Thank you very much.
I almost feel as though I should title my presentation “And Now For Something Completely Different”.
As the title of our organization—the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network—indicates, my focus in speaking with you this afternoon will be literacy and essential skills.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present to you today and indicate that I find it very easy to address both of your study subjects, as they are so inherently connected. The foundation of strong literacy and essential skills is now absolutely necessary to enter the labour market at any level, and no workforce can acquire the skills without that foundation set of skills.
I'd like to point out that low job skills, as we used to know them, no longer exist. Most of them have really disappeared. Most of them have been automated in the last decade. The gap has occurred where we have not equipped those who have traditionally held those positions with the skills to continue to work in those positions. What's emerged is the fact that we have an ever-widening gap between high- and low-skilled Canadians.
On the internationally recognized scale of literacy and essential skills—and Canada was a participant in two separate studies, in collaboration with the OECD—level three has been established as the level Canada's workforce needs to function at in order to allow Canadian businesses to stay competitive in a national as well as a global context. I don't want to risk oversimplifying things, but on a scale of one to five, levels one and two are the levels you're at when you're learning to read and you're gaining your foundational skills. Once you attain skills and you're functioning at level three and up, instead of learning to read, you're reading to learn. So there is a transition in how you use those skills and how important they are to you. Requiring skills at level three is the case not only for the knowledge-based economy but really across all sectors of industry. Moving into the future, it is ever more evident that people need to continuously upgrade their skills.
The difficult reality we're facing as a nation—and I know this is perhaps not news to some of the committee members—is that 43% of Canadians have literacy levels below level three. As I just indicated, level three is that kind of cut-off point, such that if you have skills lower than level three, you have difficulty functioning.
In terms of numbers—because 43% is just a percentage of what?—this means that for 9.8 million adults in this country, according to the 2011 census, who are between the ages of 16 and 65, the ability to fully participate in life, community, and work is severely compromised.
Looking for a long-term approach and opportunities at this critical point in time, CLLN recently conducted research that explores the potential of an investment in adult literacy to reduce government and business expenditures on employment insurance, workers' compensation, and social assistance benefits. We compared literacy statistics, income and earnings statistics, and information about people in receipt of payments under those benefits programs, and we found a strong correlation that suggests that the lower your level of literacy, the more likely you are to have accessed these programs.
We'll be releasing a detailed analysis later this month, but here's a quick preview of some of the more striking findings.
It would cost $16 billion to increase literacy levels of all working age adults to level three. However, the return on this significant investment would be, in our view, rather compelling: individuals' earnings could rise, due to an increase in labour productivity, by as much as $83.9 billion annually.
Employment insurance, workers compensation, and social assistance payments could drop by as much as $2.917 billion annually. This combined annual increase in savings does not include government savings and increased revenue from income tax rolls.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has said that more people with advanced skills are needed for Canada to compete and prosper in a global, knowledge-based economy. In our opinion, you can't build a skilled labour force without the basic foundational literacies and essential skills. Investments in those with low skill levels will provide a long-term solution. Investments in raising the literacy and essential skills levels will provide a greater return on investment than moving people up between the higher levels and will ensure that more Canadians have what is needed to fill the skills gap.
To fulfill Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise that he made in Davos—namely, that the Canadian government will move ahead with “transformations necessary to sustain economic growth, job creation and prosperity now and for the next generation”—we need a pan-Canadian human capital strategy. This strategy must have the goal of a Canadian workforce with advanced skills at its centre, and that goal can only be built on a strong foundation of literacy and essential skills.
Thank you.