Canadian Social Policy: Issues and Perspectives. 4th ed.

Elaine G. Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

Updated and enlarged (by 116 pages), the many strengths of this fourth
edition rest solidly on the foundations of previous versions. Divided
into two sections (one on policy-making, the other on policy issues),
this book consists of 21 chapters densely but accessibly written by
authors who are authorities in their fields. Some uniformity has been
achieved in the layout across the 12 chapters on current policy issues
in that they were structured by questions laid out by the editor. The
topics of the chapters within this section are an admixture of policy
areas and marginalized groups for whom policies have been developed.
Chapters on health care, workfare, and immigration are included along
with chapters on children in poverty, single mothers, and the disabled.
Within the seven chapters on policy-making processes, three are
specifically aimed at important shifts in the policy arena (added in the
third edition): influences of NGOs on UN refugee policies, advocacy
processes for citizen participation groups, and Aboriginal
understandings of policy-making. The remaining two chapters are those of
Westhues on policy as a field of study and policy evaluation.

Of the three new chapters that appear in this edition, two are in the
policy issues area: one on mental health, the other on risk assessment
in child welfare. The latter is the only chapter in the book that
focuses directly on policy implementation, although the chapter on
partisan political wrangling over federal policies and programs could be
seen in that light. The third new chapter discusses the Charter as a
tool for social change.

Within a book that provides an overview of policy debates, Westhues has
gone some way toward encouraging critical social policy perspectives.
Still, there is considerable distance to travel. For instance, she
identifies humanism as an emerging policy evaluation framework but does
not recognize institutional ethnography as doing precisely that.
Likewise, her critical inclinations might be more fully realized if she
went beyond asking questions that tend to keep both problems and their
solutions in discrete policy silos. Nonetheless, the critical frameworks
that she and her contributors have used offer valuable insights.