Reviews/Comptes rendus
A Fragile Social Fabric? Fairness, Trust, and
Commitment in Canada
by Raymond Breton, Norbert J. Hartmann, Jos L.
Lennards and Paul Reed. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004.
Breton et al. provide a thoughtful, well-organized
account of the lines of integration and fragmentation in Canada’s social fabric. The book assesses
these lines through the lens of a “social covenant of
rights and obligations” that binds citizens to their
community across dimensions of fairness, recognition, trust, belonging, contributions, indebtedness,
and social obligation.
The central argument forwarded is that Canada’s
social fabric — and the social covenant that sustains it — is important and valuable in its capacity
to bind citizens together in a shared community and
to increase peoples’ quality of life. The book is organized efficiently into two parts. The first assesses
“quality of life” issues through the dimensions of
fairness (how fair society is perceived to be, or how
fairly the individual perceives oneself to be treated
in society), recognition (of one’s contributions to
society), trust (that others will not take advantage
of oneself), belonging (one’s sense of being a member of the local or national community), contributions (the extent to which one gives to the
community), indebtedness (the extent to which one
feels they owe something to the community), and
social obligation (the extent to which one feels one
ought to help others in the community).
Based on these dimensions, the findings indicate
that there is a fairly strong social commitment and
social fabric in Canada. More than two of every three
Canadians believe that upholding the basic values
and considerations of the common good through
actions and decisions are among the most important obligations. Moreover, most Canadians feel that
everyone owes something to society and should try
to contribute to society.
333
The authors correctly point out, however, that
there are fissures in Canada’s social fabric. The data
presented reveals that a strong majority of Canadians hesitate to trust others, that there is distrust of
people with different beliefs and values, and that
there are concerns that policies crafted by governments, corporations, and other business organizations may not be in the public’s interest but rather
in those of the decisionmakers themselves and their
allies. Moreover, the authors argue that there is an
uneasiness among a number of Canadians about the
equity of the distribution of resources and the way
institutions treat people. These findings shed important insight into the cracks that exist in the foundation of the social covenant in Canada. While the
authors allude to research being conducted on related topics, more explicit and nuanced connections
to work being conducted in similar research areas
such as social cohesion, social capital, and postmaterialism would expand the academic scope of
the book, giving it added theoretical muscle.
A less explored area of interest in the book is the
extent to which a generational gap exists in people’s
perceptions of the importance of the social fabric.
If it is the case that Canada’s social fabric is eroding due to an increasing individualization of values
and globalization, one would expect to find these
changing values among Canada’s youth. Age cohort
analysis would provide insight into possible value
changes that may take place over time in regard to
Canada’s social fabric as generational replacement
occurs. Although the authors mention some
generational effects (such as how younger Canadians feel less at home in both their local community
and in the broader society), a more detailed account
of generational differences would have likely
yielded some interesting insights.
The second part of the book explores potential
lines of fragmentation in Canada’s social fabric
based on gender, cultural diversity, class, and provincial differences. As a multicultural nation built
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on diversity, this particular section of the book
makes a very useful contribution to the study of
Canada’s social infrastructure. The findings here
support the position that there are lines of fragmentation in Canada’s social fabric: women express
higher levels of dissatisfaction in regard to their jobs
and their recognition in society, visible and “other”
minorities express the lowest feelings of belonging
in their local communities and in the larger society,
and levels of distrust tend to increase as one moves
down the socio-economic scale. The book also confirms regional differences in perceptions of the social covenant, one of the most important being that
residents of the two most western provinces — B.C.
and Alberta — were the least likely to feel that they
receive their fair share from the federal government.
The methodological approach of the book is
easily discernable and presented in a “statisticallyfriendly” fashion. The book relies mainly upon a
Canada-wide survey conducted by Environics Research in 1997. The authors are quick to point out
that the intended audience of the book is not academic and that their findings intentionally rest on
descriptive information in order to capture Canadians’ everyday experiences. However, given that the
dataset sample size (2,014) was large enough to
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conduct more sophisticated statistical procedures,
one wonders how the academic contributions of the
book might have been expanded if more inferential
findings were reported.
The book offers a number of public policy issues
germane to social welfare practitioners, government
officials, and researchers working in areas of social
policy. First, the authors make the case that policy
decisions that nurture Canada’s social welfare system are an effective way of assuring the robust functioning of society and its institutions. Second, the
authors argue that the state of civil society is a valuable policy objective because it enhances the quality of life for individuals beyond just material needs,
including feelings of belonging, trust, and fairness.
Third, Breton et al. suggest that it is important to
revitalize public institutions and to redefine their
role in the context of globalization and technological change. In this sense, the book concludes that
public programs such as urban-development policies ought to perform a redistributive function to
nurture the social covenant and break down the lines
of fragmentation that currently exist.
T RACEY R ANEY , Department of Political Science,
Wilfrid Laurier University
POLITIQUES , VOL. XXXI , NO . 3 2005
Reviews/Comptes rendus
The Price of Knowledge 2004: Access and
Student Finance in Canada
by Sean Junor and Alex Usher. Montreal: Canada
Millennium Scholarship Foundation, 2004, Millennium Research Series, 353 pp.
Three years ago, a conference proceedings volume
was published under the title Towards EvidenceBased Policy for Canadian Education (de Broucker
and Sweetman 2002). The title’s suggestion that
Canadian educational policy had not previously been
informed by evidence is troubling but came uncomfortably close to the truth. Canadian researchers simply did not have the data required to support serious
analytical inquiries. Fortunately, this is now changing rapidly and we have seen in recent years the creation of the Canadian Education Statistics Council,
the development of new survey-based data, better
access to existing data, and a consequent surge of
academic research into higher education.
One of the agents of change has been the Canada
Millennium Scholarship Foundation, established in
1998 to promote greater access to postsecondary
education. Although its primary function is to administer the Chrétien government’s $2.5 billion
scholarship endowment legacy, the foundation has
been exceptionally proactive in the creation and
analysis of higher education statistics. The Price of
Knowledge 2004, a second edition following the
initial 2002 volume, brings together the large scope
of statistical evidence on student access and finance
that the foundation has assembled.
The book’s organization follows the chronology
of a student’s progress into, through, and out of postsecondary education. Or, at least, through the university and college system since trades education is
ignored. The book begins with an examination of
available empirical evidence about the manner in
which Canadians decide whether or not to pursue
postsecondary education, make financial plans
required to support that pursuit, choose between individual institutions and so on. This is followed by
an exhaustive description of who actually goes to
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university or college. As befits its focus on issues
of access, the book then turns to the question of who
does not go on to postsecondary education and what
barriers may have prevented them from doing so.
The following four chapters are the most closely
related to the operational aspects of the foundation’s
student aid mandate, beginning with an itemized
description of the cost of attending university or
college (from tuition fees to textbooks to travel and
childcare) and proceeding through a review of student aid processes and programs in Canada, the
sources of financing students use, and an examination of government expenditures on postsecondary
education. The final chapter deals with the experiences of graduates in terms of the time they took to
complete their studies, their experience in the transition to the labour market, their experience with
debt repayment, and so on.
The book’s subtitle is “Access and Student Finance in Canada” but might be more appropriately
subtitled “What Data Can We Find that Relates to
Access and Student Finance in Canada?” In other
words, it is primarily a presentation of data rather
than a synthesis of research on the issue. Certainly
there are many instances where insightful inferences
are drawn from the data and results from the research
literature are mentioned, but the book is really a
framework for presenting the 115 tables and 216
figures of descriptive statistics. This is not intended
as a criticism for one can learn important and interesting lessons about the state and quality of data
from two authors who are quite obviously intimately
familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the
statistics many researchers and policymakers are
now using. Indeed, the preliminary chapter documenting the data sources used in the volume might
well be worth the price of the book on its own.
While primarily a showcase for descriptive statistics, the book does have as an overarching theme
a research question of considerable policy importance. Do Canadians face barriers to accessing universities and colleges? From a financial point of
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336 Reviews/Comptes rendus
view, the answer appears to be generally no, certainly not to the extent one might expect given the
large increases in tuition over the last decade. Why,
then, are youth from lower-income families underrepresented in Canadian universities? Because, according to the authors, they do not want to go to
university. Characterizing this as a type of barrier
(due to a lack of “cultural capital” among lowerincome Canadians) is a bit of a stretch, but the correct diagnosis of the university participation gap
between the rich and the poor is both important and
welcome.
There are a number of specific complaints one
could make about the text. Many of the graphs are
quite cryptic, at least to readers not on a first name
basis with the data or the issues. Some inferences
drawn from the data are rather casual and therefore
possibly misleading. There is, perhaps, too much
detail obscuring the central theme and diverting attention away from interesting results. Do we really
need to know, for example, the cost of insurance for
a 22-year-old student driving a 2001 Dodge Neon
in 32 selected Canadian cities?
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These criticisms are minor, however, and The
Price of Knowledge 2004 represents an extremely
valuable reference for researchers and policymakers
working in the area of Canadian higher education.
It does not touch on many interesting dimensions
of educational policy such as governance, research
or vocational training. Nor does it offer a solid theoretical framework for thinking about the issues of
participation in and outcomes of higher education.
It does provide, however, important conclusions
about access issues in addition to offering a veritable
gold mine of potential research topics. Its promotion and dissemination of data will advance the research agenda in higher education and take us much
further toward evidence-based policy for Canadian
education.
REFERENCE
de Broucker, P. and A. Sweetman. 2002. Towards EvidenceBased Policy for Canadian Education. Kingston: John
Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy
and Statistics Canada.
TORBEN DREWES, Department of Economics, Trent
University
POLITIQUES , VOL. XXXI , NO . 3 2005
Reviews/Comptes rendus
The Most Dangerous Branch: How the
Supreme Court of Canada Has Undermined
our Law and our Democracy
by Robert Ivan Martin. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
Robert Martin does not like some of the recent findings of the Supreme Court of Canada. This much
becomes clear with merely a brief glance into his
book. His concerns, however, go beyond the actual
judgements passed; he is concerned with the way in
which judges come to their decisions. Specifically,
he feels that the “Court has regularly abandoned
established principles, disregarded statutes, and invented new doctrines” (p. 27), in order to impose
their own values on Canadian society. Since judges
of the Supreme Court are not elected, this is tantamount to a coup d’état.
Martin is not alone in these concerns. For the
2004 federal election, Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party made it part of their platform to implement a Judicial Review Committee to try to
prevent “court decisions which Parliament believes
should be addressed through legislation” (Conservative Party of Canada 2005, 6). Indeed, there has been
sufficient criticism that Chief Justice Beverley
McLachlin felt it necessary to defend the Supreme
Court’s adjudication process in a recent interview
(CBC Radio One 2005). For those unfamiliar with
the decisions that have caused this furor, Martin’s
book not only provides a detailed account of the
cases, but also examines the arguments used by the
Supreme Court in arriving at their decisions. The
topics of the controversial findings include abortion,1 assisted suicide,2 the provision of health care,3
and gay rights.4
Martin’s argument can be summarized as follows.
A Supreme Court, when functioning properly,
should pass judgements in a manner that is “general, consistent, coherent, and predictable” (p. 29).
Further, there should exist limits to the kind of decisions that the Court can make. Specifically, “setting the social agenda, amending legislation, [and]
337
amending the constitution” (p. 41) should be left to
Parliament. The Supreme Court of Canada, Martin
argues, has been entirely unprincipled in its adjudication, leading to decisions that are “capricious,
arbitrary, unpredictable, and largely ad hoc” (p. 30).
Moreover, these decisions overstep the above mentioned bounds. According to Martin, the Supreme
Court has inappropriately used the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as justification for their
creation of law. They have created rights not specified in the Charter through the technique of “reading in.” That is, the Supreme Court judges have
created (or amended) legislation by adding “words
not placed in [an existing] statute by the legislature”
(p. 157).
Martin’s complaints are serious, and when one
reads some of the opinions of the judges, the cause
for his concern becomes evident. Unfortunately,
Martin’s writing strongly detracts from his arguments. As an economist, a compelling argument
would be one that argues a specific principle, or
objective function, that would be socially optimal
for the Supreme Court to use when passing judgements. One could then proceed to demonstrate how
specific decisions do not conform to this principle.
Instead, Martin has chosen to argue that the Supreme
Court judges have come under the thrall of an ideology he calls “the orthodoxy.” As such, the judges’
decisions have been “guided more by the orthodoxy
than by the law and the Constitution” (p. 3). The
orthodoxy is characterized by “its commitment to
relativism — intellectual, cultural, and moral” and
“denies the existence of objective reality” (p. 11).
In particular, the subjectivity of reality means that
“men cannot understand, and therefore cannot write
or think about women; white women cannot understand ‘women of colour’; heterosexual ‘women of
colour’ cannot understand lesbian ‘women of colour’ and on and on” (p. 19). In other words, the orthodoxy is a form of postmodernist feminism.
While Martin sounds a bit like a conspiracy theorist when talking about the orthodoxy, it is not his
complaints about postmodernism that detract from
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338 Reviews/Comptes rendus
his arguments. In fact, he is at his best when he attacks the writings of legal scholars that have “succumbed to the orthodoxy.” Rather, it is the lack of a
well-defined theory of how the Supreme Court ought
to operate that makes his argument weak. As an
economist, the separation of judiciary and legislature is an extremely interesting question of mechanism design. What functions should be delegated to
which branch? What objective function should each
branch maximize? When Martin complains about the
Supreme Court amending legislation, it is not obvious that the Court has not done so in a socially desirable way, nor that the Court should not have such
a function. Another interesting question (from an
economist’s viewpoint) pertains to the composition
of the Supreme Court. Cardozo argues that the Court
should comprise a wide range of views.
The eccentricities of judges balance one another.
One judge looks at problems from the point of
view of history, another from that of social utility, one is a formalist, another a latitudinarian, one
is timorous of change, another dissatisfied with the
present; out of the attrition of diverse minds there
is beaten something which has a constancy and
uniformity and average value greater than its component elements (Cardozo 1921, 177).
Since one judge in particular, former Madam Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, seems to be the main
target of Martin’s criticisms, one is left to question
whether composition of the Supreme Court might
in fact be optimal. Indeed, the fact that Martin complains both about the opinions of dissenting judges
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and that Parliament seems to be enthralled with the
orthodoxy makes many of his arguments seem like
sour grapes.
While I have many complaints about Martin’s
writing, one should not dismiss the concerns that
he raises. I have mentioned above how an economist might think about some of the issues. Sadly,
little work has been done by economists as yet. If
anything, Martin’s work is a call for research to be
done on the topic. For those researchers either interested in testing whether the Canadian Supreme
Court’s decisions conform to some principle (such
as the promotion of efficiency), or in doing normative work on the optimal degree of separation of judiciary and legislature, Martin’s book is worth
reading.
NOTES
1
R. v. Morgentaler (1975) and R. v. Morgentaler (1988).
R. v. Latimer (2001).
3
Eldridge v. British Columbia (A.G.).
4
Trinity Western University v. British Columbia College
of Teachers (2001).
2
REFERENCES
Cardozo, B. 1921. The Nature of the Judicial Process.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
CBC Radio One. 2005. Sounds Like Canada, 13 May.
Conservative Party of Canada. 2005. Policy Declaration.
Last modified 19 March.
P HIL C URRY , Department of Economics, Simon
Fraser University
POLITIQUES , VOL. XXXI , NO . 3 2005