| For Canada's two largest cities, the rates were 23 per cent in Montreal and 27 per cent in Toronto where four in 10 of those surveyed were immigrants. Elsewhere in Ontario, functioned illiteracy ranged from 21 per cent in London and 23 per cent in Ottawa to 32 per cent for the rural area around Owen Sound, where 43 per cent did not get to high school. For illiterates in these centres and across the country, theirs is a way of life that is growing, not shrinking as officials had forecast. The survey and other Southam research strongly suggest 100, 000 illiterates a year are being added to the Canadian population by a flawed education system and humanitarian immigration policies. Yet deaths, emigration and literacy training only reduce the ranks by an estimated 70,000 annually. "It's not as life-threatening as AIDS, nor as terrible as mass murder, nor as current as acid rain," says McGill University education professor Jon Bradley of illiteracy in general. "But in the long run it could be a far more damaging threat to Canadian society." The dangers are stark: 10 per cent of Canadian adults can't understand the dosage directions on a medicine bottle; 20 per cent can't correctly select a fact from a simple newspaper article; 40 per cent can't figure out the tip on a lunch bill; more than 50 per cent have serious troubles using bus schedules; and nearly 60 per cent misinterpret the key section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 
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