Of learning as of virtue, it may be affirmed, that it is at once honoured and
neglected.
Samuel Johnson, 1760
This report presents new information on the level and distribution of literacy performance for all Canadian provinces and territories. The 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey did not merely ask respondents about their education or self-assessed literacy proficiency, but actually measured their performance against an international standard, and linked this to economic and social outcomes.
The results document the powerful influence literacy exerts on people’s life chances and quality of life. Even though Canadians are better educated and their living environments more literacy rich than ever before, many adults nevertheless experience a literacy challenge in everyday life. Paradoxically, the improvements achieved in the quality of schooling and in the level of educational attainment of the population have not diminished but reinforced the concern with literacy. This is because literacy demands are not static but evolve with social and economic change. Literacy requirements in Canadian workplaces have increased over time, by some measures dramatically so. In addition to the abilities normally associated with literacy – mainly reading and writing – people today also require higher-order analytical skills, numeracy and technological and computer literacy.
In addition to the literacy profiles of Canadians, this report presents, for the first time, a comparative analysis of the population distribution of numeracy and problem solving abilities, ranging from elementary to advanced levels of complexity. It also shows how these abilities are related to the use of computers and other information and communication technologies in Canadian society. Because the 2003 literacy scores are directly comparable to those from the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey, the report allows the reader to understand how the level of literacy in Canada has changed over the past decade.