While much has been written about the politics of retrenchment, in a number of advanced industrial societies social policy expansion does occur today, which raises issues about how to study it in a post-retrenchment era. The present article explores the new politics of social policy expansion in Canada. Drawing on the work of Paul Pierson, we use an integrated framework that highlights the interaction of five factors: the availability of fiscal resources; the emergence of new social risks; the intensity and nature of partisan competition; the policy preferences of the main political parties; and the role of political institutions, especially federalism. Empirically, the article studies the politics of federal social policy expansion during the Harper (2006–2015) and Justin Trudeau (2015–) years, with a focus on three policy areas: child benefits (Universal Child Care Benefit and Canada Child Benefit), pensions (Old Age Security and Canada/Quebec Pension Plan) and Employment Insurance.

The move towards early retirement as witnessed over the last few years in Europe comes from social assistance mechanisms, other than old age security and is not due to a simple earlier retirement age.

Two systems have been used primarily to help older workers. These are disability and employment insurance. “Early retirement” mechanisms have also helped these active or unemployed workers retire, by means of allocating resources.

The social security structure in European countries has remained essentially unchanged with the risks and logistics of management inextricably intertwined. Moreover, these new forms of transition between activity and retirement reveal the reorganization underway in all matters related to aging workers. One of the implications of the massive movement towards early retirement has been that the tripartite life course in which important social stages within the life course are marked by milestones (e.g. school age, retirement age …) is disappearing. It is gradually being replaced with new flexibility for managing the end of the life course. This type of evolution would require us to rethink the social protection system in the sense of reducing the distinct ternary division in the life course. In this perspective, the very concepts of retirement and social transfers for definitive inactivity are no longer relevant.

The move towards early retirement as witnessed over the last few years in Europe comes from social assistance mechanisms, other than old age security and is not due to a simple earlier retirement age.

Two systems have been used primarily to help older workers. These are disability and employment insurance. “Early retirement” mechanisms have also helped these active or unemployed workers retire, by means of allocating resources.

The social security structure in European countries has remained essentially unchanged with the risks and logistics of management inextricably intertwined. Moreover, these new forms of transition between activity and retirement reveal the reorganization underway in all matters related to the aging workers. One of the implications of the massive movement towards early retirement has been that the tripartite life course in which important social stages within the life course are marked by milestones (e.g., school age, retirement age …) is disappearing. It is gradually being replaced with new flexibility for managing the end of the life course. This type of evolution requires us to rethink the social assistance system in the sense of reducing the distinct ternary division in the life course. From this perspective, the very concepts of retirement and social transfers for definitive inactivity are no longer relevant.