Dorothea Crittenden; Canada's first woman deputy minister reformed welfare and social assistance
Hyfler/Rosner
Canada's first woman deputy minister reformed welfare and
social assistance
A feminist decades before the movement came into vogue, her
early experiences were shaped by the Depression. She started
out as a typist, and developed such influence that premiers
returned her calls
GAY ABBATE
December 24, 2008
Dorothea Crittenden was a trailblazer who devoted her life
to helping build Ontario's welfare system. She was also a
key player in the creation of the Canada Assistance Plan, a
federal-provincial cost-sharing plan that guarantees all
Canadians equal access to social assistance.
She was instrumental in bringing in Ontario's General
Welfare Assistance Act in the 1950s. Up to then, the only
program available to Ontario residents was unemployment
relief, an initiative left over from the Great Depression
that provided some cash, goods and services. The new system,
which she renamed welfare, standardized social assistance,
replacing the practice of each municipality deciding what
help it would provide to residents in need.
"Dorothea was at the forefront of welfare reform, of
bringing public assistance into the 20th century," said John
Stapelton, a friend and former colleague in the Ontario
Ministry of Community and Social Services who now works in
social policy.
Ms. Crittenden, a feminist decades before the movement came
into vogue, carved out a long and impressive career in
Ontario's civil service. Starting as a lowly typist in the
department of public welfare (the old name for the Ministry
of Community and Social Services), she worked her way up to
deputy minister, the top job in the bureaucracy. During a
time when marriage was a career-killing move for women in
the civil service, she deliberately chose not to marry. In
making her mark in a man's world, she opened the door for
others to follow in her footsteps.
Hers was a career filled with firsts. In the 1940s, she was
the first female director of personnel in an Ontario
government ministry. Her appointment as deputy minister of
Ontario's Ministry of Community and Social Services in 1974
made her the first woman named deputy minister by any
Canadian government. Four years later, she became the first
female chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Dorothea - Crit to her friends - was the only child of Damon
and Emma Crittenden. They were 50 and 40 years old
respectively when she was born. The family settled in St.
Thomas, south of London, Ont., where she grew up during the
Great Depression.
Life was a challenge for her family during the Depression,
as it was for so many Canadians. Her father lost his job at
62 and her mother was too ill to work. At 12, Dorothea
started babysitting to earn money, charging 25 cents an hour
during the week - double that on weekends. Her earnings kept
the family afloat during the worst of times. "I was very
resourceful," she recalled in a 1991 interview. "I made more
money than my father made when he even started to get a day
or two of work," she said. "You know, all I'm saying is that
you make this rapid adjustment. You come from a family that
was totally self-supporting and suddenly it has no earning
capacity. So a 12-year-old suddenly starts to roll into
gear."
The Depression, she said, taught her frugality.
After graduating from St. Thomas Collegiate in 1932, she
earned a teaching certificate in London. She was offered a
job in Dryden, a Northern Ontario community about 140
kilometres east of Kenora.
She was just 17, but off she went, attracted by the heady
annual salary of $900. However, she was totally ignorant of
the harsh conditions she would face living in the bush and
teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. "I didn't know a damn
thing about living in the bush," she said in the interview.
"I didn't know what it was like to live in a log cabin with
no heat and I had never seen an outhouse in my life before.
I had never lived anywhere where the temperature went to 50
degrees below in the winter."
She sent part of her pay to her parents and saved enough to
pay for typing and shorthand courses at Alma College in St.
Thomas when she returned home. She moved to Toronto in 1937
to take a typist's job with the Ontario government but soon
took up work as a statistician. At the same time, she
started night classes at the University of Toronto,
eventually earning a degree in psychology and sociology.
Ms. Crittenden was Ontario's lead negotiator in the 1960s
during the development and implementation of the Canada
Assistance Plan, which transformed the patchwork of
provincial welfare programs into a national social-benefits
program. CAP provided for 50-50 cost-sharing with the
provinces. The sixties were boom times economically, so Ms.
Crittenden and her team agreed to several concessions to
encourage other provinces to sign on to the plan. Ontario
gave up its residency requirement, thus providing social
assistance to people migrating to look for work from other
parts of the country. Even though this proved costly to
Ontario, "being a Canadian is more important than worrying
about where you live," she said.
It was because of Ontario's many concessions that Ms.
Crittenden was so incensed when the federal government
announced in the early 1980s that it was going to cap
transfer payments to Ontario, thus reducing Ottawa's share.
She believed this was illegal under CAP terms. She
immediately phoned Ontario premier David Peterson, who
contacted other premiers. British Columbia, Alberta and
Manitoba soon joined Ontario in challenging the legality of
the cap. When the court sided with Ottawa, Ms. Crittenden
said it was because the judge did not fully understand the
agreement.
Ottawa's unilateral action without prior consultation
reinforced her belief that Ontario was not treated fairly.
The province, she said, could make a good case for saying to
Ottawa: "Okay buster, we're the province with the money ...
We're going to collect our own taxes and we'll give you back
the amount of the tax that we think you're entitled to."
While such a move flew in the face of her principle that
everyone should be treated alike, the situation was to her
an obvious exception. "If they are going to cost this
province billions of dollars, this province certainly is in
a position to say we're not going to take it any more."
There were many ways to fight fire with fire, she said.
As deputy minister, Ms. Crittenden was criticized for not
delegating authority. Mr. Stapleton said that while everyone
knew she ran the show, she never wanted subordinates to tell
her what they thought she wanted to hear. "She just wouldn't
allow it," he said.
Even so, staff was very reverential, calling her Dr.
Crittenden after Lakehead University had in 1976 awarded her
an honorary doctorate.
When dissatisfied with someone's work, she let them know in
firm, quiet manner that was all her own. "I'm going to allow
you to redo the report at your expense," she would tell a
consultant.
Mr. Stapleton said she was always giving people permission
to do something. "That's how she gave people direction."
When she took over the Ontario Human Rights Commission after
41 years with the ministry, she encountered a new set of
problems - public complaints about the time it took to
handle cases, insufficient staff and weak human-rights
legislation. In a letter to The Globe and Mail in 1980, she
attributed the delays to a 31-per-cent increase in the
number of complaints, and to the changing nature of alleged
discrimination complaints, which were growing more subtle
and complex. "It is easy to make public outcries but they
often serve to polarize parties as opposed to our mediation
role which benefits all of society," she wrote.
She retired from the commission in 1981 but spent the next
decade as a consultant to the Ontario government. In the
early 1990s, she was still hard at it. By then, Ontario had
experienced a severe economic downturn and the Ministry of
Community and Social Services, in particular, sought her
out. As the ministry dealt with rising welfare costs, it
decided to explore possible similarities between the
problems it was facing and those created by the Great
Depression, with which Ms. Crittenden was very familiar.
During much of that time she also chaired the Ontario
Nursing Home Complaints Committee.
An avid golfer most of her life, she preferred to play at a
ladies-only course. After she gave up consulting work, she
loved going to live theatre and lunching with her many
friends.
A strong woman in both health and spirit for most of her
life, her body began to fail her in recent years. Four years
ago, a broken hip put her in a wheelchair and into a nursing
home. She also began to lose her short-term memory.
DOROTHEA CRITTENDEN
Dorothea Monta Crittenden was born April 30, 1915, in Blyth,
Ont. She died Dec. 6, 2008, of natural causes at Kipling
Acres nursing home in Toronto. She was 93. She leaves many
friends and former colleagues.