Abstract

The Children's Agenda:
The Design and Discourse of Social Re-investment in Canada

Deena White and Kathleen Charlebois

The Children's Agenda, announced by Chrétien in his 1997 Red Book and gradually implemented since 1998, represents the principle product of the Social Union Framework. It encompasses a cross-cutting set of federal and provincial programs that, formerly, would have fallen into the separate domains of public health, labour market, social assistance, social service and family policies. This paper briefly presents the policies and programs that constitute the Children's Agenda, and how they differ from those that they replace. It concludes that the Children’s Agenda is emblematic of the new social investment state, both in terms of the policy instruments it uses and the discourse by which it justifies social policy goals in general.

Bios

Deena White, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Sociology, Université de Montréal, specializing in social policy and the social regulatioin marginal groups. She is a member of the Research Centre on the Social Aspects of Health and Prevention (GRASP). There, she leads an applied research team that, in partnership with regional health and social service boards and the Québec Advisory Council on Health and Welfare, investigates questions of macro and micro regulation in the health domain, with study topics ranging from policy and services to community participation and critical professional issues. Her recent book, Pour sortir des sentiers battus (2002, Publications du Québec) explores the conceptual premises, as well as the promise and pitfalls of intersectoral action for addressing social problems at the local and national levels. She currently holds an individual SSHRC grant to carry out a comparative study of the changing role of the Third Sector in post-welfare states, and is a co-researcher in the SSHRC strategic grant team, Fostering Social Cohesion: A Comparison of New Policy Strategies, headed by Jane Jenson.

Kathleen Charlebois, M.Sc., is a doctoral student at the Université de Montréal.

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