The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920-1970

L. Richard Lund is a Ph.D. candidate in history at York University.

The Limits of Affluence, like its predecessor No Fault of Their Own, is
one of the best books ever written on the history of the welfare state
in Canada. In recounting the origins and development of unemployment
assistance, mothers’ allowances, means-tested old-age pensions, and
general public assistance in Ontario between 1920 and 1970, Struthers
has filled a large void in the literature on the Canadian welfare state.
More than a narrative account of welfare programs in Ontario, the book
is also a superb in-depth

analysis of the province’s social policy-making process.

Wisely, Struthers casts a wide net in his search for factors that may
have influenced Ontario’s welfare policy. He examines key decisions on
a case-by-case basis and, to his credit, does not allow any particular
ideological agenda or theory of welfare-state development to place undue
limitations on his analysis. Among the factors that at one time or
another affected policy decisions were industrialization, urbanization
and changing economic conditions, public opinion, provincial political
culture and party politics, and, of course, the poor themselves.

Periodically, a number of these factors combined to produce a fragile
consensus that favored changes beneficial to welfare recipients. In
general, though, limited incremental reform characterized the history of
welfare in Ontario. By 1970, more people were eligible for assistance,
and aid was much less miserly than in the past, but welfare benefits
still provided recipients with only 60 percent of a poverty-line income.
Inadequate benefits, according to Struthers, reflected the fact that the
philosophical underpinnings of Ontario’s welfare system remained
virtually unchanged between 1920 and 1970; preserving the incentive to
work and keeping costs as low as possible continued to take priority
over meeting the real needs of Ontario’s poor. Hence, despite moments
of promise in the 1960s, the idea of providing an adequate social
minimum for all Ontario residents remained unfulfilled.