things that our industry does are because green matters, and we like to use that tag line because we're also an environmental group. We do a lot of greenscaping, landscaping, and because of that we are a seasonal industry; there's no doubt about it.

Our industry does not look for government handouts. We look for solutions, with deliverables that are of benefit to the industry and to Canada, so we ask for everything that we do to be inclusive of our industry. So we appreciate the opportunity to talk here today.

As has been communicated to our association by industry and its members, employment insurance is a big issue for us. We believe employment insurance does not adequately handle the seasonality of the nursery and landscape industry. Qualified seasonal workers are often encouraged to look elsewhere, in non-seasonal industries. We desire to work with government to find win-win-win relationships for our industry, government, and our employees.

We don't put blame on the EI offices. We understand that they're working with a system, that they're doing their job, but ultimately it does not serve well our industry or our members or, again, the employees either.

It has been a common occurrence for industry to communicate to us that local EI offices are suggesting to seasonal workers that they find employment in other industries that can offer year-round employment. This short-sighted action has exacerbated the labour shortage for industry and led to more industry frustration and discontent.

We feel that EI should encourage improved training and communication with our industry to ensure that skills of these workers are elevated in order to encourage and improve synergies with other industries that directly or indirectly benefit from our economic impact. There is a more progressive policy than simply encouraging both skilled and unskilled labour to seek employment elsewhere.

We have worked with government in the past to create education and industry certification programs to better train our workforce and increase the professionalism of our industry. Over 10 years ago, we worked together with the Horticulture Human Resource Council and our industry to develop a certified horticultural technical program, which is a Canadian and American industry certification program that further develops the skills of our workforce. This program is still in existence today and it is growing annually. It is a positive example of how industry and government can work together to accomplish and further the goals of improving human resources in Canada. Our association has a proven track record of being able to work effectively with government in a constructive way to create mutual benefits.

Regarding labour shortages, again we've been trying to be proactive in raising the level of professionalism within the industry through our certification programs and have also been doing work in communicating to high schools, colleges, and universities to try to improve input into our industry. Yet we continue to face these labour shortages and a diminishing labour pool due to external forces, including EI practices.

One of the things we're dealing with right now in specific areas, such as Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, are certain labour shortages, specifically due to some of the construction boom that has created a demand for labour and cannot simply be met by our industry. This situation will ultimately slow us down, and that economic impact will affect others. We would like the HRSDC to create a nursery and landscape association labour market opinion in order to facilitate the industry to access foreign unskilled labour to address our short-term seasonality concerns. We recommend that this be done over a two-year process or a two-year time span in order to review the effectiveness of this.

We also feel that it would be of great assistance to us if we could work with government to help move people from areas such as Newfoundland, where they face high unemployment, to areas such as Alberta. Again, we need assistance with that. We're not looking for financial assistance, we're looking for solutions, and that is one of the things we request.

The bottom line is that that's my little spiel for now. I'll pass it over to Harold, and he will give some specific examples, because he is in the industry and can tell you how some of these issues have affected his company personally and those of some of his colleagues in our industry.

[Harold Deenen, Co-Chair, Human Resource Committee, Canadian Nursery Landscape Association]

Thank you, Dean. I'll keep it really short.

I am a contractor here in the city of Toronto, and I also serve as the human resource chair for the CNLA. I can't add a whole lot to what our executive director, Victor, has already said—and he has done a great job. I can tell you that we are a very progressive group.

I would point out that we're the only group in agriculture that collects and remits millions and millions of dollars of GST every year, so we're not looking for a handout. What we're looking for is some cooperation with HRSDC, and we're looking to try to see if we can work with the seasonality issues.

I know that both this government and the former government were looking for ways of dealing with the seasonality problems, but I think we need to be a bit more aggressive. We need to start doing a little bit more training. Rather than trying to push people into year-round occupations that don't serve any of us, we need to start working at training these people in the off-season so that they become more employable, so that they make more money, so that it's a win-win-win situation.

Thank you.

[Victor Santacruz]

I'd like to further add to that. We have some members in Alberta, and I bring their example because they're the ones who have been bringing the majority of concerns to us. They don't have any employees right now. Some of their garden centres, some of their landscape companies, and some of their nurseries actually aren't operating in some cases.

Some of them have gone out of their way to pay over $5,000 to bring in a foreign worker for twelve months, and sometimes eight months, just to do the job. We have a lot of people in Canada who can do this work, and obviously we want Canada first. We have areas of high unemployment, so why not bring those people to other areas? Why not facilitate it?

The problem is that they're not there. Even the national association is bringing in a foreign worker. I'm not from here and...I'm joking; I am from here. But it's almost that bad, people. I make light of it, but it's true.

We are facing real issues, and a lot of our industry members are getting very frustrated because, again, we don't ask for handouts. It has never been a tradition for our industry. We are very entrepreneurial, and our only request is that we work together with government to find solutions. There are real problems, and people are going out of business, which obviously doesn't help anyone.

We're even thinking of doing work fairs in other provinces to try to facilitate this, but alone, as a not-for-profit association, we cannot accomplish this. We're looking for some solutions and some help and, again, to work together.

That's it for us. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Santacruz and Mr. Deenen.

We're going to move to Mr. O'Leary.

[John O'Leary, President, Frontier College]

It's good to see you, Mr. Allison. Thank you. And thank you, members of the committee, for giving me this opportunity to present to you.

I was originally a teacher. I'm now president of Frontier College.

Frontier College is Canada's original literacy program. It was founded here in Ontario in 1899 by a group of students and teachers from Queen's University who wanted to make education available to workers in the frontier settlements of Canada at that time. They sent university students to work, live, and teach in mining camps, to rail gangs, and in logging operations right across the country.

Our heritage as an organization has always been to work with people who are in some way disadvantaged, and to help them to improve their situation and their future through access to literacy and education. Today, we recruit and train over 5,000 volunteers across the country. We work from 50 chapters at Canadian universities. If you go to our website, frontiercollege.ca, you'll be able to see where those chapters are.

I'm here today to talk to you about the links between employability and literacy. I've written a very short brief, because I think the connections are obvious to all of you and to all of us, and they're connections that you understand.

We know that a significant number of adults in Canada have serious literacy problems. Between 15% and 20% of Canadian adults aged 16 and out of school have difficulty dealing with almost any kind of print material. The impact of that problem at the workplace is very evident.

A further 22% of adults have some difficulty in coping with literacy skills in everyday life and work. We know that people with low literacy skills are twice as likely to be unemployed as those with higher skills.

We also know there are other impacts. Those with lower literacy skills, according to the Canadian Public Health Association, are among the least healthy Canadians.

And illiteracy is a serious problem with some of the most disadvantaged people in our country. For instance, among aboriginal people, the rates of illiteracy are particularly high.

We also know that support for literacy leads to clear economic benefits. There was a study done by the University of Ottawa just last year that shows that a rise of 1% in literacy scores relative to the international average will lead to a 2.5% rise in labour productivity and a 1.5% rise in GDP per capita.

In a recent study, the Conference Board of Canada told us that employers who implement literacy in the workplace programs gain productivity, reduce errors, have a higher quality of work, gain accuracy—which is crucial in ISO certification—and a range of improvements and performance, have better health and safety for employees, and ultimately experience increased profitability.

Workers who have higher literacy rates also obviously benefit. Again according to the Conference Board, they estimate that a male and a female with higher literacy skills may be expected to earn an additional $585,000 and $683,000 respectively over a lifetime, compared to a counterpart with lower literacy skills.

In my brief, I also made reference to the connection between literacy skills and other matters that are of concern to you as parliamentarians: the connection between literacy and health, which I referred to; literacy and access to justice in our courtrooms; and literacy and democracy, in terms of being able to read and understand the print material that each of you gives to your constituents, that each of your parties prepares in your platforms. So literacy is a key feature of our democratic system.

In conclusion, what needs to be done? In a nutshell, I've been a literacy advocate and instructor for more than thirty years. We need to increase the number of Canadians who are taking literacy instruction. There is a literacy infrastructure in place across our country. Most adult literacy students are attending classes in colleges or school board programs. The second largest number are involved with voluntary community-based organizations like Frontier College. Our workplace programs at Frontier College are in place among some of the workers you are examining in this committee process. We work a lot with seasonal workers, farm workers, migrant farm workers, and domestic workers, and we've done a lot of work with hospitality and service workers in places like this hotel.

As an example, we're starting a new program out west with cab drivers who want to improve their literacy skills or perhaps finish high school. These are people who work 10 to 12 hours a day and six or seven days a week. They're not able to go to a more formal program, so groups like Frontier College organize informal programs to reach people who are most in need.

What I would request the committee to consider is that you support the idea of a Canada-wide literacy action plan, with the financial resources required to teach one million Canadians over the next 10 years. I was a member of a group of educators from across the country last year--the chair, Mr. Allison, and I spoke about this--and we actually prepared a 10-year action plan and presented it to the last government just before the election was called.

We urgently need a plan in this country to implement and provide the appropriate resources to teach and reach a significant number of these adults. The good news is that we know how to do it. We, being Canadian educators, know how to do it. We're simply reaching too few people.

Stephen Lewis gave a speech a little while ago about the AIDS crisis, and I think his comment is applicable to the literacy situation. He said we need fewer people doing studies and more people studying.

The literacy issue has been examined and analyzed over and over again. We need to move the conversation forward and, as I said, scale up the number of Canadians who are engaged in literacy programs at the workplace, in the community, and in our formal education system.

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. O'Leary.

I know that when we have chatted before, I've been very impressed with the work that Frontier College has been doing. As we ask questions, I think you will probably provide some great examples of how we can move literacy ahead.

We're going to move forward now with the first round of questions.

Mr. D'Amours, seven minutes, please.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I'd like to thank you for travelling here to make a presentation to us. I come from a rural area in northern New Brunswick. So I understand that it's a fairly difficult task for you to come here, with the traffic there is in Toronto. So I want to thank you for coming.

I'd like to talk with Mr. Deenen and Mr. Santacruz on the issue of seasonal jobs. We talk about seasonal employees, but in fact it's the jobs that are seasonal. I'd like your comment on the need to try to train people so they can work throughout the year. Yes, we can dream. Yes, we can hope to do that, but the reality is quite different. There isn't really any magic solution.

When you train someone so that he can work year-round, he'll probably leave the seasonal work place to go and work indoors. That means that the small businesses in the industry you represent — and perhaps there are some bigger ones — will find it hard to retain their employees. When you get into this situation, what happens the following year? You have to start over and find new employees to fill their positions. In addition, you have to train those new employees because this is a new job for them. So that becomes a problem.

I'd like to hear what you have to say on those two points. You say the employment insurance system has to be improved. In the last Parliament, with my government, I implemented the best weeks policy. That concerned the 14 best weeks of the 52 previous weeks during which people had worked. Instead of taking the last weeks, we took into account the best 14 weeks in the previous year. That was applied in the regions where the unemployment rate was high, where it was 10% or more.

First, in your view, would it be important for this initiative that was implemented in 2005 to be applied nationally in order to help industries such as yours, to allow them to keep their employees and not to penalize employees because their work ends?

Second, since the start of the new Parliament, I have introduced a private member's bill on the elimination of the two qualifying weeks in the context of the employment insurance system. Do you believe that could help you retain your present employees over the next few years?

[Harold Deenen]

I'm sorry, I'm not bilingual, so I will answer in English.

With respect to the seasonality issue, you raised some important points. The pilot program you have in place now—the best 14 weeks—is a good step. I think we need to move forward with that.

In answer to your question, we have been trying to connect with winter-oriented companies so that we can try to share labour. We've been working on that the last few years. We have not had a great deal of success, because there's an overlap period in which both employers require the services. So there's been only limited success. We are working on it, though.

Second, we need to accept that we live in Canada. There are seasonal businesses here, and that will never change. It's difficult for us to plant trees in the middle of the winter. Most contractors employ a number of their core people year-round, and those people are the best trained, the most educated, the ones who have worked hardest. What we need to do is broaden that base. We need to get more people who are educated, certified, and have an understanding of what they're doing, so that they are more employable in our industry. We need to get EI to push those people into training during the winter months, as opposed to putting them into year-round employment. Make them better employees. Make them more employable. Then they'll make more money. We've been working with certification pilot programs for 14 years—ever since we worked with HRSDC on that report.

[Victor Santacruz]

I can add to that. I think you managed to answer the question very directly. Yes, it would help, but it's a short-term solution for us.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Do you mean the two-week waiting period?

[Victor Santacruz]

I mean the two-week wait time, and also the 14 weeks. It's a short-term solution for us. Of course it would help, but it would help us more if, during the times they are on EI, they weren't encouraged to leave the industry. I think that's a more important point. We are seasonal. Fishing, planting trees, cutting lawns—it's not going to happen in the winter. We are in Canada and we have to expect, and embrace, a cold nature. We just can't work during that time.

Our industry has been proactive on this. We've been tossing around a few ideas—hour pooling, banking hours. All of them, though, have been on an ad hoc basis. I think these things need to be explored more. They are short-term solutions. They would definitely help us, but in the long term, we need to be progressive and look at solutions that will benefit everyone, including the EI system. We don't want to be draining it. We're entrepreneurs, and we want to find ways that will benefit everyone, including our employees and our companies. We have the core people who stay. But how do we keep everyone else, especially the unskilled labour? It's easier for them to leave for another industry if they're encouraged to do so. That's the question we have to answer: how we keep the lower level? What you said is true: continuous training really makes a difference.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Not everybody across the country understands the reality. As you said, Mr. Deenen, we cannot plant trees during the winter. We cannot fish in downtown Toronto. That's the reality. But not everybody understands. Still, everybody wants fish and everybody wants to buy 2x4s to build houses. Some have a problem understanding that we need these industries to make sure everybody is able to have a better quality of life.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. D'Amours.

Madame Bonsant.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I represent a very rural riding, which includes a municipality of 112 inhabitants, who live an hour and a quarter from the largest town, which has 6,700 inhabitants.

One thing shocks me a great deal. Every time I go into big cities, I get the feeling you always want to empty the countryside in order to fill up the cities. It's true that there are people between 45 and 55 years of age who lose their jobs and who have spent their lives in their rural community. Do you sincerely believe they want to leave everything and leave rural Quebec to go to Alberta for one year, two years or three years? No.

Messrs. Deenen and Santacruz, I'm going to ask you a question. In Quebec, we have a training school called CRIFA. It's a school specialized in agriculture, nursery work, landscaping and so on. I want to know whether that exists outside Quebec. That's a somewhat odd question, but I want to know whether you have similar schools. If so, do you recruit at those schools?

Furthermore, if there are schools, are they far from the city? Are they in rural areas? Are young people ready to move?

Apart from that, in Quebec, in the employment insurance field, we have a system that's called Emploi-Québec. Employment insurance claimants go to this centre, where positions are always posted. Emploi-Québec pays for training for those who want to change careers.

I want you to tell me especially about your nursery system. One of my friends has one. Physically, it's very tough, and I admire her, because I wouldn't do that. I don't think someone 62 years of age can start planting very heavy trees. You have to be very solid physically and very strong to be able to work in that field. It's very tough.

I don't know whether I've asked too many questions. I await your answers.

[Victor Santacruz]

Starting off with the agricultural and nursery colleges, we have a few. Olds College, in Alberta, is just outside Calgary. We have Guelph University for agriculture and nursery programs, and the rest are colleges within Toronto. But most of them tend to be rural or semi-rural, not towns of 6,000 or 7,000 people, and again not a metropolis like the Greater Toronto Area.

It's tough getting people to study agriculture and horticulture. It's not perceived by youth to be a glamorous career, or a career. A lot of people want to be doctors or lawyers, and they aren't necessarily looking at the trades. The trades have become a dirty word. It's unfortunate, because the trades are a very respectable business and are very profitable for most people who stick with it.

Hopefully that answers the question.

With regard to jobs in Quebec, you made a good point. It is tough work, and a lot of people don't like doing it. A lot of Canadians don't like doing it. I think the agriculture sector has also seen that. It's why the foreign worker program has worked well for them. Again, I think it's a short-term solution.

You were right when you said people who are 62 years of age won't go to work in a nursery, but we'd welcome them to come and work at a garden centre. I think someone who's 62 years old or even older would provide the customer service that we need. If they would only look at our industry as a possibility, we'd love to have them.

[Harold Deenen]

Further on the colleges, we are working within our association with what we call the TDAs or the training delivery agencies.

There's Humber College. As an example, the North Campus teaches landscape technology, and there are about six or seven jobs that are waiting for every single graduate. There's Fanshawe College, and Olds, as you mentioned. There's Kwantlen College in British Columbia. They're available. The employment is there. There is a huge demand for these people. I believe it's 6:1 or something, six jobs for every one person that comes out, and we need a lot more people.

It's funny that you mentioned older people. I just hired a 65-year-old gentleman who had some nursery experience. He used to work for Sheridan Nurseries, and he loves working outside. He tried working inside when he retired, the whole bit, but he now works for me and just loves it. He's on a maintenance crew, which is tough work all day long, but he loves it. He isn't as productive as some of the younger ones, but neither am I.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Santacruz, as I said earlier, in my riding, there's an agriculture and nursery school. That school has been in existence for 15 years. Last year, it was expanded because increasing numbers of young people are studying in the agricultural and nursery field, as you say. There may not be a lot of people who have farms in Toronto or Calgary, but in my neck of the woods, in the Eastern Townships, that's increasingly developing: farms are increasingly being transferred to girls, more than boys. Back home, we don't exactly have that problem. That's not the problem; the problem is literacy. These are people isolated in rural areas and they need to learn to read and write.

Mr. O'Leary, I wouldn't want you to get involved in politics, but what damage will the cuts that the Conservative government has made in literacy programs do in your area? You know that has been considerably cut. I want to know what the impact of this cut in literacy programs that enabled people to enter or re-enter the labour market will be in your field.

[John O'Leary]

I regret that the government made that decision. I've met with Mr. Allison and some of his colleagues; in terms of literacy policy, I know the government is aware of the importance of literacy. As I said, I'm very eager to work with them to move ahead and to look at a major, significant initiative in our country, and I know my colleagues are too.

The infrastructure in place right now is modest. It is not reaching as many people as it needs to. As I said, I regret that the cuts were made, but I do agree that we need to reorganize the literacy infrastructure in this country, because we're not getting the results we need.

I'm eager to work with the government and with the members of Parliament. I was in British Columbia yesterday, talking to the Minister of Education there. The provinces obviously play a major role, and I think it's important that we look ahead at designing something new--something more effective than, and with more capacity than, the existing infrastructure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Madame Bonsant and Mr. O'Leary.

Mr. Martin is next, for seven minutes, please.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

I have a few questions. One is for Bonnie. On the prior learning and assessment, I agree with you. I think it's a really valuable and necessary service that we need to provide.

You mentioned the need for core and targeted funding. What kind of funding are you getting now, and from where, and how much are you talking about in terms of core and targeted funding?