Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Communications
Standing
Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 7 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, March 19, 1997
The Subcommittee on Communications of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 3:30 p.m. to study Canada's international position in communications.
Senator Marie-P. Poulin (Chair) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chair: The Subcommittee on Communications will come to order.
We welcome Mr. Toth from the Canadian Film and Television Production Association. We are honoured that you could meet with us today.
As you are probably aware, this is a subcommittee of the permanent committee of Transport and Communications. The permanent committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Bacon, decided a few months ago that it is extremely important to review Canada's situation and how Canada can be at the leading edge of communications as we enter the year 2000.
Knowing that it is a very complex issue, knowing that it is a situation which is evolving rapidly every day, we focused on four approaches or four chapters: the technological concern; the cultural content concern; the human resources concern in terms of where our professionals are today, where they will be tomorrow, how they are being trained for tomorrow; and the commercial partnerships that are continuing to progress.
We would appreciate hearing from you on those four areas. Please proceed, Mr. Toth.
Mr. Garry Toth, Vice President, Member Services and Industrial Affairs, Canadian Film and Television Production Association: We might be able to explore some of the specific areas in your mandate.
The CFTPA represents about 300 member companies across Canada who produce, as individuals or as companies, the majority of product that we see on Canadian television. We thank you for this opportunity on behalf of the entire membership and on behalf of our president and CEO, Elizabeth McDonald, who sends her regrets that she cannot be here today.
The movies which we see at the cinema and on television are perhaps the most powerful media to reflect our society and project our culture. This media informs, enlightens and entertains Canadians and enables us to share our experiences and aspirations across all provinces, regions and languages.
The success of the Canadian film and television producers in creating content that reflects our culture has been quite remarkable given the challenges that typify the Canadian market -- the small population, different languages, domestic and foreign market access and, as we already mentioned, the changes in the communication environment. Change, especially in the areas of technology, seems endless in this specific industry. Regardless, what does remain constant is that only Canadians will create distinctly Canadian films and television programs.
Recently, the CFTPA released its 1997 profile on the Canadian industry. This study indicates that the Canadian film and television industry generates about $2.7 billion worth of economic activity for Canada. This amount includes both certified and non-certified Canadian productions; private, specialty and pay broadcasters' in-house productions; and location filming by foreign companies.
Please jump in if you need clarification on any of the terms that I am using...
While there has been tremendous progress made by the Canadian film and television industry, the limited domestic market of about 30 million people means that public support is still required for most Canadian productions.
For feature films in what is designated as "under-represented" television programming, that being drama, variety, documentary and children's programming, the Canadian market is too small to finance even the most popular of French and English language programming in these categories. For example, broadcaster licence fees typically account for only 10 to 25 per cent of a program's budget.
Some Canadian production is aimed primarily at the Canadian market with relatively low potential for international sales because of its content. Other Canadian programs, typically those which involve financial participation from outside Canada, are produced for both Canadian and global markets.
In both these cases, the creative and technical talent is primarily Canadian. Both are fundamentally important to a rich and vital industry in Canada and in providing Canadians with a variety of viewing choices. Despite the growth in private and foreign financing for Canadian production, the vast majority of both of these types of Canadian productions will continue to require public support to be viable.
Mr. Neil Bregman, President/Executive Producer, Sound Venture Productions Ottawa Ltd.; Member of Board of Directors, Canadian Film and Television Production Association: As the owner of a mid-sized, regional, production company located in Ottawa, I can attest first-hand to the difficulties of financing and producing distinctly Canadian programs.
With very little or no potential international financing component to rely on in many cases, it would be virtually impossible to make these types of programs without the infrastructure that exists in Canada today.
As an example, last year I produced a documentary film called Art for a Nation as part of the 75th anniversary celebration of the formation of the Group of Seven. Even as a defining force in Canadian culture, a program about the Group of Seven could not have been made without the support of the delicate infrastructure which exists. Licence fees from Bravo!, the CBC, educational TV stations, a handful of commercial stations combined with funding from the Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund, and tax credits, were barely enough to cover the costs of this program.
Unfortunately, there is no international marketplace for this particular film, so if you take away any of the above-mentioned financing mechanisms -- all of which result from public policy and regulations designed to encourage and guarantee access to our own Canadian market -- this program does not get made and so is not seen by Canadians.
Is it important for Canadians to have access to programs about their history, their art, their culture, produced by themselves? I believe so and I think most would agree with me, but it cannot happen without protecting the access to the markets, the financing mechanisms and copyright protection of this product that we have worked so hard to create.
As I have discovered with other programs and series I have produced, without a domestic marketplace leading the way, production would be virtually impossible and the growth of a company like mine would be unlikely. Today we have grown to a staff of 15 full-time people and counting, one that hires dozens of young, skilled, highly-paid Canadians on a year-round basis.
This year, Sound Venture Productions will create between 30 and 40 hours of high quality Canadian television, some of which will be seen in other countries around the world. Our small success story, which is replicated across the country by hundreds of producers of different sizes, could never have happened and will not continue to happen without the support of our own domestic marketplace, both in terms of access to the air waves, to shelf space, and in terms of financial and regulatory infrastructure.
I believe that it is excellent policy and good business to monitor, maintain and fine-tune these mechanisms to protect our own cultural imperatives as well as for the good of our cultural industries as the global communications environment evolves.
Mr. Toth: What Mr. Bregman has just told you holds true for large Canadian companies producing culturally significant dramatic series like North of 60. Such shows attract very solid Canadian audiences, but it is the kind of show which does not have a broad international appeal.
Other types of what we call "industrial" production takes, such as the series FX or Psi Factor, are not as identifiably Canadian compared to North of 60, but their production is essential to feed broadcaster demand for a variety of Canadian content. These productions and the companies that produce them are a critical component to ensuring the health of the Canadian production industry.
In the near future, new delivery systems will be challenging how we traditionally receive television into our homes. Satellite distribution -- DBS/DTH -- terrestrial wireless and broadband telephony will all increase choices for the Canadian consumer and audience.
The CRTC, for example, faces the challenge of fashioning effective packages of policy for the new broadcast undertakings. Such regulatory support is necessary to ensure that Canadian pay and specialty licenses have sufficient revenues to sustain and expand their license fees for Canadian programming. Already, specialty channels have become an important source of financing for many Canadians producers.
Other aspects of regulation of broadcast and distribution undertakings -- among them, Canadian ownership requirements, Canadian content regulations, tiering and linkage rules, simultaneous and advanced substitution -- will create more opportunities for Canadian programming to be seen and will ensure a measure of Canadian control over the exhibition of Canadian independently produced programming.
Regulation has, in effect, succeeded in building a market for Canadian programming and in furthering a viable Canadian production sector in ways that the Canadian feature film market has not been able to replicate.
Canadian feature films account for approximately 20 per cent of the total volume of certified and agency supported production in Canada. While the Canadian feature film industry has not enjoyed the same success as the television industry, it remains an extremely important expression of our nation's culture. The main reason for the lack of success lies in the structure of the feature film industry rather than in the deficiency of Canadian talent.
Commercially successful feature films of the Hollywood studio variety are typically mega-budgeted projects compared to TV dramatic series. Except for extremely low-budget feature films, it is almost impossible to recover enough revenues from the Canadian market to pay for production and marketing of a Canadian feature film. Government support in terms of financing and policy remains the lifeblood of the feature film industry. We must reassess the needs of the industry so that the policy can reflect and support a strategy for the Canadian feature film industry that has contained within it definable goals.
Mr. Bregman: I would like to summarize some of the important points.
It is critical that Canada maintain a viable competitive position globally for this industry, especially in the face of changing technology. We must assure that these changes provide expanded opportunity for Canadians to see TV programs and theatrical films that reflect the nation.
We must look for long-term solutions if advances to technology appear to defeat Canadian content regulations.
We must assure that we have guaranteed access to our own market and that the cost of Canadian programming remains affordable. This is achieved through the maintenance of such mechanisms as the very successful Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund and other programs like the Federal Refundable Income Tax Credit Program.
As well, attention must be paid to Canadian companies in their efforts to expand revenue opportunities in the global marketplace. Ongoing support must be provided which fosters the continued growth of the television and film distribution sector.
Finally, rights protection is a fundamental principle for independent producers. Our products are the inherent rights to the programming we produce and we must be diligent in protecting these.
Keeping the Canadian film and television industry in a competitive position in the changing global marketplace is critical, not only for the companies and the thousands of Canadians to whom the industry provides high-paying jobs, but for Canadians themselves as this industry is perhaps the most dynamic medium for providing Canadians with a distinct opportunity to see themselves.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Toth and Mr. Bregman.
Mr. Bregman, you speak of the cost of a production and you gave an example of the 75th anniversary program on the Group of Seven. What would be the cost of such a production?
Mr. Bregman: Generally, the budget of a small documentary like that is about $200,000.
The Chair: "Small" being how many minutes?
Mr. Bregman: It was actually 30 minutes. It was made primarily for non-commercial television, for a specialty channel, so the time did not have to fit into the commercial constraints of TV. There were no commercial breaks.
The Chair: Because of the international reputation and the recognized quality of these Canadian artists, why would the international distribution of such a documentary be difficult?
Mr. Bregman: Believe it or not, there is very little interest in Canadian visual arts and Canadian culture outside of Canada. We may think of them as a high profile group of artists and as an important part of our culture and heritage, but they are not perceived that way within the broadcast and film industry outside of Canada.
I have tried to find a distributor to pick up the program. I have tried to sell it myself, and no one will pay for it. Working in the industry and travelling abroad and dealing with distributors, I can tell you that the perception we have of the importance of a story like that is not what it is outside of our borders. That is really the point to much of this discussion. It is very important to us. It is critical to us, to ourselves, to who we are. That is why we believe the opportunity to discuss it and to make programs and to keep these ideas alive is important; however, it is not critical to those outside our borders.
The Chair: Who was your domestic broadcaster?
Mr. Bregman: We have several. One is Bravo!, the specialty arts network. We also did an original French language version for la Société de Radio-Canada. We also had a number of educational broadcasters like the Knowledge Network in B.C. and Saskatchewan Communications, and a couple of small independent stations, CFCF in Montreal and CFCN in Alberta.
Those were the people who guaranteed the financing up front. They trigger the production process or those broadcasters that will commit a licence fee. Even in that case, amongst all of them, the licence fee was still only about 15 per cent of the budget. So it is a little bit of this and you string the money together.
Fortunately, as I said, there are some other programs available to us, like the CTCPF, the Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund, previously called the Cable Production Fund. We were able to scratch together the money, but the truth be told, it was done at just a break-even, basically. It was not revenue-generating for our company. We just felt it was important and we went ahead and made it.
Without some of those triggering factors, though, we could not have covered our costs and therefore we would not even have entertained the thought of making it. That is true of many programs that we make.
Last year, we completed a program with the Canadian War Museum here in Ottawa called Canvas of Conflict. That was originally pre-licensed by Adrienne Clarkson at the CBC. It is a program about the art collection from World War I. That Canadian art collection is the largest war art collection in the world. That program was budgeted at the same range and was successful in its broadcast, but it was very difficult to finance. Without those critical areas of financing that are policy-oriented, we could never have raised even enough money to complete the production.
We think this program has a some international potential because it is about World War I, but the estimates received from the biggest distributors in the country are really insignificant vis-a-vis the budget expended. Again, that money may come in six months or a year or two years from now. It is very risky. Assuming it is there is a bad assumption.
The Chair: Public funds are less available than they were, for example, 20 years ago. This is a new fiscal reality, and we are just beginning to get our house in order. With that part of the picture that we know and with the situation that you state here in your presentation of the difficulty experienced by the feature film industry because of the small Canadian market, what would be the appropriate federal public policy to further enhance the need for Canadian production to be sold on an international market? What are the options? What would you recommend?
Mr. Toth: Are you referring to feature films or television?
The Chair: I refer to both, actually.
Mr. Toth: With feature films, the industry needs the opportunity, along with government, to do a real assessment. As we have alluded, the problem is inherent in the superstructure of the industry itself. It ranges from access to market to dollars available, et cetera. We would encourage the opportunity to do a proper assessment and to set measurable goals before policy is decided.
In terms of television, the success of television is evident. In a previous life, I was very close to the series North of 60. I headed up the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation and was responsible for principally financing considerable amounts of funds to that project which is now in its sixth or seventh cycle. Over that time, the Alberta government alone injected something close to $2.5 million to make sure the series happened. We expected a return of dollars, but it got down literally, in the third or fourth season, to a realization that the series would not continue. Despite its tremendous popularity in Canada, it was receiving lukewarm response in international markets.
We had both cultural and economic decisions to make on whether we would continue to finance that. I am pleased to say that, although that corporation no longer exists, we kind of saw it through to the end. There is an example at the other extreme of budgets because North of 60 costs about $800,000 per hour to produce.
CBC is the broadcaster but if you look at the private sector, even Traders, they can only pay a certain amount of money based on what their advertising revenues will generate. Even for extremely popular shows like Traders or North of 60, Canada's population predetermines how much revenue can be generated from advertisers and what is a reasonable amount of money to pay in support of good Canadian television.
When you have had the opportunity to look at the NGL study, you will see that, over the past few years, the amount of public financing both from federal and provincial dollar mechanisms has considerably declined in the last few years. It is still a very critical component and we see it continuing to be a critical component. The reality is, if you cannot start the project in Canada, you will not be able to trigger any kind of licensing from outside the country. Regardless of whether it is a documentary program or a new dramatic series, a producer from Britain, or anyone else in the world with whom you might want a partnership, will first look to see if you have sold it in Canada. Is your own country supporting you at the start?
Senator Spivak: The question for us is really not about continued support from government. That is a given. It is a proven technique. Look, for example, at the music industry.
Rather we should ask, first, is there a documentary market out there? Second, why do Australian films and British films sell internationally? Why do Canadians think that we cannot do that? I would not say that everything Canadian is wonderful or is not worth doing, but we must have failures. The United States has many failures and some terrible schlock and they have some successes. You must have that in an industry.
This may not be a particularly good example, but the movie The English Patient is not recognizably Canadian. That is not why it is such a success. Why do you think that, in order for something to sell internationally, you must tailor it in some way?
Second, what about marketing when talking about feature films? Television is something else.
As far as television is concerned, the CRTC has just announced new regulations. I have not really looked at them carefully. Do you think they are adequate?
As well, the CRTC has not been tough enough on private stations in getting them to produce proper Canadian content. There is the television program Traders but that is really an American clone. It is not a great Canadian piece of work.
The reason that private television, and you cannot really blame them, wants to buy American product is because it is so much cheaper. Because that is what is shown, people become accustomed to it and they love it. It is a vicious cycle. Are Canadians are capable of producing something like Seinfeld, which is so popular?
Mr. Bregman: You bring up many issues and there is no one answer.
Senator Spivak: I am just putting them all on the table. You can discuss them one by one, as you want.
Mr. Bregman: Maybe we can just bring them up again because I do not think that I can go through them.
The Chair: Tackle them one at a time, because we would appreciate your comments.
Senator Spivak: First, there is film and then there is television.
Mr. Bregman: I am not a film producer but, being involved in the industry, I do know a little bit about it. One must understand that we are next door to the largest producer of entertainment programming in the world.
Senator Spivak: Absolutely.
Mr. Bregman: We are not Australia and we are not Britain. They have protected markets in the sense that they have some distance. We have a border and television comes over it. This is why protection and CRTC regulation have been so critical for us maintain the voice that we have.
Senator Spivak: There is no question about that.
Mr. Bregman: This is also the answer, in a sense, to your question in that we have a larger struggle to overcome. Canadians like American programs. You mentioned Seinfeld. We just do not have the resources and the foundation and the strength at this point in time to compete with the Americans at their level. They make $100 million features and they take $100 million to market them.
Senator Spivak: That is it.
Mr. Bregman: We do not have that money. To try to beat them at their own game is to beat your head against the wall. You cannot do it. The big issue is that we must maintain access. Again, film and television are very different.
The Chair: What do you mean by "maintain access"?
Mr. Bregman: Access in television is regulated by the CRTC. There are Canadian content regulations. There are funding mechanisms put in place to which cable stations and television stations must contribute to support the independent market.
Senator Spivak: Let us focus back on how we will market our products in the United States? How will we ensure that these are obviously Canadian products? Americans produce some good things but a lot of it is just schlock. I should not use that term.
Mr. Bregman: One person's ceiling is another person's floor.
Senator Spivak: No, that is not true.
Senator Rompkey: They produce a lot of sitcoms.
Senator Spivak: They produce a lot of sitcoms and they produce a lot of bad stuff, everyone will agree, but it sells.
Mr. Bregman: People watch it. Canadians watch it.
Senator Spivak: People watch it because it is there. The distribution is there. The bombardment is there. I understand what you are saying. We will never compete with $100-million productions, but on the other hand, we have heard from Canada Live that the exports are rising. Can you tell us something about that? What is the formula?
Alanis Morissette made history. She sold more records for the first time than anybody else, Canadian or American. How did she get on to that distribution circuit?
Mr. Bregman: She is with an American company and an American distribution network. She went to the United States.
Mr. Toth: Madonna produces her.
Mr. Bregman: She is on Madonna's new record label.
Senator Spivak: Is that the answer?
Mr. Bregman: It is a power thing. There is an infrastructure.
Senator Spivak: What should we do?
Mr. Bregman: We must continue to permit access because the Canadian industry has grown in leaps and bounds in the past five to ten years. Ten years ago, there really was no independent production community to mention. Now we have some very strong, well-financed public companies. You may not distinguish their product from American companies' products. You may disagree with that from a cultural point of view, but the fact of the matter is that they started the same way my company started and they still do make Canadian programs.
Senator Spivak: Are you saying we should put more money into production? There is talk of getting the telephone companies involved. One of the things the CRTC is saying is no more voluntary, which was ridiculous to begin with, and this should be mandatory.
Mr. Bregman: This is a big boost to the industry.
Senator Spivak: Should we double or triple or quadruple the production fund?
Mr. Bregman: One should look at that possibility based on a lot of these new undertakings. One must allow these new companies to establish their own business plans. A lot of the technologies are unproven so we are not saying, willy-nilly, go get as much money as you can. Yes, it was a good step to say that a minimum of 5 per cent must go to an independently organized fund. That is a minimum. That is a great starting point.
We must continue to grow that. That really supports companies like mine and companies that are smaller or larger than mine.
Senator Spivak: We should push this, as a committee or whatever, as job creation issue because it creates jobs and the cost per job is infinitely less than Hibernia?
Mr. Bregman: Absolutely.
Senator Spivak: It employs a lot more people. Sorry, Senator Rompkey.
Senator Rompkey: You might be interested to know that Newfoundland has a film development corporation. It was set up about a month ago.
Mr. Toth: The only provinces that do not are Alberta and P.E.I.
Mr. Bregman: Your point is very well made. The statistics do back you up in terms of the amount of government intervention or support given to the industry versus the return. It is one of the lowest.
Senator Spivak: It is very rarely mentioned. That is also true in childcare.
Here is the new technology, the satellites, the DTH. Here is a tremendous opportunity, it seems to me, for films. We will get video demand, pay per view and pay on demand and whatever. How will you position yourself? Is money needed to get on to that medium and giving Americans more viewing choice?
I suppose it is like a supermarket. As with Pepsi and Coke, you must place yourself well. How do you deal with that? That will be, it seems to me, a tremendous growth engine.
Mr. Bregman: There are now regulations. CRTC is regulating those new licensees as well. One of the problems is that we were late getting going for Canada.
Senator Spivak: That is for Canada. I am talking about exporting to the U.S.
Mr. Bregman: We are exporting to the U.S. Even a small company like mine is exporting to the U.S. To get on their networks is increasingly possible. We are doing that. That is a question of growing our industry. The large companies have the infrastructure, the capital, the expertise and the management capabilities.
The Chair: Mr. Bregman, you were saying that, in the last ten years, the private producers have really grown. Can you give us names, examples of those who are starting, like yourself, but also those which are now publicly traded and so on?
Mr. Bregman: There is Atlantis.
Mr. Toth: Any of the publicly trading companies -- Cinar, Atlantis, Alliance, Paragon, Malofilm -- if you look back ten years, were all very small companies.
Senator Spivak: Are you familiar with Power DirecTV which was supposed to use American satellites? There was a linkage with an American company in which Power DirecTV promised that they would send as much back down there and, using their satellite facilities, have Canadian films coming back and forth and that that would increase the export. Do you think that is what it takes?
You mentioned Madonna. Does it take a linkage with a huge American company to get that product on for Power DirecTV?
Mr. Bregman: No, the product itself will dictate what gets on and what does not. One leads to another. They do not act independently of each other but they must satisfy American consumer tastes. Americans are commercial.
Senator Spivak: What is American TV taste?
Mr. Bregman: You defined it at the outset.
Senator Spivak: But as with the Jane Austen productions, you manipulate taste. You create demand.
Mr. Bregman: They control their distributions.
Senator Spivak: How can we get in on that?
Mr. Bregman: We are in on it. We are getting in on it. We are at the ground floor. We are trying to work our way up.
Senator Spivak: As a policy issue, you are not saying there are any more suggestions for us to recommend to have that happen? Is that your desired outcome, that we should export more into the United States and get on there on an equal footing or a niche footing or something like that?
Mr. Bregman: From a business point of view, that is the only way. They will not just say: Sure, come on in and give us all your product and have a good time.
They will take what makes them money, that is good for their audiences. It is very much a business down there, and they have a very powerful lobby for their own film and television industry.
Senator Spivak: They are not always right. Look at Waterworld.
Mr. Bregman: It probably made a lot of money in home video for them.
Senator Spivak: If it did well, then I am wrong.
Mr. Bregman: I am sure it did.
Senator Spivak: There are other failures that the Americans have had. It is not a fixed thing, is it?
Mr. Toth: There is a saying in this industry. It comes from William Goldman. Many of you who have read his books will know this quote. It is about the film industry specifically, feature films, and that is, "Nobody knows," period. Nobody knows. That goes to the point, especially for feature films.
In Canada, the chances of us pulling together publicly supported or privately supported $100-million budgets, where $50 million is spent on marketing, are highly unlikely.
Senator Spivak: Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Toth: However, you can also look at the fact that Crash has just opened in the U.S. and is getting a tremendous response.
Senator Spivak: How much did it cost?
Mr. Toth: Crash was close to $14 million. Probably Alliance would have to answer how it was financed but I am sure it involved the private sector.
Mr. Bregman: Telefilm was in on it. That is government money.
Senator Spivak: My question is, does that mean some kind of partnering with American companies? Everybody is busy consolidating and partnering. Is that what it means?
Mr. Toth: That is not necessarily so. Two guys out of Calgary produced a feature film in 1995 called The Suburbanators for $25,000 out of their own pockets. It was picked up to be showcased at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, and it was picked up because the product was good. There was something about the product that appealed.
Especially with feature films and unlike television to a degree, the proof is really in the pudding. Canada is very much in the same situation as practically any other country, except India and perhaps the United States, that you cannot pre-sell them. You must be able to produce the films and show them and then the market decides if they are liked.
Going way back, most of the world would never have seen the movie I Heard the Mermaids Singing if Alex Raffe and Patricia Rozema were wandering around with only a script and their reputations. That is another thing: Track record sells. Until you are given the ability and until the infrastructure of the system can support your being able to repetitively produce and have your successes and failures, as exist anywhere in any of the film industries in the world, you will never build a track record, and no-one will come knocking at your door.
Mr. Bregman: To add one more detail with regard to the smaller films and, as you mentioned, some of the foreign films, we cannot and do not want to compete with the American feature film industry with their mega-hits. We know that will not happen. We must make distinctive programs. The films may not be Canadian in that you see everything Canadian but they have a Canadian sensibility, a style, a feeling that you can say is something different; something unique.
You do not always know an Australia film is from Australia. You can tell because of accents in many cases, but if you take that away, they are stories. We must be able to tell our stories.
The Chair: That is what they say about ours. They can tell by the accent.
Mr. Bregman: That is true.
Senator Spivak: Let us turn to television. We are looking at policy questions and what we should be recommending.
Mr. Bregman: The big difference in television is we have maintained access and shelf space for Canadian programs. Again, not being an expert in film and not wanting to go back to where we were, we do not have access to the screens the way we have access to television screens. That is because, from the beginning, it has been regulated and our place in the structure has been protected.
There are still a lot of American programs on but at least there is a guarantee. In all these new licensing endeavours, there is a commitment by every broadcaster to "X" amount of Canadian content, "X" amount of license fees, and that makes such a big difference.
The other issue in television is that it is more of a level playing field in terms of the dollar amounts that even the Americans would spend per hour. It has a limited return on the global scene, different from the feature film industry, and therefore it is more of a level playing field. If you are talking $1 million an hour, that is kind of the limit for Canada, the U.S. or anybody. It is not where they can spend $100 million an hour, because they do not. It does not work that way.
Senator Spivak: We are talking about export now. We are talking about getting into the American market. What should be done?
Mr. Bregman: We are in there.
Senator Spivak: You are in there, and you do not see any policy barriers to further growth?
Mr. Bregman: We are talking about Canadian policy. We cannot tell others to change their policies.
Senator Spivak: No, we cannot tell them to change their policies.
Mr. Bregman: That would help a lot. We are talking about our policies. I go back to the same thing: We need to maintain access and grow access to our marketplace. We need to be able to continue to build the expertise in companies like mine which, without the access, could never have gotten a toe-hold. Now we are exporting. We are more export-driven. We are selling into the U.S. and to Japan and to other countries around the world. One good thing leads to another.
The Chair: Our Minister of International Trade spoke about the importance of promotion rather than protection when he spoke about Canadian culture. How did you react to that? You referred to protection earlier on.
Mr. Bregman: Are we referring to this whole discussion that happened in February?
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Spivak: We are talking about the protection of Canadian access to prime time television.
Mr. Bregman: There are two issues in the TV business. One is an industrial issue and one is a culture issue. Without access and without commitment to allow us to get to the marketplace, there will be no television industry. It is pretty well that simple. Being able to tell our stories in our country is not a bad thing from a trade point of view or any other point of view. It is a cultural imperative.
Senator Spivak: How about training? Are there enough trained people? Are there enough opportunities for people to be trained in the technological aspects of film? For example, the Filmon government has just increased some sort of fund or tax credit for Manitoba, which is my province. Derek Mazur, with the company Credo, was ecstatic but he said it is will take us a while because we do not have enough trained people here.
Mr. Bregman: Again, on the training level, we train young people all the time. There is a college system which does an initial training.
I cannot speak for Manitoba. I know that in Ontario there are colleges with film and television programs, with writing programs.
Senator Spivak: Are they sufficient?
Mr. Bregman: We never say sufficient. In the industry the good thing is that we do take those men and women who are coming out of college who want to be in the industry.
First of all, there are initiatives between the CFTPA and the government to fund training and development. There is one specific program. I know that those programs are being discussed in terms of expanding them because they have been so successful.
Speaking for myself, we train people all the time, with or without the programs. We love it when there are programs but we need manpower. One of the exciting things about our industry is we take young people and train them.
Senator Spivak: I will switch the subject a bit, if I may. Patrick Watson recently did a whole spread in The Globe and Mail, which you must have seen, with regard to the CBC. What do you think of it? What do you think of his ideas? What do you think of the fact that he thinks it might be a good idea to meld the news-gathering facilities into one station? I think that is what he said.
Mr. Toth: To be honest, I did not read that.
Mr. Bregman: I did read it. I do not know if you noticed Jim Bird's rebuttal in the paper on the weekend following.
Senator Spivak: I have not read the papers. I was out of town.
Mr. Bregman: There were the two articles, one by Patrick Watson and one by someone from Toronto; the name eludes me now. Then there was a rebuttal by Jim Bird who is head of English Programming. That appeared in The Globe and Mail five days later or the week after. I read them both. I read all of those articles.
I think much of what Patrick Watson described is happening. That is what the rebuttal said. You can agree with some things and you can disagree with some things.
I am doing a lot of work with the CBC right now, so I can tell you the CBC is open to independents because I am producing three series, a couple of specials, and developing some other programs with them even as we speak. The CBC is changing. It is evolving and it is dealing with the new reality.
I think everybody acknowledges that the CBC is incredibly important to the country and it is a viable and essential service in Canada. What everyone is arguing about is their own point of view of how it should be redesigned or re-thought from the ground up.
Senator Spivak: Do you think that the CBC ought not to have its programming cut any more, that the way they are handling the production is right in terms of giving money to ensure that there are funds for independent producers?
Mr. Bregman: I believe that the independent sector, with its expertise and knowledge and international point of view and smaller infrastructure, is much better able to make programs at a much lower price and be innovative in the way it finances its programs. The fact that they are doing less in-house production and licensing more from independents is an absolutely great thing and should not necessarily change the quality of the station. If anything, it might improve it.
Senator Spivak: That is not true about the news gathering, though. They need a critical mass of news gathering.
Mr. Bregman: They seem to have that. News is not my expertise, so I do not know.
Senator Rompkey: They have it except it is not all focused and streamlined. If you go to a regional office, you will see about six people show up for CBC, one for CBC Radio, and one for CBC Television.
Senator Spivak: Everybody says that but, at the same time, if you watch CNN and you watch Newsworld, there is no comparison. CNN is very superficial whereas Newsworld is the best in the world, I would think, at the moment.
Mr. Bregman: We are proudly Canadian. That is a great thing but one has to put it into perspective. Although we sit in this room and say that, CNN is on every cable network around the world.
The Chair: The biggest challenge that we have probably with our national broadcaster is that, when we see CBC, everybody thinks of CBC Television and compares it to CTV, whereas our public broadcaster is really an umbrella for quite a few different broadcasters, English radio, French radio, Newsworld, English television, French television. Maybe one day what they will need labelled microphones that show "CBC 1", "CBC 2", et cetera, so that there is a difference visually.
Mr. Bregman: They always talk about radio. Radio and TV are two different media. One must accept that. They do tend to get lumped in as CBC.
Senator Spivak: The whole thing comes down to access. CBC Newsworld is recognized around the world for its quality, just as is the BBC.
Mr. Bregman: Canadian independent producers are recognized around the world for the quality of their work. In production values, I believe we are the second largest exporter of television programs in the world outside of the Americans.
Senator Spivak: Therefore, it is a question of getting into the market and, since we do not have the money for promotion, it must be done some other way, but marketing is everything these days.
Mr. Bregman: Marketing is important, but you must have a product to market. I still believe, in essence, that if you have the product, the marketing will come and that you can succeed with product.
We have a fledgling industry. We must continue to nurture it and to maintain it and grow it. I do not think any of us aspire to be American-style companies but we know that we are highly respected around the world and that people do buy our programs in over 100 countries around the world. There is a market for us and we can succeed and grow our industry.
The Chair: Up to now, one of the key tricks to success -- and I say "tricks" -- was the scheduling. In other words, the viewers sat and received programming according to a schedule. We are now moving to where the viewer will determine what he or she wants to see and when they want to see it. How will that change in the mindset of Canadians, based on the availability of technology? How will it impact on private companies like yours, Mr. Bregman?
Mr. Bregman: That is a good question because now we are speculating. We are all grappling with what the new technologies mean, how they will evolve, how they will be accepted in the marketplace, how they will change the way that programs are delivered. We can speculate. The fact of the matter is we do not exactly know. I can say, from my own point of view, I am not certain. I cannot give you a simple answer to the question.
I believe, in the end, that content is everything and that if you have good content, you have something to say, whether it is in the form of a documentary, a drama or a variety program and, if people want it, they will find it. They will get it.
I gather you are asking whether it will be easier for people to get exactly what they want, when they want it? It is still the same thing. A company like mine has to make the programs and then ensure that they are accessible.
Delivery is not my specialty. Mr. Toth may have a different view on that.
Mr. Toth: One of the technologies that is on the horizon that has the potential to be the biggest magazine rack in the universe is the Internet. When the technical capabilities are there to deliver real-time video and audio, then we really will be surfing. It will be important, whether it is dramatic programs or arts programs or sports programs or news programs, to be able to be educated on how to market in that new environment, because it definitely would be a very different environment and, again, one must access the markets in very different ways. One is suddenly now not selling to eight programmers across the country but is ensuring a listing somewhere on the Microsoft network service or the Sympatico service.
The Chair: That is selling to 26 million programmers.
Mr. Toth: That is right. Obviously, it is important how you describe your program on whatever "Generation X" search engines are out there. We are not far from the day when your own search program will get to know you and it can be trained to find what you are seeking. It will independently be your own Arthur Weinthal in the background.
Senator Spivak: It is like Reader's Digest.
Mr. Toth: It does go back to the overwhelming technology. For instance, I have a VCR which will practically fly to the moon but I can barely set the clock on it. This is true of Canadians or any other demographic group you want to examine. Even when we have that capability, there will still be a vast amount of the audience who will not want to go home and surf. They will want to come home and watch what they want to watch and have it pre-arranged for them.
The Chair: It is very interesting you should bring that up, Mr. Toth. Senator Rompkey, Senator Spivak, and I were in Boston just after Christmas and we had a long meeting with three Harvard professors who have been doing, over many years, an in-depth study on communications, not only communications from a technological point of view but on a human behavioural point of view. We asked these three professors what they thought would be the most important need which will be expressed by people who have access to all this new technology, programming, content, entertainment, news, whatever.
We were expecting a completely different answer from them. They answered with exactly the reference you made when you spoke about the clock. They said "simplicity."
How do you react to a statement of that kind? Do you have any comments?
Mr. Toth: It is true. Television has become so successful over the last 45, 50 years because of its simplicity.
Senator Spivak: That is also true of the telephone.
Mr. Toth: It is like TV dinners; it is entertainment in a box. There are better boxes and you can watch better stuff and worse stuff on your box. The reality is, for the vast number of people, they will continue to want simplicity.
If you are into golf in a major way, that may be your prime choice and all you want to watch is golf, but then the marketplace will have an intermediary somewhere in there that will make sure that, if that is all you want to see, you will be able to see golf 24 hours a day. It is already happening at the specialty channel level.
If you are into home renovation and gardening, you may watch Bob Vila all day long. If you want to watch Hockey Night in Canada forever, you will be able to do that.
Senator Spivak: What a frightening prospect.
Mr. Toth: In the same way that you choose your magazine subscriptions, you will likely be able to choose the kind of viewing. Simplicity will be key, I think.
Mr. Bregman: Some of that does exist already. The VCR has liberated people from the schedule. We realize it in some concrete manner because we may have a show broadcast on one day in January but we do not get a response until March because someone has taped it and watched it at a later date. The mechanism for that exists now.
What is complicated is the different types of delivery and the different options for delivery and the sort of break-down of the regulatory process governing the way programs are consumed through telephones or computers. Not long from now we may be able to get it a lot of different ways.
Mr. Toth: That example is kind of the extreme of what you as a committee are facing in terms of public policy. With the Internet, the potential is there right now. It is borderless. It is a Robin Hood of copyright. Those are the challenges that we are all going to examine. How do we protect the product that we make, regardless of how it is delivered?
For this industry, whether we send it out on CD-ROM, whether we send it out over DTH, whether we drop it in your mailbox on a VHS tape, we must decide how to access the customer. How do we protect what we have made? Certainly, copyright protection in Canada is being reviewed and needs to be reviewed, given the new technologies. How do we let people know that we are out there?
Senator Spivak: Do you think, though, that the Internet is will be a preferred medium for entertainment? It will not be simple. It is simpler to get it via DTH. It is a very good medium for communication and for business. For business, the Internet has not proven to be good commercially. Companies are still not getting much back.
Mr. Bregman: I think the operative is "yet." The technology is just in its infancy. Everybody is focusing on it. We will see that it will change and evolve. At the same time, I must say, from my own point of view, I do not quite get it.
Senator Spivak: Me, neither.
Mr. Bregman: I am actively working with it and, in some cases, dealing with companies who are active with it. It is complicated. I do not think it will change the landscape dramatically in the short run. We must look at it and we must be aware of it. The issues that Mr. Toth has brought up are very critical and they have to do with rights and distributions. Those to me are the essence. The depth and breadth with which such take hold is hard to quantify today.
Mr. Toth: I am the other extreme. I really think that technology, whether you call it the Internet or whatever, will introduce a whole new kind of genre of programming. There will come the day in talking about nature programming, you will not just watch a show about being on safari in Africa; you can tune in and be on safari in Africa. The technology is not there yet. We are still in the basement in terms of the technology.
Five years from now, we may not be talking about television programming and feature film programming. It will all be a kind of word from that screen in your living room that presents your phone bill and that you answer when your mom calls and on which you watch movies. You may look up a recipe on it, and it will be transparent.
My niece, who is five now, is totally computer-literate. What will she want to watch when she is 18?
Senator Rompkey: If this committee were like Eaton's with an Eaton's catalogue from which your mother orders gifts just before Christmas, what three things would your wish list contain?
Mr. Bregman: Knowing what we know today about Eaton's, I might pick up the Sears catalogue and make sure that it gets delivered. You want a wish list?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Toth: One area that we have talked about is access to the market, however, that market evolves based on the technology.
The Chair: In French, would you say "un accès privilégié pour le contenu canadien"? When you say access, everybody will have access. Like a preferred client for Aeroplan, there will be a preferred access for Canadian producers.
Mr. Bregman: Continued preferred access to Canadians and growing access, certainly, from a producer's point of view, is great. The more the better. That would absolutely be on the our wish list.
Senator Rompkey: That is wish number one.
Mr. Toth: We want to realize what they refer to from a television point of view as shelf space.
The Chair: When you say "shelf space," could you explain that?
Mr. Toth: "Shelf space" is used in the industry to essentially describe the time slots, whether they are prime time or off-prime-time slots, which are available right now for a programmer to purchase a program to air in that slot. The more distribution undertakings that come on, whether it is satellite or whatever, the shelf space increases because there are more mechanisms to deliver more hours of television into your home. Half-hours and hours are referred to as shelf space.
The reality is there are only 24 hours in a day. There is only a prime time slot, predefined by our viewing habits, so there is a limited amount of shelf space and limited access to it.
Mr. Bregman: Some shelf space is better than others. Again, the idea is that, when you walk in the store, you want to see it right in front of you as opposed to buried on a shelf in the back behind all of the widgets.
The Chair: You would wish for shelf space for Canadian content?
Mr. Bregman: We would wish for prime-time shelf space.
The Chair: That would refer shelf space in terms of time, in terms of listings for the Internet, in terms of movie outlets for feature films -- any type of shelf space?
Mr. Bregman: Absolutely.
Mr. Toth: I put that as number one.
Mr. Bregman: We are still at number one, are we not?
Mr. Toth: We are still at number one.
The Chair: You sound like one of our children.
Senator Rompkey: These are tough times. Please restrain yourselves. We are only Eaton's; we are not Santa Claus.
Mr. Toth: That shelf space or access to the market is supported because of the size of our domestic market. We talked about the need, especially with feature films, to prove yourself before people will buy. We want that access to shelf space to be supported with financial mechanisms to deliver the programs. We want our programs protected with good copyright laws.
Mr. Bregman: The financing mechanisms are important to discuss. Those are regulated policies like the Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund, CTCPF, which really is the government regulation ensuring that financial resources are put in by the broadcast distributors. There are also Telefilm, the National Film Board, and other key players that are government financed that we want to see being put into today's perspective, redesigned but protected, to be there in the future so that we can continue to access them as we need them.
Financing can also offer programs like the refundable income tax credit which is a tremendous program. That allows us to invest our money and hire and build our industry.
Mr. Toth: As the new technologies come on stream, from a policy point of view, regardless of whether it involves public financing, and from a public regulatory point of view, we must ensure that the horse does not get out of the barn and out of the yard before we know what is happening. Many believe that is what happened with feature films and access to our theatrical screens. There must be a role and a place for Canadian content in the new technologies.
The Chair: Mr. Bregman and Mr. Toth, that is quite a schedule that you have given us. We have a lot of work ahead of us. If our researchers and our clerks have any additional questions, we trust we can communicate with you and get additional input?
Mr. Bregman: Absolutely. The association works hard at researching the industry to provide public policymakers with well-researched, well-documented information. We are always happy to assist in that manner.
The Chair: Thank you for this discussion and your presentation.
Our next witness is Mr. Page from the National Literacy Secretariat and the Office of Learning Technology.
Thank you for accepting our invitation to discuss with us the challenges that are ahead of us.
In one of our meetings a few weeks ago, Senator Rompkey and Senator Spivak and I met with quite a few key thinkers in communications in Boston. One of the major issues we discussed was literacy. This is where we said we had better go back home now and do a little bit of homework.
So, Mr. Page, we look forward to hearing from you.
Mr. James E. Page, Executive Secretary, National Literacy Secretariat and Office of Learning Technologies: Thank you, Madam Chair. It is always a pleasure to talk about issues related to literacy.
As I am sure you know, this is an issue that very quickly sinks deep into one's consciousness and into one's heart. It is an issue that is important to every Canadian, as I will explain in my remarks.
I would like to introduce to you two of my colleagues. Stephen Lloyd works with me in the Office of Learning Technology. Jean Pignal is from Statistics Canada, and he has been one of the key people involved in a major international study on literacy with considerable implications for Canada called the International Adult Literacy Survey. I would like to spend a bit of time in my remarks speaking about it and about some of its implications for competitiveness generally.
Our text will touch on a number of the concerns that the committee has. Then we will be happy to respond to any questions you might have.
In taking a look at the terms and conditions of the subcommittee as they were laid out, we decided to focus on the human capital issues. There are two questions in particular: What measures should be taken to ensure that Canadians develop the necessary skills to provide human resources adapted to the needs of an information society, and, second, how can new information technologies be used in training and education programs to help better equip Canadians with the necessary skills for the information society workforce?
From our perspective, lifelong learning lies at the heart of the answers to both of those questions. Building a society that values continuous learning is critical to Canada's future economic development and international competitive position, not only in communications but truly in any field.
It is clear that traditional concepts of work are being challenged by a number of forces that have been unleashed in the world by the unprecedented explosion or growth in knowledge, by rapid world-wide dissemination of that knowledge, by an increasingly sophisticated world-wide communications infrastructure, by the increasingly unrestricted global flow of trade and capital, and by the rise of multinational enterprises. There is evidence as well that the low-skilled, low-technology jobs that have characterized the past are rapidly disappearing.
When you take all of those things together, it is clear that people across the developed world are finding that the nature of their work is changing. As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has observed, these same factors leave modern nation states like Canada with control over fewer and fewer levers to enhance their international competitiveness. The principle instrument that remains -- and this comes clearly out of the OECD's job studies <#0107> for countries like ours wishing to enhance competitiveness is human capital formation; that is the development of the skills of the workforce.
Those same job studies show that member companies, including Canada, are faced with increasing competition and with emerging economies for new high-wage, high-tech, high-skilled jobs. That competition will not be easy for Canada because our country now has in place the workforce it will have well into the 21st century. There are new entrants to the workforce every year, of course, but the percentage of those new entrants is relatively small compared to many of our competitor countries.
Consequently, we need to focus on the learning needs of people who are employed, as well as on the learning needs of young people. For our young people, one of the emerging lessons is that school must be more than simply a preparation for a specific job. It should be, in fact, a preparation for a lifetime of learning.
Our view is that, if Canada is to make the grade in the emerging global economy, if it is to be able to compete on a number of fronts, including communications, it will need people committed to learning throughout their lives and it will need workplaces which are not only conducive to learning but which actively promote learning.
A sign of this changing environment can be found in a whole host of developments. We have all heard of "just in time" delivery of parts for an assembly line, but increasingly we see the delivery of just-in-time training, training to keep a firm's workforce productive and on the cutting edge. To be trained "just in time," people must be ready to learn at any time.
As executive secretary of the Office of Learning Technologies and of the National Literacy Secretariat, I represent two organizations which share a common objective, that is to contribute to the development of a culture of learning in Canada. We do this in the Office of Learning Technologies by encouraging the effective and appropriate use of learning technologies by adults and, on the other hand, in the National Literacy Secretariat, we do this through partnerships designed to enhance the literacy competence of Canadians.
I would like to speak a little about learning technologies. They do offer enormous potential to help Canadians adapt to the global economy. By "learning technologies" I mean the full array of technologies that can be used for learning purposes, some very simple and traditional through to those at the very high end of multi-media, Internet and so on.
Learning technologies, it is important to note, are most useful for learning when they are appropriate to the needs of the learner. They can provide flexibility in terms of how, when and where learning can be made available. They can increase the availability of learning opportunities outside of formal educational settings. They can be adapted to accommodate individual learners, individual learner's needs and styles. They can provide low-cost opportunities for workers and employers to maintain and upgrade their skills.
In the Office of Learning Technology, which was launched relatively recently -- June 1995 -- we promote the effective use of learning technologies by supporting assessment, research and testing related to the use of technologies for learning purposes and by supporting projects to increase the availability and sharing of knowledge and information about learning technologies. The Office has begun to work with a wide range of public and private partners, including educational institutions, non-government organizations, sector councils, labour, business, and other levels of government.
To illustrate, the OLT is a founding member of the Telelearning Network of Centres of Excellence and is a member of that network's program committee. This is a national collaboration between Canadian researchers and organizations involved in the development and application of advanced educational technologies. The Network is, in turn, represented on the OLT's own Advisory Network of Experts.
OLT also works in partnership with organizations like the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, the Canada Association of Distance Education, the Canadian Association of Universities and Colleges, the Network of Ontario Distance Educators, and so on.
I would like to give you a few examples of projects we fund today to provide a flavour of the work we are doing. For instance, with CEGEP de Bois-de-Boulogne, we have undertaken a project to support a "Multimedia Learning Technology Watch," essentially a watching brief to identify and disseminate information on new models, applications, products, and developments in the use of learning technology for practitioners and for learners. This sort of project has potential for the international marketplace as a way of promoting innovative work here.
With our support, the Alberta Association of Courseware Producers is starting a project to provide a national clearing house of courseware, a focal point for Canadians in accessing information about education and training opportunities using new technologies. This, too, has potential international application.
Simon Fraser University has begun to develop and test a training program for instructors in the use of a virtual learning environment for the design and development of computer-based courses on line -- a link to the Internet. The Canadian Plastics Training Centre is testing the effectiveness of CD-ROM simulations to deliver workplace training to people in their industry, which we hope will assist in creating workplace learning environments in that field.
Obviously, technology is only one of many tools available for adult learning. I should like now to turn for a moment to some considerations about literacy generally and the work we do in that field.
Since the late 1980s, Canada has had to rethink the issue of literacy and to reshape the entire field of literacy research and training in this country. Prior to the release of several studies in the late 1980s, and more recent work, Canadians tended to see literacy as a youth-oriented issue, a matter for the schools. Poor reading and writing levels among adults were largely hidden problems. We now know that literacy is a matter of importance to every Canadian, regardless of age.
Given this subcommittee's interest in international competitiveness, I should like to spend a moment on the findings of the International Adult Literacy Survey or IALS. This report contains significant findings in terms of Canada's international competitiveness. Working with partners in six other countries -- the United States, Sweden, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland -- and with the OECD, Canada was the lead country in the development of this survey. The survey has appeared in Canada in two guises: first, in an international comparative report entitled "Literacy, Economy and Society", released in December, 1995; and, second, in a more detailed Canadian report which appeared in September, 1996, entitled "Reading the Future: A Portrait of Literacy in Canada".
I have copies of the documents here and they have been provided to your research team.
IALS examined adult literacy skills along three scales: a prose scale, a document scale and a quantitative literacy scale. Each of these scales had five levels, with level 1 being the lowest.
IALS, as an enterprise, advances our understanding of literacy from simply encompassing the basic ability to read to ways in which adults use written information to function in society. Literacy is now seen as a continuum on which everyone has at least some level of proficiency. In fact, that is why in Canada we focus on literacy as the issue rather than illiteracy.
The situation in France, a country that was involved in the IALS study but which dropped out of it, is an interesting contrast. The homologue organization to the National Literacy Secretariat is called Le groupe permanent de la lutte contre l'illettrisme, and their focus is on the issue of illiteracy rather than on the development of literacy competence and skill.
I suspect, again by way of side bar, that one of the reasons they withdrew from the study was the difficulty they had in grappling with the adjustment in thinking from there being a problem to there being, essentially, a range of possibilities and potential solutions.
In this country, the question is not whether Canadians can read and write but, rather, how well do Canadians read and write. IALS tells us a great deal about that. As a consequence of studies like IALS, Canadians are beginning to realize how low literacy levels are in this country. That is not to suggest at all that we have an army of illiterates. It is to suggest that there are significant numbers of adults in this country, aged 16 and over, who have some level or other of difficulty in reading.
As another consequence of this work, I think Canadians are beginning to realize that literacy problems have an uncomfortably familiar face. No longer do literacy concerns apply to people with learning impediments or to people in undemanding jobs. The face of the literacy challenge is that of a neighbour, a co-worker, a friend, or even a family member.
Today, by the way, is Literacy Action Day. There were a number of people from a variety of literacy organizations meeting with parliamentarians across the parliamentary precinct. I happened to be in a meeting just before coming here where the discussion revolved around the fact that in many instances when literacy advocates spoke to parliamentarians, parliamentarians responded by mentioning a person in their riding or someone in their family, perhaps in the past, who had one level or other of difficulty with literacy. The point that we are making is that the literacy challenge is a large one, and one which touches all parts of the country.
IALS also found that literacy is not like riding the proverbial bicycle. Many people have the belief that, like the bicycle, once you have mastered that skill, you never lose it. Once you have mastered the ability to ride a bicycle, you keep on rolling forward. While literacy skills can be learned, IALS suggests, they can also be lost if not used. Therefore, practice, the use of skills, is at the heart of lifelong learning. I think that is an important message, not only for this subcommittee, but for all of us who are involved in public policy work.
IALS found differences in literacy skills across nations, languages and cultures. Among reporting countries, Sweden had the strongest results of the seven countries. There was not a league table established, senators; it was not a horse race. These countries were all volunteers. The purpose of this survey was not to see who came first or last but, rather, to identify those factors which would contribute to or inhibit the development of literacy competence.
However, in this study of those volunteer countries, Sweden came first. It is also the country with the most advantaged commitment to lifelong learning.
Most of the countries in the survey clustered in the middle, with each country having its particular strengths and weaknesses. Both Canada and the United States had large numbers of individuals at both the higher and the lower literacy levels, and fewer at the middle levels than the Europeans. If you would think pictorially for a minute, the Canadian and American situations are very much like an hour glass, with many people at the top and many people at the bottom. In European countries, it was more like an inverted egg, with many people clustered in the middle, particularly at level 3, which, in the IALS survey, is seen as essentially the appropriate level for competence in functioning in daily life.
As I say, the Europeans tended to cluster in the middle. Canada stands about average in comparative terms, in the middle with Germany and the Netherlands.
There were many findings in this report. It is extraordinarily rich reading. However, I will allude to just a few of its findings. Literacy, IALS found, is clearly linked to economic success. A person's level of literacy competence is a predictor of an individual's attachment to, and success in, the labour force. That is a rather stunning finding. In aggregate terms, IALS argues, the higher the literacy competence of a working population, the greater the likelihood of competitive success of that working population.
One of the things we know is that future Canadian workers will require higher and higher levels of literacy skill because the growth industries in this country are industries that require employees with higher and higher levels of literacy.
Another key finding is that literacy practices in the workplace are critical to the maintenance of a skilled workforce able to be trained and able to adapt to changes in technology and market conditions. The reason for that is that most Canadians find that the opportunities that they have to read are in the workplace rather than elsewhere.
Canada's reserve labour force, a term which statisticians and macro-economists like, is the term used to describe people who are not working, unemployed people. Canada's reserve labour force is low-skilled and has a comparative disadvantage in terms of its European counterpart. That is something which should worry us.
Another finding from IALS is that adults with low skills, in particular those at level 2, do not usually acknowledge that literacy is a problem for them. Although people with low literacy skills are shown to have higher rates of unemployment than others, they do not on the whole recognize literacy, or their lack of literacy, as limiting their job prospects. This is often because individuals are in jobs that do not require stronger literacy skills. However, we know that as technology inexorably moves forward, the literacy requirements of those jobs will increase and those people will be at great risk.
IALS suggests that literacy is the key to every person's ability to participate fully in the social, cultural and political life of a country, making decisions in a democratic state, as well as the ability to participate in the economic life of the country. Literacy levels matter, given the increasingly rapid shift to knowledge- and information-intensive industries and away from the smokestack, smelter and tractor industries of the past.
The level of literacy competence affects the life chances of new entrants to the workforce. Literacy levels aid or deter those in their middle years who are faced with job restructuring or skills upgrading. Older Canadians have to adapt, for example, to the demands of electronic banking. It is clear that they must realize how important literacy is to their independence, to their security and in fact to their self-esteem.
What do we in the literacy field do? The federal government created the National Literacy Secretariat in 1988. The government renewed its commitment to literacy in 1993 with the appointment of Senator Fairbairn as the Minister with special responsibility for Literacy. At the same time, it restored the secretariat's funding to its original levels. Several weeks ago in his budget, the Minister of Finance announced that the resources for the NLS would be increased by 30 per cent.
The new moneys that had been accorded to the secretariat are to be used to enhance our efforts in the fields of workplace literacy and family literacy in particular, two areas important for the development of learning environments. There is also money to support further developments of the literacy infrastructure in Canada, including the electronic infrastructure needed to use new technologies effectively for literacy objectives. Taken together, these funds provide an important response to the policy directions suggested by the International Adult Literacy Survey, which focused on issues in the home and in the workplace.
Overall, the secretariat acts as a catalyst and facilitator for literacy issues in Canada. It forges cooperative relationships with public- and private-sector partners in a national effort to create a more literate Canada. Our funding is used for projects to support five activities: the development of learning materials; increased public awareness; supporting research; improving coordination and information sharing; and improving access to literacy programs, particularly for people who are disadvantaged. We work in partnership with each province and territory to sponsor literacy projects directed to regional or local needs.
We have essentially very effective, very positive working relationships with each of the provinces and territories. We are developing partnerships with business and labour to foster corporate and labour awareness of, and involvement in, literacy issues. The focus of NLS has included non-traditional learning opportunities and innovative ways to promote learning in the workplace and elsewhere.
I would like to give you some examples of what we have done. The examples chosen for this paper have a technology bias to them. I did that because of the mandate of the committee.
One of the initiatives to which I would draw your attention is something called the National Adult Literacy Database -- NALD is its acronym -- which facilitates the continued delivery of literacy programs in Canada by providing a communication network and a clearing house of adult literacy information for individuals, organizations and government policy-makers. Every project funded by the National Literacy Secretariat is accessible. That is, information on them is accessible through NALD.
NALD provides e-mail, conferencing and bulletin board services; a database on Canadian literacy organizations, institutions and groups; and a resource database on publications and other materials useful to the field. It has a website and it manages home pages for about 35 literacy organizations, including the NLS.
A very different kind of project is SARAW, Speech Assisted Reading and Writing. SARAW is soon to be joined by a project called SAM, Speech Assisted Math.
SARAW is a talking computer program. I suppose that is a colloquial way of putting it. It uses voice synthesizers and is designed to help teach basic reading and writing skills to adults who have severe physical disabilities, who are non-verbal, and who have very limited motor skills. Learners with severe physical disabilities have access to literacy education through this computer-based program with the assistance of trained instructors and, as a result, have a more equitable chance for success in society and in the economy.
I must tell you, senators, this is a powerful new technology. It is not an exaggeration to say that it revolutionizes the lives of those Canadians who have need of it.
With our support, the Neil Squire Foundation has worked, in partnership with Capilano College, Digital Equipment of Canada -- which put in well over $1 million for development <#0107> Microsoft Canada, and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, to implement this program across the country.
Another example of our work is what we have done with the literacy practitioners of Alberta. With our support, they have created a program on CD-ROM called STAPLE. Again, this is a technology application, an interactive multi-media training program for literacy workers, coordinators and volunteer tutors. There is, I understand, interest in this project in the United States and Europe. In essence, it provides self-instruction to those who are preparing to be providers of literacy training.
We have also established a set of guidelines for literacy organizations to use when considering the acquisition of computer-based adult literacy programs. We have also organized meetings. I chaired one yesterday on electronic infrastructure. We also held what was called a Policy Conversation on New Technology in January of 1995; we provided the results of that work to your researchers.
To conclude this part of the presentation, senators, I would just say that the use of technology for learning purposes is growing rapidly in this country, just as the use of technology for work or entertainment is growing exponentially. There is a difference. While the growth in terms of learning is rapid, the growth in terms of entertainment has been even faster. That is part of the challenge that we face.
Harnessing technology for learning purposes is a challenge we must meet if Canada is to be able to situate itself among the most successful of nations, not solely in the communications field but certainly in that field.
This notion of success is not limited to economic success, but to the success of our social, cultural and political institutions. Perhaps even more importantly, strong literacy skills are essential if Canadians are to be able to adapt to the evolution of the knowledge-based economy during coming years and decades. While learning technology can assist individuals in improving their literacy skills, literacy skills are a prerequisite to making full use of technology in the home, in any learning environment and at work. Technology, learning and literacy are linked and will only become more inter-connected in the future. Thank you.
The Chair: That was extremely interesting, Mr. Page. You are reminding us today that while literacy is far from being the whole answer to those who have not had the same opportunities as others, it is really one of the key issues related to communications and to the new technology.
We often hear today about the spoken word and the written word in terms of literacy. Then we often hear about the regrouping of computer literacy. I notice that you did not refer much to computer literacy. Could you speak to us about the combining of those two? Where are you in that type of thinking and planning?
Mr. Page: I would be very pleased to do that, senator. I would welcome comments from my colleagues.
If I may speak from the perspective of the National Literacy Secretariat for a moment, we see literacy as lying across a very broad spectrum. At one end of that spectrum, one finds what is normally thought of as basic literacy skills -- the simple ability to read and write. Through the middle ranges of that spectrum, one finds what I would call, rather than functional literacy, essential literacy, the types of literacy competencies referred to in IALS that are required for full and effective participation in all aspects of life. At the other end of the spectrum, one finds what I as a literacy person think of as literacy by analogy. By that, I mean computer literacy, media literacy, societal literacy, economic literacy, and so on.
I make those sorts of distinctions because, quite frankly, when one sits down in front of a computer monitor to work or to explore the Internet, one is essentially working with text, either in prose or in document form. What lies at the heart of the ability to use the new technologies effectively and well is, in fact, literacy in its traditional forms. The difference between those forms and a computer is that the words are on paper, rather than on a screen.
It is increasingly clear from reports, such as the IALS report, that a very high order of literacy skill -- in the traditional sense of the term, the ability to read and write <#0107> is required by people in order to take full advantage of the technologies. One must be able to work with two, three or four concepts, and to work inferentially, which often is required when one is dealing with the Internet.
For me, the term computer literacy could be thought of perhaps in the old-fashioned programming language sense. I am old enough to remember things like COBOL and FORTRAN. I would have thought that computer literacy might be described as the ability to work in those computer languages. Another way that one might think about computer literacy is in terms of the learning of applications.
Frankly, as an old fossil, I like to work in WordPerfect 5.1. I am told by many of my younger colleagues that Word is much better or that WordPerfect 6.1 is just dandy. However, there what you are learning, essentially, are applications. If you move from one application to another application, the thing that really matters, in essence, is your ability to work with what is on the screen.
For me, computer literacy is a handy term that could apply to a number of different things. It is a dangerous term, in a certain respect, because when we are discussing the term, we are in essence discussing the high levels of literacy required to use computers. For the sake of plain language, I would prefer to put it that way.
Mr. Jean Pignal, Special Surveys Division, Statistics Canada, National Literacy Secretariat and the Office of Learning Technologies: It is even better to use the term "computer skills" rather than "computer literacy", because it is a misnomer to equate the two. When you understand a person's computer literacy, you are understanding the person's facility and ability to use computers.
Where is the information technology taking us? We heard earlier about the possibilities of narrow casting, of having people being able to get the information that they want. Do they know what they want if they cannot read it or if they are not able to apply the filters necessary to get rid of the junk and keep the gems?
Senator Spivak: You are speaking about comprehension.
Mr. Pignal: We measure not only the ability to read but the ability to use written text in IALS. It is more than just saying, "See the cat run," or something like that.It is the ability to ask, "What ran," and having an answer saying, "The cat did."
When you think of the information and the freedom of information that the new technology is giving us, they are wonderful things, but there can be problems when you get so much information that you have information overload. You need a filter to be able to get through all that information coming in and take only what you want, what you need and what you understand, and that is the kind of literacy we are talking about rather than the ability to use a computer.
Senator Spivak: You know, I am sure, what Neil Postman says about computers. When we were in Boston, we were told it was a crock. He said that the major function of education is to teach our children how to think, how to express themselves, and how to evaluate, and he claims that computers do none of this. Is your point of view opposite? Do you think that the new technologies achieve this aim, with which everyone would agree, better than the old-fashioned methods?
I understand that computers are an essential and unavoidable tool today. They are a commercial tool and a tool for gathering information. However, are they as good a tool for learning as the old-fashioned ways?
Mr. Page: Senator, a computer, as you have just suggested, can be a learning tool. Its effectiveness depends on whether it is appropriate from the perspective of the individual, his or her needs, learning style and context. From our perspective in the Office of Learning Technology, we have placed a great deal of emphasis on that term "appropriate". We are anxious to explore the frontiers of computer use and to determine how valuable they can be as tools, hence some of the projects we have underway. However, we come at this issue really from the human end. I think that is one of things that distinguishes the work we are doing in the Office of Learning Technologies. Our principles are learner-centred and appropriate. Those are the key things. I think of SARAW as an example. People with those severe handicaps cannot be helped any more effectively by the old methods than by computer. In that instance, for those people, this is the most powerful learning tool they have ever had.
Senator Spivak: That is true.
Mr. Page: For someone who is in an isolated community in Northern Ontario or in the Arctic, for someone who is in a community with virtually no technological infrastructure, with no background or experience in using low-end technologies, let alone high-end technologies, the computer is probably not a very effective learning tool, and within the context of that person's experience, could not be, without a great deal of effort and cultural change on the part of that individual. The answer lies there, in the issue of appropriateness. We are concerned about trying to make a contribution, as we have suggested, to the development of a culture of learning in this country by using all of these things in ways that are appropriate to Canadians as they are found.
Senator Spivak: I might say that I am absolutely thunderstruck by the magnitude of the task you are setting for yourselves. The way you have defined "literacy" is amazing. Perhaps it is easy for you, but you have the challenge of appropriate ways of teaching people. There is a debate going on now about phonetics and whole language. Teaching people to achieve the kinds of skills about which you are speaking and which we need to be competitive is a mammoth task.
I want to know the numbers. You say Canada has a great number of people with low-level skills. What number are you talking about, given that you have defined this in a very broad fashion?
Mr. Page: Let me take a layman's crack at it. The statistician can correct me. There were three scales in IALS: the prose scale, the document scale, and the quantitative scale. The prose scale essentially refers to the reading of simple text. That scale contains five levels of competence, level 1 being the lowest. Roughly 22 per cent of adult Canadians, those 16 and over, were at level 1. What does that mean? It means that these people are able to read simple text, text with an idea embedded in it, and they are able to work with that concept, in essence. There is no inferential work required.
Level 2 on the prose scale applies to 26 per cent of adult Canadians. I do not like to add the various figures together, but if you are keeping a tab, we are up to 48 per cent now.
Senator Spivak: Are you including numeracy?
Mr. Page: That is on the quantitative scale. We will get into that. I am talking here about reading text, the simplest part of it. Document literacy is much more inferential and more difficult. This is the simplest of the reading tasks.
As indicated, 26 per cent of adult Canadians in this survey were at level 2. That is a level at which you would do some inferring. Essentially there would be an idea to be extracted from the text. Again, it is not a difficult reading task. Perhaps Mr. Pignal would like to make a comment about this.
Mr. Pignal: At level 2, there again is no inferring. You do not get inferring until you get up to the higher levels. In fact, you have distracters here. You are asked a question based on a key word in the text, and there are several of those key words in the text, so there is a possibility of having an answer in different places. Consequently, the person has to be much more aware. They are not just matching a symbol with another symbol in the text; they must actually make a distinction between two symbols.
Senator Spivak: What about the British system of précis, which emphasizes your grasp of the essential? That is also the basis, I think, of legal education. Where does that fit on the scale? Is that higher? Are you then into inference?
Mr. Pignal: I am not sure that IALS gets into too much of that. We are really good at the lower end and reasonably good at the upper end, but what you are talking about is a gestalt of a text.
Senator Spivak: It is pretty basic.
Mr. Pignal: It may be basic to certain people at the higher ends, but it is not so basic. It is a bit more difficult to measure. We did measure some things that have that element. For instance, we have given people a sentence and asked them to say that sentence again in their own words.
Senator Spivak: That skill is tested on an IQ test, is it not?
Mr. Pignal: Most possibly it is, yes.
Senator Rompkey: Let me welcome Jim Page, first of all, whom I have known for some years and who has given outstanding service to this country through a number of administrations in a number of different incarnations. I am very pleased to see him again.
Let me just deal with Senator Spivak's question first. As the chair will know, I recently spent a couple of days in Sudbury and had the opportunity to spend a morning with the Inco training people. They will have about 800 training manuals on computer by 1999. Their experience so far is that they have halved the learning time. They have put thousands of people back on the job more quickly and increased time in the workplace. They have saved millions of dollars. The retention rate is 80 to 90 per cent, and the enthusiasm rate of the learners is high. It used to be that when people left for a coffee break and wandered away, you had to hustle them back to the classroom. Now they cannot get the workers away from the computers. A very successful Canadian company is absolutely convinced that computer-based learning is very effective. I thought I would throw that in for information purposes.
I do not know how far we can go in addressing the issue on literacy in our report because we are mainly dealing with communications, but I think we should make a statement somewhere that this country is not doing enough. I would like to know how we compare with other countries. Mr. Page said that we have restored funding for literacy, or increased it by 30 per cent. That is not nearly enough given the importance of this problem for Canada. I do not know if we can find a way to make that statement, but I would like for us to make it.
To buttress our argument, I would like Mr. Page to tell me how we compare with other countries who took part in the survey with regard to government policy. What does Sweden do, for example? What percentage of GDP does Sweden devote to literacy compared to Canada?
Mr. Page: That is a difficult question to answer, but it is a question I certainly welcome. It is difficult to answer because countries organize themselves very differently in terms of how they spend money on education and training generally.
One of the fascinating things about the Canadian case, without getting into a comparison, is that we, like Sweden, spend a very high proportion of available dollars on education generally. We are right at the top or close to the top in terms of per capita spending on education. The interesting thing, though -- and it is something that characterizes both Canada and the United States -- about the way we spend in this country is that we have a very open post-secondary education system, which I think is a wonderful thing. One cannot criticize that. That is one of the reasons we have a higher proportion of people at the very top end of the scale than a lot of the European countries, with perhaps the exception of Sweden. I think Sweden stands first in that respect as well, but we are right up there in terms of per capita spending. The challenge in this country is why are we thin in the middle?
Senator Rompkey: Sweden is not a confederation. Perhaps we should talk about Australia and Germany as better models.
Mr. Page: I think so.
Senator Rompkey: Part of our problem is inter-governmental fighting.
Mr. Page: Part of our problem is the age structure. We have the problem of opportunities that people did or did not have in earlier years. As I suggested in my prepared remarks, it is a matter of a culture of learning.
One of the things that distinguishes the Scandinavian countries and several other European countries from Canada and the United States is the systemic commitment, not only in institutions but in the home and in the workplace, to a learning culture. The value of learning for itself is there.
I had an opportunity to chat with some of our Swedish colleagues involved in this study. I asked them the blunt question, "Would the results have been the same if Iceland had volunteered?" Their answer was that the Icelanders would have cleaned us.
I had the good fortune once to visit Iceland. It is an extraordinary place. Here is a country with a population smaller than Ottawa. It sustains a publishing industry in Icelandic. It has a literary tradition that spans a millennium. From talking to the Icelanders I met, I learned that it is an ingrained tradition for one of the members of the family to read as the meal is being prepared in the kitchen. The point I am getting at is there is a commitment to learning and a love of learning. People champion learning.
From our perspective both in the NLS and the OLT, we are not looking at the issue from the point of view of what one can accomplish in two, three or four years. This, I think, is Senator Fairbairn's commitment as well. We are looking essentially at cultural change. That is the challenge. As a father of a 13-year-old child, I say that if this country is to be successful 25 or 30 years down the road, we must create learning environments in our homes and in the workplaces of this country. We need more Incos. That is absolutely critical. I am hopeful this can be accomplished, but it will be important for leaders of this country to speak out about the importance of literacy and to encourage it.
As a parent, one of the things I find troubling in the mass media is the extent to which so many of the heroes are anti-learning heroes. You can make millions of dollars in entertainment or sport. Who values the learners? I cannot help but reflect on that. We must all think about the centrality of learning for a society.
Senator Rompkey knows me from my Canadian Studies days. One of the things I am deeply committed to is the importance of national self-knowledge, knowing about our country, knowing about our institutions and knowing our history. The last time I testified before a Senate committee was on the issue of the teaching of history in this country.
I hope I am being clear. What we need to do when we think about communications technologies, learning technologies and the literacy challenge is think about them holistically, from the point of view of what we can do as a people to commit ourselves to learning.
Senator Rompkey: Accepting what you say, I think that money is an important issue, particularly in areas of the country where Canada's reserve labour force is low-skilled and has a comparative disadvantage. In Cape Breton, the unemployment rate is 20 per cent. That is the official rate. I suspect it is much higher than that. They are not stupid people, and there are opportunities in this country.
Why do we have such a high unemployment rate? If you teach people to be literate and to learn, and if the computer is a valid tool, what will happen to Canada in terms of changing communications? We may not have French-English and East-West divisions, but will we be divided into people who are computer literate and people who are not? I am thinking about people in remote parts of the country such as Cape Breton and the North. When you say computers may not be appropriate learning technologies for those people, I am not sure I agree with you. I think they are just as appropriate in those areas.
The problem there is how to provide the hardware, because you cannot use that kind of learning process unless people have the hardware. I am talking about actual computers in schools. Too many Canadian schools do not have the wherewithal and have no way to get it. As transfer payments decrease, they have even less opportunity. So I want to discuss how we provide the money.
The other question I want to ask you is: Are there enough Incos? Is the private sector doing enough? What are the mechanisms that have been successful? We have tried a number of different mechanisms in this country to mobilize resources to aim at that problem. Which have worked and which have not? I think that is a challenge for us.
Money is certainly a problem with regard to the issue of illiteracy in this country, and I am not talking about just throwing money at it. It is more than just culture, more than just an attitude; money is a problem. You do not have enough in your secretariat, so how do we mobilize it in the country and what mechanisms have worked that we can support as excellent initiatives?
Mr. Page: First, let me correct what I guess was a misreading of what I said. The point I was making was that it is important to think about learners in their contexts. I was simply suggesting that if one found a person who had not had an opportunity, who was living in a remote community -- and I just chose that as a for instance -- a computer might not be the best learning tool at that particular point in time. However, I take your point. I have been in several native communities in the North, where there have been real efforts to create the kind of infrastructure that allows people to use those technologies. Native broadcasting, through the Northern Network, is a real success in that respect, and that is a learning technology.
To come to the question of money, I think obviously one of the issues with technology is access to that technology. One of the things that happens with respect to technology is that these new things have a rapid tendency to become ubiquitous. I reflect on my first day on the job in a government department back in 1983. I was on the floor of a huge government complex, there were probably a thousand people working on that floor, and there were two word processors. Of course the people who ran those word processors were enormously popular, particularly with people like myself who tend to wordsmith a bit and have to get the product of their labours churned out. I happen to work in the same building on the same floor 15 years later, and every person on that floor has a computer on their desk. What I am getting at is the ubiquity of computers. The prices come down, and availability increases. We are to a point now with communications that it really does not matter where you are situated so long as you have access to the phone line. There are certain kinds of industries you can set up and certain kinds of services you can get.
My sense is that there is a ubiquity to this stuff that is driving its accessibility. If you look at the statistics -- and I do not know if you have that sort of information readily at hand -- I think you will see that the use of computers in the home, to say nothing of the workplace, is sky-rocketing in this country and will probably continue to do so.
At the risk of overstating things, one can use this technology for all kinds of purposes. Having a computer in the home does not mean necessarily that it will be used for learning purposes. That is where the attitude and the cultural questions come into play. I do not think that that can be overstated. When it comes to the matter of literacy, if, as I believe, IALS is right that if you do not use your skills you lose your skills, then the creating of environments in the home, of encouraging people to think about the centrality of learning to their very well-being, and of reading to their ability to function in society, become extremely important. I do not want to oversell that notion, but I would not want to dismiss it either.
Senator Rompkey: What about the mechanisms that have worked? You mentioned some here earlier on, such as sector councils and labour-business partnerships. What has worked?
Mr. Page: One of the things that we have done in the National Literacy Secretariat is to commission a number of case studies of workplace literacy. We have written about 15 case studies now and they are shared very proudly across the country. We have taken a look at various types of enterprises -- small, medium and large -- located in various parts of the country, in very different sectors, and we have tried to identify those factors which contribute to the success of a workplace literacy program. By "success" I mean something that is sustained, that reaches the workers, is used by the workers, and has an impact on that plant.
We have been able to identify several things that are absolutely critical. One is commitment from the top. The owner of the small enterprise or the chairman of the board of the large enterprise must actually go out and say, very publicly, that this matters. If I may give you an example, the president of Syncrude, Eric Newell, has made it very clear that for him personally, as the chief executive officer of a company, workplace literacy is at the heart of their business. That is what it takes. It also takes a buy-in on the part of organized labour, and there has to be the ability and the willingness on the part of the firm to provide time on the shop floor, on the work site, during the working day. Those are examples of things that are absolutely critical to making a workplace literacy program function effectively.
What we are doing in terms of Office of Learning Technologies, which as I have indicated is very new, is finding ways of working in partnership, with, for example, sector councils, such as in the plastics industry. We try to determine the kinds of things that need to be done in that industry to ensure the effective use of technology.
Mr. Stephen Loyd, Manager, Office of Learning Technologies: There are quite a number of sector councils now studying this very issue and trying to think of new ways to get across the same information to people but not have the people of necessity leave the work site. Mr. Page mentioned the project we have with the plastic sector council. Normally these people would have to go to a community college for six weeks to get the learning. We are providing money to be able to do a comparative analysis between the learning outcomes related to that traditional type course versus a new method of delivery, which will incorporate the use of CD-ROM technology as well as having tutor trainers go to the work site. We will be studying the outcomes in the two situations, as well as the employee and employer satisfaction rates. There is a great deal of interest among all of the sector councils in this area, and many are trying to determine how they can incorporate learning technologies in a cost-effective manner and with a positive learning outcome. That is very much one of the businesses we are in.
Senator Rompkey: Are sector councils the best mechanism for doing the training of the future?
Mr. Loyd: Traditionally, the sector councils, as supported by HRD, have been a combination of management and labour within a particular sector coming together to attempt to define what the learning needs are for that sector and to set some of the standards regarding the kinds of competencies that are required. In that sense, they are setting the stage for understanding what an employee needs to know to be able to effectively do the work. Certainly that sets the stage then for setting the learning objectives and working with the employers. They are an excellent vehicle for disseminating information right across the country. In that regard, they, in conjunction with human resource training firms, universities and communities colleges, are a means by which we will move ahead. They are certainly not the complete answer, but they are important.
The Chair: I will take Senator Rompkey's question from another point of view. As a Senate committee, we have a responsibility to make recommendations to every level of government. We do not have to address ourselves only to the federal level. We must also address ourselves to private industry, to families, and to all the people in our society who have a responsibility.
You identified the key issue as being the learning culture. You also stated the importance of developing a learning culture within our own country so that the technology that is becoming increasingly available and accessible is put to full use for the progress of one's country, be it progress in employment, in quality of life, or in communication with ourselves and with other countries.
You referred to your 13-year-old son. A recent study from Berkley was printed a few months ago. After in-depth research with hundreds of candidates, the report stated that the three key factors of success were reliability, a strong self image and intellectual curiosity. My children are much older than yours, Mr. Page, but I found that the environment they were in was not the same environment I found myself in when I was a child, where curiosity and asking questions was encouraged, valued and recompensed. Over the years, this intellectual curiosity has been undervalued and devalued so much that now we have built these huge institutions where children, teenagers and young adults are not encouraged to become involved in an interactive question-answer-discussion environment anymore. This whole learning culture has not been valued for quite a few years.
What three recommendations could we make that would contribute, even modestly, to the development of a learning culture?
Mr. Page: This question of intellectual curiosity and seeking knowledge is something that is innate to children. Frankly, it is innate in all of us. The issue becomes the extent to which that is reinforced, valued, recognized and built upon.
One of the great promises of these technologies is that they can be used for learning on their own or with the assistance of a mentor, a tutor, a guide or a teacher. The difficulty is that in this society -- certainly in North American society -- it is clear that these technologies are marketed not for their learning value but for their entertainment value.
If one were to go to a computer store within stone's throw of the parliamentary precinct and look at the software on offer, one would find very little learning software available. The huge computer stores in this city are chock-a-block with $50, $60, $70 CD-ROM games that require joysticks and all sorts of other equipment. They are not marketed as learning tools but as diversions.
The issue is one that will not be addressed in the short term. We must find a way to encourage the leaders of our institutions, working together with community organizations and others, to start to get the message out that, from the points of view of both individual and collective well-being, these questions are central to the future of our children and to the future prosperity and success of our society.
This all sounds vague, and it is at one level, but at another level it requires that people, individuals and institutions, make choices. They must make choices that are oriented toward a kind of revolution in this country -- that is, a revolution in value and attitude. If your committee were to speak out strongly about the importance of examining the values and attitudes that drive us forward, and the importance of continuous learning for competitiveness not only in the communications industry but also in other industries, you will have made a valuable contribution. There is no magic bullet.
The Chair: How can we better link entertainment and learning? I will give you an example. When Senator Rompkey was referring the use of computers for training at Inco, and the fact that people did not want to go on their coffee break, Senator Spivak said, "That is because they are having fun." How can we link fun and learning together? What can we, as a committee, recommend on that?
Senator Spivak: Learning is fun.
Mr. Page: That is right.
The Chair: But how many schools, for instance, will take a feature film that is historical and take the time to broadcast it? The rules say that they must take the textbook and go through it to teach children, whereas the film that has been produced is a marvellous tool but it is too entertaining for the school environment. How can we link those up?
You were talking about values and research. How can we, as a committee, get that message across? Let us face it: Our kids want to be entertained. How can we turn entertainment into a learning opportunity?
Mr. Page: It can be done. A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to write a book on the use of film in teaching. Like Senator Rompkey, I was a teacher for many years. I used film to teach history to my students. You must use these sorts of things with a great deal of care and, frankly, with a lot of skill. As a medium, film can be used appropriately and inappropriately, as can any of these other things.
In terms of the use of documentary film, for instance, some of you may remember two series of films that were made by the National Film Board of Canada during the Second World War. Canada Carries On was one series and World in Action was another. There were several films in that series that used literally pieces of film footage with Lorne Green's voice of doom as a voice-over. However, the voice-over carried a certain message. At that time, there were several films being made about the Soviet Union which was an ally of Canada's in the war. Of course, the voice-overs were all about the glories of the Soviet system and of Joseph Stalin, et cetera. The same film footage was used in films in the late 1940s when the Cold War had started, with a very different voice-over and with a very different message. The point I am getting at is that you can use these things for didactic purposes, but they have to be used very carefully.
Senator Spivak: There is a contradiction here because the Internet is largely text. It is communication largely by way of reading. You have different objectives. If we are talking about creating intellectuals and a learning culture, that is so difficult in today's world. However, there are different objectives. I subscribe wholeheartedly to the need to create a culture of learning. I think if we approached it in the way Iceland does, many of our problems would be solved, and I happen to know a great deal about Iceland.
Our mandate really is to examine the competitiveness of our communications industries. How can we compete in the field of communications and how can that assist our competitiveness generally?
Everyone talks about computers and how essential they are. They do not differentiate between functions at all. All the MBAs who are graduating know how to use computers, but they cannot get jobs. On the other hand, Northern Telecom needs skilled people. They need 2,200 people and they cannot get them. The same is true for companies in Vancouver.
Have you given any thought to linking the training and education of people in literacy -- and I am getting down to a very basic level -- to match the sort of jobs and skills that are needed in our country? Is there anyone doing it?
I have used the example of Germany many times. In Germany, every year, people from labour, business, the training institutions and government would sit down and talk. I do not know if they still do this since East Germany has been annexed. Business would be asked, "What do you need?" The training institutions would send in the course of programs. Labour would have to agree. Government would facilitate the training through funding or other means. That is a very practical approach, one which has never been used in Canada, as far as I know. Of course, now we are moving even further away from it because we are devolving labour training.
If we are talking about literacy at a general level, are we also talking about it in a particular level?
Mr. Pignal: We keep coming back to the idea of computer literacy. In a way, what we are trying to say is if you put 10 million monkeys in front of 10 million computers, they might come out with Windows 95. The point is that if you do not have the essential skills to use that computer effectively, whether it is to use ACCPAC as an accountant, or whether it is to write a program in COBOL, or whether it is just to use WordPerfect, then you are nowhere. The school system provides those basic skills. The workplace, if it is literacy rich, will enrich those skills -- or degrade them if it is not literacy rich -- or it will help at least to maintain them.
What comes after that? In Sweden, they read their television; they cannot afford to voice-over all these foreign movies. They are practising literacy at a time when Canadians are not.
There is a whole culture of literacy. People should be encouraged, if they are going out to be sitting at a bus stop, to have a book or something to read to practise the skill. Once you get out of the workforce, whether you are unemployed or whether you decide to leave by choice, that is the only thing that helps to maintain those skills.
Senator Spivak: Are you talking about something like Participaction?
Mr. Pignal: If you have a picture in your mind of a Swede on his skiis, then put him with a book, because that is what he is doing.
Senator Spivak: That is an excellent idea.
Mr. Page: On our letterhead we have the slogan, "Read Every Day". Essentially, that is the message.
Senator Spivak: I believe Participaction worked, did it not?
Senator Rompkey: The 70-30 ratio was reversed.
Senator Spivak: Perhaps we should be talking about a national promotional program.
Senator Rompkey: That was the point I made earlier about really buying into this as an important issue. Restoring the money to the National Literacy Secretariat and increasing it by 30 per cent is peanuts. We have not bought in as a government. Let us take the government alone. I do not think the government has bought into literacy <#0107> and that is apart from the fact that we have not bought into it as a country. Who is providing the leadership? After all, what is government for?
Mr. Pignal: It used to be that no one saw this issue as important. Why bother? We got our literacy training at school. There was no point. IALS demonstrates that you can lose it. There is that possibility.
Senator Rompkey: The hook is productivity. If you watched The National last night, you would have seen the story about the guru in the 1950s who predicted what would happen in the 1990s if we did not take cognizance of the effect of computers.
Senator Spivak: People are still talking about the fact that if you cut taxes you will get jobs. They are not looking at the job market and thinking of innovative things like cutting overtime so that more people can have jobs.
Senator Rompkey: The country has not bought into the idea of education and training as being important in the 1990s, in the information economy. We used to talk about the vision of 1867 and the building of the CPR. There is not a similar vision today. That was the industrial economy. There is not the similar vision in the information economy.
The Chair: For us to remain at the leading edge of competitiveness, we must increase our productivity.
Senator Rompkey: If we do not do that, we might as well forget free trade agreements.
Senator Spivak: We have to lift up the whole country. In order to do that, we need a national promotion program.
The Chair: Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. As you can see, we hold this research close to our hearts, for various reasons.
The committee adjourned.