Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy

Jeffrey J. Cormier, Ph.D., specializes in Canadian society at McGill
University.

The good news, according to Rice and Prince, is that the Canadian
welfare state crisis has come to an end—the bad news is that we face
some pretty tough choices about how to allocate money in a post-deficit
economic era. Governments still need to make hard decisions about social
policy as they contend with the dual tensions of rapid economic
globalization and increased social pluralism. The dictates of global
capitalism compel governments to open borders and allow for the free
exchange of goods and services. The dictates of social pluralism, on the
other hand, push governments to contend with an increasingly diverse
population demanding essential social services. The complex interaction
of globalization and social pluralism, and the impact of these two
forces on Canadian social policy, are the central issues addressed in
this book.

The first few chapters look at the development of Canadian welfare
policy over the past 100 years. From the early days when the principle
of “less eligibility” was dominant, through the 1930s and 1940s when
the actual foundations of Canada’s welfare policy were laid, up to the
crisis period of the 1970s, and finally to the retrenchment and
government cutbacks of the 1980s and early 1990s, the authors tell a
detailed story of how a mixture of social, economic, ideological, and
political factors molded Canadian social policy over the years. In
subsequent chapters, they discuss the welfare state crisis of the 1970s
(including the attacks made on the welfare state by both the right and
left), the impact of globalization, the important role of gender in
discussions of welfare, and the influence of community groups (i.e.,
civil society) on the eventual shape of social policy.

Rice and Prince have produced an extremely evenhanded treatment of a
topic that is usually approached from ideological extremes; the downside
is a text that sometimes makes for less than engaging reading.