Gosselin v. Québec (Attorney General)

Some of the authors of this judgment have a history with Gosselin v. Quebec (Attorney General) that pre-dates the creation of the Women’s Court of Canada. Rachel Cox and Gwen Brodsky were co-counsel to the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) in its 2001 intervention in Gosselin at the Supreme Court of Canada. Shelagh Day was an advisor to NAWL’s legal team in that litigation. Kate Stephenson was not directly involved in the Gosselin case, but her work as a leading anti-poverty litigator makes her intimately familiar with the reasoning and outcome. Each of the authors has been affected by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision. Rachel Cox, who lived in Montreal in the 1980s when the Social Aid Regulation reduced young people’s welfare benefit by two-thirds, felt keenly the gulf between the reality of the time and the Supreme Court of Canada’s characterization of the scheme as ‘‘an affirmation of [young people’s] potential’’ and dignity. For those living in Quebec in the 1980s, the reason for the reduced rate was clear: to save the government money. Even if people disagreed about whether that was right or wrong, no one believed at the time that the government had designed the scheme in a sincere effort to help young people on welfare. There was a recession and somebody had to pay. Simply put, the court case was about whether or not it was legal for the government to make already very poor welfare recipients pay so much of the cost. As for the workfare programs, once the government decided that it could not afford to keep its electoral promise to do away with the reduced rate, the programs were just a guilty afterthought. Like the scarce life boats on the Titanic that were appropriated by the wealthier passengers, the workfare programs saved some of the fittest, most functional, and most employable young welfare recipients from total destitution, leaving the majority to fend for themselves. In any hearing before the courts, a particular situation, such as Louise Gosselin’s, is described, usually years after the fact, through testimony and exhibits and other documentation. Choices are made. Some aspects of the situation are described in testimony or written and filed in evidence; others are not. The case takes on a life of its own. The judge chooses which of the multitude of facts that made it into evidence to report in his

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