The Road to Innovation, Convergence or Inertia: Devolution in Housing Policy in Canada

The focus of this paper is on housing policy in Canada since 1945 with a particular emphasis on the period since 1986 when the federal government began its withdrawal from housing policy. The paper applies existing theories of policy change, namely innovation, convergence, policy learning, and policy inheritance to the five phases of housing policy that have occurred in postwar Canada. It also incorporates two surveys of provincial housing policy conducted by the authors in 1994 and 1997 to assess the changes that have occurred since the federal government withdrawal in 1996. The analysis suggests that within a broader model of the policy process which deals with both periods of change and non-change, the theories of change can explain previous periods of activism, but the model can also explain the current period which can best be described by inertia. This inertia is understandable because the preceding conditions for change which existed in the earlier phases of housing policy are largely absent today.