We want to provide a second chance to the people who need it most. These are the men and women who missed the chance to acquire a skill during their youth or whose skill has been made obsolete by technological change 22

An important component of the new Manpower effort was Basic. Training for Skills Development (BTSD), an adult basic education program which enabled those clients who needed it to upgrade their general educational levels prior to entering job training. By the 1968-9 fiscal year, it was far and away the largest ABE program in Canada, with 64,000 participants, or approximately 85% of all those enrolled in ABE in Canada at that time 23

However, in practice, the new Manpower program largely helped those likely to quickly benefit from training, and passed over the riskier category of subliterate adults, who were more impoverished and needed help the most. Adult educators from the Canadian Association for Adult Education and Frontier College forcefully argued this point in appearances before the Special Senate Committee on Poverty in 1969 and 1970.24 The Frontier College brief suggested that the length of time a client of the Manpower program could remain in upgrading be extended beyond 52 weeks in order to accommodate those who had the most grades to cover--subliterate adults--and that the BTSD program be reorganized to take into account the needs of the poor as had been discovered in the Elliot Lake experiment:

... the policy should recognize that many "poor" persons are marginally motivated, and the initial Basic Training for Skills Development training should be adapted to deal with the motivation of the clients, not just formal basic education skills. Our experience suggests that such an approach is essential, especially in working with adults at a basic education level. Not to adopt this more flexible approach is in fact to discriminate against, "poor" Canadians in Manpower programs 25

The committee report, issued in 1972 and received with a great deal of interest in Canada, strongly supported the suggestions of the two adult education organization briefs, and argued for an explicit redirection of the Manpower program toward the goal of reducing poverty 26

In the same year, the federal government introduced changes in the Manpower program which did in fact enhance the access and utility of training for the poor. Although the 52 week limit stood, the BTSO program was reorganized in a way similar to that suggested by Frontier College, and a new program of basic literacy and pre-employment life skills training, called Basic Job Readiness Training (BJRT), was introduced. 27