Literacy from illiteracy

Back in September, I came across an interesting article that led me to the website of the Canadian Council on Learning.

The organization created a survey of 'prose literacy' in Canada, which is used to measure basic literacy -- the knowledge and skills needed to understand and use information from news stories, editorials, brochures and instruction manuals. It is, therefore, an instrumental building block for developing more sophisticated literacy skills and is critical to understanding a rapidly changing world.

Two things stuck out for me.

The Canadian Council on Learning created its survey using a geographic information system (GIS), which presents data linked to location, allowing for the information to then be analyzed, managed, compared and presented multiple ways so as to provide deep insight into what's happening, where it's happening, and with some analysis, why. Modern technology has given GIS new abilities to layer data as well as dramatically increase interactivity and linkages -- when designed with accurate information, modern GIS systems are the equivalent of striking data gold.

The interactive literacy map created by the Council looked at 52,000 cities, towns and communities across Canada, revealing that we Canadians are not as literate as we thought. Using data from Statistics Canada and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and combining these with 2006 federal census data, showed that some 48 per cent of adults in Canada have low literacy levels.

Adult literacy is often measured on a prose literacy scale of 1 to 5. Level 3 is widely considered to be the minimum threshold for coping with the demands of the global knowledge-based economy, while a Level 2 denotes someone who is able to deal with simple, straightforward material, but “their poor literacy makes it hard to conquer challenges such as learning new job skills.” With nearly half of adults in Canada having low prose literacy levels, there is major cause for concern; it explains why the current government has been able to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadians for so long.

The other important lesson that stuck out for me is the utility of GIS mapping. This should be the foundation for policy formulation in Canada -- providing insights on how best to ensure the most good for the most number of people, be it in education, health care or employment creation. With baseline data established, such as we now have with literacy, it becomes another layer in the GIS onion for when the next census takes place in 2011. It also becomes a way for Canadians to compare 2006 data with 2011 data, understand areas of progress or decline, and hold our politicians to account. In the case of literacy, knowing what we know now, there should be commensurate investment in bolstering primary and secondary education so as to improve literacy.

We have Statistics Canada. But it's clear that Canada now needs to step up its game to connect the dots between the gathering and analysis of statistics, and allowing that information to have realtime impact. Right now, we have fairly high levels of illiteracy. But, if we learn the lesson correctly from the Canadian Council on Learning, there is in fact, literacy from illiteracy -- we just have to be willing to read between the lines.

Preparing for Copenhagen and encouraging transparency

The Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice, hasn't yet articulated the Canadian position on climate change and emissions reduction, as was promised, before Canada sits at the table in Copenhagen for the December 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quite frank at the APEC meeting this weekend: nothing tangible will be coming out of Copenhagen. He may not even show up if other Heads of State don't show up.

In what is becoming a template approach to governing our country, and unfortunately an acceptable form of governance to Canadians, a docile Federal Government patiently waits in the wings for an American position. With the American position established, Ottawa can then decide on a Canadian position. Fellow Canadians, is this not sovereignty squandered? Is this not a waste of nationhood and a blatant underestimation of the power and ingenuity of Canadians and the Canadian economy?

While I agree that, since signing the North American Free Trade Agreement, the economies of Canada, the US and Mexico have become closely intertwined, I am also of the opinion -- whether climate change is purely an act of nature or heavily influenced by man -- that we have a moral imperative to choose newer cleaner technologies over old polluters. Consider it an insurance policy. Consider it a way to transition from an economy built on dying consumerism, to something fresh, with new job and technology opportunities. Whatever stance you take on climate change, it's hard to argue that the oil economy is in a fight for its life, and dare I say it, will be our energy 'Waterloo' if we do not have the courage to move boldly and quickly.

The demand for a major shift in our approach must be driven by mainstream Canadians. We are sleepwalking by allowing our current Government to align itself with the old world approach and not asking it to make difficult, informed decisions. Perhaps we are mesmerized by the double-speak coming out of Peter MacKay's mouth on the should-we-stay-or-should-we-go Afghanistan approach. Perhaps Canadians can't see past the idiocy of the Minister of Natural Resources and her sexy isotopes. But one thing is for certain, all this stupidity has compromised the integrity of Canada.

We are now the obstructionist, laggard sidekick to America. We support too-big-to-fail auto companies, just like the Americans. We have lost all credibility on the international stage, undermining the very international processes we worked so hard to create. We have changed the language used by our diplomats and bureaucrats to give it an unhealthy ideological bent, in line with our neighbours to the South. I have blogged about all of this before -- the world has taken note, and the world thinks a lot less of Canada.

I wouldn't have said this a year ago, but given the very rapid shift in context and perspective, I think the failed Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, may have been prescient with his Green Plan. (I suspect my friend MD would agree.) I also think that Canadians, and our environment, are poorer have having missed an opportunity for much-needed reform, which is clearly not going to come from this Government.

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Interested in following Canada in inter-governmental processes? Or other countries for that matter?

Last Friday, the United Nations Department of Public Information launched: United Nations Member States: On the Record. Here is the launch press release, reproduced from the United Nations intranet, which also includes a publicly accessible link. I thought readers might find this tool useful. Enjoy!

Their work in the principal organs determines the work of the Organization throughout the world, and yet finding out exactly who said what has until now required an in-depth understanding of the Organization.

A new project, United Nations Member States: On the Record, makes information easily accessible that was once complicated and difficult to find.

This website is an easy-to-use research tool that provides access to information from a variety of existing United Nations databases and websites. Just click a link to get to the most up-to-date, accurate, and historically comprehensive information on a Member State’s participation in the United Nations.

Based on the experience of the librarians at the reference desk of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library in New York, this tool responds to frequently asked questions about United Nations members.

On the site, each Member State has a page with links to dynamic searches in various United Nations databases. Over 4000 links provide current information -- without the user needing to know how to use each database.

Information available for each Member State includes: the key documents related to its membership in the United Nations, statements made before the principal organs, draft resolutions sponsored, periodic reports submitted on Human Rights conventions, and more.

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Cultivating skills and minds

News came this week that the unemployment rate in Canada continues to rise. On the heels of this news, which I think is the harbinger of some very difficult times ahead, Canadians must begin transitioning away from the economic and social model we've grown comfortable with in the last 50 years.

The globalized economy has given us unprecedented access to everything from every corner of the world at any time of year. Fruits from Chile and South Africa, t-shirts and shoes from Honduras or Vietnam, and every other conceivable item -- from ceramic mugs to knock-off modern furniture -- from China. These are proudly displayed on the shelves and in the cabinets at Walmarts, Zellers and Dollar Stores across Canada as the cheap trophies of globalization.

Our commuter highways, box stores filled with cheap goods, and cookie-cutter homes in 'The Fields at Oak Park' are premised on cheap and easy access to energy. This energy is now more expensive, has an increasingly larger impact on our environment, and has hollowed our nation's skill set. In major cities across Canada, the industrial base that once drove employment is now either gutted or its vestiges being converted into lifestyle condominiums. Our skilled draftsmen or millwrights are now being put to use as customer service representatives at Home Depot. I'm certain there are a lot of botched tile and plumbing jobs across Canada -- the Home Depot slogan "You can do it, we can help" really needs to be "You can't do it, but we'll still sell you the stuff." We've devalued the very skills upon which our society is built: anyone can do anything, only not that well.

Education is directly related to the productivity of our society and economy -- whether that education takes the form of specific skills training (drafting, millwright, metallurgy, mechanics) or a liberal arts University education. We have ignored the former, and devalued the latter. Not everyone is cut out for University education. This has not been lost on the Germans, where their education system has long recognized that some people are better suited to working with their hands or in technical trades. These people are identified when they're young and streamed into a suitable educational program. In this regard, they're recognized as having an important role to play in the larger social and economic system.

On the other hand, a liberal arts University education is reserved for those who are technically challenged, but have a mind better suited to intellectual rigours. Universities become centres for strong theoretical development and knowledge creation, and move away from trying to cater to the lowest common denominator. I'm not suggesting that higher education become a bastion of elitism -- that would be a very narrow understanding. I am suggesting that if we are trying to build an inclusive and just society, everyone must play a productive role.

So where am I heading with all this?

The globalized economy is showing just how flawed and fragile it is. Our government must begin to think about alternatives -- regionalized and localized, entrepreneurial, balanced upon the technical innovation and creative intellectual thought. Right now, there is no balance. The skills of our tradesmen have been lost to fickle globalized capital, which takes its business wherever it can to get the best price. But Made in Canada means something -- well built, of high quality materials, made by family, friends and neighbours who care.

The same can be said of our intellectual stock -- currently seduced by capital to take their gained-in-Canada education to serve faithless multinational corporations focussed solely on their own interests. This is unsustainable for Canada. We need a complex approach to strongly link education to the Canadian economy -- centres of thought, centres of art, research and engineering -- so that we can begin reinvesting in aviation and aeronautics, in alternative transportation methods (shipping, rail), investing properly in our food and agriculture system, our farmers, and ultimately in quality and diversity on our tables and on store shelves. Ultimately, it's an investment in ourselves.

I often think about the deep and dangerous hole dug for us by stimulus funding from the government. It has created ballooning debt for Canadians and is providing money to building bridges and roads (providing you're in the right political riding), and saving Chrysler and General Motors. At the same time, tuition fees for higher education continue to rise due to lack of funding. Public health funding is woefully inadequate. Housing for low income families is almost non-existent. In short, the stimulus funding put money in all the wrong investments.

Do not believe the hype. Claims of a 'jobless' economic recovery -- all the rage in US media these days -- simply reaffirm the shortsighted and unsustainable approach of our government. After all, what's the point of a jobless recovery if a majority of people can't put food on the table?

Sealing the deal

Working in international development, certainly at headquarters in New York, isn't always what it seems. Despite the best intentions of most staff members, outcomes are often disconnected from logic and are heavily political.

I was recently reminded of this at a meeting of the Bureau of the Executive Board, where five grown men — each highly-paid senior diplomats in the service of their governments — sat around a table discussing the date for the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board in January 2010. The date had already been set for mid-January, but this was now the second meeting to discuss changing the dates; Bureau members were unhappy that the Executive Board of UNICEF would be preceding the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board. After an hour of deliberation, there was still no resolution.

Creating the documentation for this one-hour meeting took two-and-a-half days, with a lot of back and forth between colleagues in UNDP and UNFPA. The output was a four-page rationale as to why it would pose serious problems to move the date for the session before UNICEF (distributed at the meeting and therefore, not read). Perhaps the most poignant moment for me was when, during the course of the meeting, the President of the Bureau reminded me, and other members of the Executive Board secretariat, that the United Nations exists to serve Member States. Whatever the Member States want is what the United Nations needs to deliver. If Member States want the days of the Executive Board session moved to the first week of January, when most people aren't around and when the session would coincide with Christian Orthodox Christmas and when it would be unlikely that most documents could be delivered in all official languages, then that's what Members should get. And we were reminded that, regardless of the costs, those documents should be delivered in all languages.

It was a stark refresher: the lofty goals of the original United Nations, laid out while the ashes of war still smouldered around the globe in the late 1940s, has essentially devolved into petty politics of ego maniacs and blatant stupidity.

Another, more serious, reminder came later in the week. At an inter-agency meeting — that is a meeting with several organizations present at the table — one of my colleagues mentioned 'COP 15'. For the sake of simplicity, COP 15 refers to the upcoming (December 2009) climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where a successor agreement to Kyoto is supposed to be agreed upon. A tremendous amount of resources — your tax dollars and my tax dollars — have been spent organizing the conference, creating documentation and informational resources, and promoting it (Seal the Deal!).

The Secretary-General and many of the heads of United Nations funds and programmes have strongly vested interests in a meaningful outcome from Copenhagen. They argue, quite rightly, that poverty alleviation is now closely tied to climate change mitigation and prevention because most of the impact from rising ocean levels, for example, will be borne by those least able to cope with it. And furthermore, the poor are least responsible for changing the environment. If we are to have any credibility in meeting the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, climate change must be addressed.

At any rate, back to my meeting.

My colleague mentioned, in passing, that it may be possible that several critical international players may not be at the table in Copenhagen to forge a deal. In fact, she followed that up by saying, without these participants the entire outcome possibility for the conference will be changed. Whereas before, at the conclusion of the conference, the intention was to announce a climate deal to which the world agreed, the Secretary-General in now likely going to settle on an announcement that the world agrees on the need for a climate deal. In other words, all that money has been spent to take us from the possibility of solid action to the continuation of political conjecture.

There is still a month left to go before Copenhagen, and if I learned one thing, it's that the real deals take place in the shadows and back rooms. I generally don't have access to this, so things may change. Still, I felt this nugget of interesting information might be valuable for a couple of reasons.

The hopes and possibilities for multilateralism are, despite the dire need for such a collective approach, slipping to forces of business, lobbyists and financiers. This is the main reason why players who need to be at the table won't be at the table -- the perception that limiting greenhouse gas emissions will have a detrimental impact on the economy. It would seem, therefore, the multilateral system is as much about creating problems as it is about solving problems, which is why there are very few real outcomes from 60 or so years of United Nations presence. If we are to correct the problems around multilateralism, we must make it as much about humanism as it is about capitalism — right now, the balance is most certainly in favour of the latter.

Canadians — most of whom are moderate, generous, and compassionate — must invest as much, if not more, in creating stronger bilateral exchanges with partners around the world. I don't believe a full extraction from the multilateral system would help Canada. But I do believe that we can help promote the ideas of justice, human rights and good governance through direct knowledge exchange and setting a proper example, rather than relying solely on the United Nations. If the United Nations is quickly becoming toothless and moribund under its own weight, it is certainly thanks to the calibre of direction it receives from its Member States. It's clear that, now more than ever, it has become servant to all, but unable to play master in any of its mandated areas.

By the way, it did not take me two days to write this.