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Old Age Security in Canada: Changing Attitudes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Elisabeth Wallace
Elisabeth Wallace*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Old age pensions of $40 a month became available on January 1, 1952, to every Canadian over seventy years of age, who had lived in the country for twenty years. As Canada has now had pensions for old people (subject to a means test) for only a quarter of a century, the idea is usually thought of as relatively new. In point of fact, however, Canadians were interested in old age security as far back as 1889, when the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital mentioned with approval a French scheme to provide annuities for elderly workmen and their widows. The need for government action in the matter has been widely discussed in the Dominion ever since.

Great Britain's example in this, as in so many other matters, had an important influence. As early as 1773 a bill to provide annuities for “the industrious poor” had been passed by the House of Commons at Westminster, only to be rejected by the Lords. During the eighteen-eighties and nineties British enthusiasm for pensions for the aged revived, largely owing to Charles Booth. His monumental study of the Life and Labour of the People of London showed that some thirty per cent of the population of the metropolis lived in conditions of extreme poverty, because their earnings were not high enough to allow a decent standard of living, much less to make feasible any provision against old age. The government, Booth argued, ought under these circumstances to accept some responsibility for its elderly citizens.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , May 1952 , pp. 125 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1952

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References

1 Week, Jan. 13, 1893.

2 Globe, Aug. 24, 1893, Dec. 22, 1896, and Aug. 28, 1897. Germany, under Bismarck, in 1889 introduced the first old age insurance legislation in the world, and Denmark, in 1891, brought in the first non-contributory old age pensions scheme.

3 Canadian Magazine, XII, 1898–1899, 296–301 Google Scholar, and Drummond, Andrew T., “A Social Experiment,” Queens Quarterly, VIII, 07, 1900, 47.Google Scholar

4 Cappon, James, “Socialism, Unionism and Law,” Queen's Quarterly, 04, 1906, 372.Google Scholar

5 Letter from Goldwin Smith to the Earl of Rosebery, Dec. 20, 1907, Goldwin Smith's Correspondence, ed. Haultain, Arnold (Toronto, n.d.), 492.Google Scholar

6 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1906–1907, II, 3374–96.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 1926, II, 1951.

8 Labour Gazette, XXV, 1925, 669–70.Google Scholar

9 Globe, Jan. 29 and 30, 1926.

10 Canada, H. of C. Debates, 1926, II, 1950–3 and 1979, and III, 2478, 2485, and 2502.Google Scholar

11 Canada, Debates of the Senate, 1926, I, 136, 160–1, and 173.Google Scholar

12 Saturday Night, Dec. 11, 1937.

13 Canada, H. of C. Debates, 1950, I, 672–3.Google Scholar

14 Canada, Dept. of Labour, Economics and Research Branch, “Pension Plans in Canadian Industry,” Canada Gazette, 04, 1950.Google Scholar

15 Toronto Daily Star, July 4, 1950.

16 Canada, Debates of the Senate, 1951, 363.Google Scholar The amendment appears as section 94A of the British North America Act. It gives the Parliament of Canada power to legislate concerning old age pensions, with the proviso that any such legislation is not to affect provincial legislation on this matter.

17 Canada, H. of C. Debates, 1951, second session, 379–86 and 607–10.Google Scholar

18 Canada, Debates of the Senate, 1951, second session, 79–113.Google Scholar In 1926 Mr. J. H. King, who was then Acting Minister of Labour, had introduced the original old age pensions bill in the Commons.

19 In a letter from Goldwin Smith to the Pall Mall Gazette, from Toronto, July 31, 1894. Goldwin Smith Papers (unpublished), Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N.Y.

20 Globe and Mail, June 25, 1951.