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September 29, 2006
The Honourable Diane Finley Minister Human Resources and Social Development Canada 140 Promenade du Portage Place du Portage, Phase IV, 12th Floor Gatineau QC K1A 0J9
Dear Minister:
I am pleased to present to you the report on the Formative Evaluation (PDF, 1.02 MB) of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL). The evaluation was conducted by The Centre for Public Management Inc., with advice and guidance from an expert external advisory panel:
This report fulfils the requirement under Section 8.2 of the Funding Agreement between the Minister of State, Human Resources and Skills Development and the Canadian Council on Learning, as follows:
8.2 The Recipient [CCL] will have an independent third-party, approved by the Board, complete a formative evaluation within 30 months of the coming into force of this Funding Agreement [i.e. September 30, 2006].
I am pleased to note that the report confirms the success that CCL has achieved, in a very short space of time, in defining appropriate goals and objectives, creating an effective infrastructure, and designing and developing relevant products and activities.
As you know, CCL was created following a countrywide consultation on innovation. Leaders from all walks of Canadian life—education, business, labour, government, Aboriginal organizations and non-governmental organizations of many kinds—agreed that Canada must move beyond rhetoric about lifelong and life-broad learning. They wanted to see links among the various parts of our learning systems—a national roadmap for a culture of learning throughout an individual’s lifespan.
The Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) was created as a consequence of a grant from the Government of Canada in March 2004 to:
The scope of CCL’s activities encompasses the continuum of lifelong learning. This includes information about learning throughout all stages of life (childhood, youth, and adulthood), in many settings (home, classroom, community and workplace), and in different forms, from structured to self-directed learning and learning by doing.
CCL holds a unique position in the Canadian learning landscape, and fills a critical role. I have attached to this letter some notes that explore this “uniqueness” in more depth.
I am proud of the organization we have created, and of what we have accomplished to this point in time. We have assembled a skilled and dedicated staff of professionals who are committed to the vision and goals of CCL. We have established relationships with a number of provincial ministries of education, to provide research and analysis to support effective decision-making in priority areas. We have partnered with various learning organizations to promote effective research and knowledge exchange, through joint sponsorship of conferences on issues such as post-secondary education, students at risk and Aboriginal learning, to name only a few. To engage business and labour leaders in learning issues, we have instituted a series of roundtable discussions in cities across Canada.
We have created five knowledge centres across Canada, in five critical thematic areas:
The development conferences leading to the creation of these knowledge centres brought together over 500 different learning organizations, and the consortia created for each centre demonstrate CCL’s success in engaging groups from the ground up in its research, reporting and knowledge exchange activities.
CCL devoted much time to the development of the world’s first Composite Learning Index (CLI), which was released in May 2006. The index provides researchers, policy-makers and the general public with a comprehensive measurement of the state of learning across Canada—in the home, the classroom, the workplace and the community. The goal is to provoke discussion of how learning can help achieve our personal and societal goals.
We are in the final stages of creating and publishing the first comprehensive report on the State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada. This report and the CLI are the first of a series of core products that CCL will produce on an annual basis. These core products are just some of the many compelling and innovative initiatives that CCL is developing to fulfil its mandate to report on the state of learning and identify effective approaches to learning.
From my conversations with Canadians across the country, it is clear that people are engaging with the idea that continuous learning is the key to personal development, social cohesion and collective prosperity. I am proud of the unique and vital role that CCL is playing as we work toward our vision of being a catalyst for lifelong learning in Canada.
Sincerely,
Robert Giroux, Chair of the Board of Directors Paul Cappon, President and Chief Executive Officer
c.c. Ms. Janice Charette, Deputy Minister, HRSDC