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SINCE THE MID-1990'S, Canada and Quebec have initiated important changes to their system of social protection; the objectives of the reforms were to control public expenditure or attain zero deficit, improve the efficiency of social policies, particularly in relation to employment incentives, and guarantee acceptable living conditions. Such objectives were conveyed by a restructuring of several social protection mechanisms, achieved by reconfiguring protection parameters and activating the same social expenditure. To understand this restructuring, the article analyses the changes introduced in certain income security mechanisms including unemployment insurance, universal family allowance and welfare, at both the Federal and Quebec levels. To explain this approach, the paper is divided into three parts: the first on the reconfiguration of each mechanism, the second on the activation of social expenditure and the third introducing the elements of analysis towards this recent restructuring of social policies. The subject matter is dominated by a fundamental question, that of knowing whether the reforms convey a neo-liberal change of policy in the disengagement of the state and erosion of social rights or whether they convey a reorganization, a modification of the framework as a result of change of paradigm or reference in a socially active state or as a form of social investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OVER THE LAST FEW years, the activities of minimum wage commissions in the western provinces and in Ontario have been the subject of several historical studies. Inspired by these projects, this paper examines the work of the Quebec Women's Minimum Wage Commission, from its inception in 1925 to its dismantling in 1937. After giving reasons which forced the Quebec government to legislate on this issue, the author presents the position of international and catholic unions on women in the work force. In his analysis of the operating mode of the commission and, more precisely, his critical evaluation of its mechanism for enforcing the law, the author concludes that as with the other commissions across Canada, the Quebec Women's Minimum Wage Commission would not have allowed wage increases for women. In a socio-economic context where women on average made half of the salary of men, the decision to use the minimum wage as stool to fight the abuse of the capitalist system had the major consequence of keeping salaries low. In fact, the low rate of the minimum wage agreed to by the commission upheld the principle of pay inequity by gender, thus reflecting the dominant ideology of the era during which the work of women was considered marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]