Moreover, as social welfare expenditures, they would have a low priority. That is, the Liberal government began to cut back on the "social affairs envelope", i.e. the budget for social welfare expenditures, in order to help finance initiatives in envelopes dealing with economic development (e.g. tax write-offs for business and industry, subsidies for research and development, investments in energy projects, etc.). 35

In summary, in the face of economic crisis, political elites in Canada have increasingly rejected the assumptions underlying the liberal perspective and have embraced a new "politics of austerity" which is pessimistic about the feasibility and desirability of attempts to redistribute economic and social opportunity through government action. The growing influence of this perspective in Canada foreshadows the possible eclipse of the problem of illiteracy as an issue of government concern for an indefinite time to come.