The Insertion Model or the Workfare Model? The Transformation of Social Assistance Within Quebec and Canada

Community Action, April 14, 2003 by David Mitchell

by Sylvie Morel, Status of Women Canada Policy Research Fund

Headlines in the January 20, 2003 Community Action: "Quebec's unique anti-poverty law aims for a society with the `least poverty' ... The Quebec government is the first jurisdiction in North America to pass a law [Bill 112] that supporters say "provides a framework to combat poverty and social exclusion ... echoing similar laws in Europe ..."

Coupled with the recent Quebec election call in which social issues move from and centre, Laval University's Sylvie Morel's scholarly though ponderous work is timely research. Not only providing an insightful, in depth review of Quebec's welfare system from both a current and historical perspective, it compares this "distinct society" with other Canadian and international domains.

A largely qualitative and feminist perspective approach unfortunately promotes a one-sided analysis, but this does not on the whole detract from the work's overall comprehensive review of welfare trends particular to women and families.

Ms. Morel and her collaborators summarize their research methodology as a "comparative study [using] an analytical grid derived from economics, the institutionalist theory of J.R. Commons, whose relevance is being rediscovered today, and which is well suited to analysing [sic] social policy (emphasis on the notion of rules, on the social relations of rights and duties, the cross-disciplinary approach, the importance of ethics and the question of the need for [income] security ...)".

In examining this rules/ fights/responsibilities continuum, she suggests that overall, "the Canadian ... system lies somewhere between the American and French models." The Americans stand accused of using a decentralized (state or provincially-mandated) residual, minimalist "categorical" model in which social service recipients are deliberately classed as undeserving peasants. "France, at the national level, has a dual social assistance structure" more broadly inclusive, integrated, institutionalized and rights-based, therefore in many ways equivalent to Canada's severely threatened federal "demogrant" system.

With the repeal in the mid 1990's of the federal Canada Assistance Plan in favour of provincially-expedient "Health and Social Transfer" legislation, Ms. Morel brings the historical debate full circle: Is the present emphasis on "workfare/welfare" models and its concurrent continual loss of assistance income all simply a re-enactment of the 400 year old Poor Laws/Social Darwinian cycle? For example, referring to mid 1920's "rules of deservingness", Ms. Morel demonstrates that "[the] basis of social control of [female] recipients was [back then] based on highly arbitrary criteria ... the good morals of poor mothers ... cleanliness, sobriety, chastity or, more generally, sexual conduct that dominated the investigations of social workers." Is the more modern invasion of female privacy any less strictly rigid with "spouse in the house" or "snitch line" regulations? And does not the prevailing "neo-liberal" view of welfare recipients continue to be one of deviance and "statutory non-deservingness"?

This is clearly one of Ms. Morel's conclusions--how far we have not come in Canadian and Western culture generally in combating poverty through enhancing social instruments as opposed to blaming the victim. Specifically in the case of Quebec however, and as "[a] francophone North American society steeped in French culture, Quebec has ... retained its distinctiveness ... Borrowing from both the French ... and the American approach, the hybrid configuration of the Quebec social assistance reciprocity model is certainly quite unique, but [nevertheless] definitely inclines towards workfare ... towards a `soft-core' version [however]."

Given the seriousness of the problem therefore, Ms. Morel's 20 recommendations--divided into "Improving the Status of Poor Women" and "Suggested Areas for Further Study"--are far too general and simplistic. A sense of unrelenting hopelessness exists among the nation's poor, and one is left with the sobering impression of Canadian policy makers continuing to prove George Santayana's maxim, that "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." So, as Quebecers go to the polls ...

David Mitchell is an experienced community services worker in Arnprior, Ontario