Results of various surveys, which purportedly evaluate reading skills, serve to reinforce the impression that we have a serious literacy crisis on our hands. Yet, it is unknown if these measures are even valid indicators of literacy (Corbett, 1982). This is not to imply that literacy is not important, because as D'Angelo (1982) points out in looking at the cognitive consequences of reading and writing, literacy allows a kind of abstract conceptual thinking. He stresses that this type of cognition is necessary in a technological society to enable people to go beyond the here and now to draw inferences and work out relationships that otherwise would not be possible.

More than fifteen years ago, the first direct assessment of adult literacy abilities in Canada was conducted. The Southam Literacy Report, a benchmark literacy survey, revealed in 1987 that five million Canadians did not have a sufficient literacy skill level to allow them to perform daily tasks such as writing letters, filling out forms, understanding prescriptions, reading a newspaper or following directions in a manual (Calamai, 1987).

The Survey of Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities (LSUDA), a study of 9,455 Canadian citizens between the ages of 16 to 69 years, was subsequently commissioned in 1989 by Statistics Canada, Special Surveys. The results of this study lend support to Calamai's (1987) findings of a significant number of adult Canadians with limited literacy (Statistics Canada, 1990). Around this same time, the Canadian Business Task Force on Literacy (1988) estimated that low levels of literacy cost Canadian businesses four billion dollars annually due to problems arising from staff learning to use new technology or from their inability to follow workplace health and safety guidelines.