Ontario and British Columbia Welfare Policy: Variants on a Neoliberal Theme

Abstract

This article suggests that the nature of the neoliberal state needs to be more fully explored. Our research on two regional welfare policies in Canada over the past three decades reveals that neoliberal regional states can differ quite remarkably in how they include or exclude their poorer citizens from receiving welfare. By exploring the dramatic changes to welfare in British Columbia and Ontario, we argue that the former follows a “purer” neoliberal model of reduced state involvement and fewer state actors, while the latter increases state expenditure and hires new staff to micromanage the poor. We attempt to explain these differences with attention to historical and contemporary political and religious cultures that deeply affect class, gender, and race relations.

‘Covering all the [welfare] basics’: a critical policy study of the Expert Panel on Basic Income report in British Columbia, Canada

“…While constructions of poor, Black, drug-using teenage girls (see for example Duncan and Hoffman, 1990) are hardly representative of Canadian welfare caseloads (or American ones, for that matter; see Roberts, 1996), these depictions justified the dramatic welfare reforms that sanctioned the monitoring and surveillance of people's private lives (Little and Marks, 2010). Welfare recipients were vilified and dependency pathologised: 'Dependent Personality Disorder' was even added to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (4th edition) to identify excessive dependence, a diagnosis most frequently assigned to women (Fraser and Gordon, 1994).…”

“…The US imposed workfare requirements and limits on the length of time one could receive assistance, presumably to break its presumed intergenerational pattern (Raphael, 1996). BC followed suit, becoming the only province in Canada to implement time limits on assistance receipt (Little and Marks, 2010). However, research is clear that most people on income assistance tend to cycle in and out of the system (Lightman et al, 2005;, just as they weave in and out of insecure jobs in a precarious and inequitable labour market (Lewchuk, 2018).…”

'It doesn’t always do justice to people’: Neoliberalism’s Reorganization of Social Service Delivery in Ontario

“…Critical scholars situated in various interdisciplinary fields attribute much of the reorganization of the NPSS in Ontario to the neoliberal restructuring that began in the 1980s (Fanelli & Thomas, 2011;. Neoliberalization is a politically guided reconfiguration of state-economy relations characterized by an intensification of market rule with an emphasis on privatization, deregulation, marketization, decentralization, and fiscal austerity (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2009;Little & Marks, 2010). Neoliberals favour a minimalist state with fewer state actors, increased market freedom, and reduced social spending, generally accomplished through cuts to social services; however, some scholars argue they have simply reconfigured social welfare systems in ways that responsibilize and surveil recipients through programs such as workfare (Little & Marks, 2010, 192), and offer individualized solutions such as skills development in an effort to produce independent, self-reliant citizens (Woolford & Curran, 2012).…”