Ernie Lightman
Biographic Data
| ID | 244663 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ernie Lightman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ernie |
| FAMILY NAME | Lightman |
| SIGNATURE | LIGHTMAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Fostering Resistance, Cultivating Decolonization: The Intersection of Canadian Colonial History and Contemporary Arts Programming With Inuit Youth
Using a case study of a social circus program developed for Inuit youth in Northern Quebec, this research analyzes how social service programs developed for indigenous youth must be understood and designed in relation to colonial history. Focusing on the program's contradictory and complex role in assimilation, acculturation, and cultural preservation, we analyze how colonial dynamics can be recapitulated despite best intentions. Youths' acts of …
Barriers to Employment Among Women With Complex Episodic Disabilities
The expansion of the global economy, characterized by shifts in the organization of labor markets, has increased demands for flexible employment. Changes from standard, permanent employment relationships to nonstandard or “precarious” work arrangements have become the normative template in many work settings. Although significant scholarship explores precarious employment among the nondisabled, little work examines precarious work among persons w…
Cycling Off and On Welfare in Canada
Internationally, traditional approaches to social assistance (welfare) have increasingly been replaced with 'active' labour market policies. Alongside other industrialised countries, Canada embraced this shift, with its emphasis on the 'shortest route' to paid employment.There has been little research on the outcomes of these dramatic changes in Canada, especially longer term. This article explores the post-welfare labour market experiences of pe…
Searching for Local Solutions: Making Welfare Policy on the Ground in Ontario
Over recent decades welfare dependency has played a powerful role in defining the welfare “problem” and in passing appropriate “solutions.” One result has been the proliferation of short-term, low-cost employment programs and training programs that have emerged as critical sites for challenging and reforming the attitudes and behaviors of welfare recipients. By exploring work-readiness programs in four communities in Ontario, Canada, we provide i…
Globalization, Precarious Work, and the Food Bank
This paper explores whether people are better off working in the precarious employment associated with a neoliberal globalized economy. Firstly, we show the impacts of globalization on the composition of food bank users in Toronto, Canada. We then compare two groups offood bank users, one with at least one household member working, the other without. Our findings demonstrate that the life experiences of the two groups remain depressingly similar:…
Work First’ and Immigrants in Toronto
This paper examines the experiences of immigrants in Toronto as they pass through, and leave, Ontario Works (OW), a ‘Work First’ approach to social assistance that prioritizes rapid labour force attachment. We examine the Ontario Works activities of immigrants, compared to native born Canadians, and their respective post-OW job characteristics. We find that immigrants experience a significant relative wage disadvantage after participation, and su…
Exploring the Local Implementation of Ontario Works
Similarly, Ernie Lightman, Dean Herd, and Andrew Mitchell argue that the role of the federal government has been redefined rather than removed from welfare policy. While the decentralization of the Canada Health and Social Transfer resulted in the Ontario government's further downloading of responsibilities to the municipalities, the policy framework is still established by the federal government
One Year On: Tracking the Experiences of Current and Former Welfare Recipients in Toronto
Despite large welfare caseload declines in Ontario in recent years, little is known about the longer-term circumstances of people who leave welfare or remain on a much-changed system. This paper reports on a second round of qualitative interviews with current and former workfare participants in Toronto. The findings demonstrate how the lives of most remain marked by poverty, hunger and uncertainty, and reveal contradictions between the realities …
Workfare in Toronto: More of the Same
This paper uses a recent survey of welfare leavers in Toronto to examine Workfare, a uniquely American initiative introduced into Canada, with its different welfare state history and traditions. When classic American workfare was imported by an enthusiastic government in Ontario, its application led to employment outcomes remarkably similar to those in the US (reduced caseloads, insecure and contingent employment, high recidivism). Yet, Canada's …
Rituals of Degradation: Administration as Policy in the Ontario Works Programme
After the election of a neo-liberal provincial government in 1995, Ontario was at the forefront of work-based welfare reform in Canada. Many of the sweeping reforms carried out under the banner of the “Common Sense Revolution” received widespread coverage: for example, reductions in welfare rates, the introduction of the Ontario Works programme, the adoption of a zero-tolerance policy for so-called welfare fraud, and changes to the rules relating…
Welfare to What? After Workfare in Toronto
An employment survey among people in Toronto who left Ontario Works — a classic “work‐first” regime — shows clear secondary labour market status. Most interventions typical of work‐first programmes did not have a positive effect on job quality: contrary to the “stepping stones” theory that poor initial jobs lead to better jobs, those who changed jobs after leaving assistance experienced poorer job quality. A shift in orientation to “sustainable e…
Social Policy in Canada
List of Tables List of Figures Foreword Preface Part I Introduction Chapter 1 Setting the Context Introduction Distribution and Redistribution Income Inequality in Canada Wealth and Income Half a Century of Social Welfare in Canada The Macroeconomic Context: Keynes and After Supply-Side Economics The International Context Looking Ahead Notes Suggested Reading Part II Approaches to Social Policy Chapter 2 Defining Social Policy Introduction A Look…
Assisted-living for older people in Israel: Market control or government regulation
In recent decades there has been a rapid expansion of assisted-living facilities for older people in many different countries. Much of this growth has occurred with only limited or no government regulation, but many problems have arisen, typically around the quality of care, which have led to demands that governments act to protect vulnerable residents. This paper examines whether formal legal regulation is the optimal policy to protect the needs…
Too Much, Too Late: The Advocacy Act in Ontario
This paper examines the concept of government‐based social advocacy on behalf of vulnerable people in the community. It uses as a case example the Ontario Advocacy Act, a statute that was surrounded by controversy through its short life. The more general question raised is whether the ideas of government‐based advocacy are fundamentally conceptually untenable, or whether the fault lay with the specifics of the act and its implementation. As gover…
Social assistance in a shrinking Canadian welfare state
Social assistance, variously known as “welfare” or “the dole”, stands at the very base of the modern welfare state and must remain when all other societal, community and family supports have vanished. This paper examines social assistance in Canada, primarily through the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), the key legislation operative in the area of divided jurisdiction between the central and provincial governments. It considers how CAP has fared in …
Restructuring Canada's Welfare State
This paper highlights the development of the welfare state in Canada to its peak in the mid-1960s, and then traces the retreat from that height. While federalism and the complex relations between Ottawa and the provinces clearly represent a complicating factor, the paper argues that the fiscal crisis of the state has been the primary influence in the decline. As a major trading economy, Canada could not be immune from the onset of worldwide monet…
Earnings Disregards in Canada, Britain, and Israel
This article examines and compares the earnings disregards or work-incentive programs of Canada, Britain, and Israel, finding a broad similarity in approach among the programs (though details differ). While ostensibly facilitating a transition from welfare to paid work through gradual benefit reduction, each country, in practice, erects formidable financial barriers: benefit reduction or tax-back rates that rapidly exceed 100 percent. Reasons for…
Welfare Ideologies and Theories of Federalism
This paper examines from a theoretical perspective how each of three major ideological orientations towards the welfare state (structural left; social democracy; new/far right) might incorporate an intermediate level of interest between a central and local governments—namely, a province. While the analysis is most straightforward at either end of the spectrum, it is complex for the middle grouping. The paper observes one commonality across all po…
Welfare ideology, the market and the family
Social Workers, Strikes, and Service to Clients
Women and Voluntary Blood Donation
This study explores the patterns of and motivations for voluntary blood donation by men and women in Toronto, Canada. Examining social systems with differently structured opportunities for altruism illustrates both the influence of the sex-role differential on altruism, and also the impact of these social structures upon sex-role behaviour. Data are drawn from a postal questionnaire completed by a random sample of about 1,000 males and 850 female…
Professionalization, Bureaucratization, and Unionization in Social Work
This study examines the perception within social work of incompatibility between professional status (implying a service norm) and unionization (reflecting selfinterest). Attitudinal data were collected through personal structured interviews with 121 randomly chosen professional social workers in Toronto. The vast majority saw no incompatibility; indeed, many felt unionization may facilitate service goals, offsetting workplace bureaucracy. Respon…
The Private Employer and the Prison Industry
Journal Article THE PRIVATE EMPLOYER AND THE PRISON INDUSTRY Get access ERNIE S. LIGHTMAN ERNIE S. LIGHTMAN ** Ph.D. Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Faculty of Social Work and Centre for Industrial Relations; Research Fellow, University of Bristol and Academic Visitor, London School of Economics, 1981–82 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 22, Issue 1, Jan…
Technique bias in measuring acts of altruism
Continuity in Social Policy Behaviours: The Case of Voluntary Blood Donorship
Using voluntary blood donation as a case example, the study on which this article is based explored not only the extent, or breadth, of community involvement in social policy behaviours, but also the continuity, or depth, of this commitment. Demographic and motivational data were collected through a postal questionnaire returned by 1,784 persons who had voluntarily donated blood at least once in metropolitan Toronto between 1974 and 1978. An empi…
Rituals of Degradation: Administration as Policy in the Ontario Works Programme
After the election of a neo-liberal provincial government in 1995, Ontario was at the forefront of work-based welfare reform in Canada. Many of the sweeping reforms carried out under the banner of the “Common Sense Revolution” received widespread coverage: for example, reductions in welfare rates, the introduction of the Ontario Works programme, the adoption of a zero-tolerance policy for so-called welfare fraud, and changes to the rules relating…
Social Policy in Canada
List of Tables List of Figures Foreword Preface Part I Introduction Chapter 1 Setting the Context Introduction Distribution and Redistribution Income Inequality in Canada Wealth and Income Half a Century of Social Welfare in Canada The Macroeconomic Context: Keynes and After Supply-Side Economics The International Context Looking Ahead Notes Suggested Reading Part II Approaches to Social Policy Chapter 2 Defining Social Policy Introduction A Look…
Exploring the Local Implementation of Ontario Works
Similarly, Ernie Lightman, Dean Herd, and Andrew Mitchell argue that the role of the federal government has been redefined rather than removed from welfare policy. While the decentralization of the Canada Health and Social Transfer resulted in the Ontario government's further downloading of responsibilities to the municipalities, the policy framework is still established by the federal government
Barriers to Employment Among Women With Complex Episodic Disabilities
The expansion of the global economy, characterized by shifts in the organization of labor markets, has increased demands for flexible employment. Changes from standard, permanent employment relationships to nonstandard or “precarious” work arrangements have become the normative template in many work settings. Although significant scholarship explores precarious employment among the nondisabled, little work examines precarious work among persons w…
Fostering Resistance, Cultivating Decolonization: The Intersection of Canadian Colonial History and Contemporary Arts Programming With Inuit Youth
Using a case study of a social circus program developed for Inuit youth in Northern Quebec, this research analyzes how social service programs developed for indigenous youth must be understood and designed in relation to colonial history. Focusing on the program's contradictory and complex role in assimilation, acculturation, and cultural preservation, we analyze how colonial dynamics can be recapitulated despite best intentions. Youths' acts of …
Welfare to What? After Workfare in Toronto
An employment survey among people in Toronto who left Ontario Works — a classic “work‐first” regime — shows clear secondary labour market status. Most interventions typical of work‐first programmes did not have a positive effect on job quality: contrary to the “stepping stones” theory that poor initial jobs lead to better jobs, those who changed jobs after leaving assistance experienced poorer job quality. A shift in orientation to “sustainable e…
Cycling Off and On Welfare in Canada
Internationally, traditional approaches to social assistance (welfare) have increasingly been replaced with 'active' labour market policies. Alongside other industrialised countries, Canada embraced this shift, with its emphasis on the 'shortest route' to paid employment.There has been little research on the outcomes of these dramatic changes in Canada, especially longer term. This article explores the post-welfare labour market experiences of pe…
One Year On: Tracking the Experiences of Current and Former Welfare Recipients in Toronto
Despite large welfare caseload declines in Ontario in recent years, little is known about the longer-term circumstances of people who leave welfare or remain on a much-changed system. This paper reports on a second round of qualitative interviews with current and former workfare participants in Toronto. The findings demonstrate how the lives of most remain marked by poverty, hunger and uncertainty, and reveal contradictions between the realities …
Continuity in Social Policy Behaviours: The Case of Voluntary Blood Donorship
Using voluntary blood donation as a case example, the study on which this article is based explored not only the extent, or breadth, of community involvement in social policy behaviours, but also the continuity, or depth, of this commitment. Demographic and motivational data were collected through a postal questionnaire returned by 1,784 persons who had voluntarily donated blood at least once in metropolitan Toronto between 1974 and 1978. An empi…
Searching for Local Solutions: Making Welfare Policy on the Ground in Ontario
Over recent decades welfare dependency has played a powerful role in defining the welfare “problem” and in passing appropriate “solutions.” One result has been the proliferation of short-term, low-cost employment programs and training programs that have emerged as critical sites for challenging and reforming the attitudes and behaviors of welfare recipients. By exploring work-readiness programs in four communities in Ontario, Canada, we provide i…
Work First’ and Immigrants in Toronto
This paper examines the experiences of immigrants in Toronto as they pass through, and leave, Ontario Works (OW), a ‘Work First’ approach to social assistance that prioritizes rapid labour force attachment. We examine the Ontario Works activities of immigrants, compared to native born Canadians, and their respective post-OW job characteristics. We find that immigrants experience a significant relative wage disadvantage after participation, and su…
Assisted-living for older people in Israel: Market control or government regulation
In recent decades there has been a rapid expansion of assisted-living facilities for older people in many different countries. Much of this growth has occurred with only limited or no government regulation, but many problems have arisen, typically around the quality of care, which have led to demands that governments act to protect vulnerable residents. This paper examines whether formal legal regulation is the optimal policy to protect the needs…
Restructuring Canada's Welfare State
This paper highlights the development of the welfare state in Canada to its peak in the mid-1960s, and then traces the retreat from that height. While federalism and the complex relations between Ottawa and the provinces clearly represent a complicating factor, the paper argues that the fiscal crisis of the state has been the primary influence in the decline. As a major trading economy, Canada could not be immune from the onset of worldwide monet…
Globalization, Precarious Work, and the Food Bank
This paper explores whether people are better off working in the precarious employment associated with a neoliberal globalized economy. Firstly, we show the impacts of globalization on the composition of food bank users in Toronto, Canada. We then compare two groups offood bank users, one with at least one household member working, the other without. Our findings demonstrate that the life experiences of the two groups remain depressingly similar:…
Attrition of Applicants to the Canadian Armed Forces
Professionalization, Bureaucratization, and Unionization in Social Work
This study examines the perception within social work of incompatibility between professional status (implying a service norm) and unionization (reflecting selfinterest). Attitudinal data were collected through personal structured interviews with 121 randomly chosen professional social workers in Toronto. The vast majority saw no incompatibility; indeed, many felt unionization may facilitate service goals, offsetting workplace bureaucracy. Respon…
Incomes Policy: What Can We Learn from Europe
Incomes Policy and Capital Sharing in Europe
Conciliation and Arbitration in Family Disputes
Attrition of Applicants to the Canadian Armed Forces
Continuity in Social Policy Behaviours: The Case of Voluntary Blood Donorship
Using voluntary blood donation as a case example, the study on which this article is based explored not only the extent, or breadth, of community involvement in social policy behaviours, but also the continuity, or depth, of this commitment. Demographic and motivational data were collected through a postal questionnaire returned by 1,784 persons who had voluntarily donated blood at least once in metropolitan Toronto between 1974 and 1978. An empi…
Women and Voluntary Blood Donation
This study explores the patterns of and motivations for voluntary blood donation by men and women in Toronto, Canada. Examining social systems with differently structured opportunities for altruism illustrates both the influence of the sex-role differential on altruism, and also the impact of these social structures upon sex-role behaviour. Data are drawn from a postal questionnaire completed by a random sample of about 1,000 males and 850 female…
Professionalization, Bureaucratization, and Unionization in Social Work
This study examines the perception within social work of incompatibility between professional status (implying a service norm) and unionization (reflecting selfinterest). Attitudinal data were collected through personal structured interviews with 121 randomly chosen professional social workers in Toronto. The vast majority saw no incompatibility; indeed, many felt unionization may facilitate service goals, offsetting workplace bureaucracy. Respon…
The Private Employer and the Prison Industry
Journal Article THE PRIVATE EMPLOYER AND THE PRISON INDUSTRY Get access ERNIE S. LIGHTMAN ERNIE S. LIGHTMAN ** Ph.D. Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Faculty of Social Work and Centre for Industrial Relations; Research Fellow, University of Bristol and Academic Visitor, London School of Economics, 1981–82 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 22, Issue 1, Jan…
Technique bias in measuring acts of altruism
Social Workers, Strikes, and Service to Clients
Welfare Ideologies and Theories of Federalism
This paper examines from a theoretical perspective how each of three major ideological orientations towards the welfare state (structural left; social democracy; new/far right) might incorporate an intermediate level of interest between a central and local governments—namely, a province. While the analysis is most straightforward at either end of the spectrum, it is complex for the middle grouping. The paper observes one commonality across all po…
Welfare ideology, the market and the family
Earnings Disregards in Canada, Britain, and Israel
This article examines and compares the earnings disregards or work-incentive programs of Canada, Britain, and Israel, finding a broad similarity in approach among the programs (though details differ). While ostensibly facilitating a transition from welfare to paid work through gradual benefit reduction, each country, in practice, erects formidable financial barriers: benefit reduction or tax-back rates that rapidly exceed 100 percent. Reasons for…
Social assistance in a shrinking Canadian welfare state
Social assistance, variously known as “welfare” or “the dole”, stands at the very base of the modern welfare state and must remain when all other societal, community and family supports have vanished. This paper examines social assistance in Canada, primarily through the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), the key legislation operative in the area of divided jurisdiction between the central and provincial governments. It considers how CAP has fared in …
Restructuring Canada's Welfare State
This paper highlights the development of the welfare state in Canada to its peak in the mid-1960s, and then traces the retreat from that height. While federalism and the complex relations between Ottawa and the provinces clearly represent a complicating factor, the paper argues that the fiscal crisis of the state has been the primary influence in the decline. As a major trading economy, Canada could not be immune from the onset of worldwide monet…
Too Much, Too Late: The Advocacy Act in Ontario
This paper examines the concept of government‐based social advocacy on behalf of vulnerable people in the community. It uses as a case example the Ontario Advocacy Act, a statute that was surrounded by controversy through its short life. The more general question raised is whether the ideas of government‐based advocacy are fundamentally conceptually untenable, or whether the fault lay with the specifics of the act and its implementation. As gover…
Social Policy in Canada
List of Tables List of Figures Foreword Preface Part I Introduction Chapter 1 Setting the Context Introduction Distribution and Redistribution Income Inequality in Canada Wealth and Income Half a Century of Social Welfare in Canada The Macroeconomic Context: Keynes and After Supply-Side Economics The International Context Looking Ahead Notes Suggested Reading Part II Approaches to Social Policy Chapter 2 Defining Social Policy Introduction A Look…
Assisted-living for older people in Israel: Market control or government regulation
In recent decades there has been a rapid expansion of assisted-living facilities for older people in many different countries. Much of this growth has occurred with only limited or no government regulation, but many problems have arisen, typically around the quality of care, which have led to demands that governments act to protect vulnerable residents. This paper examines whether formal legal regulation is the optimal policy to protect the needs…
One Year On: Tracking the Experiences of Current and Former Welfare Recipients in Toronto
Despite large welfare caseload declines in Ontario in recent years, little is known about the longer-term circumstances of people who leave welfare or remain on a much-changed system. This paper reports on a second round of qualitative interviews with current and former workfare participants in Toronto. The findings demonstrate how the lives of most remain marked by poverty, hunger and uncertainty, and reveal contradictions between the realities …
Workfare in Toronto: More of the Same
This paper uses a recent survey of welfare leavers in Toronto to examine Workfare, a uniquely American initiative introduced into Canada, with its different welfare state history and traditions. When classic American workfare was imported by an enthusiastic government in Ontario, its application led to employment outcomes remarkably similar to those in the US (reduced caseloads, insecure and contingent employment, high recidivism). Yet, Canada's …
Rituals of Degradation: Administration as Policy in the Ontario Works Programme
After the election of a neo-liberal provincial government in 1995, Ontario was at the forefront of work-based welfare reform in Canada. Many of the sweeping reforms carried out under the banner of the “Common Sense Revolution” received widespread coverage: for example, reductions in welfare rates, the introduction of the Ontario Works programme, the adoption of a zero-tolerance policy for so-called welfare fraud, and changes to the rules relating…
Welfare to What? After Workfare in Toronto
An employment survey among people in Toronto who left Ontario Works — a classic “work‐first” regime — shows clear secondary labour market status. Most interventions typical of work‐first programmes did not have a positive effect on job quality: contrary to the “stepping stones” theory that poor initial jobs lead to better jobs, those who changed jobs after leaving assistance experienced poorer job quality. A shift in orientation to “sustainable e…
Exploring the Local Implementation of Ontario Works
Similarly, Ernie Lightman, Dean Herd, and Andrew Mitchell argue that the role of the federal government has been redefined rather than removed from welfare policy. While the decentralization of the Canada Health and Social Transfer resulted in the Ontario government's further downloading of responsibilities to the municipalities, the policy framework is still established by the federal government
Work First’ and Immigrants in Toronto
This paper examines the experiences of immigrants in Toronto as they pass through, and leave, Ontario Works (OW), a ‘Work First’ approach to social assistance that prioritizes rapid labour force attachment. We examine the Ontario Works activities of immigrants, compared to native born Canadians, and their respective post-OW job characteristics. We find that immigrants experience a significant relative wage disadvantage after participation, and su…
Globalization, Precarious Work, and the Food Bank
This paper explores whether people are better off working in the precarious employment associated with a neoliberal globalized economy. Firstly, we show the impacts of globalization on the composition of food bank users in Toronto, Canada. We then compare two groups offood bank users, one with at least one household member working, the other without. Our findings demonstrate that the life experiences of the two groups remain depressingly similar:…
Economics (22 works) · Political science (21 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Welfare (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (10 works) · Economic growth (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (8 works)