Leonard Charles Marsh - Report on social security for Canada

REPORT ON SOCIAL SECURITY FOR CANADA

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244 Report on Social Security for Canada (New Edition)
Leonard Marsh

Report on Social Security for Canada

LEONARD MARSH

A New Edition with an Introduction
by Allan Moscovitch

Carleton Library Series 244

McGill-Queens University Press
Montreal & Kingston London Chicago

McGill-Queens University Press 2017

ISBN 978-0-7735-5156-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5157-2 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5252-4 (e PDF )
ISBN 978-0-7735-5364-4 (e PUB )

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2017
Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

First edition 1943. Preface by Michael Bliss and introduction by Leonard
Marsh University of Toronto Press 1975. Reprinted with permission
of the publisher.

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last
year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout
the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Lan dernier,
le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de lart dans la vie
des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Marsh, Leonard, 1906 1983, author
Report on social security for Canada/Leonard Marsh; a new edition
with an introduction by Allan Moscovitch.

(Carleton library series; 244)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7735-5156-5 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-7735-5157-2 (softcover)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5252-4 (e PDF ) ISBN 978-0-7735-5364-4 (e PUB )

Social security Canada. I. Moscovitch, Allan, 1946, writer of
introduction II. Title. III. Series: Carleton library series; 244

HD 7129. M 3 2017 368.400971 C 2017-907188-2
C 2017-907189-0

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript.

Contents

Introduction to the New Edition

ALLAN MOSCOVITCH

On 11 March 1943, a copy of the Report on Social Security for Canada was presented before a House of Commons Committee on Reconstruction by Dr Cyril James, the chair of the federal governments own Advisory Committee on Reconstruction.

The Report on Social Security for Canada was written by Leonard Marsh, a researcher for the Advisory Committee on Reconstruction, at the request of Ian Mackenzie, the minister responsible for the committee, and Cyril James as chairman. Mackenzie wanted a Canadian report after seeing the enormous international impact of the British Beveridge Report, which was released in late November 1942.

Produced in less than two months, the Marsh Report received enormous attention when it was released to the press on 16 March 1943. It was immediately heralded as the Canadian Beveridge Report. The Winnipeg Free Press covered its front page with stories about the reports proposals for postwar Canada, and a feature story spoke to the similarities between the Marsh Report and the Beveridge Report.

The vision of a postwar world Marsh incorporated into the report was strongly influenced by the research he conducted on Canadian labour and social conditions during the Depression and by his social democratic outlook. Arriving in Montreal in 1930, he spent ten years as director of research for the McGill Social Sciences Research Project. As a result, he was in a unique position to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the market system as it appeared in Canada and the very limited range of social programs that then supported working families without sufficient employment income to pay their expenses.

His social democratic political views were strongly influenced by his time as a student at London School of Economics and Political Science ( LSE ), then led by William Beveridge, and by his time as assistant secretary of the LSE -based New Survey of London Life and Labour, a project to study social conditions in the 1920s. Indeed it was during this time that he became a progressive social reformer who devoted the rest of his life to formulating blueprints for improving Canadian social and economic conditions.

Above all Marsh advocated a program to plan for and provide full employment for the Canadian labour force. Similar to Beveridge, Marsh believed that the foundation of social welfare in a market society was employment. For those who did not have enough income from their employment, did not have employment, or could not be employed he proposed that the federal government establish enhanced employment insurance, public sickness and disability benefits, health insurance, and retirement insurance. For women who were employed he proposed maternity benefits. Marshs other major proposal was for an allowance to assist families in covering the additional costs of raising children. As Margaret Philip noted in a 1994 retrospective, As much as anything, the blueprint for Canadas modern welfare state was a document hastily cobbled together in 1943 by a young McGill University social economist named Leonard Marsh.