Historical Development Of The Canada Assistance Plan Of 1966

Assignment #2:

Historical Development of the Canada Assistance Plan of 1966

Beaonca Meier

Student# 7928973

University of Manitoba, Faculty of Social Work

SWRK 2110 - D01

Instructor: Kayla Cardinal

August 10th, 2023

1. Describe the “Canada Assistance Plan”, giving an outline of specific details and key components of this new provision for social welfare.

Co-operative federalism occurred in Canada most notably during the 1960s and resulted in the implementation of many new social program developments. This concept is commonly accepted to refer to an intense degree of intragovernmental consultation, to the basic equality of the relationship, and to the decentralizing nature of the results in this period (Dyck, 1979). Perhaps the

The plan’s genesis lay in the recognition that the categorical approach to public assistance was administratively cumbersome and socially unsound in that a focus on the cause of the financial need, rather than the need itself, made it difficult for many to qualify for help (Guest 1997). However, when CAP was put into practice for the first time in 1996, it provided for federal contributions for the first time to provincial mothers’ allowance schemes, to provincial costs in providing health services to public assistance recipients, to rehabilitative and preventative welfare services, to provincial child welfare expenditures, to work activity projects, to Indian welfare programs, and to the administrative costs of such programs (Dyck, 1979). This made the Canada Assistance Plan national and comprehensive in scale and

The first thing that separated CAP from past social welfare programs relates to the dominant place that the norms of program administrators occupied in its development (Dyck, 1979). Program administrators of CAP were positioned to work in collaboration with one another and maintain frequent communication with one another on a nearly daily basis. A second thing that separated CAP from previous social welfare programs was its initiatives, which stemmed largely from the provinces, rather than from the federal government (Dyck 1979). That is to say, the provinces were largely responsible for making decisions about which services to provide and what levels of financial assistance to allow as part of the program. A third feature of CAP’s development was the attitude of federal officials towards the provinces (Dyck 1979). Federal officials were already well acquainted with their provincial counterparts and realized that the success of the new plan would depend upon future congenial relations between them (Dyck, 1979). Both federal and provincial officials made use of persuasion as they engaged in courteous negotiation (Dyck, 1979). The result of this was that few problems escalated, and when they did, they were dealt with immediately, often meeting the demands of the