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Thank you for joining us this morning for the Forum on “Education and Training: A Primary Source of Sustainability.”
My name is Paul Cappon and I am President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Council on Learning. CCL was created to provide a strategic and pan-Canadian perspective on learning. Since our inception, we have been passionately engaged in finding ways to use the learning system to effect change—both in Canada and on a global scale.
When Jacques Delors outlined four pillars of learning in UNESCO’s ground-breaking study on learning for the 21st century, he provided a context in which we can analyze how learning applies to sustainable development. His four pillars are:
Learning to live together also implies learning to respect and value the environment which sustains us every day of our lives. In fact, we need to stop looking at sustainability as if it were only an environmental issue. Sustainable human development is the interrelationship of three ideals: the stewardship of our biosphere; the crafting of an economic paradigm that conserves the planet’s resources; and systems of human well-being where harmony with nature and harmony with one another are paramount concerns.
Bringing these three ideals together will not be easy, and our learning systems will play a key role. As UNESCO asserted in 1997, education is “the means for…bringing about desired changes in behaviours, values and lifestyles, and for promoting public support for the continuing and fundamental changes that will be required if humanity is to alter its course…Education, in short, is humanity’s best hope and most effective means to the quest to achieve sustainable human development.”
To achieve that goal, we need to reflect on the hard realities that face learning in the world today. Millions of people—young and old, in the North and in the South, men and women—have no access to any education, let alone to one that promotes a humanistic view of sustainability.
The sustainability of our learning systems involves more than questions of money or curriculum. It requires changing attitudes and highlighting new conditions that contribute to ensuring education for all within the context of sustainable human development. It must recognize the value of both the formal learning that takes place within our schools and the informal learning that takes place within our homes, our communities and our places of work.
When it comes to assessing whether we can marshal the forces of informal and formal learning to meet this challenge, I am an optimist. After all, there has been a marvelous explosion in our understanding of the learning process over the past decades. The accelerating momentum of this knowledge is similar to the revolution in modern communications technologies.
We can use our greater understanding of how people learn to promote sustainable behaviour and, at the same time, to support innovation and technological advancement. When we integrate the “learning to do” pillar with the “learning to live together” pillar, we create a structure that will support a new era in human development—one where we use innovation and technology to heal the planet’s wounds, rather than wound the planet further.
This morning, we have assembled a distinguished panel to look at various aspects of education and training as a source of sustainability.
The Introduction to this session will be made by Angel Gurría who, since 2006, has served as Secretary General of the OECD. Prior to this, Señor Gurría served as Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance and Public Credit. As OECD Secretary-General, he has reinforced the OECD's role as a ‘hub” for global dialogue and debate on economic policy issues while pursuing internal modernization and reform. Under his leadership, OECD has agreed to open membership talks with Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Slovenia and to strengthen links with other major emerging economies, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa, with a view to possible membership.
Señor Gurría is an active participant in various international not-for-profit bodies. Here in Canada, for example, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of Governors of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and he was the first recipient of the Canadian International Council’s Globalist of the Year Award.
Following Señor Gurría’s introductory remarks, we will hear from three exceptional speakers.
Professor Lucie Sauvé holds the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Education at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she is emerging as one of the international leaders in environmental education. As Director of a major training and research project called Environmental Education in the Amazon, she is at the centre of a network of researchers linking her university with universities in Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia. In collaboration with institutions in Belgium, France, Mali, and Haiti, she launched a research journal and developed an international distance education program for graduate studies in environmental education.
We are also joined by the Honourable Madeleine Meilleur, the Ontario Government’s Minister of Community and Social Services and Minister responsible for Francophone Affairs. Minister Meilleur was first elected to the Ontario legislature in 2003 and has served in Cabinet since that time. In her current Community and Social Services portfolio she contributed to the development of the Ontario Child Benefit Program. She is both a registered nurse and a lawyer specializing in labour and employment law. She has received several awards including the United Way’s 2001 Community Builder Award and the 2002 Prix d’Excellence given by the Réseau socio-action des femmes francophones for her dedicated work within the community.
Our final speaker this morning is Christine Ockrent, Chief Executive of France Monde, the French television and radio world service. One of France's most respected journalists, Ms. Ockrent was the only journalist granted an interview with Saddam Hussein in the middle of the Gulf War. She began her career at NBC news and worked for eight years at the CBS current affairs program 60 Minutes. In addition, she has served as editor-in-chief of the weekly newsmagazine "L'Express" and as editor-in-chief of and anchor of current affairs programs on France 3 television.
Ms. Ockrent is on the board of International Crisis Group (ICG), the French Council on Foreign Relations (IFRI), the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the Center for European Reform (CER), Human Rights Watch France, Reporters sans frontières and the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. A graduate of the Institut d'études politiques in Paris, Ms. Ockrent also studied at Cambridge University.
I would now like to invite Señor Gurría to make his introductory remarks.
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