"Never Again": Building Canada's Social Safety Net

"Never again"

For people who lived through the 1930s, the Great Depression left a scar. Families had lost jobs, farms and homes, and many had to rely on charity or humiliating local relief. A serious illness could wipe out a family's savings. Old age often meant poverty.

After the Second World War, many Canadians said never again. They had seen the government organize the whole country to win a war. Why couldn't it organize to protect people from unemployment, sickness and poverty? Between 1940 and the early 1970s, Canada built a social safety net: government programs that protect people from falling into poverty when hard times come.

In this lesson you will learn what the programs were, who fought for them, and how they changed Canadians' lives.

Ideas behind the safety net

• In 1943, an economist named Leonard Marsh wrote the Report on Social Security for Canada (the Marsh Report). It proposed a set of programs to protect Canadians "from the cradle to the grave".
• Economists also argued that government spending in bad times could keep people buying goods, which would keep factories open and reduce unemployment.
• Parties on the left, especially the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), pushed hard for social programs. The governing Liberals adopted many of these ideas, partly to keep voters from switching to the CCF.
• Universal programs go to everyone in a group (for example, every mother with children). Means-tested programs go only to people whose income is below a certain level.

The main programs

• Unemployment Insurance (1940): workers and employers paid into a fund; workers who lost their jobs received benefits for a time. In 1971 it was greatly expanded to cover nearly all workers and to add maternity benefits.
• Family allowance (first cheques 1945): a monthly payment for each child under 16, paid to mothers. For many women, it was the first money of their own. It was universal.
• Old Age Security (1952): a universal monthly pension of $40 for everyone aged 70 and over (the age was lowered to 65 in steps by 1970). The means-tested Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) was added in 1967 for low-income seniors.
• Hospital insurance (1957): the federal government agreed to share the cost of provincial plans that paid for hospital care.
• The Canada Pension Plan and Quebec Pension Plan (CPP/QPP, began 1966): workers and employers contribute during working years, and workers receive a pension when they retire. Quebec chose to run its own plan.
• The Canada Assistance Plan (1966): federal cost-sharing for provincial social assistance (welfare) for people in need.
• Medicare: described below.

Tommy Douglas and the fight for medicare

Tommy Douglas was a Baptist minister who became CCF premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961. His government introduced universal hospital insurance in Saskatchewan in 1947, the first universal hospital insurance plan in North America.

Then Saskatchewan went further: medicare, paying for visits to doctors, began on July 1, 1962 (under Premier Woodrow Lloyd, after Douglas had left to lead the new New Democratic Party, founded in 1961). Many Saskatchewan doctors went on strike for 23 days, arguing the plan would make them government employees and harm care. The government and doctors reached a compromise, and the plan survived.

A federal royal commission led by Justice Emmett Hall recommended medicare for all of Canada in 1964. Parliament passed the Medical Care Act in 1966, and it took effect in 1968. By 1972, every province and territory had joined. In a 2004 CBC contest, viewers voted Tommy Douglas "The Greatest Canadian".

Who benefited, and who was left out?

• Women: family allowance gave mothers independent income, and 1971 UI maternity benefits supported working mothers. But women who did unpaid work at home could not earn CPP pensions of their own.
• Seniors: poverty among the elderly fell sharply as OAS, GIS and the CPP/QPP grew.
• Workers: UI gave security between jobs, which also gave workers more bargaining power.
• First Nations, Inuit and Métis: programs reached many Indigenous people unevenly. Historians note that family allowance required children to attend school, and in some First Nations and northern communities this requirement was used to pressure families to send children to school, including residential schools, or to move into permanent settlements.
• Provinces: the federal government used its spending power to share costs, which raised questions about provincial powers, especially in Quebec, which preferred to run its own programs (like the QPP).