Public Policy Instruments

STREAMLINING SOCIAL DEMOCRACY INTO CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY: EXAMINING HOW THE CCF-NDP POLITICAL PARTY IMPACTED CANADA’S SOCIAL POLICY AND THEIR CURRENT RELEVANCE

SUBMITTED BY: ANNE GITAU & SAMANTHA DALE
SUBMITTED TO: PROFESSOR HARRIS
COURSE: PAP3350
DATE: DECEMBER 7TH, 2010
INSTITUTION: UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

Out of the post-World War II period, Keynesianism was born and its Socialist and Marxist tenets spawned a new political stream in Canada: social democracy. Buzz words like income redistribution, equality and social welfare entered the political dialogue and social policy was streamlined into state affairs. Social democratic ideology in Canada has withstood the test of time and Canada’s only social democratic political party, the New Democratic Party, has earned its place as a legitimate opposition party in Parliament, officially engaging in the social policy arena. The question explored in this essay deals with how the NDP, formerly the Convention Party (CCF), used their social democratic agenda to shape social policy reform in the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Using public policy theory and analysis, the paper will examine the NDP’s role in universal health care, employment insurance and old age pensions indexation, and narrate/assess the current relevance of the NDP in today’s policy realm.

DEFINITIONS AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In Canada, the terms social policy, social security policy, and, more recently, human resources development policy have typically been used loosely, and often
altered. Social policy can be defined broadly to include income support such as
seniors' benefits, unemployment insurance and tax credits, employment and labour
programming, education, health and social housing, and social services.
Social policy applies to the policies which governments use for welfare and social protection, to the ways in which welfare is developed in a society, and to the academic study of the subject. In the first sense, social... [continues]

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