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The pendulum swings: in Canada, the popularity of government-funded social programs rises and falls in a cycle.

Article Excerpt
Otto von Bismarck seems an unlikely person to get the credit as creator of social programs to support the poor and disadvantaged. He was born in 1815 into the privileged landowning class of Prussia (a kingdom roughly covering the territory of eastern Germany today).

He is described as an archconservative, a foe of democracy, a believer in the rights of the aristocracy to govern, and an enthusiastic user of military power.

Yet, in 1889, Otto von Bismarck introduced the modern world's first social security system. Workers got an insurance program, paid for by themselves and their employers, against accident, sickness, and old age.

Several decades passed before Bismarck's ideas were put in place elsewhere. It took the hardships of the Great Depression of the 1930s to jolt governments in most Western countries into action. This was certainly true in Canada.

In 1935, the Conservative government of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett tried to respond to the economic crisis. A sweeping Employment and Social Insurance Act was introduced, but several provinces objected to the whole idea of social assistance. Federal courts sided with the provinces and struck down the Act, saying Mr. Bennett didn't have the power to bring it in.

The next prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King used the gentle art of persuasion. He negotiated with provincial leaders and got them all to agree to an Unemployment Insurance Act in 1941. The Family Allowances Act came along in 1944 and, with some changes, is still going.

Saskatchewan famously led the country into a publicly funded health care system by introducing Hospital Insurance in 1947. The program went national in 1959 and, eventually, became today's Medicare.

Pensions for retired people, financial support for the disabled, welfare and subsidized housing for the poor, schools, colleges, and university, for students, and many other government services followed.

The idea behind the growth in social programs in Canada came from the European embrace of "collectivism" (see sidebar on...