Toronto, ON — ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation today issued a four-page Report Summary of the international literacy survey recently released by Statistics Canada and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey, released May 11, compares Canada’s performance in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills with that of the United States, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Bermuda, and the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. Its findings are based on information collected in 2003, and further build on the picture of literacy in this country first captured by StatsCan and OECD in 1994 and 1998.

“This Report Summary provides a handy reference guide for media and for teachers and the literacy community,” says Christine Featherstone, ABC CANADA President and CEO. “It encapsulates the key findings, in text and graphs, and also gives a backgrounder and a glossary of terms to provide context.”

The Summary Report is available, by request, at ABC CANADA (e-mail info@abc-canada.org) and is on the ABC CANADA Web site: www.abc-canada.org.

One of the key findings of the ALL Survey is that 42 per cent of Canadians have low literacy (scoring either Level 1, the lowest level where a person is, for example, unable to read a medicine label; or Level 2, where only the simplest of messages are comprehended and there are limitations on learning new skills). Given this finding, along with others, ABC CANADA has called for a national strategy to address the prevailing problem of low literacy (Media release, May 11, 2005).

View our Report Summary: Learning a Living: First results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey (PDF, 362KB).