One day, a new piece of machinery landed on the shop floor. His supervisor tossed him the instruction manual and said, "It's supposed to be a lot faster than the old machine. I don't have time to show you how it works -- read the manual and get busy. We need 10 units finished and out the door by Friday."

The reason [MIKE] tossed the safety manual aside was that he couldn't read it. He represents one of the 753,000 Albertans who do not have the literacy skills needed to function fully in today's knowledge-based economy. Sure, Mike could read basic words, but he didn't have the literacy skills necessary to comprehend the instruction manual for a sophisticated piece of machinery.

The first relates to labour shortages. The province is desperately short of workers, yet no one seemed to notice that 143 were killed in job-related accidents, some of them due to illiteracy. If they had possessed the reading comprehension skills to understand the safety manuals, some of those 143 workers might be alive today. The province is looking to bring in thousands of overseas workers to help fill the gaps. Immigrant workers are certainly a part of the solution for Alberta, but shouldn't keeping the existing workers alive and healthy be a solution, too?