The Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL) is a national non-profit charitable organization representing literacy coalitions, organizations and individuals from every province and territory. For over twenty-five years, MCL has worked to:

• provide a national forum for provincial and territorial literacy organizations to work together to ensure that all Canadians have access to quality literacy education;

• inform the federal government and the general public about issues related to adult literacy in Canada;

• strengthen the adult learner voice in Canada; and

• support the development of a strong movement of people and organizations involved with adult literacy education.

In this brief, MCL calls on the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HRD Committee) to endorse recommendations that pave the way for meaningful advances on literacy and essential skills development. Canada’s economic and social prosperity will be served if the federal government makes literacy a policy priority.

According to Statistics Canada, 22% of Adult Canadians have serious difficulty with reading, writing and math (“level 1”), and another 26% do not have the literacy skills necessary to prosper in the knowledge-based economy (“level 2”).¹

For most Canadians falling into these two lowest literacy levels, the challenge is not so much in simply deciphering print information, but in understanding and working with it. Because today literacy is about much more than the ability to read words on a page – it’s about the capacity to “read the world”. The demands of our knowledge-based society are escalating faster than ever before, and our definition of the minimum literacy skills required to meet the challenges of modern life is evolving to match.²

¹

“Literacy, Economy and Society”, International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), OECD, 1995

²

For more, see “Literacy, It’s not what it used to be”, National Literacy Secretariat Fact Sheets at www.nald.ca/NLS/nlsild/fact8.htm