Home › Policy Articles: Welfare & Social Issues: Social Security: 2004

Jane Jenson provides a synthesis report for the year-long analysis undertaken by Canadian and international experts for a research program organized by the CPRN.

This paper explores the notion of wage supplementation in Canada as a solution to the high levels of failure to reach the poverty-income line (as defined by Statistics Canada).

A movement, called Food Charters, is taking place in Canada to build a strategy for good food policy, to mobilize action at the local and regional levels, and to influence public policy.

This paper is one in a series of research reports published for the CPRN's Seeking Social Architecture for Canada's 21st Century project.

Christopher Leo and Todd Andres argue that recent changes in the global economy have increased productivity, thereby creating new ways to generate wealth and create economic growth.

This first article, by Garson Hunter, is entitled Race to the Bottom: Welfare to Work Programming in Saskatchewan, and its Similarities to Programming in the United States and Britain. Hunter argues that Canada has developed a hybrid welfare programming model – one that is based on the US model of welfare programming and blended with ideology borrowed from British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Third Way welfare approach.

This article by Tom McIntosh, originally published in the Spring 2004 edition of Canadian Public Administration, explores the old and new intergovernmental dynamics around federal transfers to the provinces for health and social policy spending in the aftermath of the Romanow Report.

In this report, Alison Brewin and Lindsay Stephens carefully examine the massive cuts to legal aid coverage in BC in 2002. In particular, family law legal aid and poverty law services were substantially reduced or eliminated. While these cuts have affected all British Columbians, the authors posit they have had the greatest impact on women.

In this paper, Bernard and Saint-Arnaud use the previous work of sociologist Esping-Andersen as a basis for studying welfare regimes in Canadian provinces. Esping-Andersen’s work identified three welfare regimes: social-democratic, liberal, and conservative. These authors add a fourth regime – familialistic – in order to round out their analysis. They identify Canada as having a liberal welfare regime, and analyze Canada’s four larges provinces from that starting point.

This paper examines income inequality in BC in the 1990s. Marc Lee draws on traditional survey data, as well as tax and census data, to paint a more comprehensive picture of income inequality while enabling a more detailed look at income distribution.

Sherri Torjman, Ken Battle and Michael Mendelson prepared this paper for the Finance Committee’s pre-Budget consultations. The authors present key principles they contend should guide the federal government’s spending of its surpluses, namely, transparency, balance, and purpose.

In this backgrounder, Poschmann and Robson are examining policies that promote saving/financial independence in low-income families. According to them, policymakers have recently been giving fresh attention to these initiatives, with the idea of promoting forward thinking about personal investments and encouraging financial independence throughout life. Another important consideration is that promoting personal savings can cushion against the adverse events that can knock vulnerable individuals and families from financial independence to social assistance.

This research report, by Bruno Palier, isolates major trends that are reshaping social policies in Europe, as well as policy methods and concrete reform processes.

The Canadian government promised to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. This report, written by Pauline Raven and Lesley Frank, provides information relating to that promise, and updates data since the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ 2002 Report. The authors focus on Nova Scotia, relative to the other Atlantic provinces and the rest of Canada.

In 1988, Transitions: Report of the Social Assistance Review Committee was released. It proposed a new vision for social assistance and a radically redesigned set of child benefits, a new income program for persons with disabilities, and a new direction to bring welfare recipients into the community mainstream.

This study examines welfare policies in Ontario since 1985, and evaluates the welfare reforms initiated under the Conservative government, led by Premier Mike Harris, in June 1995.