Radical Incrementalism and Trust in the Citizen: Income Security in Canada in the Time of COVID-19
Open accessAbstract
This article documents Canada’s main public policy responses to promote income security among working-age adults during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis between March and early June 2020. This period of rapid policy change unfolded broadly in three phases, starting with minor adjustments to existing policy instruments, followed by larger amendments to a wider range of programs, and finally ending with the creation of new and quite generous benefits. The pathway of policy change is best described as incremental, but it resulted in a more radical shift to “trust but verify” to administer benefits rather than the pre–COVID-19 practice of verifying eligibility before paying benefits. The reasons and precedents for this decision are discussed. I conclude with some observations on the applicability and limitations of trust but verify for income security policy in the post–COVID-19 period.
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CERB was an improvement over EI in availability and adequacy of benefits, particularly for low-income workers, and relied on a less onerous "trust, but verify" application process.
“In terms of a crisis support program, CERB was an improvement over EI in that it was more generous in terms of the availability and adequacy of benefits, particularly for low-income workers (Robson 2020a), and it relied on a less onerous “trust, but verify” application process (Robson 2020b).”
From Public Policy in a Time of Crisis: A Framework for Evaluating Canada’s COVID-19 Income Support Programs (2021) · cites this paper as Robson 2020a
CERB was an improvement over EI in availability and adequacy of benefits, particularly for low-income workers, and relied on a less onerous "trust, but verify" application process.
“In terms of a crisis support program, CERB was an improvement over EI in that it was more generous in terms of the availability and adequacy of benefits, particularly for low-income workers (Robson 2020a), and it relied on a less onerous “trust, but verify” application process (Robson 2020b).”
From Public Policy in a Time of Crisis: A Framework for Evaluating Canada’s COVID-19 Income Support Programs (2021) · cites this paper as Robson 2020b
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Koebel, K., Pohler, D., Gomez, R., & Mohan, A. (2021) · Canadian Public Policy · doi:10.3138/cpp.2020-117 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
- Authors
- Robson, J.
- Affiliations
- Carleton University (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Robson, Jennifer
- ORCID
- Robson, Jennifer
- Venue
- Canadian Public Policy
- Published
- 2020-07-01
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- S1
- Pages
- S1-S18
- ISSN
- 0317-0861 (ISSN-L)
- 1911-9917
- PMC
- PMC7976853
- OpenAlex
- W3036353936
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 12.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Canadian Public Policy (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Social Policy and Reform Studies
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Policies and Family
- Keywords
- income security, COVID-19 pandemic, public policy responses, trust but verify, benefit administration, eligibility verification, Canada, working-age adults, social benefits, policy change
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