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Carefair: Rethinking the Responsibilities and
Rights of Citizenship
by Paul Kershaw. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005.
Pp. xi, 228.
Paul Kershaw develops the argument that the practice of citizenship in a liberal welfare state operates
in two distinct yet interrelated temporal spheres.
While the history of political thought and public
policy in Anglo-European welfare regimes has emphasized the redistribution of goods and services on
the model of the worker-citizen, Kershaw argues that
citizenship requires public policy that makes it possible for an individual to participate in the realm of
the market and in the realm of domestic care. Further, Kershaw argues that the continued exclusion
of women from commodified work makes it possible for men and for the state to neglect care duties
in the domestic realm, particularly those duties owed
in the form of child care. Worker-citizens, namely
men, have enjoyed a privileged citizenship status by
“free-riding” off of the care work of women.
Kershaw argues that the social liberal tradition,
as articulated by T.H. Marshall and John Rawls tends
to emphasize state-oriented social assistance insofar as it is driven by the postwar concern with class
inequality. The implication of this is that it (arguably)
renders those receiving welfare as passive recipients
of state assistance without the duty to actively participate in the society from which they receive assistance and support. More importantly for Kershaw,
this class-based rationale for state redistribution
policies is based upon the postwar practice of
privileging the male worker-citizen. Thus, important
contributions to the social good made by women’s
care work are ignored. A strict class analysis, then,
in Kershaw’s view, only succeeds on the assumption that social inclusion, or to use Marshall’s term,
social citizenship, is captured in terms of employment. Kershaw argues that in this way, social citizenship is constituted through the denial of the
intrinsic social value of the private realm of care. In
fact, the family furnishes a distinct temporal context for “private” practices of identity and recogni-
111
tion central to full citizenship in multicultural societies and should be emphasized alongside class concerns of paid work.
Kershaw believes that public policy in Canada
has entrenched women in the unpaid private realm
of care work while preventing their equal participation in the paid workforce. Child care is an example
of decommodified care work as it is done “freely”
by women and necessary to citizenship. Because
women’s care work as been traditionally privatized
and because this care work makes citizenship possible for the wage-earner, the very practice of
decommodification is thrown into question unless
we are able to devise policy options that encourage
women’s entry into the paid workforce by providing work and child-care incentives that will encourage men to assume more care duties. Otherwise, this
kind of decommodification results in the exploitation of women by men and the state. Moreover, without the increased participation of women in the
workforce, we lack the necessary tax base from
which to subsidize decommodified goods such as
adequate public child care. Thus, the key to furnishing a public commitment to child care lies not in a
class-based analysis, as in the social-liberal tradition, but in a concern with gender equity in public
and private realms, as articulated by the feminist
analysis of Pateman (1988) and Fraser (1994, 1997).
According to Kershaw, a carefair policy accepts in
principle the logic underpinning workfare insofar
as it maintains that all citizens have a reasonable
right to social benefits provided they fulfill their citizenship duties. As a policy initiative it adds to traditional conceptions of welfare contractualism by
recognizing care work as an essential social duty.
The question arises, however, as to whether
Kershaw is inadvertently reinforcing the public/private divide that he attributes to social-liberal
redistributive practices. This slippage occurs in
Kershaw’s defence of private time for care as the
basis for public time for citizenship for both men
and women. But if care work is an essential social
duty, then Rawls’ difference principle and Marshall’s
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conceptualization of social citizenship speak to the
importance of civic institutions like social transfers
and public services such as health care and education as public sites of care. Civic care, then, works
to mediate private care. In order to be recognized
as an essential social good, care work requires the
civic context developed by welfare theorists.
Kershaw’s own policy initiatives, particularly his
call for universal child care, tend to recognize the
class and poverty issues surrounding care, even
while their explicit aim is to encourage more men
to take up the duty to care. Carefair contributes to
an urgent debate on the importance of public sites
of care for poor children, whose mothers and fathers are denied both the time for care and the time
for citizenship, insofar as they are systemically denied access to public sites of care. Without a civic
context, private care work is often marked by vio-
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
lence and desperation, particularly in the context of
social and economic deprivation.
REFERENCES
Fraser, N. 1994. “After the Family Wage: Gender Equity
and the Welfare State,” Political Theory 22(4):591-618.
______ 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on
the “Postsocialist” Condition. New York: Routledge.
Marshall, T.H. 1964. Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
MOLLY MANN , Programme in Social and Political
Thought, York University
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The Canadian Federal-Provincial Equalization
Regime: An Assessment
by Alex S. MacNevin. Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 2004. Canadian Tax Paper No. 109.
Alex MacNevin’s book comes at an opportune time.
While the equalization program has not generated
much public attention over the last two decades, the
pressures on the system have been slowly building,
like the gradual movements of the earth’s tectonic
plates, and a significant seismic event occurred in
2004 over the treatment of Newfoundland and Nova
Scotia’s resource revenues. In its time-honored Canadian tradition, the federal government when faced
with a public policy mess has commissioned a report from an expert panel, headed by Al O’Brien.
MacNevin’s book has been published just at a time
when we need a detailed and thorough review of
the equalization system.
After a brief introduction and overview in Chapter 1, the conceptual basis for equalization is examined in Chapter 2. The focus of this chapter is on
the need for an equalization system to address concerns about horizontal equity and the fiscallyinduced migration that can arise when there are
horizontal fiscal imbalances within a federation.
Chapter 3 deals with the design of equalization systems. Mechanisms for eliminating fiscal imbalances
are analyzed when the equalization system is either
funded by contributions from the “have provinces,”
which MacNevin calls the net-funded approach, or
out of general federal tax revenues, as in the current Canadian system, which he calls the grossfunded approach. Chapter 4 is concerned with the
key conceptual issue in the implementation of
equalization systems — the definition and measurement of fiscal capacity. In this chapter, MacNevin
considers alternative ways of defining fiscal capacity when the composition of provincial governments’
tax bases differ or there are differences in their ability to export tax burdens to non-residents through
increases in the consumer prices of provincially
taxed goods. Macro measures of fiscal capacity, such
as personal income or gross provincial product, are
113
evaluated along with adjusted macro measures, referred to as total taxable resources and exportedadjusted income. These measures are compared with
the fiscal capacity measures used under the representative revenue system approach, which is the
basis for calculating equalization grants under the
current Canadian equalization system. Chapter 5
focuses on the design of an equalization system that
takes into account variations in expenditure needs
as well as variations in fiscal capacity. Chapter 6
provides a brief history of the evolution of the Canadian equalization system, an assessment of the key
policy issues with the current equalization system,
and a summary of the view of provincial officials
regarding these issues. The final chapter summarizes
MacNevin’s assessment of the current equalization
system. He concludes that “the equalization regime
in Canada falls short of the commitment to equalization made in the constitution.” He argues that the
representative revenue system used under the current equalization system is flawed because it does
not adequately measure fiscal capacity or expenditure needs, and it produces adverse incentive effects
for provincial governments’ fiscal behaviour.
MacNevin argues for the replacement of the current
system by a framework that would use adjusted
macro measures of fiscal capacity (to better reflect
their taxable capacity and their ability to export tax
burdens) and that would incorporate expenditure
needs. He also suggests that if his preferred option
of a net-funded equalization program is not politically feasible, the federal government should consider integrating the CHST with the equalization
program to achieve a net-funded result.
How convincing is this list of recommendations?
In my view, most readers, and especially those who
have not formed stronger prior opinions about the
need and direction for reform, will not be persuaded
that MacNevin’s prescription is a good direction for
reform. There are a number of reasons why his
analysis is not persuasive. First, much of the analysis is conducted in a ponderous style. The chapter
on the design of equalization systems contains page
after page of simulations showing the effects of tax-
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base and tax-rate changes under different equalization schemes. All of these simulations are based on
simple artificial examples — five provinces with
exogenously determined tax bases, tax rates, and
expenditure levels. The behavioural responses of the
provinces to changes in equalization regimes are not
modelled. While these simulations may illustrate
how an equalization formula works, if there are no
behavioural responses, they do not provide a good
basis for drawing policy conclusions. Nonetheless,
MacNevin draws policy conclusions as if they were
supported by his simulations. For example, he argues that “a gross-funded scheme is less economically efficient than a net-funded scheme, since the
horizontal revenue imbalances that remain under a
gross-funded scheme will distort the interregional allocation of labour and capital” (p. 70). This conclusion, even if it is valid, cannot be drawn from
simulations that do not incorporate any reallocation
of labour and capital because of fiscal incentives.
MacNevin’s arguments for equalization, based on
horizontal equity and fiscally-induced migration,
will be familiar to anyone who has read the 1980s’
literature. He presents these arguments, without seriously considering counter arguments or other
policy constraints on governments. While the Canadians’ commitment to the concept of horizontal
equality is undoubtedly strong, it is a very slender
reed upon which to build the case for a greatly expanded equalization program. To begin with, the
principles of horizontal and vertical equity are usually applied to a particular government, be it federal,
provincial, or local, and not to the public sector as a
whole. Applying the principle to the entire public sector ignores the federal nature of Canada, that the federal and provincial governments are sovereign in their
respective areas of jurisdiction. Furthermore, there are
numerous examples of policies where governments
depart from the principle of horizontal equity because
this principle, even if it is valued, conflicts with other
desirable policy outcomes. For example, taxing capital gains at half the rate of other forms of income surely
violates the principle of horizontal equity at least to
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
some degree, but it is justified because it helps to
achieve other policy goals.
The argument for an expansion of the equalization system based on fiscally-induced migration is
even more tenuous because MacNevin, along with
many other analysts, ignores the other labour market
distortions, such as the extended employment
insurance benefits in high unemployment regions,
which reduce the incentive for workers to move to
areas with lower unemployment and more secure employment opportunities. Industrial subsidies to regions with high unemployment also reduce the need
for labour market adjustment through out-migration.
Fiscally induced migration, from say Newfoundland
to Alberta, may in fact improve overall economic
efficiency by counteracting these other policyinduced distortions in the economy. Certainly, we
should not get overly concerned about fiscallyinduced migration until wage rates in Alberta and
Ontario are lower, and unemployment rates are
higher, than in the Atlantic region.
MacNevin’s proposed alternative measures of fiscal capacity and expenditure needs are not derived
from the established theory of optimal taxation and
public expenditures and would require a number of
arbitrary and contentious adjustments if they were
adopted. For example, MacNevin argues that provincial debt should be included in a measure of fiscal need. However, basing equalization payments on
the level of provincial debt would only encourage
and reward irresponsible fiscal behaviour by the
provinces. MacNevin does not provide any calculations of these alternative measures of fiscal capacity and expenditure need or how they would affect
the total amount of equalization payments or its distribution among the provinces.
One of the most important constraints on any
equalization system adopted in Canada is that it will
almost certainly be funded by the federal government out of its general tax revenues. Given this constraint, it does not make sense to impose very high
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federal personal income taxes across the country in
order to make substantial equalization payments to
the Atlantic provinces and Quebec arising from resource revenues in western Canada. The burden of
this policy would be largely borne by Ontario residents, with deleterious effects on equity and economic efficiency. Achieving a net-funded approach
by including CHST in the equalization system would
only exacerbate Ontario politicians’ complaints
about the $23 billion gap. It would also eliminate
any leverage that the federal government retains over
how Alberta organizes its health-care system.
115
In sum, MacNevin provides only a very one-sided
discussion and superficial analysis of the case for
an expanded and greatly revised equalization system. I believe that most readers will conclude that a
few modest revisions to our current equalization
system would be greatly preferred to MacNevin’s
proposed wholesale revision of the system.
BEV DAHLBY, Department of Economics, University
of Alberta
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A Civil Society? Collective Actors in Canadian
Political Life
by Miriam Smith. Peterborough: Broadview Press,
2005.
There have been dramatic transformations in Canadian society in recent decades, including in our governance. Change is all around; so is the idea of change.
Representative politics is in disarray. The market is
flexing its muscle on many fronts, including the supply and distribution of what historically were regarded as public goods. The judicial role has been
forever altered: courts have been the big winners in
the governance sweepstakes. Where are we headed?
Not in the right direction according to Miriam
Smith. For a number of reasons she details, Professor Smith thinks that the path Canadians are following is a less democratic one. Her focus is
“collective actors” but as she charts their uncertain
course she documents many worrisome features of
the Dominion as it heads into the twenty-first century. Progressives will be particularly disturbed by
A Civil Society’s message but anyone with a serious
interest in the future of Canada needs to read this
book.
The book concentrates on the influence of groups
and social movements, particularly on the state —
the legislatures, elections, the bureaucracy, and the
courts. A central argument is that group politics has
been restructured by the move from the Keynesian
welfare state to neoliberal globalization. In doing
so it surveys the main approaches to the study of
collective action, including pluralism, neo-Marxism,
historical institutionalism, and rational choice
theory. A Civil Society contends that a number of
changes, including the transformation of federalism,
the enhanced role of the courts after the coming of
the Charter, and the decline of the legislature have
significantly altered the role of group politics in
Canada. More than just politics have changed: the
main institutions of the state have been reshaped.
On the whole, the influence of groups, except for
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
privileged ones, has been diminished. Because of that
decline and other factors, opportunities for democratic
engagement have shrunk in worrisome ways.
This is a short book: about 200 pages. Its conciseness is admirable in many ways. Professor Smith
keeps the narrative and argument moving along as
she develops her central assertions regarding the
declining fortunes of groups other than those who
are privileged. However, the comparative brevity
means that some topics are dispatched briskly so
that there is not a lot of room for nuance. There may
be more complexity here than A Civil Society indicates. Take the discussion of courts. In 35 pages the
book attempts to analyze the influence of litigation
in both the pre- and post-Charter eras. As a result
there are omissions. Her discussion of Aboriginal
litigation in the post-Charter era (five pages) is very
brief. That section says little about the implications
of 25 years of lawsuits for an increasingly large
number of urban Aboriginals. Endless litigation
about treaty rights, nation-to-nation status, and land
claims has done little to bring these issues to constructive resolution. At the same time the plight of
Aboriginals in the cities as they strive to make a
better life for themselves has largely been ignored,
including by A Civic Society. Moreover, her discussion of post-Charter litigation says little about
“rights talk.” What may be most important about the
Charter is the habit of mind it has helped to produce. The claiming of rights, in the courts, but also
in the media, the legislatures, and the streets produces an atmosphere where appeals regarding the
common good are viewed as nostalgia at best often
tinged with connivance. “Rights talk” can be empowering; it can also be corrosive.
But criticisms aside, this is a fine book. Of its
many contributions the strongest may be Chapter 3
“Historical Trajectories of Influence in Canadian
Politics.” Here Professor Smith provides a primer
on the way ordinary men and women banded together to assert a better life for themselves and their
children. Whatever may be the state of public goods
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117
in this society their origins owe much to the efforts
of many groups and communities. It is sobering to
think that A Civic Society may, indeed, be a requiem
for social and political voices that are, increasingly,
being muffled.
W.A. BOGART, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
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Response by Miriam Smith to W.A. Bogart
In William Bogart’s review of my book, he highlights that my account of the Charter’s effects is
cursory. As Professor Bogart has shown in his own
work, it is a challenging and even daunting task to
measure the consequences of law, especially the
impact of law on political culture. I concur with
Professor Bogart that my exclusion of the legal and
constitutional position of urban Aboriginals from my
analysis of the Charter’s effects is an important
omission as much of the analysis of the constitutional and legal landscape for Aboriginal peoples in
Canada is cast in terms of self-government and land
claims. As Professor Bogart points out, this fails to
recognize the growing importance of urban Aboriginals and their place in Canadian society.
As to the effects of “rights talk” on our political
culture, I believe we need more empiricallygrounded studies of the effects of the Charter, especially studies that explore the way law and rights are
used and understood across the spheres of everyday
life. It strikes me that Canadians have not really become more litigious as individuals in the wake of the
Charter but that English-speaking Canadians have become more attached to rights as an abstract concept
and as a political ideology of equality. This is quite
different from the American attachment to rights which
tend to emphasize the individual and the individual’s
right to litigate in response to everyday conflict.
Nonetheless, I think Professor Bogart and I agree
that the empowerment of courts in Canadian society
is linked to the growing importance of markets in our
public life and that these developments have had negative effects on the quality of Canadian democracy.
Miriam Smith
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
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Good Government? Good Citizens?: Courts,
Politics and Markets in a Changing Canada
by W.A. Bogart. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005.
In his earlier work, Courts and Country: The Limits
of Litigation and the Social and Political Life of
Canada, W.A. Bogart explored the changing role of
courts in Canadian politics in the wake of the Charter, providing a temperate reading of the politically
raucous debate over the role of courts in Canadian
politics. In this new work, Bogart expands his earlier analysis of courts to include the role of states
and markets. The central concerns of the book are
normative, rather than explanatory. Bogart wants to
know how we can have good government and how
we can enhance citizenship in an era in which courts
and markets have become more powerful at the expense of representative democracy. Any reader who
cares about the future of democracy in Canada would
do well to read this broad-ranging and thoughtprovoking book.
Bogart provides useful overviews of some of the
current debates over courts, the decline of trust, the
democratic deficit, and the rising power of markets
with their cults of efficiency and choice. He then
looks at the role of courts, the decline of representative democracy and the rise of markets in relation
to specific public policy issues — the plight of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples, the role of the Internet,
debates over education, and the challenges of an
aging society.
In order to ensure the quality of democratic politics in life, Bogart agues that our politics must recognize the limits of courts and the limits of markets.
In that sense, the book can be read, as its author
claims at the outset, as a moderate’s plea for the
revitalization of a representative and democratic
politics. Bogart raises the powerful role the courts
are currently playing in Canadian society as a cause
for concern as he believes that litigation may undermine the search for the common good that should
be at the core of politics. This is a useful account in
119
that it does not seek to further inflame the tired debate about judicial power; rather, Bogart emphasizes
that a focus on rights may pull citizens away from
balancing public and private interests in ways that
maximize the common good. Unlike most critics of
judicial activism, Bogart combines his critique of
litigation with systematic attention to the role of
markets. The shift to the political right and the relative decline of the state have given markets a more
powerful role than ever in Canadian politics, a tendency that further undermines representative and
democratic politics. Hence, for Bogart, the rise of
judicial activism must be placed in a broader political and economic context.
Nonetheless, this reader would quibble with
Bogart on a few points. The depiction of “the society that was” overplays the role of the state in developing and implementing policies for the common
good. The Canadian state is not a neutral arbiter nor
are politicians and bureaucrats necessarily concerned with the greatest good of the greatest number.
Politicians seek to win elections and public servants may seek to build bureaucratic fiefdoms. These
forces of realpolitik as well as the pressures of the
capitalist market economy played an important role
in the development of Canadian public policy.
Bogart depicts the role of the courts prior to the
Charter as relatively marginal; nonetheless, arguably, the courts played a critical role in defining
Canadian federalism, especially in allocating most
of modern social policy to the provincial level, a set
of legal decisions set the parameters of the Canadian welfare state.
Bogart might have improved the text somewhat
by taking a more critical stance toward Canada of
the past. For example, Bogart emphasizes a theme
of good citizens and good governments that puts
forward the idea that Canadians have historically
had an attachment to “peace, order and good government.” The problem with this view is that it
glosses over the power struggles that have shaped
Canadian politics and history. The definition of the
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good citizen has been subject to restrictions throughout Canadian history, most obviously based on race
and gender.
Nonetheless, Bogart’s book is an excellent overview of the most important themes of Canadian political and public policy today, namely, the changing
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
role of states, markets, and courts. Its normative approach to asking how our politics can best serve the
common good will likely appeal to many students
of Canadian politics and public policy.
MIRIAM SMITH, Department of Political Studies, Trent
University
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121
Response by W.A. Bogart to Miriam Smith
In her review of my book, Good Government? Good
Citizens? Miriam Smith argues that I should have
taken “a more critical stance toward the Canada of
the past…. [T]he good citizen has been subject to
restrictions… most obviously based on race and
gender.” In response, I would like to point out that I
do acknowledge in the book that the struggle to
eliminate the exclusionary practices of the past is
one of the most important aspects of contemporary
law and politics in Canada. Yet, however flawed
Canadian society was historically because of the
evils of discrimination it managed to engage in great
civic projects including public education, universal
health care, and a decent social welfare net. It is
this latter point that must not be lost. While I believe that we should not be myopic about our past,
we should not be naïve about the kind of society
that market advocacy and rights activism may be
creating: one in which civic projects are scarcely
contemplated, let alone achieved.
W.A. Bogart
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