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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]

Drawing on ethnographic observation conducted in a Montreal pawnshop, this paper explores the logics and perception of money and changing rhetoric of value deployed within pawn broking, an activity of value fixation. The complex experience and self-definition of their social role by pawnbrokers is explored. The history of pawn broking is briefly C'est bien de valeur, mais… Portrait d'un pawn shop montréalais [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]