There are a zillion things I take for granted in this life. Food and water come quickly to mind. Fuel for the thirsty Dodge. Astonishingly expensive shoes for my kids to wear. I wish it weren’t so, but another assumption is my ability to read the damned Visa statement that arrives every month. I actually can calculate the ratio of spending on moi compared to spending on my darling children. I don’t much like this tiresome moment of my life.

But there’s a whole crowd of people who would love it. Not the awful words and numbers themselves, rather the simple ability to comprehend them. And when I say “crowd,” I mean exactly that.

The most recent literacy survey shows that 48 per cent of adult Canadians can’t read, deal with numbers, or understand documents and forms well enough to function successfully in our society. They’re not necessarily illiterate, but at best they’re unable to adapt and learn well enough to hold a job for very long, to help their kids with school, maybe even to vote. This matches the results of similar tests done elsewhere. For example, 51 per cent of Americans are in the same boat.

Think about that: half of us are essentially out of it. And another third aren’t as well equipped for life as we ought to be.

This test, done in 1994, is the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). Involving Canada, the United States, and 17 other industrialized countries, it was the first time such a multi-country and multi-language assessment of adult literacy had been done. The results show Canada is around the middle of the pack.

A couple of things you should know before I continue. To start with, literacy isn’t just the ability to read and write. That’s called “prose” literacy. There’s also “quantitative” literacy, namely the ability to comprehend numbers and do things like balance a cheque book. A third, separate component is “document” literacy, or the ability to find and use information from things like application forms, maps, and logbooks.

These abilities are measured at five levels. Level 1 is the lowest, where a person may not be able to read the label on a medicine bottle. Some 22 per cent of Canadians sit here, according to the survey, possibly because they’re immigrants who have yet to master the language or because they have a learning disability.

Level 2 people, 26 per cent of adult Canadians, may have adapted to everyday life, but learning new skills is tough. Significantly, these folks tend not to know they’re limited in this way. Level 3 is where people, 32 per cent of us in Canada, have a minimum level for success in life, but many jobs demand still higher skills.

Level 4 includes just 16% of Canadians. They can calculate more complex problems — how much money a person would have if he invested $100 at 6 per cent for 10 years, for instance. Level 5 is an elite group — just 4 per cent of Canadians. They can integrate several sources of information or solve complex problems. A typical survey question at this level would ask the person to calculate the total calories in a hamburger based on a nutritional-analysis chart and the knowledge that a gram of fat has nine calories, requiring a conversion from fat to calories.

At levels 1, 2, or 3, where most of us reside, we’re talking about, as the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council puts it, employability skills, enabling skills, the foundation on which people are able to process new information and adapt.

This industry already faces a shortage of capable people. The problem is only compounded by a shortage of utterly basic skills in the people we already have. And, given that half the population is underskilled, shall we say, what about our ability as recruiters to determine who’s equipped to do the jobs we need to have done? Think, for instance, of the various complexities involved when a driver pulls a hazmat load across the border.

Enter the CTHRC, the Ottawa-based group that is developing a “National Essential Skills Strategy” to address these challenges, at the core of which are literacy upgrading efforts and a new tool to determine such skills in the workplace. The test was developed jointly by the B.C. Construction Industry Skills Improvement Council and Bow Valley College in Calgary, and it’s being used in eight CTHRC pilot projects before a full rollout. I’ve become involved in this important work, and I plan to give more time to it in the future. I’ll most definitely keep you posted.

In the meantime, I urge all of you in ownership or management to recognize just how big this problem is and then to attack it within your own companies by way of the many local resources you’ll find with a simple search. I’ll help with that in coming issues. A key thing to remember is that literacy is not fixed: it’s a “use-it-or-lose-it” sort of thing, and quite easy to develop. Which means that all is not yet lost.