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This paper defines two key core concepts in the field of public policy: co-production and co-construction. It first examines the role of the third sector in the co-construction of two public policy initiatives, the Voluntary Sector Initiative and the Social Economy Initiative, developed under the responsibility of the federal state. Then it turns to the participation of the third sector in co-constructing public policy under the responsibility of the Quebec provincial state in six policy areas: policy to recognize autonomous community organizations, policy to recognize the social economy, daycare policy, home care policy, social housing policy and Quebec legislation to combat poverty. The policy initiatives of both the federal state and Quebec state are compared and analysed from a co-construction perspective [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on confidential data from some Censuses and examines the factors of inequality of earnings and of poverty relative to Canadian immigrants during the period of 1990 to 2006. The results of our analysis show that immigrants from developing countries have been the most harmed by economic fluctuations. They have less income than either native-born Canadians or immigrants from other countries; in addition, the return on their human capital has diminished between 1991 and 2006. The importance of migratory flux from developing countries has increased the social heterogeneity of the immigrant population, and has aggravated the inequality of income within the group of immigrants from the South as well as between them and other immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the contribution of the main sources of income as well as that of taxes and transfers on the level of poverty in Quebec and in Canada. This contribution is decomposed into a product of the effects of total size and performance per dollar of each of the income sources. An important problem in this type of exercise is that the order in which the components of income are ranked can influence considerably the share of total poverty alleviation allocated to each component. A sharing rule is thus used to allocate to each income component a part of total poverty alleviation that is independent of the ordering chosen. Sensitivity tests are also applied to assess the role of the choice of poverty lines and indices. The results indicate that the more generous social programs do not always reduce relative poverty the most, and that other aspects of the tax/benefit system that are less prominent are more effective in that regard. Relative to the rest of Canada, Quebec’s social programs are both more generous and more poverty-performant; however, this is associated with taxes in Quebec that are also heavier and more costly in terms of poverty impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]