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.