The Manpower Training Program in Canada is one of the main federal programs intended to reduce poverty by helping poor people develop their aptitudes and therefore to improve their revenue and their possibilities of finding work 26

Austerity

However, as the 1970's wore on, severe problems in the capitalist accumulation process, especially 'stagflation', displaced the legitimation problem posed by poverty from the top of the priority list of federal political elites. Reacting to a fiscal crisis in government revenues, and influenced by the new "politics of austerity", Ottawa began to scrutinize social welfare and anti-poverty programs for areas that could be cut back or eliminated. 27

At this time there were mounting demands from the business community that government spending in job training and upgrading be made to show better 'pay-off' in immediate economic terms.28 As we have seen, evaluation studies of these programs, conducted both inside and outside the federal government, showed that of the clients who begin with the lowest initial education levels (and are also the most impoverished), a relatively small percentage were actually helped over the poverty line as a result of their participation. 29 As well, it was found that the costs involved were high when compared with the amount expended for trainees who began with adequate initial education. 30 In a 1976 review of the Manpower policy, officials argued that the attempt to provide literacy and life skills training was not efficient from a cost-benefit standpoint, and not particularly compatible with the occupational emphasis of the manpower program 31

Thereafter, the goal of stimulating productivity through responding to shortages of skilled workers would take priority.32 Accordingly, the number of training spaces for the undereducated were reduced to make room for those who could most easily and quickly benefit from training, i.e. those with higher initial education levels. 33 In 1981, academic upgrading at the lowest, i.e. basic literacy, level was abandoned, eliminating from eligibility those with reading abilities corresponding to grades 1 through 4. At the same time, spaces were reduced for those with reading abilities equivalent to grades 5 through 7. 34

The actions of the federal government signaled a major retreat from the liberal perspective on illiteracy. That is, until 1976, educational upgrading, including literacy training, had been treated as both a means of providing 'uplift' for the poor and as a means of stimulating productivity and growth in Canada. This dual emphasis reflected the core theme of the liberal perspective--i.e. that those two objectives are fundamentally congruent. However, after 1976, political elites increasingly rejected the assumption that literacy education is economically efficient, arguing that in fact, such programs are unproductive and have no place in an active manpower policy responding to the needs of the economy. Literacy education was now defined as a problem of social welfare, akin to the provision of subsidized housing, general welfare assistance or other benefits and services for the 'disadvantaged'.