Around 425,000 Quebecers would be trapped in a spiral of great vulnerability, while their socio-economic development would be hampered by limited income and insufficient basic skills.
This is what emerges from a study published by the Literacy Foundation and conducted by Quebec economist Pierre Langlois.
While the poverty rate had been declining since 2015 in Canada, and even more so in Quebec, and the overall educational profile was improving, since the COVID-19 pandemic the number of people in a situation of great vulnerability has increased again. on the rise.
“With 6.13% of its population aged 15 and over in a situation of great vulnerability and an upward trend, the spiral of precariousness will hold a growing number of Quebecers prisoner,” writes Pierre Langlois in his study.
“We see it visually because we can clearly see, in our respective neighborhoods, that the food counter is a little more crowded than in the past,” underlines Mr. Langlois in an interview with The Canadian Press. We also see it because, now, there are people setting up tents in certain areas, so we are starting to have visual symptoms of this crisis of vulnerability. »
The disparities are particularly large in Montreal, where the highest index of great precariousness is in the more modest borough of Montreal-Nord with 6.89%, while the lowest corresponds to the Ville-Marie-Ile- sector. des-Soeurs-Sud-Ouest, which displays 3.99%.
Across the province, the municipalities of La Tuque and Salaberry-de-Valleyfield share the sad record with an index of 7.37%.
Galloping inflation among the causes
The economist particularly blames galloping inflation, which has been eating into household budgets since 2021. However, the high vulnerability index operates on the basis of a vicious circle constituted by its two reference values: income security and literacy. The logic is therefore that “faced with a difficult life situation, the individual does not have the financial resources to begin a process of training or upgrading their skills and in doing so, they remain captive to the spiral”, explains Mr. Langlois.
And the problem is not to be taken lightly, because the question of literacy, reminds the economist, is too often schematized. “People will take the shortcut, namely that someone is illiterate or not,” underlines Mr. Langlois. Then in the news, there are somewhat sensationalist sites which will claim that one in two Quebecers is illiterate or functionally illiterate. But it’s more complex than that. »
Literacy levels take into account not only the ability to read and write, but also the ability to work from text and numerical data. There are therefore more people with low levels of literacy than we think. Pierre Langlois’ study reveals that 50.9% of Quebecers are below level 3 of PIAAC, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies.
Concretely, according to the grid of the Ministry of Education of Quebec, this means that these people are not or barely capable of “understanding dense or long texts and of reacting to them adequately, of understanding text structures and rhetorical processes , to identify, interpret or evaluate one or more pieces of information and to make appropriate inferences as well as to carry out operations involving multiple steps and to choose relevant data from competing information to determine and formulate answers. »
For comparison, Quebec, with its 50.9%, is seven percentage points below Ontario in PIAAC Level 3 literacy. But Ontario itself lags well behind the top-ranked countries of Japan, the Netherlands and Finland, where the percentage of the population below level 3 is below 40%.
A historic delay, but an improvement
Mr. Langlois nevertheless qualifies the case of Quebec. Because low literacy rates are concentrated among Quebec seniors, due to a historical delay, underlines the economist. He recalls that in 1965, according to federal statistics at the time, one in two Quebecers had neither a primary school diploma nor a high school diploma. Fortunately, “generational mixing means that we can hope that results will improve in Quebec,” argues Mr. Langlois.
According to him, only “structuring” external aid can break the vicious circle of great vulnerability. For households in very vulnerable situations who cannot obtain a first diploma, Mr. Langlois suggests forming “a shock team” linked to the Quebec employment department. Such a team “would bring to these vulnerable households an intervention plan that would support them financially and socially” so that these individuals could take the time to improve their basic skills and obtain the professional requalification that would get them out of the impasse. .
Among the possible solutions, he proposes in particular to set up an income support program, temporary access to social or affordable housing, community health and social pediatrics resources or even a skills upgrading program. basic which would lead to a secondary diploma or vocational training improving employability and salary expectations.
One of the keys is also, according to him, the fight against dropping out of school. “All of this effectively remains a Quebec national strategy, which must continue to be well financed,” insists Pierre Langlois. He maintains that we must keep young people in school as long as possible, “in particular [les] boys.”
“At the age of 16, there is a door that opens towards professional studies and often, it is boys who will take this path,” he explains. And as soon as we fall into professional studies, literacy, it becomes something that is absent. » He therefore maintains that professional training in Quebec could certainly be improved.
“Obtaining a high school diploma is not the only determining factor, but it is the first key to improving our results,” recalls Pierre Langlois. Where we have a leap [dans les] literacy results is with college attendance. »
The figures collected for his study show that a person with some form of secondary education in Quebec, in approximately 66% of cases, will still have literacy issues. “But when we add college attendance, we get results of around 40%,” explains Mr. Langlois.
A percentage of around 40% literacy at level 3 or higher places Quebec on the same level as the best nations in the world.
“In a perfect world, if the entire Quebec population had at least some form of college education, we would probably have literacy results that would be similar to the best nations in the world,” concludes the economist.