In Quebec, the reform of social assistance policy, announced by the Liberal government in January 2015 and finally adopted by Parliament on November 10, 2016, was very controversial. To specify the normative models in competition that emerge from this controversy, we collected all the articles of opinion (political and activist forums, editorial forums, reader’s letter) published in three Quebec mass newspapers between 2015 et 2016. We are modeling our approach on the cognitive policy analysis (Muller, 2005) in order to identify the main normative and cognitive references that are put forward. This analysis highlights that supporters and opponents rarely use the same references; especially, people benefiting from social assistance are rarely described with the same characteristics. The opponents, however, have rarely put forward in their argument an alternative to the normative model developed by the government.