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Thank you for joining us today to celebrate the launch of the Canadian Council on Learning’s Work and Learning Knowledge Centre, one of five Knowledge Centres that CCL is creating across Canada. The other Knowledge Centres will focus on aboriginal learning, early childhood learning, adult learning and health and learning.
CCL was created following extensive national consultations that identified the importance of lifelong learning in today’s knowledge-based society and economy. 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 called for better links among the various parts of our learning systems — a national roadmap for learning throughout an individual’s lifespan.
People also wanted to know what educational models and practices work well, and which do not — in Canada and abroad — so that they could make informed choices about learning. Both business and labour saw a need for national perspectives, national solutions, to issues of workplace learning, in order to create the conditions for innovation and productivity.
That is why the task which drives us on at CCL is that of making a real difference to the learning lives of Canadians.
But learning is not just about innovation and productivity; learning plays a key role in personal development, social participation and social cohesion.
CCL will examine learning issues from a wide range of perspectives. Our approach is based on a model of collaboration. CCL will partner with all levels of government, learning institutions, non-governmental organisations and learners to enhance existing networks, skills and organizations. The vision of CCL is to link Canadians from all regions in sharing learning experiences and promoting the enhancement of learning as a core value of a distinctive Canadian society.
Our work is, of course, about public policy in that vast field of human endeavour we call learning. This carries importance well beyond policy makers and researchers. Public policy is for the public: we need to address issues in ways which people can understand and use; we need to make a difference to people in communities; and to put research to use in daily practice.
Yes, we want practices and policy in education to be evidence and research based, but we also want practice-based research.
We are also a proudly pan-Canadian organization. We will link residents of this country across regions, languages, cultures and generations in relation to one of the central dimensions of our collective value system: education.
Our interest in national perspectives comes from our belief that the learning progress of some depends largely on the progress of all: this country needs a national learning framework in order for its regions, provinces and territories to succeed. From our study of pan-Canadian issues will emerge the national solutions that are fundamental to a distinctive Canadian society.
Certainly, as we speak of the importance of lifelong learning, learning in the workplace is an obvious theme for CCL to pursue. In today’s knowledge-based economy and society, Canadians cannot afford to stop learning once they leave the formal education system. And businesses also cannot afford a workforce that is not evolving – they need workers who are able to rise to the challenges of an increasingly competitive international economy.
A recent OECD report found that Canada has the highest overall level of formal education attained among the countries surveyed, which included the UK and the US. This base of well-educated young people should put Canadians in a good position for the knowledge economy.
However, the same OECD report showed that Canadian firms invest less in workplace training than do their counterparts in the UK, the US and the Nordic countries, so we risk losing our early advantage. The report cites both the absence of a strong tradition of workplace training and the predominance of small business in Canada as possible reasons for our mediocre performance in this area.
The development conference that CCL convened in June of this year brought together the full range of players in workplace learning – employers, labour, researchers, policy makers and educators – who developed their own list of challenges that the Work and Learning Knowledge Centre must try to address:
The list of research priorities identified at the conference was no less daunting, ranging from how to deal with the changing nature of work and the changing nature of the next generation of workers, to better approaches to accreditation and how to develop more effective content and methods to enhance workers’ skills and ingenuity. There is no shortage of issues to address; the challenge will be to identify and focus on those issues that will offer better opportunities for employees and better outcomes for employers.
Today is the exhilarating day when we can say that we at last have the means at our disposal actually to do something about all that – and to do it in ways which will bring us all into close and fruitful working relationships.
I believe that the consortium that will lead the Work and Learning Knowledge Centre is well situated to address those challenges and the complex interfaces and interactions between learning and work.
With over 50 members who represent every facet of work-related learning, the Canadian Centre for Labour and Business has put together a powerful force that can be the much-needed catalyst to promote more effective learning in the workplace and ensure that Canadians have the skills and ingenuity to maintain a high quality of life in the coming century.
I am delighted by the high calibre and dedication of the consortium members that have come together under the leadership of Shirley Seward. Shirley has worked tirelessly in building the consortium, in selling the promise of the knowledge centre, and in generating excitement, enthusiasm and support among key players in business, labour, academe and the community.
To create this Knowledge Centre, CCL initiated a process that called for the formation of a consortium of interested partners. Ontario was the obvious choice of the location of this centre given its role as the industrial heartland of the nation. That being said, the centre will serve as a national resource, linking key players across the country.
The consortium represents a wide cross-section of researchers, educators and practitioners in the field of work and learning, with expertise across the full spectrum of activities from prior learning assessment to literacy.
I again want to underline how impressed I have been from the very beginning with the collegial, effective and determined network that evolved to bring forward the successful proposal for the Work and Learning Knowledge Centre. It has been a model for all of Canada.
And what a wonderful model it is – and what an engaged, talented and diverse group you are, who have assembled to celebrate this moment with us. It is you and your colleagues from across the land who will provide the pan-Canadian leadership required to make the CCL’s Work and Learning Knowledge Centre the indisputable national network of reference that is so badly needed.
Collectively, the consortium represents precisely that scope and breadth, that expertise and commitment which we dared hope to be able to bring to coalescence in all five Knowledge Centres, and that I believe will have such a profound impact on learning policies and practices in this country.
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