The Canada Pension Plan disability benefit is a monthly payment available to disabled citizens who have contributed to the CPP and are unable to work regularly at any job. Covering the program’s origins, early implementation, liberalization of benefits, and more recent restraint and reorientation of this program, Struggling for Social Citizenship is the first detailed examination of the single largest public contributory disability plan in the country. Focusing on broad policy trends and program developments and highlighting the role of cabinet ministers, members of Parliament, public servants, policy advisors, and other political actors, Michael Prince examines the pension reform agendas and records of the Pearson, Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin, and Harper prime ministerial eras. Shedding light on the immediate world of applicants and clients of the CPP disability benefit, this study reviews academic literature and government documents, features interviews with officials, and provides an analysis of administrative data regarding trends in expenditures, caseloads, decisions, and appeals related to CPP disability benefits. Struggling for Social Citizenship looks into the ways in which disability has been defined in programs and distinguished from ability in given periods, how these distinctions have operated, been administered, contested and regulated, as well as how, through income programs, disability is a social construct and administrative category. Weaving together literature on social policy, political science, and disability studies, Struggling for Social Citizenship produces an innovative evaluation of Canadian citizenship and social rights.

Michael J. Prince holds the Lansdowne Chair in Social Policy at the University of Victoria and is co-author of Rules and Unruliness: Canadian Regulatory Democracy, Governance, Capitalism, and Welfarism.