The provincial role in the Canadian welfare state: the influence of provincial social policy initiatives on the design of the Canada Assistance Plan

Abstract. Provincial social welfare programs are often treated as provincial government responses to federal initiatives establishing shared-cost programs in the welfare field. In this paper, this traditional viewpoint is reversed, showing that the federal government's Canada Assistance Plan of 1966 was the result of provincial social welfare initiatives. Federal policy is shown to have been designed to accommodate as cost-sharable those programs in which provinces (particularly Alberta and Ontario) were already involved. The federal government had to make considerable additions to, and concessions concerning, the proposed program in order to retain provincial support for the new national welfare program.