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This report provides provincial and territorial educational authorities with comparative Canadian information intended to support evaluation and planning for educational policy. Additionally, it compares Canada’s performance on literacy tests and its determinants with those of other countries. A primary reason for these comparisons is to attempt to reconcile inconsistent results from different surveys. The analyses use two international data sets that have developed standardised measures of literacy skills: the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the International Adult Literacy Skills Survey (IALSS). The former is used to assess the reading achievement of 15 year olds from surveys conducted in 2000 and 2003. The latter is used to assess the prose skills of youth between the ages of 16 and 24. The international comparisons are limited to countries that took part in both assessments, i.e. Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, and the USA.