The National Council of Welfare

(R.I.P.)

National Council of Welfare, R.I.P.

The official demise of the National Council of Welfare:
Not with a bang but a whimper...
April 27, 2012
[By Gilles] When I learned that the federal budget had announced that the National Council of Welfare (NCW) [ ] would close its doors by the end of March 2013*, I felt, like many others in the Canadian progressive social research community that we'd lost a friend and an ally in the quest for evidence-based social policy in Canada. I knew that the Council had special status as an advisory body because its mandate was enshrined in the departmental statute of the day, meaning it had its own section in the National Department of Health and Welfare Act. Why does that confer special status, you ask? Because a statute must be tabled, debated and voted upon in the Parliament of Canada before it can be amended or repealed. Oh well --- at least the repeal of the statute would be debated in the House of Commons, I thought, and that debate would be recorded in the parliamentary record. Not so. The repeal of the Department of Social Development Act and the demise of the National Council of Welfare are buried in Division 51 of Part 4 of Bill C-38 (see the link immediately below). Because Bill C-38 covers so many multi-billion-dollar items, it's highly unlikely that anyone in the Opposition would take the allocated debate time to raise the issue of the Council, a mere million-dollar annual line expenditure.
Farewell, National Council of Welfare. Social progressives everywhere grieve your passing.
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*(but more likely as soon as the statute is passed; given this is The Budget Bill, it will pass quickly.)
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The Bill that will kill the National Council of Welfare:

BILL C-38, 2012
An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget
tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures

First Reading April 26, 2012
Excerpt from the Summary (at the beginning of the file):

"Division 51 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add powers, duties and functions that are substantially the same as those conferred by the Department of Social Development Act. It repeals the Department of Social Development Act and, in doing so, eliminates the National Council of Welfare."

Source:
Parliament of Canada

Comment (by Gilles):
If you find the reference in the above excerpt to both the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act and the Department of Social Development Act a bit confusing, welcome to the club. That's because the same Department changed names and mandates several times from the mid-1990s to 2012. Here's a link to a brief history of the name changes in this department that was known for decades (until 1993) as the Department of National Health and Welfare:
Back to the Future?
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/hrsdc.htm#general_info

Related link:

Federal budget 2012: Ottawa axes National Council on Welfare

Laurie Monsebraaten
March 30 2012
Source:
Toronto Star

Federal budget 2012: Ottawa axes National Council on Welfare

Laurie Monsebraaten
March 30 2012
Anti-poverty groups are shocked, but not surprised, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty axed the National Council of Welfare in Thursday’s budget. The independent, federally-appointed body was created by an act of Parliament in 1969 to advise the Minister of human resources on poverty in Canada. But since the Harper government was elected in 2006, it has ignored the council’s research and advice on how to address growing income disparity across the country, activists say.
(...)
A spokesperson for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said the $1.1 million council and its eight Ottawa-based staff are being cut next year to reduce duplication (see my comment below). “Many non-governmental organizations . . . provide quality independent advice and research on poverty-related issues,” said Alyson Queen. (...)
The council’s annual report on welfare incomes in Canada is the only comprehensive analysis of social assistance across the country and how it interacts with federal benefits, he said. The council has also produced authoritative reports on child care, child benefits and low incomes in Canada.

Comment by Gilles:
Reducing "duplication"?
How does the demise of the only credible national source of welfare and poverty information reduce duplication?
Won't each of the provinces have to do its own cross-jurisdictional comparisons, thus duplicating the efforts of all other provinces and territories? Notwithstanding the HRDSC spokesperson's talking points, there isn't ONE non-governmental organization in Canada that produces detailed welfare information and welfare statistics for all jurisdictions. Yes, NGOs *do* provide "quality independent advice and research on poverty-related issues", but to my knowledge, none has a national perspective on social assistance programs and statistics that even approaches that of the National Council of Welfare. Net gain to the federal coffers: one piddly million bucks per year.
Net loss to Canada: one strong, credible voice for accountability, fairness and social justice and the only solid source of cross-jurisdiction information on welfare and poverty. This is a sad day for government accountability in Canada.
Like many others in the social justice community, I'm in shock and denial today, and I'm grieving this senseless and brutal political decision.
[ Some might say that the writing's been on the wall for the Council since Stephen Harper's accession to the throne in 2006, and that a swift end is better than death by a thousand cuts, as has been the case since 2006. I disagree. Not only should the National Council of Welfare be retained --- it should have MORE resources to better fulfill in its mandate of advising the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development in all matters relating to social development in Canada.]

I'm sad for the dedicated staff at the National Council of Welfare, and I'm grieving over the demise of the Council.

Evidence?
We don't need no stinkin' evidence.
We've got the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office and the Department of Finance to tell us what to think.

Will the Council's reports still be available online?
If you're worried about the imminent disappearance of the Council's website in April of 2013, the Internet Archive [ ] has preserved a complete copy of the Council's collection of online reports as at July 2011 at the following link:

NOTE : The link above takes you to the Council's home page as it appeared in July 2011, and all content links are functional.
Until April 1, 2013, you can still visit the Council's live website:

Harper throws National Council of Welfare on the scrap heap

April 12, 201
By Carol Goar
(...)
For a few days [after the recent federal budget], anti-poverty activists thought low-income Canadians had been spared. By the time they discovered the truth, all they could do was mourn the demise of another once-proud social agency. Since 1962*, the National Council of Welfare had held up a mirror to the nation, highlighting the pockets of poverty and warning policy-makers of the consequences of neglecting those in need. It gave non-profit groups the facts they needed to speak credibly about hardship in a land of plenty. It tracked the emergence and growth of a crack in society between the comfortably well-off and the struggling. And it brought together social policy thinkers to find solutions to poverty — or at least keep the debate alive. Now it’s gone. Kellie Leitch, parliamentary secretary to the minister of human resources, dismissed the loss offhandedly. “We are putting our policy resources to best use and reducing duplication,” she said, pointing to Campaign 2000 and Canada Without Poverty as high-profile non-profit organizations serving the same role.
Actually they don’t...
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* NOTE : In other media accounts about the Council, you'll often see 1969 as the startup date for the Council. In fact, the Council was created when Conservative John Diefenbaker was Canadian Prime Minister in 1962 as a federal-provincial Deputy-Minister-level advisory body on matters pertaining to the welfare of Canadians. In 1969, the Council was re-shaped into a citizens' advisory body reporting to the federal minister responsible for welfare in Canada (In 1969, that was John Munro, who was then Minister of Health and Welfare).

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[ 34 Comments about this article:
]

Source:
Toronto Star

Scrapping welfare council is a cheap shot by a government that doesn’t care about the poor

By Steve Kerstetter
April 8, 2012
Ever since its creation by an act of Parliament in 1969, the National Council of Welfare has been the only federal agency with a mandate devoted exclusively to improving the lives of low-income Canadians. The Conservative government’s decision to scrap the council in the budget speech was a cheap shot — in more ways than one — and a shot that will deprive Canadians of one more source of valuable research.
(...)
The council’s work on the welfare system has been extraordinary. Its annual publication Welfare Incomes is the single authoritative source on that subject in Canada and is used extensively both inside and outside government. But the council has worked in many other areas as well. Its reports on child poverty and women and poverty are well known. It has published some of the most readable descriptions of public and private pension programs. It documented the many shortcomings of legal aid in Canada. A report on the justice system showed that poor people are most likely to be picked up by police, most likely to appear in court without adequate legal representation and most likely to wind up serving time.
(...)
The National Council of Welfare was traditionally a great friend of opposition parties in Parliament and came to be regarded a royal pain in the butt once a party formed a government. That wasn’t because the council was anti-government by nature — just that governments of recent years had so many bad ideas about social policy and so few good ones. In fact, members of the council who make up the group’s board of directors are appointed by the federal cabinet and have often been close friends of the government of the day. However, that friendship never compromised the work of the council even once during my 13 years as a staff member.
(...)
The decision of the Harper government to shut down the National Council of Welfare comes at a time when poverty remains a significant blight in a country that has the means at its disposal to eliminate poverty.
(...)
The Conservatives didn’t even have the decency to mention the demise of the council in the budget speech. The budget papers included a table in one of the appendices that showed a cut of $1.1 million a year in the council’s budget beginning next year. What the papers didn’t bother to say was that $1.1 million is the council’s entire budget.

[ Steve Kerstetter retired as director of the National Council of Welfare in 2000 and now lives in Vancouver. ]

Source:
Toronto Star

Comment by Vince Calderhead, senior
staff lawyer with Nova Scotia Legal Aid: March 30, 2012
"This shocking news [demise of the National Council of Welfare] will impact on many, not the least will be those who relied on NCW reports in ant-poverty and other human rights litigation--both in Canada and before the UN. A quick search shows that the Supreme Court of Canada cited NCW reports at least four times in the past decade--not many government (or non-government) agencies can claim that importance. There are literally dozens of lower court decisions which also cite the NCW. Given the meagre amount saved ($1 Million), the Tories actually gain far more politically by silencing this purveyor of crucial info re both poverty in Canada and the state of Canada's social assistance systems."

When is a conservative not a conservative?

By Armine Yalnizyan
April 5, 2012
This week we learned that Rights and Democracy -- an agency established by Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988 to monitor human rights and democratic development internationally -- has been terminated. The closure follows similar shutdowns by the Harper Conservatives of organizations that bear witness to these trends internationally, such as KAIROS and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. The $11 million in "savings" was not part of the identified list of cuts announced in last week's federal budget.
But another organization, whose elimination will save the federal government a whopping $1 million, was identified in the list of organizations getting cut. It, too, effectively monitored human rights, democracy and development, but closer to home. Established by Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1962, the National Council on Welfare will cease operations after half a century of gathering information and providing recommendations about income security for Canada's most economically vulnerable citizens, across the land and province by province. An unusual exchange took place in Canada's Senate Chamber between two Conservative Senators, triggered by this development.
Senator Hugh Segal asks the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Marjory LeBreton, what was the rationale for the cut. The answer, in its essence: we don't need that information anymore; we have all the information we need about poverty from other sources. Senator Segal then asks an eyebrow-raising supplementary question (my paraphrase): are you controlling sources of information about poverty because you don't intend to do anything about it? The answer is almost as Orwellian as the suggestion behind the question.
Click the link above to read the full exchange between Senator Segal and Senator Marjory LeBreton the Harper Government™ mouthpiece.

Found at the bottom
of this article:
"Senator Segal is a life-long Progressive Conservative. There are many more like him who are becoming outsiders within their own political home. Shutting down input and voice, including from within Conservative ranks, may end up dividing the right anew." [Leftie comment : One can only hope. By Gilles]

Source:
rabble.ca

From the
Globe and Mail:

Budget cuts another victory in Tory war on information: opposition

By Gloria Galloway
March 30, 2012
Only a handful of agencies were delivered a death sentence in this week’s federal budget but they include three institutions whose primary job is to provide statistics and research that is meant to inform government decisions. The First Nations Statistical Council, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy and the National Welfare Council were all told Thursday the money they receive from the federal government will expire at the end of this fiscal year.

204 comments on this article

From Jennefer Laidley
Income Security Advocacy Centre

Latest Media and Policy News

April 2, 2012
[Click the link above to access any of the articles below.]

Federal Budget 2012
--- The Star: Ottawa axes National Council of Welfare
--- Northumberland View: Cut to NCW will hurt low-income Canadians
--- Globe: Tory war on information
--- Rabble blog: Small minded budget