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Decoda Board Chair Donna Wilson addresses industry, government and literacy practitioners at the Forum.

DONNA WILSON, CHAIR OF THE DECODA LITERACY SOLUTIONS BOARD

Thank you Kerry and thanks to each one of you for being here today…and not being on a spring break or Easter vacation!

It’s wonderful to have such a richly diverse group of people ready and willing to address the challenge of work-force literacy and essential skills. What a challenge it is.

More than 150-thousand British Columbians aged 25 to 54 have not graduated from high school…

And 600-thousand working-age adults do not have the literacy and essential skills they need to achieve their goals and to function …and thrive… in our modern economy, our modern society.

What a waste of knowledge and potential! And it’s going to get worse.

The BC government has predicted that there will be one-point-three million new job openings by 20-20… and yet we only have about 650-thousand young people in the school system right now.

That’s a set of numbers that add up to an unhappy equation for the province’s economy – and for society as a whole.

These numbers underline the imperative of ensuring that every person in this province has the capacity to gain … and sustain… productive employment.

Literacy and essential skills are often the first step in this journey.

The time to develop a comprehensive workforce literacy strategy has never been better… and the need has never been greater. I’d say we’re at a tipping point of awareness about this need.

Business people…governments…educators… they all agree that literacy and essential skills is one of the top… if not the top… issue facing B-C’s business community… and therefore our economy as a whole.

We saw the federal government acknowledge the issue with the emphasis on skills training in last week’s budget.

The Government of British Columbia recently launched a Skills and Training plan, with a focus on trades and technical training.

I’m pleased that Education Minister Don McRae will join us shortly to tell us more about the government’s position and plans… and I’m pleased that we have a number of government representatives here from the Ministries of Education and Advanced Education.

When we talk about literacy… people often think it’s a matter of the A, B, Cs.

But when we talk about workforce literacy… I think it’s a matter of the three Cs:

• Clarity• Capacity… and • Coordination

Clarity… because we need to better define the nature and scope of the issue…

…we need to better understand the roles of all the people who have a stake in the issue…

…and we need to articulate a compelling value proposition for addressing this issue.

Speeches from Addressing the Labour Shortage: Literacy and Essential Skills Solutions

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We need capacity in the form of people and resources to deliver literacy and essential skills services… in a variety of ways… a variety of places… to a variety of audiences.

Most of all we need coordination.

We need to coordinate both policy and practice.

We have many literacy and essential skills programs and service providers doing excellent work in this province.

What we don’t have is a strategy to ensure the comprehensive and cohesive delivery of these services.

That’s where all of us come in.

Before I go on…however… I’d like to note that when I say we don’t have a workforce literacy strategy… I’m not looking to point a finger at anyone.

I’m pointing to a problem…and an opportunity…

And I’m looking to people like us to point the way to a solution.

As B-C’s lead organization for addressing adult literacy priorities… we see a natural role for ourselves in facilitating the development of a workforce literacy and essential skills strategy.

But we certainly can’t do it alone. This is where each of you and your organizations come in.

I am also very pleased to announce that we are getting down to business with the assistance of the leaders of B-C’s top business associations.

The CEOs of the Business Council of BC… the BC Chamber of Commerce… and the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association… have each agreed to join our newly-formed Business Sounding Board.

Greg D’Avignon… John Winter… and Craig Williams will guide us on how to engage employers and industry groups as we develop the Workforce Literacy Strategy.

“The time to develop a comprehensive workforce literacy strategy has never been better...”

Who are we?

Well, I hope you’ve had some time to meet a few of the people here with you today.

We are a group of employers… educators… employment service providers… civil servants… industry association representatives… and – of course - literacy practitioners.

Your host… the group I represent… is Decoda Literacy Solutions.

We were formed in May, 2011 with the merger of 2 0-year-old Literacy B-C and the literacy department of the province’s 2010 Legacies Now initiative.

Decoda is derived from the word decode… which means to create understanding… to unravel the mystery…

Decoda supports literacy programs and practitioners as well as a coordinated network of literacy and essential skills stakeholders in communities across the province.

Those stakeholders include businesses and other employers.

We have worked with legal services, corrections, health providers, and Aboriginal and immigrant services to embed literacy supports in work environments.

JOHN WINTER’S ADDRESS

The chamber of commerce network in Canada, led largely by the actions of the B.C. Chamber since 2002 has been working to create with governments an awareness for the looming shortage of skilled workers in this country … one that while experiencing a short hiatus in ‘08 / ’09, is clearly upon us. The prime minister said last November that the skills shortage is the biggest challenge facing this country, and we saw some response to that in the federal budget last week.

So what we and others have been saying for some time is now widely accepted: Canada’s skills crisis needs to be addressed.

The evidence is clear: the demographic shift is resulting in retirements; there is a growing shortfall of skilled workers; and we have a growing mismatch between skills required and those available. 2012 was the tipping point for many Canadian and BC businesses on this issue. A crisis which has been somewhat hidden by the recession became fully apparent.

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Virtually every sector is experiencing skills shortages. From construction to mining to information technology, from tourism to trucking and elsewhere, shortfalls of workers are predicted for the next 5-10 years and beyond. Our members have told us repeatedly that the ability to find and retain the talent they need to maintain and grow their businesses, seriously affects their competitiveness….and that’s the key word, to be competitive.

Next week we here in BC will lose one very important tool that would have assisted our competitiveness…the HST! But i won’t take your time this morning harping on its benefits to BC. Suffice to say, it would have helped.

But there are other issues impacting our competitiveness that we can do something about. In fact we must do something about! The global economy demands it, if we plan to compete. BC is a small open trading economy…we rely on exporting our goods and services and we are working very hard to diversify those markets beyond just the USA. Asia is our natural and logical target for trade growth. But the landscape is changing. The once emerging economies have more than emerged…they need to be regarded and viewed as partners and as competitors. Their infrastructure is brand new – better than ours in some cases. Their technology is often as good or better – we actually buy from them now, and not just their low priced goods. China for example is now the world leader in solar panel technology, and we are a customer. And, for a growing middle class, the education they receive is closing the gap with North America.

Most importantly they are in a hurry, anxious and pre-pared to compete. And I worry we are going to be unable to meet the challenge, given some of the realities we face.

Last year in an economic summit in Davos, PM Harper said “the wealth of western economies is no more inevitable than the poverty of emerging ones”.

So if we want to maintain our privileged life styles, we have to fight for them. We have to compete. And I see precious little evidence that we Canadians, and we British Columbians realize this reality.

The theme for competitiveness is not new, but it remains top of mind with many business leaders. We have a competitiveness challenge and exceedingly poor productivity growth that is impeding our prosperity…the lowest levels of productivity growth in the country.

So the time has come (perhaps its overdue) for action. Peter Drucker, a pre-eminent management consultant said that: “since we live in the age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist, and cannot yet be clearly defined.”

Yet we seem content to put our precious human resources through an education process that bears no actual resemblance to the world of work, paying significant tuitions, incurring large debts, and graduating to a world with no hope for employment, all while business and industry is screaming for help.

All that said, the issue is around human capital, and that is why we are here today. Addressing the labour shortage: literacy and essential skills solutions. This forum is a crucial step in addressing a key aspect of the barrier we face in addressing human capital as part of the competitiveness equation.

At the chamber, we continually hold roundtable discussions with our members about the skills crisis. Feedback is consistent…the need to upgrade the skills of workers in our domestic workforce. The message is the same in all sectors and in all parts of the province. The same topics and themes come up in all regions.

Let me highlight three topics that we raise in most locations with our members. First, it’s about the demands for more people in the skilled trades combined with the need to ensure more apprenticeships occur. A second topic is the challenge of addressing employees who may lack essential skills – the literacy, numeracy and basic work skills which are necessary to function and learn in the 21st century workplace. Third, we heard that employers must take more responsibility to provide training and encourage upskilling of their employees, both in the essential skills, and in work related skills.

So, on the first one, there is no doubt that we are experiencing a skilled trades deficit in our workforce…with tens of billions of dollars worth of investment in our infrastructure in the offing or even in the works, the prospects for finding the skills here or elsewhere to make it happen are dim indeed. We need more people to enter the trades and equally, we need more employers to offer apprenticeships. Only one in five eligible employers actually participates in trade apprenticeships in Canada (BC should be no different) according to the Canadian apprenticeship forum. Many employers do not take advantage of the financial support available for apprenticeships because they lack the time.

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For smaller companies, competition for employees can hurt efforts to offer apprenticeships. One small independent operation in Prince George has had an apprenticeship program for decades. The owner tells us that each year he will regularly lose between 5 and 10 journeymen. His rhetorical question was: “how do you get people to support apprenticeships?”

Many people have been working to tackle this shortage and address the complexity of apprenticeship programs and the financial disincentives for apprentices. Small businesses are in this picture too, as they represent potential employers for apprentices.

The second topic, described by some as survival skills, but more commonly called essential skills by groups like our hosts here today…Decoda. These include literacy, numeracy, communications, the ability to work in teams, and basic computer use, among others. Without a certain level of these skills, workers’ learning and productivity growth is held back. They simply won’t benefit as much from other training without the minimal proficiency in these skills. I am continually surprised to hear so many employers complain about employees lacking theses skills…a comment on our education system perhaps?

We were told of an employer who said he hires grade 12 graduates now but those graduates may only have grade 9 reading level, and they can’t do calculations such as Pascal’s law! How does that happen?

The question then becomes, who provides the essential skills training to those employees? How does the employer help his or her employees address their skills shortfalls? Important questions if competition and survival is the stake.

And now the third and very related key topic…training and up-skilling. There are common refrains everywhere. We hear that employers are not, by and large, involved in skills training, especially the so-called SME’s. The attitude

seems to be “the state takes care of education, employers employ”, as one member put it. Some employers question why they would hire a new graduate and train them just so they could move on to a larger company to earn more money, leaving them to repeat the process of hiring and training again. One quote worth passing on…”maybe there should be support for the transitional time of a new grads’ early employment, which would reduce THE RISK TO EMPLOYERS”.

We know that in Quebec, the government finances several training entities responsible for supporting small business. But there is no cohesiveness, so each entity acts in isolation and pursues its own objectives. Consequently small businesses there receive lots of offers of services but they are difficult and time consuming to assess.

Some businesses feel that employers in general can be helpful in taking co-op students and interns who need three to four months’ work experience at minimum, however they recognize how difficult it is for business to participate regardless of their size.

So, while the well-publicized and acknowledged contributors to the fix for these shortages – immigration, underutilized pools of labour, and workforce development, are being discussed continually, and with some apparent progress, the urgent need to up-skill our workforce, to enable our businesses to continue to compete and win, must be the priority. Our members tell us the dismaying story of a workforce which often lacks these basic skills…shocking and revealing. We had assumed like most of society would that our education system would take care of this. But, in many cases, education from K-12 is falling short of the standards we would expect. Post-secondary institutions often have to offer remedial programs to new students. And we realize that business has to step up. We can no longer operate on the assumption that every new employee we hire will be job ready.

I have told members before that most of the workers you need to take you to the next level are not coming from Europe or the Middle East. They are not pouring out of our colleges and universities. They are already in your shop. Overwhelmingly, the better, faster, more reliable way to get more productive workers is to make them, not go shopping for them.

Up-skilling is a key, critical, vital and important part of our success formula.

I look forward to hearing the remainder of today’s discussions, and thank you for the opportunity to participate at this level.

John Winter, president and CEO of BC Chamber of Commerce speaks about the challenges that lie ahead.

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EMPLOYERS PANEL

JOCELYN FRASER, THOMPSON CREEK METALS COMPANY

Thanks for the opportunity to be here today. I feel privileged to join you and to learn from you about literacy and essential skills strategies. I am going to talk about an initiative we are attempting to roll out in the communities near our Mount Milligan mining project. And I want to share with you the opportunity we see and some of the challenges we face.

To start, let me say a few words about mining and the role we play today in building sustainable communities. The terms I will use – corporate social responsibility, or CSR, and social license to operate – are relatively recent, originating in the needs of a modern industrial society, and I believe their inclusion in the corporate lexicon reflects a value shift on the part of business in the late 20th century.

Companies operating today know we must assume a socially responsible role in the communities in which we operate. Over the years, I have learned that successful programs are those that have a clear alignment between a social issue and a company’s business, because that gives us a greater the opportunity to leverage the firm’s resources and benefit society. For me, it is less about investing in infrastructure and more about investing in people.

This represents a fundamental shift in thinking from what I would call philanthropic CSR –forging community partnerships by investing in infrastructure – building a hockey rink or day care centre. While there is nothing wrong with that approach, at Mount Milligan we are proposing a shift away from that traditional thinking (investing in infrastructure) to focus on investing in people and building a true legacy in the communities in which we operate by supporting their sustainable development.

Before talking about what we call our “legacy” proposal – which we hope will be built upon a literacy initiative – let me tell you a little about Mount Milligan.

When Mount Milligan comes into production later this year, it will be the first major new metals mine commissioned in BC in more than a decade. The copper gold mine is located almost equidistant between the communities of Fort St James and Mackenzie, about 150 km north of Prince George. In recent years the economy in the area has been cyclical with significant

downturns in the forestry sector having a severe and negative impact on the region.

We will be creating more than 400 permanent jobs and are endeavouring to employ as many local people as possible. To date, more than 60 per cent of our operations team comes from the local region. That’s impressive in an area that has not had much mining in recent years. But the location and the lack of recent mining expertise has also created challenges finding candidates for some of the senior management positions and for some of the skilled jobs within a processing plant that is technologically advanced and one of only six of its kind in the world. The skilled labour shortage is definitely a challenge. Mining is a global industry these days and we face intense competition from other mining companies – not just here in BC but around the world – and from other industry such as the oil sands.

Local hiring and the use of local supply and service companies is one way we can benefit the region. In our regulatory permit we also have a formal commitment to create a legacy from the project within the region. What exactly that means has been open to interpretation. We have an Impact Benefit Agreement in place with the McLeod Lake Indian Band and hope that 2013 will see us complete an IBA with the Nak’azdli First Nation. There are a number of other first nations and aboriginal communities in the region but MLIB and NFN have the longest history of traditional use in the area we are borrowing for mining. But our “legacy” will go beyond an IBA. We feel an obligation to make a contribution to regional sustainability post mining. And we want to look for those points of intersection between our needs and the needs of society, and find ways to measure success.

We considered a number of different options for our legacy: we could go the traditional route and invest in infrastructure – swimming pools, recreation centres, hockey rinks. Many of the municipalities have significant infrastructure needs – upgrading the sewage system, water treatment, and housing – that they are hard pressed to finance. We could heed the advice of local service providers who told us that the communities need day care. Or drug and alcohol clinics. Or medical equipment. All of these are worthy causes.

Yet when we looked at the root cause of some of the communities’ issues, we began to think that we should take a serious look at funding literacy initiatives. Not only to help build the capacity of those who might be future employees of the mine, and address a critical skilled labour shortage, but also to leave a legacy in the community that will support their future sustainability.

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In its comprehensive report, Reading the Future, published in 2008, The Canadian Council on Learning, noted that about 48 per cent of the adult population in Canada is considered to have below-standard literacy skills. As many in this room will know, 40 per cent of BC adults do not have the skills necessary to read a newspaper, fill out a work application form, read a map, or understand a lease. Forty-nine per cent do not have the skills necessary to calculate a tip, create a budget, calculate sales tax, or understand credit card interest rates. And, in 2008, 20% of Canadian teenagers aged 15 to 19 – our future work force – were no longer pursuing a formal education. It can be anticipated that in areas where we are working – outside of major metropolitan centers, and in Aboriginal communities – the bleak picture presented by these statistics is even grimmer.

It is also relevant to note that in industries, such as mining, where safety is a critical performance indicator, research tells us although 64% of employers think that their employees understand vital health and safety information, only 40% of workers agree.

As a result of these findings we determined that the best legacy we could leave would be a more literate population. We devised a program outline that would see us support literacy initiatives – allowing us to invest in people, helping to train potential employees, and building a very tangible “legacy” from the mine’s operations, beyond the significant contribution we will make through our business practices. I am excited about this because the proposal provides a point of intersection between our needs for a healthy, educated future workforce; and the needs of society for healthy, educated citizens. Individuals who can be employable and productive members of their communities. If we can help build essential skills in the community we may benefit by hiring these people at the mine. And if they go to work somewhere else? That’s ok too because it strengthens the region.

The idea of a literacy “legacy” has a lot of merit to us. However, as we work to secure endorsement for this idea we are confronted by communities accustomed to working with resource sector companies in a different manner. We have heard from elected officials and economic development officers in the region who question the need for literacy programming in their communities. Some have even associated literacy with ESL programming. We have tried to explain that literacy can be embedded into economic development initiatives, it can form the basis of worker training, it can be integrated into health and wellness programming.

We even tried rebranding our initiative – we stopped calling it a Legacy of Literacy and started calling it “The Healthy Communities Legacy”. And yet we continue to hear from local authorities who tell us that what their community needs and wants is not what we are offering.

We are firm in our commitment. Yet we know we need community buy in to make the “legacy” project a success. From our perspective there is nothing more important than investing in people. We are convinced that offering to fund innovation in literacy programming in the best possible approach. We know we will need local champions and that we will need a series of small wins to help galvanize interest and commitment in our approach.

We will know if we are successful because we can measure literacy rates. We have 22 years to see a return on our investment: 22 years to see literacy rates increase and to support a sustainable future for the communities in the vicinity of Mount Milligan. So while I am pleased to be here today to share with you the idea we have for integrating literacy programming into our social responsibility and community relations initiatives, I am really here to find out from you how do we get a skeptical public on board to endorse literacy? How do we help the communities to see literacy in a different way? Right now, when we talk about literacy, I think they envision adult learners crammed together in embarrassment in a stuffy church basement learning to read.

We often talk about a social license to operate but I think in this endeavour we may need a social license to lead and any advice or direction that this group can offer on how we can achieve the objective of increasing literacy in the communities in which we operate will be much appreciated.

BEN HUME, SHEPPARD’S BUILDING MATERIALS

Sheppard’s is a manufacturer of Sunrooms, Conservatories and retractable screen doors….

Essentially we are a metal fabricator. We employ 25 people.

We build to inventory as well as make-to-order ( MTO). This means we have some standard production but we also do a lot of custom assembly including configuration and colours. Four thousand finished goods SKU’s which to a large degree are managed using Kanban systems.

While the product is pretty simple we work in a pretty fast paced environment that gets pretty complex.

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Average pay on the shop floor is $18/hr with starting wages at $14.50/hr. We require a minimum grade 12 edu-cational requirement.

Our staff is made up of South Asian, Korean, Chinese, Philippino, Jamaican and Canadian born folks.

We are a seasonal business so our core staff must be able to train new hires.

It is also essential that our staff can do multiple jobs on the shop floor so that we maintain flexibility to deal with changes in product demand and unplanned absences.

We also need staff to be able to problem solve and par-ticipate in continuous improvement projects.

In short we need folks who can work in teams, lead oth-ers, solve problems and learn new things. These are to my mind “essential skills” for any work environment in a knowledge based economy

Challenges:

Finding people who have the essential skills that we need…in fact we can’t find them for the wages we can of-fer. We assume we will have to train people. The problem is how to get them that training in a sustainable fashion….

How does a firm of 25 people, let alone 5 -10 folks de-liver training?

The training needs to accommodate individual needs as well as specific firm requirements for specialized equip-ment or processes.

Getting staff to enroll in outside training even if we are willing to pay for tuition and books is very difficult…mostly because of time constraints but also because they fear failure

What is so intimidating is the range of training needed:

ESL, Numeracy, cultural context, specific firm knowledge, etc.

Successes:

Training consortiums work.

Embedding literacy training in the work and firm specific training.

Success breeds success….once people get the sense they can actually learn new things they tend to be eager to learn more.

Having a training resource available would be very helpful.

In summary:

Literacy and essential skills are what will keep my firm competitive.

How to make sure my staff get the training they need to have the essential skills is a major challenge.

Training consortiums are the way to support SME’s. They cannot do it on their own.

We need to develop a recognizable credential

BRENDA LECLAIR, CEO, DECODA LITERACY SOLUTIONS

It is a pleasure and an honor to introduce our keynote presentation today.

When we talk about literacy, we often talk about the need to have many access points to literacy services.

That’s because people facing literacy challenges do so for a variety of personal and cultural reasons.

There’s an excellent description of this in a blog called Painting the Grey Area.

Blogger Chandra…she doesn’t give her full name… describes a fictional character she calls Jonny.

“Jonny might be dyslexic. He might have spent his entire childhood being shamed and belittled by his teachers and classmates because his brain works differently from theirs.

He might come from an abusive or otherwise dysfunc-tional home, where focusing on his English studies comes a distant second to keeping the pieces of his body and spirit together.

He might be living on food stamps and lack the necessary fuel to fire his brain’s higher-level synapses.

He might have spent most of third grade hooked up to life support in the Children’s Hospital while his classmates were getting hooked on phonics.

He might be a refugee from a country whose native language has an entirely different writing system… or no writing system at all.

He might be surviving any combination of these circumstances… and more.”

Here in British Columbia… that “more” category might include the complex set of factors that characterize the education experiences of our First Nations populations.

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In B-C, the province measures high school graduation by looking at the percentage of students who complete a Certificate of Graduation within six years from the time they enroll in Grade eight.

The graduation rate of our overall student population is 81 per cent.

The graduation rate of the Aboriginal student population is 54 per cent.

This is a sad and stunning figure.

It’s a figure that gives us some idea of literacy issues experienced by our First Nations peoples.

Fortunately… there’s some good news on this front and some of it comes from the First Nations Employment Society… the organization represented by our keynote speakers.

Leonard Laboucan is the society’s training advisor.

He is a Metis originally from Northern Alberta.

Leonard helps Aboriginal people build careers and find jobs... and he specializes in getting people into the apprenticeship trades.

He tells us… “I’ve watched many Aboriginals whose lives were changed by getting through the four or more years it takes to become a fully-qualified tradesperson. It’s one of the rewards of my job.”

We have a bonus today in that our keynote speaker has brought another guest speaker.

Jay Mearns is a member of the Musqueam First Nation. He is a job coach with the First Nations Employment Society.

Right now… Jay is helping the society develop and implement a partnership strategy for employment and training for the Seaspan shipbuilding projects.

SMALL GROUP NOTES FROM FORUM

What are 3-5 long term goals for a BC Workforce Literacy and Essential Skills Strategy?

1. Coordinate and Collaborate

• Get provincial government on board

– Coordinate the different ministries

– All ministries onboard and involved

• Define and coordinate roles and responsibilities for government, employers and training providers

• All stakeholders involved (industry, educators, parents, students) in creating strategies

• Have a single workforce strategy that includes LES so we’re not talking about it as a separate piece

• A strategy that ranges from cradle to grave

• Use CCL international planning data to form a Canadian plan

• Create a national education policy

2. Apply LES thinking to everyone, not just some groups of people

• Long term goals should apply to all of society, not just level 1,2,3 or marginalized groups

• Public policy that supports Level 1-5 funding model

3. Replicate good practice

• Share success stories and best practices (or good practices)

– Don’t keep re-inventing the wheel

• What other countries are succeeding at LES?

– Germany – Industry works with government

– Switzerland – apprenticeship is part of post-secondary education

Lindsay Kennedy CEO of Canadian Literacy and Learning Network and Scott Murray DataAngel Policy Research present their views.

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4. Clearly define LES and communicate that definition broadly

• Essential Skills Literacy

– De-stigmatize?

– Re-brand?

– Life Skills and mobility = ES

• Clarity around terms

– Whole new word?

• Effective Communications Strategy

– Universally accepted standard for what essential skills means that cross associations and institutions

• Clarify the definition and raise the awareness of what essential skills are

• Destigmatize literacy and essential skills – they should be together

5. Outreach and Sales

• Engage industry / business

– How does this impact bottom line?

– How does your company benefit?

• Outreach and Sales – why is this in your best interest? (industry and individuals)

– Relationship building that is authentic

– Relationship building with all stakeholders

• Show the value proposition to business, government and the community at large

6. Pathways for learning need to be more visible

• We have a navigation problem

• Create easy integrated pathways

• Hope and optimism for all Canadians and immigrants in knowing access points and ways up the ladder

• Ensure supports for learning are in place

7. Credentials for those who are learning and those who are teaching

• Credential Program for Essential Skills

– Standardized

• Transferable learning certificate that demonstrates tangible skills with a broad recognition as an em-ployer or post secondary institution of the skills this provides

– Must be all encompassing to reach entire workforce

– Open access to all people in BC

• Industry Standard Recognized Qualifications

• Credentialling – renewable

• Assessment geared toward industry-specific / occupation-specific

• Tool kit for training

• Raise the level and define the best practices for quality of instruction in workplace / essential skills literacy

• Standardize essential skills – universally accepted levels

• Teacher training and the resulting K-12 system needs to reflect an emphasis on divergent, analytical thinking. This should also be applicable to post-secondary and informal learning networks.

8. Sustainable approach

• Increased funding for the Community Adult Literacy Program provided through the Ministry of Advanced Education

• Sustainable funding

• Stable, consistent funding

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9. Engaging and embedding

• Engaging Non-traditional interest groups and adapt-ing ES programs around these groups

– Immigrants

– People with disabilities

– Women in non-traditional roles

• Embedding essential skills in other programs

– Appropriate level / intentional

• Cultural shift

What are the values or principles that should be reflected in the Strategy and in how it is implemented?

Wholistic

Equal opportunity to learning

Anyway/anywhere

Educate the whole person for whole life

Sustainable

Add competitiveness to the 4 c’s presented by Decoda (Canada is competitive with China) –

– Clarity

– Cohesion

– Collaboration

– Coordination

PLENARY DISCUSSION

How do we move forward together to develop a strategy? Who needs to be involved and how?

What is one key action that could enhance literacy and essential skills in BC in the next 12 months?

Get a lot more groups of people involved

Get a politician (or more) to actually care and talk about it

Prepare key messages for a new government in BC

The general public does not know what literacy and essential skills means – communicate what is lacking very effectively (better)

Literacy comes out of a social justice place; essential skills comes out of economic, workplace thinking: why do we have two terms?

• What do we mean when we talk about the field? Many ES providers do not align themselves with literacy at all

• Make a repository for research, funding opportuni-ties, etc

• People who need to be involved: learners, people with disabilities, unions

• Certification is an essential issue

• Proof that people have the skills that the certifica-tion says they do

• Engage industry – demand side - and ask what industry needs

• Certification of practitioners

• Prepare materials that can be given to media

• Be inclusive and optimistic about literacy and es-sential skills for everyone including owners and managers