Mr. Speaker, today is Literacy Action Day. Since 1990, the Year of International Literacy, government, business, labour and voluntary sectors have been working together to find ways to solve this problem.
The Canadian Commission for UNESCO's International Literacy Year's objective is to eradicate illiteracy by the year 2000.
Despite ongoing struggles as many as 963 million people, 26.9 per cent of the world's people, remain illiterate. Thirty-eight per cent of Canadian adults have some difficulty dealing with the reading requirements of everyday life.
I would like to pay tribute to three organizations in my riding who are fighting relentlessly against illiteracy. They are the Haitian community action and social affairs centre, the Villeray literacy centre known as La Jarnigoine, and the new immigrants' centre known as Le Centre N-A Rivé.
Education is the key to freedom. Let us continue to work together to eliminate illiteracy.