National Adult Literacy Database

Considering the importance of literacy and the skills that individuals require in a knowledge and information economy, it is clear that the vitality of official language minorities largely depends on them having the tools and information that they need in order to grow and develop. Because of the unfavourable situation in which many Francophones find themselves with respect to their reading, writing and numeracy skills, these communities must have data enabling them to better understand the situation of their members so that they can target their efforts more effectively.

It was in this spirit and in light of the above that this study was prepared, focusing on the literacy and skills of official language minorities as measured in the 2003 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). This study seeks to shed light on different aspects of the processes by which official language minorities acquire literacy and language mastery.

The main national objective of the ALL survey is to produce estimates of the change in the literacy level of Canada’s adult population since the publication of data from the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).