Series 09 - Projects and Task Forces

While MCSA documents earlier sometimes construed the term "project" so generally as to encompass virtually any activity in the social welfare field (see, for example, the statement on the Council Program, 1941-1954: file 206), no identifiable Projects and Task Forces Series existed until the 1956 New Areas Recreation Project relocation of the old inner city Iverley Community Centre to the rapidly growing post-war suburb of St. Laurent (files 816 and 1192) . This series, which proliferated in the 1960s, is the most socially activist and even politically radical in the implications of the programmes some of its documents promote. It is also the most ambiguous to the extent that, because of the vagaries of the MCSA's filing practices and assignment of titles, in some cases it is unclear as to precisely what project (though not which task force) a given file pertains.

The largest series, Projects and Task Forces in general reflects a change in mood from the comparative conservatism of the 1950s and, while still providing traditional services like research, deals more concertedly in consumer and tenant advocacy, and self-help and Dhands on D community involvement, including the encouragement of citizens' and other pressure groups. Moreover, though the participation of the Council and its members in and with other organizations had always been a matter of course, in Projects and Task Forces this involvement, especially in the last half decade or so of the institution's existence, sometimes took the form of the MCSA role and identity becoming submerged, almost marginal. In important fields like housing and urban redevelopment, and the coordination of efforts to alleviate and eliminate poverty, the Council would seem to have been losing the initiative and becoming just another player on a wider, and increasingly francophone, welfare team.

Correspondence, briefs, reports, minutes, press clippings and press releases, as well as lists of supporters and mailing lists, are all well represented, but this is the only series to preserve public petitions (these are found in four of the Lower Bus Fares for Senior Citizens files). A substantial portion of the holdings are committees which might otherwise be expected to appear mostly or totally in the Committees Series. However, their original Council inclusion in Projects and Task Forces has been maintained. Noteworthy in this respect are the Committees on Quebec Social Assistance, Housing and Urban Renewal, Greater Montreal Anti-Poverty Coordinating, Pointe St. Charles Coordinating, and Safe Label ... Safe Closure.

The provision of day care for the children of working parents, with -Day Care- appearing in 84 titles as listed, constitutes the largest concentration of data on any subject in this series. But other themes are also numerously addressed.