Human Resources committee  My name is François Nault. I am the Director of the Centre for Education Statistics.

Human Resources committee  Yes, we look at a number of characteristics of those people. In fact, we're doing a special study of those Canadians who are at a lower literacy, and we will have the results in the fall. I think they concentrated more on the older population. The study surveyed people who are 16

Human Resources committee  First of all, I think last November we released data that showed the dropout rate from high school has been dropping in Canada. We often hear stories about dropouts, but when you look at the statistics, the dropout rates have been declining in the last 10 years. On that front, I

Human Resources committee  You're right, there were conflicting statistics when we released our statistics. What we looked at was the proportion of 20- to 24-year-olds who have high school diplomas. In Ontario I think it's 9% or 10%. The 30% statistics that you are referring to, in my mind, refer to the pr

Human Resources committee  That is a good question. I don't think we have completely finished studying the relationship among immigrants, literacy and employability. The literacy assessment we conducted was in Canada's official languages — that is, English and French. However, there is no doubt that most i

Human Resources committee  That is a good question. Unfortunately, I cannot provide an answer. We would have to track immigrants as they learn the language to determine whether they find it easier to enter the labour market, or not. I think that we could conduct studies on this. At present, a number of aca

Human Resources committee  I can give you my opinion, and then Alain can give you more details. One of the slides shows all possible sources of employees. Immigration is one of the major sources. However, if people who reach retirement age remain on the labour market, or if we can increase employment amon

Human Resources committee  We do not have those figures, but about 5 per cent of workers have more than one job. The phenomenon is not very widespread. It is not a high percentage.

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. You are quite right.

Human Resources committee  That's a good question. I don't have the chart in front of me, but there are only six to seven countries on that chart. Those are the countries that have done the survey in 2003. It's the second time the survey has been conducted internationally, I guess. The first time was in 19

Human Resources committee  Well, we would have hoped to have gains. There are not enough countries now to really situate Canada, but hopefully there's a second wave of that survey that will take place this year. There will be five to six additional countries that will run an identical survey, so we'll be

Human Resources committee  Graphs have been around for a long time. They show, for example, the relationship between the unemployment rate and level of education. I will send you the graph. Four levels of education are very clearly distinguished: people who have a university degree, people who have another

Human Resources committee  I could send you several studies on that topic. In fact, both participation rates and program completion rates vary according to people's socio-economic level. That is true for aboriginals. I have the impression that there are also nuances based on access. However, the results ar

Human Resources committee  It is 42 per cent for all people between the ages of 16 and 65.

Human Resources committee  I believe it was a percentage.