Those were very tough times for youth in the mid-80s – high unemployment, disillusionment and even anger around the country. And so the group of us, including my dear friend, your president and my former Senate colleague, Dr. Lorna Marsden, set out across the country holding public hearings. Anyone could come. Parents, teachers, social workers, business, labour, people in all parts of public life at all levels and, of course, the young people themselves.

I can tell you, it was a riveting experience. We heard what we expected to hear about the lack of jobs, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancies, family break-up, and all of that. But we also heard something that we had not expected. In every region of Canada witnesses of all ages spoke out about literacy and learning disabilities and the devastating impact that all this had on human lives. And we were shocked.

In our report released in February of 1986, among many other things, we called for a national campaign to tackle the problem of literacy. And then we went back to our regular work on other issues.

However, I was haunted by what I had heard. I began my career as a journalist. I have spent the rest of this part of my life, working always, with words. I could not imagine getting through a day without understanding words – their meanings and their contexts, in the most basic circumstances of human living.

So I was angry with myself because, for fourteen years, I had been working side by side with Pierre Elliott Trudeau, our most education-oriented prime minister, and the issue had never come up; not once – not for him, not for me. How could that be?

So I set out to find out where literacy was hiding in Ottawa and on Parliament Hill. I discovered we had not missed it, simply because it was not there. It had been deemed at some point to be an education issue and therefore, within that marvellous, compelling, and often totally confusing document we call our “Constitution,” it was within the jurisdiction of the provinces. Now, there is no question, education is and should be a provincial responsibility. But in responding to the young woman who asked a question up here on the right, I believe that literacy moves well beyond all of those boundaries. It is a national and a human imperative. So it became my cause then, and now and forever.