Clearly, the Senators were concerned that fundamental questioning of the capitalist economic system might follow in the wake of high and sustained unemployment.

Later in the 1960's, attention shifted from unemployment to the more multidimensional problem of poverty. Loney notes that elites were concerned about threats to social stability posed by the "increased militancy of the poor and native groups".4 According to Mann, some among the middle class were frightened "that if things (were) not quickly improved, riots and disturbances like those occurring in the U.S.A. (might) break out in Canada".5 Of particular concern was the situation in Quebec, where regional inequalities and high unemployment were fueling a growing nationalist movement. Loney observes that there was "increased concern to develop positive initiatives to strengthen the integrative mechanisms in Canadian society", a concern which was prompted by "the specific and serious threat which political developments in Quebec posed to the maintenance of Canadian federalism".6 In 1968, the Economic Council of Canada warned that one of the principal costs of poverty in Canada was that of "controlling the social tensions and unrest associated with gross inequality". The Council registered its belief that "serious poverty should be eliminated in. Canada and that this should be designated as a major national goal".7

Channels of Integration

As in the U.S., the Canadian state responded to the high unemployment, severe inequalities, and the political problems associated with them by adopting various new channels of integration of the poor. It began by adopting an "active manpower policy", including improved labour market information and education and training opportunities under the Technical and Vocational Training Act. Later in the decade, various anti-poverty measures were enacted, among them academic upgrading and Job training under the Canada Manpower Training Program. 8

Loney argues that while one of the major objectives of the government intervention was that of stimulating productivity, another one was that of exercising social control over dissident groups so as to stabilize the existing political system.9 However, with regard to the latter objective, he cautions against imputing a "master plan" to elites. He says "the process of government is not so attractively simple". 10 He quotes Michael Kidron who observes that state intervention has been "in a series of disjointed steps that bear every sign of not representing a coherent attitude", and that they actually are "a series of ad hoc responses to short-term problems which could not be dealt with in any other way".11

Mann supports the view that the anti-poverty programs of the 1960's represented a strategy of social control of the poor on the part of political elites: