Abstract

The Royal Commission on the Status of Pensions in Ontario (Haley commission) and the Parliamentary Task Force on Pension Reform (Frith committee) were both established during the Great Pension Debate (1977-1984) to study the Canadian pension system and to develop proposals for reform. Yet despite studying pensions in the same country and era, the two inquiries developed fundamentally different solutions. Whereas the Haley commission recommended incremental adjustments to programs, the Frith committee reframed pensions as an issue intrinsically tied to and perpetuating gender biases in society. Using Peter Hall’s systematic process analysis, this thesis finds that the different recommendations of these two public inquiries are largely the result of: (a) the varying types of information used by the inquiries (specifically expert versus non-expert information); and (b) the social learning amongst women’s groups in the period between the two inquiries. The combination of an inquiry open to using non-expert information alongside an increased number of women’s groups presenting specific proposals for reform, led to the Frith committee’s fundamental reframing of pensions.