Happy
Retirement to Gilles Seguin from HRDC
publisher of Canadian Social Research
Links:
a
virtual resource centre for Canadian social program information
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/
Gilles Seguin has been involved in the social program information field since the fall of 1975, when he joined the Cost-Shared Programs Directorate of the Department of National Health and Welfare to work in a shop called the Canada Assistance Plan. His job there was to produce summaries of provincial/territorial social assistance (welfare) programs based on the legislation & policy manuals of each jurisdiction.
Less than a year later, he was asked if he'd be interested in taking on the responsibility of maintaining a similar report in a different branch, for distribution to a small group of (~300) federal, provincial & territorial government welfare administrators. He thought it might be fun for awhile, so he monitored and chronicled welfare programs from the summer of 1976 --- until 1994. That's when the welfare mandate was transferred (and he moved) to HRDC - Human Resources Development Canada.
It was the start of
a tumultuous period that also saw the rise and fall of the ill-fated Lloyd
Axworthy Social Security Review (see the CAP/CHST Resources page of Gilles'
CSRL website for
more on that) and the announcement (in the February 1995 federal budget)
of a significant change in the way the feds would be contributing to provincial/territorial
social programs starting in April 1996.
Beginning in the summer of 1996, Gilles spent a year on secondment with the National Council of Welfare. During that time, he worked on Another Look at Welfare Reform (100+ pages of information on Canadian welfare reforms in the nineties, published in the fall of 1997) and the 1995 welfare incomes report. Check out the Council's Publications List for over a dozen online reports about poverty and welfare in Canada.
Since the summer of 1997, Gilles was back in the social program information and analysis business, in the Social Policy Directorate of the Strategic Policy Branch in HRDC. If you click on the Directorate link and scroll to the bottom of that page, you'll see a link back to Gilles' website.
Canadian
Social Research Links is something Gilles has worked on his own time
using his own resources.
Every Sunday, Gilles has distributed his electronic newsletter to 990+
subscribers highlighting recent additions to his Canadian
Social Research Links website.
To access earlier
online HTML issues of the Canadian Social Research Newsletter, go to
the Newsletter page - http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/news.htm.
You can also subscribe to the e-mail version of Gilles' newsletter on
that page, or just click this email
link here to send Gilles a request to be added to same (it helps if
you add "Subscribe me to your newsletter pls").
The board and members of DAWN Ontario extend best wishes to our cyber
buddy, Gilles Seguin, and congratulate him on surviving so many years
with the feds while maintaining his sense of humour, his passion for social
justice and for being inclusive, respectful and above all, a true role
model! We wish him the very best in his retirement (Sept, 18, 2003 was
his last official day of work at HRDC) and hope that he enjoys the new
freedom by continuing to enrich us for a very long time with so much incredible
information on social welfare.
Gilles, you truly help in a monumental way to bridge the informational gap!
From
your sisters at DAWN Ontario!
Send Congratulations to Gilles
Return to DAWN Ontario index page
Page last updated September 24, 2003