Patchworks of Purpose: The Development of Provincial Social Assistance Regimes in Canada

Jeffrey J. Cormier is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Canadian society
at McGill University.

The commonsense assumption that most of us undoubtedly share about
social assistance programs in Canada is that they are directed toward a
similar universal goal: to reduce poverty and inequality among the less
fortunate in our society. Boychuk challenges this assumption by
describing, in some detail, the very different trajectories that each
provincial social assistance regime has taken in the years before and
after the 1966 implementation of the federal government’s Canada
Assistance Plan (CAP).

Fusing together the theoretical perspectives of Gosta Esping-Anderson,
Karl Polanyi, and Richard Titmuss, Boychuk constructs an analytical
typology of five models (conservative, residual, market/family
enforcement, redistributive, and market) that he uses to quantitatively
and qualitatively compare the evolution of the provinces’ social
assistance programs. His general finding is that all 10 provinces, based
on the political, social, and economic factors unique to each, have
developed distinct variations on these five ideal-type models. Ontario,
for instance, continues to have in place a mostly conservative regime,
while Quebec has gone from a residual regime to a mixed one.
Furthermore, Boychuk observes that the five regime types have remained
relatively stable over time, regardless of federal cost-sharing
initiatives (such as CAP) aimed at setting national standards. He
suggests that regardless of the relative strength of arguments for and
against the setting of national social assistance standards, regime
types are ultimately the product of political decisions rather than
economic imperatives.

One of the most frustrating things about this book is that Boychuk’s
conclusion—that provincial assistance programs are the result of the
political, social, and economic context of individual provinces—is
merely asserted rather than demonstrated. Instead of documenting why
provincial social policies are different, Boychuk devotes almost all his
attention to showing how they are different. To his credit, he does
point to the complex ways in which policy formation and public opinion
reinforce each other; unfortunately, by the time he gets around to doing
this, it is a case of too little, too late.