Thank you.
My name is Sharon Manson Singer, and I'm the president of the Canadian Policy Research Networks. Dr. Ron Saunders is with me today, and Ron is our director of the work network.
In the next seven to eight minutes, I'd like to tell you a little about our organization. I'd like to share with you some facts from our recent work on Too Many Left Behind. I'd then like to tell you a couple of stories about what it means to be left behind and how we solve our problems in Canada.
First of all, CPRN is an independent, non-profit policy research think tank. We think about what Canadians need, talk to Canadians about what Canadians want, and then share that information with governments at all levels. We're delighted to be here today and are very pleased that we were asked. We think we have some important things to share with you, and we are willing to help you as you proceed to do your work.
Our mission is to create knowledge and lead public debate on social and economic issues that are important to Canadians. We do that by looking at areas that are very important to Canadians: work obviously is a central concern; family issues; health; and public involvement, or the whole area of democracy and how Canadians can become involved.
As Shirley already mentioned, the work network participates on the steering committee of the Work and Learning Knowledge Centre, which is a partnership program.
Let me share with you some pretty shocking facts.
First of all, nine million Canadians of working age do not have basic levels of literacy; nine million Canadians of working age do not have basic levels of literacy in order to be productive and to live and work in today's society. It's a shocking statistic. Canada is far below other nations, as measured through the OECD. There are 3.7 million Canadians aged 25 to 64 who don't have high school diplomas or high school credentials. Without those credentials and without that basic level of literacy, they are condemned to low-wage jobs, jobs of lower status, and fewer learning opportunities.
We don't give Canadians who don't do it right the first time on a high school diploma a very good take on a second chance. It's very hard for them to break out of this difficult labour market position, where they do not have the opportunities that you would want for your children, your family members, and the mothers and fathers of our next generation.
Let me tell you what it looks like for a couple of people. Let me give you three kinds of case examples.
Let's talk about Pedro. Pedro is 29 years old. He's been working for the last eight years in a unionized manufacturing plant. He's had a good job and a good wage, and he's been safe and secure. He's also eligible for employment insurance. He has now learned that his job is gone. The plant is closed and they're packing up shop and moving out of Canada. What happens to Pedro, who is left behind?
He's actually in a pretty good position because he receives employment insurance. Because he's receiving employment insurance, he's eligible for many of the federal programs that will help him build skills or change his skill sets and move on to others, but he finds it difficult to access the services. There's no centralized hotline where he can find what he needs and get information about where he wants to go. It's hard for him, but he is going to be supported.
Let's look at Debbie. Debbie is 25 years old. She's in a minimum wage job in the retail industry. She's a service worker and has been working for the last four years. She has a seven-year-old daughter, and she's really worried about her future. Debbie would like to do better in life and she'd like to move ahead. She has a grade 11 education, and she's missing some of math and science courses. She'd thinks that she'd really like to do better. She'd like to become a medical technician or a nurse, and she'd like to move ahead.
She probably has a long road ahead of her because, in fact, her investment in her own human capital is pretty weak to start with and she doesn't have a high school education. She's going to have a long road ahead of her in terms of trying to support herself and her child while she tries to get into a professional degree-granting school where she can make a real contribution. As you know, we certainly need health care workers in this country. There's a chronic shortage of them. We would want Debbie to be encouraged to train and go forward with that kind of work.
How well is it going to work for her? Again, she is faced with the kinds of financial disincentives that make it really difficult for her to access the kind of support she's going to need to make sure that her daughter is safe and secure while she invests in her education. It looks like Debbie is probably going to be forced into a personal loan in order to make it forward. In a minimum-wage job, the risk factors for her are significant if she wants to try to invest in her education. That is a hardship that is a barrier for this person who is trying to make a difference.
I'm going to tell you one more story, and then I'm going to talk a little about what access looks like across the country.
How about Nadja? Nadja is 33 years old. She's been unemployed, and right now she's on social assistance. She's been working as a cleaner and has a grade 10 education. She hasn't been in school, as you might guess, for some time. She's done nothing to invest in further education, and she hasn't been encouraged by the cleaning companies that she's worked with to upgrade her literacy skills or further her education. She left high school when she was 16, and she's been gone for a long time.
What does it look like for Nadja? How is she going to upgrade her skills and get some opportunities for herself through her own investment in human capital? Again, Nadja is looking at some support because she's on social assistance. Most provinces across the country will support persons on income assistance to take basic levels of literacy. In fact, Ontario mandates that persons on income assistance must move forward to raise their basic level of literacy, but it's a patchwork system, and it's inconsistent across the country. Also, unless her worker is dedicated in helping her find the resources she needs, it's going to be very difficult for Nadja to understand and navigate the adult learning system in any way that makes sense.
What we can say about what has happened in Canada to give these adult workers a second chance is that most provinces have launched important initiatives to improve their adult education systems. Adult education systems remain very complex, fragmented, and incomplete. Websites are the most frequently used method for obtaining information, and they're difficult and complex to navigate. In particular, we're talking about people with low levels of literacy, for whom information on websites is not easily accessible.
We see a lot of gaps. There are gaps in the coordination and the counselling services that are available to help guide our adult learners back into the education system. Certainly financial aid is very complex and difficult to obtain and, in some cases, truly not available through government sources, but only through private ones. Employer support and government investments have been low, particularly on the employer side. Canada, again, stands below average in terms of OECD countries with respect to our employer investment in worker training.
We know that when we lift the level of literacy of our adult workers up from the bottom, productivity greatly increases as a result of that push upwards. Lifting from below makes a real difference in terms of the productivity levels for Canada. That effort at the bottom lifts the entire level significantly, and it makes a bigger difference than does investing in more advanced training for our more highly skilled workers. Raising the bottom makes a big difference.
We'd like to recommend that you adopt a vision for an adult learning system, which would be that no one will leave school without a minimum set of employability skills. As adults, they'd have a decent second chance to both enhance their basic skills and to maintain, transform, and make a difference in them over a lifelong course.
We'd like to say that adults should have easy-to-access and easy-to-understand information about adult learning opportunities--it's hard to learn how to be better if you can't find out how to get there--that we would provide the supports and counselling that is necessary, and that the supports are coordinated. One-stop shopping is really a way to think about making it easier. We recommend that the skills development of workers, particularly our lower level workers, are considered important and worthwhile investments. If you think about it in terms of lifting the boat, we lift the productivity for all of Canada.
Now, how are we going to get there? I think one of the things we can talk about is beginning with a policy framework that's built around a right to learn. And if we think about the way we treat our elementary school system and our high school system, we have a basic right to education, but once you leave high school, and even if you leave high school without your diploma, there is never again a system in place that really offers truly a right to learn. What's Pedro going to do? How about Nadja? And what about Debbie? How are we going to support those people to make the kind of contribution that they should be making to Canadian society?
We need to look at our financial support programs, as they are now really built for children who are leaving home for the first time and entering post-secondary education. They are not built around the idea of adult learners with families who are going back to school. Most of the financial aid programs require that you diminish all of your assets--in other words, taking away those RESPs that you've saved for your child's education, the RRSPs that you've saved for your pension investment. Our financial aid system does not appreciate all the things that we in Canada encourage our workers to do, and it will actually tell people to diminish themselves rather than build them up.
Our government financial aid programs are opposite to the way we think about our private sector approaches. In the private sector, if you've got lots of assets, they're willing to give you lots of money. What we say to our people when we're telling them to apply for government financial aid is, diminish all of your assets and we'll finally give you something. So I think that in terms of adult learners making rational choices about investing in their own human capital, they're looking at the barriers that they have for their families, and that's a very significant barrier to making that kind of investment.
We think it's important that we invest in basic skills training and that government does that. We think that's a valuable and important investment in basic skills training.
Finally—and this is, I think, a plea from Nadja, Debbie, and Pedro—please can we have a coordinated approach, somewhere where it's easy for me to navigate and to make a difference.
We've left you some material, and there are certainly some charts and statistics in your packages this morning, but I really want to give you an opportunity to meet some of the Canadians who are affected by the lack of coordination and opportunities to access adult learning and to talk a little about what that means for us as a country.
I want to say thank you very much and also to say, as my friend and colleague Shirley has, that we're here to help you. If we can be of service to you as you proceed with your work, we will be delighted to give you whatever service we are able to, and particularly in our expertise around adult learning and other areas related to work and our policies there.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.