Critical Perspectives on Canadian Public Policy

Studies in Political Economy 55, 1998

The Canadian welfare state has changed significantly in the last decade with the federal devolution of policy responsibilities creating opportunities for some provinces to adopt American social policy ideas. Given the expectations of resilience and non-convergence, in the welfare state literature, this article addresses the issues of policy change by demonstrating that the movement of British Columbia's labour and social policy towards international neoliberal norms, including policy examples set in many US jurisdictions, have produced limited convergence. We suggest that this indicates that more change has occurred and is occurring in the Canadian welfare state than the resilience model or comparative public policy literature would indicate.

2006

Global Social Policy, 2007

The Canadian welfare state has changed significantly in the last decade with the federal devolution of policy responsibilities creating opportunities for some provinces to adopt American social policy ideas. Given the expectations of resilience and non-convergence, in the welfare state literature, this article addresses the issues of policy change by demonstrating that the movement of British Columbia's labour and social policy towards international neoliberal norms, including policy examples set in many US jurisdictions, have produced limited convergence. We suggest that this indicates that more change has occurred and is occurring in the Canadian welfare state than the resilience model or comparative public policy literature would indicate.

Politics & Society, 1997

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, 2019

Based on the varying views of power under neoliberalism, the literature draws divergent conclusions regarding its quality as a policy approach. Neoliberal economic restructuring is generally regarded as positive by the conservative public choice school, as positive by some Weberians and negative by others, and as overwhelmingly negative by Marxians and feminists. Critics usually present restructuring as something that is happening "to" us, that is presented to us as a fait accompli, handed down by bureaucrats and elected officials influenced by international business. This view obscures the role of the average citizen in pushing restructuring forward, not only in allowing it to happen, but also in actively performing it. In response, this paper suggests a focus on individual actors at the local level that locates the expansion of neoliberalism in intersecting global and institutional, as well as in individual sites, without obscuring the various oppressions generated by restructuring.

The dominant welfare regimes approach, like the historical-institutionalism on which it draws, predicts path-dependent responses to contemporary challenges. According to this, Canada's social policy regime clearly belongs to the (mainly Anglo-American) 'liberal' family, where markets and families retain a key role, supplemented by modest state supports. Yet, as some have recognized, there are important differences among liberal regimes and within a particular welfare regime over time. There are, in other words, 'varieties of liberalism'. This article argues, moreover, that in the contemporary period Canadian welfare reform has been characterized by warring principles for redesign. While some have sought to deepen the postwar social project, the main trends have been neo-liberal restructuring and, more recently, policies inspired by 'inclusive liberalism', though less deeply than under Blair's government in the UK. The continued existence of such alternatives suggests the need for a more nuanced conception of path-dependent change, consistent with recent revisionist trends in historical-institutionalism.

Socialist Studies 7 (1&2), 37-302. Part 2., 2011