Mélanie Valcin explains the risks that poor literacy rates introduce for families, communities, and Canada and how advisors can help address it
In 2024, 20 per cent of Canadian adults ranked in the two lowest levels on the OECD’s six point literacy scale assessing adult literacy. On September 8th, the government of Canada released Canadian results in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which found that in 2025 22 per cent of Canadian 15 year olds read at below their grade level. 26 per cent of Canadian 15 year olds have math and numeracy skills below their grade level. Those numbers are up from 18 and 22 per cent respectively in the last study conducted in 2022. Across the country the message is clear: literacy is poor and it’s getting worse.
Mélanie Valcin, President & CEO of United For Literacy in Montreal, is sounding the alarm. Valcin explained that as literacy has declined, the demands on individuals to rely on literacy skills as the navigate the world has increased. She highlighted how intimately numeracy is tied to literacy and how children and adults falling behind in these core skills should be viewed by the financial services industry as a critical and structural risk. She believes that advisors and financial services professionals can help to improve the state of Canadian literacy, because of an underlying moral imperative and because a more literate society benefits advisors.
“Literacy has always been essential, but it’s even more essential today because of the advent of AI, because we need digital and critical media literacy, because we’re facing a world where more decisions are made for you as we’re fed by an algorithm,” Valcin says. “Those core skills like numeracy, reading, and writing need to be even more sharp so we can interpret what’s being force-fed to us, decide if it’s credible, and build our skills on how we will use these technologies.”
Why Canadian literacy is flagging
Valcin says that the causes of declining literacy in Canada are myriad, but that lower literacy rates are disproportionately found among people of lower socioeconomic standing. Families stuck in the intergenerational cycle of poverty also suffer from a cycle of low literacy. People stretched by a lack of resources, a lack of time, and a lack of energy may struggle to provide their children with the educational supports necessary to advance their literacy.
Canada’s provincial public education systems are strong, Valcin says, but they are stretched by a need to be everything to everyone. Some students fall through the cracks, especially if they lack the additional support from their families and communities.
Those socioeconomic roots sit under layers of accreted technological changes that, if managed poorly, detract from reading, numeracy, and critical literacy skills. The long and deep attention spans required to engage with these practices and skills are exchanged for rapid stimulus from tech devices.
The worsening state of literacy isn’t just bad for the publishing and news industry. Valcin says that literacy should be described as “Big L literacy” and encompass a range of skills including numeracy, financial literacy, and critical media literacy. As that wider set of literacy skills decline, individuals, communities, and societies face greater risks. Individuals lose capacity to move up the socio-economic ladder and break the cycle of poverty. Communities lose civic participants and potential leaders. Societies lose the public engagement that keeps leaders accountable and economies responsive to public need. Advisors, Valcin says, lose the next generation of potential entrepreneurs, high earners, and clients.
Why advisors should care about literacy
“A lot of the young people that might be struggling in school right now because they have lower literacy and numeracy skills will still become adults that will enter the job market and might one day become a client,” Valcin says, when asked why advisors should pay attention to declining literacy rates.
Beyond the wider incentive of self-interest motivating advisors, Valcin also notes this profession’s love of giving back to the community and advisors’ unique capacity to show how numeracy and literacy can contribute to material success. She believes that advisors can help advance the cause of literacy in a few simple ways.
Valcin suggests that advisors’ work can begin with client families, introducing clients’ children to financial literacy skills and concepts. They can work with clients to develop those lessons and offer suggestions as to how parents can gradually make sure their children understand concepts like saving, spending, budgeting, and even taxation. She also suggests contacting local schools and teachers, partnering with them to deliver financial literacy lessons, especially to children in late elementary and middle school, who tend to be showing the greatest curiosity about finance and financial literacy.
These individual actions, Valcin says, can result in major positive impacts for individuals, communities, and society. Small as it may seem, she believes that advisors can begin to make a big difference.
“One person who teaches many will have an impact, now imagine what happens if many people start teaching” Valcin says. “If we always stop and ask what difference it makes to give one workshop, we’ll never change anything.”
