Social Policy and Practice in Canada

Alvin Finkel

Description

Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History traces the history of social policy in Canada from the period of First Nations’ control to the present day, exploring the various ways in which residents of the area known today as Canada have organized themselves to deal with (or to ignore) the needs of the ill, the poor, the elderly, and the young.

This book is the first synthesis on social policy in Canada to provide a critical perspective on the evolution of social policy in the country. While earlier work has treated each new social program as a major advance, and reacted with shock to neoliberalism’s attack on social programs, Alvin Finkel demonstrates that right-wing and left-wing forces have always battled to shape social policy in Canada. He argues that the notion of a welfare state consensus in the period after 1945 is misleading, and that the social programs developed before the neoliberal counteroffensive were far less radical than they are sometimes depicted.

Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History begins by exploring the non-state mechanisms employed by First Nations to insure the well-being of their members. It then deals with the role of the Church in New France and of voluntary organizations in British North America in helping the unfortunate. After examining why voluntary organizations gradually gave way to state-controlled programs, the book assesses the evolution of social policy in Canada in a variety of areas, including health care, treatment of the elderly, child care, housing, and poverty.

Sujets

• Social policy
• History of Canada
• Multiculturalism
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 09 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554588862
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Social Policy and Practice in Canada A HISTORY
Social Policy and Practice in Canada A HISTORY
ALVIN FINKEL
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Finkel, Alvin, 1949-
Social policy and practice in Canada : a history / Alvin Finkel.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 10: 0-88920-475-6. ISBN 13: 978-0-88920-475-1
1. Canada-Social policy. 2. Public welfare-Canada-History. 3. Welfare state-Canada-History. I. Title.
HV108.F56 2006 361.6 10971 C2006-901185-0
Cover and text design by Sandra Friesen. The cover photograph of an unemployment demonstration in Edmonton, Alberta, was taken in October 1933 by McDermid Studio. The photograph is being used with permission from the Glenbow Museum Archives.
2006 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Fourth printing 2011

Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1-800-893-5777.
For Ann, Antony, Kieran
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION Studying Social Policy
PART 1 Non-State Provision (The Pre-Confederation Period)
CHAPTER 1 First Peoples and Social Needs
CHAPTER 2 New France: The Church, the State, and Feudal Obligations
CHAPTER 3 British North America and the Poor Law
PART 2 Beyond the Poor Law: Canada, 1867-1950
CHAPTER 4 Early Canada: Continuity and Change, 1867-1914
CHAPTER 5 War, Depression, and Social Policy: 1914-39
CHAPTER 6 Paradise Postponed, 1939-50: The Second World War and Its Aftermath
PART 3 The Welfare State, 1950-80
CHAPTER 7 Social Policy and the Elderly, 1950-80
CHAPTER 8 The Medicare Debate, 1945-80
CHAPTER 9 The Child Care Debate, 1945-80
CHAPTER 10 Housing and State Policy, 1945-80
CHAPTER 11 Anti-Poverty Struggles, 1945-80
PART 4 Neo-Liberalism
CHAPTER 12 The Welfare State since 1980
CHAPTER 13 The New Millennium and Social Policy Directions
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Acknowledgements
This book tries both to narrate and analyze the history of social policy in Canada from pre-contact times to the present, integrating the extensive existing literature on the period before the 1930s with mostly primary research on the period since 1930. It has been the product of over a decade s work. Along the way, I have been helped by the insights and willingness to read my writing of a variety of people, including Harold Chorney, Philip Hansen, Shirley Tillotson, Georgina Taylor, Bryan Palmer, Mark Goldblatt, and Ann Goldblatt. The three anonymous reviewers for the publisher also made a valuable contribution to the final product. Steve Boddington provided research assistance. The archivists at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the Archives of Ontario, the Provincial Archives of Alberta, the British Columbia Archives, and the library staff at the LAC, the University of Alberta, and the Alberta Legislature Library have all been very helpful in finding materials that I might otherwise have missed. Of course, I take sole responsibility for any deficiencies in the final product, but would like to share credit for anything that might be worthwhile in these pages.
Among those who also deserve credit are the anonymous reviewers of articles and book chapters on social welfare that I have published over the years. Two of the chapters in this book are largely based on earlier journal articles of mine. I thank the editors of Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Soci t historique du Canada for their permission to make use of my article Paradise Postponed: A Re-examination of the Green Book Proposals of 1945, which appeared in New Series , 4 (1993): 120-42; and the editors of Labour/Le Travail for their permission to copy large parts of my article Even the Little Children Cooperated: Family Strategies, Child care Discourse, and Social Welfare Debates 1945-1975, which appeared in 36 (Fall 1995): 91-118. The former forms the basis of chapter 7 of this book, the latter of chapter 10 . Though the rest of this work represents original writing, readers may catch a glimpse of materials and ideas from the following articles, among others: The State of Writing on the Canadian Welfare State: What s Class Got to Do with It? Labour/Le Travail 54 (Fall 2004): 151-74; Welfare for Whom? Class, Gender, and Race in Social Policy, Labour/Le Travail 49 (Spring 2002): 247-61; Changing the Story: Gender Enters the History of the Welfare State, Tijdschrift voor sociale geschiedenis 22, 1 (1996): 67-81; Trade Unions and the Welfare State in Canada, 1945-1990, chapter 3 in Cy Gonick, Paul Phillips, and Jesse Viorst, eds., Labour Gains, Labour Pains: Fifty Years of PC 1003 (Halifax: Fernwood, 1995): 59-77; Social Programs, the West and the Constitution, in James McCrorie and Martha L. Macdonald, eds., The Constitutional Future of the Prairie and Atlantic Regions of Canada (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1992): 167-80; and Origins of the Welfare State in Canada, in Leo Panitch, ed., The Canadian State (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977): 344-70.
Funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a Standard Research Grant from 1991 to 1994, along with research grants from the Academic Research Fund at Athabasca University, made it possible to travel to archives outside of my home base in Edmonton and to employ a research assistant. Athabasca University also provided one sabbatical for the research and another for the writing of this work. Several secretaries at the university during this period, particularly Myrna Nolan and Sandra Davidson, have assisted me in various ways with keeping track of materials.
The editors at Wilfrid Laurier University Press have contributed a great deal to this book. I wish to thank Brian Henderson, Jacqueline Larson, Beth McAuley, and Carroll Klein for their input. Thanks also to Cheryl Lemmens, who prepared the index.
INTRODUCTION Studying Social Policy
A PPROACH AND S TRUCTURE OF THIS B OOK
This book surveys the evolution of social policies in Canada from the period of Aboriginal occupation to the present. It focuses on how the residents of what is today Canada have, at various periods, attempted to care for the unfortunate in their midst. While other social policies are referred to from time to time, the main focus is on care of the destitute, the ill, the elderly, and the young.
Such policies cannot be studied without an appreciation of the larger social context in which they have evolved. The book s focus is on the social values that have predominated in various periods and the struggles over social values that have led to change. This leads to an emphasis on social class, gender, and race/ethnicity as factors in social development in Canada. The book interrogates reforms closely to determine who benefited from the particular design of social policies or from the ways in which the program was implemented. A key concern throughout is the role of social struggles in shaping outcomes.
Part 1 , Non-State Provision ( chapters 1 to 3 ), assesses various periods before Confederation, each different but characterized by a reliance primarily upon the charitable or private provision of social assistance. Part 2 , Beyond the Poor Law ( chapters 4 to 6 ), covers the period from 1867 to 1950 and studies the factors that influenced broad social acceptance of a welfare state. Parts 1 and 2 are largely chronological, demonstrating emerging social trends in various periods. Chapters 1 to 4 are based primarily on secondary sources, reflecting an extensive Canadian literature. Chapters 5 and 6 , by contrast, rely more on primary research, as do the chapters in Part 3 .
Part 3 , The Welfare State ( chapters 7 to 11 ), discusses the years between 1945 and 1980, the period that witnessed the greatest progressive social experimentation in Canada. This is the era that we associate with the establishment of the Keynesian welfare state, a period in which social programs came to dominate state activities. Part 3 attempts to evaluate critically the evolution of a large number of these programs, with a focus on how they affected the distribution of wealth and power in Canada. A chronological approach here might emphasize how much more dynamic this period was for social program development than the period covered in Part 2 , but it might easily degenerate into a positivist catalogue of state achievements. Instead, I have chosen to assess policy areas in separate chapters, and to demonstrate in this manner the limits as much as the achievements of social policy-making in the period often viewed as the welfare state period.
Part 4 , Neo-Liberalism ( chapters 12 and 13 ), analyzes the decline of the postwar Keynesian welfare state and the rise of neo-liberal notions of the relationship of states and