Federalism, social policy, and the constitution

Few things in Canadian political life have been dissected, debated, deplored,
and defended as much as federalism. Federalism, it is argued, defines our
national institutions, reflects our history, expresses our genius, echoes our
vices, impedes our maturity, and preserves the peace. Any student embarking
on a study of federalism will find the terrain well charted but battle-scarred.
Canadians have made federalism into a national obsession.
It is rarely possible, in these circumstances, to say anything original or
entirely persuasive about Canadian federalism. I shall not try. Instead, this
chapter's more modest (and more prudent) task is to introduce and review the
relationship between Canadian federalism and social policy. With one recent
and notable exception,1 this relationship has not received from students of
social policy the attention or careful analysis that one would expect. The other
chapters in this volume address this problem in detail. This chapter serves only
to provide an overview of the social security system as it now exists and as it has
evolved, of its conventional, constitutional, and rational foundations, and of
the possible effects of Canada's new constitution on social policy.