The Queen’s community is remembering Ken Battle, Arts’70, a leading Canadian social policy analyst known for his unwavering commitment to helping some of this country’s most vulnerable.
The co-founder of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy and member of the Order of Canada passed away on Nov. 18, 2024, in Ottawa. He was 77.
Battle was “a national treasure,” wrote his Caledon co-founder Alan Broadbent, LLD’15, recently. “He wanted to have influence that would improve people’s lives, particularly those without sufficient resources to live with dignity.”
Battle’s policy work focused on welfare programs, social security reform, and poverty alleviation. He is perhaps most famous for designing what is now known as the Canada Child Benefit (CCB), called “the most significant new social program since Medicare” by former prime minister Jean Chrétien.
As the CCB story goes, a copy of Battle’s report, National Child Benefit: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, made its way to then federal finance minister Paul Martin on a Sunday afternoon in the mid-1990s. That same day, the future prime minister called Battle at home, and the rest was history.
Today, the CCB pays up to $7,787 per child under the age of six per year and $6,570 per child aged six to 17. The program has been credited with lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
Battle was born in Calgary and grew up in Edmonton and Ottawa. At Queen’s, he majored in Politics and excelled in his studies. He is also believed to be the first humanities student to win the Prince of Wales Prize, then given to one Faculty of Arts and Science graduating student with the highest grades.
After Queen's, Battle went to the University of Oxford on a Commonwealth Scholarship and then began his career in public policy at the National Council of Welfare, a now-defunct advisory body to the federal government on issues related to low-income Canadians.
In 1992, Battle co-founded the Caledon Institute of Social Policy with Alan Broadbent and served as the think tank’s president. For the next 25 years, he and his colleagues worked on practical ways to lift people out of poverty, addressing everything from income security and disability supports to childcare and community development.
The phrase “relentless incrementalism” was often used to describe Battle’s approach. As he knew well, change is often slow in government, sometimes happening over many successive steps. But he would persistently push for those next steps until he thought the right solution was achieved.
This approach was on full display throughout the evolution of the CCB. When it was introduced in 1998, it was funded with less than a quarter of the amount Battle proposed. He accepted that but kept pushing for incremental funding boosts year after year.
In 2000, Battle was named a member of the Order of Canada to recognize his “significant role in the area of Canadian welfare legislation, including the development of the National Child Benefit Program.”
Seventeen years later, at Caledon’s 25th anniversary event, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally thanked Battle for his contributions to Canada. Queen’s joins in thanking him and will remember him in the long tradition of alumni who have helped build this country.
