The Canadian Welfare State Evolution And Transition

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The selections in this volume are drawn from the proceedings of the Second Conference on Provincial Social Welfare Policy held at The University of Calgary, May 1-3, 1985. The conference sought to further national cross-disciplinary research on provincial social welfare policies and programs from a comparative provincial perspective. It was organized around four major themes: The Canadian Welfare State: Evolution and Transition; Income Security and Job Creation; Issues of Structure and Process; and, Selected Social Issues and Programs. Perspectives on Social Services and Social Issues offers detailed studies of a range of contemporary issues.

Using class and ideology as key concepts, Michael Ornstein and Michael Stevenson examine this transition in terms of the nature of hegemony and hegemonic crisis and the conditions of political order and instability. These concepts guide the interpretation of three large surveys of representative samples of the Canadian public and two unique elite surveys, conducted between 1975 and 1981.

Focusing on welfare states in capitalist societies, The Welfare State in Transition carries forward the debate on pluralism, identifying and discussing the problems involved in transferring responsibility for welfare services from the state to the other three sectors.

The first major reference work of its kind in the social welfare field in Canada, this volume is a selected bibliography of works on Canadian social welfare policy. The entries in Part One treat general aspects of the origins, development, organization, and administration of the welfare state in Canada; included is a section covering basic statistical sources. The entries in Part Two treat particular areas of policy such as unemployment, disabled persons, prisons, child and family welfare, health care, and day care. Also included are an introductory essay reviewing the literature on social welfare policy in Canada, a "User's Guide," several appendices on archival materials, and an extensive chronology of Canadian social welfare legislation both federal and provincial. The volume will increase the accessibility of literature on the welfare state and stimulate increased awareness and further research. It should be of wide interest to students, researchers, librarians, social welfare policy analysts and administrators, and social work practitioners.

Changing Canada examines political transformations, welfare state restructuring, international boundaries and contexts, the new urban experience and creative resistance. The authors question dominant ways of thinking and promote alternative ways of understanding and explaining Canadian society and politics that encourage progressive social change. They examine how the evolution of capitalism is producing new types of transformations and new forms of resistance, and show that aspects of the state and the wider society are being contested. They also discuss the often paradoxical or contradictory effects of various social forces, such as the liberating but also constraining features of new communications technologies, new employment norms and new household forms.

Welfare Reform in Canada provides systematic knowledge of Canadian social assistance by assessing provincial welfare regimes and emphasizing changes since the late twentieth century. The book examines activation, social investment, and economic inequalities and provides nuanced perspectives on social welfare across Canada's provinces in relation to trends and issues in the country and beyond. These conceptual, international, and historical perspectives inform in-depth case studies of social assistance reform in each province. The key issues of social assistance in Canada, including gender relations, immigrants, Aboriginal peoples, and the impact of activation programs, are addressed, as is the possibility of convergence taking place in provincial welfare policy. This book is the second volume in the Johnson-Shoyama Series on Public Policy, published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, an interdisciplinary centre for research, teaching, and executive training with campuses at the Universities of Regina and Saskatchewan.