XI

End Notes

While this booklet focuses mainly on criminal cases and procedures, many of the insights and action suggestions included are equally applicable to the civil court system.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)/Statistics Canada, "Literacy, Economy and Society: Results of the First Adult Literacy Survey", OECD, Paris, France and Ministry of Industry, Ottawa, Canada, 1995.

The Canadian Bar Association Task Force Report, "Reading the Legal World: Literacy and Justice in Canada", The Canadian Bar Association, Ottawa, Ontario, August, 1992, p.52-53.

According to the 1990 Statistics Canada study on literacy, 38% of Canadians have some degree of difficulty with everyday reading and writing. The more recent International Adult Literacy Survey, released in Paris in December, 1995, shows that an even higher proportion of people in Canada (about 42%) do not have sufficient skills to cope with the everyday literacy demands of our society.

This estimate from a key researcher for International Adult Literacy Survey (cited in endnote 2), is based on the assumption that legal documents and legal procedures with their complex language, would only be understood by people at the two highest levels of literacy. The International Adult Literacy Survey divided the population into five levels of literacy in terms of Prose Literacy (the ability to understand and use information from printed texts); Document Literacy (the ability to locate and use information in various formats such as forms, schedules, maps, tables and graphics), and Quantitative Literacy (the ability to perform various math operations).