PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Madam Speaker: Order, please. The hour being 5 p.m., time for private members' hour.
Mr. Ben Sveinson (La Verendrye): Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable member for Pembina (Mr. Dyck),
"WHEREAS Manitobans are being provided with the opportunities to acquire and maintain basic literacy skills in reading, writing, computing and problem-solving; and
"WHEREAS the Provincial Government is also dedicated to ensuring that all Manitobans have an opportunity to achieve computer literacy; and
"WHEREAS literacy is one of four foundation skills areas that are required from K to S4 classrooms; and
"WHEREAS literacy programs are responsible for the coordination and management of a range of community-based and workplace literacy programs that provide employed and unemployed adult Manitobans who lack a high school education, with literacy and numeracy skills required for daily living at home, at work and in the community; and
"WHEREAS a close linkage is being forged between literacy and employment development programs.
"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that all Members of the Legislative Assembly maintain their support to the Minister of Education and Training and the department in their ongoing efforts to develop partnerships with the community and industry to provide life-long learning opportunities for all Manitobans."
Motion presented.
Mr. Sveinson: Madam Speaker, this government considers lifelong learning opportunities for all Manitobans and partnerships with community and industry to be important. We know that the more our citizens learn throughout their lives, the stronger Manitoba will be. Development of partnerships help create opportunities for lifelong learning.
Madam Speaker, before I get going on this, as you noticed, I have a cold, and I will be lucky if I make it through it and still have a voice. However, I am going to give it a try.
It was not too long ago that there a nice gathering here at the Legislature. The member for Pembina (Mr. Dyck) was there, and you could tell he was quite proud of the people from his area. I would like to read into the record some of things that were said at the time that this group was here. It was the Pembina Valley Learning Centre, a group of people from that area and indeed others from throughout the province who were here to do something that--well, it does not happen too often, but the headlines are: Thanks, Mr. Filmon. I do not say it does not happen too often because we do not do things that they could thank us for; simply, it is just human nature maybe. It does not happen as often as we would like.
Anyway, the Premier (Mr. Filmon), and I quote Ms. Ellie Reimer, was touched that Pembina Valley Learning Centre Co-ordinator Cheryl Campbell--the Premier said he had never been thanked that way. That way was with 275 thank-you letters compiled in a huge binder, presented to the Premier in a ceremony at the Manitoba Legislature without being asked for anything more. That is quite something.
Over 150 adult learners from learning centres all over Manitoba converged on the Legislature on February 26 to express their gratitude to the provincial government for keeping their promise to increase funding for adult literacy over the past three years. Campbell, together with 25 adult learners from the PVLC, attended the ceremony. After the formalities were over, learners, teachers and politicians, including the Pembina MLA Peter George Dyck and Education Minister Linda McIntosh, mingled and talked.
Madam Speaker, going on the article, it goes: for the students, the highlight was the Premier's reaction. Premier Filmon had been storm-stayed in Brandon, said Campbell; he really had to make an effort to be there for the presentation. One student commented that was the best thing, that he really talks adult literacy support seriously. Proudly, Campbell displayed samples of the letter that had been included in the book given to the Premier. Even the entry-level students did their own work on the computer, she said, and that was one thing she had stressed to the Premier. All the work was done by the students themselves. The letters were not staff-generated.
I could go on with this here, and it just shows 275 people, many of whom came to this country without knowing the language, many coming to a country that they know as the best country in the world, but still not knowing everything that they were going to meet. Happening to be in a country where your language is not the first language spoken, in fact, it becomes very hard.
I guess I can relate to that somewhat because some 30 years ago I moved into the Ste. Anne area, where at that time much, much French was spoken. Now, my wife grew up in the Ste. Anne area, and she speaks fluently three different languages. She went to school in Ste. Anne. She speaks Slovak, French, and English. When she started school, she could not speak a word of English or French. Strangely, as it might seem, or as understandable as it might seem, since then I have seen many that have been in that situation. She took, believe it or not, top honours in francais for a number of years right across Manitoba. She still, to this day, speaks French very fluently and Slovak, which she reads and writes also, all three languages. It was through that kind of a situation.
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She told me also that when she went to school, it was rather scary, because she did not know the other languages. So at first it was, but simply because of the attitude there at the time, and it was called the 50-50 French and English course, be it actually the main subjects were taught in English and what they would term possibly as a lesser subject was taught in French, and it worked out to be 50-50. But the very interesting part, it might be getting a little off track with the literacy program, but the interesting part at that time was that all of the kids that Milly, my wife, went to school with came out very fluent. I guess it was a little bit of an added thing, and that too was that the French language was spoken not just in the classroom but a lot outside too, so that probably did help.
Madam Speaker, part of the lifelong learning includes establishing a solid foundation in essential learning. We consider basic or essential learning from kindergarten to Senior 4 to be crucial. That is why we have embarked on education renewal.
I will try to speak about this literacy as much as I can, but there are a number of things I want to mention here again. The other night in Lorette, we had a function that was put on by the Seine River School Division. I was invited to be there with many of my people from throughout the constituency and from Lorette, and the honourable member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) walked in. Now, I invite all members to come to my constituency. It was very nice of her to come. Indeed, it gave me a good feeling just to have that kind of thing going on in my constituency, for her to see was good. I enjoyed it very much, but what it was was the collaboration approaches to developing safer communities.
Now, you might wonder how that ties into literacy, but the approach was put on by Doris Mae Oulton. She is the chief executive officer of the Manitoba Child and Youth Secretariat. She has spearheaded the development of the strategic plan for the highest risk children and youth in Manitoba. Also, another person was Spencer Clements. Spencer is well known in the educational community. He is presently working as a crime prevention officer with Manitoba Education and Training.
Now I am getting to the literacy. It was very interesting, and I will explain some of that too, how it ties in. You have many different things, take the Child and Family Services, education, health and how all of them do come in together with a child entering school, for example, having eaten and being able to learn. But it was presented by these two people, and if any of you have the opportunity to attend such a presentation within the school or within the community, take it in. It is really, really good, and they show how it ties into education, health, justice and so on. It was good, and to watch and listen to the people, parents committees, a lot of them, as they broke up into different groups. They broke up into different towns or different communities, so indeed that they could come to a particular thing within each of their communities. What their job was was to come back to the person that was running it with this is where we are going to go in our community.
I moved from table to table, and what I found was the encouragement of a few things in this sense: firstly, that the kids could leave home with something in their stomachs. We took a couple of instances where those parents were working, but the people next door, they did not know, so the kid went to school with nothing in their stomach. Then we went back and did it all over again, where in fact the people next door, they did know. They made that effort to get to know. Indeed now because they were neighbours, and because it was concerned people next door, they said to those two people perhaps Johnny could come over here and have breakfast, and they said, well, thank you very much. Johnny went on to school feeling good and being able to go to school and learn. That is where the literacy does tie in.
There are times, Madam Speaker, when our youth do come to school, and we have got programs now that deal with this also, where indeed children come to school with nothing, as I have said, and cannot learn or what they have learned at home and possibly in the community is not up to par, perhaps. I hope I said that in a gentle fashion. They come into school and to jump right into where they can be learning at a level where many of the others are, they have to be tutored somewhat. Indeed, we do have programs of that nature now.
I see that my time is up, and I hope there is somebody else in the Assembly that will want to speak on it. Madam Speaker, perhaps, when the next time rolls around, I will be able to speak again on this or some other time. Thank you.
Mr. Doug Martindale (Burrows): Madam Speaker, I am delighted to take part in debate on the resolution from the member for LaVerendrye (Mr. Sveinson) on literacy. Later on, I will be reading definitions and levels of literacy but, to start with, I would like to give a little bit of a personal history and also current involvement with a literacy program.
When I was growing up in Thornhill, Ontario, the public library, I believe the first that I can remember, was actually in Thornhill public school, the school of which my father was the principal. At that time it was a very small public library. It moved around a number of times before it found a permanent home. Eventually, it moved to the former home of the Tucker family on Colborne Street, and it is still there. It is a charming, small library located in a former residence. Since that time the municipality has built a much larger regional library, but my fondest memories are going to Thornhill Public Library in its various locations and especially on Colborne Street.
When this library began, it was a public library in the sense that it was open to the public, but it received either very little public funding or no public funding because I can remember taking produce from our garden in my wagon and going door-to-door on Elgin Street and selling it to people and telling them that the money was going to be donated to Thornhill Public Library. We used to collect six-quart baskets and do the same thing. We would take them to the farmers' market and sell them for--I do not know--2 or 3 cents each to help raise money for Thornhill Public Library.
Of course, the reason that I did that as a child was that my parents had instilled the love of reading in me and in my siblings. Coincidentally, we did not have television. There was no television in our family home until I was 17 years old, which I consider a blessing because I grew up as a book lover and so did our siblings, and all of us went to university or community college. I think that having no television and acquiring a love of reading and a love of books was probably a great contributor to that, so, of course, I want to see everyone learn to read and to enjoy reading as much as possible.
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So, when I was asked to join an advisory committee for Open Doors Adult Literacy program in Burrows constituency, I jumped at the chance. I am pleased to see that the member who sponsored the resolution spoke of an adult literacy program in his constituency. It is one of the things that is very easy to support because these are very small programs and anything that we can do to help them makes a big difference, whether it is donating a used computer or writing a cheque and making a small donation every year or attending their graduation ceremonies, or in the case of Open Doors Adult Literacy program they have a potluck supper once a year, which is a delicious event to attend. [interjection] As my colleague says, they appreciate it very much.
Now one of the things that Open Doors Adult Literacy program has done is to produce a book called Living and Learning. It was written by the students of the Open Doors Literacy program. I would just like to read a couple of the very short stories that were compiled into this booklet because they are very interesting, and they reveal a lot about the students and about their program.
The first story is by Tammy B. She says: I wanted to go back to school for a long time, so I talked to my worker and she said to come to Open Doors. I did. I was scared at first, but it is okay now. I am going back to school because I want to get my Grade 12. It is good that I am no longer scared to come here. I know that I will be better off going back to school.
Now that is a very interesting little story because many of the students have gone through our public education system. Most of them have completed elementary school, and some have completed part of secondary school; but, for many of them who write stories in this book and to whom I have spoken, school was not a pleasant experience. Some of them were actually afraid to go back into an elementary school, in this case, King Edward elementary school, to go to an adult class. Many of the other students are immigrants to Canada for whom English is a second language.
I would like to read another short story by Marianne Gunn who says: My school experience is very good, and I enjoy going to school to learn how to write and how to do math. I came to school because I did not know how to write and read English. I was in ungraded classes when I went to school. I had a hard time, so when I got older, my mom took me out of school. She was sick and I had to look after my little sister, so I go to school now to learn. The school is called the Open Doors program. I have another chance.
So for these students, education as an adult is an opportunity, and, in many cases, an opportunity that was not available to them when they were younger. It is really amazing to listen to their stories and to hear over and over again some of the reasons why they dropped out of school. The usual reasons that one might suspect, such as having a learning disability or having difficulty academically, are probably not the most frequent stories that one hears. Frequently, one hears stories about someone in the family being sick and an adolescent or a child staying home to look after brothers and sisters or a sick parent, and as a result, they did not complete their education.
Here is another story--I will just read part of it--a story by Carol M. She had a number of unfortunate educational experiences. She says all the kids were laughing at me because when you had to stand in the corner, you had to do so with your nose pressed against a small circle that was drawn on the wall. The teachers that were sent out to teach in my village were the least qualified. I feel that my learning problems that I had in school had a lot to do with the way I was educated. My experience during my school years was not very good. It scared me away from reading and learning. I had no faith in the school system and teachers until I began with the Open Doors Literacy program. Now I feel confident in myself and I trust the teachers. So here is another individual who was adversely affected, she believes, by the poor quality of teachers and by the fact that she was ridiculed and made to stand in a corner.
Now they have a wonderful teacher at Open Doors Adult Literacy program, by the name of Margaret Banasiak, who is very highly respected by her students and by the volunteers and the advisory committee because of her very gentle nature and the way that she can motivate students and encourage students to learn to read and write, and we all appreciate her very much.
I have also been involved in recruiting volunteers for Open Doors Adult Literacy program by sending out letters to my constituents. Some of them have responded and are now volunteering as adult tutors in Open Doors Adult Literacy program, and they are very much appreciated by the teacher and by the learners.
We know that literacy is a very serious problem in the province of Manitoba and in our country for those who do not have adequate literacy skills. According to Literacy Partners, literacy is defined as a person's ability to understand and use written language. It is more than just being able to read, write and calculate. This is of crucial importance in today's technological society that demands higher levels of literacy. However, literacy problems affect larger numbers of adults beyond those living on the margins of society.
In a minute I will go on to read about the five levels, but this quote about the higher degree of literacy required for the more technological society reminds me of the story by one of my constituents, who is in this book, Norma Flett, who talks about applying for a job at Motor Coach Industries. She wanted to work there, but first she had to take a welder's course, which she took at Red River College, and at the time of writing this story, she had been working at Motor Coach Industries for 24 years. So we know that there are more and more jobs which require higher and higher levels of literacy for people to be employed in those occupations, and we know that industries that are laying off employees are the ones with lower levels of literacy requirements.
About 4.7 million Canadian consumers, or 22 percent, are at Level I of the five levels of literacy, and that is the lowest level. These people who often do not have secondary education may only recognize a few words in a simple text, are unable to use labels and often printed material to make decisions and find shopping or paying bills difficult or impossible. It is estimated that 53 percent of seniors over age 65 fall into this category.
Now there used to be an adult literacy program for seniors also in Burrows constituency at White Flower House, and they did not qualify for provincial government funding because all their learners were over 65. Most of them were immigrants, but some of them were Canadians.
I met a gentleman who grew up in the Swan River area on a farm in the bush, and there was no school. He never did get any education. I think maybe he got Grade 1 or 2, but he was at home and working on the farm in an isolated area. When I met him, he was about 70 years old and going back to school and learning to read and write for the first time and was quite thrilled to have that opportunity. Unfortunately, White Flower House adult literacy program no longer exists in spite of the fact that there is a great need for immigrant seniors to learn how to read and write, so that they can live more independently and not be totally dependent on their families or others.
About 5.5 million consumers or 26 percent are at Level II. They can only deal with plainly written reading material that is clearly laid out and have difficulty with long paragraphs of solid print and new reading tasks. Many cannot fill out a job application form or a bank deposit slip. About 33 percent of all consumers are at Level III, the minimum level necessary to understand most information. They have sufficient reading and arithmetic skills to meet most demands, for example, using the yellow pages, writing to a manufacturer for information and understanding basic health and nutrition information but can become frustrated by technical jargon in manuals and documents. The remaining 20 percent of consumers are at Levels IV and V and have the skills to understand challenging printed materials. It is estimated that 95 percent of this group have a job and earn the highest incomes.
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As we know, there is a very direct correlation between level of education and level of income. If one looks at it by census tracks in the city of Winnipeg or even by constituency in the city of Winnipeg, it becomes very apparent. So, for example, if one looks at River Heights, we have the highest levels of education, and we have the highest levels of income and the lowest levels of unemployment. If you compare that with the William Whyte neighbourhood in the constituency of Point Douglas, you have the lowest levels of literacy, you have the lowest levels of educational attainment, the lowest levels of income, and many of those incomes are from government transfer programs, and the highest level of unemployment.
So when one breaks it down by census tracks or neighbourhoods, you can see the very clear indicators and differences in educational attainment and employment levels and level of income, so that is why it is good to see people going back to school and improving their literacy skills, getting more education, because it means they are much more likely to get a job and raise their income.
In February 1997, Liberal Senator Joyce Fairbairn stated that Canada has an illiteracy rate of 40 percent involving degrees of difficulty with reading and writing. Unfortunately, I think the 40 percent figure has been thrown around rather casually and it has become popularized, so people seem to accept the 40 percent level of illiteracy in Canada without examining it and knowing that it probably refers to various kinds of illiteracy and does not mean that 40 percent of Canadians cannot read and write.
According to the Canadian report on the international adult literacy survey released in 1996, literacy is central to the well-being of individual Canadians and to the nation, and it is important that all Canadians participate in society, not just those who read well. I think I will use this thought to conclude and say that literacy is important not only to getting a job but also to people's sense of self-worth and feeling that they are full participants in our society. For that reason, we on this side want to support all efforts at adult literacy, not just those in our own community but everywhere in Manitoba, and we would urge this government to increase the funding to adult literacy programs.
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): I am delighted to be able to add some comments to this particular resolution, Resolution 20. As a government, Madam Speaker, our responsibilities to the future generations of Manitobans are clear. Our young people, leaders and contributors of the future, must be prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. It is up to us to help them, and we must prepare them for this today. Providing them will skills and knowledge will enable them to make informed choices about their lives.
When we succeed in providing our children with the tools they need, we are giving them power over their future, and in giving them the fundamentals today, we are investing in the future for all Manitobans. By providing skills and knowledge to our children and youth is only part of this government's commitment to education and training and making Manitobans literate.
Literacy is important to everyone because it strengthens the economic and social fabric of our society and our province. Recently, adult literacy has been viewed as being crucial to the economic performance of industrialized nations all over the world. Just as global societies are redefining themselves, the concept of literacy is undergoing an evolution all its own. It is not defined in terms of just reading ability anymore. Theoretical and technological advances have transformed literacy. It is growing more and more complex and more and more important. Rather than just being just the basic ability to read, literacy now includes the ability to use information from printed texts and the ability to use technology in new and relevant ways.
At present, literacy is seen as how people use written information to function in society. Today adults need a higher level of literacy to be functional in society because the world itself is becoming increasingly complex. Lifelong learning is an important means of gaining new skills for Manitobans. We know that the information economy changes both the expectations and demands on those looking for employment, and it will continue to be a factor for future generations of Manitobans. Literacy, education and training will help in promoting the benefits of globalization. In Manitoba schools, education renewal has been strongly based on ensuring that our children graduate from our schools with a solid foundation of skills that include reading, writing, thinking, computing and problem solving at a high level. These priorities for education renewal have been widely supported by Manitobans. Across the province it is widely recognized that strengthening the learning opportunities for our children is an important way of investing in their future.
In 1997-98, the government of Manitoba contributed over $1 billion towards education in Manitoba. In fact, funding for education in Manitoba increased from 18.7 percent of our total provincial expenditures in '96 and '97 to over 19 percent today, and education continues to be one of government's highest overall expenditures, second only to health. We want our students to be prepared for employment to be able to realize their dreams and have healthy satisfying lives right here in Manitoba. Research has demonstrated that early intervention programs for young children having difficulty to read and write are more successful and cost-effective.
Reading Recovery, Madam Speaker, an incredibly good program that was founded in New Zealand, brought to Canada not that many years ago and is centred in Toronto, and a western institute now established in Manitoba, the second place in Canada where Reading Recovery exists, is an early literacy intervention program that provides additional training to certified and experienced earlier teachers so that they can meet the rest of these at-risk students in Grade 1. One on one with trained teachers in these techniques and the success of this program is phenomenal. Success in early literacy learning supports learning in subsequent years and we know this to be true, and we know this to be important.
Last year--I guess now two years ago, in December 1996--I had the privilege of announcing the opening of the Western Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery here in Manitoba. This institute was established to provide training and professional support for teachers and it has been incredibly successful. We will not know the true impact of that success until the children who benefited from it last year--these are in Grades 11 and 12 and ready to finish school, but the early results are most impressive and the worldwide experience in New Zealand and again in Canada emanating out of Toronto are outstanding results in terms of taking children at risk and turning them, in very short order, into proficient readers.
A critical aspect of the implementation of the Reading Recovery program is the training of teachers. The Western Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery will train teacher leaders who, in turn, will train the Reading Recovery leaders, and it is the train-the-trainer model. Some schools, as we are building new schools, actually have Reading Recovery laboratories built right into the school, with the one-way glass and all of the features that are required to make it really, really work well.
Quality implementation of this program depends on high standards for training at all levels and careful monitoring. The monitoring includes on-site visits and professional development activities provided for teachers, teacher leaders and school personnel. The teachers who are participating in this have universally and unanimously said it is one of the best tools they have yet been given to help get children at risk in their very early days of schooling and turn them around to build a foundation for success.
This is one of the most important ways, Madam Speaker, that I believe we can ensure literacy for those entering the system as they progress through the school system, but I would like to return for a moment to discuss the ways in which this government is working to helping adults who were not fortunate enough to be exposed to some of these early intervention techniques to help them to become more literate, to become educated and better prepared for the future.
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We know that we have a number of tools now available that are coming into use. Distance Education, technology and other methods of delivery are helping to increase the accessibility to education in Manitoba. These are important thrusts. We have been encouraging institutions to utilize them to become student friendly, and we have been looking more and more at program content to help make sure they meet Manitoba's emerging needs.
We are striving to ensure that our programs are effective, and we are also striving to produce graduates who are able to find work in this province.
Opportunities for post-secondary education are critical in this picture of lifelong learning. The work of the Council on Post-Secondary Education, established by this government, will be significant because it includes work on credit transfer and articulation, and there has been some incredible success done there. I was out last night at the board of governor's meeting at the Red River Community College and the degree to which they have already begun their articulation program amazes even me. I knew they were planning to go at it with a great deal of gusto and enthusiasm, but their record of success after such a very short time has really amazed me. They are way ahead of projected articulations, and I am pleased with them and proud of them and thrilled for the students that they have been able to put in the degree of articulation that they have done.
In addition to credit transfer and articulation, there is Distance Education, aboriginal education and the development of many other initiatives to work in this area.
Developing literacy in our schools is still the strongest method for ensuring that our children are prepared to meet future challenges, but literacy initiatives and education and training programs for adults assist Manitobans in obtaining lifelong learning, helps turn their lives around if they are currently not literate, and helps greatly enhance their lives if they are only partially literate.
Through various initiatives, programs and partnerships, this government is investing in the future of our province and our people. I believe the member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson), if I am not mistaken, made reference to the literacy presentation made to the Premier (Mr. Filmon) not long ago. I can reference things like the Pembina Learning Centre where incredible things are happening with joint efforts, partnerships, wonderful volunteers, people working together, caring for each other, supported by the government that represents them to really effect a high degree and level of literacy in this province.
Madam Speaker, it is absolutely thrilling to see a child who had been identified as at risk, who had no sense of what the written word meant, and within a very few months that child begin to read and read well because of programs like Reading Recovery. It is why we have pumped so much money into it this year. I have sat through so many different workshops watching this happen with hope and amazement as I watched.
The other thing that is a very emotional thing to witness is the way that people feel, if they are adults, when they become literate after a lifetime of being illiterate, and to see the change that that makes in their lives is awe inspiring. The one gentleman who spoke to us and did such an excellent job speaking in public had never gone past elementary school, and to hear him speak and to listen to him read and to know that his life had been changed makes you feel that some of the things you have been doing are really counting and that they are really worthwhile and inspires us to carry on supporting literacy in Manitoba.
So I thank the member for his resolution. I believe it does deserve support, and I look forward to other members' comments on this very important area, Madam Speaker. Thank you.
Mr. Tim Sale (Crescentwood): This is a very important resolution, and I am pleased to be able to take part in the debate.
Madam Speaker, the scale of the literacy problem in this country has been recognized for many, many years. I am sure that some members are aware, for example, that the union movement and the churches worked together to develop a program called Frontier School Division. There is the whole notion of the frontier schools that gave their name essentially to our northern school division of volunteer adult workers who went into the mines and went into the remote areas, the forestry camps, and brought basic education as well as, in some cases, a more advanced form of education--debate about economic systems, of political issues--and raised substantially the level of the ability of many of the workers in those camps through the years before the Depression and through the Great Depression.
In fact, when I first came to Manitoba in 1966, there were still Frontier College programs in the North and Frontier College volunteers travelling to the North, particularly in the summers because at that time many of those volunteers were university students who were not getting anything other than their transport in the way of wages. They worked in the camps during the day, and they ran their programs in the evening.
So I think it is important to remember the tremendous history, particularly on the part of the social justice movement and the labour movement in addressing literacy questions.
The early history of the Labour Party of Manitoba and the union movement in Manitoba was, at least in part, one of a struggle to provide literacy education to working-class folk. The first kindergartens, for example, were programs established not by school divisions, but they were established by churches and unions and community organizations at a neighbourhood level to bring children into school earlier than the public school system provided for.
By the 1880s, Madam Speaker, in this city, education was taking place in 17 different languages, essentially mother tongues, language of origin of the children, and it was the unfortunate heritage of the concern in the late 1880s over what were euphemistically called aliens, who were basically anybody that was not Anglo-Saxon, that resulted in the banning by the late 1880s, early 1890s, of languages of instruction other than English in our schools, which, of course, led to the Manitoba Schools Question and the challenge to the Privy Council, the order on the part of the Privy Council to Laurier to re-establish French as a language of instruction, which was, conveniently, simply ignored for close to a hundred years before it was finally brought into place essentially by the Pawley government, an issue of which I continue to be very proud.
Madam Speaker, in the current union movement, unions like the Canadian Auto Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers run adult literacy programs in their centres. They spend a good deal of their resources training and supporting workers who work with their members, particularly their members who are new Canadians, but not exclusively new Canadians, many people who have literacy challenges and who have become functionally literate through programs supported by the union movement.
The union movement, I am very proud to say, was an advocate for literacy long before it became a fashionable movement. So I want to pay tribute to the many people over more than a century now who have recognized that working people often have not had the opportunity to go to school long enough to become functionally literate, and they spent a good deal of effort to address that problem.
The second group I want to pay particular tribute to are a group probably known to some members called the Laubach Literacy Program, named after a Lutheran pastor by that name Laubach who did his initial work in New Brunswick and then worked in Africa for a number of years and came back to Canada and founded a volunteer-based literacy program that recruited adult volunteers. One of my very good friends, a woman who is a nurse, introduced me to the Laubach program and told us many stories not unlike the Minister of Education's story about the tremendous emotional satisfaction from helping an adult person to be able to read.
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Laubach volunteers and the Laubach council were early advocates of the government getting seriously involved in literacy programs in the early 1980s and through the 1980s. The government at that time began to make grants to Laubach and to other literacy programs, and the current government has continued and somewhat expanded on those programs.
I want to comment on the adequacy of the current programs, having paid tribute to the working-class groups and the church groups that founded the literacy movements in centuries past and worked on it through this century. I want to now look at the question of adequacy. Madam Speaker. In the material shared by my honourable colleague from Burrows, he pointed out that according to Literacy Partners, about 4.7 million Canadian consumers, or 22 percent, are at Level I in their literacy studies. In Manitoba's case, that would equate to approximately 240,000 Manitobans.
Now, I think that number is so large as to probably engender some disbelief on the part of many people, but let us cut the number into tenths and say 22,000. I believe it is much larger than that, and I do not find the number difficult to believe, the number of 220,000, but let us cut it by 90 percent. When we do and recognize that even if it is 10 times larger than reality, there are only 1,900 adult Manitobans enrolled in literacy programs in 1997, according to the government's own statistics. Specifically 1,900 Manitobans were enrolled at adult literacy programs. An estimated 1,669 participated in 37 community-based programs that received provincial funding.
So, Madam Speaker, we have by the government's own admission literacy programs which reached at best 1 percent, at very best 1 percent, of those suggested to be functionally illiterate by their own group, the Literacy Partners group, which is supported by the province. The estimates of the cost to the economy of such levels of illiteracy are staggering. They run in the billions for an economy, even such as Manitoba, of $27 billion. There are several billions of dollars of lost productivity associated with adult literacy difficulties.
Only yesterday, Madam Speaker, the government proudly took part in an announcement of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism (Mr. Downey), part in an announcement of a network of high-tech firms that were announcing their commitment to bringing high-wage, high-skilled jobs to the province, at the very same time when there is a recognition that many Manitobans are not equipped to enter into those jobs, and one has to ask why. Why, when we have known for well over a decade that we have 20 or so percent of our population functionally illiterate, is government not putting far more significant resources into these quite inexpensive programs?
Madam Speaker, the total cost of the literacy expenditures in Manitoba is approximately a million dollars, approximately, and the total expenditures on education in Manitoba are $1.3 billion. So, again, we have a situation where less than 1 percent, considerably less than 1 percent of our provincial education expenditures are directed toward a problem that affects 20 percent of our adult population. So we have a gross mismatch between needs and resources in this situation.
Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity and privilege to help one of my colleagues Dr. Benjamin Levin evaluate adult literacy programs, particularly programs using computer software to train people in basic literacy. It was about two years ago and I had the opportunity to both look at the software and to interview a number of people in those programs. I would echo and support what the member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson) said and also the honourable Education minister said that it is a very moving experience to talk to people who have regained their literacy or have gained for the first time their literacy.
I remember, in particular, a gentleman who could only be described as very large, and he was not only very large but he was also largely covered by tattoos. He was a fairly gruff and imposing figure in my interview with him. He was quite a bit larger than I am. I would certainly say that, not a difficult thing to be. But I asked him what was motivating him to take this training course, and his answer just struck me as one of those things that you cannot buy motivation like this. You cannot produce it; you can only wonder at it. He said I want to be able to read to my preschool child, and he went on to say that he was embarrassed because his school-age daughter could read to him but he could not read to her.
So I thought what a wonderful story that was, but at the same time how tragic it was that we are only reaching such a small percentage of these people, because they all have tremendous gifts to contribute to our economy, to our families, to our neighbourhoods. When people come inside the circle of learning and inside the community's ability to think about its own affairs, to read about political choices, to become literate citizens, our whole community is strengthened. The strengthening that goes on for them individually is multiplied by the strengthening that happens in their families and then in their communities because they become functional citizens, not just functionally literate.
So I would urge the government to not rest on its laurels but to recognize that there are very few resources now being allocated toward adult literacy in comparison to the need for adult literacy. The groups are out there prepared to work. Adults are prepared to volunteer. Teachers are available, and certainly the students are there. What is lacking, I believe, is a true commitment to resources on a scale that would make a real difference in this program over a reasonable period of time.
I thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I would urge the government to increase its efforts and not to rest on its laurels as this motion appears to do.
Mr. David Faurschou (Portage la Prairie): Madam Speaker, it is indeed an opportunity that I enjoy to rise in the House today to support this resolution, because it is one that is very much in keeping with what I believe is so important in our daily lives in Portage la Prairie and across this great province of ours. Everyone must have the opportunity to experience that of education. Anyone who is currently experiencing the job market in Manitoba must recognize the importance of education. For those entering even the line of factory work, the minimum education these days that is required is that one must have a Grade 12 education. That is why it is so important that we maintain facilities for adult learning in this province.
In Portage la Prairie, we have the Portage Learning Centre which is an integral part of this educational delivery. I am very proud--
Madam Speaker: Order, please. When this matter is again before the House, the honourable member for Portage la Prairie will have 14 minutes remaining.
The hour being 6 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. Monday next.