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The purpose of this paper is to review the potential utility of the social-indicator or social-audit approaches¹ for the ongoing monitoring and strategic evaluation of major social programs, like the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST)². Such approaches might also be adaptable to the evaluation and monitoring of other social programs (the Child Tax Benefit³, Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement, Seniors' Benefit Program, Canada Pension Plan). This task is particularly challenging in the case of the CHST, since federal funding is transferred to the provinces, which in turn determine its allocation for various activities in provision of welfare and post-secondary education. For this reason, a particular focus of this paper is the potential applicability of these approaches to CHST monitoring and evaluation.

It is federal government policy to periodically evaluate the continued relevance, success and cost-effectiveness (program performance) of the federal programs and use that information to reconfirm, improve or discontinue programs⁴. The objective of the policy is to ensure that federal departments and agencies have relevant, credible and objective information available on the performance of their programs, and that they use that information for the cost-effective and accountable management of programs.

In the past, these have mainly been retrospective `point in time' evaluations, but there is now a new emphasis as well on `real time' evaluations in which ongoing performance monitoring will play a key role.

A primary concern is to ensure that HRDC is in a position to effectively monitor and eventually evaluate these programs, but not duplicate other work. A secondary concern is that HRDC contributes to the improvement of performance reporting for its major social programs.

This paper is composed of three sections in addition to this introduction. Part 2 is a discussion of the term social indicator and reviews past work in this field under a broad classification scheme for such indicators. Work just completed or currently under way in Canada is also reviewed, as well as that in the United States, which may have a bearing on future domestic work. Part 3 sets out some options for Evaluation and Data Development, HRDC, to pursue in the area of social indicators and social audit, with a particular focus on the CHST. Part 4 summarises the recommendations of this report.

Block funding programs with little input conditionality, like CHST⁵, present a challenge for federal accountability requirements. The latter must balance the objectives of enhancing provincial flexibility, while maintaining a degree of federal control consistent with the fact that federal dollars and broad national objectives are involved. An approach to balancing these competing provincial and federal objectives is to promote evaluation-type accountability for the results or outcomes of provincially administered programs financed in part with federal funds. This would suggest that the federal role may be to monitor block funding programs like CHST by collecting information on the related provincial-program efforts and accomplishments (outcomes), as well as evaluating and disseminating information on `best practices' to achieve these outcomes. This review of the potential use of social indicators for the monitoring and strategic evaluation of major HRDC social programs (like CHST) proceeds on the basis of this assumption.

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Footnotes

1	Social indicators and social audit are assumed to be the same and therefore in the remainder of this paper the term social indicators is primarily employed.
2	CHST, which had its origins in the Federal Budget of February 27, 1995, came into effect in 1996-97 to replace previous major transfers to the provinces and territories under the Canada Assistance Program (CAP) and the Established Programs Financing (EPF) for health and post-secondary education. As with CAP and EPF, the new `block funding' transfer is a combination of cash and tax points. The CHST components for which HRDC has administrative responsibility are the EPF post-secondary education and social assistance/welfare support components (replacement for CAP), not the EPF health component of CHST, which is administered by Health Canada. The CHST accounted for $25.1 billion in tax points ($12.5 billion) and cash transfers ($12.6 billion) to the provinces in 1996-97. While HRDC has a policy interest in the CHST matters, Finance Canada has legislative responsibility for the CHST.
3	In 1993, the federal government replaced the family allowances and child tax credits with the Child Tax Benefit (CTB), a tax-free, income-tested, monthly payment for families with children, $1,020 per child and another $75 for additional children. It also included a $500 Working Income Supplement for low-income working families' first child to be raised to $750 in July 1997 and $1,000 in July 1998. The February 1997 Federal Budget converted this program into the enriched National Child Benefit System, which combines the Child Tax Benefit and the Working Income Supplement; the Working Income Supplement will rise from $500 per family to $605 for the first child, to $405 for the second one, and $330 for each additional child, starting July 1997; the CTB will provide a maximum $1,625 for the first child and $1,425 for each additional child, beginning July 1998. While HRDC has a policy interest in child poverty, Finance Canada has legislative responsibility for the CTB.
4	See Treasury Board Policy (1977-47) on "The Evaluation of Programs by Departments and Agencies"; this was reconfirmed in the 1992 Treasury Board Manual, Evaluation and Audit and the TBS Review Policy (May 26, 1994).
5	The Ministerial Council on Social Policy, Reform and Renewal's Principles to Guide Social Policy Reform and Renewal, Report of the Premiers (August 1995) sets out the values, principles and objectives (VPOs) which guide `Social Union' type programs like CHST, e.g., programs must be flexible, responsive and reasonably comparable across regions. These values, principles and objectives may be further specified in the future.