Canadian Social Research Links

Welfare Reforms in Canada

Sites de recherche sociale au Canada

Réformes de l'aide sociale au Canada

Updated January 21, 2009
Page révisée le 21 janvier 2009

[ Go to Canadian Social Research Links Home Page ]

NEW

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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When 'poorhouse' wasn't only an expression
A local museum preserves in harrowing detail the stories of a forgotten institution
January 3, 2009
By Tracey Tyler
"(...) Though more commonly associated with Victorian England and novels by Charles Dickens, such as Oliver Twist, the poorhouse was part of Canada's social fabric for more than 60 years and one of its earliest legislated responses to poverty."
Source:
The Toronto Star

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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.)

Coming of Age in a Man’s World:
The Life, Times and Wisdom of Dorothea Crittenden,
Canada’s First Female Deputy Minister
(PDF - 355K, 22 pages)
January 2007
Source:
Open Policy (John Stapleton's website)


From the website of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada:

Income assistance (welfare / social assistance) for
Members of First Nations living on reserve*:

Income Assistance Program - from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)
INAC has engaged in on-reserve income assistance activities since 1964, with the broad objective of providing individuals and families with the means to meet basic needs for food, clothing and shelter. (...) As a matter of policy, INAC follows the terms and conditions of provincial and territorial general assistance [welfare] programs. While INAC may directly deliver the income assistance program, the program has been largely devolved. The Department's present involvement in income assistance activities is primarily to provide funding to First Nations who in turn deliver programs and services to community members. In 2006-2007, 534 First Nations administered their own program (This figure does not include First Nations functioning under self-government arrangements).

---
*
First Nations members living off-reserve must apply for welfare to the provincial athority where they reside.
For more info on provincial/territorial welfare programs, go to the Key Provincial/Territorial Welfare Links page:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/welfare.htm

---

Related link:

Income Assistance Program - National Manual
NOTE : includes excellent information on the history of social assistance to members of
Canada's First Nations along with information on the federal-provincial-First Nations roles and responsibilites in the area of income assistance.
Table of Contents:
* Introduction
* Definitions
* 1 - Backgrounder
* 2 - Program Components
* 3 - Funding Arrangements
* 4 - Financial Administration
* 5 - Reporting and Compliance
* Annex A - Resource Information and Links
* Annex B - Resident On-reserve Communities
* Annex C - Income Assistance on Site Compliance Review Process

Social Programs
In addition to income assistance, INAC supports "province-like social programs" in First Nation communities including education, early childhood development, housing, family violence prevention and help for persons with disabilities. Click the link above for general information or click any link below for more specific info.

* Assisted Living Program * Family Violence Prevention Program * Justice * Non-Insured Health Benefits * Band Moneys * Indian Status * Wills and Estates * National Child Benefit Reinvestment Initiative * First Nation Child and Family Services Program * Early Childhood Development

Source:
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)

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NEW


Table of contents for this page:
Scroll down the page or use one of the links below to jump to a particular section further down on the page.
Welfare in Canada - 2006 and 2007 - Historical Welfare Reforms - Canadian Welfare Reforms in the 1990s - Key Government Departments and Reports  - Federal  - Provincial/Territorial - National Reforms - The National Child Benefit (NCB) - Provincial/Territorial Reforms  -Two-Tier Welfare in Canada - Another Look at Welfare Reform (Fall 1997, National Council of Welfare) - Welfare Incomes report (annual, National Council of Welfare) - A State of the Art Review of Income Security Reform in Canada (Summer 1998, Pulkingham and Ternowetsky) - A few words about workfare - The Right to Welfare - Have Canadian welfare reforms succeeded? - Welfare Leavers (Statistics Canada study, March 2003) - Social assistance trends in incidence, entry and exit rates (StatCan, August 2004) ===> includes followup article: Social Assistance by Province, 1993-2003

NOTE: This page offers links to information about welfare reforms in Canada from an historical perspective and on a national scale.
It hasn't been updated very often since September 2005, but it contains some historical nuggets...
For links to information about provincial-territorial welfare reforms, go to the home page of this site and select a jurisdiction in the left-hand column of the page.

See also:
Anti-poverty strategies and poverty reduction campaigns:
--- Provincial and territorial information
--- National/federal & international information


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Poverty in Canada
- incl. links to : * History of poverty in Canada * Measures of poverty in Canada * Low income groups in Canada * Effects of poverty in Canada * Assistance for poor people in Canada (Government transfers and intervention - Non-governmental assistance) * more...

Welfare reform
Movements in many countries around the world push for welfare reform. Sizeable and powerful reform movements exist in the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain, and France among many others.
- incl. the following : * United States * The Welfare System and reform in Great Britain * The Welfare System and reform in France * References * External links


NOTE 1:  For links to info about current welfare systems in place in Canada,
see Key Provincial and Territorial Welfare Links - 500+ links
!


NOTE 2: Many of the links on this page will take you to the Canada Assistance Plan/Canada Health and Social Transfer Resources Page of this site. If you're looking for historical welfare stats, that's where you'll find them --- or on the Statistical Links page of this site.


NOTE: In my view, the following is a milestone historical document on social assistance in Canada and elsewhere in the world.
It's a comprehensive overview of how social assistance (welfare) operated in 24 countries (including Canada) in the mid-1990s.
I highly recommend it for all welfare (and social policy) historians.


1996 international social assistance study
- detailed comparison of how social assistance programs operated
in 24 OECD countries, including Canada and the United States (see Volume II)

Social Assistance in OECD Countries
Volume I : Synthesis Report
(PDF - 2.6MB, 207 pages)
A study carried out on behalf of the Department of Social Security and the
OECD by the Social Policy Research Unit
1996

Social Assistance in OECD Countries
Volume II : Country Reports
(PDF - 4.8MB, 499 pages)
A study carried out on behalf of the Department of Social Security and the OECD by the Social Policy Research Unit
By Tony Eardley, Jonathan Bradshaw, John Ditch, Ian Gough and Peter Whiteford
1996

Participating countries:
* Australia * Greece * Norway * Austria * Iceland * Portugal * Belgium * Ireland
* Spain * Canada * Italy * Sweden * Denmark * Japan * Switzerland * Finland
* Luxembourg * Turkey * France * Netherlands * United States * Germany
* New Zealand * United Kingdom

Source:
United Kingdom
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)


 

NOTE:
Mirror links to access these two reports:

If the links to the two reports in the left column are dead, use the links below. Complete copies of both reports are stored on the Canadian Social Research Links server.

Social Assistance in OECD Countries
Volume I : Synthesis Report
(PDF - 2.6MB, 207 pages)

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Social Assistance in OECD Countries
Volume II : Country Reports
(PDF - 4.8MB, 499 pages)

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Welfare historians, rejoice!!

This two-volume study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released in the mid-1990s, is a critical and comparative overview of how social assistance or welfare operated in the mid-1990s in 24 countries (including Canada, with a special focus on Ontario). The chapter on Canada presents a factual snapshot of how welfare was working in Canada just before the 50-50 federal cost-sharing under the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) was replaced by a block fund, the Canada Health and Social Transfer, in April of 1996.

The OECD study consisted of a two-stream approach: for each country involved in the study, an "expert informant" (academic) and a "national government official" received a questionnaire on social assistance programs. The questionnaires were different from one another - federal government officials were asked to provide factual responses to over 70 questions, while the academics' questionnaire focused more on an in-depth critique of those same programs. Social Work Professor Patricia Evans was the Canadian expert informant, and I completed the submission on behalf of the Canadian government (see the link immediately below).

Social Assistance in Canada, 1994 is the final submission of the Canadian federal government in the context of the study.
It contains over 40 pages of information on Canadian social assistance programs as they operated in 1994. The final submission about welfare in Canada to the report team was posted to the website of the Department that's now called Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. I occasionally rant about shortcomings of HRSDC's website, so it's only fitting that I give them credit for something creditable, like leaving an historical document about welfare in Canada available on their website. Well done, HRSDC!

I should emphasize that Social Assistance in Canada, 1994 is only ONE of the two source documents used by the team responsible for drafting the final report for the OECD. The other source was Professor Evans' submission, which was, as noted above, more of a critical perspective. [ See Background for more contextual information on the Canadian portion of the study. ]

Following the same methodology as for all participating countries, information from both submissions - the expert informant's and the national government official's - was woven together into one coherent text by one of the co-authors of the report. The resulting Canada chapter (Chapter 5, pages 78-108) that appears in Volume II of the report is quite balanced because of the two-stream approach; I recommend it.

NOTE: Social Assistance in Canada, 1994 contains some info that the Canada chapter in the OECD report doesn't include; I'd suggest reading both.

---

* NOTE: I mentioned "FREE" in the blurb above because the total cost of the paper version of both volumes was close to $400 in Canada when it was released in 1996.
On behalf of social researchers, a big THANKS to the U.K. Dept. of Pensions and Work for making this available to the masses.



Different eligibility tests used in Canadian financial assistance programs:

Here's a quick overview of the various types of tests used in Canada to establish eligibility for income maintenance and social assistance programs in Canada:

Income test:
- only the applicant's income (and not his/her assets) is considered in determining eligibility for the program. Eligibility for many of Canada’s income security programs is based on an income-test, including the Canada Child Tax Benefit, the Guaranteed Income Supplement [click for more info] and the Spouse’s Allowance under the Old Age Security program, and the refundable Goods and Services Tax Credit.

Needs test (used only in provincial-territorial welfare programs):
- involves determination of the applicant's assets, income and regularly-recurring needs (all of which are defined and quantified in provincial welfare regulation). After the assets of the household are examined and determined to be within the approved exemption limits, the household's non-exempted income is compared with its needs, and if there is a budget deficit, assistance may be granted. Provincial-territorial social assistance (welfare) programs are all needs-tested.
(See the Canadian Social Research Links Key Provincial and Territorial Government Welfare Links page for relevant links).

Means test:
- in Canada, the "means test" was (long ago) used to determine eligibility for some types of income assistance programs. The means test involved establishing that the applicant's means, i.e., assets and income, were less than the standards set for the program.
All eligible applicants received the same benefit, which was a flat-rate amount.
Some of the programs that were folded into the Canada Assistance Plan in 1966, such as Blind Persons' Allowances and Disabled Persons' Allowances, used the means test approach. Where a client's assets and income were below set thresholds, the person received $75 per month.

BUT...
In the international jargon, a means test is the same* as Canada's needs test --- assets, income and needs are all taken into consideration.
[*...except when an author uses the expression in the generic sense, i.e., "tested according to the means (or resources) of the applicant."]

For a detailed review of the framework of Canadian welfare programs, see Social Assistance in Canada, 1994 - click on "Manuscript (questions)". The information is presented in question-and-answer format, and it's an important snapshot of welfare in Canada in 1994 as well as a good general overview of social assistance in the era of 50-50 cost sharing between the federal and provincial/territorial governments. It's over 40 pages of information on eligibility, benefits, administrative rules, caseloads, legislative framework, and more. It includes information about cost-sharing of welfare costs between the federal and provincial/territorial governments under the Canada Assistance Plan.
This work was part of a larger study of social assistance in 24 countries released by the OECD early in 1996.
 

WELFARE IN CANADA 101

If you're not sure how welfare works in Canada, I highly recommend the first chapter of Welfare Incomes 2006 and 2007 (PDF - 17MB, 167 pages) entitled What is Welfare? from the National Council of Welfare. That chapter contains information on the administrative rules and financial eligibility criteria (asset and income exemptions) and the estimated total income of selected types of households receiving welfare in each province and territory.
Welfare Incomes 2006 and 2007
also includes information on: * Patterns and Trends * What is Welfare? * Adequacy of Welfare Incomes * Welfare Incomes Over Time * Welfare Incomes and Child Benefits * Total Welfare Incomes and Poverty Over Time * Concluding Thoughts * Appendices * Fact Sheet: 2007 Provincial Welfare Rates Compared to the MBM.
Source:

National Council of Welfare

__________________________

Another source of information on how welfare works in Canada:

Social Assistance in Canada: An Overview (6 pages)
*This is the second chapter of
Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2007
[Posted online July 2010]
Produced by the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Directors of Income Support
- 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.

Links to the three earlier editions of this report:
* Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2006
*
Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2005

*
Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2004

Source:
Social Policy

[ Human Resources and Skills Development Canada ]

Today in Canada, welfare works much the same - on paper, at least - as it did in 1966, when the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) was created as a vehicle for federal contributions to provincial/territorial social assistance programs (and welfare services, and child welfare, and other selected social programs). What's changed, some would argue, is the size of the stick and the carrot that are both part of the system.

Redesigning the “Welfare Mix” for Families: Policy Challenges
Discussion Paper by Jane Jenson, Director of the Family Network
Canadian Policy Research Networks
February 2003
Executive Summary (PDF file - 168K, 7 pages)
Complete report (PDF file - 654K, 82 pages) --- click "Download" under the graphic of the title page
Impressive, extensive collection of information on Canadian, American and European welfare (social assistance) programs and recent initiatives to improve labour market attachment as a means of reducing welfare dependency.
Includes some excellent info on the following topics (to mention but a few):
Defining the Welfare Mix - Current Challenges (An Ageing Society- Economic Marginalization and Social Exclusion - Changing Families - Child Poverty) - Redesigning the Welfare Mix: What is Being Done Elsewhere --- The European Union (An Employment-Centred Strategy for Achieving a Better Welfare Mix) - The United States (Welfare Mix of Hidden Expenditures and Dramatic Reforms) - The Adequacy of Social Assistance Benefits in Canada - Canada’s Strategies for Increasing Labour Force Attachment - Work and Family (Child Benefits and Other Supports for Families)
- also includes info about the Self-Sufficiency Project (Final Results), a table showing Adequacy of Welfare Benefits by Province and Location of Residence (Lone Parent, One Child Families and Couples with Two Children) - Comparison of Selected Countries’ Programs to Foster Labour Force Participation, Aid Transition from Social Assistance to Work, and Ensure Adequate Income - Rankings of Provinces by Amount of Social Benefit and “Poverty Gap” - Comparison of Provinces’ Programs to Foster Labour Force Participation, Aid Transition from Social Assistance to Work, and Ensure Adequate Income.
Source : Canadian Policy Research Networks

Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

"The United States [...] has one of the highest rates of expenditure on social assistance as a percentage of GDP. (...) At 3.7 percent of GDP, social assistance spending in the United States was well above Canada’s 2.5 percent." [during the mid 1990s]
(I found this on page 20 of the full report; it's a quote from a 1996 OECD study of social assistance in 22 countries)
.....................
OK, I'm not Don Cherry, and this isn't Coach's Corner, but Kids, you've gotta learn to watch out for sucker punches like this. Quoting stats out of context is very misleading, and it's a tactic that's sometimes used in the conservative/liberal debate that plays out in the daily media.

I'm not an economist, so my expression tends to glaze over when I read observations like these - but I know that they're the memorable bits that some people retain after reading a report like this. Never mind the fact that the author goes on to say that "by the mid-1990s, both Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit each cost more than Aid to Families with Dependent Children..."

The hidden nugget in the previous paragraph is the inclusion of Medicaid (health coverage for low-income households and individuals) in the equation. Because the U.S. has no universal health care, Medicaid costs substantially more than non-insured health services for people with low income in Canada, where the entire population enjoys basic Medicare coverage. (Medicare in the U.S. is primarily for older people and younger people with disabilities). The last time I checked, there were some 44 million Americans without any health care coverage whatsoever.

This commentary is not intended to criticize this report by Jane Jenson, which I highly recommend --- it's to show the importance of interpreting information in context...
...and to reiterate that American and Canadian welfare systems are not comparable without the compulsory warning flags about the American emphasis on rapid labour entry of welfare clients (with less emphasis on skills development or long-term education), the different rules for clients in both countries who want welfare and for states/provinces that want federal contributions for their welfare programs, the different clienteles, the different transition-to-work measures and supports, etc.

Since the mid-1990s, when the Canada Health and Social Transfer replaced the Canada Assistance Plan, a number of jurisdictions have "taken children's benefits out of the welfare system" by means of a provincial/territorial benefit that's paid to parents on behalf of children in all low-income families. Go to the Key Provincial and Territorial Welfare Links page of this site and click on "welfare rates" for more information on welfare rates for families with children.

Another Look at Welfare Reform (released by the National Council of Welfare in the fall of 1997) is a 125-page chronicle of welfare reforms in Canada, both at the federal level and in each Canadian province and territory, throughout the 1990s (up to the fall of 1997).

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New 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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Welfare Incomes, 2006 and 2007

A personal note about the Welfare Income series:
For about 25 of my 30 years as a welfare program information specialist with the federal government, I supported the work of the Council on the subject of welfare program information and welfare rates, and I think that their collection of historical, cross-Canada information on Canadian welfare programs is second to none.

Welfare Incomes, 2006 and 2007
December 2008
PDF version (16.6MB, 157 pages)
Table of contents: * Message from the Chairperson * Patterns and Trends * What is Welfare? * Adequacy of Welfare Incomes * Welfare Incomes Over Time * Welfare Incomes and Child Benefits * Total Welfare Incomes and Poverty Over Time * Concluding Thoughts * Appendices * Fact Sheet: 2007 Provincial Welfare Rates Compared to the MBM
NOTE : the HTML version of the report also includes links to earlier editions of this report back to 1999

News Release:
Poverty line is being cracked, but not broken.
Cross-Canada action needed as economy worsens, National Council of Welfare says
News Release
Toronto, December 10 – While incomes for most Canadians on welfare were stuck far below the poverty line, some cracked that line in 2007, the newest report by the National Council of Welfare says. But tough economic times mean it will be tough to really break through, unless comprehensive, nationwide action is taken, says the advisory body to the federal government.
Welfare Incomes, 2006 and 2007 looked at the circumstances of Canadians on welfare in all provinces and territories. The study by the National Council of Welfare found that in the case of the lone parent with a pre-school age child living in Quebec, welfare income for 2007 reached 100 per cent of the Market Basket Measure (MBM), a poverty line measurement that takes into account the cost of meeting basic needs in different parts of Canada.

Related link:

Welfare recipients poorer than Canadians imagine: report
December 09, 2008
OTTAWA - Amid fears a souring economy will throw more Canadians onto provincial welfare rolls, a federal advisory body is issuing a bleak report that says most people living on social assistance are so impoverished that adequate housing, jobs and recreational activities are beyond their reach. With the exception of some residents of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, the country's 1.7 million welfare recipients subsist on incomes far below what most Canadians can imagine living on, the National Council of Welfare says in a massive report being released Wednesday which documents welfare incomes in 2006 and 2007.
Source:
Canada.com

Welfare Incomes 2006* fact sheets
on adequacy of welfare incomes

For the past 20 years, the National Council of Welfare has been producing the Welfare Incomes series, which are annual estimates of the incomes of individuals and families on welfare in each Canadian jurisdiction. In addition to an extensively-annotated table of welfare benefit levels for single clients (able-bodied and disabled) and families (one adult + one child and two adults + two children), the report includes information on prevailing welfare asset and income exemption levels in each province/territory, comparisons of welfare incomes over time and comparisons of current welfare incomes with various benchmarks.

The fact sheets which were recently posted to the Council's website include several variations and permutations of income measures used in Canada, such as Statistics Canada's before- and after-tax low income cut-offs, before- and after-tax average incomes and before- and after-tax median incomes. For the first time, the 2006 edition of Welfare Incomes includes a comparison of welfare incomes and the Market Basket Measure (see related links below).
[* NOTE : According to the Council's website, "The NCW plans to publish a 2006/2007 combined issue of Welfare Incomes at the end of 2008. In the meantime, all usual data will be available on our Web site."]

Source:
Welfare Income series - includes archives back to 1999
[ Council Research & Publications ]
[ National Council of Welfare ]
The National Council of Welfare (NCW) is an arm's length advisory body to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development on matters of concern to low-income Canadians.

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Welfare Incomes 2005 (PDF file - 1.4MB, 116 pages)
August 2006
"Welfare Incomes 2005 estimates total welfare incomes for four types of households in each province and territory, for a total of 52 scenarios. The four household types we use are a single employable person, a single person with a disability, a lone-parent with a 2-year-old child, and a two-parent family with two children aged 10 and 15. The National Council of Welfare has published similar estimates since 1986."

Staggering losses in welfare incomes (PDF file - 24K, 2 pages)
Press release
August 24, 2006
"In Alberta, the income in real dollars of a single person on welfare has decreased by almost 50 percent since 1986. Since 1992 in Ontario, the welfare income of a lone parent with one child has decreased by almost $6,600 and a couple with two children has lost just over $8,700. The National Council of Welfare’s report, Welfare Incomes 2005, paints a dismal picture, and one that is getting worse. When adjusted for inflation, many 2005 welfare incomes were lower than they were in 1986. Most welfare incomes peaked in 1994 or earlier...."

FACT SHEETS from Welfare Incomes 2005
# Welfare Incomes by Province and Territory, Peak Year and 2005
# Welfare Incomes by Household Type: Losses, Peak Year to 2005
# Welfare Incomes Over Time: 1986 to 2005 by Province and Territory
# Welfare Incomes 2005 by Province and Territory and Type of Household
# Welfare Incomes 2005 by Type of Household and Province/Territory (graph)
# Adequacy of 2005 Welfare Incomes by Province
# The Clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement
# Changes in Welfare Incomes for Families with Children, 1997 to 2005 (graph)
# Methodology Used for Welfare Incomes
# Number of People on Welfare, March 1995 to March 2005 (PDF file - 133K, 1 page)

Google.ca Web Search : "welfare incomes report, canada"
Google.ca News Search : "welfare incomes report, canada"
Source:
Google.ca

Related links:

NDP launches campaign to end poverty in Canada
Thu 1 Jun 2006
"OTTAWA - The NDP today launched a national "End Poverty in Canada" campaign vowing to engage Canadians and their politicians in deciding what the fairest way forward is for all Canadians. "Our social safety net has become an incoherent, inefficient mess that must be repaired," said NDP Social Policy Critic Tony Martin (Sault Ste. Marie).
Source:
New Democratic Party of Canada

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Bouquets
to CBC Radio, who covered the release of this welfare incomes report right across the country starting at six a.m. in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

You can find links to CBC radio coverage of this story, in the form of written articles or an audio file as in the example below, adapted for each region's audience, with local reaction for each jurisdiction in Canada, by doing a Google.ca search using the search terms "welfare incomes, 2006, Ontario".
Remember to remove the quotation marks from your search terms and replace Ontario with the name of your province or territory, and be sure to try both the Web Search and the News Search buttons in Google.ca

Here's a sampling of coverage concerning the release of this report from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador:

CBC Radio - St. John's Morning Show (7-minute Real Audio file - requires speakers and RealPlayer)
Newfoundland and Labrador
Thursday, August 24
NOTE - if you're behind a corporate firewall in your government office or university, this audio stream probably won't work, for security reasons.

Welfare payments called 'morally disgraceful' - August 24 article from the CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

-----

Brickbats to the Citizen in my home town of Ottawa, who didn't even mention the release of the welfare incomes report. I'm not sure what people in the media call it (scoop? oversight? stoopid editorial board decision to take a pass on the story?), but the Citizen editorial board richly deserves the egg that's on their collective faces for having missed the boat on a report that's as significant as this one. Judging by the significant media coverage and public feedback in forums and letters to the editor - elsewhere in Canada - since the release, "this story's got legs" --- it'll be in the public consciousness for awhile longer.
No thanks to the Citizen, though...
************************

More editorializing:

If you've read the Top Ten Reasons I Created This Site, you already know (#8) that I think there's too much of a slant from organizations like the Fraser Institute and Prime Minister Steve's earlier gig, the National Citizens' Coalition, in the mainstream media, and not enough from progressive non-governmental organizations like the Canadian Council on Social Development and Campaign 2000.

Another such organization that's actually part of government in an arm's-length kind of way is the National Council of Welfare. The Council came to life in the late sixties via an integral part of the statute that defined the activities of the Department of National Health and Welfare. After a few departmental restructuring initiatives and name changes over the years, the Council is currently the government advisory body to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development in matters pertaining to social development, i.e., well-being in Canada.

I have the highest regard for the Council as an advisory body, because it advocates on behalf of people, not corporations. The excellent reports produced by the Council's secretariat - especially the time series like Welfare Incomes and Poverty Profiles - offer up to twenty years' worth of cross-Canada information for use by both federal and provincial-territorial policy-makers to support their work. The reports are also for use by the social advocacy sector, to keep governments' feet to the fire --- fits right in with the concept of Accountability as one of the New Canadian Government's five priorities, doesn't it?

For about 25 of my 30 years as a welfare program information specialist with the federal government, I supported the work of the Council on the subject of welfare program information and welfare rates, and I think that their collection of historical, cross-Canada information on Canadian welfare programs is second to none. I spent a year on secondment with the Council secretariat starting in the summer of 1996, and I updated the numbers in Welfare Incomes 1995 as part of my work there. Now, ten years later, we find that after inflation, welfare incomes in '96 were more generous than they were in 2005 by several thousand dollars a year. And that includes thousands of families with kids...

For links to Canadian welfare program information, go to the Key Provincial/Territorial Welfare Links page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/welfare.htm



Historical Welfare Reforms

Welfare reforms have been around as long as welfare programs themselves. Canada's Unique Social History (from Steven Hick of Carleton University in Ottawa) is an invaluable online resource for anyone interested in the evolution of social programs in the world and in Canada. It comprises eight modules, each filled with links to more information and Internet resources. Module 3, The Rise of Income Security, covers Canadian welfare reforms from pre-Confederation days to the Canada Health and Social Transfer. Module 2, The Rise of Capitalism and Social Welfare, offers historical information on welfare and welfare reforms back to the Middle Ages.

Also from Steve Hick :

Social Work Glossary
(Click on Glossary link in the left column - 600+ terms)

 

Other Canadian Sites

The Evolution of the Canada Assistance Plan is an appendix to the 1985 Nielsen Task Force report on CAP. 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.

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.

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).

A Notable International Site:

An Introduction to Social Policy : Social welfare, the welfare state and the social services
Scotland
Excellent intro to welfare - enormous site with a wealth of information organized under the following headings : 
Social Policy - Welfare and society - Social need - The welfare state - Social administration - The politics of welfare - The social services - British social policy - Social services in the UK - Social Policy on the Web - Reading

 



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 Services Council of Newfoundland and Labrador


Reconnecting Social Assistance Recipients to the Labour Market
Lessons Learned - Final Report
(PDF)
Evaluation and Data Development
Strategic Policy
Human Resources Development Canada
March 2000

Source : Evaluation and Data Development (Human Resources Development Canada)

Key Federal Government Departments and Reports

The Department of Finance is currently the lead federal Department with respect to social assistance in Canada. It is responsible for the administration of the Canada Health and Social Transfer, the federal transfer (block fund) to provinces and territories covering health, post-secondary education and welfare. The Department has its own social policy shop in the
Federal-Provincial Relations and Social Policy Branch . A key document for researchers is Federal Transfers to Provinces and Territories, which provides a detailed summary of how the federal government contributes to the cost of provincial and territorial welfare programs (among others)
- *See also A Brief History of the Health and Social Transfers - from the launch of the Canada Assistance Plan in 1966 to 2007, a helpful chronology of the evolution of federal contributions to the provincial/territorial level of government from 1966 to date.


Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) had a broad mandate that included areas such as employment insurance, human resources investment (Canada Student Loans, Canada Education Savings Grant), Income Security Programs (Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan), and labour. 

On December 12, 2003, when Paul Martin took office as Prime Minister of Canada, Human Resources Development Canada was split into two departments --- Social Development Canada (SDC) and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC).

Until 1993-94, the Department of National Health and Welfare (NHW) was responsible for the administration of the Canada Assistance Plan or CAP. CAP was the federal statute that enabled federal contributions to the provinces and territories towards the cost of social assistance - or welfare - and social services (as well as other approved social programs and services).
------
The Canadian Social Research Links Canada Assistance Plan and Canada Health and Social Transfer Resources Page has over 100 links to information about CAP and the CHST --- and, since April 2004, about the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer .
-----
 This mandate was transferred to HRDC in 1993 along with the rest of the "welfare side" of Health and Welfare Canada when the federal government created HRDC as a "super-ministry" to deal with income support and labour market programming in a more integrated manner.

Social Development Canada* works with provincial and territorial government departments responsible for social assistance to eliminate duplication and overlap between programs and with working groups under the auspices of the Social Union initiative; Human Resources and Skills Development Canada is involved in activities under federal-provincial-territorial labour market agreements. Check out the official Social Union website for more information on the National Child Benefit (including the NCB progress reports and NCB reinvestment reports, or visit my Unofficial Social Union Page for links to related material that's not on the official site. You might also want to check out my Provincial/Territorial Social Union Pages to see what provinces and territories are doing in the area of NCB reinvestments. 

******

November 2008 Update:
After playing around with the mandate and the name of the department for a few years, the Harper Government has settled (for now, at least) on the name Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.
For more on the name changes, see:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/hrsdc.htm#general_info

 


Health Canada - like HRDC - monitors provincial and territorial health insurance ("Medicare") programs to ensure compliance with federal standards.
Read the Canada Health Act Overview to see how Medicare works in Canada, including funding by the federal government under the Canada Health and Social Transfer.
See the Canada Health Act Annual Reports for detailed information on the administration of the CHA, federal contributions and payments and each of the provincial and territorial health insurance plans under the CHA.
 
See also the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada (the Romanow Commission)
 


Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
(INAC) pays for social assistance for Aboriginal people on reserve. The Department's website includes a lot of information about the federal government's relationship with its Native people. See the  INAC site map for links to everything on one page, including the Final Report of the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and the Federal Government's Response to RCAP.

See also "First Nations NCB Reinvestments" - part of The National Child Benefit Progress Report: 1999


The Canada Revenue Agency (formerly Revenue Canada) is responsible for the delivery of the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB), which is the name of the federal benefit paid under the National Child Benefit initiative, and of some provincial and territorial financial benefits that are also under the NCB. 

The Canada Revenue Agency's Family Benefits Page includes a wealth of information about the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the National Child Benefit. It also includes information concerning related provincial and territorial programs administered by Revenue Canada: Alberta Family Employment Tax Credit - BC Family Bonus - New Brunswick Child Tax Benefit - Newfoundland and Labrador Child Benefit - Northwest Territories Child Benefit - Nova Scotia Child Benefit - Nunavut Child Benefit - Saskatchewan Child Benefit - Yukon Child Benefit

Revenue Canada is involved only in the distribution of benefits, not the related policy-making.

Note: these are not the only federal departments involved in Canadian social policy, but rather the main federal players in the area of social assistance policy.


Key Provincial/Territorial Government Departments and Reports
 

Provincial and territorial welfare departments play the most important role in the design, administration and delivery social assistance programs, although the role of Finance departments cannot be understated.

You'll find links to welfare information for each province and territory on the Key Welfare Links page of this site. On that page there are further links to each jurisdiction, e.g., Saskatchewan Links - where you can find some welfare reform info and documents specific to that jurisdiction.

The federal Department of Finance has a Public Finance Hotlinks Page that includes links to Finance departments in all Canadian jurisdictions as well as nine other countries (scroll down past the "General" and "Canada" sections)


National Reforms
Although provincial and territorial welfare programs have been in constant evolution as long as they have been around, the 1990s have produced so much profound change in the way programs are funded and delivered, that some academics have called this round of reforms a "paradigm shift", a reaffirmation of the old principles of self-sufficiency that preceded the progressive social reforms started after the Second World War.

The cap on CAP
The unofficial launch of the welfare reforms in Canada in this decade was the 1990 federal Expenditure Control Plan, which included a shift in federal funding in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Dubbed the "cap on CAP", this measure is often cited as "the beginning of the end" for CAP. A section in Another Look at Welfare Reform (see box below) entitled The Setting for Welfare Reform deals with the cap on CAP and other events that framed Canadian welfare reforms in the 1990s.

The 1994 Social Security Review was another national milestone in Canadian welfare reform, if only because of the number of informative reports that were produced and released during its short lifespan. The Review was launched by Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Human Resources and Development) in January 1994, and a number of consultation papers were released in the fall and winter of 1994-95. By then, however, federal-provincial relations were strained as a result of federal cuts in the 1994 federal Budget (tabled less than a month after the announcement of the Review). Following the tabling of the 1995 Budget - announcing the Canadian Social Transfer (later renamed the Health and Social Transfer) and its cuts coming into effect in April 1996, the Social Security Review fizzled into obscurity.

From the Canada Assistance Plan to the Canada Health and Social Transfer is a series of links to information about CAP and its successor the CHST, from the 1995 federal Budget to 1999 Budget papers on transfers to the provinces and territories. These links focus on the federal dimension of the transition.

Women and the CHST: A Profile of Women Receiving Social Assistance in 1994
 March 1998
 Katherine Scott, Centre for International Statistics
 Canadian Council on Social Development
Funded by Status of Women Canada's Policy Research Fund

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dramatic Decline in Welfare Dependency in Canada,
Several Factors Responsible: C.D. Howe Institute
(PDF - 40K, 3 pages)
Communiqué
June 19, 2008
Canada has experienced a dramatic decline in welfare dependency since the early 1990s, according to new study by the C.D. Howe Institute, which notes that Canada’s Social Assistance (SA) dependency rate fell by approximately half from the early 1990s to 2005, taking the country’s rising population into account. In The Welfare Enigma: Explaining the Dramatic Decline in Canadians’Use of Social Assistance, 1993-2005, authors Ross Finnie and Ian Irvine provide a nationwide analysis of the factors responsible for the truly remarkable decline, and draw implications for policymakers.

Complete study:

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.

Related links:

Jobs, government cutbacks cut Canadian welfare rolls in half: report
OTTAWA — More available jobs, with a kick from stingy government policies, has contributed to a dramatic decrease in the number of Canadians receiving welfare cheques, says a new study by the C.D. Howe Institute.
Source:
Google News

Solving the welfare enigma
By Ross Finnie and Ian Irvine
Source:
National Post

COMMENT:
It appears that every eleven years or so, the C.D. Howe Institute, minions of the business, university and professional elite, trot out another earth-shattering study about how reducing access to welfare results in fewer people on welfare. Well, Whoop-De-Doo. That's about as informative an observation as "It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick."

Here's the earlier C.D. Howe study:

Alberta welfare reforms
a model for other provinces, says C.D. Howe Institute study
(PDF file - 668K, 38 pages)
April 1997
Kenneth J. Boessenkool, Prime Minister Steve's occasional confidant and advisor, produced this study praising the 1993-1996 Alberta welfare reforms, for other provinces to emulate.

See the Alberta section of Another Look at Welfare Reform (1997) from the National Council of Welfare for a different perspective on Alberta's welfare reforms.


The National Child Benefit - part of the federal-provincial-territorial Social Union


The National Child Benefit Progress Report: 2003 (PDF file - 3.3MB, 86 pages)
March 2005

Report finds government supports increasing for low income families
News Release
April 6, 2005
"OTTAWA—The National Child Benefit (NCB) Progress Report: 2003 released today by Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers Responsible for Social Services1 confirms that government investments for low-income families with children continue to increase. Federal support to low-income families in 2002-2003 had risen from $5.6 billion in 2001-2002 to $5.7 billion in 2002-2003. It is projected to reach $6.4 billion in 2004-2005. The report further shows that provincial and territorial governments and First Nations have increased their expenditures for low-income children and families through the National Child Benefit initiative to $764.2 million in 2002-2003. This funding supports programs and services, including child benefits and earned income supplements, child/day care initiatives, early childhood services and children-at-risk services, youth initiatives, and supplementary health benefits."

Source:
National Child Benefit website

National Child Benefit Misconception

The popular misconception:
"The federal government should take measures to make sure that provinces don't claw back the federal increase in the Canada Child Tax Benefit from families' social assistance benefits."

The Fact: The clawback is actually part of the NCB design, by agreement of the governments of all provinces and territories (except Quebec) and the federal government.
Read the excerpt below from the Second Report on Social Policy Renewal:

Progress Report to Premiers - No. 2 (PDF file - 72K, 18 pages)
July 1997
Excerpt (page 8)
"Federal/provincial/territorial governments have agreed on a joint NCB approach that involves three simultaneous steps.
First, the federal government will increase its benefits for low-income families with children through an increase in the Canada Child Tax Benefit.
Second, provinces and territories will make corresponding decreases in their social assistance payments for families with children while ensuring these families receive at least the same level of income support from governments.
Third, provinces and territories will reinvest these newly-available funds in complementary programs targeted at benefits and services for low income families with children."

News Release:
Social Policy Renewal

August 8, 1997

From the 38th Annual Premiers' Conference

St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick

See also:

"Building a Better Future for Canadian Children" - click on "Social Assistance Adjustments"
National Child Benefit Booklet
September 1997
"As the federal benefit increases, provinces and territories will decrease benefits for social assistance recipients. This decrease will not exceed the amount of the federal increase - the total benefit available to social assistance families will remain at least the same"

Provincial/Territorial Social Union Pages - links to a large collection of information on NCB reinvestments

The Unofficial Social Union page - links to everything you wanted to know about the Social Union --- and more.

Family Benefits Page (Revenue Canada) - explains the Canada Child Tax Benefit (federal benefit) and provincial reinvestments under the NCB.

----------------------------------------------------------

Where do we go from here?

Alliance tackles welfare reform - Ontario/Canada
Oct. 25, 2004
By Carol Goar
Toronto City Summit Alliance teams up with St. Christopher House to help improve income support for working age adults
"They are launching — and paying for — a non-governmental review of the safety nets that are failing millions of low-income adults. They intend to build public support for a modern, sustainable income security system. (...) Using its contacts in the senior echelons of business, academe and public life, it hopes to mount a powerful campaign to fix what is wrong."
Source:
The Toronto Star

Related Links:

Toronto City Summit Alliance
St. Christopher House
- Modernize Income Security for Working Age Adults
- Income Security for Working-age Adults in Ontario

-----

Social Policy in the 21st Century
August 2004 Issue
Policy Options
To read any article, click the above link and (on the next page) select the article you wish to read by clicking on its link; all files are in PDF format.
Back to the future - the rear-view mirror provides glimpses of what lies ahead for income security in the 21st century by Havi Echenberg
New century, new risks: the Marsh Report and the post-war welfare state in Canada by Antonia Maioni
'In the national interest': a social policy agenda for a new century - restore cooperative federalism, modernize medicare, put children first by Tom Kent
Social policy and the knowledge economy: new century, new paradigm by Thomas J. Courchene
Relative poverty - it can't be erased, but it must be addressed, at home and abroad by Hugh Segal
Choix politiques et solidarité sociale à l'heure de la mondialisation by Keith G. Banting
Health care markets and the health care guarantee: baking a better loaf, or baking enough bread? by Paul Jacobson
The 'other' health system: reflections on the dark side of the moon of health and health care in Canada by Hugh Scott
L'école à l'aube du XXIe siècle : retour vers le future by Louis LeVasseur and Maurice Tardif
Universities in the new millennium: heading toward a new culture by Brian Flemming
Access to degrees in the knowledge economy by Dave Marshall
Time for plain talk about social policy by William Watson

Back Issues of Policy Options (back to 1997, full text of hundreds of articles)

Source:
Institute for Research on Public Policy


Provincial/Territorial Reforms

Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2006
August 2009 (Third edition)
Posted online April 9, 2010
P
repared by:
Federal-Provincial-Territorial Directors of Income Support
"
In recognition of the growing public demand for comprehensive information on provincial and territorial social assistance programs and caseloads, the Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2006 is the third 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 six-page descriptive overview of social assistance in Canada in 2005-2006, comprising a (very) brief history of federal social assistance since 1966 and general information about welfare eligibility and benefits. Other chapters of the report provide, for each province and territory, information on eligibility (including asset and income exemption levels) and benefits, 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
- (751K, 129 pages)

Links to the two earlier editions of this report:
*
Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2004
*
Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2005

Source:
Social Policy

[ Human Resources and Skills Development Canada ]

< Begin social researcher's lament. >

While it is reassuring to read in the report summary that Federal-Provincial-Territorial Directors of Income Support recognize "the growing public demand for comprehensive information on provincial and territorial social assistance programs and caseloads", I wish they'd also recognize that there's also a need for reasonably *timely* data about those same programs and caseloads. This report is dated August 2009, but it wasn't posted to the HRSDC website until April 9, 2010. The latest data in the report are for March 2006, now four years out of date. Thus, since March 2006, there is NO national picture of the number of households receiving welfare in Canada.
So what?
So now researchers can't tell, among other things, how many new welfare cases are "EI exhaustees" (families whose Employment Insurance benefit period has expired) and how many are there because they didn't qualify for EI in the first place.
That is unaccountable and unacceptable.
Welfare reporting must be comprehensive AND reasonably current.
Perhaps it's time to farm out the production of welfare statistics and related information to an objective, non-politicized third party...

< /End social researcher's lament. >

---------------------------------------------------------------

Related historical reports from Social Policy Directorate of HRSDC:

Social Assistance in Canada, 1994
Over 40 pages of information on Canadian social assistance programs as they operated in 1994. Much of the information in this document is still as relevant today as it was back then - eligibility, benefits, administrative rules, and more. Includes information about cost-sharing of welfare costs under the Canada Assistance Plan. Question-and-answer format for quick reference. This work was part of a larger study of social assistance in 24 countries released by the OECD early in 1996. I was the author of this report, with a lot of input from a number of colleagues in the Department at the time. If you want a snapshot of what welfare was like in Canada before the Canada Health and Social Transfer in 1996, this is a pretty decent one - and it's free.

Social Security Statistics, Canada and Provinces - 1978-79 to 2002-03
[ Appendix A - methodological notes ]
- the SA Statistical report for 2004 contains no expenditure data.

---

Related Links from the National Council of Welfare:

Profiles of Welfare: Myths and Realities (Spring 1998)
- large statistical collection covering twenty years of data, examining variables like family types, reasons for assistance, age, education, duration of spells on assistance, housing and more.
NOTE: number-crunchers who specialize in welfare statistics can compare this report with the 2004 report above for some interesting observations --- but be careful about data incompatibilities between the two reports...

Number of People on Welfare, March 1995 to March 2005 (PDF file - 133K, 1 page)

*********************************************

Two Tier Income Assistance (welfare)

Legislation in effect today creates single income assistance system - Manitoba
June 01, 2004
"Legislation creating a single system of income assistance in Manitoba and ensuring services are more consistent and effective becomes effective today, Family Services and Housing Minister Christine Melnick has announced.
The Employment and Income Assistance Amendment Act makes the province responsible for administering all provincial income assistance in rural and northern Manitoba. The change to the single system was requested by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) after the province began delivering all provincial income assistance in Winnipeg in 1999."
Source:
Department of Family Services and Housing

Municipal Assistance Program
"Prior to June 1, 2004, non-disabled single people, childless couples and two-parent families with children received assistance from their local municipality under the municipal assistance program."

Source:
Manitoba Department of Family Services and Housing

More about two-tier income assistance in Canada
Until the federal government implemented the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) as a vehicle for federal contributions to provincial-territorial welfare and social programs in the mid-1960s, two-tier social assistance was the norm in Canada. Two tiers meant that provincial governments provided assistance to anyone deemed "unemployable"(and their dependants), while municipalities were responsible for providing financial assistance of last resort to employable people in financial need (and their dependants) who were residing within their jurisdiction. The advent of CAP helped provinces and territories to consolidate their old categorical assistance programs for blindness, disability, unemployment and single parenthood into one needs-tested program. Moreover, within the first ten years of CAP, most Canadian jurisdictions had streamlined their two welfare systems into one, with the higher authority taking over the responsibility for providing financial assistance to anyone in financial need in the province/territory, regardless of the cause of that need. Differential treatment of "worthy and unworthy"clients (i.e., short-term employable vs long-term unemployable) has persisted in the form of tougher eligibility rules and lower benefit levels for employables even after systems were merged or unified. Three Canadian jurisdictions did not unify their two-tier systems along with the rest by the mid-1970s : Nova Scotia, Ontario and Manitoba. As of June 1, unification of income assistance is officially complete in Manitoba, the culmination of a process that started with the implementation of the Municipal Assistance Regulations in 1993. Nova Scotia also unified over a period of several years, starting with a pilot project in the Cape Breton region in 1995 and ending with the implementation of the Employment Support and Income Assistance Regulations in April 2001. In Ontario, despite the rhetoric of the former Conservative Government (which had promised in the 1995 election campaign to eliminate the two-tier welfare system), income assistance is still a two-tier affair --- the province still delivers the assistance program for people with disabilities, the Ontario Disability Supports Program (ODSP), and municipalities are still responsible for the delivery and part of the cost of Ontario Works (welfare for people with no disabilities); municipalities must also pay part of the cost of ODSP. [see the Guide to Welfare in Ontario for more info.]

[ Related links - go to the Manitoba page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/mbkmrk.htm ]

*********************************************

Recommended Reading on welfare reform in Quebec!

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]

 


Another Look at Welfare Reform (Autumn 1997)
- an in-depth analysis by the National Council of Welfare 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. 
- large file (300K+) but well worth the wait for detailed information on welfare reforms in the 1990s in each Canadian jurisdiction, as well as a national overview of the broad issues of welfare reform and the setting for welfare reform in Canada
Source :
National Council of Welfare

Surveying US and Canadian Welfare Reform (PDF file - 838K, 68 pages)
August 2001

-incl links to :
Executive Summary
Introduction
1. Historical development of welfare in the United States
2. PRWORA—the end of welfare as Americans knew it
3. American states—experimentation and innovation
4. The results of PRWORA and state welfare reforms
5. Welfare in Canada
6. Provincial welfare reforms
7. Recommendations for Canada
Glossary
References
Source : Fraser Institute

A State of the Art Review of Income Security Reform in Canada
Jane Pulkingham & Gordon Ternowetsky (1998
International Development Research Centre*
(Click on the title of the report above to go directly to the table of contents.
The entire report is online)

- Includes an extensive, detailed overview of income security reforms in Canada in the 1990s, specifically around the Canada Health and Social Transfer, a review and typology of current research in virtually every area of federal and provincial/territorial social programs and a section on the impact of changes since the CHST and related social reforms. 
- Recommended reading for anyone looking for information about the critical forces that have shaped income security programs in Canada and that continue to do so as we approach the new millennium. 
- Topics covered include welfare reforms, the National Child Benefit and child poverty, unemployment/employment insurance reforms, pension reform and the retirement income system, labour market policies, the Social Union, income security reforms in the broader context of social security reform, etc. 
*The International Development Research Centre website also includes many links to information on similar reforms in developing countries 
"The International Development Research Centre is a public corporation created by the Canadian government to help communities in the developing world find solutions to social, economic, and environmental problems through research." 
Complete reports online include the following:

Social Policy Challenges in a Global Society
by Keith Banting (1995
- An extensive and excellent treatise on globalization, trade agreements, social need and reforms. 

 Establishing an Effective Social Policy Agenda with Constrained Resources
by Peter Hicks (1995
- An excellent article written by a senior HRDC official at the time. It presents some interesting historical information about the evolution of Canadian social programs from the sixties to the early nineties. 
- Social historians will be particularly interested in the author's analysis of the 1994 SSR discussion paper... 

Social Policy Reform in Canada Under Regional Economic Integration by Albert Berry
- This article covers issues such as the harmonization and convergence of social programs, rationalization, privatization, cost-saving, competitiveness and social policy reform.

Spouse-in-the-house : The Falkiner Case (Ontario)
The Falkiner case revolves around the issue of single parents and welfare.
On this Canadian Social Research Links page, you'll find background info, the official Court record of the May 13 (2002) decision and several related links. The June 2002 issue of the Fraser Forum (Fraser Institute) contains an article about the potential impact of the Court decision on welfare reforms elsewhere in Canada. On the Spouse-in-the-house page, you'll find a link to the issue that contains this article as well as a counterpoint commentary on the article by Vincent Calderhead, staff lawyer with Nova Scotia Legal Aid in Halifax and respected authority on matters relating to human rights and the Canadian Charter.

Ontario Municipal Government and Non-Governmental Organization Links Page - for critiques of welfare reforms in that province by Ontario NGOs.

Non-Governmental Organizations Links - critiques of social program reforms from a number of Canadian NGOs.


A few words about workfare

Most of what is called workfare today in Canada is actually a combination of tighter eligibility criteria, benefit cuts, a broadening of the definition of "employable" and more stringent enforcement of rules regarding reciprocity for employable people that existed even before CAP - and that continue to exist today.

There are two types of workfare in Canada today - formal and de facto.
[Of course, one could argue that the two types of workfare in Canada are the punitive approach and the human services approach, as does Sherrie Torjman of the Caledon  Institute of Social Policy in her online paper entitled Workfare: A Poor Law (PDF file - February 1996). But that's a whole other web page...]
Source : Caledon Institute of SocialPolicy
 
"Formal" or institutionalized workfare contains three essential elements, summed up as follows: 
- work for a specific minimum number of work units (measured in hours or output) in a job that is designated or approved by the welfare authority, to qualify for the basic welfare benefit. 

In 2001, the only Canadian jurisdiction where formal workfare exists for all employable people is Ontario, under one component of the Ontario Works program. In many other jurisdictions, there's a "learnfare/earnfare/trainfare"policy that's described in more detail on the CAP Resources Page of this site.

All applicants under the Ontario Works program in Ontario (single people, couples with and without children, sole support parents, and people aged 60 to 64 years) must agree to participate in one of the program's three active parts: employment supports (job-search services, referral to basic education and job-specific skills training), employment placement (referral to a job placement or self-employment development agencies) or community participation (unpaid community service activity).

The community participation stream is the one most readily identified with the notion of "workfare". In this stream, welfare recipients can be required to work from 17 to 70 hours per month in a not-for-profit or public sector workplace approved under the program in order to receive their basic welfare benefit. 

Further reading for detailed Ontario Works information

The Ontario Works page of the Ministry of Community and Social Services website includes the complete collection of Ontario Works Policy Directives. This is the Ontario Works Policy Manual - everything you might want to know about the program. 

The Ministry of Community and Social Services Business Plan includes a section entitled Annual Report On Key Achievements where you can find a description of welfare reforms since 1995 - including Ontario Works - and plans for further reforms. 

Recommended Reading from the - analysis of Ontario Works  is available from the (Toronto) Workfare Watch Project website. 
FIVE YEARS LATER: Welfare Rate Cuts Anniversary Report (November 2000)
- includes the following sections : The real value of welfare benefits - Evictions - Ontario versus the other provinces - Poverty and Health - Rent costs - Poverty Index - Food - Harming Women - Food bank use - Welfare Cuts and Policy Changes 

See the r Ontario Non-Governmental Organization Links page for additional perspectives on many issues around workfare in Ontario.

"De facto" workfare occurs where the welfare authority does not impose a mandatory "work-for-your-basic-welfare-cheque" policy for all employable people receiving welfare. Rather, governments enforce job-search requirements for employable people more stringently, and they pay monthly supplements to people who are engaged in some approved activity whose goal is to help the person break free from welfare. The job-search rule is often seen as workfare, but it was always a part of CAP and provincial/territorial welfare programs. 

Some jurisdictions pay monthly supplementary benefits to people on welfare who are participating in an approved employability program or job search activity to help them cover work- or training-related costs. Ernie Lightman argued in an article in the C.D. Howe Institute's 1995 book on workfare Helping the Poor: A Qualified Case for "Workfare" that the gap between the basic and supplemented benefit levels is often an offer that people in need can't refuse. 

Quebec's welfare rules in 2000 for employable people best illustrate the tiered benefit structure that can result from these supplements and the application of the reciprocity principle. The Quebec welfare rate was about $120 less a month for a single employable person who was not participating in an employability measure (schooling, training or job integration) than for one who was. (The difference was about $200 for a two-adult household.)  This "non-participating" category included not only those who decline such measures, but also those for whom no appropriate measures were available. A non-participant was still required to satisfy job-search requirements, notably by not refusing a job (or abandoning one without just cause) under penalty (stipulated in Regulation) of a reduction in monthly welfare benefits of $100 or $150 (depending on the situation of the household) for a year. A second refusal within the year would result in monthly benefit cuts up to $300 ($150 for a lone-parent family). 
*Check the (English) Employment Assistance page on the website of the Ministère de l'Emploi, de la Solidarité sociale et de la Famille for current welfare rules. 

See  CAP, Rights and Workfare on the CAP Resources page for more on job search requirements VS workfare.

The Right to Welfare

Submission by the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues (CCPI) to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the occasion of the Review of the Third Report of Canada at the Committee's 19th Session (November - December, 1998)
- incl. a detailed analysis (~25 printed pages) of "the right to social assistance" with references to the Constitution Act, the Charter of Rights and the change from CAP to the CHST. The CCPI submission includes information on welfare case law in a number of jurisdictions that you definitely won't find elsewhere - dealing with the right to social assistance, adequacy of social assistance benefits, provincial contravention of national "standards" under CAP, sections 7 and 15 of the Charter of Rights, etc.
The case law information was prepared by Vincent Calderhead, Solicitor for the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, in November, 1998.
Source : Charter Committee on Poverty Issues
See also: U.N. '98 Page - (links to 18 related documents)


Have Canadian Welfare Reforms Succeeded?

That depends on whether you're asking the Finance Department and Fraser Institute types, who interpret caseload reductions as a significant measure of success, or the social advocacy groups, who focus more on the human condition, income adequacy, wealth inequality and social justice..

Since the mid-1990s:
Welfare dependency has dropped significantly (see below) since the major reforms of the mid-1990s, from a high of 3.1 million Canadians (including children) in March of 1994 to just1.7 million in March of 2003
Welfare spending is down
- partly because of program reforms and partly because of economic recovery, but it's difficult to say exactly by how much in some jurisdictions. In fact, it's very difficult to do any longitudinal research on welfare spending since the early 1990s with the imposition of the cap on CAP.

Number of People on Welfare, March 1995 to March 2005 (PDF file - 133K, 1 page)
Source:
National Council of Welfare

Related Links - "the other side of the coin":

National
2003 Report Card on Child Poverty in Canada (PDF file - 183K, 12 pages)
"Despite consecutive years of economic growth more than one million children, or almost one child in six, still live in poverty in Canada."
Provincial child poverty report cards : incl. BC - MB - NS - ON - SK
Source:
Campaign 2000

Ontario
Struggling to Survive: Ontario Works Recipients Talk About Life on Welfare (PDF file - 135K, 30 pages)
October 2003
Rhetoric and Retrenchment: ‘Common Sense’ Welfare Reform in Ontario (PDF file - 50K, 7 pages)
January 2003
Source:
Social Assistance in the New Economy (University of Toronto)

Alberta
Benchmarks in Alberta's Public Welfare Services:
History Rooted in Benevolence, Harshness, Punitiveness and Stinginess
(983K, 53 pages)
February 2003



Welfare Reform Tracking Issues
(U.S.)
[NOTE: this site is not about Canadian welfare reforms, but rather U.S. research on welfare leavers - relevant for Canadian welfare reform research.]
"State tracking studies provide information concerning critical questions about what is happening to the large number of families leaving welfare. While these studies do not provide the basis for any general conclusions about the success of reforms, they provide us with the first set of data regarding the effects of welfare reform. They illustrate both the positive results of welfare reform-more ex-recipients are working; and the remaining questions-How do we move recipients who are not working into jobs so they can establish stable support systems for their families?"
Tracking Recipients after They Leave Welfare (August 1999 article)
Summaries of individual states studies
- links to summaries for 21 states
Source : National Conference of State Legislature
s

Welfare Leavers

Social Assistance Use: Trends in incidence, entry and exit rates
August 2004
by R. Sceviour and R. Finnie
"This paper explores the dynamics of Social Assistance use over this period [1995-2000] to calculate annual incidence and entry and exit rates at both the national and provincial level, broken down by family type. These breakdowns, available for the first time ever, are revealing as policy varied by province and family type and not all provinces shared equally in the recession or the expansion that followed it. The paper does not attempt to apportion the movements in SA participation rates between those related to the economy and changes in the administration of welfare. The focus is on the empirical record of SA entry, exit, and annual participation rates.
Source:
Feature Articles [NOTE: check out dozens of links to past feature articles here!]
Canadian Economic Observer
[ Statistics Canada ]

Followup article:

November 17, 2004
Social Assistance by Province, 1993-2003
Feature Article in the November 2004 issue of The Canadian Economic Observer
"Social assistance rates fell in every province between 1993 and 2003, but nowhere was the decline more dramatic than in Alberta and Ontario, according to a new report."
Complete article (PDF file - 67K, 7 pages)
"A recent article [see above] looked at the drop in people receiving social assistance in the 1990s, with particular emphasis on entry and exit rates by family type. This paper extends the results by province to 2003. One of the trade-offs of more timely data is the loss of detail on whether the changes originate through entry or exit and the type of family affected. The gain, however, is a comparison of which provinces have experienced the largest changes in social assistance among their population, and which had the highest and lowest rates of welfare use in 2003."

Source:
Feature Articles [Dozens of links to past feature articles!]
Canadian Economic Observer
[ Statistics Canada ]

Life after welfare : 1994 to 1999
March 2003
"Family incomes rose for the majority of people who stopped receiving welfare benefits during the 1990s. However, for about one out of every three individuals, family income declined significantly, according to a first-ever national study of the economic outcome for people who left welfare rolls."
The link above takes you to a summary of the report.
Complete report:
Life After Welfare: The Economic Well Being
of Welfare Leavers in Canada during the 1990s
(PDF file - 332K, 32 pages)
Source:
The Daily
[Statistics Canada]

Related Links:

After Welfare - Contrasting Studies (British Columbia)
"Statistics Canada has released a study on people who leave welfare that contrasts with the story spun by BC's Minister of Human Resources, Murray Coell. "Life After Welfare: The Economic Well Being of Welfare Leavers in Canada during the 1990s" by Marc Frenette and Garnett Picot provides some fascinating contrasts with Coell's characterization of the 90s and
with what are passing as welfare exit surveys in his ministry."
Source : Strategic Thoughts

Reports on Welfare Leavers and Diversion in the U.S.
-over 100 links to Cross-State Summaries and National Reports as well as state and county reports.
Source: Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
[U.S. Department of Health and Human Services]


See also:
The Canada Assistance Plan/Canada Health and Social Transfer Resources Page
Canadian Union Links - including a selection of relevant reports

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