This volume reflects on a period of major change in the provision of public services in Israel and Canada. It has been generated through the association of the Halbert Exchange Program for the University of Toronto and the Center for Canadian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In showing the effects of cutbacks in funding, limitations in access, and threats to the universality of public service provision, the book emphasizes that this stress also marks a shift in political values leading to the changing roles of the state in the lives of the residents of the two nations. The analysis of public service provision included in this collection also demonstrates the effect of constitutional, strategic, demographic and economic changes during the eighties. While these forces reflect distinctive national characteristics demonstrated in the two countries, they also demonstrate the impact of wider changes associated with such global trends as: fiscal integration and the emergence of trade blocs, technological change, dominance of multinational corporations, and the growing effects in an international division of labor.