Women and the Canadian Welfare State: The Decline of Social Welfare and Its Effects on Women Welfare programs must contribute to the attack on family breakdown and illegitimacy. Unless such problems are dealt with effectively, they fester, and grow, sapping the strength of society as a whole and extending their consequences in troubled families from one generation to the next. - John F. Kennedy Canadians, especially Canadian women, can no longer expect as much from their government; rights that were formerly guaranteed by our welfare state a