The implications of this new conservative, business-oriented "politics of austerity" for the question of illiteracy are evident in the recent criticisms of the Canada Manpower Training Program. We will now examine them, and the changes that have been introduced in the program in response to them.

Manpower and Illiteracy

In the more prosperous late 1960's and early 1970's, when a major concern of the Ottawa government was to restore public confidence in liberal economic policies which seemingly were unable to deal with continuing unemployment and poverty in some groups and regions in Canada, political elites were willing to take a chance on what were highly optimistic, but as yet largely untested manpower theories which promised simultaneous social and economic benefits from a coordinated program of Job training and academic upgrading. The influence of the assumptions of this new liberal theory was reflected in the dual emphases of the Canada Manpower Training Program: equity, i.e. the provision of opportunities for the "disadvantaged" to achieve economic self sufficiency, and productivity, i.e. the provision of skilled workers in response to the demands of business and industry.22 The belief that these two seemingly disparate goals could be simultaneously accommodated in a single program is a testament to the strong impact of the liberal perspective in Canada.

However, it will be recalled that from the very beginning there were doubts expressed as to the depth of the commitment of the government to the first objective, equity. The most impoverished among the unemployed are those in greatest need of academic upgrading, and yet it has been clear that the federal government has been ill at ease in its role as provider of academic upgrading, which it has had to define as training for pre-occupation purposes in order to circumvent provincial concerns about infringement upon the exclusive Jurisdiction over education granted them under the British North America Act.23 As well, there have been repeated complaints since the inception of the Manpower program that it was never effectively designed to help the poor, in that strict limits imposed on the length of time individuals could spend in the upgrading program insured that those with the least prior education, who are also the most impoverished, were effectively excluded 24

In spite of these drawbacks, it is a fact that large sums of money were expended on academic upgrading and life skills training within the Manpower programs, and large numbers of illiterate adults enrolled in them in preparation for Job training.25 As well, government representatives continued to assert the dual emphases of the program, including the objective of reducing poverty. For example, in his 1970 Annual Report, the Minister and Manpower and Immigration wrote: