| The following list of links is not in
any particular order. It's a collection of resources from a number of Canadian Social Research Links pages. I thought it would be helpful to have a central location for all of these texts. Gilles |
Related pages on this site: - Go to the Canada Assistance Plan / Canada
Health and Social Transfer / Canada Social Transfer Resources page:
- Go to the Welfare and Welfare Reforms in
Canada page:
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The Canada Social Transfer: Retrospect
and Prospect (Word 2007 file - 242K, 15 pages)
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net//CST_2011.docx
By James Gauthier
14 July 2011
The structure of major federal transfers for provincial/territorial social
programs has undergone significant changes over the years, primarily in
response to the desire among provincial/territorial governments for greater
flexibility and federal concerns over rising costs. This paper provides
an overview of how federal support for social programs is provided to provinces
and territories today through the CST, and how this fiscal arrangement has
evolved over time, including its associated accountability mechanisms. The
paper concludes with a presentation of some likely key issues for renewal
of the CST, along with a description of the process of FPT negotiations
for major federal transfers, as well as an example of a more targeted federal
transfer to provinces and territories in support of housing and homelessness.
Source:
Library of Parliament Research Publications
http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/Library/VirtualLibrary/ResearchPublications-E.asp
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From Mothers' Allowance to Mothers Need
Not Apply:
Canadian Welfare Laws as Liberal and Neo-Liberal Reforms (PDF -
240K, 39 pages)
http://ohlj.ca/english/documents/02GaviganChunnafterSS.pdf
April 2008
By Shelley Gavigan and Dorothy Chunn
In this paper we examine changes in the form and content of Canadian welfare
law through a historical, feminist lens using the exemplar of mother-headed
families. Our analysis of how the state dealt with sole support mothers
in several provinces throughout the twentieth century reveals important
continuities, as well as discontinuities, between the past and the present
that have shaped and reshaped the lives and experiences of poor women and
their children.
Source:
Osgoode Hall Law Journal (Vol. 45 No. 4)
http://www.ohlj.ca/
Journal Current Issue + Archives
http://www.ohlj.ca/english/current.htm
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From The Canadian Encyclopedia:
Social
Security
- from the Colonial Era to the demise of the Canada Assistance Plan in the
mid-1990s
By Dennis Guest
Social security denotes public programs intended to maintain, protect and
raise basic living standards. Specifically the term covers publicly financed
and administered programs that replace income that has been lost because
of pregnancy, illness, accident, disability, the death or absence of a family's
breadwinner, unemployment, old age or retirement, or other factors.
- incl. links to:
* The History of Social Security in Canada * Renewing Canada's Social Programs
* Suggested Reading * Links to Other Sites
Source:
The Canadian Encyclopedia
The full text of The Canadian Encyclopedia and its related resources has
been made available online by the Historica Foundation as a public service
since 1999. Since its publication in book form in 1985, The Canadian Encyclopedia
has provided the most comprehensive, objective and accurate source of information
on Canada for students, readers and scholars across Canada and throughout
the world.
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From the
National Council of Welfare (NCW):
Over the years, the Council has produced many reports on poverty and welfare, but there are three that stand out in my mind as milestone reports on the history of welfare in Canada, at least since the 1980s.
1.
Welfare
in Canada: The Tangled Safety Net (PDF - 2.7MB, 131 pages)
November 1987
Tangled Safety Net examines the following issues in Canadian social
assistance network of programs:
* Complex rules * Needs-testing * Rates of assistance * Enforcement * Appeals
* Recommendations
This report is the first comprehensive national analysis of social assistance
programs operated by the provincial, territorial and municipal governments.
These programs function as the safety net for Canadians and are better known
by their everyday name ‘welfare’.
Version française :
Le
bien-être social au Canada : Un filet de sécurité troué
(PDF - 3Mo., 138 pages)
Novembre 1987
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2.
Welfare
Reform (PDF - 2.8MB, 61 pages)
Summer 1992
This report is an update of the 1987 Tangled Safety Net, but it presents
information by jurisdiction rather than by issue - covers all provinces
and territories.
Version française:
Réforme
du bien-être social (PDF - 3,5Mo., 63 pages)
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3.
Another
Look at Welfare Reform (PDF - 6.75MB, 134 pages)
Autumn 1997
- an in-depth analysis of changes in Canadian welfare programs in the 1990s.
The report focuses on the provincial and territorial reforms that preceded
the repeal of the Canada Assistance Plan and those that followed the implementation
of the Canada Health and Social Transfer in April 1996.
Version française:
Un
autre regard sur la réforme du bien-être social
(PDF - 8Mo., 148 pages)
Source:
National Council of Welfare
[ Conseil national
du bien-être social ]
Established in 1969, the Council is an advisory group to the Minister of
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (originally the Minister of
Health and Welfare Canada). The mandate of the Council is to advise the
Minister regarding any matter relating to social development that the Minister
may refer to the Council for its consideration or that the Council considers
appropriate.
NOTE : In addition to the above snapshots of welfare in Canada from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the National Council of Welfare website also includes a series of annual reports on estimated annual welfare incomes of four typical household types in Canada from 1986 to 2010. The Welfare Incomes reports also contain detailed information on adequacy of welfare incomes and on the treatment of assets and income in each provincial and territorial social assistance program, going back to 1986.
Also from theNational Council of Welfare:
Number of People on Welfare, March 1995 to March 2005 (PDF file - 133K, 1 page)
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Canada Assistance Plan (CAP)
Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST)
Canada Social Transfer (CST)
Canada Social Transfer
http://www.fin.gc.ca/fedprov/cst-eng.asp
(...) The CST is calculated on an equal per capita cash basis to reflect
the Government’s commitment to ensure that general-purpose transfers
provide equal support for all Canadians. Prior to that, the CST was calculated
on an equal per capita basis combining the value of both tax and cash
transfers.
History of the Health and Social Transfers
(Finance Canada)
http://www.fin.gc.ca/fedprov/his-eng.asp
Source:
Federal Transfers to Provinces and Territories
http://www.fin.gc.ca/access/fedprov-eng.asp
Department of Finance Canada:
http://www.fin.gc.ca/fin-eng.asp
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The Canada Social Transfer: Retrospect
and Prospect (Word 2007 file - 242K, 15 pages)
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net//CST_2011.docx
By James Gauthier
14 July 2011
The structure of major federal transfers for provincial/territorial social
programs has undergone significant changes over the years, primarily in
response to the desire among provincial/territorial governments for greater
flexibility and federal concerns over rising costs. This paper provides
an overview of how federal support for social programs is provided to provinces
and territories today through the CST, and how this fiscal arrangement has
evolved over time, including its associated accountability mechanisms. The
paper concludes with a presentation of some likely key issues for renewal
of the CST, along with a description of the process of FPT negotiations
for major federal transfers, as well as an example of a more targeted federal
transfer to provinces and territories in support of housing and homelessness.
Source:
Library of Parliament Research Publications
http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/Library/VirtualLibrary/ResearchPublications-E.asp
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The 1967-68 Annual Report of the Canada Assistance Plan also offers some historical perspectives on welfare programs going back to the Old Age Pensions Act of 1927
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The Evolution of the Canada Assistance
Plan (CAP)
1985
By John E. Osborne
This is a copy of the 21-page Appendix to the 1985 Nielsen Task Force
report on the Canada Assistance Plan. It's an insider's view of
the first 20 years of CAP and its historical precedents. It was written
by an official of the federal Department of Health and Welfare (the "home"
of CAP) at the time, it includes a gold mine of historical information
on Canadian social programs of last resort in the twentieth century.
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"No sooner had CAP been launched
than the Minister of Finance proposed, in September 1966, that it
be terminated. In a statement to the Tax Structure Committee, he
offered to terminate it as of March 31, 1970, and to replace it
with a combination of tax abatement, equalization payments and adjustment
grants unrelated to program costs."
From The Evolution of the Canada Assistance Plan By John E. Osborne, in the Nielsen Task Force Report on CAP (1985) |
The Canada Assistance Plan: A Twenty
Year Assessment, l966-l986 (~23 printed pages with graphs and
tables)
Allan Moscovitch
Carleton University
January 1988
This excellent critical analysis of CAP's first twenty years
provides detailed information about programs that preceded CAP and about
the inner workings of the administration of CAP.
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Provincial
and Municipal Social Assistance Programs
(8 printed pages)
March 1996
The source of this file is the Inventory of Income Security Programs
in Canada (Health & Welfare Canada, multiple editions from 1984
to 1993). This is a version of the Overview/Introduction to the chapter
on social assistance (or welfare) that's been updated to 1996, just before
the Canada Assistance Plan was replaced by the Canada Health and Social
Transfer.There's a snapshot of how welfare operated in 1996, and you'll
find that some of the rules haven't changed that much since then. There's
also some interesting information on this page about the Federal-Provincial
Agreements to Enhance the Employability of Social Assistance Recipients
(mid-to-late 1980s), known in federal-provincial government circles as "the
Four-Corner Agreements."
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Government
transfer payments to persons
On this one table, you'll find the latest five years' worth of information
on national expenditures (provincial stats available for a small fee) in
the area of transfers to persons, which includes (among other programs):
* Family and youth allowances * Child tax benefit
or credit * Pensions - First and Second World Wars * War veterans' allowances
* Grants to aboriginal persons and organizations * Goods and services tax
credit * Employment insurance benefits * Old Age Security Fund payments
* Provincial Social assistance, income maintenance * Social assistance,
other [bolding added] * Workers compensation benefits * Canada and Quebec
Pension Plans.
NOTE: In case you're interested in province-level stats, click the "384-0009"
link under 'Source' at the bottom of the table. There you can obtain more
specialized CANSIM tables, including provincial tables, for a few dollars
each. The "Find information related to this table" link (which
is also at the bottom of the StatCan table) contains methodological notes
and other related StatCan products, many of which are free of charge.
Source:
Statistics
Canada
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Dorothea
Crittenden: Canada's first woman deputy minister
reformed welfare and social assistance
December 24, 2008
Obituary
By Gay Abbate
"(...) Dorothea Crittenden was a trailblazer who devoted her life to
helping build Ontario's welfare system. She was also a key player in the
creation of the Canada Assistance Plan, a federal-provincial cost-sharing
plan that guarantees all Canadians equal access to social assistance."
As a rule, I don't include links to obituaries on my site
or in my newsletter. In this case, however, I've made an exception based
on the valuable historical insights that I've found in the obituary, and
moreso in the paper below by John Stapleton, and that I wanted to share
with Canadian social historians --- more pieces of the puzzle, as it were...
[...and no, I won't link to your Aunt Bertha's obituary. Don't even ask.]
The above obituary by Gay Abbate appeared in The Globe
and Mail on December 23, and it's based in part on information provided
by Dr. Crittenden in the course of interviews with John Stapleton in 1991.
The content of those interviews appears in the paper below, which provides
valuable historical information about Canadian social policy from the Depression
to the mid-1970's when she was Ontario's Deputy Minister of Community and
Social Services. Of particular interest to Canadian social historians, I'm
sure, will be sections like * What Ontario gave up for CAP * Project 500
in the 1970s * the cap on CAP (I should note that the cap on CAP was in
the early 1990s and not the 1980s, as noted in the above obituary. John's
paper has the correct info on that.)
Source:
Open Policy (John Stapleton's
website)
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From the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation:
Learning
What Works — Volume 5, Number 1 (PDF file - 1.7MB, 15 pages)
Spring 2005
Newsletter
Table of Contents:
- Asset-Building Strategies for the Poor: Is Policy Ahead of Research?
- Whither Welfare? (Excellent overview of recent
welfare reforms in Canada and the U.S.!)
- One-on-One Help for Addressing the Employment Needs of Long-Term Unemployed
IA Clients
- Why Experience-Rate the EI Program?
- School Readiness: Evidence From the Manitoba 2004 EDI Parent Survey
- Bulletin Board
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Canada's
Unique Social History
This is a comprehensive online introduction to social welfare
and social work that anyone interested in the history of social programs
in Canada should bookmark. The site comprises hundreds of pages of text,
audio-visual material and links to more information. Prepare to spend hours
- I did.
This is a must-visit site with something for everyone with
an interest in Canadian social programs.
This site is the creation of Steven Hick, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor, School of Social Work of Carleton University in Ottawa.
The project was funded by Heritage Canada.
Here are just two of the eight modules:
- Rise
of Income Security (module 3) offers 38 topics providing information
about social programs from the 1800s to the post-CHST world
- Rise
of Capitalism and Social Welfare (module 2) offers 17 topics from
the origins of social welfare in the Middle Ages to the 1930s Depression
in Canada
Also from Steve
Hick :
Social Work Glossary
(Click on Glossary link in the left column - 600+ terms)
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The
Great Depression: A Canadian perspective
- An excellent site for information about the 1930s in Canada.
- Includes good multimedia (slide show, RealAudio version,
etc.)
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Windows
of opportunity: social reform under Lester B. Pearson(PDF file
- 568K, 12 pages)
by Jim Coutts
[historical information on the creation of several of Canada's key social
programs in the early to mid-sixties]
"...in only five years of two minority governments Pearson enacted
the Canada-Quebec Pension Plan, The Canada Assistance Plan, the Guaranteed
Income Supplement and Medicare, all keystones of the modern social security
system."
Source:
Policy Options: November
2003 Issue
(Theme: Corporate Governance)
[ Institute for Research on Public
Policy ]
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Poor
Laws (England, 17th Century)
"The history of the English poor laws is often divided into the Old
Poor Law and the New Poor Law — the watershed between them being the
Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Not everything changed in 1834, however.
One important and complex piece of poor law legislation which originated
in 1662, and which did not finally disappear until 1948, was the Settlement
Act."
Source:
The Workhouse
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Ontario
Ministry
of Community and Social Services:
Supporting Ontario's communities since 1930
(retrieved from the Internet Archive)
The year 2005 is the 75th anniversary of the Ontario Ministry of
Community and Social Services.
Click on the link above and then, on the next page, scroll down to "Stories
from our Past" for links to six short historical bits about welfare
and social services in Ontario in the last century and even before.
Origins of the welfare department (1930) - breaking 650 lbs. of rocks to
qualify for welfare in 1915 - houses of refuge - the Mothers' Allowance
Act (1920) - the first foray into the field of day care in the mid-40s -
the Soldier's Aid Commission (est. 1915).
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Canadian Welfare Reforms in the Nineties
Welfare
to Work Study
King's College (University of Western Ontario)
Caroline A. Gorlick, Ph.D/Associate Professor, King's College, is
the principal investigator of this research project and Guy Brethour
is the research associate/coordinator.
"The National Welfare to Work Study funded by Social Development Partnerships
(Human Resources Development Canada) has 3 main objectives:
- to produce an inventory of the different types of welfare to work programs
emerging across the country
- to analyze the dynamic relationship between program design, community
resources and individual/family capacities
- to assess the impact of the linkage between program design, community
resources and individual/family capacities on program success.
The first objective has been completed with the collection of comprehensive
information on all provinces/territories' welfare to work programs. Both
the National Inventory on Welfare to Work in Canada and an accompanying
discussion paper entitled National Welfare to Work Programs: from new mandates
to exiting bureaucracies to individual and program accountability was published
and disseminated by the Canadian Council on Social Development in the fall
of 1998. The other objectives were addressed in Phase 2 of the study which
included data collection in six Canadian communities. All the communities
had experiences with welfare to work program implementation. Phase 2 also
involved updating the original National Inventory on Welfare to Work in
Canada. The final report will be disseminated in the winter of 2002."
Welfare to Work Phase 2 Update - reports for every province and territory are now available on the site. They contain detailed information about welfare-to-work programs and services --- eligibility, supports, funding, assessment and review, planned program changes and much more - all revised to reflect what was happening at the end of 2001 across Canada.
Welfare-toWork:
The Next Generation
A National Forum
(followup to the Welfare to Work Study)
November 16 – 18, 2003
UPDATE - February 2, 2004
Profiles,
Papers and Presentations (abstracts / Powerpoint presentations /
complete papers)
- links to 40+ papers and presentations from the Welfare to Work Forum are
now available for download - includes keynote speeches, transcripts of sessions,
powerpoint presentations and more.
Source:
Community Sector Council of Newfoundland and Labrador
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The
Welfare Enigma: Explaining the Dramatic
Decline in Canadians’ Use of Social Assistance, 1993–2005
(PDF - 548K, 32 pages)
Commentary
June 2008
"(...) Keeping people off welfare in the first instance, rather than
attempting to get them off once on, is likely the most effective means of
affecting caseloads and reducing longer-run welfare dependency."
Source:
C.D. Howe Institute
The C.D. Howe Institute is Canada’s leading independent, nonpartisan,
nonprofit economic policy research institution. Its individual and corporate
members are drawn from business, universities and the professions.
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Two
Tier Income Assistance (welfare) - this link takes you to a section
of the Welfare Reforms in Canada Links page of this site.
Before the mid-1960s, two-tier welfare was the norm in Canada --- the provincial
government was responsible for so-called "unemployable" people,
and municipalities were responsible for "employable" people in
financial need. Now, in 2011, only Ontario has such a systm, and the municipal
($) contribution to welfare is being phased out (by 2018).
Source:
Ontario Social Assistance Review Commission (2011)
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Québec
The Insertion Model or the Workfare Model?
The Transformation of Social Assistance within Quebec and Canada
September 2002
Sylvie Morel, Université Laval
"This research project involves a comparative analysis of changes in
social assistance policies in Canada, particularly in Quebec"
Complete
Report (PDF - 2.4MB, 190 pages)
"...we conclude, based on the cases of Quebec and Ontario, that Canada
is currently evolving towards workfare, but encompasses several variants."
Source:
[Status of Women Canada]
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From the Fraser institute:
Welfare
Reform in Ontario: A Report Card (PDF)
December 2004
This study will examine welfare policies in Ontario since 1985, evaluating
the welfare reforms initiated under the newly elected provincial government
in June 1995. These will be compared with reforms of welfare policies in
the United States, which have proven abundantly successful in reducing dependency,
increasing employment and earnings of welfare leavers, and lowering poverty
rates, as well as with reforms of welfare policies undertaken by other Canadian
jurisdictions.
Welfare
Reform in British Columbia: A Report Card (PDF)
October 2002
This study examines and evaluates the commitments made by the BC government
to welfare reform. It draws comparisons with recent welfare reforms in the
United States because the US reforms have proven overwhelmingly successful
at reducing welfare caseloads, increasing the employment and earnings of
previous welfare recipients, and reducing poverty rates.
Welfare
in Saskatchewan: A Critical Evaluation (PDF)
November 2002
This study is divided into three sections:
- welfare and welfare reform in Canada
- overview of welfare provision in Saskatchewan
- information on the welfare reform experiments in the United States post-1996.
Surveying
US and Canadian Welfare Reform (PDF - 842K, 68 pages)
[ Executive
summary - HTML ]
August 2001
The provision of welfare and related services is a sensitive undertaking
requiring a delicate balance between the compassionate delivery of services
to those in need and the maintenance of fiscal prudence...
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From
Human Resources and Skills
Development Canada:
Social
Assistance Statistical Report: 2008
[Posted online July 2011]
Produced by the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Directors of Income Support
This report includes a description of, and statistics
related to, the welfare system in each province and territory, information
about federal-provincial-territorial jurisdictional and funding issues,
a bit of historical info on the Canada Assistance Plan and the Canada Health
and Social Transfer, etc.
"In recognition of the growing public
demand for comprehensive information on provincial and territorial social
assistance programs and caseloads, the Social Assistance Statistical Report:
2008 is the fifth annual joint publication by federal, provincial and territorial
governments. The report provides a general overview of social assistance
in Canada, as well as a description of income support-related/social assistance
programs in each jurisdiction. This report does not include social assistance
rates as this information is currently available to the public on most provincial
and territorial government Web sites."
(Excerpt from Chapter
1 - Summary)
NOTE: Chapter Two of the report is a seven-page descriptive overview of social assistance in Canada in 2008, comprising a (very) brief history of federal social assistance since 1966 and general information about how welfare works in Canadian provinces and territories (including the treatment of federal child benefits under welfare programs, welfare eligibility conditions and administrative rules, etc.). Other chapters of the report provide, for each province and territory, information on eligibility (including asset and income exemption levels) and benefits (but no actual benefit levels), as well as an impressive number of statistical tables, graphs and charts providing numbers of cases and beneficiaries (time series statistics going back as far as the mid-1990s, depending on the jurisdiction), profile information (age/education/sex of household head, cases by reason for assistance) and even (for most jurisdictions) the percentage of households reporting income.
Complete
report
in one PDF file - (606K, 141 pages)
Links to the earlier editions of this report:
* Social
Assistance Statistical Report: 2007
* Social
Assistance Statistical Report: 2006
* Social
Assistance Statistical Report: 2005
* Social
Assistance Statistical Report: 2004
Source:
Social
Policy
[ Human Resources and Skills
Development Canada ]
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The
federal role in Canadian
welfare (social assistance) programs
- this link takes you to a section of the Canada Assistance Plan Resources
page, where you'll find:
* a link to The Constitution Act, which replaced the British North
America Act in 1982
* the actual text of the sub-section (s.92(7) of the Constitution Act
that declares provinces are responsible for "[t]he Establishment, Maintenance,
and Management of Hospitals, Asylums, Charities, and Eleemosynary Institutions
in and for the Province, other than Marine Hospitals."
* information about the spending power, which the federal government invokes
when it encroaches into provincial constitutional territory
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