CCL Home > About CCL > Corporate Reports
When CCL was established following the national Innovation Summit in November 2002, it was announced in response to widespread shared views that it was required to occupy a unique space in the Canadian programmatic and political scene. A vast array of organizations and individuals considered that a strategic pan-Canadian effort was required in the context of the social and economic imperatives of a knowledge society, an effort that was not being initiated by existing institutions in this country.
In conceiving, therefore, the model, structure and activities of CCL, its leadership sought to consider a series of related questions: What is it that no other organization can or is doing, or is likely to do? How can CCL create value in a space that has been problematic because clear pan-Canadian responsibility cannot be taken by existing institutions and governments? How can CCL use its unique character within that space to act as an enabler for continuous learning?
It followed from these questions that assessment of the success of CCL would ultimately need to evaluate the degree to which the organization had made a powerful difference. For example, is CCL accomplishing important things that otherwise would not be done? Are these things critical to the future of learning in Canada, and more generally, to the future of a distinctive Canadian society?
From these reflections, in considering its future, CCL asks itself: “What else do we need to put in place that will optimise the utilisation of this unique function to make a difference, add value, and make a singular contribution to pan-Canadian learning?”
When the incoming CEO met for the first time with the Board of CCL in October 2004, he put eight strategic questions to himself and to the Board, questions whose answers would require consistency with the view that CCL must create value by unique contributions that no other institution in Canada could make. The responses to these eight strategic questions helped to shape the organization and to increase the likelihood that it would make a powerful contribution to continuous learning. In articulating here the questions and summarising the responses, CCL indicates how that shape flows directly from the concepts and principles that align with its unique character and position.
Response: CCL acts as catalyst and enabler of continuous learning in Canada. As such, it provides the evidence for public consideration of learning issues; but does not engage in policy prescriptions or in educational programming—since these are already facets in the purview of governments, employers, unions, parents, and communities.
However, CCL does have a responsibility to help create a space for consideration of the impact of its evidence for policy and programming; and it does so by mobilizing expertise, together with the leadership of civil society. Its premise is that pan-Canadian leadership in learning policy and programming in an educational milieu as dispersed as that in Canada will emerge from civil society as much as from government.
A second attribute to the vision of CCL is the pan-Canadian linking of citizens through a shared valuing of learning. Inter-generational, inter-ethnic, and geographic connections among Canadians through learning have powerful potential for enhancing a sense of national distinctiveness.
Top
Response:
Response: CCL is unique in having a national and independent emphasis on learning outcomes where those outcomes refer to learning in its broadest lifelong and life-wide sense. It will organize key learning issues into groups or compartments that can be analysed. This allows it actually to produce real conclusions and lessons, and to emphasize outcomes and results, not inputs or process. At the same time, it will recognize the complex interaction of different aspects of learning across the country and across the lifecycle.
Response: CCL is unique in having a national and independent focus. Limited resources and a strategic view of its mission dictate that it focus on the most significant pan-Canadian learning issues. These issues will often correspond to our most significant weaknesses in the learning field. CCL must also emphasize domains in learning that might not otherwise be reported, analyzed, and improved—it must do what might otherwise not be done, or not be done sufficiently.
Within each segment or theme of its activity, CCL must also be strategic, selecting for its work those issues that most require public attention and intervention—areas in which improvement would make a very positive difference to Canadian society. Issues and domains that can be tackled nationally by others will not be duplicated by CCL.
Response: Each of the five domains identified by CCL for particular emphasis is either considered by developed countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as an emerging determinant of a knowledge society and economy, or (in the case of Aboriginal learning) as a historic weakness in Canadian learning efforts.
Formal education (K-12 and post-secondary education) is not identified as a weakness in Canadian learning. It is also the area in which provincial/territorial governments and their collective organizations deploy most of their effort. For these reasons, it is not emphasized in the work of CCL. However, CCL must report on outcomes in these domains, as an essential part of its monitoring function. Indeed, such independent reporting on degree of attainment of national goals in formal education is an important added value of CCL.
Response: CCL must strike an appropriate and creative balance between the advantages of a distributed educational model and its central accountability for optimising use of public funds and for making a powerful difference to Canadian learning. This balance is achieved through several mechanisms.
First, the creation and support of national knowledge centres (KCs) that are led from each of Canada’s five regions makes optimal use of regional interest, expertise, and engagement with learning. Each KC has an appropriate degree of autonomy in establishing national communities of interest for one of the five CCL key learning themes; but financial accountability is centralised. Because each KC is governed through both regional and national participatory processes, this model maximises the possibility that Canadians will act—through policy and practice—on the evidence that CCL provides. As a result, CCL avoids the pitfall of being a mere “think-tank”. Instead, its support for its KCs acts as an enabler and agent of change and progress without unnecessary centralised CCL control.
Second, the functions of Research and of Monitoring and Reporting, although supported by the expertise of CCL’s five KCs, are centrally managed. This allows for consistency of emphasis, of analysis, and of reporting. It also allows for national peer review processes for all research that is supported by CCL.
Third, the model allows CCL to draw the links among its learning themes located in the KCs, by establishing “cross-cutting issues” that touch on all five KCs and on all aspects of learning. These are: culture, gender, e-learning, literacy, and francophone-minority settings.
The creative balance established by CCL is uniquely Canadian. It allows for a decentralised educational model to become an advantage in national thinking out of directions for a distinctive Canadian learning culture.
Response: The leadership of CCL has always been completely aware of the political dynamics of Canadian education. Rather than to attempt to alter these, CCL focuses on its mission and mandate, and specifically on the task of adding value in a space that has been problematic. The principal elements of the CCL response to this political dynamic are these:
Response: CCL must build a structure and team that entirely reflects its principles and foci. The following are the key elements of this structure and team.