Series 12 - Reports, Studies, Briefs and Surveys

Second only to Projects and Task Forces in number of files, the Reports, Studies, Briefs and Surveys Series has the oldest document in M.G. 2076, the J.H.T. Falk inspired Social and Financial Survey of Protestant and Non-Sectarian Social Agencies of 1919 (file 11). Though after the mid-1960s Projects and Task Forces tended to appropriate records which previously would have gone to Reports, Studies, Briefs And Surveys, the latter series nonetheless remains a prime indicator of social welfare problems, policies and resources for most of the Council's history. With input from internal (especially committee and section) sources and external contributors alike, it features studies and reports by and, about particular MCSA agencies as well as the institution collectively, besides those addressing numerous other welfare issues. Content ranges from mundane questions of infrastructure - administrative organization and function, or Red Feather fundraising and personnel practices, for instance -- to Executive Director J.W. Frei's scholarly, theoretical paper on Research in Socio-Cultural Development (file 289).

Briefs to the federal and provincial governments are an important element of this series. Among the noteworthy are those to the 1968 Royal Commission on the Status of Women (file 861) and the 1964 Special Senate Committee on Aging (file 954), as well as that on Social Policy for Quebec (the 1967 Castonguay Commission, file 5). The two latter submissions indeed come complete with drafts and working papers (files 428, 560 and 936 respectively). Draft documents similarly figure with finished ones in the welfare planning study of Greater Montreal's English-speaking Protestant community conducted by the National Study Service of New York for the MCSA, and in J.W. Frei's response (files 986-988 and 166). While much of the material in this series relates to meeting physical and psychological needs in conventional social agency terms readily intelligible across Canada, a few items also deal with concerns like Quebec's constitutional position, and bilingualism and biculturalism, which have a special relevance for Montreal.