Literacy practitioners used to have access to a once robust national adult literacy knowledge infrastructure: activities that generated research on adult literacy practices and learners, ensured that the knowledge was widely shared and that it was housed and preserved for future use. The federal (Canadian) government played a crucial role in creating and maintaining that knowledge infrastructure, but over time its role has been significantly reduced.

This paper argues that, to provide literacy practitioners with the tools to do their work effectively, the federal government should play a leading role in reinstating that knowledge infrastructure, and makes several recommendations for how to achieve this.