Social programs in Canada

Social programs in Canada include all government programs designed to give assistance to citizens outside of what the market provides. The Canadian social safety net covers a broad spectrum of programs, and because Canada is a federation, many are run by the provinces. Canada has a wide range of government transfer payments to individuals, which totaled $176.6 billion in 2009. Only social programs that direct funds to individuals are included in that cost; programs such as medicare and public education are additional costs.

In Canada, the entirety of the social provisions of government are called "social programs" (French: programmes sociaux), rather than "social welfare" as in European and British usage. "Welfare" in Canada, like in the United States, colloquially refers to direct payments to low-income individuals only, and not to healthcare and education spending. It is rarely used as the name of any specific program, however, because of its negative connotations. (In French it is commonly known as 'le bien-être social'). In slang, welfare is also sometimes referred to as "the dole" (slang, as in British usage).

Generally speaking before the Great Depression most social services were provided by religious charities and other private groups. Changing government policy between the 1930s and 1960s saw the emergence of a welfare state, similar to many Western European countries. Most programs from that era are still in use, although many were scaled back during the 1990s as government priorities shifted towards reducing debt and deficit.

The scaling back of wealth distribution programs, and a general failing of trickle-down economics to effectively distribute money in capitalist economies more broadly, meant that gaps between rich and poor widened. Canada of the late-1960s was a land where blue-collar workers could afford cottages easily, but only far more rarely could this happen in 2015 where standard of living has declined for new families (based upon measures of double-income families, increased household debt, and GINI Coefficient increases from .28 to .32 since 1988). In Canada, Exports have dropped 50%; and Imports have doubled - since year-2000, creating a new and pervasive Trade deficit. Canada; similar to the U.K., saw per-Capita GDP Exports drop to one-third those seen in Nordic states. A country's poorest citizens can seldom afford to participate in commerce, but in Nordic Model states - states with strong Welfare Social Programs, poorer citizens could participate and clearly - by the statistics - they did.

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