Social Movements in Canada - Term Paper Example

___________ d: Feb-26-2009 Canada's Social Safety Net: Establishment and Analysis of Social Movements The great depression of the 1930s in Canada was no doubt a hard journey for millions of Canadians to survive in extreme poverty. The dominating political and social discourse initiated in 1935 when Ontario's Industrial Standard Acts (ISA) was passed in order to bring workers and employers together under the state shelter with an aim to establish minimum wages and work standards. One reason for the economic crises that Canada confronted was mainly due to unnecessary dependency on its neighbors. Canada's economic and national security relationships with its southern neighbor grew too much closer in the mid twentieth century, as a succession of Canadian governments saw greater North American integration as essential for national security and economic growth. The industries were witnessing lack of significant demand for their goods, resulting in providing layoff to their workers. With few primary products in hand and failure of high tariffs, the stock market crashed and riots initiated. The social services that were influenced by a political shift in Ottawa and in several provinces witnessed a fiscal crisis of unprecedented dimensions and deep cuts in social service funding. This in turn escorted to predictable crises in administration and service delivery with a national health care system in jeopardy, putting the unemployment level higher than ever, diminished career prospects for the young, lack of national identity and a steep decline in public confidence in the ability of government to cope effectively even with its basic tasks (Crane, 1994, p. 4). People lost confidence in government which was further accompanied by declining faith in the efficacy and trustworthiness of professionals of various kinds. The Department of Public Health and Welfare The economic crises during late 1930s lead reform debates to criticize the department of public health, which acquired a budget of more than eight million dollars and responsibility for the survival of population of approximately 750,000 people. As a result reform advocates began to raise fundamental questions about the role of the state in health care and social welfare, as well as the balance of federal and provincial responsibilities. Such criticism and growing concern on the part of privately-owned health programs and public health services became a topic of debate during the 1935 provincial election, which was subsequently won by the Social Credit party (Ismael & Vaillancourt, 1988, p. 45). Government while recognizing that more intensive programs were required took steps to develop a plan for financing the increasing demand for a wide range of social services. Among significant steps to cope up with the economic crises, one step taken by the new government was to make local authorities responsible for both the hospitalization of their impoverished sick residents and for developing specialized health programs and services. There was a slow but steady development in the public health services sector and by 1951 it was increasingly evident that public health programs were needed throughout the province. The Health Unit Act of 1951 while realizing how badly social reforms were needed in the health care, divided provinces into geographic areas to be served by local health units. The Government was contented to allow each unit having its own board and administrative system and received up to 60% of its budget from the province (Ismael & Vaillancourt, 1988, p. 45). In 1935, when the Social Credit government established the Bureau of Relief and Public Welfare under the direction of the minister of Public Health, it successfully reorganized relief and welfare programs within the Department of Public Health. However the new Social Credit party made a substantial social, educational, and cultural progress from 1940s through 1960s with prosperity in welfare programs that the Department of Public Welfare had to appear as a separate government department in 1944. The onus came onto the shoulders of the newly formed department to provide millions of Canadians with all forms of relief, child welfare and children of unmarried parents, part of the Domestic Relations Act, the Juvenile Court Act, and by 1945, old age pensions and mother's allowance (Archive, 2009). Role of Social Movements in the Economic crises The beginning of the twentieth century brought a social welfare system which was outstanding in a sense regarding the family, since individuals were expected to respond to social distress through the marketplace, and only when these broke down would community structures provide assistance of a characteristically temporary and minimal nature. Over the course of the century, it was evident from higher levels of government financing that an increasing proportion of social welfare formerly the constitutional would privilege the provinces, but with the assistance of local levels of government and of private charity. An institutional system was ushered after the Second World War where Government interventionism promoted an emergent Canadian nationalism. Prior to the 1960s Roman Catholic Church hold great influence over all aspects of Quebecois social welfare. The phase of Canadian recovery from the misery of poverty and unemployment initiated when in 1940s government discovered that the real cause of economic decline is due to the reduction in international trade, therefore unemployment rate began to decrease. National social movements played a significant role in the poverty reduction and dealing with unemployment in the 1950s. NGO advocacy through the 1950s worked hard for greater poverty focus, more social sector lending, and public participation in project planning and implementation. Canada was an active member of the antipoverty network of the World Bank since then. The foundation of the Canadian Social Safety Net was based on employment insurance and welfare system in the 1940s and developed largely in the 1950s (Torjman, 2007). Canadian citizens perceived economic turbulence as a failure of the national economy which only brought a deep recession that provoked the need for establishing a social safety net. Since social safety was associated with the appearance of newly formed social problems entailing homelessness, begging, massive lay-offs, unemployment, and insecurity, the new Government developed constitutional, judicial and social policies that bypassed the market, and created institutions parallel to it, such as social insurance schemes, assistance programmes and health care systems, to serve as a safety net (White, 2003). Public welfare issues received significant public attention, especially those specifically related to child welfare programs. In the mid-1940s, criticism and scandal arose from publicized inquiries regarding the administration of child welfare programs and the handling of child welfare cases. Though such public scrutiny was not in favor of the Government, yet it had little positive effect on Alberta government policy which remained out of harmony with other provinces' approaches towards social welfare through the 1960s. In 1949 among a significant number of changes that took place, was the responsibility on part of the Department of Public Welfare's financial matters. It was felt that Public Welfare Assistance Act of 1949 allowed 60% of the municipal costs for child welfare services to be paid by the Department of Public Welfare which later was transferred to the social assistance services by legislation. Additional changes in the federal Old Age Pensions Act and issues like old age security in 1949 resulted in some of the Department of Public Welfare's financial responsibility being shared with the federal government. Federal Health Grants In 1948 when provinces accepted federal health grants, the program included all the grant that concerned mental and physical disease control including cancer, crippled children, tuberculosis control with all the necessary professional training to support hospital construction and public health research (Heacock, 1985). It was mainly the contribution of the social organizations that led these grants to have a successful effect on the availability of health care and led to improved public and mental health services, a standard hospital accounting and reporting system, upgrading of diagnostic services and, through the Hospital Construction Grant, an upgrading of physical facilities. The efforts of social organizations resulted in the introduction of Public Health Research Grant (PHRG) in 1969 with an aim to fund health services research. Later in 1975, the PHRG was amalgamated with the new health services research grant to form the National Health Research and Development Program (Robinson & Elliot, 1993, p. 20). Role of Social organizations in boosting up Canadian Economy Canadian policy prior to 1930 developed the economic and technical base for a wheat-export economy so as to cope up with the catastrophe of the Depression and to secure a stable position in the world wheat trade after the Second World War. When policies are compared with Argentine, it is clear that since the late nineteenth century Argentine had failed to develop agricultural research and education, to provide an efficient transport system, and to build an effective marketing structure. Argentine has never been able to keep pace with the international competition in agriculture since there was an ongoing exploitation among nation's tenant farmers (Solberg, 1987, p. 4). While the depression got worst, Bennett introduced some programs in order to support the poor and the unemployed which remained unsuccessful. However in 1935, when ISA was regulated, 'regulatory unionism' was introduced as a key development in Canadian economy. Although the introduction of unionism in Canada experienced a slow growth until the third decade of the twentieth century, social sector perceived it as the power of the employer in the labor market and at the work place. Union movements established labor rights, free from legal restraints as indicators to counterbalance the power of employers so as to resist the efforts of their employees to unionize (Woods, 1962, p. 40). Although Canadian Government in order to uplift the people in the middle of depression created two national corporations, Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) and the Bank of Canada which gained success in getting the economy back on track. However in 1937, the economy started to recover but unable to get hold of the Canadian political institutions that in many ways had reinforced, social divisions. It was soon felt that managing societal conflicts would be the most difficult task for Canadian government, particularly after an economic catastrophe this task became even more difficult when all felt the division of societies by cleavages resulting in deep, long-standing divisions based on race, religion, region, language, and class factors. These divisions were generally marked by distinct group values, identities, and institutions so as to work for their betterment. Ultimately it was realized that government alone would not be able to alleviate such divisions, since conflict management in a democratic society does not mean that there is no conflict, but rather that conflict is resolved in a way that all parties accept as legitimate, even if the outcome is not particularly to their liking. The political parties took initiatives to detect the most obvious indicator of successful cleavage management and ended up in realizing the absence of symptoms of deep alienation from the system-political violence (such as riots, assassinations, and bombings) and political parties or movements that seek drastic changes in the countries' institutions or boundaries (Banting, 1992, p. 9). Although Canada has always avoided political violence in the past, but economic limitations and challenges of being dependant on the U. S. resulted in endemic disasters. Keeping in view the distinctive risks and limitations for conflict management, Canada used several types of mechanisms to compensate for any weaknesses that might have arise with a single mode of conflict management. Conflicts were started for the relations with Britain and the place of Canada within the British Empire was a long-term source of division between francophones and anglophones through much of Canadian history. With an eruption of the political crises as well, it was decided to determine the extent to which Canada should follow Britain's lead into these conflicts and whether Canada should impose recruitment in order to raise manpower for fighting overseas. However during war I and II, elections were commenced to authorize recruitment in the provinces voting in favor. For most of the period up to 1960, it was noticed that a relatively stable pattern of conflict management emerged which was based largely on a system of bargaining between Anglophone and francophone elites within the federal cabinet, accompanied by devolutionary mechanisms that gave Quebec substantial autonomy in social, cultural, and educational policy. In return the Quebec provincial government contented to allow the Anglophone minority in the province to practice substantial control over their own affairs. Quiet Revolution The year 1960 witnessed a major political change that reflected all the demographic shifts associated with the depression. As soon as the election took place, a Liberal provincial government in Quebec saw the outcome of a series of changes remembered as 'Quiet Revolution' and encompass a variety of social and governmental shifts, all having their roots in a more assertive and secular nationalism. The then Quebec government took immediate control over the province educational and social welfare institutions away from the church, embraced industrialization, and saw the provincial government, rather than the English-speaking business class, as a primary engine of development (Banting, 1992, p. 23). While realizing the key shifts of development process and what would it take to fulfill this enlarged responsibility, the provincial government sought to increase its powers, either through a general devolution of powers to the provinces or through the granting of 'special status' to Quebec. It was at that time when a new federal Liberal government was attempting a series of new initiatives in areas under provincial jurisdiction like security, pensions and health care. That was the time when the Quebec and Ottawa government experienced clashes over the issues of how these initiatives were to be managed and in particular whether and on what terms, Quebec could opt out to manage its own programs. Furthermore the conflict was increased by successive Quebec governments and pressurized to increase control over the languages of education and work within the province. Quebec's Quiet Revolution was the creation of a welfare state characterized by secularization of the society in which the provincial government dominated Catholic origins of Quebec by taking over the fields of health care and education (Hayday, 2007). This revolution was an attempt by the social reforms to argue that not only was there a cultural shift in Quebec from 1931 to 1964, but that the reforms enacted by Quebec's elites in the early 1960s had their origins in Catholic movements such as Catholic Action in the 1930s (Hayday, 2007). Quiet Revolution was solely responsible for putting the political transformations of the Catholic Church into modernization by making Catholicism more compatible with modernity and more firmly secure in Quebecois public culture. Pressure upon social programs The last two decades have tried to bring together the diverging opinions of policy makers and activists in creating healthy communities across Canada by expressing concern over the widening of gap between rich and poor (Perception, 2005). Many welfare assistance programs have been eliminated in the last two decades which are escorted by massive cuts to transfer funds. Few people are left across the country that has been entitled to receive welfare or employment insurance benefits, thereby expanding the distance between rich and poor. Minimal level of labor standards on one hand have promoted competition since firms have not been able to use the lower labor standards and living conditions to cause lower wages or unemployment, on the other hand labor market challenges Aboriginal Canadians having no possibility of job transition. Issues like shortage of skilled workers and increasing rate of precarious employment must be dealt with a hope to end up substance abuse, family violence and social order breakdown. The profound effects of Canadian institutions on social discontents are quite mixed as many perceive it a pressure on social welfare programs that moved the social clause of civil societal organizations to prove their adaptability and responsiveness to the conflicting, even incompatible, demands that are being placed upon them. Work Cited Archive, 2009 accessed from Banting G. Keith, Dion Stephane & Stark Andrew, (1992) The Collapse of Canada: The Brookings Institution: Washington, DC. Crane A. John, (1994) Directions for Social Welfare in Canada: The Public's View: University of British Columbia Press: Vancouver, B.C. Hayday Matthew, (2007) "The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, 1931- 1970", Historical Studies, 73, p. 111. Heacock R. A., (1985) accessed from < http://www.iss.it/binary/publ/cont/Pag.%20129%20- %20144%20New%20perspectives,%20Presentation%20of%20Unido,.11522619 87.pdf> Ismael S. Jacqueline & Vaillancourt Yves, (1988) Privatization and Provincial Social Services in Canada: Policy, Administration, and Service Delivery: University of Alberta Press: Edmonton, Alta. Perception, (2005) Canadian Council on Social Development: 27 accessed from Robinson C. Geoffrey & Elliot R. F. George, (1993) Children, Politics, and Medicare: Experiences in a Canadian Province: University of Calgary Press: Calgary, Alta. Solberg E. Carl, (1987) The Prairies and the Pampas: Agrarian Policy in Canada and Argentina, 1880-1930: Stanford University: Stanford, CA. Torjman Sherri, (2007) Repairing Canada's Social Safety Net, accessed from < http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/PDF/631ENG.pdf> White Deena, (2003) "Social Policy and Solidarity, Orphans of the New Model of Social Cohesion", Canadian Journal of Sociology, 28(1), p. 51. Read More