There were also literacy advocates, during this period, in governmental circles as well as in literacy programs. There were several calls for a renewed federal government attention to literacy, for example in a 1979 report for Labour Canada,29 by the 1981 Parliamentary Commission on Employment,30 by the 1983 Skill Development Leave Task Force,31 and by the 1984 Royal Commission on Equality in Employment.32 A few provincial reports also appeared, urging literacy activity in British Columbia, Québec, and Saskatchewan. The anglophone reports tended to elaborate arguments concerning illiteracy as a "cost" to society, literacy as means to improve individuals' employment possibilities and (as a subordinate theme) to increase social equity. In Québec, a "mission" for literacy was recommended as part of a global adult education strategy.

Putting literacy on the agenda - the late 1980s

Literacy has been relatively more prominent in public discussion and public policy since 1985. Public awareness has been built, and literacy has been "put on the Canadian agenda." It is clear that this prominence of literacy has not arisen because of decreases in literacy levels.33 Rather public and political awareness has been built, and there have been certain key literacy-related changes in labour markets and the organization of work.

Awareness of the literacy issue has been built through a complex process of public discourse (as with any issue in a democratic industrialized society). The public discourse of literacy encompasses images and accounts of the literacy problem that circulate in leaflets and posters, the media, government reports, politicians' speeches, and the proposals of advocacy organizations. People in many locations contribute to this discourse. It expresses various and often conflicting conceptions of literacy and literacy work. It provides for a rough co-ordination of the thinking and activities of government ministries, labour market planners, politicians, and the like — especially as issues of literacy policy are articulated in relation to broader issues in economic and social policy. The public discourse about literacy also helps to co-ordinate the thinking and activity of literacy practitioners and advocates, individual students, employers, workers and unions, and community organizations. It merits close attention.

29 Report of the Commission on Educational Leave and Productivity (R.J. Adams, Chair), Labour Canada, Ottawa, 1979; and Roy J. Adams, "The Functionally Illiterate Worker and Public Policy," TESL Talk 13:4, 1982, 9-16.
30Work for Tomorrow: Employment Opportunities in the '80s (Warren Allmand, Chair), 1981.
31Learning a Living in Canada, Employment and Immigration Canada, 1983.
32Report of the Commission on Equality in Employment (Judge Rosalie Silberman Abella, Commissioner), Ottawa, 1984.
33We don't know know what the results of a literacy survey would have been about 1960 when the federal government began de facto literacy work as a matter of labour force upgrading; or just before 1980, when the federal government decided it didn't work, and other people started taking up the slack; or about 1985, when a definition of literacy as economically important again came to centre stage. The only literacy statistics for which we have a time series are census figures on grade level attainment, and they show that a steadily declining proportion of the adult population has less than grade 9. Over the time when interest in literacy has increased, the proportion of the "undereducated" has decreased.