Do We Know Where We Are Going? The New Social Policy in Canada

Abstract

This commentary evaluates the new social policy paradigm, which shifts the emphasis from income redistribution to investment in human capital. Canadian governments have embraced the first side of this approach, restructuring income-security programs in ways that reduce the level of economic security assured to working-age Canadians. But their approach to investing in human capital is weakened by uncertain public commitments, problems of timing and sequence, and a failure to come to grips with the policy implications of the socio-economic gradient in educational attainment. The commentary concludes that education and training are carrying too much weight in new social discourse, and that a successful strategy of investing in human capital cannot be divorced from issues of poverty and inequality. The key challenge is one that is largely being ignored: to design a redistributive complement to a human-capital strategy, one that makes meaningful the promise of education as an instrument of economic security, and compensates for its significant limitations.