Sociology

With the advent of the world economic crisis in 2008, unemployment has emerged as the biggest social problem facing the Canadian society today. Traditionally, Canadian and American economies have been largely interdependent on each other with each ranking as the largest trading partner to one another. The meltdown in the US economy therefore meant that the Canadian economy took a beating, and one of the manifestations of this meltdown on the Canadian economy was increased unemployment. Many people are out of work today as a result of the crisis and in need of alternative engagement. Left without a source of income, these people may need social services such as counseling and other activities to keep them busy.

Technology is also presenting another problem. Technology may have made life easier for many, but with it came other problems that have weakened the social fabric that holds the Canadian society. People are now making more friends on social networking sites such as facebook and MySpace instead of the traditional human contact method. This presents a problem of creating a society that is made up of strangers and therefore no shared fears, aspirations nor destiny for the Canadian society. It is up to the social workers to create an enabling environment for Canadian people and especially the young generation to engage more with each other. One of the ways would be by organizing more social engagements for the people or helping the government develop programs that would reduce the problem.

Related to the above problem is juvenile delinquency. Juvenile delinquency is worrying to any social expert because it may signal a bigger underlying problem. Deviant children are indicative of deficient parenthood, which means that the society could be sitting on time bomb. Social workers have responsibility of educating parents on parenting skills. Parents may be well meaning when they overwork themselves to provide for their children but they are sometimes unaware that what they are doing could be harming the children. The social workers may for example come up with a checklist that parents can use to monitor their parenting skills and ways.