The federal and provincial governments have recognized the importance of the lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is now a guiding principle for Canadian policy initiatives ranging from national economic competitiveness to social cohesion (HRDC, 2002). Despite this recognition, participation levels for less-educated learners have scarcely improved in five years. Many observers have pinned the problem on adult learning systems that are complex, incoherent and incomplete.

This report focuses on how to strengthen our adult learning systems. It has two broad objectives. First, it aims to document the availability of formal learning opportunities and to identify the factors that influence participation of less-educated/less-skilled adults in these opportunities. Second, it aims to identify gaps in our adult learning systems and recommend measures to fill these gaps.

Canada’s adult learning policy environment is extremely complex.³ Because adult education is primarily a provincial responsibility, there are large differences in policy and provision across Canada. Adding to this complexity, within each jurisdiction, there is often more than one ministry involved. A recent CMEC report (Powley, 2005) noted that in no province does a single government organization have overall responsibility for adult education. In most provinces, this responsibility is split between several ministries overseeing education, labour and/or human resources development programs. While a truly comprehensive study would examine all provinces, in this report we focus primarily on five provinces: Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Québec.

The report progresses in the following way. In the next section, we draw a statistical portrait of the less-educated/less-skilled population, showing how these individuals are at great risk of being ‘left behind’ in a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy, and are likely to face low wages and a higher likelihood of unemployment over the course of their careers. In Section 3, we review the literature on the effectiveness of various forms of adult learning. In Section 4, we explore the various routes to obtaining a high-school diploma (or its equivalent) in five Canadian provinces. We assess the extent to which Canadian provinces provide easily accessible pathways to individuals who want to obtain this essential credential. We follow this in Section 5 with an assessment of the accessibility of post-secondary education for adults who wish to return to school later in life. Section 6 turns to the workplace and assesses the extent to which workplaces provide skills-upgrading opportunities to less-educated workers. In Section 7, we step back from the detail of the previous sections and examine how the various pieces of our adult education systems work together to meet the needs of less-educated adult learners. We accomplish this task by analyzing five real-life scenarios that represent a range of learning needs that low-skill/lowwage workers may have and then determining what opportunities are available to help these individuals meet these needs. The final section highlights gaps in the Canadian adult learning ‘system,’ presents key principles to guide policy development and identifies possible next steps for improving policies and practices.

³ While provincial governments have constitutional responsibility for adult education, the federal government has a long-standing involvement in various aspects of adult education such as delivering skills-upgrading programs to unemployed and at risk groups, providing student loans and bursaries to mature post-secondary learners, and conducting research and disseminating information. During the 1990s, the federal government began to formally transfer responsibility for labour market development to the provinces and territories. However, even in provinces and territories where agreements have been signed, the federal government still plays an important role. In practice, therefore, it is still accurate to say that adult education is supported by a mixture of provincial and federal funds.