In 2005, the Advisory Committee on Literacy and Essential Skills submitted Towards a Fully Literate Canada: Achieving National Goals through a Comprehensive Pan-Canadian `Literacy Strategy to the Minister of State for Human Resources Development. This report emphasized the need for a national strategy and system for adult literacy/ basic education. In order to address uniformity and diversity, a national system needs to encompass national standards yet be tailored to the diversity of regional and local needs, as well as to the diversity of learners and their ways of learning.
Stakeholders need to explore whether new and existing assessment tools should be referenced to a national set of levels and benchmarks. If assessment tools are referenced to a national framework of levels and benchmarks, the framework needs to be based on research and practice, and it needs to embrace diversity and wholistic learning.