Mr. Speaker, this is Freedom to Read Week and tomorrow is Literacy Action Day.
Books, newspapers and magazines are instruments of freedom. That is why I urge all Canadians to celebrate Freedom to Read Week and Literacy Action Day.
This year Freedom to Read Week will be celebrated in libraries, bookstores and schools in Peterborough and across Canada in a variety of ways. Libraries create displays of books that have been censored or challenged over the years. Schools feature classroom discussions on censorship.
The freedom of expression committee believes that freedom to read is essential to the democratic way of life and essential to the democratic process. To be able to read one has to be literate. Literacy Action Day sponsors include Frontier College, the Movement for Canadian Literacy and ABC Canada. The slogan of one of its sponsors is each one teach one.
The efforts of these groups to promote literacy and reading are particularly timely this year because of the government's efforts to protect our publishers—