Entitlements Amidst Social Change

The Basic Issue

The concept of "entitlement" is essential to the understanding of life dynamics on the Canadian Prairies today. Of all the things that are being lost, the loss of entitlement is perhaps the hardest to handle. The reason for loss of entitlement, doesn't seem to matter - it is the loss of the entitlement itself which is the hard part.

Peter Apedaile and David Fullerton, in their article on Alliances, ( )make several pertinent comments on the nature of entitlements and the role which they play in our social and individual lives. They note that entitlements flow from a variety of sources ( )

• from Citizenship, like our rights and freedoms under the Canadian Charter of Rights, and the provisions under the Constitutions and laws of Canada.
• from place of residence, like our entitlements to garbage pickup on our street on "day one of the garbage cycle".
• from our membership in formal associations, Like our entitlements upon graduating with a MRD degree, and being admitted into an alumni of fellow scholars with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto".
• from our membership in informal associations, like our expectation that we will be treated with decency and respect by our friends and family in the community.
• from our tenure in offices, like the entitlement we have as secretary-treasurer of a service club to draw funds from the organizations bank account for legitimate purposes.
• from our tenure in employment, like our entitlement in our country to adequate notice and severance pay upon termination from our jobs and protection from unjust or arbitrary dismissal.

The authors continue their reflections on entitlement by noting that entitlements:

• "...enable the exercise of innate talent, skills or knowledge".
• "...provide or deny access to the means to increase these intellectual properties".
• "...take on marketable economic value when they are exclusive in some way."

Apedaile and Fullerton go on to note that entitlements are a social construct. That is, entitlements are socially created and socially maintained. It is because of entitlements being social constructs, that they go on to make an observation which is so central to understanding the dynamics of social change on the Prairies today:

"Entitlements are established, and their exclusivity is enforced, by governments and established historic social convention. Consequently entitlements are always challenged by the dynamics of social, economic and political shifts." ( )

Once we realize that social change of any sort immediately puts entitlements at risk, it can open our eyes to the "recovery dynamics" that many of our friends and neighbors may be going through, from multiple sources, at any given time.

The two authors list several entitlements which are under pressure due to social change on the Prairies today:

• export subsidies for grains
• marketing boards
• rights to organize labor in Paper mills
• business grants
• loanguarantees
• seasonal eligibility to unemployment insurance
• health care

To this list we could add such items as "the right to farm", "treaty rights", and the subtle social "entitlements" of family or gender roles.

The loss of entitlements on this continent is not new. The social change wrought by the arrival of European settlement, put at risk most of the long-established entitlements of the original First Nations. The social recovery from this impact is still in process, and the renegotiation of their entitlements is a current topic of great concern.

Before considering the matter of loss of entitlement further, it is necessary to trace several major dynamics which have developed over time and are now converging in prairie life today. We start our story by considering the pre-European-settlement prairie economy

Rural Development Institute Research Studies

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