1. See Davies, Gareth, “North American Antipoverty Wars: Canada and the United States in Comparative Perspective,” in Bak, Hans, van Holthoon, F. L., and Krabbendam, Hans, eds., Living in the Welfare State: Social and Secure? (Amsterdam, 1996)Google Scholar.

2. For a competent review of this series of events, see Donovan, John C., The Politics of Poverty (New York, 1967), chaps. 3–5Google Scholar.

3. Smirhers, James, The Limits of Affluence: Welfare Policy in Ontario, 1920–1970 (Toronto, 1994), 235Google Scholar.

4. Struthers reports that, despite the growing number of single mothers receiving welfare in Ontario, the Progressive Conservative government failed to produce the kinds of day-care support that would have allowed such recipients to become economically independent. Ibid., 239–43.

5. The council refers to its determination “to lay the basis for a well co-ordinated and effective Canadian war on poverty.” Economic Council of Canada, Fifth Annual Report: The Challenge of Growth and Change (Ottawa, 1968), 106Google Scholar.

6. For useful treatments of these precedents and influences, see Matusow, Allen J., The Unraveling of America: Liberalism in the 1970s (New York, 1984)Google Scholar, and Marris, Peter and Rein, Martin, Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972)Google Scholar.

7. For the NDP and its importance to the Canadian antipoverty debate, see Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars.”

8. See Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935 (Pittsburgh, 1968)Google Scholar, passim; and Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), chaps. 3–5Google Scholar.

9. In the case of Los Angeles, the feud between OEO and Mayor Yorty was held partly to blame for the catastrophic Watts riot of August 1965. The records of the U.S. Department of Labor for this year contain much correspondence relating to both the feud and its consequences.

10. Martha Derthick, “Crossing Thresholds: Federalism in the 1960s,” paper presented at the conference “Integrating the Sixties,” 30 May 1995.

11. A “man-in-the-house” rule stipulated that ostensibly single mothers found to be concealing a male breadwinner were not eligible for AFDC assistance.

12. Derthick, “Crossing Thresholds,” 18,19.

13. One scholar to have taken this logic-of-modemization approach to understanding federalism is Samuel Beer, in his article “The Modernization of American Federalism,” Publius 3 (Special Issue, 1973, ed. Daniel J. Elazar), 49–95. For an interesting analysis of this essay from a Canadian perspective, see Smiley, Donald V., “Public Sector Politics, Modernization and Federalism: The Canadian and American Experiences,” Publius 14 (Winter 1984): 39–59Google Scholar. Another insightful comparison of the two brands of federalism is Watts, Ronald L., “The American Constitution in Comparative Perspective: A Comparison of Federalism in the United States and Canada,” Journal of American History 74 (Summer 1987): 769–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Banting, Keith, “Visions of the Welfare State,” in Seward, Shirley B., ed., The Future of Social Welfare Systems in Canada and the United Kingdom (Ottawa, 1987), 151Google Scholar.

15. For the constitutional significance of these decisions, see Struthers, Limits of Affluence, especially 204–7; Leman, Christopher, The Collapse of Welfare Reform: Political Institutions, Policy, and the Poor in Canada and the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 61–64Google Scholar; and Van Loon, Rick, “Reforming Welfare in Canada,” Public Policy 27 (Fall 1979): 474–75Google Scholar.

16. I am indebted to James Struthers for this point. In the early 1970s, Donald V. Smiley could write: “The story of Canadian federalism from the late 1950s onward is that of the relative weakening of the power of the national government and the strengthening of that of the provinces.” But a decade later, another respected scholar of Canadian federalism, Milton J. Esman, was struck by the extent to which Trudeau had “committed his political career to protecting the powers and resources of die federal government from further erosion by the provinces.” A decade later still, theextent of federal activism, however unsuccessful, seems all the more striking. See Smiley, “Federal-Provincial Conflict in Canada,” Publius 4 (Summer 1974): 9; and Esman, , “Federalism and Modernization: Canada and the United States,” Publius 14 (Winter 1984): 21Google Scholar.

17. Haddow, Rodney, Poverty Reform in Canada, 1958–1978: State and Class Influences on Policy Making (Montreal and Kingston, 1993), 104Google Scholar.

18. The nature of this crisis is explored in somewhat greater detail in Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars.”

19. For Kent's understanding of this constraint, see Scott Young's article “The War on Poverty—Latest Communiqué: All Quiet on the Canadian Front,” Toronto Globe and Mad, 29 October 1965, 7.

20. Struthets, Limits of Affluence, 220.

21. For Lévesque's contribution to the Ottawa conference, see Toronto Globe and Mail, 8 December 1965,9. “Quiet Revolution” was the term given to the new spirit of modernization and reform that had swept through Quebec after 1960, following the overthrow of the theocratic, ruralist, and reactionary Duplessis regime. It is treated at somewhat greater length in Davies, “North American Antipoverty Wars,” which also contains suggestions for further reading.

22. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, 222.

23. Geoffrey Stevens, “The Poverty War. Jargon versus Eloquence,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 13 December 1965, 9.

24. Kent, Tom, A Public Purpose: An Experience of Liberal Opposition and Canadian Government (Kingston and Montreal, 1988), 383–84Google Scholar.

25. For a lively discussion of the decline of the Pearson government, see Newman, Peter C., The Distemper of Our Times: Canadian Politics in Transition, 1963–1968 (Toronto and Montreal, 1968)Google Scholar.

26. Bella, Leslie, “The Provincial Role in the Canadian Welfare State: The Influence of Provincial Social Policy Initiatives on the Design of die Canada Assistance Plan,” Canadian Public Administration 22 (Fall 1979): 450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. This is a major theme of Haddow, Poverty Reform in Canada.

28. Banting, “Visions of the Welfare State,” 174.

29. This is a recurrent theme in Leman, Collapse of Welfare Reform, and the point is also made by Van Loon, “Reforming Welfare,” 475.

30. McRoberts, Kenneth and Posgate, Dale, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis (Toronto and Montreal, 1976), 99Google Scholar.

31. For Lesage, see Canadian Annual Review (1965): 61. For Lévesque, see Canadian Annual Review (1966): 49.

32. See Haddow, Poverty Reform, and Leman, Collapse of Welfare Reform, for good summaries of these investigations.

33. For the existence and fascinating interaction of these socialist and Tory traditions in Canada, see Lipset, Seymour Martin, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York, 1990)Google Scholar, passim, and Horowitz, Gad, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32 (May 1966): 143–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Equally, the fact that the principal welfare program for families was the universalist family allowance program meant that welfare mothers were not stigmatized in quite the same way north of the border. Welfare resentments in Canada tended to focus on the Unemployment Insurance program, which expanded rapidly after the mid-1960s, and especially after 1971.

35. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, 241–42.

36. For the pressures that the work-for-welfare movement placed on Ottawa, see Haddow, Poverty Reform; Bella, “The Provincial Role in the Canadian Welfare State”; and Struthers, Limits of Affluence.

37. See chapter 2 of Davies, Gareth, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, Kan., 1996)Google Scholar. The most celebrated antiwelfare outburst came when the mayor of the upstate New York town of Newburgh (less than two hundred miles from the Canadian border) declared war on welfare scroungers, earning nationwide publicity. The most recent account of the Newburgh affair comes in Coll, Blanche D., Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929–1979 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995), 210–16Google Scholar.

38. Struthers, Limits of Affluence, chap. 6. The quotes are taken from page 200.

39. Ibid., 199.

40. Canadian Annual Review (1972): 348.

41. See Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 9, 216–17.

42. Canadian Annual Review (1972): 352.

43. Leman argues that die Canadian political process is inherently more “closed” than that of the United States, and that outside pressure groups and interests—be they mainstream or radical—find it more difficult to penetrate the policymaking network in Ottawa than is the case in Washington.

44. See Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, passim, for a fuller discussion.

45. The drawn-out death of the guaranteed income in Canada has been treated in depth by Haddow and Leman, and lies beyond the scope of this essay. The ongoing constitutional crisis was the most important obstacle to reform, but the deteriorating economic environment was also a factor, as were the continuing popularity of the universal family allowance (which a GAI would have replaced), the inability of the policy planners to agree among themselves on matters of detail (this point is emphasized by Haddow), and the political weakness of the Trudeau government.

46. For one example of such resistance, see the reaction of the Canadian Labour Council to the idea that Canada should copy Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Haddow, Poverty Reform, 77.

47. See, for example, June Callwood, “Crisis in Our Classrooms,” Maclean's, 23 January 1965, 7, 24–28; and Alan Phillips, “Our Invisible Poor,” Maclean's, 20 February 1965, 7–10. For a list of American magazine articles that dealt with similar themes, and did so in a strikingly similar manner, see Davies, Gareth, “War on Dependency: Liberal Individualism and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964,” Journal of American Studies 26 (August 1992): 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Ryan, Margaret, The Revolution Game: The Short, Unhappy Life of the Company of Young Canadians (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar; Toronto Globe and Mail, 10 December 1965, 10.

49. For contemporary books that treated the Native American experience in Canada, and that are infused with the language and assumptions of the civil rights movement, see Cardinal, Harold, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada's Indians (Edmonton, 1969)Google Scholar, Waubageshig, , ed., The Only Good Indian: Essays by Canadian Indians (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar, and Robertson, Heather, Reservations Are for Indians (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar.

50. Economic Council of Canada, Fifth Annual Report (Ottawa, 1968)Google Scholar.

51. This sense that Canadian politics during this period was driven in part by dynamics imported from the United States persists if one considers such New Left agitation as occurred north of the border during this period. In a fine study of New Left activities in Kingston, Ontario, Richard Harris describes empowerment campaigns on behalf of the underprivileged that are strongly reminiscent of organizational efforts south of the border. In some cases it seems that his organizers had to work quite hard to find subj ects to agitate about, let alone to win any response. In such an unpromising setting it seems likely that both the effort and its instigators' persistence reflected the inspiration of events in the United States (just across the St. Lawrence River). See Harris, Richard, Democracy in Kingston: A Social Movement in Urban Politics, 1965–1970 (Kingston, Ontario, 1988), passimGoogle Scholar.

52. For Trudeau and the New Politics, see Radwanski, George, Trudeau (New York, 1978)Google Scholar, chap. 12. See also speeches and interviews from the period 1968 to 1971 in Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, Conversations with Canadians (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar.