Adult Literacy Issues in Canada

Abstract

This chapter concerns adult literacy issues in Canada—adults being defined as people fifteen years or older and out of school—and focuses primarily on adults who are not (or are barely) literate in any language. Until the mid-1980s, educational support for adults who wished to develop or improve their literacy skills up to about the grade eight level was almost entirely a charitable endeavor. People with low literacy skills were perceived to be a marginal group consisting of elderly people who had not had the chance to go to school, people with disabilities who were considered to be untrainable, certain immigrant populations, and people who had failed in the school system through some individual weakness. In 1985, in the midst of national concerns about the productivity of the country's labor force, the government of Ontario launched a program of funding for three explicit purposes: 1) to assist literacy programs for adult learners, 2) to support literacy organizations, and 3) to fund a small amount of community based research on adult literacy. The federal government followed suit in 1986, establishing the National Literacy Secretariat in the Department of the Secretary of State for Canada.