Federal record on literacy: opportunities wasted, warnings ignored

The federal government's record on literacy is a series of opportunities wasted, warnings ignored and political pettiness displayed by both Liberal and Conservative administrations.

The latest addition to this doleful litany was $1 million in "development" funds for literacy announced in early September, all that Secretary of State David Crombie was able to salvage from an initial multi-million dollar request to the federal cabinet in spring, 1987.

Crombie concedes he's struggling to get some sort of permanent federal commitment to literacy in place before the existing public interest falls off.

"We've got to capture the interest and make sure it's going to continue. We want to be here for the long haul." Literacy groups can be forgiven for being skeptical; they've heard such promises before, starting with the 1971 report of a Senate committee on poverty that recommended a national office to set educational goals for the country. The same idea was repeated in 1985 by the Macdonald Royal Commission, a good indication of how little progress has been made.

Numerous other warnings have also been ignored by federal authorities: a 1976 report by the Senate finance committee; a 1979 commission of inquiry for the federal labor minister; a 1984 royal commission on employment equality; a 1984 task force report to the employment minister; and a 1986 Senate report on youth.

"Adult illiteracy in Canada is a serious social and economic problem which is being largely ignored," prophetically warned the 1979 inquiry.

The current federal government has also ignored the Conservative party's own blueprint for combating adult literacy, drawn up three-and-a-half years ago by a task force on manpower retraining appointed by then Opposition leader Brian Mulroney.

The Tory task force recommended a federal provincial conference "for the sole purpose of developing an action plan to combat adult illiteracy." Also recommended was a public advocacy campaign about illiteracy and immediate work on developing teaching materials for volunteer tutors. No action was taken on either proposal.

Inside the federal bureaucracy, a few officials have waged an isolated and increasingly demoralized struggle to get more attention paid to the growing illiteracy problem.

"It should be readily apparent that the federal government of Canada's direct contribution to literacy education is no more than a pittance," said an internal report in December, 1984, from the training branch of the Employment and Immigration Department.

And a shrinking pittance. The only federal training program that provided upgrading for people with reading and writing skills below a high school level was deliberately cut back by officials and politicians—because it was too popular.

The program, known as Basic Training for Skills Development, helped more than 55,000 functional illiterates in 1972-73. By 1984-85, the total number of trainees had been slashed to 29,000 and recent administrative changes effectively bar the majority of functional illiterates.

Why? Because Ottawa wasn't going to pay for cleaning up mistakes made by the provinces.

"The BTSD component appears to be directed at meeting worker needs which have resulted from deficiencies in provincial educational programs," intoned the Nielsen Task Force in March, 1985.

Senators had trotted out the same line in 1975 when they grilled the late Bob Andras, then Liberal manpower minister, about which level of government was responsible for undereducated adults.

"The fact is that they do exist," Andras shot back. "Whether it is their fault or the fault of the educational system does not enter into it. They are now on our doorstep." But the federal government has even ducked illiteracy when its jurisdictional authority was undisputed. Decades of inadequate schooling for Indians have contributed to soaring illiteracy rates among natives.

In 1982, the Economic Council of Canada noted in astonishment that Ottawa had axed much-needed adult education programs on Indian reserves.