Federalism in Action: The Devolution of Canada’s Public Employment Service, 1995-2015

Every developed country has a public employment service that connects job seekers with employers through information, placement, and training support services. In Federalism in Action, Donna E. Wood assesses how Canada’s public employment service is performing after responsibility was transferred from the federal government to provinces, territories, and Aboriginal organizations between 1995 and 2015.

Drawing upon over twenty years of data, Wood reveals the governance choices provinces made, the reasons behind these choices, and the outcomes they achieved. Provincial decisions regarding employment programming is an important public policy issue about which little is known, and even less understood within the context of Aboriginal communities. Federalism in Action includes analytical comparisons of Canada’s employment programming with the United States, Australia, and the European Union, as well as information from insightful interviews with key informants from every province. In firmly placing Canada within the extensive international literature on the governance of welfare-to-work policies, this book makes an important new contribution to research.