Ignatieff calls for learning strategy
Published Tuesday February 23rd, 2010
Liberal Leader speaks at Moncton roundtable event
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says a national strategy on learning is needed to arrest low literacy rates in Atlantic Canada and across the country.
Coupled with a future which presents a bleak demographic picture, Ignatieff warned yesterday that low literacy levels have the ability to hand the provinces both labour shortages and high unemployment at the same time.
"We're looking at labour shortages," Ignatieff said. "We're looking at that demographic transition where the baby boomers grow up and then we will be in that weird situation of having labour shortages and high unemployment.
"And we will have both of them because we don't have the skilled and qualified people to fill those spots."
Ignatieff made the comments in an address to roughly 150 people attending a Liberal party roundtable on the region's economy in Moncton.
The party has held a series of roundtable discussion since parliament was prorogued in late December.
Following a discussion on the future economy of Atlantic Canada and the occupational skill sets needed to sustain it, Ignatieff said there was a role for the federal government to play in ensuring the knowledge base is available.
"People say to me 'but that's not a federal responsibility, education is provincial,'" Ignatieff said. "But this is about national leadership and national strategy.
"We need a national strategy on learning."
Only 52 per cent of Canadians aged 16 and older have Level 3 literacy proficiency, according to Statistics Canada.
Level 3 is generally considered to be the minimum level of literacy required to function well at work and in daily living.
"So the colleges have to step up, the universities have to step up," Ignatieff said.
"We cannot afford to be a country where more than 40 per cent of our fellow citizens have literacy levels below Level 3."
Colin Dodds, chair of the Association of Atlantic Universities, said Canadian universities are failing its students in providing literacy proficiency.
"We do a super job in English second-language training for our international students and we have done a wonderful job increasing the number of our international students," Dodds said. "But we also have to put in programs within our degree programs that ensure everyone has to be proficient."
Dodds said 70 to 75 per cent of new jobs are going to require post-secondary education and that immigration will not be enough to stabilize a shrinking population and fill the need for skilled workers.
"You have to try to arrest the decline, but you won't be able to reverse it," he said. "You are going to have to rely more on the population you've got.
"If you map out your asset base as to what jobs we are likely to have in the future, we can then gear ourselves towards educating people for those positions."
Dr. Rodney Ouellette, president and CEO of the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute based in Moncton, said the Atlantic region currently doesn't have that structure in place.
"We have very few universities in our region that offer graduate level programs in our field of study," Ouellette said. "So once students get to their third or fourth year level, they are already looking at other options of where they could pursue their PhD and that is often outside the region.
"Our best grads leave."
Ignatieff added better immigration policy for skilled workers and international students as other ways to quell the pressure of a demographic switch, but insisted a national strategy to target literacy scores is necessary.
"All of this put together gives you a strategy in which Atlantic Canada can grow and beat those demographic challenges," Ignatieff said. "But it is a national problem.
"We have to have a national strategy here."
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Because colleges and universities train teachers. D'oh.