Delicate Dances explores the relations between the public and nonprofit sectors at all levels of governances and examines the role of the Third Sector in global decision-making on trade, analysing different sides of the relationship between the Canadian federal government and voluntary organizations. The authors look at the relationships in different provincial settings, focusing on Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan, examining the defining influence of government welfare programs on the lives of two local religious orders in Atlantic Canada.

The authors argue that both the public and the nonprofit sectors are changing. In the public sector, the traditional dominance of central governments has given way to a governance system that interweaves action at the global, national, regional and local levels. In the nonprofit sector, groups are assuming new organizational forms and engaging in public policy more centrally, both as advocates and service providers. Not surprisingly, relations between these two sectors involve a complex series of delicate dances, in which missteps by either partner can produce tangled confusion. Contributors include Donald Abelson (University of Western Ontario), Kathy Brock (Queens University), Ian Brodie (University of Western Ontario), Ann Capling (Melbourne University), Miriam Lapp (University of Western Ontario), Georges leBel (UQAM), Heidi Macdonald (University of Lethbridge), David Malloy (University of Regina), Kim Nossal (Queens University), Susan Phillips (Carleton University), Ken Rasmussen (University of Regina), Paul Pross (Dalhousie University), Peter Smith (Athabaska University), Elizabeth Smythe (Concordia University College of Alberta), Kernaghan Webb (Carleton University), and Mary Wiktorowicz (York University).