Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 18 - Evidence - February 16, 2007
OTTAWA, Friday, February 16, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 9:05 a.m. to examine the future of literacy programs in Canada, the consolidation of federal funding and the role of literacy organizations in promoting education and employment skills in Canada.
Senator Art Eggleton, P.C. (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I call to order this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
[Translation]
I am very happy to tell you that 14 organizations are here today. All regions of Canada are represented. There are also organizations representing Aboriginals and some people are here as individuals.
[English]
Welcome to Ottawa and thank you for coming on short notice. Last week, this committee held public hearings on literacy programs and we heard from department officials. We heard from national literacy organizations and from learners themselves. Those witnesses provided us with information on the future of literacy programs in Canada, the consolidation of federal funding that occurred last year and the role of literacy organization in promoting education and employment skills.
Today, in a round table discussion, the committee will get additional information from literacy organizations that operate on a provincial and territorial level.
Before getting into your presentations, I should like to introduce our colleagues. I am Senator Art Eggleton, a senator from Toronto. With me is Senator Cochrane from Newfoundland and Labrador. Senator Trenholme Counsell, a former Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, has been a senator for several years. I see Senator Rompkey, also from Newfoundland and Labrador. Senator Chaput is from Manitoba. Senator Joyce Fairbairn is also here. Senator Fairbairn was the proponent in our dealing with the matter in terms of a motion in the Senate, which then give the committee the mandate to look further. Senator Mercer is from Nova Scotia,. Senator Carstairs is here as well, giving us two representatives from Manitoba. Finally, Senator Harb is an Ontario senator.
To each of the organizations around the table, as I call upon you to speak, I would ask you to say a little bit about your organization. As you have been told in advance, we want to hear about the types of programs currently being offered to learners in your province or territory, how accessible the programs are, whether they are able to meet current demand, whether they are tailored to meet the needs of Aboriginal people, where the funding comes from and what conditions are attached.
We also want to hear about, first, whether the ability of your literacy organizations to work collaboratively with the federal government has been affected by the literacy funding changes that were announced September 25 of last year and, second, whether your organization have been affected by the restructuring of various components of literacy in the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. If these have affected you, how have they affected you?
How might the September 2006 spending reductions affect program operations in the future and, if this committee, after it has heard from you, as it has heard from others in its last two meetings, were to make recommendations to the government regarding what it did in September, what might the recommendations be? What would you suggest as the way forward, the kind of recommendations that we can make to the government that, it is hoped, will have a positive impact on the work that you do?
We have decided for the sake of providing some structure to our discussions to split our time today in two parts. In the first part, we will hear from the different organizations and, as our time is limited, I would ask that you keep your presentations to five minutes.
Once everyone has had an opportunity to speak, we will move on to questions from committee members and get into a general dialogue around the table.
I will first call upon someone who also wants to make some general remarks on behalf of some other organizations, and that is Ms. Janet Lane.
Janet Lane, Executive Director, Literacy Alberta: I have been asked to speak on behalf of my colleagues from coalitions that are members of Movement for Canadian Literacy — MCL — in order to provide general background, so that we do not reiterate too much from each other and overlap.
We are representatives of the thousands of literacy programs offered across this across this country, and therefore of all the learners, the teachers and the practitioners involved in learning and working in those programs. Each coalition works in its own way to meet the needs and the goals of each province and territory, so we all do different things in our own work but there is also commonality in the work that we do. We are autonomous from each other and yet we work together. We form the backbone of literacy across this country. Others are involved in the work and, as you see here today, there are other organizations besides the ones involved in MCL — and you have heard from other members and other organizations in previous weeks.
As a coalition of coalitions, we are the framework for literacy across the country. My colleagues will tell you of their individual work in the next few minutes. We work together to further the work of literacy through our work and involvement with MCL. The information and knowledge that flows back and forth through MCL is crucial to our work and crucial to MCL, in that they are able to access our information and know what we are doing.
As you will hear, we do slightly different work partly because literacy is funded and handled differently in each province. However, we are doing some similar things. We are involved in research. We create and disseminate new knowledge about literacy in all its forms. We develop resources. We are involved in the creation of curriculum for learners and tutors, as well as professionals working in the field. We develop tutor tools and resources. We offer extended learning opportunities for learners, including providing opportunities for them to network together.
For example, some of us have speaker bureaus for learners, who can then learn to eloquently tell their stories and create awareness of it or issues of literacy. I know that you heard from four learners last week, some of whom may have been involved in a speakers bureau in the past. Who could not be moved by the stories you heard last week?
We provide professional development for literacy practitioners. This is probably one of the most important pieces of work we do. Many of us have been in the forefront in developing and implementing curriculum to professionalize the field, which, as you will know, started off as a grassroots thing.
We connect learners to program supports and services through our help lines, plain language training, education and awareness programs, and more. We create awareness of literacy issues, as a health, justice, equity, poverty and productivity issue, as well as an issue of education.
We talk to employers, agencies, community support workers, and educate them in ways to assist their low-literate clients. Therefore, we are probably one of the biggest sources of information regarding issues of literacy in the country.
Coalitions have been around for about 20 years. There are so many things that have been accomplished, but some of the highlights are that we have created awareness, as well as commitment and partnerships with and between sectors. For instance, one coalition has brought together health, poverty-reduction and harm-reduction agencies to partner with a literacy program to provide wrap-around services to people living and working on the streets.
We have brought together workforce and workplace literacy providers and employers, labour, chambers of commerce and other stakeholders to discuss and find solutions to skilled worker shortages. One of us created a literacy audit kit that helps communities determine the literacy needs of their clients and then to help meet them.
We have developed regional systems. Many of us have a regional system or network within our province that is the circulation system for information in our provinces. We conduit from the grassroots to the coalition, from the coalition to the national area, from the national back to the coalition, and then through our regional systems down to the people who are actually working with literacy learners in the field.
Literacy work is messy and literacy students bring their whole lives with them when they come to class — if they come to class. They need practical help and support in order to be the learners that they are, and we need to be able to provide that support to the people who are working with the learners in the field so they can actually engage their learners in learning. You are aware of the situation, and we will be telling you more about what that means to each of us in the next little while.
To solve this problem and deal with this situation we need a pan-Canadian literacy strategy, which we have been saying for quite a while. We need a strategy that is designed to create meaningful differences in literacy levels all over the country. We have made a difference over the last 20 years and we want to be part of the strategy that makes bigger and lasting differences over the next few years.
Literacy is a non-partisan issue. That was understood in 2003 when the all-party House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities determined this need for a pan-Canadian strategy.
There should be four pillars in this strategy. We have been working on this in the hopes that this would be coming in the next little while. These four pillars are as follows: to develop a quality, strong adult learning system across this country; to improve access to the system for learners wherever they are and wherever they move to; to increase the knowledge base around literacy needs and practice; and to build partnerships, because literacy is everyone's concern.
The federal government is a partner in developing and implementing a pan-Canadian strategy for literacy. It has to be. That is because literacy is directly related to health, justice, immigration and settlement, employment, skills training, democratic engagement and society as a whole. These are all areas of federal responsibility. Therefore, the federal government must be a player in this pan-Canadian strategy. We, as coalitions, are needed to be partners in this pan-Canadian strategy as well, because we are a major player in the existing adult learning system.
We are dedicated to increasing support and access for learners in this system. We are actively involved in creating and disseminating knowledge about literacy needs and practice. We are key partners in literacy programs, supports and services. We are singularly able, because of our connections on the ground in all of our provinces and territories, to be able to create and maintain partnerships that will be needed to implement a pan-Canadian strategy.
We have lost momentum and potential over the last few months, and our hearts are devastated by this. We are fighting for our lives in this work. We want to be part of the important work that needs to be done in the future.
The Chairman: I wish to introduce the deputy chair of the committee, Senator Keon, who has just joined us. He is also an Ontario senator, from the Ottawa area. He is a noted cardiologist, but he also has in his family a noted hockey player who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
We will now hear from Carol Vandale of the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Literacy Network Inc.
Carol Vandale, Coordinator, Saskatchewan Aboriginal Literacy Network Inc.: Thank you for inviting us to this table. We are an organization in Saskatchewan much like the Saskatchewan Literacy Network, which is the coalition organization in Saskatchewan. However, we have also been invited to this table as a Saskatchewan provincial organization.
Our organization was conceived in 2000 and incorporated in 2003, so we are a young organization in this field. Our purpose is to raise awareness, including special resources, for Aboriginal people in Saskatchewan to encourage and to engage more Aboriginal people in learning opportunities.
In fact, one of our main roles is to engage not only learners but leaders in the dialogue around literacy, because that is not happening. We want to help learners, Aboriginal peoples, to take on opportunities, to help them to access resources and programs and to build better programs that include culture and language awareness and retention, inclusive in literacy. That is one of our main focuses.
We have been involved in working with Aboriginal educators and leaders, and we are still working hard at that. We need to work with the leadership in Saskatchewan to have them understand more about literacy needs among our own people and to help them to find strategies to deal with those needs.
In November, we finished a three-year project with what was then the National Literacy Secretariat, and we have now got funding from the province to work with them on initiatives that they have started. That is our work for now.
Other than that, we have no funding. We have proposed to what is now the National Office of Literacy and Learning to develop a program, which is something that we were not yet prepared to do. We wanted to do more consultative and engagement work with leaders, to bring them on board to work with them to develop programming that would meet the needs of the people. However, we have now looked at developing a program to engage learners before they are aware that they are learners. If they are, say, involved in a group involving violence against women, we would work with them to engage them in a learning task that would, we hope, increase their awareness of literacy and their need for literacy, and help them to pursue literacy programs. That is the task we hope we can do over the next couple of years. We still do not know yet, however; we have been waiting for a number of months to hear about that from the National Office of Literacy and Learning. That is where we are at. We do not have funding to meet the needs of engaging leaders.
I wish to bring to the Senate's attention a report from the Treasury Board by an independent blue ribbon panel on grants and contributions. They recommend to the Treasury Board to encourage multi-year funding of projects and core funding. That is what we need in Saskatchewan, not forever, but for a while — that is, to engage leaders and build relationships and capacity for literacy strategic planning at that level. That is what I recommend to the Senate.
Sierra van der Meer, Programme Coordinator, Yukon Literacy Coalition: There are many facts, figures, research and statistics about literacy. I could talk about these things, but you have heard a great deal about them, so I will take this opportunity to talk about the Yukon and the impact of the funding cuts on the Yukon.
Joe Clark once said that Canada was a community of communities, and the Yukon Literacy Coalition agrees. We are a country united by its differences. I do not suspect that anyone here thinks the needs of Newfoundland are the same as those of Old Crow or downtown Toronto.
The literacy coalitions across Canada in conjunction with the Movement for Canadian Literacy have had the unique ability to address the pan-Canadian needs in literacy while meeting the varied and specific needs of the particular provinces and territories. While every coalition has different programs and objectives, all work together toward the common goal of eliminating illiteracy in this country.
The Yukon is a very different place. I will be honest with you. I have not shaved my legs in four months, because tonight is the women's hairiest leg competition in Whitehorse, yet I am sitting here and will therefore be giving up my crown because I believe it is very important to talk to you about literacy. I will be showing off my legs at break!
We are a large territory, with a very small population. We have 11 self-governing First Nations, three unsigned First Nations, 12 rural communities and an urban centre with more than 80 per cent of our total population.
Whitehorse has one of the highest education rates in the country and we have enormously high literacy rates. We have many professional people working in government in high levels in Whitehorse, but we also have populations that are falling behind. The rural First Nations and Yukon-born people of the Yukon have significantly lower educational achievement and literacy rates. It is these populations that the Yukon Literacy Coalition has worked hard to support in meeting their literacy goals.
To meet these goals, we have not only tailored programs that are culturally and regionally relevant, but we have also established a governance structure that ensures that the coalition is reflecting community needs and First Nation needs. The Yukon Literacy Coalition's projects are diverse, but they are focused on several key areas. We do practitioner training in the areas of Aboriginal youth, family and adult literacy. We have information-sharing and communications to all Yukon stakeholders, which you can imagine is important for a place such as Beaver Creek with 100 people, 500 kilometres away from Whitehorse. Keeping the information flowing is essential to people who need to offer programs and who are often in situations of almost complete isolation.
We support and have developed a learners' network that allows people to participate in national and territorial decision-making. We offer family literacy programs, which have been enormously successful, especially in communities where they are consistent with First Nation and community values. We have developed resources that are both Northern and First Nation relevant. We do literacy community development that reflects our core belief that communities know their challenges and opportunities and that they must be supported and encouraged in meeting their literacy goals.
Since the literacy cuts, all of these programs have been put on hold. This is particularly disappointing because of the enormous momentum that has been building in the Yukon. There are communities that are now eager for training and want to start their own programs, but at this time we are not able to give them the support that they have requested.
Since the federal literacy cuts, the Government of Yukon has provided interim funding that is allowing the Yukon Literacy Coalition to remain open until March 31. This funding was provided as a short-term, temporary solution and was given with the mutual hope and understanding that applications would be considered and that funding could be available. March 31 is six weeks away, and unless the situation changes, the Yukon Literacy Coalition will be closing its doors. While we have heard that federal applications are being considered, we have not heard anything for months and we are unsure of where to go next.
In terms of the result of the cuts, for us, it is devastating. The literacy rates in this country are not improving. We needed more literacy funding and more support; we needed literacy funding that can meet all of our needs. However, instead of getting that, we are getting less literacy funding. Basically, our core services have been cut.
Regions such as the Yukon are facing labour shortages where skilled workers are needed, yet now we are in a situation in which we cannot help adults acquire the basic skills they need.
Coalitions have built up strong partnerships, successful programs and important relationships that should not be allowed to disappear. They have worked passionately, diligently and dedicatedly towards literacy for almost 20 years. This literacy cut came without consultation or discussion with the people who are working on the ground towards literacy.
In terms of what I would like to see this committee suggest to the government, not only do I think literacy funding needs to be reinstated, if not increased, but also there needs to be consultation with those who are working with learners and practitioners. If the federal government wants to refocus its priorities vis-à-vis literacy, that is its prerogative, but the federal government should do so with the input of the people who know what is going on in the country in terms of literacy.
Give coalitions an opportunity to meet the changing needs of the government and to sit at a table in deciding a national strategy that encompasses the common literacy needs of our country while at the same time allowing us to individualize programs for each of our unique regions.
I can sit here and speak as eloquently and as passionately as I can, even beg for the reinstatement of funding and for a change in this decision, but in the end, I do not really matter. I am sitting here with speaking notes in front of me, with copies of briefs, and I can read them all.
Gordon Hardy is the representative for the Yukon. He is 48 years old and he cannot read. Last year, I came to Ottawa with Mr. Hardy, and it was the first time he had left the Yukon in 25 years. He lives in Dawson City, which does not have an escalator, an elevator, a taxi, nor, if you can believe it, even a Tim Horton's. He came all this way because he felt that it was important to talk about literacy and for him to be able to express the challenges that he has faced because he cannot read.
Our literacy programs have allowed Mr. Hardy's tutor to get training and to access funding so that they were able to partake in programs, and it helped Mr. Hardy leave the Yukon for the first time in a quarter century. Literacy opened doors for Mr. Hardy, and I beg you not to let those doors close again.
The Chairman: I am sorry you missed this evening's contest, but you did very well here. You have definitely had an impact here.
Ms. van der Meer: Do I get a golden razor here?
Diana Twiss, President, Literacy British Columbia: I am President of Literacy British Columbia and also a literacy practitioner. I have been working in the field for the last 14 years. I currently coordinate a department at Capilano College called Community Development and Outreach. We believe that community development is at the core of good literacy work.
I run a family literacy program with approximately 18 Asian women. We help them find ways to become involved in their children's education, to support their children's learning, and also to increase their language skills.
I am also involved in two workplace literacy programs. One is at the backstretch of Hastings Racecourse. We work with the people who take care of the horses, the people who, if it were not for opportunities that the learning centre offers in that little community centre, would be just hanging out in the barns all the time.
The other program I work in is at the city yard, with the City of North Vancouver, working with the day labourers, the people who are cleaning our parks, dealing with sewers, water treatment plants and disposal collection, et cetera.
Literacy British Columbia has as a membership of about 400 members. There are many people in British Columbia who use the services of Literacy British Columbia but who are not even aware of this membership focus, because it is not something we push on people. Even though we have a direct membership of about 400, there are probably about 2,000 people who we regularly connect with through the organization.
Like any good teacher, I have brought a handout for you. I will not go over this document, but it contains information about Literacy British Columbia and what our coalition does, which is similar to the kinds of things that Ms. Lane spoke about. We are involved in research, the development of resources, learner networks, and so on.
One of the things that you will hear over and over again today is the need for training and professional development. It is important to understand teacher's college does not train a person to teach adults how to read. You will learn how to support emergent readers, if you go into the primary stream in teacher's education, and then you learn all of the wonderful games you can play with kids to get them engaged in reading.
However, if a learner does not grab a hold of that education and later emerge from the system without having learned to read well, there is nowhere that we as adult educators are trained to teach those adults how to read. You cannot play the ABC games with an adult; it is just too insulting. The phonetics tricks and various other methods do not work the same way with adults. We must use adult themes and techniques. This is where professional development is so important, and this is what the coalitions offer for us. They help us continuously find new ways to teach and to engage adults in the exercise of reading.
I felt I had to explain that because you will hear the word ``training'' and you might think: Why do they need training, for heaven's sake? Do they not know what they are doing? However, teaching adults to read is different from teaching children how to read.
The second thing you will hear a lot about is the need for coordination. Coordination is highly necessary because, as Ms. Lane mentioned, good adult literacy work is messy. For the most part, we do have a very good institutionalized education system. We have ministries of education and ministries of advanced education that work to deliver programs. However, for people who do not have access to these programs or who do not want to access because, for some reason, these programs have failed them in the past, we need to find other ways to connect to learners. That is where family, community and workplace literacy programs come into play. Because these are not institutionally based, we need to find a way to connect them.
The coalition connects the dots. We help all the people who are working in these programs to not feel so isolated. We provide them with resources, services and support. When they call us for help and advice about particular problems learners are experiencing, we provide them with resources, support, advice or another avenue of approach.
In my brief, I answered all the questions you asked. In doing so, I consulted the regional literacy coordinators in British Columbia. We have divided our province up by college regions, of which we have 13, and we have one regional literacy coordinator in each area. That person is connected to the college with the goal of encouraging or enticing the college to do more outreach work in the community.
The job of the regional literacy coordinators is to raise awareness of literacy in their area, to develop networks and partnerships, and to foster new programs.
We have an electronic conferencing system with first-class software. This is a very important tool for literacy in British Columbia. It provides access through the Internet to information on everything that is taking place in British Columbia. In addition to being a communication tool, it is a training tool. We host online conferences and share resources. We have a wonderful section on tutor training from which new tutors can download resources. It is very immediate.
These are two very important infrastructure programs in British Columbia that we will lose as a result of the recent cuts. Cuts to the local funding stream seriously limit our ability to develop innovative programs. We want to continually find ways to re-engage learners, so our regional literacy coordinators keep their ears to the ground. When they come up with interesting ideas, we apply for funding and get a program going. This is how we have used the money from the National Literacy Secretariat in the past; it was our seed money.
I have many examples of how we have used that money to set up programs for which the college has later agreed there is a need, and they are now base funded or paid for by employers or community organizations. This is our goal. We want to find ways to bring other people into this area and who can help with funding. The money from the National Literacy Secretariat helped us get started.
British Columbia is a good example of what you can do when you put decent money, support and leadership into lifelong learning. Note my use of the word ``decent.'' We do not always get adequate funding, but we need at least decent money to get us started. For a number of years, we had the good fortune of working with people in government at the federal and provincial levels who understood how good literacy work is done. They gave us space and opportunity to do the gritty work that needed to be done. It is unfortunate that we no longer have that at the federal level.
The system is not perfect and there are still many gaps. Access to education is one of our primary goals, and we are able to achieve that. We are more successful in some areas than in others, and we are not as successful in the rural areas because there is not the same concentration of people or issues there. In urban areas, we can piggyback things, but we are less successful with that in the rural areas.
We repeatedly hear about inadequately funded programs, how programs survive on shoestring budgets and how supplies are bought from the dollar store. Imagine what the scores would have been like if we had been sufficiently funded for the last 10 years rather than being able to provide only half the number of hours that a learner needs in order to succeed.
In conclusion, we need to reconsider the way we think about the challenge of raising literacy levels in Canada. We need to start thinking about it as lifelong learning, not a kindergarten to Grade 12 thing. Learning is lifelong and life wide. As Janet said, many parts of our lives are affected by our ability to understand the printed word. We see that repeatedly in health and justice and in employment and immigration.
We need an integrated approach to the issue, and we need to get more ministries directly involved.
Ann Marie Downie, Executive Director, Literacy Nova Scotia: Thank you very much for the kind invitation to join this discussion. I have spent several days trying to think of something new and profound to say to you, but I have nothing new or profound to say. I have been involved in adult literacy for a very long time. I started my career as a public schoolteacher. At that time, I wondered why some parents did not come to parent/teacher night. I learned that often those parents did not come because their own school experiences had been so negative that the last place they wanted to be was in their kids' school.
I moved on to adult literacy and I have seen it from many sides. I have seen it as a teacher, as an administrator, as a government official with responsibility to manage literacy services for the Department of Education, and from the coalition and community side. Therefore, over the years I have developed a good understanding of what needs to be done in adult literacy.
I have presented to you a paper dealing with the issues for literacy in Nova Scotia. In that paper, I describe what Literacy Nova Scotia does and what the situation is in Nova Scotia. I will move along to the questions you asked us to address.
In Nova Scotia, the province offers programs through the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning. That is done through a variety of partnerships with community-based groups, the community college and school boards. Adults have an opportunity to access a continuum of learning opportunities from the very fundamental level of literacy through to level 4, which leads to an adult high school diploma. About 5,000 individuals participated in the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning last year, of which about 2,200 were in community-based programs. About 500 adults received an adult high school diploma. My unscientific estimate is that about 2 per cent of the people who could and should access literacy training did so.
The programs are significant, but they are under-resourced. They are not easily accessible, they do not run a full year because they are not appropriately funded, and they reach only a fraction of those who need them.
I have read that the literacy system should be like a train. You should be able to get on and off the train where you need to, the train should take you where you need to go, the tracks should be well maintained, and you should be able to access other adventures along the way. Taking that analogy further, a train must have a schedule, it must stop at stations where people live and, to use the British phrase, you have to ``mind the gaps'' — and there are many gaps in Nova Scotia in terms of access to literacy training.
One of the significant gaps is that adult learners who are EI eligible are funded through the Employment Insurance Act to participate in training, but it is limited to two years. If you are a literacy learner, most often you will require more than two years of education and learning if you are to move on and get to where you need to go.
The other gap is that there is a strong movement in Nova Scotia for workplace or essential skills literacy training. It is underfunded and poorly resourced, yet where people are participating and once they participate it is probably one of the most profound experiences of the employer and the employee alike.
In terms of Aboriginal people, there are 13 Mi'kmaq reserves in Nova Scotia, two of which are relatively large in size; most are small reserves. Literacy programs are available on a few reserves. Where there are small reserves, the adults are able to access programming through the 30 community-based organizations. The community college also has initiatives to address Aboriginal students and to encourage enrolment.
In terms of funding, the province provides $6.5 million for program delivery in Nova Scotia, of which approximately 20 per cent comes through a federal-provincial agreement.
When you ask us how programs are affected by the cuts, I would say today that no program has been directly affected. No adult has been turned away from a class; no class has closed; no program has closed. However, what will happen is that the programs will not be able to do the work they need to do because they will not be able to access the professional development and the training Diana mentioned so eloquently, which I will not repeat, that is needed to address the increasingly complex learning needs. I can assure you there are increasingly complex learning needs for many adults.
Adults come with multiple issues. When I started adult literacy in 1975, the learner was different from today's learner. A lot of them had quit school at a very young age and were starting fresh in terms of their learning. Today, people have stayed in school somewhat longer and they come with social and learning issues that need to be addressed. Appropriate literacy training is an extremely important issue for us in Nova Scotia.
If the issue of the federal cutbacks to literacy does not get resolved within a year, Literacy Nova Scotia will be closing its door. When we close our doors, the training and professional development that the field has come to depend on will no longer be available.
The other thing that is important, before I go on to talk about what needs to happen in the future, is to point out that coalitions were created by the federal government. They were not created by the provincial government; they were not dreamed up by some organization at the provincial level. Rather, they were creations of the federal government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were intended to be part of an infrastructure to support adult literacy in Canada.
When the Mulroney government created the National Literacy Secretariat, I must confess that there was not a lot of interest in adult literacy by the Province of Nova Scotia. I think the fact that the National Literacy Secretariat came along to offer encouragement for the province's involvement, the fact that the Nova Scotia Provincial Literacy Coalition came along to offer encouragement and support to the field, helped encourage an interest in an support of adult literacy.
I was hired by the provincial government in 1988 to create an infrastructure for literacy with no provincial money. By 1994, there was an announcement by then Premier John Savage that there would be an investment of $1.6 million in community-based literacy. I do not think that would have happened without the support of the federal government. It might have, but I doubt it.
Those are the kinds of things we must look at. We must look at the past and then look at the needs today. Yes, provinces are involved in literacy now, some more so than others. They have seen the light. We now, however, have other things and other issues that we must look at. I must keep reiterating what you have heard before, namely, that we need a system in Canada that will support that development. For the federal government to somehow withdraw its support will create a huge gap in adult literacy in the country.
When you look at what needs to happen, I must reiterate what the previous speakers have said: We need to look at the 2003 report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, entitled Raising Adult Literacy Skills: The Need for a Pan-Canadian Response. We need to determine how it applies today. This was an all-party report. When I saw it in 2003, I was delighted. I really felt that there was strong hope for literacy in Canada.
I also realize that a newly elected government must put its own stamp on policies and programs, but there are important nuggets of information and recommendations in that report that need to be looked at today. We need government to take it very seriously so that we know where we are going in the future.
We need a strategy that is supported, funded and planned. It needs all levels of government to buy in. It needs the federal government to buy in. It needs the provincial and the territorial governments and municipalities as well.
Adult literacy must be embedded in lifelong learning. As well, we must support it, endorse it and make all learning attractive to all adult Canadians. That is not the case now. It is not respected and it is not attractive to them.
Those are the roles that government must take on to make that happen.
The Chairman: Could you wrap up, please?
Ms. Downie: I have not yet had a chance to read the entire blue ribbon panel report on grants and contributions as it has just come out, but one of the things that jumped off the page was the whole idea about the need for respect for the recipients of grants and contributions.
I have seen government programs from the government side and from the community side. The thing that strikes me strongly is that the level of accountability when those same programs were offered by government is not quite the same as the level of accountability that is required when they are offered by a community group. Maybe that needs to be looked at as well.
The Chairman: Our next presenter is Jan Greer, Executive Director of the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick.
Jan Greer, Executive Director, Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick: The Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick was established in 1988, which is when the newly established National Literacy Secretariat was set up through the federal government. At that time, stakeholders in the province got together and determined that there indeed was a need for a multi-sectoral organization like the literacy coalition to carry out literacy initiatives across the province.
We have 15 volunteer board members. The majority represent community-based literacy agencies, but we also have partnerships on our board with federal-provincial government departments that have mandates for literacy.
Back in 1988, up until September of this year, we were funded to carry out literacy initiatives in specific areas. Those areas include access and outreach, coordination and information sharing, the development of learning materials, public awareness campaigns and research.
The literacy coalition was charged with developing and carrying out projects in these areas that would complement the province's efforts in direct delivery. Federal funds were provided to the coalition that would support teachers, learners and the general literacy field. To me, this demonstrated our federal government's leadership in lifelong learning without infringing on the province's mandate for delivery of service.
For example, our coalition is working with partners in developing a week-long institute this year on adult literacy and learning disabilities. In August, 50 adult literacy teachers will receive concrete professional development, providing them with teaching strategies that will give their students greater success in reaching their learning potential.
About 80 per cent of adults in literacy programs have undiagnosed learning disabilities. Teachers and volunteer tutors do not know how to assess or address the learning needs of these students. They have asked time and again for this specialized training. It is the literacy coalition that is responding to that need. We are doing so in such a way that the learning at this institute is not stagnant. It will be ongoing. Those who attend will mentor teachers and volunteers in their regions for the years to come. Think of the benefits to adult learners.
I have just learned that 45 out of the 118 teachers in the province's adult literacy classrooms do not have post- secondary education. They have a high school diploma, and that is it. They need this professional development in order to teach the learners in their settings.
If you looked at our website today, you would see that this year alone the coalition is providing three major learning opportunities to practitioners in the field.
We have brought new and innovative family literacy programs to the province, such as Storysacks, which became a nationwide program for all cultures and languages. That particular program stretches from sea to sea to sea.
The Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick was instrumental in a research study carried out in 2002 that identified tremendous challenges within the province's service-delivery system. This was a wake-up call for our province and provincial government. They are still using that document as their adult literacy strategy improvement plan.
Because of that research, the provincial government has begun to address some of over 40 recommendations in that report. They are developing strategies to address volunteer burnout. They are providing increased material and financial resources for programs, and they have developed quality standards for learning settings. The provincial government has just installed two up-to-date computers in each classroom, and these classrooms have just obtained Internet and email access. They have developed a mechanism for teachers to communicate electronically, and they are now providing access to Internet-learning programs for students. This is a vast improvement over a program that is now 16 years old. These improvements would not have been made if it had not been for that study.
Finally, 16 years after developing these community programs, the provincial government in December 2006 set up a tracking system. At last, the government will know how many students are registered in their programs, and they will be able to determine why these learners are leaving. They are finally documenting learner success, which had not been done before.
It is the efforts of the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick that shrunk the gap between the provincial government and the frontline literacy workers, and that has created solid working relationships between the service delivery groups. Whereas before they were working independently from each other, now they are working in collaboration and partnership.
The coalition has established a good working relationship with my colleague across the table, Ms. Rhéaume's organization, Fédération d'alphabétisation du Nouveau Brunswick. We team up together on a number of projects.
Other roles of the coalition include knowledge exchange and opportunities for reflective practice and discussion forums. We promote literacy practices to the public and support literacy programs throughout the province.
Because we exist, we are able to leverage approximately $185,000 a year to support literacy programs in our province. These funds provide for a scholarship program for students and resources for classrooms, teachers, learners and volunteers. This year alone, we have distributed 4,000 new children's books across the province through our annual Books Brighten Life campaign.
These are the kinds of efforts that will be lost. No other literacy organization in New Brunswick has the capacity to take on these responsibilities.
When the publisher of our provincial daily newspaper wanted objective information about the state of literacy in New Brunswick, he came to me. I have been asked to prepare a situational analysis on literacy in our province and present it to our premier.
Because of the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick, literacy is now being realized as the foundation for the province's strategy for self-sufficiency. We are front and centre in the province's task force in the non-profit sector and on post-secondary education. Our province is in tremendous difficulty. We have a skilled labour shortage. Our skilled people are exiting in huge numbers, and the commissioners heading the self-sufficiency task force are calling it a hemorrhage. We are already anemic.
Over 278,000 working-age adults in New Brunswick have low proficiency in literacy and numeracy. We can only reach about 2,000 people a year.
Without funding from the federal government, all of these types of initiatives will be lost.
The Chairman: Next we have the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition.
Ellen Paterson, Executive Director, Ontario Native Literacy Coalition: Thank you for the opportunity to present our views on literacy. We operate under the guidance of an elected volunteer board, elected from the four directions of the medicine wheel. Therefore, all regions have an equal voice.
We are fortunate to receive core funding from the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities, but we have been without a raise for 10 years.
Native literacy in the province of Ontario is viewed holistically. Native literacy is a tool that empowers the spirit of native people. Native literacy services recognize and affirm the unique cultures of native peoples and the interconnectedness of all aspects of creation. As part of a lifelong path of learning, native literacy contributes to the development of self-knowledge and critical thinking.
Native literacy focuses on the skills needed for people to be successful in the home, at work and in the community. At the most basic level, this includes instruction in basic learning, writing, math and communication skills, but also takes in many other essential skills people use to carry out their everyday life and work tasks, such as problem-solving, decision making and job-task planning.
The literacy program, since we are part of a larger community, is community based. The learner is the centre of the circle of native literacy, so the program is learner centred. That is most important.
The native population was not included in the 2003 survey nor has it been represented in past International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey — IALSS — surveys. The result is that the native stream does not have access to the type of reliable statistical data available to non-native groups.
The intergenerational nature of literacy issues is evident in the fact that a parent's level of education has a direct relationship to the literacy scores of their children. This is true for either Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal people. The gap is higher for those living on Indian reserves. In Ontario, 31 per cent of native people living on reserve have no formal education or less than Grade 9.
On a positive note, however, we know that many of these young people will willingly re-enter the education upgrading stream. With the native population this tends to happen later in life, making them good candidates for adult upgrading programs.
In Ontario, we have 26 programs: 10 hosted on reserves; 5 stand-alone programs; and 11 in friendship centres. They are all funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.
Community-based literacy organizations play a significant role in literacy and learning in Ontario because most of ours are community based. Community literacy and learning groups are ready and waiting when an adult literacy learner comes forward for help.
Literacy is connected to some of the key challenges our communities and society face at this point in time: employment, poverty, further or higher education, health, child and family well-being, as well as many other social- cultural issues.
Our learners do not get paid to attend literacy programs. In some cases, the programs are accessible; however, in many cases, we do not have enough literacy programs, especially in the remote reserves of Northern Ontario. As you have seen in the newspaper, the suicides among our young people are happening because they do not have a future, or do not know what to do. Ontario has looked at distant learning to the fly-in communities, and we are doing e-learning which was just started.
Some of our literacy programs in Ontario are at capacity; they have waiting lists.
The 26 programs are funded by MTCU. They currently receive $40,000 to $50,000 a year. These programs have not received a raise, and these must cover both administration and delivery. This means that practitioners' salaries are often less than $30,000, which is almost at poverty.
The literacy programs must meet targeted contact hours to maintain their funding. The average is approximately 6,000 hours a year. Stress and turnover is high in the literacy field, because of the high administration load that comes with the funding. There is usually only one very dedicated person to do this. Practitioners carry the burden of being instructors, facilitators, teachers, counsellors as well as administrators.
The impact that the 2006 spending will have is that practitioners will not have the training they need, professional development will be lost, curriculum development will be lost, along with research and knowledge exchange on best practices.
Project dollars to have culturally appropriate materials and resources available and the learning content need to be relevant.
Our recommendations for the committee are as follows: We need to acknowledge the work that is going on in adult literacy, particularly in the lifelong learning ideas of the much wider community capacity that is available to us outside the education institutions; sustainable funding in place that is more than one year, short-term project-based grants impose an administrative burden on organizations; improving the literacy and numeracy skills of the Aboriginal people must be a top priority; we must have a commitment to promote plain language in all communication materials and information resources provided to the public; we must develop a professional literacy workforce; raise awareness so that the stigma of low literacy is reduced and participation in adult literacy programs is increased; close the educational gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people; create resources to develop and deliver culturally relevant First Nations-based curricula in both formal and informal learning settings; and provide a vital infrastructure to all the literacy programs across the country, such as NLS.
To sum up, in Ottawa, Dorothy Silver, a learner who spoke at the 1999 Literacy Action Day, summed it perfectly when she said: ``You might think that you cannot afford more literacy; but if you think literacy is expensive, try ignorance.
Daniel Page, Board Treasurer, Nunavut Literacy Council: The Nunavut Literacy Council is a registered non-profit organization governed by a volunteer board representing Nunavut's three regions. Our organization uses a community-capacity building approach to promote and support adult, family, early childhood, youth and workplace/ workforce literacy in all the official languages of Nunavut.
The council's work focuses almost solely on the Inuit population. All the program, services, training and materials we produce are delivered in Inuktitut and English. We work closely with the territorial government, Nunavut Arctic College, Inuit organizations, businesses and labour to ensure that the needs of those working in the field of literacy are met.
We also conduct research and stay on top of trends and issues. This information is disseminated to those working in the field.
The Nunavut Literacy Council represents the interests of approximately 100 individual members, 25 adult educators and an additional 20 community-based programs and organizations. We also represent the literacy interests of approximately 200 adult learners, as well as numerous teachers, community-health representatives and early childhood providers across the territory.
To date, we have delivered workshops in professional development to 700 individuals across Nunavut. These workshops and professional development activities have included working with adult learners who have learning disabilities, designing Inuktitut family-literacy programs, proposal writing, program evaluation and instructional sessions on how to use the council's resource manuals. We have developed over 50 resources that are used extensively in literacy programs across Nunavut to date.
We also work with the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, the Inuit land claims organization, and other partners to develop the recently announced Nunavut Adult Learning Strategy. Annual grants of $256,500 from the National Literacy Secretariat allowed us to accomplish this important work.
Prior to the funding cuts announced in September, Nunavut Arctic College delivered literacy programs in a handful of Nunavut communities. The college's annual budget for literacy programs was $300,000, which included the $125,000 accessed through NLS. This cost-sharing funding was used to hire literacy program coordinators who developed and coordinated community literacy programs and developed resources to support these programs.
The college programs are delivered in Inuktitut or English, depending on the needs identified by the communities. There are no stand-alone literacy programs in the territory other than the few short-term programs offered by Nunavut Arctic College. There is less than $200,000 in territorial funding to support program development and delivery in the territory.
The Nunavut Literacy Council has worked very hard, since its inception, to build a capacity of community-based groups and organizations to integrate literacy into their existing programs. These efforts have been very successful, but the lack of available funding has hampered substantial progress. The funding cuts announced in September combined with changes made to the National Literacy Program have dealt a devastating blow to literacy in Nunavut. The funding cuts were even more damaging because they came well into the fiscal year, after requests for proposals from other potential funders had closed.
Literacy rates in Nunavut are the lowest in Canada. In a country as prosperous as ours, this is a national disgrace. In Nunavut, low literacy levels have created serious skills shortages, the effects of which we see in every business, government department and agency. The lost economic revenue to Inuit due to these low literacy rates is considerable. Approximately 50 per cent of Nunavummiut have significant literacy issues. Eighty-eight per cent of Inuit score below the level recognized as a minimum needed to participate actively in the workforce and in community life. Most alarming are the low literacy skills of Nunavut youth. Approximately 80 per cent of youth between the ages of 16 and 25 score below the minimum level needed to participate in the workforce.
The impact of Nunavut's skills shortage is pervasive and significant. Over 60 per cent of those currently employed scored below what are acknowledged in the IALSS as being the minimum. This is evident in the high number of accidents on the job, increased costs to employers caused by high employee turnover, high absentee rates and mistakes made on the job. We see it in the high cost of health, in the dropout rates, in high poverty, and in suicide rates.
People in Nunavut want what other Canadians want. They want to be active and productive members of society, but low literacy levels present serious challenges.
The impact of the September 2006 spending reductions has been profound. Nunavut Arctic College had to cancel a number of literacy programs due to funding. The literacy council has laid off two staff members; the executive director and senior staff are now carrying out extra duties to meet obligations to other funding partners. It will not be possible for the literacy council to continue its current programs without funding contributed through the National Literacy Program, as that was the only source of funding with a focus strategically targeted toward adult literacy.
The Nunavut Literacy Council provided adult educators with the majority of their professional development. We are the only organization in Nunavut that provides community groups and organizations with literacy, language- related training, and we are one of the few organizations that develops Nunavut-relevant materials to support educators, instructors and teachers. It is, in fact, the only literacy organization in the territory.
In conclusion, in terms of recommendations to the committee, they are obvious and have been said already: One, reverse the September 2006 spending reduction; two, expedite the review of all proposals submitted by the provincial- territorial coalitions and by the Movement for Canadian Literacy, the umbrella organization that represents us all; and lastly, I repeat Ms. Lane's comment about the need for a pan-Canadian literacy strategy.
The Chairman: Unfortunately, Literacy Newfoundland and Labrador was unable to come to Ottawa today because of the weather.
Monika Feist, Board President, Literacy Partners of Manitoba: Our board represents Northern Manitoba rural, urban and remote centres, as well as industry. Our board and staff put our energies and dollars from the federal, provincial and foundation grants and from the fundraising and donations that we receive into the projects that are delivering real results for over 290,000 working-aged low literate Manitobans.
Some highlights in the past two years include the services we have provided to adult learners in literacy programs and other adult learning programs, where we recruited more than 100 volunteers in partnership with the Winnipeg Free Press, the daily paper, and have worked as literacy tutors in the literacy programs. We have provided over $19,000 in bursaries to adult learners, again from fundraising that we have done for prescription eyewear, child care, transportation and school supplies. This is from net proceeds from the PGI, the Peter Gzowski Invitational Golf Tournament. We also support regional events for our learners. We operate a resource centre for their teachers, and we contribute to the Literacy for Life Endowment Fund, an initiative of ours, along with the Winnipeg Foundation and the Winnipeg Public Library. We provide access to over 5,000 resources from our literacy library, with free delivery anywhere in the province.
We see ourselves as the thread that holds together the province as it relates to literacy. So much has already been said vis-à-vis the other provinces. We have similar activities and a similar sense of how we have been both the leaders and the connecters across our province. It is what we do as well.
As well, we have provided leadership to the extent that we become the conscience for the provincial government. We take the leadership and then create the situation for them to start taking on more responsibilities and leadership in the literacy area.
We try to leverage our resources across the province to support learners and programs. We have partnered with the provinces in setting up a variety of programs and research.
As well, we have recently had the opportunity to work with the premier in establishing a literacy strategic steering committee. This committee is composed of three members — an assistant deputy minister in training in continuing education who makes every attempt to attend all meetings despite his very demanding schedule; a professor sitting from Brandon University responsible for Aboriginal studies; and a director of one of the four centres of literacy and adult learning.
We presented a second draft to the minister in advanced educational literacy, and this resulted in the presentation of the bill for the development of an adult literacy act. The six-member committee continues to work on recommendations, which will be used in the development of a revised provincial literacy strategy.
We serve some 34 adult literacy programs provincially that are funded both through the federal and provincial system, with over 2,700 adult learners. We have counted at least 63 family literacy programs, 14 of which are funded provincially, with 109 practitioners and over 200 volunteer tutors.
We have memberships from the adult learning centres, workplace skills programs, the English in alternate language programs, Aboriginal immigrant programs and their learners and instructors.
The mandate for us is to raise that literacy level in Manitoba. We have supported programming through research and made a submission on the national basis — however, this is where we will be affected in terms of doing a literacy assessment, a needs assessment. Without the federal funding, we just do not think it will be possible for us to provide that information back into the community and back to the government.
As I said, we are a conscience for the province. We have a very proud relationship in terms of how we have worked with the provincial government. We find we do not always agree, yet they want our input and they come and ask for it. As a result, we come up with various solutions in terms of the challenges with working with learners, literacy practitioners and so on.
We work, as do the other organizations that I have heard, in terms of distributing our resources, and this kind of service will be totally annulled if there is not funding. We have a major challenge in that 15 of our community-based literacy programs are located in Winnipeg, where the population is approximately two thirds of the province, and we find that this certainly is not enough.
There are two centres with year-long programs that offer classes full-time, and the remainder are all part-time programs. We have 19 programs in rural northern regions, and these are certainly not adequate. The remoteness, the requirement for the travel distances for the programs, all serves to increase the challenges both for the tutors and for the adults who want to enrol or who are enrolled in the programs. Aside from the issues of low wages and social assistance, it makes it very difficult for those individuals to participate. There is no public transportation outside of the urban centres, so travel costs are extremely high, aside from all the issues that deal with road and weather conditions.
Despite all the challenges that I have just described, the number of Manitobans in the lowest level of literacy, level 1, has dropped 13 per cent lower than the national average in just one decade. Therefore, we really do feel we have had a tremendous impact.
A testimony to the work being done in Manitoba in literacy is that the greatest growth was at level 3 over the same time. This is from Statistics Canada 1995 statistics from IALSS through to IALSS 2005. Level 3 is the level of literacy that most Manitobans use in daily living and workplace tasks. This indicates Manitoba's system of re-education and training, particularly through the adult family and the adult learning centres, is working. All these programs are fully supported by our coalition.
I want to make a couple of general comments. We look at the national level in terms of a leadership role, of having the overall perspective of what is happening in the country. Therefore, often, because of that overview, it allows us then, in looking back into our own provinces, connecting across the country, to put together a perspective of the kinds of things that we may need to be able to have happen in the province. That seed money — and I truly look at it as seed money — is what allows a lot of these initiatives to start happening. Fortunately, because we all recognize how important it is to spend tax dollars wisely, we tend to share right across the program, in terms of the kinds of services that we offer and how we use and distribute the resources and share those resources across the country.
Recently, we were fortunate to have received some funding from the Winnipeg Foundation, to start a program where we work with parents in the home, literally with volunteer tutors going into the home to expose them to books and materials and start the learning process in the family, so that when the children start school the enthusiasm and the development starts happening.
We have partnerships with the northern polar airline to fly in books that we have been able to gain free from publishers to the remote communities and into the reserves. Certainly, that thread, which now is being broken, will be a tragic thing, certainly for Manitobans. I would think the issue is the same right across the country.
I recommend that the federal government come back to us. Let us sit down and talk, take a look at how we can work together in terms of some of the priorities that they would also like to see established. I would not like to see literacy become the orphan of the federal government. The kind of involvement that we have brought in, from Raise-a- Reader, across the country is high profile and we have support from various organizations across the country to raise money for literacy. There is a community swell of trying to support literacy, but it also must come from the top down.
We would like to sit down and talk with the government. Our staff is exceedingly knowledgeable in this area. My concern is that the government is looking at us as being a purely lobby, self-interest group. We are not. I am a volunteer. I spend many hours working in this area, as do many of the others around this table. We are not doing this because we are have self-interest but because we see there is a need out there as community members and we care about what is happening with Canada.
In Manitoba, we will have a terrific increase of immigrants. We are already seeing that situation. We are the largest recipient of refugee populations in Canada. These are the groups that we are trying to serve under a variety of programs but the funding is not there.
Therefore, we ask you to reverse the spending cuts, both on a provincial and on a national basis.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Now, we will hear from the coordinator of the Regroupement des groupes populaires en alphabétisation du Québec, Mr. Christian Pelletier.
Christian Pelletier, Coordinator, Regroupement des groupes populaires en alphabétisation du Québec: Mr. Chairman, there are two recognized networks in Quebec: the school board network — the institutional network — and our network, called the Réseau des groupes d'alphabétisation populaire which represents 132 organizations.
Over the past 30 years, we have developed a unique approach called literacy for the people because they believe that literacy is just one part of the fight against illiteracy. We teach reading, writing, and math skills, but we also teach people how to speak in public, get involved as citizens and take charge of their lives.
Our students are undeniably poor and this often causes problems. The approach we have developed allows us to adapt the schedules, to work in consideration of people's need and develop learning tools that are adapted to people's daily lives, be it by focussing on what we read in the papers, what is happening in the neighbourhood and so on.
It is important to us that people get involved in managing the groups and the democratic structure.
In Quebec over one million people have trouble reading and writing. The institutional network helps 13,000 of these people and we help 7,000 of them with much less money. Together, the networks only help 2 per cent of these people. It is not very reassuring. The reason is because when we talk about accessibility, the difficulty is really the precarious financial circumstances of these people. When you are worried about limited money every day or you are just trying to survive, it is hard to focus on other things.
Accessing resources is also difficult. For example, services need to be provided to vast areas, people may have difficulty accessing transportation, and when I talk about transportation, I am not just talking about the isolated regions. There are people living in cities who are unable to pay for public transit, which is costly, and often, groups in Quebec City or Montreal have difficulty accessing transportation.
This is also a problem in the regions because there is no transportation. Also, some people have young children and it is difficult to ensure access for them.
The Quebec government subsidizes the groups but another source of funding for literacy groups is the federal government. There are two parts to the funding: there is a $1.3 million amount available to national resource organizations or literacy-related organizations and there is $3.7 million under a federal provincial agreement, known as IFPCA, which has existed for several years now.
The federal government provides funding under this agreement and the funding is used to pay for activities that are not directly related to training, because that is under provincial jurisdiction and the fights between Quebec and the federal government and these respects are well known.
The groups receive $1.4 million from that federal envelope. As a network, we get approximately $235,000 for our training program, to train trainers and develop educational materials.
I am going to try to focus on previous budget cuts. Last year, the program changed and you know that, under the federal-provincial agreement, the groups are getting this money for the year 2006-07. This year, there have been no budget cuts. Applications for the 2006-07 program had to be submitted last February to begin in September 2006.
Implementation of the new program delayed applications that had been made in September only, to be applied in December. This money has to be spent before March 31 and, currently, no one has got their money and the applications are still in Ottawa. It is now the middle of February and there is a month and a half left in this fiscal year. In addition to the budget cuts, there have been problems in how the program has been applied. In fact, I could say a lot about the changes made to the program because, at times, they have been very inconvenient.
I would like to remind the committee that the budget cuts were made in September, almost the same day that the federal government announced $18 million in cuts, including $5 million for Quebec. Ironically, that same day, the federal government announced a budget surplus of $13 billion for that fiscal year. When I talk about $18 million and I compare that amount to the federal budget, I feel like I am talking about two pennies in the bottom of my pocket.
Furthermore, the $235,000 cut back applied immediately in September and this amount was used by the organizations for support services, training programs, and the publication of training materials. The training program was given to, on average, 200 trainers per year.
Furthermore, people were laid off and the training program was abandoned. Nearly four months later, we learned that the application had been reviewed and that we were going to be given $235,000. People often talked about efficiency, but I think that we have nothing to learn here when we are forced to rehire people who are not necessarily available and we have to do things over again.
The federal-provincial agreement ends on March 31, and we have learned that it will not be renewed. Therefore, the $4.1 million will not be available next year. This was not a large amount of money, but it allowed us to do a lot. It was possible to undertake recruiting an awareness campaigns, the results of which were very interesting.
We know that access is the main problem for these people. As I said earlier, the two networks only reach 2 per cent of the population. In terms of recommendations, I think that it would be very important to reinvest on a permanent basis the amounts cut. We should reinvest in literacy programs in the next budget.
We need an action plan to support the various stakeholders fighting illiteracy in Canada. We also need to take into account the different territorial, economic, social and cultural realities of people with low levels of literacy. I share vision of my colleague from the Yukon, and I am pleased to see that you consulted with learners last week. In my opinion, this experience bears repeating.
We need to get close to these people to learn their needs and how to meet those needs. I have been working with this population for 17 years and I can tell you that they have taught us a great deal. They should not only be consulted from time to time, but rather we should establish a mechanism to ensure a long term follow-up.
[English]
The Chairman: I will now switch the next two presenters, in order to facilitate the sign language interpreters, who have now moved up in order deal with the change in language.
[Translation]
Solange Basque Rhéaume, Acting Director General, Fédération d'alphabétisation du Nouveau-Brunswick: Mr. Chairman, I will briefly summarize what the Fédération d'alphabétisation du Nouveau-Brunswick does. I see that the various problems are doing some things the same way, but, nevertheless, New Brunswick is doing some things differently.
The Fédération d'alphabétisation du Nouveau-Brunswick known more commonly as the FANB, is a not for profit organization with 16 regional boards that are members of the federation and whose role is to promote literacy and literacy awareness in their respective region.
In order to contribute to improving literacy levels in New Brunswick, the federation coordinates projects, organizes conferences and forums, educates Acadians and francophones about literacy, plays a representational role for government bodies, publishes guides, and provides a literacy resource centre for those who may wish to take advantage of its services.
The federation also assists students with the recruitment process by making available what we call community adult learning programs. There are various types of programs available in New Brunswick including community adult learning programs, which have more of a general educational focus than one specifically on literacy. Only 1 per cent of our population takes advantage of these programs and it is important to not lose sight of the fact that virtually 67 per cent of New Brunswick's population has literacy issues. These community programs are essentially managed by volunteers, the community's good Samaritans who are taking interest in literacy, but who are in no way experts on the subject.
The federation is managed by a team of literacy experts, people who have worked in the field for many years. Before becoming Director General of the federation, I taught for almost 13 years in New Brunswick's community adult learning programs and, I can assure you, these programs do not satisfy the needs of students with low literacy levels. French and math are the two subjects offered as part of these programs.
We have just recently started teaching students how to use computers. Peoples in these classes are not ready to put in long days working on French and math. They need a lot more; they need to learn about life, they need life skills, and this is what the federation supports.
The federation promotes family literacy in New Brunswick and makes training programs available to experts and parents. Family literacy reminds us that we cannot ask adults with children to give their children what they do not have themselves. They need skills that are even more basic than those taught in the education system.
And as our community adult learning programs do not meet the real needs of New Brunswickers, obviously they are not satisfying the needs of our aboriginal population. The federation is funded by the federal government and we were hit hard by the recent budget cutbacks. We had to cut back the number of staff working at the federation and we have changed premises. We have two major projects up for completion in March 2008. Two of these are up for review to determine whether they meet the much talked about national criteria. If these projects are not approved, the federation will have to close its doors in March 2008 when our two major projects come to an end.
If you think about it, in the long term, the government needs organizations in each province, and it needs the New Brunswick Literacy Federation in order to meet its aim of having a completely literate society.
In terms of recommendations, the federation held an important meeting of its board of directors recently. We still face the same problems in New Brunswick and we always come back to the same question: are these solutions, these recommendations? There are four major problems when it comes to literacy in New Brunswick: educating the public, communications, cooperation among stakeholders and, last but not least, adequate and justifiable levels of funding, just like for all the other provinces.
In closing, I would like to point out that for the past 15 or so years, thousands of volunteers, educators, community program teachers, and managers have worked tirelessly throughout New Brunswick to make literacy what it is today. Now, more than ever, is the time to work together, to utilize our human, material, and financial resources, and to closely coordinate our efforts across all sectors in order to achieve far more than the simple survival of New Brunswickers.
Literacy is a fundamental right and is the key to making individuals autonomous, helping families climb their way out of poverty, and to being in a position to fully participate in community life. The New Brunswick Literacy Federation believes in equality between persons and human dignity. Moreover, the federation believes that every person is capable of learning and that each and every person is entitled to an ongoing quality education which really meets her needs.
[English]
The Chairman: The final two presentations are from representatives from Ontario. First we have the Ontario Literacy Coalition, Ms. Wesolowski, President.
Annmarie Wesolowski, President, Ontario Literacy Coalition: I am currently President of the Ontario Literacy Coalition, but I am also the executive director of an adult literacy network in northwestern Ontario called Literacy Northwest. Prior to that, I was program coordinator of an adult literacy program in a small mining community in northwestern Ontario called Red Lake. Although I am wearing the Ontario Literacy Coalition hat this morning, I believe I can speak from a grassroots perspective as well.
The Ontario Literacy Coalition is a membership-driven organization that represents adult learners throughout Ontario, as well as literacy practitioners, delivery agencies and other community stakeholders. The coalition is, in fact, a conduit, similar to what other coalitions in the room today have said, in the sense that it gathers and disseminates information in a timely manner throughout the province to the various stakeholders to try to meet their needs.
In terms of services available in Ontario, the literacy and basic skills program is delivered by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities through the Skills Investment Branch. That has been restructured as of January 1 this year.
The Chairman: Sorry to interrupt. I appreciate you trying to stay within the five minutes, but please slow for the translation.
Ms. Wesolowski: Thank you.
The restructuring that took place January 1 is as a result of the labour market partnership and development agreement that Ontario signed in 2006.
In Ontario, the literacy programs are funded under three separate sectors and streams. We have the community- based school board and college sectors, and the streams are anglophone, deaf, native and francophone.
Under these various streams, there are a total of 290 program sites that served upwards of 49,000 adult learners in 2006. In addition to funding the delivery sites, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities also funds 23 provincial and regional literacy and basic skills support agencies that serve the 290 sites. There are 16 regional networks in the province, covering a vast area, four provincial literacy coalitions, one for each of the literacy streams, and three sector agencies, one representing each of the funded sectors. The services that they provide duplicate what has already been said around the table.
In terms of access to programming, although the Ontario population is highly skilled and educated, there are a total of 3.4 million adults who struggle on a daily basis with tasks of daily living, as well as tasks related to finding and keeping jobs. Less than 10 per cent of these adults access literacy services.
The magnitude of the challenge is high in relation to the level of support that the province can provide. Less than 1.5 per cent of level 1 and 2 adults in Ontario are being served in any given year. Clearly, the current funding structure is inadequate. Many people are beyond the reach of literacy programs, primarily in the North and in more remote areas. This has resulted in vast unserved and underserved areas.
In these remote areas, we need to incorporate a flexible distance-learning strategy. This will require investment in technology, infrastructure, expertise, equipment and resources. These needs are compounded by the fact that there is a growing demand for services, which has resulted in waiting lists and in the need for increased funding. The reality is that the majority of agencies in Ontario have seem flatline funding for 10 years; it is impossible for them to maintain, let alone increase, services and meet the growing demand.
In terms of the funding model, programs are funded through a model of contracted number of learners and contact hours. The Ontario government provided $69 million for literacy and basic skills program delivery in 2006. This funding covers primarily overhead costs, locations, administration and salaries. While all of the agencies are in need of more funding to cover the growing demand, the smaller, community-based programs are most vulnerable. The current funding model does not adequately provide for the growing overhead costs, leaving those programs with less of a budget for instructional hours.
In addition to the program delivery, the province also funds $1.5 million for research and development for projects on an annual basis and $3.8 million to support the coalitions' regional networks and all of the other support organizations.
Prior to the 2006 announcement for federal cuts, the federal government partnered with Ontario to support the adult literacy infrastructure through project funding as well, providing $3 million, which was added to the $1.5 million pot that the provincial government offered. This allowed for ongoing training, research and resource development to support the delivery of quality programming in Ontario.
Literacy in Ontario is vulnerably built on short-term program and project funding. We have seen over the past 10 years and as a result of the funding cut announcement that it can be eroded away with drastic results.
If we want to raise adult literacy levels in Canada, we need to improve our policy governance, strengthen our national literacy infrastructure, and substantially increase funding rather than destroying the foundation we have built over the past years.
As a result of the termination of the federal, provincial and territorial funding stream, our national adult literacy infrastructure is being dismantled. In Ontario, we are losing the AlphaPlus Centre, an internationally recognized adult learning literacy library that could be closing its doors by the end of March 2007. The previous structure allowed us to maintain this infrastructure, and its demise will have devastating results.
The field in Ontario anticipates that an appropriate level or a portion of the funding that Ontario will receive as a result of the labour market partnership development agreement will be allocated to increased delivery services in Ontario to enhance the capacity of agencies to serve more learners and to enhance the support agencies' capacity to address the diverse needs of the various literacy sectors and streams in the province.
We believe that now is not the time to cut work but rather the time to build upon the work that has been done. In 2005, a report entitled, Towards a Fully Literate Canada: Achieving National Goals through a Comprehensive Pan- Canadian Literacy Strategy was submitted by the Advisory Committee on Literacy and Essential Skills to the Minister of State for Human Resources Development. That report called for the adoption of a pan-Canadian approach to literacy and sustainable funding provided by the federal government. It makes economic and social sense to reinstate funding to literacy, to build a pan-Canadian strategy and to link literacy policy with other social service policies so that Canada will have a literacy framework that is competitive on an international scale.
It is obvious from hearing all the speakers who preceded me that there is a wealth of literacy knowledge, experience and expertise around this table, and we are happy that the Senate committee is tapping into that.
The Chairman: Thank you.
[Testimony given through a sign language interpreter]
Peggy Anne Moore, Executive Director, Ontario Literacy for Deaf People: I should like to give a bit of information about GOLD — Goal: Ontario Literacy for Deaf People — the umbrella organization I am with. We are funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. GOLD is the only provincial literacy organization geared toward deaf and deaf-blind individuals. We have 14 sites throughout the province and are always looking for qualified teachers, of which there is a great lack. Most of the practitioners do not have formal training in literacy instruction. Much of their expertise comes from on-the-job training. Resources are a continuing problem for us. We have to take the existing resources and adapt them to the deaf and deaf-blind population that we serve.
If the priority is to increase someone's technological knowledge, we have to adapt those resources. Many materials are auditory, and we have to put them into a visual database.
We consult with many organizations outside of Ontario that are dependent on GOLD for our expertise, resources, professional development and adaptation of their provincial programs. There is a huge need across Canada for literacy programs geared toward those who are deaf and deaf-blind.
Increasingly, those who are deaf themselves and are instructing in our programs are experiencing burnout. They cannot keep up with the vast need that exists.
You can imagine the devastating impact that the federal government cuts will have on our programs. The deaf-blind population is already at a disadvantage, and this will put us further behind other Canadians. I would say that 50 per cent of the deaf or deaf-blind university students are already behind their sighted-hearing colleagues.
Deaf Aboriginals suffer even more, because they are not able to easily fit into the Aboriginal programs that are offered. The deaf programs that do exist are not really geared for the Aboriginal population. There, too, lies a gap that isolates deaf Aboriginals.
In Ontario, literacy is a priority of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities for now, but you can see that funding cuts will impact us greatly.
The previous presenter spoke of the threat that exists for AlphaPlus. If those resources are cut, where does that leave are our rights to access resources? AlphaPlus has been developed extensively and provides accessibility for the deaf and deaf-blind. The resources exist, but if AlphaPlus and similar programs are cut, we will be back to square one, having to re-adapt what has already been adapted.
AlphaPlus has set up AlphaRoot for level 1 and 2 or above through which students can further their studies. The majority of the population that we deal with are pre-level 1. They are still learning computer skills, for example. That in itself is a barrier to their advanced learning. You can only imagine the added frustration of not having these skills and trying to attain literacy skills on top of that.
We have people in AlphaPlus who have the expertise required in the deaf and deaf-blind population, but we are losing that expertise. Those people have been laid off, and we now have to catch up all over again. We have to look for alternative funding, which increases the work for our small staff.
GOLD has historically developed some resources, mostly in a bilingual format. We have them in sign language and text format. Some are auditory materials that have been adapted into sign language format.
Programs like GOLD give an increased return on investment. The payoff from programs like GOLD is much greater and longer lasting. We recommend reinstatement of the funding that was cut in September.
In the National Literacy Secretariat, there is a stream for Aboriginals, francophones, et cetera, but there is no national level program for the deaf or deaf-blind. I strongly believe that if we had national support for each provincial level we could become a strong and effective coalition.
The last thing I should like to speak of is WebNet. I do not know whether you have heard of it. It does not provide captioning or sign language for the deaf and deaf-blind. Accessibility must be considered when instituting programs. To me, it is important to think about a national literacy strategy, something that will fill in the gap that we have had to date. We have individuals working, we have the provinces acting individually, but we do not have an overall strategy for those who are deaf or deaf-blind.
The Chairman: Thank you to all of you for your opening presentations, for the insights and experiences that you bring to the table from right across the country. They are most valuable to us here.
The second part of our program involves question and answer interaction with senators.
Senator Keon: Let me thank all of you for coming here from afar to assist us in this report. Allow me to congratulate you on what you have accomplished on the ground so far.
There are a tremendous number of good things that are up and running that can be built on. I heard about your coalitions and the knowledge exchange centre in British Columbia through the Internet, about the cooperative programs between government, NGOs, community and industry, about measurable progress being made in Manitoba and about your national secretariat.
How can we help? When the federal government officials testified before us, I raised the issue of a paradoxical problem. Looking at the situation from above, which the government always does, there is no progress in macro- measurement. I am sure you all have indicators of progress. Obviously, you have identified your need for a pan- Canadian strategy, and that has to come. I hope that will come after the report is complete.
In that strategy, the most important thing you must do is outline a way that you can measure progress, highlight outcomes from your programs and try to standardize this across the country so that you can educate each other. If the federal authorities took the recommendations that I provided in the hearing where they were present, they may well identify people that can help you do that.
Once you have done that, there are no logical arguments against major funding to help you along the way. I think your applications must highlight your integrated progress, whether it is local or national.
My question to you collectively is this: How can we in our report highlight the progress you are already making in measuring your outcomes and progress?
Ms. Twiss: That is an excellent question, and it is a concern for us as well. We were very frustrated and concerned by the IALSS data.
One of the things we must recognize is that the IALSS data measured the general population. It would have been interesting to measure literacy learners as they came into programs and then learners at the end of three months, six months or two years. We could then say whether that actually made any kind of a difference.
I do not want to talk too much about that data. I want to talk about what we are currently doing in order to measure because this has been a concern in British Columbia.
We measure our programs all the time because we are concerned about students coming in and what progress they make. With that information, we then tinker our programs and change our teaching styles. There was a disconnect between the way we measured and the way government needed to hear that.
A couple of years ago, we successfully applied for and received funding from the National Literacy Secretariat to complete a study. It is called From the Ground Up, and we are working in collaboration with the Ministry of Advanced Education and a research team on the field developing meaningful research tools so that we can measure the learning outcomes of program evaluation, learner progress, group progress and practitioner development in four different areas. We are working with government to find ways that the data we are gathering and the tools we are measuring are something that will be meaningful to them, that they can do something with that information.
The first part of that project is complete, and we are presently testing out those research tools. Hopefully, the program will be complete by the end of September.
The Chairman: Let me throw a supplementary in here.
We have invited the minister and people from the political end of things to appear, but they have not. We have had staff people who are involved in literacy programs appear, but we do not have a clear idea — I certainly do not — about where they are going.
I suspect, following up on Senator Keon's question, that perhaps the government people are in fact influenced by the IALSS study by saying the results look to be the same they were 10 or 12 years ago, and maybe there is something wrong with the programming as a result of that. If that is where their heads are at, that must be addressed as well.
They have been holding up funding. You have all mentioned that. There seems to be more orientation towards programs as opposed to umbrella organizations or coordinating entities. It is hard to get a firm handle on where they are going. I expect this is part of their thinking at the moment. We need to address that.
Ms. Lane: Over the last 20 years, the coalitions have been extremely accountable and have been meeting their outcomes, for every project that has been funded through the National Literacy Secretariat over that time. Whenever we do a project, we talk about what we want to achieve, how we will measure it, and then we report on that. We have continued, at least at Literacy Alberta — and I presume it is the same with my colleagues — to attract money from the National Literacy Secretariat, until this last year, on the basis of the fact that we have met the outcomes we stated we would when we did the project.
I think we have proven ourselves to be organizations that are accountable and that meet our outcomes. However, the National Literacy Secretariat, through which we have been funded for the last 20 years, did not state as one of their goals to increase learner outcomes. They were to increase support for programming. We have been measured on one thing, and now we are being held accountable for something else. I am not disputing the fact that the future holds something different than the past. I say, bring it on. We do not want to go back to the way things were. We are here today to say that we are ready, willing and able to move forward. We want to improve literacy levels in Canada, but what we will tell you and the government if we are given a chance is that it will cost a bit more than $1 per person a year, which is what the National Literacy Secretariat's budget has been for the last few years. We cannot do what needs to be done, doing what we have done in the past, on the basis of what was asked from us in the past and with the funding we received in the past.
By all means, we are ready to be accountable. There is a project proposal in front of the government right now to institute a system of accountability. Virtually every coalition has signed on to being part of that project. Ironically, we were to do that work through Movement for Canadian Literacy, which may be closing its doors at the end of March. The project has never been more needed. Even if it is funded, we may never be able to accomplish the work of that project.
Ms. Greer: I wanted to say some of what Janet has already alluded to. In the beginning of my brief, I explained what coalitions were funded to do. A few years ago, a logic model was set up to look at the success of the National Literacy Secretariat and literacy outcomes. The final outcome is an improvement in literacy levels in Canadians, but that is not what the National Literacy Secretariat was directed to do nor is that what we are funded to do. There is a difference in what we are asked to do and funded to do and what the outcome was in that measurement.
The other thing I want to add is that, in New Brunswick, the province is responsible for the direct services, so they are responsible for the adult literacy programs. In our province, they have just designed a measurement tool that aligns IALSS outcomes with their traditional grade levels, which is what education systems are used to. They will now be able to provide some measurements that, for example, in the 2,000 students to whom they provide service, such that they will be able to connect the success outcomes of those students to the IALSS research and data. That is just beginning now.
Ms. Feist: We are not recognizing that, first, there is a growth in population, second, the statistics do not take into account the remote and isolated communities and reserves, nor do they take into consideration the refugee population coming in. In terms of the measurements that are made, we do not recognize that communities are starting to move into urban centres. For instance, more and more Aboriginal people are moving into urban centres in Manitoba. Again, you will not see an increase, because if there is already remoteness in the ability to provide services to those communities to start with, then the literacy levels of the individuals who are moving into the centres, if they start measuring them, will be low. The statistics will not go up for a long time in Canada unless we take a very aggressive and comprehensive approach throughout each of the provinces in dealing with the various populations that have literacy needs. We are dealing with literacy needs with respect to individuals who are extremely well educated but who are coming here and do not speak English; they have to start right at the beginning. To get to your first ground up, it takes one year; and to be able to communicate well, it takes anywhere from four to five years.
I am aware of many immigrants who have been here for 20 or 30 years who, if their literacy levels were measured, would fail. The Boeing representative on our board has shown our deputy minister some of the TOWES testing that was done, and more than 50 per cent of the people coming through were failing. These are educated individuals, or individuals who are considered to be ``literate,'' but they cannot pass the test and they were not able to be hired to do technical jobs.
We have to look at this in a very careful way. We are talking about needing a skilled labour force. We must start right here in this country with our people on the ground, and we are not doing that. The federal government, as I see it, has that overview. It is very difficult to take patchwork pieces — because that is basically what we do. We do our piece of the patchwork. It is important that that overall framework is put in place so that we can sew those patchworks together and come up with an overall result. That is very difficult right now. The majority of us will be closing down, if not all of us.
[Testimony given through a sign language interpreter]
Ms. Moore: For the IALSS, we presently do not have a way to measure incomes for people who are Aboriginal or who are deaf or who are newcomers to Canada. We would need to count the number of deaf persons, the number of Aboriginal people who are deaf and the number of deaf among newcomers to Canada. There is a desperate need for that, because right now they are being overlooked.
Last year, there was a round table across Canada to discuss literacy, in which Minister Bradshaw participated. We were talking about an additional $30 million being brought forth to the literacy programs. During those discussions, we felt very positive. Now we have seen major cuts. It is very important that all of our expertise be at the table so that we can inform them of what we feel is going on and also to find out from them what has happened between last year's round table and these cuts.
I should also like to emphasize that, for people who are deaf or deaf-blind, there has been much research done on employment. The Canadian Association of the Deaf has conducted a large research. There was a 70 per cent unemployment rate in 2006. In 2007, we now have 85 per cent unemployment rate. You can imagine the impact these cuts will have on our populations, as well as the domino effect; you can also imagine the stress it will put on all the different literacy programs dealing with these populations. It is quite a domino effect.
[Translation]
Mr. Pelletier: We need to agree on what ``progress'' means. First, you cannot only rely on statistics to calculate literacy levels. How do you determine if there has been any progress from level one to level two or progress across one level, and whether or not it makes a difference? The adult literacy training process is slow and you cannot forget this.
Second, the federal government is not alone responsible for progress. When you do not want to face facts, you interpret statistics as you see fit. The Quebec government has always refused to acknowledge the number of people who have taken part in surveys by claiming that the sample was not representative. We have seen how statistical studies use the word ``under-educated'' instead of the word illiteracy, and these are not at all the same thing.
There are roadblocks to progress. The Université du Québec in Rimouski conducted a poll, in which we took part, of individuals who had taken advantage of literacy services in school boards. It was an attempt to determine what the barriers are to learning. Several factors were revealed. One factor is that when the economy is going well people do not register for training and I am speaking generally here, not just in relation to literacy. Another factor is that people get discouraged. They think that you can learn to read and write in six months, and that it happens automatically. That puts added pressure on people who just lost their jobs, who have never been literate and who think there is a quick fix to the problem. I think we need to take a look at what progress means and give the notion a lot of thought.
So why are we not able to reach these people? Why are we only able to reach one or two out of every 100 illiterate people? I do not know the answer to that question and I have no quick fix I can suggest, but this is a question we need to think long and hard about. One thing is certain and that is that in our network we have tried to help more people. We have acted. The Quebec government set up the Alpha Info line and funds it. Statistics indicate that 2000 people have called in. But when you ask them how many people are now part of a group or a school board, their response is that they do not get any funding in that area.
To begin with, we do not think enough about barriers to learning and, secondly, we do not have any idea how adults learn. These are two factors we need to consider. Groups of 16 to 24-year olds recently took part in a study. The research focused on their educational background such as their relationship to the writing process throughout their youth, and it is very interesting. All this is very important, but we need to go further.
[English]
Ms. Downie: When the first international study came out in the mid-1990s, some of the other countries that were part of that study initiated an aggressive approach to the problem. To be very honest, I do not think Canada was very aggressive in its response to the first IALSS study.
The other problem, when talking about measurement criteria, is the need to have that developed and understood upfront. When you look at the federal government's support for literacy, it has never been in the area of delivery. Those of us in the field have been — because we are all experts at writing proposals, believe me — careful to never write a proposal that would be seen as delivery. After the fact, it is very difficult to be accountable for moving the markers when there was nothing about delivery in the first place.
Another problem that we need to look at very seriously is that we are a country where adult literacy is isolated. We have Nova Scotia doing its thing, the federal government doing its thing, and 12 other jurisdictions doing their thing. There is a lack of coordination. It is very difficult to be accountable after the fact, and for what?
A recent example of that was a proposal that I have somewhere in the works over at HRSDC that was written very carefully so as not to be seen as directly benefiting adult learners. After I wrote that proposal and sent it into the system, there was a change in criteria. The minister announced that, yes, the department would review my proposal, among others, but it would be reviewed with the new criteria that it had to directly benefit adult learners. I am getting measured with a measuring stick that I had no way of foreseeing and no input into developing. Once again, I might be getting punished and my organization might be getting punished because of that. This is just a small example of being judged after the fact and not really knowing the rules.
We are able to adapt and we are able to work with people to develop new rules. We are smart enough to do that, but we must do it upfront and it must be coordinated, and then we are ready to go.
The Chairman: If the rules are to change, you need to be bridged between the old and the new.
Ms. Downie: I have been asking the department that is responsible for literacy for a chance to have some input into how that $81 million that was announced in September — at the same time the cuts of $17.1 million over two years were announced — will be allocated and what programs will be developed to spend that money. No one has come to me to ask if I would like to talk about that, and I am sure there are others around the table here who would like to talk about that as well.
Ms. van der Meer: Senator Keon, you talked about how the government officials are talking about IALSS as being a measurement that shows there is no progress. I think that is faulty logic. It is a very unfair way of presenting those statistics, because it insinuates that, had there been no literacy programs, the levels would have stayed the same. If cancer rates stay the same over 10 years, we do not say: Obviously, we are not doing much for research. Let us cut all the research and all the programs.
Without programs, those literacy rates would have fallen; they would not have remained constant. In making the argument that because our IALSS results are the same, we must be ineffective, we are forgetting that literacy rates deteriorate after time. Literacy is like muscles — they must be used to be maintained. Over time, people may lose their literacy skills. Unfortunately, it is an example of government using statistics to make its point, regardless of whether those statistics are actually giving that information.
If the government wants to measure whether literacy programs have made progress, it needs to follow learners over time. The government could not just say, for example, that 50 per cent of the general population is now wearing red shirts and if in 10 years 50 per cent of us are wearing red shirts that means we are all the same. It will not be the same people who have low literacy skills or the same people we are measuring. It is important to keep that in mind, instead of taking that statistic and using it as a justification for stopping funding as opposed to a reason for increasing funding so that we can actually move upwards.
Senator Keon: It is interesting that you mentioned the cancer people, who have been very successful with their cancer strategy. They are getting a lot of money. In their strategy, they said, ``Here is what we are doing. We have cured the most deadly cancer in women'' — which is one of the uterine cancers, totally 100 per cent curable — ``some of the skin cancers, 100 per cent curable,'' and the list went on. They then said, ``Here are the ones we are having no effect on, and here is the research we want to do.'' I think you folks have to play the same game. You have all kinds of good things to offer, but you are just not displaying them correctly.
Senator Fairbairn: I want to thank everyone who has come here today and set out, as I would expect them to do, their situation and their thoughts very firmly and eloquently. This is an issue that is unlike any other issue. Learning is a difficult goal for many to achieve. As well — and I think the statisticians would say this — it is an extremely difficult issue in which to do their job as well.
I know the story you have brought to this committee is the reality of what is on the ground. That is why it is so important to have you here this morning. Obviously, things have changed and changed quite dramatically. There are a couple of questions I want to ask. In the new situation that exists in the department, namely, the change into this larger grouping of learning, literacy, skills training, and so on, has there been any indication at all that you will have a relationship with someone within that new grouping who will work with you and will visit you to find out what it is that is most important in the various parts of this country? They are tremendously important and importantly different.
Can you tell us what it is you need and how best the government can assist you?
The National Literacy Secretariat had very skilled people whose responsibility it was to visit the various regions and provinces across the country. They would have discussions with the various organizations to determine their most difficult and important issues and work with those organizations to determine how best the federal money could be spent to remedy what was relevant — not what Ottawa thought was relevant — on the ground, in an effort to assist people of all ages in learning. Those people could then, starting with their families, train their children and help them to learn, as well as fill the jobs we are now being told we do not have a skilled labour force to fill.
Is there any link, other than the startling one in the fall when word came down that no one seemed to have an indication was happening? Has anyone come to sit down with you and say, ``Okay, things will be done a bit different. How do we work together?''
The Chairman: There is your answer — a resounding no.
Senator Fairbairn: That was pretty quick. I ask the question because those of us sitting here in Ottawa are not in a position to come to the same conclusions you can. There has to be a workable linkage on the ground across this country with the people in the literacy movement. They are the ones who have to live it; they are the ones who do the teaching. We talk about the pan-Canadian accord, but we must remember that that, too, was not a creation of a government mind. It was fundamentally a creation of a parliamentary committee, the first ever in the House of Commons to study this issue. That committee produced one of the finest reports on literacy I have ever seen in the many years I have been involved. That is what was pushing the issue.
Has anything been moved with you at all within the past year on that issue?
The Chairman: We heard a general ``no,'' but we have three people who want to expand on their answer.
Ms. Vandale: We have not had a lot of consultation, but on an individual level there is still some willingness to be connected — but certainly not as a department or as a changing department. We do not even know the name of what we are supposed to be proposing to.
The Chairman: Without divulging any name, this person that you think is communicating with you well, what is he or she saying about what the department is doing?
Ms. Vandale: Not much. First, we were brought back to the table in December to review the proposals. I was fortunate to be at the table with our province, with Saskatchewan, to review the proposals with the new criteria. A lot of them, of course, were sent back for rewriting. We thought we would hear the following week that we could rewrite our proposals and have maybe until mid-January. No, we heard in mid-January, and we had a week to rewrite the proposals, to refocus and come up with new ideas, which I did, and so did the SLN and, I am sure, many other people. However, during that time, we kept hearing that the process would involve one to two months after we submitted our proposals.
The Chairman: Do you actually have new criteria in writing?
Ms. Vandale: With that review panel, yes.
Ms. Twiss: There has been no direct relationship, but, as Ms. Vandale mentioned, the project manager has been very helpful interpreting the new guidelines — when she has been telephoned. I must add that a reading of the guidelines in itself is a literacy activity. They are convoluted. The person us through them also recognizes how convoluted they are. On a number of occasions, she has said, ``I know the interpretation sounds like it could be this, but why not try for that and we will keep it open?'' It is undecided and must be frustrating at her end as well because she does not want to make promises to us that end up being wrong.
It is important for us to have an honest relationship with our funders because in the past we have had that. They help us see the realm of the possible. We are working at a micro-level with our heads to the ground. The funder comes in knowing the larger landscape and tells us, ``If you do this and this, I know that this other group is doing this and this. We could add this money and do this larger thing.'' That has been helpful for us in the past.
We are now moving into a charity model. We do not have a relationship. We have a strict set of criteria. We apply to it and we are told no. There is no negotiation; there is no dance; there is no respect happening here. We have put in applications. The funding was just cut. They decided to open it up again. As Ms. Downie mentioned, the criteria were changed. If you told me you wanted me to do direct delivery, I would have put that in in the first place. If you told me I was allowed to do that with this money, it would have been in there, because that is exactly what we want to do. We have to dance around it. We have to find someone else to do the direct delivery. We have to spend all our time coordinating this and fostering those relationships, because that is all we are allowed to do with that money. Later on, we are told, ``Forget it. There is not enough direct impact on learners, so yours goes into the black hole.'' That is a charity model.
[Translation]
M. Pelletier: In previous years, we have been lucky enough to have an exceptional resource person here in Quebec; since this individual retired, it has not been as easy dealing with government. The federal government hired someone on contract to carry out this role. As I said to you earlier, the projects we were supposed to start still have not been considered. I am trying to not be ironic here, but they hired someone to engage these groups in order to facilitate the progress at a federal level — that happened in Quebec and now it is happening with the federal government — and, in my humble opinion, the questions being asked have nothing to do with whether or not the project and its objectives are worthwhile, and what solutions are available. To give you an example, we were asked whether an amount of $200 out of a 12,000-dollar budget for transport was for taxi or public transport. Personally, I do not think that kind of question does much to advance things. It makes a big difference and it is not necessarily because of the new program. In the past, we were very spoiled, because the official in charge of our province was good at asking us relevant and realistic questions with a view to making things move forward. That individual's support was important and is no longer available.
[English]
[Testimony given through a sign language interpreter]
Ms. Moore: You were just speaking about Quebec and the contact with individuals. The criteria and the guidelines can be in political language, but I think a good exercise would be to put them into plain English, in order for the rest us to work efficiently and expediently. In many of our organizations, for example in Ontario, the grassroots workers cannot necessarily apply for such programs if the language of the program, the application in itself, is a barrier.
GOLD made an AlphaPlus application for us, but we had to aggressively seek a relationship with the government. Why is that necessary? When we do make such an effort, the answer we get is rather scant. Then we are not sure what is happening on the government side and we need to chase down the information.
I would have thought that someone dealing with federal funds or other provincial funds would be interested in what we are doing, in the sense that, because we are asking for money, do you not want to know more about what we will do with it or how we will use it? We can explain it to you if you tell us what your questions are. This reciprocal relationship has a huge impact.
The Chairman: Thank you for your answers. I have four more senators who have questions.
Senator Rompkey: I want to make some comments, and I would be pleased to hear your reaction to them. In October, I will have been here on Parliament Hill for 35 years. I have rarely seen what is happening today. This kind of interaction with a committee is a rare occurrence. I congratulate the committee and those who have attended. I am not a regular member of this committee; I may be behind the learning curve in terms of witnesses you have heard before.
I have been a teacher and have kept in touch with the Labrador literacy coalition, which is in the area that I represent.
I first want to comment on the reason for underfunding. We had a train in Newfoundland in 1949. After we joined Confederation, the government continually underfunded the train and ran down the service so that no one used the train. The government then said, ``No one is using the train, so we will close it.'' We do not have a train any more. There is a Newfoundland and Labrador play entitled, Daddy, What's a Train?
There is another bureaucratic ploy. If you ask them to put in a service, they will say, ``We have to survey the traffic offering.'' They will come back to you and say that there is no traffic offering so they cannot put in the service. There is no traffic offering because there is no service there in the first place.
I do not think the literacy coalition and the literacy program across the country is underfunded as a result of lack of progress; I believe there is a malaise at the top. I know that we are not supposed to be partisan, and I do not want to be. It is not a partisan issue. It was Mr. Mulroney who brought in the literacy secretariat and it is Mr. Harper who is killing it. We have a malaise at the top, a lack of vision and commitment. That is where the problem is and that is the problem this committee must address. In a sense, the feds have killed their own child.
The presentation that I associated with most directly was the one from Nunavut, because my area is much like Nunavut. It is a large area. Labrador is 112,000 square miles, with several large communities and many small communities dispersed over a coastline, largely unconnected and largely Aboriginal, with many of the same conditions and needs that were expressed from Nunavut.
John Ibbitson had a good column in The Globe and Mail this morning. He made a good point about the funding of Aboriginal literacy and Aboriginal programs. He made the point that people in Nunavut cannot go anywhere. If they do, they are killing a whole culture. For us, in Newfoundland, there is a direct flight now between St. John's and Fort McMurray. Our people are going down the road just as Nova Scotians have gone down the road for years. For people who speak Inuktitut, you must first get them to Fort McMurray and then get them to assimilate. There is a different problem with certain regions of the country, particularly in Aboriginal communities, that we must understand. Mr. Ibbitson does.
That brings up another point. Once the committee has its report, and there is a lot of ammunition here today to enable it to do that, it then has to engage the support of the provinces and the press. We have to dig out people like Ibbitson who are sympathetic.
In the same column, Ibbitson said that the Government of Nunavut has now taken the federal government to court because it has a fiduciary responsibility, apart from everything else. The Nunavut government is supporting the land claims organization, who is taking the government to court. That is a direct action by a regional government in a part of the country to take action on what is essentially a literacy and educational problem.
I notice that the Premier of New Brunswick was getting a briefing. These are encouraging signs. If the premiers can meet on health care, on equalization and all of those things, get them to meet on literacy and put the case forward. That is where the power is. Education is a provincial responsibility.
I wanted to make those comments, and I certainly support what the committee is doing, even though I am not a member. Thank you for the opportunity. I will be glad to hear from people who want to continue the discussion.
Mr. Page: I would agree with everything you have said. Going back to what we said earlier, the other consideration is that Senator Keon mentioned the IALSS results and the fact that it was wide-scale, macro-evaluation. The problem with that is that in Nunavut, when you evaluate progress under literacy in a nation, there is an assumption that education and literacy levels are only impacted by formal educational activities. In fact, educational or literacy levels are impacted by other governmental policies, such as housing.
A researcher named Jean Anyon wrote a book entitled Radical Possibilities, and she has done a lot of thorough research in the United States about the impact of literacy levels on housing, community planning and minimum wage and how they impact on literacy levels. She chose five cities in the United States. That research is relevant to the situation in Nunavut. A good example of that is the isolation in Nunavut and the cost of living, particularly for housing. The housing shortage has a direct impact upon literacy and graduation levels in Nunavut. There is overcrowding in the houses in Nunavut. There are no homeless people because you would not survive outside. Instead, there is overcrowding, with 14 or 15 people in the houses. You do not have a room to do your homework in. It is not easy to do homework in the North. That has an impact on literacy levels and school retention, adult literacy programs, et cetera.
When the government considers benchmarks and evaluation tools, it is important that they realize what exactly is being evaluated and be open to the reality that when they do something as simple as an IALSS, even though it is a complex process, it is evaluating things far more than simply the work of the coalitions and the educational practices in this country. It involves other policies. A pan-Canadian strategy would have to include looking at housing and other considerations in order to develop a policy that would be as effective as it can be and that would not be minimized by other policies that work against it.
Senator Cochrane: I am looking at the news release from February 14, a few days ago, in which the Council of Ministers of Education met in Toronto. It says the ministers of education continue to show leadership in the area of literacy by implementing the next phase of the literacy action plan, which would include, as one of them, the creation by each jurisdiction of formal policy frameworks on literacy, both for school-age children and adult learners. They met on February 14. We should keep an eye of this, as it is the minister of education from every province.
My concern here is that all I am hearing is programs, programs, programs. What about core funding?
Ms. Lane: We have been trying not to go there.
Senator Cochrane: Can I go there? What about the core funding? Did you not have core funding? If you did have core funding, when was it cut and why?
Ms. van der Meer: I am surprised you used the phrase ``core funding'' because that is a dirty word for us in the literacy coalition. Uttering those words could mean the instant death of your application, because the government has been very clear that they absolutely, 100 per cent, do not core fund. However, the reality of the situation was, through the National Literacy Secretariat and in our previous funding applications, we were able to support our infrastructure through programs that offered perhaps what we would call core services and were able to pay our general infrastructure costs. It is putting a chicken suit on a cow and pretending it is not a cow any more. We were given our core services, and our core infrastructure costs were covered by the National Literacy Secretariat, but we were never allowed to say that nor recognize it. Instead, it was all programs that happened to be core services. That was the funding that was cut on September 25. I searched ``core funding'' in my document and replaced it with ``program costs.''
Ms. Paterson: We do receive core funding from the provincial government in Ontario, but we have not had an increase for 10 years. That core funding allows us to have one staff in the coalition and then one practitioner in our programs in Ontario. What we received from the federal government was always project dollars, which were yearly. We would then get the extra administration dollars to have a half person in the coalition to do what we needed to do. That is where our core funding comes from, and that is still in place for Ontario for the four umbrella organizations.
Ms. Lane: The coalition funding was never considered core funding, but it was the kind of funding that enabled us to flesh out our administration dollars. For instance, last year, Literacy Alberta applied for six projects. One was a coalition project, which was not allowed to be core funding — we even had to taken anything to do with our board out of that — but it was stuff that would pay for part of my time and part of an administrative person's time, and we were going to be able to do many things with that money.
However, as to the other five projects we had applied for, spreading the rent out amongst all of those projects and the various costs associated with holding an office in downtown Calgary, we were able to hold ourselves accountable for what we were doing with government money. We were able to have a board of directors and an accountant. We were well governed and had good policies and procedures because we had funding from various projects.
My coalition proposal has been sitting in the minister's office since about November 12, and we have not heard a word on it. Three of our projects that were to be reviewed are still in the system. If only one or two of those projects is funded, I might have to turn the money down — because I will not be able to pay the rent or feed the kids. I will not have enough infrastructure money from one project to keep us going when I have applied for funding for six projects.
Senator Cochrane: When Prime Minister Mulroney announced this program, was there not core funding announced? Was it just program funding?
Ms. Twiss: The word is ``project,'' not ``core.'' Due to federal-provincial jurisdiction, the federal government cannot be seen to be providing core funding for an educational initiative. It can, however, fund projects, and on projects our experience in British Columbia is very similar to what Ms. Paterson spoke of. We get core funding from the province. It is not enough, but we supplement it with projects, which means that we have to reinvent ourselves every year. We are doing the same things but have to find different ways to do them. That is good, in that it keeps us fresh and current, but sometimes we are simply doing the same thing over.
Senator Cochrane: At least you are helping the core people.
Ms. Twiss: If we could get funding for five years at a time, it would be fine, but we have to apply every year.
Senator Cochrane: Are other provinces contributing core funding?
Ms. Downie: The Province of Nova Scotia provides no funding to Literacy Nova Scotia, core or otherwise. LNS has received project funding from the federal government. In the earliest years of the National Literacy Secretariat it was in the form of grants, which were more flexible than contribution agreements. Contribution agreements do not provide the flexibility to enable us to cover operational costs.
Project funding has always been in place. The biggest disadvantage of it is that we are always massaging a project to fit criteria that might not be the most appropriate for the constituency we serve or the current needs. Rather than considering the needs of your community, you are trying to write something to accommodate the funding criteria, which is a huge disadvantage.
Senator Cochrane: That may be a disadvantage, but that is the case everywhere, not only in literacy.
Ms. Downie: Yes. We laughed when you mentioned core funding because it is so far out of the realm of possibility for literacy organizations right now.
Senator Cochrane: I would like to see something national whereby you can share proven successful programs. Programs are successful only if they can be evaluated. Only after a program is evaluated will you know whether it should be continued. If a program is not successful, if the students are not improving, throw it out. Evaluation is very important. Ms. Downie said that lack of evaluation is one of the gaps.
Ms. Twiss spoke of a software program that could perhaps be shared with the other groups across the country. Sharing and evaluation are important.
I commend you all for everything you are doing and ask you to keep doing it. Perhaps we have to reassess a lot of things and find out where the gaps are that Ms. Downie mentioned.
[Testimony given through a sign language interpreter]
Ms. Moore: We have talked about core funding as well as coalition funding, which is key. For the last 15 years, our coalitions have been key. We have other coalition organizations that have been receiving NLS money for their operations. I was not aware of that. I previously wanted to apply for that funding, but I was told it was not possible. I am learning that other coalitions do receive funding for that.
Is it an earned privilege to receive the coalition funds? There are some opportunities that not all of us have been able to obtain. Does that funding still exist? It would be good to have a standardized method of accessing funding.
I am the only person running my organization and have been for two years. If I had access to coalition funding, I would be able to hire someone to work with me to make my task a little bit easier. We have always experienced being underpaid. We do this work because our hearts are in it.
Does coalition funding still exist? Is it a hidden fund that can be accessed only if you have certain information?
The Chairman: I do not know whether senators have that answer. We would certainly like to get the answer.
[Translation]
Mr. Pelletier: Let me add something. The amount of $235,000 that our organization receives for supporting the network of groups is provided, because we are a coalition. When we receive that amount, with the project that we propose — we present projects every year —, we do not know where the money is coming from. I have no answer to that question. For years, there has always been money for that purpose. It was included in the old NLS program.
Let me come back to the evaluation issue. With regard to subsidies, for instance, for a coalition that receives $235,000 as we do, there must be an evaluation, because it is a considerable sum. However, if we look at the subsidies of groups subsidized at the local level, in Quebec, the average is around $10,000. This sum might seem smaller than it really is, and many may be inclined to think that it is not worth the trouble. We must be careful because this sum enables us to carry out projects and to bring things to completion every year. For instance, we can gather people, raise public awareness, we can do recruiting, we can create instruments that the basic funding does not allow for because the entirety of the basic funds — that is inadequate in any case — is committed to service delivery. This is an important point.
As I said earlier, when evaluating a grant, we must have clear criteria so that new criteria do not get imposed after the fact and so that new reasons cannot be raised for further budget cuts.
[English]
Senator Fairbairn: I have an observation to make. When I was Minister with Special Responsibility for Literacy, it always amazed me that Quebec had a signed agreement with the federal government on their literacy proposals. It was a joy to see those names on a piece of paper. We knew that it would last, and I think a lot of good things were done in Quebec because of that.
The Chairman: Thank you for that observation. We now have in front of us a copy of that news release that Senator Cochrane talked about that does reference literacy.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It is simply wonderful that you are all here today. This certainly is a highlight of my years in the Senate. It is because of the wonderful people you are and the wonderful work you are doing.
I want to zero in on measurement, as our Senate colleagues have done. There is an enormous difference between measuring the incidence and the cure rate, success rate and treatment, of cancer and literacy. I would like to ask whoever wants to address this a bit more of the details of the IALSS survey. That is what people are looking at all the time — 66 per cent in New Brunswick in terms of francophones, and 40 per cent in terms of the English, as is the case across Canada. Can you help us a bit to understand how the sample is chosen and your perspective on that?
For instance, if you are thinking about people with learning disabilities, we were told this morning that in many programs 80 per cent of the people have learning disabilities. It does not take one or two years to treat a learning disability, it takes almost a lifetime, but it takes many years at the very least. You help them along step-by-step. As well, know that in Canada we have a huge population of new Canadians, and that will increase, as will the challenges. How does this affect the measurement?
On the issue of measurement, and this is a two-prong question, because I want to get as much in as I can, I want you to tell us how extremely difficult, time-consuming and almost impossible it is for you to measure to meet the ever greater requests and demands of the federal government to come up with a measurement at the end of one or two years for your projects? First of all, talk to us about the time that it will take you to figure that out and do it. You are one person alone in an office, the phone rings and faxes come in, et cetera. As well, it is not easy to measure these things, especially in the realm of family literacy, and to measure an individual at the end of one year or two years if they are having great difficulty in your program.
I wish to have some help with understanding the national figures in the surveys, and perhaps even more so your own predicament in your coalition offices, one or two people struggling to meet these increasing and formidable demands.
Ms. Twiss: I will start with the easy question first, and that is question number two, and then I will then take a stab at the question about the IALSS survey, and my colleagues will fill in the gaps.
It is difficult to measure learner progress in the way that the federal or provincial government recognizes and values. For a practitioner on the ground, it is not hard to measure; it is almost a no-brainer. You see that you are working with someone who hated to write, who could not organize their lives to get into your class at nine o'clock in the morning every day and attended three times a week. Then you suddenly see someone who is now attending regularly, someone who has organized certain things in their life, their kids are in a good daycare, they are able to make connections with the school and are showing up in your class. They are now writing more than before and they are taking books out of the library, something they did not previously do. We write these things in our reports. We make these observations because these are objectives that we have. We want people to attend regularly and contribute to the success of the program. We want them to have four or five instances where they interact with their children's school. We have these objectives for them and they fulfil them or not and we write them in reports.
There is a disconnect between what we determine as progress and success and where this mythical IALSS survey sits. Is that a level 1, level 2 or level 3 learner? We do not test for IALSS in our programs. We test whether an individual is able to write, is able to write with comfort and ease, whether an individual's communication is effective. Then we step it up a little — whether the individual is writing more complicated things, working with more complicated material, using more advanced grammar structures, for example, semi-colons. That is how we work in the field. If we are unable to do that, if we see that someone is not attending, not writing and not succeeding, then we then rejig our program and take a look at what it is.
Does that give you enough to start with on that part of the question?
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Would that be what the federal government is looking for?
Ms. Twiss: No.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I am all for what you are saying, but to me that is kind of like a story. It is not precise. Is the kind of story you are telling sufficient enough for the present government to get the funding?
Ms. Twiss: What the present government needs, and to be quite frank our own provincial governments, is a credential.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I want to know the criteria, yes.
Ms. Twiss: They want to see units of completion. We do that. In our adult basic education, ABE, programs. We have levels and we have learner outcomes that people must achieve. When an individual has reached a specific outcome, he or she moves from fundamental level into the 02 level or the 04 level. We all have our own levels. The various provinces and territories have their own credentialing.
I was heartened to hear what Ms. Greer was talking about, namely, that there is a movement to articulate the provincial credential, the ABE credential. In British Columbia, we are even incorporating the language benchmarks, the ESL benchmarks, with the IALSS survey, so that when someone reaches this level, you can say, ``It looks like he is about halfway through level 2 of the IALSS.'' This is all new information, and we are all trying to find a way to express what this stuff is.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It seems you almost need a Ph.D. in statistics to be able to meet these criteria.
Ms. Twiss: We are just teachers.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Can you give me an example of the kind of criteria that would be acceptable? A lot of you said your projects were turned back, that they were not good enough, and you were given another week or two to rewrite them. Was that on the basis of the criteria of measurement? I want to know about the criteria of measurement.
Ms. Twiss: First, you must appreciate that the guidelines were a bit confusing; they were hard to interpret.
For example, my colleagues and I had a proposal to deal with prison literacy. We had previously worked with the same group, so we had a good pool of needs-assessment information. We set out a two-year plan to do these series of activities. When we received word back, they did not think what we were accomplishing in the first year was worthwhile and asked us to make it a one-year program.
There is a real difference between a one- and a two-year program. It takes a lot of time. This is why I am so fed up with drive-by funding — and I did not invent that phrase; I cannot take any credit for that brilliant phrase. It takes a long time to develop trust in literacy learners. We have had a program at the racetrack now for six years, and only now are we starting to get the true literacy learners coming out from the racetrack into our learning centre.
In the first couple of years the learning centre was open, we got that first group of capable learners who just needed that one step up. It does not matter. You keep the doors open and work with them, because everyone on the outside is watching. What is happening? Is this a good place? Are they creeps? Will they tell everybody else what I do not know? It takes a long time.
We have been there for six years and just now we are starting to make progress. With this one year, two year, you are on or off, it ruins us. It is terrible for communities.
With regard to the IALSS survey, Statistics Canada has a good website and it has good information about the survey and the concept behind statistical measurement. It talks about how they gathered their groups together. They will list the number of people they interviewed in each province. It is statistically sound. I skimmed through it and no bells went off.
A concern I did have is that they interviewed people in their own homes, and it was a one-off thing. Some days, I am not as bright as I may want to be, and maybe that is when they came to my house and tested me.
There is a website you can visit to get all the information about the survey, as well as take some test questions yourself so you can get a taste for what people are asked.
Ms. Vandale: I appreciate the work of the Senate in delivering a message to the government. That is perhaps challenging for the government.
It seems to me the argument must be clear that, yes, the government may only see it valuable to fund national programs for which they are a national body. I may be wrong, but it seems they want to fund national programs only and not provincial programs, because that should be the purview of the province. However, the provinces do not have enough money.
In Saskatchewan, we receive $1 million for program funding for educational institutions and maybe another $900,000 has been granted for other literacy initiatives. That is not much money towards those actions.
The federal government has a lot of money. We always go to the federal government with the expectation that there will be assistance provided at the provincial level.
My question to the Senate would be this: What is a good argument for insisting that the government continue to help at the provincial level for these kinds of programs? It seems they always come back with philosophical statements saying we are only for national programs. To me, that would be a very strong point to make.
The Chairman: The Ministers of Education have said that they want to have funding partnership arrangements with the federal government. That is another vehicle that can be used.
Mr. Page: Part of the problem we are having is that we are using an analogy of curing cancer, which I do not think is a good one.
The work completed by the coalitions has made it clear that in Nunavut we have not done program delivery. We have done workshops for community groups so they can do program delivery, but we have not done it ourselves.
The idea that we can demonstrate that literacy levels have gone down by evaluating our learners, we do not have learners. We were not allowed to have learners under the criteria in the past.
If you use the cancer model again, it is more like the support provided to doctors, researchers or the equipment they use, like the MRI machine. If you look at the effectiveness of having an MRI in the community and reducing cancer rates, it is a complicated thing to measure. You are also looking at the researchers and practitioners and what they are doing.
We create resources and provide support for those in the field. It would take a lot more money for us to take the IALSS results and break it down into component parts of the impact of our work toward literacy levels, as pulled out from the work of schools, universities and employers, who also have a huge impact upon literacy levels, as well as government policy.
Ms. van der Meer: I want to speak to the difficulty of evaluation. There are a number of reasons for why evaluation is obviously necessary. All of our programs undergo some type of evaluation, but sometimes there is a discrepancy between the evaluation that the government wants and the evaluation best for our programs.
As Ms. Twiss said about qualitative versus quantitative, imagine for a second you are an adult learner. You have probably struggled enormously in school. Tests are probably not your favourite thing. When we are talking about the North, there are First Nations people who may have experienced residential schools. We are not trying to mimic a situation that was incredibly traumatic. We want to create literacy programs that are comfortable and inviting, programs that encourage participation. Saying to someone, ``Sit down and write this test for us, so we know how smart you are,'' will not help anyone. It will not have positive results. We already know that people at the lowest levels of literacy, less than 10 per cent, are accessing programs. The job of the literacy community is to try to improve literacy in whatever ways it can.
While it is absolutely necessary that we evaluate, there needs to be understanding of what a learner's perspective might be. We should be evaluating in a way that does not compromise our programming.
Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
Ms. Greer: Again, the government is looking for quantitative measurement. Traditionally, social programs provide qualitative measurement and anecdotal evidence. The two do not meet.
I want to reiterate that coalitions are not responsible for program delivery on the ground. That is responsibility of the provinces. I feel we are being punished for something that we had no part in.
[Translation]
Senator Chaput: A brief comment. I think that the current state of affairs has existed for some time. This is not a partisan issue, these are the facts of life when dealing with governments — in our case, it is the federal government. You submit your projects to criteria previously developed for federal programs without consulting you so that there is a world of difference between your reality and that of the new programs. Consequently, you have to adjust your projects before receiving the funds, although this is not what you would really like in terms of your own reality.
Now we are talking about evaluation. I think that in this room we all agree that we must evaluate projects to find out their impact. In developing an evaluation, if the criteria for evaluation are developed solely by public servants or by the government, without consulting you, you will have to comply with evaluation criteria that do not really match your reality. Therefore, your evaluation will never be as positive as you would like it to be. Do I really understand what is going on?
[English]
Some Hon. Senators: Yes.
Senator Chaput: All right. I want that on the record.
Senator Carstairs: Thank you and welcome. I, too, am not a member of this committee, but I was a teacher for 20 years and literacy issues have been ones that concern me.
Yesterday, I had my daughter's class from a Toronto school here at Parliament Hill, along with the other Grade 8s that were graduating. Less than half of these children are reading at a Grade 8 level. They will go into high school next year, where there are no formal reading programs. Reading programs end at the end of Grade 8, if that is when high school begins.
What coordination, if any, is done with these kids? I suspect that many of them will graduate reading at a Grade 5 or 6 level, a Grade 7 level, if they are lucky. What kind of information, if any, is given to them about the possibility of becoming lifelong learners when they leave high school?
Ms. Paterson: In the Aboriginal sector, we have a lot of 14 year olds that are leaving the school system because they are not at the Grade 8 level. There are a few things happening here. For example, in Ontario, until high school, the students are educated on reserves. However, there are no high schools on reserves. Hence, high schools are almost like residential schools — because the students must leave their community, their peers and their family. Therefore, what is happening is they are dropping out. They are coming into our literacy programs, but we are not supposed to be helping them because our programs are supposed to be for adults. Our practitioners are saying that we must help these kids now or in 10 years we will have them in a full circle again and have people who have low literacy.
That is what is happening in the Aboriginal community, and it is happening with a lot of kids. We must do something about it. I do not know if that answers your question, but that is what is happening with us.
Ms. Moore: I have something to add to Mr. Page's comments about funding for national organizations. It would be important for the government to consider a two-way stream, one national organization where provincial associations or organizations would have an opportunity to apply. We need a national strategy. I think that is what is lacking right now.
Also, Senator Chaput, you were talking about the criteria that should be set up basically as a two-way street. The government cannot establish criteria without consulting us. That is our major concern. There needs to be a two-way street. We need to have a dialogue. We need to be involved in the development of the criteria and the guidelines in order to have a more successful outcome in the future.
Ms. Greer: In New Brunswick, we are seeing quite a shift in the age population attending adult literacy classes. We are seeing a number of younger people in those adult literacy classes. We understand that the guidance counsellors are counselling students who are leaving high school and have poor literacy scores to seek out an adult literacy classroom. A number of these students are coming to our classrooms because that is where they will learn to read.
The job of the coalition has been to promote literacy. I think we are getting the word out. I believe that more children are arriving on the doorstep of the school ready to read because the family literacy messages are being heard. I see more children in strollers in stores with books for their entertainment. I see more parents reading to their children, and I hear from more fathers who are reading to their children — which is absolutely important.
I believe we are being successful in the promotion that we are doing. We hope to see a shift as the years go on. I think the 50 per cent of your Grade 8 class that is reading is probably higher than it would have been 10 years ago.
The Chairman: We have a few more minutes before the formal part of our meeting ends. When the formal part ends, which means that all the transcripts will come to an end, we will have lunch. We can then continue with an informal discussion.
Before we wrap up the formal part of this session, is there anyone who has not had anything to say lately but would like time to get something in here? I would like to give everyone a chance to speak.
Ms. Lane: As I alluded to in my presentation at the beginning, the need for the pan-Canadian strategy is the need for partnerships between all levels of government and all sectors. In Alberta, I am fighting for my life. I am trying to raise money for my organization through awareness and building collaborations and partnerships between the various sectors. The federal government needs to come to this table and talk to us for sure. They need to know, too, that we are willing to work in partnership with them, with our provinces, with our municipalities, with industry, with the private sector.
In Alberta, the private sector has only begun to realize that they have a literacy problem that this time they cannot hire their way out of. They are starting to say to ask what they can do about the problem. I am hoping that Literacy Alberta will be able to obtain some funding to do the work that needs to be done in this area from industry. There is it no reason for industry to be excluded from the pan-Canadian strategy. This is part of it.
I started at Literacy Alberta just two years ago, and Literacy Alberta had a mandate to work in adult literacy. Over time, we have developed and taken over some mandate to work in all aspects of literacy because literacy is a cradle-to- grave issue. I could improve my own literacy skills; I am probably ranked fairly high, but there are areas I am not literate in.
I need to spend time with the education system in Alberta. I need to be talking to the provincial education minister, who has said that he will not meet with me because that is adult literacy and therefore an adult education problem.
We are starting to do great work at the family literacy level, but I would say that the coalitions have not had any effect in the K to 12 system. We need to make inroads there as well. When we bring people to the table for this pan- Canadian strategy, it must be cross-sectoral, cross-ministerial and cross-governmental. Everyone must decide what we need to do or we will find ourselves a third-world country.
Mr. Page: When the Nunavut Literacy Council recommends the reinstating of the literacy money, we also mean that the monies and the criteria, as they were, should not change. That does not negate the possibility of new funds for program delivery, but the money that existed and the work that was done have been around areas of community development and practitioner support. Given the problem of distance, it is important that literacy programs happen in the communities. Program delivery will be a real challenge if it is centralized under the Nunavut Literacy Council. The council would welcome developing evaluation criteria in collaboration with the federal government.
Our hope is that the money and criteria that have been applied to date and have built the infrastructure that is absolutely vital to the development of further literacy development in Nunavut be reinstated.
Senator Keon: The successful national strategies have been developed by the worker bees in the field, and I think the failures have been developed by the bureaucrats.
I would take the ball and run with it.
The Chairman: That concludes the formal part the proceedings. It has been very valuable. Thank you very much for being here.
The committee adjourned.