Canada 150: Canadian Social Scientists and the Making of Public Policy since Confederation

Abstract

Since the 1890s, Canadian social scientists have been actively involved in the making of public policy as decision makers (both as elected officials and as senior public servants); as expert advisers (notably through Royal Commission reports and studies), at both federal and provincial levels; and as shapers of and participants in public discourse. The history of this involvement reflects the expansion and transformation of the scholarly community, as the discipline of political economy, pursued by a handful of scholars at a few universities, divided into multiple social sciences, with many more practitioners, and as close interaction with US social scientists came to displace the influence of the British political economy (e.g., Beveridge, Keynes, the Fabians) and, in Quebec, of the papal social encyclicals.