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A Place to Call Home
Long Term Care in Canada
Edited by Pat Armstrong, Madeline Boscoe, Barbara Clow, Karen Grant, Margaret Haworth-Brockman, Beth Jackson, Ann Pederson, Morgan Seeley, Jane Springer
Long-term residential care operates in the shadows; too often viewed as a necessary evil best left invisible. This book is takes a different approach. It is about daring to dream about developing alternative forms of long-term, residential care based on an understanding of what exists today and of what is possible in the future. Taking into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of residents and providers are women, the book makes gender a central concern in planning for care that treats… (more information)
About Canada: Childcare
Martha Friendly, Susan Prentice
In Canada, early childhood education and care includes childcare programs, kindergartens and nursery schools. When these programs are well-designed, they support children’s development and accommodate parents who work or study. About Canada: Childcare answers questions about early childhood education and childcare (ECEC) in Canada. Why doesn’t Canada have an ECEC system, even though other countries do? Why is ECEC so important? What is missing in Canada’s ECEC landscape and why… (more information)
Alternative Budgets
Budgeting as if People Mattered
John Loxley
Alternative budgets are becoming an increasingly popular form of political action both in Canada and internationally. They are a means of advancing an alternative social and economic perspective to the neo-conservative agenda of slashing social services, reducing the role of the government and cutting taxes for the rich, all in the name of “necessity.” Alternative budgets demonstrate that there really are more enlightened alternatives which are, at the same time, fiscally responsible… (more information)
Borders Matter
Homeland Security and the Search for North America
Daniel Drache
The great North American border has always been a blend of the porous and the “impermeable.” If the border, in all its aspects, is working well, then Canadian sovereignty will be effective and focused. When the fundamentals are neglected, sovereignty becomes threatened, and economic integration becomes the focus of debate. Borders Matter examines the importance of the US–Canada border against the background of the new pressures of increased security practices and the continuing… (more information)
Calculated Kindness
Global Restructuring, Immigration and Settlement in Canada
Edited by Rose Baaba Folson
It has often been the perception that Northern states admit immigrants out of generosity, offering security and shelter to people forced from their own countries because of political and economic circumstances. This collection—based on case studies with immigrants—quickly dispels this myth. Immigrants are admitted to serve economic or demographic interests. They also serve to pay back the receiving countries’ own historical and political indebtedness. It is the North that both… (more information)
Canada’s National Child Benefit
Phoenix or Fizzle?
Edited by Douglas Durst
The National Child Benefit announced in the 1997 federal Budget promised 850 million dollars to move children out of the welfare rolls and the trap of poverty. This book attempts to outline the key concepts of this new program and set the stage for discussion of its potential impact. The writers do not agree. This book does not present a unified argument either supporting or critiquing the program but raises a series of important issues and concerns regarding the programs effectiveness in addressing… (more information)
Canadian Social Policy Renewal, 1994-2000
Ian Peach, William Warriner
This is a story of how a group of largely provincial civil servants and politicians came together in the face of neoliberal hegemony to advance the national child Benefit, national children’s Agenda and Social Union Framework Agreement. This study peers behind the ideology of media-speak to show how canadian federalism was made to work and where it failed to work. It peers deeply into the canadian political economy to understand the role of these social programs in the context of globalization… (more information)
Changing Child Care
Five Decades of Child Care Advocacy and Policy in Canada
Edited by Susan Prentice
Most parents of young children need child care services to help them work or study. Yet the licensed child care system has space for less than one in ten children and is generally unaffordable for most parents. Quality, accessibility and affordability vary wildly within and between provinces and territories. While Quebec has a 5-a-day child care system, the rest of the country leaves child care to the family and the market. When and why do governments implement progressive child care policies? The… (more information)
Child and Family Policies
Strategies, Struggles and Options
Edited by Jane Pulkingham, Gordon Ternowetsky
The papers in this collection address the changing context of child and family policies which have been ushered in by the Liberal government’s Social Security Review (SSR). The contributions analyze the implications of government policy shifts showing how they are particularly devastating for children of low income, welfare, first nations and single parent families. They suggest policy options and some directions that advocacy groups might take in developing a politics of influence. (more information)
Citizens or Consumers?
Social Policy in a Market Society
Edited by Wayne Antony, Dave Broad
Social policy is about citizens choosing the kind of society they want to live in. The mid-20th Century Keynesian welfare state can be seen as a citizenship package which included acceptance of intervention by the state to maintain economic growth and social stability, that meant the inclusion of many previously excluded groups in the social policy process and the institutionalization of a collective responsibility for individual welfare. But, with the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, the politics… (more information)
Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty
Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada
Wendy Chan, Kiran Mirchandani
The criminalization and penalization of poverty through increased surveillance and control of welfare recipients in recent years has led many poverty advocates to claim that “a war against the poor” is currently in progress. The authors argue that people of colour are most often the casualties in the governments’ desire to roll back the welfare state. Relying on myths and stereotypes about racial difference, the enforcement and policing of welfare fraud policies constructs people… (more information)
Disorderly People
Law and the Politics of Exclusion in Ontario
Joe Hermer, Janet Mosher
The Ontario Safe Streets Act is the first modern provincial law to prohibit a wide range of begging and squeegee work in public space. This Act is representative of a much wider set of reforms that the Ontario government has carried out in the administration of criminal justice and social welfare. Central to the neo-conservative character of these reforms has been the construction of “disorderly people,” of those portrayed as “welfare cheats,” “squeegee kids,” &… (more information)
Guantănamo North
Terrorism and the Administration of Justice in Canada
Robert Diab
Long List selection for the 2009 George Ryga Award After September 11th, the Canadian government made significant amendments to the law, arguing that terrorism made extraordinary measures necessary. In a nation with a high regard for human rights and civil liberties, non-citizens with suspected links to terrorism are being held indefinitely without charge on secret evidence. The scope of state secrecy now extends to almost anything relating to national security. The courts have found these and… (more information)
Health Policy Reform–Driving the Wrong Way?
A Critical Guide to the Global ‘Health Reform’ Industry
John Lister
John Lister has provided the definitive critique of market-oriented health care ‘reforms’ that the World Bank has been promoting at least since 1993. His book is a critical contribution to the struggle for equity-oriented, rights-based approaches to health systems in rich and poor countries alike.— Ronald Labonte, Canadian Research Chair and Ted Schrecker, Senior Policy Researcher, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa John Lister’s book is a powerful, worldwide… (more information)
Immigration and the Legalization of Racism
Lisa Jakubowski
”The chameleon-like nature of the law–the duplicitous ways in which the law is written, the equivocal way in which it is stated and, therefore, talked about, the hiding of the truth about the resources which are expended in its implementation, the misleading way in which it casts the discretions it purports to take away and to give–its ideological functioning and its capacity to legitimate the illegitimate, all are put under the microscope in this study. It is a timely piece of… (more information)
Liquid Gold
Energy Privatization in British Columbia
John Calvert
Secure, affordable, reliable energy has been one of British columbia’s most important competitive advantages and a key contributor to the province’s prosperity. BC’s energy costs have been based on the actual cost of production. Under new government policy, future energy will not be generated by BC hydro, but will be purchased from private energy producers. John Calvert shows how BC’s successful public energy system is being supplanted by a deregulated private electrical… (more information)
Mothering for the State
The Paradox of Fostering
Baukje (Bo) Miedema
Foster care is the most important component of child welfare services in Canada. Currently, foster care services are portrayed negatively with a continuous stream of stories in the media about poor foster care services. But who are foster care givers and what happens to a family when a foster child enters their family? Baukje (Bo) Miedema’s research reveals that the most important care giver in foster care is the foster mother. Why do these women care for seriously traumatized children on… (more information)
Names, Numbers and Northern Policy
Inuit, Project Surname, and the Politics of Identity
Valerie Alia
Names are the cornerstones of cultures. They identify individuals, represent life, express and embody power. When power is unequal and people are colonized at one level or another, naming is manipulated form the outside. In the Canadian North, the most blatant example of this manipulation is the long history of interference by visitors with the ways to Inuit named themselves and their land. This book is a concise history of government-sponsored interference with Inuit identity. (more information)
Ontario Works–Works for Whom?
An Investigation of Workfare in Ontario
Julie Vaillancourt
This book is an institutional ethnographic investigation of the Ontario Works program and the problems that it creates in the lives of people on social assistance. Ontario Works is a work-for-welfare program that was implemented in Ontario in 1996 as part of the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state. The book shows that Ontario Works has not, in reality, been used to help people on assistance and rather has been used as another means of facilitating an attack on them, while providing subsidized… (more information)
Passing Through
End-of-Life Decisions for Lesbians and Gay Men
Jeanette Auger
In June 2001, Nova Scotia became the third province to pass legislation that permits same-sex couples to legally register their relationship in order to benefit from similar legal obligations as common-law heterosexual couples. Yet despite this new legislation’s aim to advance equal rights, end-of-life decisions for gays and lesbians remain difficult. Jeannette Auger examines how closeted relationships and the history of discrimination have led many partners to dismiss making decisions about… (more information)
Punched Drunk
Alcohol, Surveillance and the LCBO 1927–1975
Gary Genosko, Scott Thompson
In this critical study of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Scott Thompson and Gary Genosko expose the stakes and consequences of the enormous bureaucracy behind the administrative surveillance of alcohol consumption in Ontario. Since its inception in 1927, the LCBO subjected alcohol consumption to its disciplinary gaze and generated knowledge about the drinking population. This book details how the LCBO tracked all alcohol consumption and capitalized on technological advances in order to generate… (more information)
Remaking Canadian Social Policy
Social Security in the Late 1990’s
Edited by Jane Pulkingham, Gordon Ternowetsky
This book critically examines the changing landscape of Canadian social policy that is taking place as a result of the Liberal government’s Social Security Review (SSR) and recent budgets. The objective is to provide an alternative venue to the “official” consultation process of the SSR, while at the same time providing input into the rebuilding of Canadian social programs. Major factors that led to the SSR are examined: the role of the Minister of Finance, the fiscal power and… (more information)
Restructuring and Resistance: Canadian Public Policy in the Age of Global Capitalism
Edited by Mike Burke, Colin Mooers, John Shields
This collection surveys major areas of neoliberal policy restructuring by various levels of Canadian government. Unlike other academic studies it also considers theoretical and practical issues connected with movements of resistance against the neo-liberal agenda. Part one situates these developments theoretically in the context of globalizing capitalism and the changing role of the state, the labour market, policy formation and federalism. Section two examines six major areas of policy restructuring… (more information)
Shrinking the State
Globalization and Public Administration
Bryan Evans, John Shields
This book provides a political economy perspective on recent changes within Canadian public administrative practice and structure, revealing the theoretical and practical underpinnings of neo-liberal public administration. It also addresses itself to the search for more democratic alternatives. This work is intended to serve as a text for courses in public administration and Canadian government and politics. The role of globalization, state fiscal crisis, economic restructuring and the ideological… (more information)
Social Inclusion
Canadian Perspectives
Edited by Ted Richmond, Anver Saloojee
How is the concept of social inclusion evolving in policy terms? Are we moving toward a common understanding or definition? What does social inclusion mean for issues like poverty and the growing racialization of poverty? What can we learn about social inclusion in theory and practice from the perspectives of the needs of children and their parents? What are the contributions of feminists and of the disability rights movement? What does social inclusion mean for Canada’s newcomers, for anti… (more information)
Taxing Illusions
Taxation, Democracy and Embedded Political Theory
Phil Hansen
For several years now, the business community, politicians, the media and many academics have been actively pro-moting tax cuts as the key to successful economic development. Governments everywhere, regardless of party label, have responded with policies of tax reduction. But taxation is about more than raising revenue or shaping economic activity. Taxation helps define the nature of a political community and the values of a political culture. Through examining two Saskatchewan tax reports, one… (more information)
Telling Tales
Living the Effects of Public Policy
Kate Bezanson, Sheila Neysmith
Telling Tales offers a sharp and compelling critique of neoliberal policies that erode incomes, increase surveillance, and further endanger those with the fewest resources. This is an excellent book that should be widely read by those with an interest in social policy and issues of poverty and marginalization. —Patricia M. Evans, School of Social Work, Carleton University This remarkable book makes policy come alive. The authors peal away the complex, compounding and cumulative impact… (more information)
Terminal Damage
The Politics of VLTs in Atlantic Canada
Peter McKenna
“This book is assuredly not an anti-gambling screed. What I’m against, and make no doubt about it, is the scourge of the video lottery terminal (VLT), and the fact that not all gambling is created equal. There is a reason why those in the know refer to those electronic devices as ‘killer machines’ and the ‘crack cocaine of gambling’.”—from the Introduction The Atlantic Lottery Corporation promotes its VLT product as a win-win for Atlantic Canada. &… (more information)
The Politics of Community Services (second edition)
Immigrant Women, Class and the State
Roxana Ng
“Students like it a lot. It is readable, although it offers a complex argument. It is practical and speaks to experiences that many (students) have had. It offers a model of what an empirical study using social organization of knowledge looks like.”–Marie Campbell, Social Work, University of Victoria (more information)
Undressing the Canadian State
The Politics of Pornography from Hicklin to Butler
Kirsten K. Johnson
Through a detailed historical analysis of Canada’s obscenity legislation, Johnson argues that the state implicitly supports the ideology of pornography. (more information)