Realising our (neoliberal) potential? A critical discourse analysis of the Poverty Reduction Strategy in Ontario,Canada

Abstract

We examine the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) launched in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. Using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, we explore the dominant discourses that emerge in a genre chain produced by the Government of Ontario, including the initial 2008 PRS, annual reports and the 2014–2019 recontextualised PRS. Six key discourses surfaced: social exclusion, social inclusion, economic benefit or social investment, expert knowledge, community engagement and requisites for the PRS’ success – typically involving investments from the federal government and a favourable economic climate. No discourse of human rights, or of the rights to food, housing and an adequate standard of living is present in the PRS texts, absolving the government from its responsibility to ensure these rights. Without the accountability mechanisms attached to a rights-based approach, the PRS has little chance of ‘breaking the cycle’ of poverty, and will not likely ‘realise its potential’ to do so.

Keywords

expert knowledge human rights social exclusion social inclusion vulnerable populations

The discursive framing of contested policy arenas such as inequality, poverty and unemployment has often drawn from deserving/undeserving and underclass discourses (Wiggan, 2012). These largely cast ‘poor people’ as lacking appropriate motivation, prone to inadequate social behaviours and, ultimately, responsible for their own failure (Fraser and Gordon, 1994; Misra et al., 2003). While the discourse of ‘welfare dependency’ once occupied the textual moment of Canadian policymakers in the 1990s and 2000s (and arguably still does in many countries abroad, e.g., the United Kingdom [Duncan Smith as cited in The Spectator, 2014], Australia [Parliament of Australia, 2016] and New Zealand [New Zealand Government, 2015]), recent discourse by policymakers in the Canadian province of Ontario has largely fixated on poverty reduction.

Neoliberalism is oft associated with free-market fundamentalism, flexible labour, active individualism, austerity financing and dismantling of social welfare provisions (Harvey, 2005). However, we, following Peck and Tickell (2002), recognise that neoliberalism cannot be characterised as fitting a static, monolithic form, but is more aptly characterised as a process of neoliberalisation – one that invariably produces a variegated, uneven diffusion of individually-oriented government programmes and market freedoms (see also Brenner et al., 2010). In Canada, this process has reduced the effectiveness of the social safety net in helping to curb poverty. In fact, this declining effectiveness is most pronounced in Ontario (Weaver et al., 2010), which witnessed its poverty rate of 10.9 per cent in 1996 rise to 14.5 per cent by 2012 (low income measure, after tax {LIM-AT}; Statistics Canada, 2016). In response, a number of Canadian provinces have implemented initiatives and programmes to reduce poverty. Today, all of the provinces, with the exception of British Columbia (see Cohen and Klein, 2011), have adopted province-wide strategies aimed at poverty alleviation.

This article uses corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the dominant discourses emerging in the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) launched by the Government of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. We highlight Ontario’s commitment to neoliberal approaches that are increasingly common in the poverty dialogue across liberal OECD and developing countries (Craig and Porter, 2003: 54). In doing so, we make a number of contributions to the literatures on poverty reduction and social policy more broadly. First, from a theoretical standpoint, we suggest a generalisable approach to examine the lexical choices made in the legislative processes around poverty reduction strategies. Second, we highlight the themes and recommended practices in the Ontario PRS that borrow from poverty reduction strategies in other neoliberal contexts. Third, by identifying the incongruence between the discourses used to describe the PRS and its programmatic ambitions, specifically around using economic austerity and reliance on other levels of government as reasoning for potential programmatic failures, we suggest that there is still much left for the provincial government to do to structure poverty reduction initiatives in a way that will create meaningful and lasting change for citizens experiencing low income in Ontario.

Analysing the poverty reduction discourse

CDA is an interdisciplinary and eclectic field, associated with myriad approaches, albeit typically characterised by a number of overarching principles: CDA focuses on social problems; recognises that power relations are discursive; examines discourse as a form of social action; does ideological work; shows how discourse constitutes culture and society; understands that discourse is historical; and is interpretative and explanatory (Fairclough and Wodak, 2004: 297). By employing CDA, researchers pay attention to the dimensions of ‘naturally occurring’ language and the dynamic interactional strategies associated with its use. Moving beyond isolated words or sentences, researchers aim to understand broader units of analysis (i.e., texts, discourses and communicative events), while taking note of the broader context of language use (Wodak and Meyer, 2009).

Language, as described by Fairclough et al. (2011: 357), can be understood as the social practice signalling a dialectical relationship between the discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s) that frame it. Largely influenced by the work of the Frankfurt School, CDA is concerned about critiquing and changing society, not merely describing and explaining it. This critique is oriented towards understanding the role of ideology and power, recognising the ways that social actors employ discourse to (re)produce social domination. Accordingly, the intent of CDA is to reveal the nature of power in social relations and how these are represented, both tacitly and overtly, in texts, verbal interactions and communicative events. The utility of a CDA study can be measured by its relevance, effectiveness, and most importantly, its contribution to political change (Van Dijk, 1993).

Corresponding to Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009) four-step approach to discourse historical analysis, which considers the textual, intertextual, immediate context and broader socio-political and historical contexts of discursive events, the methods employed in this study include: (a) an examination of the broader socio-political and historical context leading up to the launch of the PRS; (b) critical inquiry into the immediate context of the most recent PRS release; and (c) analysis of social actor representation at the textual level across texts to examine how social actors are named, described and represented in the texts (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009). Text, as noted by Halliday and Hasan (1985), is language in use, comprising all instances of “written and spoken language that has coherence and coded meanings” (Luke, 1995: 13). We use discourse here to refer to the socially constitutive, context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within particular fields of social action, whereas intertextuality refers to the re-articulated and/or repeated words, statements and themes that cut across texts (Luke, 1995).

We analyse both direct and indirect references to social actors, instances where social actors are inferred (albeit their identity is suppressed) or occurrences of agent backgrounding or deletion, where the actor is removed from the text entirely. To do so, both authors read the corpus of the data prior to engaging in regular peer debriefing meetings to discuss the texts. Discourses were identified inductively through a manual reading of the texts by multiple researchers (the authors and a research assistant for external validation), followed by a discussion and reconciliation of shared key themes that allowed us to ascertain changes in trends across time. For the textual and intertextual analyses, we employed text annotation, a systematic process engaged to identify and sort social actors, discursive incidents and textual markers. For the corpus linguistic analysis, we used Provalis Research’s QDA Miner software.

We examined a genre chain reporting on the Government of Ontario’s PRS. The genre chain (defined by Fairclough [2003: 31] as “different genres which are regularly linked together, involving systematic transformations from genre to genre”) includes the initial release of the PRS (launched in 2008), the recontextualised PRS of 2014–2019, as well as intermediary annual reports from 2009 to 2013 (see Table 1). For this analysis, we engage with primary source documentation only. Secondary documentation such as media coverage is scant, and formal, written responses from the broader policy community (within government or external to it) are also sparse. The intended audience for the PRS reports is largely the policymaking community – mainly government, but also advocacy organisations and service delivery or programme implementing partners in the community sector. Documents were originally announced by the minister responsible for the PRS and placed on the Ontario government’s website for access by the wider community. The research questions explored include: (a) what are the dominant discourses underlying Ontario’s PRS?; (b) how do identified discourses represent the social actors implicated in the PRS, and how is the agency of these social actors framed?; and (c) what are the key lexical resources employed in the PRS, and what is their significance in reinforcing the discourses identified?

Table 1.

Genre chain.

‘Breaking the Cycle: Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy’ (2008)

Poverty Reduction Strategy – Annual Reports (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013)

‘Realizing Our Potential: Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy 2014–2019’ (2014)

Socio-political and historical context

In 1989, the Government of Canada resolved to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. Eclipsed by a recession in the 1990s, this pledge was never again to be resurrected by a subsequent federal government. Since this time, the rate of low income, though vacillating depending on the economic climate of the time (Murphy et al., 2012), has not witnessed a significant decline over the past few decades (Raphael, 2011). The thinning of income security programmes and social services and the normalisation of precarious employment have contributed to growing financial insecurity (Vosko, 2005), with little likelihood of significant change in the near future.

The Government of Ontario first launched its PRS in 2008. This move represented a substantive achievement for those committed to drawing political attention to poverty, many of whom had for several years demanded increased government investments in social welfare, particularly in the areas of minimum wage and employment standards improvements, social assistance reform, early learning and childcare, enhanced children’s benefits, affordable housing and health. The PRS thus represented the culmination of concerted organising and advocacy efforts by a number of community and social service organisations, think tanks, foundations, researchers and concerned individuals. In 2007, a newly formed coalition of anti-poverty groups emerged, dubbed the 25-in-5 Network, that pressed government leaders of all political stripes for a PRS to be established on firm targets and timelines (Barata and Murphy, 2011). Despite the varied ideological leanings ensconced within it, the coalition was able to realise the common goal of a strategy aimed at reducing child poverty by 25 per cent over five years, as reflected in their title (Hudson and Graefe, 2011).

The government did not meet its delineated target of the 25 per cent reduction over five years. Consequently, in 2014 it launched the 2014–2019 PRS, this time without explicit timelines attached. The new PRS promised to continue efforts to achieve the 25 per cent reduction in child poverty, and also committed to end homelessness in Ontario (again, without specific targets or timelines indicated).

Dominant discourses in the PRS

Noted discourses are highlighted in Table 2, which includes identifying vocabulary and taxonomy, as well as actor associations. The PRS articulates a continuous dialogue around six discourses: social exclusion, social inclusion, economic benefit or social investment, expert knowledge, community engagement and requisites for success – typically involving financial investment or intervention from the federal government, and a favourable economic climate.

Table 2.

Poverty Reduction Strategy discourse identification.

Discourse	Vocabulary, taxonomy	Example	Actor associations
Social exclusion	Isolates individuals based on identifiable markers of success (e.g., employment, remaining off social assistance). Emphasises social participation, wealth maintenance and completion of institutional requirements. Encourages restructuring behaviours to produce ‘responsible citizens’	“To connect more people with employment, especially vulnerable populations, Ontario is integrating government-wide employment and training programs to help those most in need access the right supports to become and stay employed” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 4)	Unemployed, single mothers, Indigenous persons, Crown Wards, ‘at-risk’ or ‘vulnerable populations’, newcomers/ immigrants/ refugees, disabled persons
Social inclusion	Adopts lexical choices consistent with social inclusion discourse, specifically discussing how to remove the barriers that restrict people from ‘realising their potential’	“Everyone has the right to realize their potential. […] we need to remove the barriers that keep them from fulfilling that potential” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 2)	As above
Economic benefit/investments	Public expenditures are described as an investment in future societal well-being. Removing individuals from poverty is equated with a monetary return	“We have another equally compelling rationale for reducing poverty: it’s the smart thing to do for our economy” (Government of Ontario, 2008: 1)	Ontario government, business sector, taxpayer
Expert knowledge	Classifies goals in terms of measureable outcomes/outputs (e.g. performance evaluation; evidence-based practice; ‘smarter government’). Poverty reduction is viewed as having a financial return for society/taxpayers	“[T]here is a greater need to apply evidence-based and best practice lenses when dealing with poverty reduction efforts and vulnerable population groups” (Government of Ontario, 2013: 67)	Ontario government, other jurisdictions, business sector, external evaluators, academic sector, community partners
Community engagement	Focuses on listening to the public for ideas for programme spending; however, without any promise of action as a result of the community engagement process. Particular focus on families as a homogenous group	“Many people living in poverty told us that this was the first time they had ever been asked for their advice or heard by government” (Government of Ontario, 2008: 6)	Community organisations, families, marginalised groups
Requisites for success	Suggests that the goals of the PRS cannot be achieved through provincial efforts alone. Federal spending and partnership is required for programme success, as is a favourable economic climate	“Ontario can’t do this alone; meeting this target depends on having a willing partner in the federal government and a growing economy” (Government of Ontario, 2008: 2)	Federal government (in opposition to – not complementary to – the Ontario government)

Social exclusion

Since the original term ‘les exclus’ entered the literature, social exclusion has been portrayed as a series of social problems to be reckoned with. DeHaan (1998: 10) describes the French definition of social exclusion to represent a “rupture of social bonds”, recognising that structural processes lead to the breakdown of key societal systems that ensure the social integration of the individual. While having a relational perspective with social integration and solidarity as end goals for the French, the social exclusion discourse in UK politics has largely centred on matters of poverty, homelessness and unemployment (Smith-Carrier, 2011).

At its core, the social exclusion discourse highlights the concept of an industrious and responsible citizen (Giddens, 2000; Rose and Miller, 1992) that is self-sufficient, contributes to the state and is only minimally reliant on state welfare. Albeit recognising the multiplicity of definitions and understandings attached to social exclusion, for some, this discourse has been used to refer to a category of individual. Unemployed individuals and ‘workless households’ (Burchardt et al., 1999) or ‘high risk’ groups (Labonte, 2004) are commonly the units of analysis, demonstrated in the historical popularity of the ‘underclass’ (Beall, 2002; Handler and Hasenfeld, 1991) and ‘dependency’ (Fraser and Gordon, 1994) discourses. In these analyses, to be socially excluded means to be outside the norm – outside of paid employment and, therefore, excluded from the benefits thereof. Individuals are categorised into kinds of persons measured by the yardstick of quantifiable outcomes such as homelessness, unemployment and poverty. This ‘kind’ of exclusion (Good Gingrich, 2003) continuously recognises particular groups as flawed, deviant and inherently different, and hence, to be blamed for their own exclusion.

In the intertextual analysis, the sub-discourse of ‘at-risk’ populations emerged as a way to construct socially excluded identities of youth, women living in poverty, and other ‘at-risk groups’. The original text (Government of Ontario, 2008) adopts the lexical choices: “at-risk kids” (p. 3), “at-risk urban Aboriginal children” (p. 15), “at-risk youth/s” (pp. 18, 20) and “at-risk groups” (pp. 21, 29), and the most recent text (Government of Ontario, 2014) refers to “at-risk Aboriginal youth” (p. 24), “at-risk youth” (pp. 25, 34) and “at-risk women” (p. 27). The literature on the ‘at-risk’ discourse is extensive, often built on notions of reflexive modernisation (Beck et al., 1994) and governmentality (Foucault, 1991). The youth-at-risk discourse, as argued by Swadener and Lubeck (1995), distinguishes young people at risk of failure. Narratives of risk convey the “colonisation of the future” (Giddens, 1991: 11), sanctioning the institutionalised reflexive monitoring of young people’s behaviours and dispositions, while compelling individuals to choose their own market-oriented biographical planning and organisation. Accordingly, the ‘at-risk’ discourse mobilises the sense that youth (or other ‘at-risk populations’) are, through their present behaviours and dispositions, at risk of jeopardising preferred or desired futures; subjects who must be responsibilised to manage the institutionally structured risks of their own DIY project of the self. Appropriate models of action are rigidly constructed according to market principles, in which “the subjects of (neo)liberal rationalities of government emerge as ‘free’, ‘entrepreneurial’, competitive and (economically) rational individuals” (Kelly, 2001: 29).

Social inclusion

The title of the 2014–2019 PRS, Realizing Our Potential, adopts lexical choices that follow the initial PRS (dubbed Breaking the Cycle), built on the assumption that “there is incredible untapped potential in Ontario’s population” and that such potential needs to be “put to work” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 5). Social inclusion emphasises the fissure between individuals who do not meet these norms, but likely could with the adoption of ‘responsible behaviours’. Consequently, the dialogue around social inclusion is careful to use vocabulary that recognises citizens’ agency and ‘potential’ to facilitate their individual DIY projects, to manage the institutional risks to which they are subjected, and thereby facilitate their own improvement. On page 11, the government reaffirms:

We know there is potential in everyone. We see it every day in the people working and striving to get a good start in life, to raise a family and to contribute to their communities. (Government of Ontario, 2014)

The realisation of potential is thus fulfilled in paid labour, with economic prosperity (through employment) equated with success, and conversely then, failure with poverty. The social inclusion discourse highlights the differences in challenges between non-vulnerable and vulnerable populations including newcomers, persons with disabilities, lone parents and Aboriginal peoples (terms reflected in the corpus of the data). Commonly descriptive imagery or allusion is used to engender sympathy while obscuring the placement of social responsibility. Problematisation is often done through verbal repetition or allegory: “Poverty is every day running a 100-metre race as if all the other kids are at the starting line and they’re 10 metres behind” or “a pregnant mother just a little less healthy, her newborn baby just a little underweight, a little less developed” (Government of Ontario, 2008: 7). It is here – the pregnant mother and her offspring assumed to be “a little less healthy” and “a little less developed” – where we observe the gendered nature of the PRS. In Ontario, as elsewhere, the ‘poor’ (typically single, young) mother has at once been cast as flawed and dependent, while also being exposed to greater social and economic insecurity and inequality; subjected to inadequate childcare and income support provisions that ensure her life in poverty is maintained (Gazso and McDaniel, 2010).

As with social exclusion, the discourse of social inclusion has the potential to obfuscate historical and existing power imbalances. Why social inequalities exist is often not questioned, nor is the consideration of how public policy plays a role in perpetuating the exclusion of particular groups. To have an included, you must have an excluded as a reference category, and as such, social inclusion is maintained via the exclusion of others (Shakir, 2005). The call for social inclusion announced in the PRS is prefaced on the ‘logic of conditionality’ (Donoghue, 2013): it is the responsibility of citizens to economically contribute to Ontario’s prosperity in order to be socially included. The 2008 PRS notes that Ontario’s PRS is:

[G]uided by the vision of a province where every person has the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential, and contribute to and participate in a prosperous and healthy Ontario. (Government of Ontario, 2008: 5)

Although social inclusion remains theoretically murky and lacks definition in the data, markers of this discourse appear manifest in the original PRS and subsequent texts; it is in the most recent PRS, however, where the discursive articulation of this discourse is most apparent. In this document, the government routinely refers to actions (primarily taken through the social service sector) aimed at removing obstacles to social inclusion. “[The government will promote] [p]rograms that boost youth employment by removing obstacles, enhancing work experience and promoting entrepreneurship” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 4, emphasis added). Notwithstanding the appeal of this (rhetorical) proposition, what these obstacles are and how they are to be removed remain less clear. The neoliberal penchant for “market inclusion and individualised employability” (Peck and Theodore, 2012: 747), firmly embedded within social exclusion rhetoric, is reflected in social inclusion discourse as well; “for individuals, this primary inclusion is inclusion in labour markets, or in training for these” (Porter and Craig, 2004: 392), or as Labonte (2004: 119) asserts to “adapt people to the needs of markets, rather than regulate markets to the needs of people”.

Expert knowledge

A Cabinet-level committee will be tasked with implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy and will be supported by a dedicated secretariat. This team will seek advice from external experts… (Government of Ontario, 2008: 39)

‘Experts’ and researchers were frequently referenced in the data. In the original PRS, the Government of Ontario (2008: 32) notes it will work “with international experts to develop innovation roadmaps for Ontario in specific areas of competitive strength, social policy and economic importance”. In 2014, the Government of Ontario (2014: 32) asserts, “We know this is an ambitious task. We will start by seeking expert advice on measures to track homelessness in Ontario.” Sometimes, ‘people with lived experience’ are included in this mix. “Researchers and experts, including people with lived experience, will assist us in defining a baseline and setting a new homelessness-related target in the years ahead” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 5).

Political leaders have recently moved toward imbuing rigorous ‘evidence-based practice’ into policy decision-making (Poulos and Zwi, 2005). While infused with distinct ideological beliefs and values, expert claims are conferred incontrovertible legitimacy under the guise of ‘impartial’ scientifically verified research. This is not to say that the shift towards evidence-based policy (EBPol) is not useful, and indeed, necessary. However, the impenetrable focus on ‘what works’, generally prescribing to positivist methods and assumptions (Stanhope and Dunn, 2011), can be problematic if such an approach does not recognise the dynamism of policy decision-making. EBPol, as Stanhope and Dunn (2011) aptly point out, has the propensity to decontextualise and simplify social problems, masking what is, in fact, decision-making that is inherently ideological and value-laden.

Moreover, the reliance on expert knowledge can serve to disempower and marginalise non-expert social actors. This is most clearly apparent when EBPol centres on rigorous outcome studies and randomised trials, which generally do not account for or acknowledge contextual understandings and lived experience in what ought to be the co-production of knowledge (Stanhope and Dunn, 2011). While the PRS acknowledges the importance of consulting with people with lived experience in policy discussions, little in the PRS suggests that their input is equally valued relative to that of EBPol contributors (i.e., researchers, academics and/or social service actors intent on securing sustained funding by demonstrating the impact of their work).

It is important to understand the underpinnings of the quest for expert knowledge, and the role experts play in the conduct of citizens. This predilection for expert technical and scientific knowledge appears to have taken hold globally (see Easterly [2013] for a critique in countries of the Global South), the ascendancy of which, according to Rose (1996), coincided with the rise of neoliberal thought. Expert figures (e.g., the scientist, bureaucrat, civil servant, etc.) play an instrumental role in the exercise of governmentality. ‘At arm’s length’ from political rule (thus sanctioned by political leaders albeit not directly emanating from them), experts are empowered to disseminate truth claims reinforcing neoliberal rationalities, resulting in what Rose (1996: 40) refers to as governance of persons “at arm’s length”. Such arrangements promote the ‘moralisation’ and ‘responsibilisation’ of citizens to govern and conduct themselves in accordance with the “appropriate (or approved) model of action” (Burchell, 1996: 29).

Community engagement

While the discourse around expert knowledge highlights the need for experienced policy practitioners to evaluate social change, the community engagement discourse calls for the participation and engagement of the public (both target and non-target populations). Community engagement is strictly consultative, not actionable, nor measurable. As such, it is a minimal investment by the state and can be viewed critically as ad hoc or superficial. At the same time, governments are able to use community engagement as a publicity or self-promotion tool by identifying a government’s willingness to consult a variety of stakeholders (“Our government heard from individuals from all walks of life” [Government of Ontario, 2013: 69]) or as a mandate to act in a way that places conditionality on action or ties responsibilities to other parties (“In our consultations, we heard repeated requests for us to work with the federal government on poverty reduction” [Government of Ontario, 2014: 48]).

Economic benefits/investments

A discourse of economic benefits and investments also emerged in the data as a way of justifying the government’s poverty reduction efforts. The rationale for the PRS was twofold. First, it was predicated on a moral argument, as noted in the minister’s message:

Certainly, there is a clear moral imperative for the Poverty Reduction Strategy. It is the right thing to do. But there are critically important economic and social imperatives as well. We will thrive and prosper as a province and as a society when every child and youth has the opportunity to succeed and contribute to their community. (Government of Ontario, 2011: i)

Neoliberal rationalities clearly demonstrated in the social exclusion and inclusion discourses resurface here. The aforementioned quote may reveal a commitment to a moral obligation to reduce poverty, yes, “but” more so, to the “critically important” economic rationale underlying the PRS. As such, social welfare provision (e.g., the programmes and services outlined in the PRS) is not rendered to provide collective protection to institutionally mediated ‘risks’, but is, as suggested by Wiggan (2012: 384), “an active agent in the moulding of individuals to the needs of economic policy”.

Requisites for the strategy’s success

The final discourse evident in the PRS texts points to a series of requisites for success, namely, a reliance on the participation (financial and programmatic) of the federal government and a favourable economic climate to receive the Government of Ontario’s proposed changes, evident through dialogue including, “However, we cannot meet this goal without a strong federal partner and a growing economy” (Government of Ontario, 2008: 4). Problematic in this discourse are the Ontario government’s commitment of federal funding to support benefit programmes (such as the National Child Benefit Supplement and Working Income Tax Benefit) and its articulation of a PRS dependent on federal partnership (“A strong federal partner is necessary if Ontario is to meet our poverty reduction goals” [Government of Ontario, 2014: 48]); suggesting that the PRS’ viability relies on funding and programming that cannot feasibly be provided by the provincial government alone. Furthermore, during the period of time that the PRS reports were released, the Liberal provincial government had a notably fractious relationship with the Conservative federal government. Finally, the language used in the PRS to mandate the federal government’s participation is often vague in its prescription, calling on the government to play “a significant role” or to “increase their support” without stating how or how much (Government of Ontario, 2008: 34, 40).

Also included in this discourse is the articulation of a role for the municipal level of government. Municipalities are often described as ‘creatures of the provinces’ insofar as cities do represent a constitutional obligation for provinces. However, Ontario contains three of the country’s largest cities (Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga), each of which has a larger operating budget than some of Canada’s Atlantic provinces, and this could lead to the sort of friction expected between the provincial and federal governments. The PRS relies on municipalities for research and implementation (e.g., “We encourage municipalities to look to other jurisdictions for best practices” [Government of Ontario, 2008: 41]) with few guidelines on how to do so. The PRS also adopts the language of permissiveness and allowance in encouraging municipalities to act to promote provincially-inspired solutions without consultation with city governments (e.g., “A central element of the strategy is to consolidate the current patchwork of provincial housing programs and allow municipalities to develop locally-based solutions to meet the needs of families and individuals” [Government of Ontario, 2010: 16]).

The final, although perhaps most pronounced of the PRS’ requisites for success, is a successful and bullish provincial economic climate. Within the texts, the government consistently articulates the need for a flourishing economy to successfully implement the PRS, relying on the openness of the market to receive and place PRS-trained young people and those sponsored by PRS programmes to retrain for a second career. Given that the release of the PRS was on the heels of the global economic downturn, this requisite for success is particularly tenuous, potentially serving as an escape clause or, in the most recent PRS, as justification for not meeting the targets initially proposed.

Discourses in the PRS: A summary

Figure 1 illustrates the volume of mentions (e.g., usage of vocabulary that signals the discourse) as coded by a research assistant. Discourse usage was coded at the sentence level, where each sentence in each of the seven texts was coded as possessing the lexical traits of none, one or more than one discourse. These were then aggregated for each text and visualised in Figure 1. This diagram highlights the prominence of the social exclusion discourse. In all but two of the texts (2009 and 2014), the government chose to emphasise a discourse of social exclusion substantially more than the other discourses. The usage of lexical resources to reflect social exclusion is second only to the use of rhetoric around expert knowledge (used more frequently than social exclusion in 2009 and 2014). All other discourses were used comparatively sparingly, with only the discourse on economic benefits/investments increasing in 2010 (during the thick of the economic downturn). What is even more evident is the pronounced decline of the social exclusion discourse from the interim report of 2013 to the PRS 2014–2019. In this recontextualisation, the government almost abandoned its use of the social exclusion discourse in favour of vocabulary surrounding the monitoring and evaluation of key identified indicators by the perceived community of experts. This finding highlights the importance of particular subsets of actors in the PRS – elaborated upon further in the next section.

Figure 1.

Evaluating changes in discourse usage over time.

Social actor analysis

A social actor analysis of the key social actors (i.e., the Ontario government, the federal government, people experiencing poverty, and community groups and the private sector) identified in the genre chain follows, including discussion on each set of actors’ assumed agency and responsibilities.

Ontario government

The texts clearly foreground the agency of the government to prevent people from “falling” into poverty, as noted in the PRS Executive Summary:

We lifted 47,000 children and their families out of poverty. We also prevented 61,000 children and their families from falling into poverty in 2011 alone, and prevented many others from falling into poverty over the course of the strategy. (Government of Ontario, 2014: 3, emphasis added)

The personal pronoun “we” is used as a substitute for “the government”, a term that Van Leeuwen (1996) posits abstractly represents and impersonalises a group of people having institutional belonging. Mulderrig (2011) similarly notes the abstract representation of the personal pronoun “we” to refer to New Labour in the UK, a shift that blurs the distinction between the government and the people, implicating the latter in policy decision-making. The adoption of this pronoun (used 323 times in our corpus of data – more than the word poverty, which only appears 319 times or the word government, which appears 130 times) also demonstrates a growing “personalization of public discourse” (Mulderrig, 2011: 565), the proclivity towards informal language that glosses over power asymmetries (Fairclough, 1992).

Federal government

In some ways, the initial text set up the PRS as a project that was unachievable through the actions of the Ontario government alone. It positioned the success of the PRS as attributable to the state of the economy (with the recession providing a useful pretext for the Ontario government’s alleged inability to make significant progress on poverty reduction) and federal government involvement (given an invitation to partner with the province on tackling the “insidious problem” of poverty) (Government of Ontario, 2008: 4). The government goes as far as to include the vocabulary of blame in its report. In response to failing to produce the 25 per cent reduction in child poverty over five years, the Government of Ontario (2014: 11) stated, “Had the federal government done their part and the economy stayed the course, we would likely have met our target.”

People experiencing poverty

The agency of people experiencing poverty is largely backgrounded in the PRS texts. Rather than recognising the structural causes of poverty, and the system that reproduces them by subjecting particular groups to continual discrimination and exploitation, the PRS reifies the oppressed identities of ‘poor people’ – lone mothers, Indigenous peoples, women, children in the child welfare system. Implicitly, the PRS assumes that if they could just get past their mental health issues, lack of education, substance abuse issues and other barriers, they too could experience the prosperity of society. “When people have a home, they are better able to manage other challenges in their lives” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 2). Here, the locus of such challenges is in the individual, not in the structures and institutions that (re)produce them.

The PRS suggests that problems lie in an inability of individuals to access the appropriate supports, rather than deficiencies associated with such provisions. It is assumed that people facing challenges should be given the tools they need to get ahead, presupposing that they do not (already) possess the appropriate tools to succeed. People with disabilities, a new group to be named in the most recent PRS, who are assumed to

have the capability, skills and desire to work are excluded from the labour market, and the province misses out on their talent as barriers limit their potential. We will support collaborations and partnerships that identify and remove obstacles to employment for persons with disabilities. (Government of Ontario, 2014: 4)

While there may be many disabled people for whom this may be true, there are others who are wary of a policy orientation aimed at subjecting this group to the same employment expectations as those traditionally deemed ‘able-bodied’ or ‘employable’. Although the government acknowledges that “barriers limit their potential”, we are not told who will be part of the partnerships formed that will “identify and remove obstacles to employment” or how the perpetuation of systemic barriers (i.e., attitudinal, organisational, environmental) will be redressed. Here again, the focus is centred on the individual and their potential within the labour market, not on transforming the systems that limit full inclusion and participation in society.

Community groups and the private sector

Two groups are positioned as partners with the government in the PRS: community groups and the private sector (including social enterprise [SE]). The Government of Ontario (2014) acknowledges the latter on page 42:

By investing and partnering in efforts that encourage and build social enterprise, and by piloting new social finance approaches, our government can leverage the efforts of those who are helping to lift people out of poverty.

This partner is privy to specific government investment: “Initiatives also include a commitment to work with private-sector investors … to leverage new funding for prevention-focused approaches” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 42). Early on in the document, the Government of Ontario (2014: 2) also states that it is trying to be “the best possible partner to community groups working to end poverty”.

The texts are ambiguous as to who the community and SE groups are, and what their specific roles would be. Teasdale (2011) similarly found that SE has been left loosely defined by the New Labour government in Britain so as to allow for a multiplicity of forms, while appearing to offer a cohesive policy agenda to address social problems. SE, assumed to foster a two-pronged approach of “doing business” and “doing good” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 12), aptly reflects a grand narrative of neoliberal social entrepreneurship that unproblematically embraces the double bottom-line; an ‘innovative’ response to the failure of the state, market and voluntary sectors to provide social security to citizens. Recipients of public funding with little accountability to specific targets or deliverables, private and SE actors have their agency downplayed. Community groups, similarly, have little agency in the PRS ‘partnership’, appearing as “creature(s) of public funding” (Peattie and Morley, 2008: 43) seeking to demonstrate the value of their work to ensure their own survival.

Policy initiatives: Boutique options or structural remedies?

Given the ‘progress’ made on the PRS, it is questionable whether the policy initiatives attached to the PRS are set to transform the lives of the 14.2 per cent of people (2013 after-tax figures) in the province who live below the LIM¹ (Statistics Canada, 2016). There are a number of areas with potential for change: minimum wage increases (tied to inflation), family tax benefits (the Ontario Child Benefit, enhanced, and also indexed to inflation), full-day kindergarten, and health and dental benefits for families experiencing low income. Although many initiatives are mentioned in the PRS (some with funding allocations specified, others without), there is no evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness. Most of these are unlikely to make substantive gains in reducing poverty, although do perhaps give the appearance of work being done to combat poverty. While the most recent PRS asserts that the Government of Ontario (2014: 5) “will continue to reform social assistance”, there are no transformative measures outlined in any of the texts analysed. The commitment to eradicating homelessness (albeit without delineated targets or timelines) in the most recent PRS may, for some, be promising, although such efforts, even with a housing first approach (for more on this approach, see Padgett et al., 2016), do not appear to address the structural factors that perpetuate poverty, and thus may be limited in scope.

The various discourses that emerged in the PRS texts are instructive; first, they reveal the lines of responsibility in the poverty alleviation project. The government is foregrounded as the agent that will ‘lift people out of poverty’, although the individual, nearly stripped of agency, is assumed to have ultimate responsibility to obtain the skills, education and willingness necessary to exit poverty and enter the realm of the (venerable, employed) socially included. Social inclusion here is recurrently linked to economic inclusion; the adoption of the appropriate models of action that conform to neoliberal rationalities. Indeed, each of the discourses discussed points to neoliberalisation (Brenner et al., 2010); a process that has created the structures and conditions that perpetuate and sustain poverty, while rendering people culpable for the systemic failures that accompany neoliberal restructuring.

Poverty is a multidimensional concept. It represents both a dearth of material goods and a lack of opportunities (World Health Organization, 2008). Its root causes and originating pathways may be different, but its effects are similar (widespread health and social problems). Poverty, personified in the data, is inferred in the PRS to be the agent that ‘increases costs’, not the social actors who perpetuate the processes that engender people to be ‘poor’. Poverty is presented as a social problem almost too complex to truly tackle, and it is assumed that poverty is best addressed gradually, through incremental policy change. Arguably, poverty is not a complex issue. If it represents, as is generally defined, the lack of a “socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2015), the remedy for poverty is likely found in ensuring that everyone in society has the material resources to live above low-income thresholds. Language that obfuscates poverty, reinforcing the notion that it is “multi-faceted, complex” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 3), gives it the appearance of being insurmountable, an enduring problem unlikely to be resolved in the immediate future and, thus, requiring only limited policy intervention. The “bold new vision” purportedly taken by the government to address poverty is at the same time diminished by the claim that Ontario’s PRS

represents the very best thinking that exists on how to reduce poverty. There are no quick fixes and no miracle cures. Its success will be incremental but it will be measurable, and over time it will be dramatic. (Government of Ontario, 2008: 6)

Rather than a coordinated, comprehensive strategy to truly eliminate poverty, the current PRS amounts to a patchwork of boutique policy options, tweaks to the extant system, which are not likely to produce substantive change. While the actual rate of child poverty decreased by about 1.6 percentage points from 2008 to 2011 (Government of Ontario, 2014: 10 from graph), the overall poverty rate for all persons (LIM, after tax) rose from 12.9 per cent to 13.2 per cent in the same period (Statistics Canada, 2016). Unstable minimum wage labour (even if full-time) and current income security programmes (i.e., social assistance, Employment Insurance) in Canada engender poverty (Smith-Carrier, forthcoming), exposing a threadbare social safety net that rather than preventing financial insecurity, actually propels people into a free-fall into poverty, with no income floor on which to securely land; a trend set to continue unless present arrangements change significantly.

A more robust approach, as some in Canada (e.g., Jackman and Porter, 2014) and others abroad (e.g., World Health Organization, 2008; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2009) compellingly argue, would be to embed human rights infrastructure into the PRS. Yet, a discourse of human rights is altogether absent from the PRS texts, absolving the government from its responsibility to ensure these rights; rights which they are legally bound to provide under international human rights law (Porter, 2014). The government is cognisant that a “good income provides the means for a life of dignity” (Government of Ontario, 2014: 5), yet does not provide a commitment to ensuring that all Ontarians are equipped with the “dignified existence” (Wicks, 2012) that comes with an adequate standard of life, outside of the individual’s singular efforts in paid employment. A PRS built on a human rights framework not only would recognise the inherent dignity of all societal members (thereby beginning to reverse the shame and indignity experienced by people living in poverty), but may also help foster real solutions to poverty (e.g., progress on a guaranteed annual income, living wage or improvements to income security measures and social services).

Arguably, the absence of a more robust human rights-based dialogue is rooted in the weakness of existing institutions. Provincial and national governments, the principal duty bearers of human rights, have not embedded a rights framework domestically to ensure the progressive realisation of citizens’ rights to, inter alia, food, housing and an adequate standard of living. Meanwhile, the courts have been reticent to interpret existing human rights legislation (e.g., the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms) in favour of justiciable social and economic rights, seeing these as falling under the legislative domain (Porter and Jackman, 2014). Consequently, the judicial system, inaccessible for nearly all Ontarians experiencing low income, has not proved to be a viable mechanism from which to advance substantive rights claims (Brodsky, 2007). Without the monitoring and accountability mechanisms attached to a rights-based approach, however, the PRS has little chance of ‘breaking the cycle’ of poverty, and, regrettably, will not likely ‘realise its potential’ to do so.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Tracy Smith-Carrier is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at King’s University College at Western University. Her programme of research touches upon a number of different fields in the social policy arena, including access to social welfare services, income assistance programmes (particularly, social assistance receipt), caring labour and the experience of health care service utilisation, specifically for frail and homebound older adults. Adopting a critical lens, Dr Smith-Carrier is interested in examining if, and how, marginalised groups access programmes and services in the post-welfare state.

Andrea Lawlor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at King’s University College, Western University. Her research interests include social policy change, media reporting on policy and public opinion toward policy issues. She specialises in areas including immigration and refugee policy as well as personal finance and long-term savings. Dr Lawlor currently holds a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant for her collaborative project ‘Third Party Spending Policy: Weak Policy, Weakened Engagement?’

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