Description

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This book explores the family allowance phenomenon from the idea's debut in the House of Commons in 1929 to the program's demise as a universal program under the Mulroney government in 1992. Although successive federal governments remained committed to its underlying principle of universality, party politics, bureaucracy, federal-provincial wrangling, and the shifting priorities of citizens eroded the rights-based approach to social security and replaced it with one based on need. In tracing the evolution of one social security program within a national perspective, From Rights to Needs sheds new light on how Canada’s welfare state and social policy has been transformed over the past half century.

About the Author

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Raymond B. Blake is professor of history at the University of Regina and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has held visiting professorships at Phillipps-Universitat Marburg and University College Dublin, where he has twice held the Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies. He was formerly director of the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy and director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University. He has written and edited more than twenty books, including, most recently, Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland’s Rocky Road to Canada.