Social Policy Test #2

Family Responsibility Approach

Parents are solely responsible for making decisions and providing children’s well-being. Role of government is limited. Includes tax deductions for families, employment leaves, and targeted minimum-income (last resort). Government’s pervasive approach to child poverty.

Investing in Children Approach

Social spending on income supports and child education is an investment that benefits all of society in the long run. Recognition that the market can’t provide sufficient incomes for families, so the state must proactively intervene to support them. Not used by the Canadian government.

Four Purposes of Child-Related Income Security

1. Minimum income

2. Horizontal Equity

3. Economic Stimulus

4. Parents as Contributors

Child-Related Income Security - Minimum Income

Supplements the income of lower-income families with children.

Child-Related Income Security - Horizontal Equity

Generated for households with children compared to those without (recognition that parents have heaver financial demands than childless households and single persons with the same income).

Child-Related Income Security - Economic Stimulus

Acts as this by putting money in the hands of the most likely to spend it (the main purposes of the 1944 Family Allowance program - the idea was to provide a monthly cheque which could be spent on necessities, stimulating postwar economy).

Child-Related Income Security - Parents as Contributors

Recognize them as part of the future (families with children contribute something that people without children don’t).

Child Benefits Phase 1 - Recognition of Family Needs

1918-1940. Introduced the Child Tax Exemption and increased tax savings, but provided no benefits to families that did not owe income tax.

Child Tax Exemption

Introduced in 1918 as income support to families with children in personal income tax.

Mother’s Allowances

Needs-tested monthly income support introduced after WWI that helped widowed mothers with small children.

Family Structural Criteria

What Families Look Like

Functional Criteria

What families do.

Census Family

Refers to a married or common-law couple (with or without children) or a one parent family. All must share a place of residence, persons living with one biological or adopted parent, or grandchildren living with at least one grandparent.

Civil Marriage Act 2005

Same-sex marriage was legally recognized nationwide.

Vanier Institute of the Family - Family Definition

Any combination of two or more people who are bound together over time by ties of mutual consent, birth, and or adoption or placement, who together assume responsibilities for variant combinations of care, socialization, social control, and nuturance.

Margrit Eichler (1977)

Developed the three models of the family.

Eichler - Patriarchal Model

Husband is the undisputed leader of the household and wife is dependent on the husband economically and socially. Women could not receive public assistance if the husband was alive. Divorce was not recognized.

Eichler - Individual Responsibility Model

Currently underpins Canada’s social welfare programs. Consists of three main elements:

• Formal gender equality

• Gender-neutral policies

• Equalized caregiving

Eichler - Social Responsibility Model

Directly addresses gender inequality, gender-sensitive policies, and the social dimension of caregiving. Emphasizes collective/public support for dependents and caregivers.

Factors Changing the Modern Family

Divorce, longevity, fertility, women in the workforce, same-sex marriages, household tech, decline of extended family, decline of religious influences, cultural diversity, increase in women-led lone parent families.

1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Enshrined gender equality in law.

Equal Pay Policies

Designed to improve women’s pay. Includes pay equity or equal pay for work of equal value.

Equal Employment Policies

Helps women’s employment and promotion opportunities. Includes employment equity.

Other Facilitating Policies

Includes child care and parental leave to put women on an equal footing with men in the labour market.

Family Allowance Act of 1944

The first universal income security scheme. Provided benefits to all Canadian families with dependent children. AKA the Baby Bonus.

Consumer Price Index

Used as an indicator of inflation.

Indexation

An arrangement in which periodic adjustments are made to benefits based on changes to an index, calculated on a monthly basis using the cost of a fixed list of commodities purchased by a typical Canadian family.

Child Care Expense Deduction (1971)

Designed to offset the incremental costs of child rearing for parents in the labour force, originally intended for lone-parent families.

Refundable Child Tax Credit (1978)

Provided the maximum benefit to low-income families, a declining amount to middle-income families, and no benefit to wealthy families.

Tax Expenditures

Tax credit is paid out if the taxpayer does not owe income tax.

Institutional View Shift to Residual View

The change of using the tax system to target low-income families. First time that the tax system was used to redistribute income.

Child Tax Benefit (1993)

Government of Canada consolidated its child tax credits and the Family Allowance into this single benefit. Provided monthly payments based on number of children and level of income.

Working Income Supplement

Supplements the earnings of working poor families.

Canada Child Tax Benefit (1998)

The first national social welfare program since Medicare and the Canadian Pension Plan. A non-taxable amount paid monthly to help families (using an income test) with the cost of raising children under the age 18. Could also include the Child Disability Benefit.

Universal Child Care Benefit (2006)

Taxable $100/month benefit for each child under 6 years of age.

Canada Child Benefit (2016)

Replaced the Canada Child Tax Benefit. Non-taxable and paid out to families with the cost of raising children under 18. Aimed at preventing children from low and middle income families from falling into poverty.

Maximum Benefit Amounts (July 2026 - June 2027)

Under 6: Up to $8,157/year

Ages 6 to 17: $6,883/year

CDB: Up to an additional $3,480/year

Alberta Maternity/Parental Leave

16 weeks, 62 weeks.

Ontario Maternity/Parental Leave

17 weeks, 61-63 weeks.

British Columbia Maternity/Parental Leave

17 weeks, 61-62 weeks.

Federally Regulated Maternity/Parental Leave

17 weeks, up to 63 weeks per parent.

Workplace Optional Top-Ups

Employers are not legally required to pay wages during statuary leave, but many offer a supplemental employment benefit to raise EI payment.

Benefits Continuation

Employers must typically continue paying their share of group health, dental, and pension plan contributions while on leave, provided you continue paying your part.

Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Program

Aiming for an average $10 dollar a day national daycare program for families with children 0-5 years of age.

Campaign 2000

Public education movement to build Canadian awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end all child poverty in Canada by 2000.

Father of Medicare

Premier Tommy Douglas, led the way in establishing a universal healthcare program.

Saskatchewan 1947

Established North America’s first universal hospital insurance program.

Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act (1957)

Introduced a 50/50 cost-sharing model for provincial hospital services, with all provinces joining by 1961.

Federal Medical Care Act of 1966

Expanded the 50/50 funding to medical insurance. National plan achieved by interlocking 10 provincial plans, all of which shared certain features by 1971.

Canada Health Act 1984

Consolidated the 1957 and 1966 acts.

Canadian Medicare

A federal-provincial cost-sharing program.

Federal-Provincial Cost-Sharing Conditions

• Universal Coverage

• Portability

• Comprehensiveness

• Public Administration

• Reasonable Access

Institutions Excluded From Cost-Sharing Agreement

• Psychiatric Hospitals

• Tuberculosis Sanatoria

• Institutions Providing Custodial Care (nursing homes)

• Home Care

• Ambulance

• Drugs

• Dentist

Canada Health and Social Transfer (1996)

Replaced the Canada Assistance Plan

2004 CHST Partition

Canada Social Transfer (CST) and Canada Health Transfer (CHT)

Neoliberal Influences Eroding Medicare

• Relegation of health care

• Cost containment, sustainability, and accountability concerns placed ahead of patients’ needs.

Canadian Dental Care Plan (2024)

Federal government covers a percentage of eligible service based on your adjusted family net income. Must have no access to dental coverage through an employer, pension plan, student organization, or private plan.

National Pharmacare Program (2024)

Provides single-payer, universal public coverage for select medications - for diabetes, contraception, menopausal hormone therapy.

Biomedical Psychiatric Perspective

Looks at multiple, interacting causes of mental illness (genetic, biochemical, hormonal, psychological, familial, environmental, economic).

General MH Classification - Serious

Focus of mental health policies. Severe, long-term, people are generally unemployed and have major problems with daily living. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression.

General MH Classification - Moderate

Short-term or episodic. People are generally employed, but have significant problems coping with the stressors of daily living. Only about 40% seek help. Anxiety, minor mood disorders, personality disorders, substance abuse.

MH Responsibility - Veterans and Indigenous People

Federal Government

Medical/Personal Tragedy (Disability)

‘Adjusting’ the disabled individual.

Social and Human Rights Models/Construction of Disability

Changing society and societal attitudes.

Biopsychosocial Model

Integrates the medical and human rights models means a more comprehensive framework for measuring and addressing disability at both individual and population levels endorsed by WHO. Focus is on one’s levels of health and functioning.

WHO’s International Classification of Function, Disability and Health

• Functioning at the level of the body or body part

• Functioning at the level of the whole person

• Functioning at the level of the whole person in a social context

The Poor Laws

Provided social and legal framework.

Outdoor Relief (Up to Mid-19th Century)

Common form of assistance available to ‘deserving poor’ including people with disabilities, who were given license to beg.

Institutionalization of People with Disabilities

So widespread that it became the common belief that this was the natural order of things and that people with disabilities had always been separated from their communities.

Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982)

Enshrined rights of persons with disabilities in Canada.

Independent Living Movement (ILM)

Dominant force in disability rights activity. Focus was to encourage and help persons with disabilities achieve self-direction over the personal and community services needed to attain independent living.