Canadian Review of Social Policy (CRSP) / Revue canadienne de politique sociale (RCSP)
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Federalism and Health Policy: The Development of Health Systems in Canada and Australia, by Gwendolyn Gray
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The 'Great West' Experiment: Neo-Liberal Convergence and Transforming Citizenship in Canada
Get PDFOver the period 1993-2004, the western Canadian provinces of British Columbia,
Alberta, and Saskatchewan, with governing political parties ranging from left to
right, experimented with the restructuring of their social assistance policies and
programs. By 2004, benefits were no longer provided on the basis of social rights
of citizenship but conditional on the recipient's actual or potential employability.
Analysis of the annual reports of the provincial ministries responsible for social
assistance over this time period reveals that the specific policy assumptions and
strategies that create benefits conditional on employability fall into four inter-related
dimensions: restriction; enforcement; surveillance; and sharing responsibility. Qualitative
differences were found in the provinces' restructuring trajectories across
these dimensions. In this paper, based on our findings, we advance the argument
that these dimensions of restructuring ultimately converge into a larger project
of solidifying market citizenship through the conditioning of employability, and
where neo-liberal market logic is superimposed on non-market facets of everyday
lives (including parenting and care-giving) with problematic societal consequences.
Key Words: neo-liberalism, western Canada, social assistance reform, employability,
citizenship
