Canadian Review of Social Policy

IntroductionAs Giorgio Agamben (1995) noted twenty years ago, "The novelty of our era, which threatens the very foundations of nation-state, is that growing portions of humanity can no longer be represented within it" (p. 115). This situation is even...

IntroductionA longstanding concern in the literature has been a lack of interconnectedness between health and social policies that serves as a barrier to optimizing population health. The inability to successfully support population health through purely...

Income security is an important contemporary policy issue especially given the rapidly shifting economy and the aging of the North American workforce (Berg, 2016; Lamarche, Hanley, Noel, & Christensen, 2016; Quinn, & Cahill, 2016). However, what...

Interculturalism: A View From Quebec by Gerard Bouchard. University of Toronto Press, 2105Debates concerning cultural pluralism have dominated the public sphere in many North American countries for the past several years. Many conservative forces seem...

The articles for this issue trace the ways in which social policies negatively affect vulnerable populations, and in some cases, when they are designed to assist them. The ability of seniors to pay family members for caregiving duties in Newfoundland...

"Why [would] a business organization ... consider becoming transgender-inclusive[?] At first glance, such an initiative might appear to be counterintuitive. After all, what could an organization realistically have to gain? Wouldn't it be disruptive to...

Lessons from Latin America: Innovations in Politics, Culture, and Development. By Felipe Arocena and Kirk Bowman. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781442605497Arocena and Bowman's book, Lessons from Latin America: Innovations in Politics,...

IntroductionThe province of Newfoundland and Labrador is facing significant challenges in terms of the provision of long-term care for the elderly population. Critical gaps in long-term care services, particularly in rural areas, have resulted from a...

The articles in this issue address the various impacts of neoliberal social policy, and explore barriers to, and possibilities for, meaningful changes. Using a variety of research approaches, the articles tackle critical questions pertaining to Employment...

IntroductionWhen workers become unemployed in Canada, there is an expectation that they will be able to access unemployed workers' support because they have paid into the federal Employment Insurance (EI) program while employed. However, this is not...

IntroductionThe conversation about people living in poverty in wealthy developed countries is couched in moralistic terms such as deserving vs. undeserving poor (Raphael, 2011). This study has found that longstanding discourses are prominent in Canadian...

IntroductionL'article propose une analyse de l'engagement politique et militant de la Coalition pour l'équité salariale au Nouveau-Brunswick. Il vise ainsi à comprendre comment la lutte menée par la Coalition favorise ou non une reconnaissance de l'équité...

IntroductionIn his report, A Preventable Death, The Correctional Investigator of Canada, Howard Sapers (2008), offers a summary of the immediate events surrounding the death of Ashley Smith:On October 19, 2007, at the age of 19, Ms. Smith was pronounced...

IntroductionHousing policy influences the lives of individuals under its purview by dictating who is entitled to social housing, how entitlement changes over the course of their lifetime, and the extent to which social housing is supported in a community...

A few years ago, I was invited to take part in an international conference at a venerable German university boasting one of the largest teacher education programs in that country. The conference theme was 'Meaningful Collaboration in Teacher Education'....

Disability, right monitoring and social change: Building power out of evidence Edited by Marcia H. Rioux, Paula C. Pinto and Gillian Parekh, Canadian Scholars' Press, 2015. ISBN: 9781551307411Disability, Rights Monitoring and Social Change: Building...

Purchase for Profit: Public-Private Partnerships and Canada's Public Health Care System by Heather Whiteside. University of Toronto Press, 2015. ISBN: 9781442651203Standing in at 203 pages, Heather Whiteside's Purchase for Profit: Public-Private Partnerships...

IntroductionAu Québec, un ensemble de mesures actives d'aide à l'emploi ont pour objectif de favoriser l'insertion en emploi et le développement de l'employabilité des personnes exclues du marché du travail, notamment chez les individus inscrits au régime...

IntroductionIn November 2013, the Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, released a Special Report entitled When Talk Trumped Service: A Decade of Lost Opportunity for Aboriginal Children and Youth in B.C. The purpose of the...

IntroductionThe role of the mother in political economies is well documented. Moreover, the ways in which motherhood is constituted - through its discursive and material effects - within policy assemblages has long been explored within the social sciences.1...

Decolonizing Employment: Aboriginal Inclusion in Canada's Labour Market. By Shauna MacKinnon. Winnipeg, Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 2015. ISBN-978-0887557811Shauna MacKinnon's book, Decolonizing Employment: Aboriginal Inclusion in Canada's...

Northern Communities Working Together: The Social Economy of Canada's North Edited by Chris Southcott. Toronto, On: University of Toronto Press, 2015, 304 pp. ISBN 9781442614185The "social economy", as a conceptual framework, seeks to capture the value...

CRSP is pleased to launch our first issue devoted to the scholarship of graduate students in Social Policy / Social Work. We began this project in the Fall of 2015, with the ambitious goal of publishing the issue by Spring of 2016, in time for the School...

IntroductionEugenicist movements in the United States, and most infamously in Nazi Germany, have been understood to be important actors in the establishment of various social policies that are linked to nationalist goals of racial purity and the elimination...

IntroductionThe First World War, fought from 1914 to 1919, was different from other wars Canada had previously participated in. The sheer scale of this war was unparalleled in history. In addition to the roughly 61,326 dead, 172,950 injured soldiers...

IntroductionOn April 30th, 2015, Canada marked its first Journey to Freedom Day (Bill S-219), an Act "respecting a national day of commemoration of the exodus of Vietnamese refugees and their acceptance in Canada" (Bill S-219, 2015, p.1). I am interested...

IntroductionPublic debate on the laws and regulations pertaining to sex work has ensued since before living memory and it continues today. Radical feminists describe sex workers' experiences in terms of sexual violence and psychological harm, which are...

IntroductionWhile a robust literature tracks the ways in which racialized and marginalized youth are excluded from dominant spaces, little attention has been paid to the effects of policies and programs that invite them. This article addresses this issue...

What's Happened to Politics? By Bob Rae, Canada: Simon & Schuster, 2015. ISBN: 9781501103414In the newly released book, "What's Happened to Politics?" former politician Bob Rae sets out a critical analysis of the current state of Canadian politics....

The articles in this issue address the ways in which austerity, cost containment and forms of surveillance undermine the security and life chances of vulnerable populations. The government commitment to austerity has deeply penetrated the areas of child...

IntroductionConcerns for health equity have found entry into social policy discussions in Canada at both the national and provincial levels of government. The concept of health equity focuses attention on the distribution of resources and processes that...

IntroductionConnie had it all. "I had a job, I had a house, I had 2 cars, I had a cottage" (Interview #4, Kingston). But her husband was physically and psychologically abusive. She describes how difficult it was for her to decide to leave her children...

IntroductionAlthough the provision of out-of-home care for children deemed to be at risk of abuse or neglect is a necessary component of child welfare services, the persistence of poor social, health and educational outcomes for children in care (Simms,...

From surveillance cameras; to hall monitors; to an increased emphasis on student identification; to police officers stationed within schools, some Toronto-area high schools are looking increasingly similar to their American counterparts. This security-based...

IntroductionAu Québec, les organismes communautaires constituent des acteurs indispensables dans le domaine du soutien à domicile des aînés. Ils offrent divers types de soutien, tels que de la livraison de repas à domicile, du transport-accompagnement,...

Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States Audra Simpson, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.Audra Simpson's book, Mohawk Interruptus, is an achievement of scholarship. It delivers what it promises, has a strong authorial...

IntroductionCanadian social policy-making involves a formation of political relations of power and constitutional jurisdictions; the deployment of expenditures, legislation and administrative systems; a focus on particular human actions and relationships;...

IntroductionTuberculosis is an infections disease that started a dramatic and steady decline in Canada from the 1950s to the 1980s when the rates dropped significantly in the general population, and it appeared to have been beaten. It re-emerged as a...

Orchestrating Austerity: Impacts & ResistanceDonna Baines & Stephen McBride (Eds.), Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2014.Donna Baines and Stephen McBride's edited book on austerity addresses one of the most important issues of the...

PovertyJim Silver, Halifax: Fernwood Books, 2014.Jim Silver's book on Poverty published by Fernwood Books in 2014 is in a series that they have titled "About Canada". It's a little book, in a format the size of a large index card, about a big subject....

Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical MakeoverMichael Harris, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Viking, 2014.In the Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover (2014), Michael Harris provides enough evidence to charge Stephen Harper...

The austerity period in Canada, unfolding under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government since 2011, has involved both the cutting back of social programs and a complex process of state reregulation and restructuring in the social policy area. In announcing...

IntroductionUndeniably, progress for women has occurred in Canada since the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970). Women's daily lives in 2014 differ vastly from the way they were in the 1970s both economically and socially. More...

IntroductionChild care is an excellent lens through which to analyze the immense social policy transformation taking place under the Harper Conservatives. While it may appear that there has been little federal action in the area of social policy, including...

IntroductionMany Canadian social scientists have indicated the need to understand food banks within a greater political context. Their origins, institutionalization and entrenchment in society in addition to their collective interactions with federal,...

The articles in this general issue cover a diverse range of policy and issue areas and reflect different analytical interests. All of them present important insights into current social realities in Canada. The first two articles speak of the dangers...

IntroductionThis paper is based on findings from a larger qualitative study of home support for seniors in New Brunswick (Low et al., 2011; Mather et al., 2011). While the focus of this broader project was the sustainability of home support services...

IntroductionThe right to access abortion in Canada was shaped by feminist activists fighting for the protection of a woman's right to control her reproductive body. Abortion was decriminalized by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988, as the court struck...

IntroductionGlobalization and technological advances, along with an increasingly unregulated capitalist market, have had a resounding impact on domestic labor market conditions. Specific factors that negatively impact young adult labour market attachment...

Introduction: Think Tanks and the CCPAOver the course of the twentieth century think tanks gained increasing importance in capitalist democracies as places where research and policy development could occur, independently of direct control by states and...

Unlikely Radicals The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War Charlie Angus Toronto, ON: Between the Lines, 2013.Book Review by Gayle BroadNorthern and rural communities face many obstacles in organizing to challenge mega-projects - they do not have access...

Troubling Care - Critical Perspectives on Research and Practices Eds. Pat Armstrong and Susan Bradley Toronto,ON: Canadian Scholars Press, 2013.Reviewed by Brigitte KitchenGrowing old is often considered a problematic stage in the life cycle. The need...

AbstractBetween 1963-1966 and 2006-2009, the work of two Special Senate Committees on Aging helped to construct a national dialogue around the consequences of population aging. An analysis of the final reports of each Senate committee provides a revealing...

AbstractIn Canada, home care provides health and social services to an estimated one million people, most of them older adults. In the absence of national policy directives, services vary considerably from one jurisdiction to the next, in what has been...

AbstractA growing share of the population in Canada comprised of aging immigrants lacks the financial resources for a secure retirement. Disproportionately visible minorities, many foreign-born seniors, have limited access to income security programs,...

AbstractImmigrants represent 28% of the Canadian population over 65, and older immigrants - more of them are women - now comprise the majority of the aging population in Canada's large metropolitan cities. Despite ample research about abuse of older...

For a Belgian researcher, the invitation from the Canadian Review of Social Policy (CRSP) to assess Vieillir et vivre ensemble, chez soi, dans sa communauté, au Québec (ageing and living together: at home, in one's community, in Quebec), a new policy...

Health in Rural Canada Judith C. Kulig, Allison M. Williams Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2012.Health in Rural Canada is an interdisciplinary collection that brings together the most current health research on rural, remote, and...

Beyond Caring Labour to Provisioning Work Sheila M. Neysmith, Marge Reitsma-Street, Stephanie Baker Collins, and Elaine Porter Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012In its 10 chapters written by the four authors, with individual chapters from two...

Understanding the Social Economy: A Canadian Perspective Jack Quarter, Laurie Mook, and Ann Armstrong. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009The primary purpose of this book is to provide a comprehensive examination of the social economy within Canada,...

First printed in Chris Searle's poetry anthology Elders (Reality Press, 1973), without attributionWhat do you see nurses, what do you see,What are you thinking when you look at me?A crabbit old woman, not very wise,Uncertain of habit, with far-away eyes,Who...

AbstractThis article addresses whether a partnership between the public, non-profit, and private sectors represents a feasible solution for dealing with contentious and symbolic public policy issues in the provision of assisted suicide service in Ontario....

AbstractOver the past 15 years, the Quebec government's public policy on social and community housing has been based mainly on the AccèsLogis program. Under this program, some 23,000 new social housing units have been developed. While the program's regulations...

AbstractAlthough the social economy has a long historical connection to food, these links have not been well explored or understood, particularly with respect to social policy. But given the well-documented range of negative impacts brought on by a world...

AbstractSocial economy innovation in sustainability is altering policy environments. The activities of green social organizations combine social and ecological missions in ways that pose new questions across sometimes discrete policy silos and levels,...

Governments have been key funders of both social economy (SE) organizations and First Nation communities, yet the relationships between them have not necessarily been easy to negotiate. Challenges abound for government funders and SE and First Nation...

Upon recognizing the significant role that Social Enterprise has on the overall social economy ecosystem, a collaboration of social economy actors and organizations convened the BC Social Enterprise Policy Forum in late 2007. The forum brought together...

For-profit companies are typically excluded from analyses of the social economy, and with good reason. The concept of shareholder primacy is deeply rooted within the modern corporation's organizational design - pursuing anything other than shareholder...

Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital John Restakis Gabriola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers, 2010The world of Co-operative Studies is notoriously bereftof literature that bridges the academic and practitioner worlds. It has...

The Resilience Imperative, Co-operative Transitions to a Steady-State Economy Mike Lewis and Pat Conaty Gabriola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers, 2012In the book The Resilience Imperative, Co-Operative Transitions to a Steady-State Economy Mike Lewis...