ABSTRACT
Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) is the primary national agency that implements federal policy intended to build an educated, skilled and flexible workforce so Canada can prosper nationally and globally. In its current iteration, HRSDC, which has frequently liaised with the OECD on lifelong-learning policy development, has subsumed two former agencies: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Social Development Canada. In keeping with the public to private shift in responsibility for lifelong learning, HRSDC’s goal is to create citizens who are more self-reliant, self-sufficient and adaptable workers who take responsibility for their own learning. This emphasis on individualism, coupled with a primary emphasis on economic productivity, abets more education for the already educated and affluent. This is having a major influence on postsecondary education, which has increasingly focused on learners ‘being equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a globally competitive economy’ (Canadian Council on Learning 2007: 2). However, the uneducated, the undereducated, the underemployed, the unemployed, the poor and others underserved within a neoliberal approach to lifelong learning, are left to experience nihilism; that is, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. For them, the quest to find a more secure and decent life seems ethereal as they struggle to attain educational access and accommodation, and a way to prosperity. In the contemporary Canadian learning milieu, lifelong learning is cast as both a necessity for economic advancement and a preventative measure so workers can keep up with learning-and-work cycles (Grace 2007). To keep workers updated in knowledge and skills, learning and work are conjoined, seeking dynamic equilibrium in a world where much of lifelong learning is about controlling workers (ibid.).
