Canadian Public Policy

The Canadian Health Care System by Lee SoderstromReview by: J. E. F. HastingsCanadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter, 1979), p. 148Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3549745 .

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148 / Reviews/Comptes rendus

not to seek direction for social action.

L O R N A M A R S D E N / Department of Sociology, University of Toronto

The Canadian Health Care System by Lee Soderstrom. London, Croom Helm (MacMillan), 1978. Pp. 271. $9.95.

This is an ambitious book. The author has tried to provide an overview for readers not well- acquainted with the Canadian health care system and at the same time to provide detailed material for readers interested in specific components and aspects of the system. Particular attention has been given to the experience with public financing of hospital and physician services and to recent proposals for change.

The way in which the material is presented seriously limits the usefulness of the book to readers who are not knowledgeable about the system. The author has given a compendium of detail on elements of the system but there is no account of the evolution of the system until well along in the book, and this is overly succinct. Much of the text consists of lists, classifications, and other detailed descriptive material either best placed in an appendix or left out entirely from the overview. Thus, there is far too much detail and not enough synthesis for the new student of the Canadian health system. On the other hand, for the reader interested in depth about particular aspects of the system, the data used are sometimes not as current as they might have been. There is an unevenness in the comprehensiveness of what is presented. Much of the information is of a nature best followed up by the serious student in original sources and references.

The presentation on financing and health costs and of proposals for change is useful and clarifies a number of issues. One wonders whether these aspects of the system should not have been the focus of the entire book, since the author is both knowledgeable and has thought carefully about them.

In summary, the book falls short of the author's goals. In many ways it resembles an early draft of a thesis. Further thought should have been given to the overall concept and scope. Vigorous pruning of material, more care in ordering it, and greater attention to lucidity of style would have helped to make it a more readable and useful book.

J . E . F . H A S T I N G S / Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

Canadian Directorship Practices: A Critical Self-Examination by Susan Peterson assisted by Morris Heath. Ottawa, The Conference Board in Canada, 1977. Pp. 179. $15.00.

The matter of the governance of major private sector organizations is a rather central aspect of an understanding of the nature of power in Canadian society. Boards of directors of large corporations have been the object of much hand-wringing in the recent past, both from the point of view that they do nothing and from the point of view that they do too much. But the present volume, if taken at face value, in no small measure leaves the reader to wonder what the fuss has been all about.

It would be naive to expect that the Conference Board in Canada would bite the corporate hands that feed it. But in examining the views of corporate directors on their own functions, a risk is run of becoming a specialized form of vanity press. While a certain detachment has been successfully retained, it would have been astounding to read in this volume that the anon- ymous directors saw major problems with the current mode of accountability in private insti- tutions. Needless to say, this book creates little astonishment, and might even be accused of having an incipient reformist bent.

Small, descriptive, and non-controversial, the volume reports the largely complacent views of fifty directors of major corporations in Canada. Also included with the directorial dicta and connecting prose are reviews of a small amount of relevant literature and the legal duties and responsibilities of directors. The book bounces through the major activities of such boards using selected comments to present the insiders' interpretations. So much of the flavour of

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