CPSA/CAPPA section on Public Administration

K03 - Governing Health and Social Services

Date: May 30 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location: Classroom CL 345 Room ID:15704

Chair/Président/Présidente : Luc Juillet (Université d'Ottawa)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Carey Doberstein (University of British Columbia)

Children in Care: When Colonialism, Neoliberalism, and Patriarchy Collide: Lorna Stefanick (Athabasca University)
Abstract: Aboriginal children represent only 7% of Canadian children, yet they comprise 48% of children in state care. In Alberta, they comprise almost 60% of foster children. Once children move into state care they remain largely invisible to the public; in Alberta, journalists waged a four-year battle to force the government to release special case reviews of children who died in state care. The same month the Alberta government received the journalists’ access to information request, it switched to an internal investigation process into deaths in care, which produces no written recommendations. While poverty, family dysfunction, substance abuse, and incarceration are by-products of the residential school system, the heavy scrutiny of mothering that results in Aboriginal children put into state care is a continuing legacy of residential schools. Most Aboriginal children are removed from their parents for structural reasons as opposed to abuse; they are less likely than non-Aboriginal children to be reported to child welfare authorities for physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and exposure to domestic violence, but were twice as likely to be reported for neglect. When researchers unpacked the neglect, however, the only factors that accounted for the over representation were caregiver poverty, poor housing, and substance abuse. This paper examines foster care in Alberta. It asks: how do colonialism, neoliberal welfare policies, and patriarchy collide to produce the high incidence of apprehension of Aboriginal children and the structural opaqueness of the institutions that supervise their care?

Regulating Risks in Long-Term Care: Poland Lai (York University)
Abstract: This paper is part of a larger research project that is intended to contribute to the debate about how law is used to reform social policy by focusing on recent changes to law governing long-term care (LTC) homes (also known as nursing homes) in Ontario, Canada. The rise of the regulatory state (for example, see Jordina and Levi-Faur 2004 and Yeung, 2010) points to the proliferation of rules in all policy areas including social policy. Not all rules are created equal in the sense that the risks they intend to address vary. My starting point is that risk-based regulation is becoming a familiar regulatory strategy in a wide range of areas and countries (Baldwin and Black 2012). This paper asks why the regulator targets certain problems and risks in the LTC sector; which factors influence such choices and the effects of such choices. The research methods include review of government documents, legal research and key informant interviews. The first part of the paper will engage the rule vs. standard debate (for example Braithwaite and Braithwaite 1995) and then the recent compliance literature (for example Baldwin and Black 2016; Almond and Esbester 2017). The main part of the paper outlines key changes that address care of residents, such as safety and security and how compliance is enforced. The paper concludes by presenting my preliminary observations about how legal rules are used to reform long-term care and their limitations.

Governing HIV/AIDS in Canada: The ‘End of Exceptionalism’, Criminalization and Policy Contradictions: Suzanne Hindmarch (University of New Brunswick), Michael Orsini (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: HIV/AIDS is marked by a series of new governance challenges, including (1) an emerging ‘end of exceptionalism’ characterized by the integration of HIV/AIDS into a broader STBBI response, and (2) continued criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. Building on a recent edited collection, in this paper we explore the tensions between, and reasons for, these simultaneous efforts to criminalize yet ‘integrate’ HIV, and discuss their implications for HIV/AIDS governance in Canada. First we assess recent efforts to integrate HIV responses with other STBBIs. Especially at the federal level, an emerging model of service integration is being promoted; this model, which collapses HIV into a broader STBBI response, will ostensibly provide better continuity of care, promote intersectoral collaboration, and create efficiencies by reducing program duplication. However, in a move epitomizing the contradictory nature of neoliberal governance, the continued criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in Canadian criminal law reinforces HIV exceptionalism. We ask how and why HIV exceptionalism is being upheld by one part of the federal system (the federal judiciary) at the same time that another component of that system (the federal bureaucracy) is seeking an end to HIV exceptionalism; we argue that the coexistence of these efforts indicates the need to theorize HIV/AIDS governance as at once more complex and less coherent than is often suggested in public policy literature.