"In the same postwar period, the decision to manage the national economy at a consistently high rate of unemployment, compared with other capitalist countries, has never been seen for what it is a political decision taken in defiance of the general welfare in Canada. Even in the prosperous 1960s, Canada's unemployment rate averaged out at 5.2 per cent of the work force, five times the rate in France, West Germany and Japan or two-and-a-half times the rate in the United Kingdom and Sweden (cf. Adams et al., 1971, pp. 83-84). To insist that welfarism was in place in the 1960s or 1970s (an assumption of nearly all liberal commentators) is to ignore the reality of inequality in Canada as popularly experienced, especially with respect to welfare allowances obtainable from the state (as payouts and tax relief) and with respect to the job opportunities available at the highpoint of welfare state achievement. This was not a "welfare state" experienced by the people as their state, committed to their welfare: it was a state that provided some small financial benefits to unemployed and working people who knew how to work the bureaucratic procedures, whilst still having to rely on the economic market of capitalism for the bulk of their needs."
- Ian Taylor, Crime, Capitalism, and Community: Three Essays in Socialist Criminology. Toronto: Butterworths, 1983. p. 15-16.
