Canada’s social safety net is fraying. Why does it feel like everything is collapsing?

Canada is at a crossroads. Social services and politics have been transformed to serve market economies, while Canadians struggle to pay rent, buy food, and find a stable job that pays well enough to cover daily costs. Everywhere we look, things are falling apart, but there’s still time to reverse the decline.

The Social Safety Net, the first book in the Canada in Decline series, tracks the forty-year attack on Canada’s welfare state. As neoliberalism has matured, Canadians have seen the impact of these attacks: unreliable healthcare, crises in education and social services, and a society that feels like it is losing cohesion.

This series tells the story of Canada’s untenable status quo and the forces that have led us to where we are today. It outlines the choices we need to make to fix all that is crumbling around us as well as the possible paths forward.

Nora Loreto is a writer and activist from Quebec City. She is the author of Take Back The Fight: Organizing Feminism in the Digital Age (Fernwood 2020) and From Demonized to Organized: Building the New Union Movement (CCPA 2013). Nora is the editor of the Canadian Association of Labour Media and is an opinion columnist whose writing appears regularly in many publications. She co-hosts the popular podcast Sandy and Nora Talk Politics with Sandy Hudson.

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The Social Safety Net reveals Canada’s sharp turn away from social welfare, and serves as essential reading for those curious about our country’s deep infatuation with neoliberalism.

Montreal Review of Books