Abstract

Redefining Needs, Risks, and Resources:
Towards a Social Investment State in Canada

Paul Bernard and Sébastien Saint-Arnaud

This presentation examines the use of social indicators in social policy discourse since the 90s in Canada. It focuses on three inter-related changes:

• the redefinition of basic needs to a lower base with the new Market Basket Measure of Poverty,
• the redefinition of risks in the wake of transforming Unemployment Insurance into Employment Insurance,
• a new focus on resources, which should be made available to those individuals who represent worthy opportunities for investment.

Three components of this notion of investment are examined: investment targets, investments terms (short or long), and investment returns or cost / benefit ratios. These three components are inter-related, and they tend to form differentiated, or even polarized, clusters. Risks are redefined: away from the chances of individuals to run into difficulties that should be covered by social insurance schemes, and towards investment opportunities that should be assumed by individuals, with the help of the State when there are opportunities for a return.

Bios

Paul Bernard, Ph.D.(Harvard, 1974) is Professor of Sociology at the Université de Montreal. His research and teaching focus on labor markets and social inequality, epistemology, research design, and methods. He has recently worked on economic and labor market segmentation, contingent work, job quality, living arrangements of young people, social cohesion, and social indicators. He is involved in social sciences policy development as a member of the National Statistics Council of Canada, as Chair of the Joint Working Group of Statistics Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada on the advancement of research using social statistics, and in academic planning at the Université de Montreal. Current research activities include: Research Team on Social Development Indicators. Project financed by SSHRCC, 2000-01, with Johanne Boisjoly (UQAR), Jean-Michel Cousineau (Relations industrielles, UdeM) and Michel Bernier (Conseil de la santé et du bienêtre du Québec). Major Research Project on the theme "Equality, Security and Community" at the University of British Columbia. Project financed by the SSHRCC, 1998-2003. He is a co-researcher in the SSHRC strategic grant team, Fostering Social Cohesion: A Comparison of New Policy Strategies, headed by Jane Jenson.

Sébastien Saint-Arnaud, M.Sc., is a doctoral student at the University of Toronto.

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