Social Policy in Canada. (Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus)

Beginning of article

Ernie Lightman, Social Policy in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003, 294 pp.

For too long, social policy had to cope with sub-status as an aspect of economic policy or public policy. Social policy deals with the arrangements human beings invent in their several relationships. Ernie Lightman shows that policies of the economy, politics, the family, education, employment, gender, welfare and so forth are ALL social policies.

Lightman believes "there is much room for manoeuvring and incremental progress within existing social structures" and that he desires a welfare society reliant on the state (preface), so we know he is likely liberal-social democrat in approach. His discipline is economics, though this is not a book about welfare economics. It examines programs, services and their resources as well as their costs and financing. He looks at taxing to fund social welfare and shows the …