Understanding the War on Poverty: The Advantages of a Canadian Perspective

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 9, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 425-449

  Davies, Gareth ^a  

^a LANCASTER UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84937266405     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898030600006163     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. See Garerh Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars: Canada and the United States in Comparative Perspective,” in Hans Bak, F. L. van Holthoon, and Hans Krabbendam, eds., living in the Welfare State: Social and Secure? (Amsterdam, 1996).
2. For a competent review of this series of events, see John C. Donovan, The Politics of Poverty (New York, 1967), chaps. 3–5.
3. James Struthers, The limits of Affluence: Welfare Policy in Ontario, 1920–1970 (Toronto, 1994), 235.
4. Struthers reports that, despite the growing number of single mothers receiving welfare in Ontario, the Progressive Conservative government failed to produce the kinds of day-care support that would have allowed such recipients to become economically independent. The limits of Affluence: Welfare Policy in Ontario., 239–243.
5. The council refers to its determination “to lay the basis for a well co-ordinated and effective Canadian war on poverty.” Economic Council of Canada, Fifth Annual Report: The Challenge of Growth and Change (Ottawa, 1968), 106.
6. For useful treatments of these precedents and influences, see Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: Liberalism in the 1970s (New York, 1984)
7. Peter Marris and Martin Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States (Harmondsworrh, Middlesex, 1972).
8. For the NDP and its importance to the Canadian antipoverty debate, see Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars.”
9. See Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935 (Pittsburgh, 1968), passim
10. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), chaps. 3–5.
11. Martha Derthick, “Crossing Thresholds: Federalism in the 1960s,” paper presented at the conference “Integrating the Sixties,” 30 May 1995.
12. Derthick, “Crossing Thresholds,” 18, 19.
13. One scholar to have taken this logic-of-modemization approach to understanding federalism is Samuel Beer, in his article “The Modernization of American Federalism,” Publius 3 (Special Issue, 1973, ed. Daniel J. Elazar), 49–95.
14. For an interesting analysis of this essay from a Canadian perspective, see Donald V. Smiley, “Public Sector Politics, Modernization and Federalism: The Canadian and American Experiences,” Publius 14 (Winter 1984): 39–59.
15. Another insightful comparison of the two brands of federalism is Ronald L. Watts, “The American Constitution in Comparative Perspective: A Comparison of Federalism in the United States and Canada,” Journal of American History 74 (Summer 1987): 769–791.
16. Keith Banting, “Visions of the Welfare State,” in Shirley B. Seward, ed., The Future of Social Welfare Systems in Canada and the United Kingdom (Ottawa, 1987), 151.
17. For the constitutional significance of these decisions, see Struthers, Limits of Affluence, especially 204–207
18. Christopher Leman, The Collapse of Welfare Reform: Political Institutions, Policy, and the Poor in Canada and the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 61–64
19. Rick VanLoon, “Reforming Welfare in Canada,” Public Policy 27 (Fall 1979): 474–475.
20. See Smiley, “Federal-Provincial Conflict in Canada,” Publius 4 (Summer 1974): 9
21. Esman, “Federalism and Modernization: Canada and the United States,” Publius 14 (Winter 1984): 21.
22. Rodney Haddow, Poverty Reform in Canada, 1958–1978: State and Class Influences on Policy Making (Montreal and Kingston, 1993), 104.
23. The nature of this crisis is explored in somewhat greater detail in Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars.”
24. For Kent's understanding of this constraint, see Scott Young's article “The War on Poverty-Latest Communiqué: All Quiet on the Canadian Front,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 29 October 1965, 7.
25. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, 220.
26. For LéVesque's contribution to the Ottawa conference, see Toronto Globe and Moil, 8 December 1965,9. “Quiet Revolution” was the term given to the new spirit of modernization and reform that had swept through Quebec after 1960, following the overthrow of the theocratic, ruralist, and reactionary Duplessis regime.
27. It is treated at somewhat greater length in Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars,” which also contains suggestions for further reading.
28. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, 222.
29. Geoffrey Stevens, “The Poverty War: Jargon versus Eloquence,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 13 December 1965, 9.
30. Tom Kent, A Public Purpose: An Experience of Liberal Opposition and Canadian Government (Kingston and Montreal, 1988), 383–384.
31. For a lively discussion of the decline of the Pearson government, see Peter C. Newman, The Distemper of Our Times: Canadian Politics in Transition, 1963–1968 (Toronto and Montreal, 1968).
32. Leslie Bella, “The Provincial Role in the Canadian Welfare State: The Influence of Provincial Social Policy Initiatives on the Design of the Canada Assistance Plan,” Canadian Public Administration 22 (Fall 1979): 450.
33. Banting, “Visions of the Welfare State,” 174.
34. This is a recurrent theme in Leman, Collapse of Welfare Reform, and the point is also made by Van Loon, “Reforming Welfare,” 475.
35. Kenneth McRoberts and Dale Posgate, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis (Toronto and Montreal, 1976), 99.
36. For Lesage, see Canadian Annual Review (1965): 61.
37. For LéVesque, see Canadian Annual Review (1966): 49.
38. See Haddow, Poverty Reform, and Leman, Collapse of Welfare Reform, for good summaries of these investigations.
39. For the existence and fascinating interaction of these socialist and Tory traditions in Canada, see Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York, 1990)
40. passim, and Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32 (May 1966): 143–171.
41. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, 241–242.
42. For the pressures that the work-for-welfare movement placed on Ottawa, see Haddow, Poverty Reform
43. Bella, “The Provincial Role in the Canadian Welfare State”
44. Struthers, Limits of Affluence.
45. See chapter 2 of Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, Kan., 1996). The most celebrated antiwelfare outburst came when the mayor of the upstate New York town of Newburgh (less than two hundred miles from the Canadian border) declared war on welfare scroungers, earning nationwide publicity.
46. The most recent account of the Newburgh affair comes in Blanche D. Coll, Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929–1979 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995), 210–216.
47. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, chap. 6. The quotes are taken from page 200.
48. Limits of Affluence., 199.
49. Canadian Annual Review (1972): 348.
50. See Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 9, 216–217.
51. Canadian Annual Review (1972): 352.
52. See Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, passim, for a fuller discussion.
53. For one example of such resistance, see the reaction of the Canadian Labour Council to the idea that Canada should copy Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Haddow, Poverty Reform, 77.
54. See, for example, June Callwood, “Crisis in Our Classrooms,” Maclean's, 23 January 1965, 7,24–28
55. Alan Phillips, “Our Invisible Poor,” Maclean's, 20 February 1965, 7–10.
56. For a list of American magazine articles that dealt with similar themes, and did so in a strikingly similar manner, see Gareth Davies, “War on Dependency: Liberal Individualism and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964,” Journal of American Studies 26 (August 1992): 223.
57. Margaret Ryan, The Revolution Game: The Short, Unhappy Life of the Company of Young Canadians (Toronto, 1970)
58. Toronto Globe and Meal, 10 December 1965, 10.
59. For contemporary books that treated the Native American experience in Canada, and that are infused with the language and assumptions of the civil rights movement, see Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada's Indians (Edmonton, 1969)
60. Waubageshig, ed., The Only Good Indian: Essays by Canadian Indians (Toronto, 1970)
61. Heather Robertson, Reservations Are for Indians (Toronto, 1970).
62. Economic Council of Canada, Fifth Annual Report (Ottawa, 1968).
63. See Richard Harris, Democracy in Kingston: A Social Movement in Urban Politics, 1965–1970 (Kingston, Ontario, 1988), passim.
64. For Trudeau and the New Politics, see George Radwanski, Trudeau (New York, 1978), chap. 12.
65. See also speeches and interviews from the period 1968 to 1971 in Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Conversations with Canadians (Toronto, 1972).