Here’s a look back at past winners and the books that made that year’s shortlist. You’ll also find our Jury from each award season.
2006 Winner
Towards North American Monetary Union? The Politics and History of Canada’s Exchange Rate Regime
Eric Helleiner
(McGill-Queen’s University Press)
Many believe that Canada’s deepening economic integration with the United States and the worldwide trend towards currency blocs will eventually lead to a North American monetary union. In this excellent analysis of Canadian exchange rate politics, Eric Helleiner challenges this view and finds little support in the U.S. for the concessions that would be necessary to make a North American monetary union palatable in Canada. Towards North American Monetary Union? is a fascinating book that explores Canada’s unusually strong commitment throughout the twentieth century to a floating exchange rate for its national currency – a commitment that Helleiner argues is likely to endure.
Runners – up
Dreamland: How Canada’s Pretend Foreign Policy Has Undermined Sovereignty
Roy Rempel
(Breakout Educational Network)
In Dreamland, Roy Rempel argues that the past decade has been marked by an ideological and domestically driven foreign policy agenda that has lost sight of the national interest. As a consequence, Canada’s policy options are narrowing, national sovereignty is eroding, and the country risks evolving into a protectorate of the United States. Dreamland is a provocative and bracing book that analyzes how Canada’s foreign policy has subverted the myths that Canadians believe about themselves and their place in the world. It provides not only a well-aimed barrage of criticism of Canadian foreign policy in recent times, but also a well-reasoned plan for an alternative approach.
Visiting Grandchildren: Economic Development in the Maritimes
Donald J. Savoie
(University of Toronto Press)
In Visiting Grandchildren, esteemed policy analyst and scholar Donald J. Savoie explores how Canadian economic policies have served to exclude the Maritime provinces from the wealth enjoyed in many other parts of the country, especially southern Ontario, and calls for a radical new approach to how Canadian governments determine policies that affect different regions. Well-written and comprehensive, Visiting Grandchildren looks to history, accidents of geography, and to the workings of national political and administrative institutions to explain the relative underdevelopment of the Maritime provinces. Savoie’s work serves as the blueprint for a new way of envisioning the Maritime region.
2006 Donner Jury
Grant L. Reuber
Chair
Senior Fellow, C.D. Howe Institute; former Chairman, Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation; former President and Chief Operating Officer and later Deputy Chairman, Bank of Montreal; former Deputy Minister of Finance for Canada; former provost and Vice-President (Academic) of the University of Western Ontario; Officer of the Order of Canada; Fellow, Royal Society of Canada.
Claude E. Forget
Former Minister of Health for the Quebec government; former Chairman of the Commission of Enquiry on Unemployment Insurance; Officer of the Order of Canada.
V. Peter Harder
Peter Harder is Senior Policy Advisor to Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP. Harder possesses a wealth of expertise in public policy as a result of his involvement at the centre of government decision making for over thirty years. Harder was the longest serving Deputy Minister in the Government of Canada. First appointed a Deputy Minister in 1991, he served as the most senior public servant in a number of federal departments including Treasury Board, Solicitor General, Citizenship and Immigration, Industry and Foreign Affairs and International Trade. At Foreign Affairs, he assumed the responsibilities of the Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to three G8 Summits (Sea Island, Gleneagles and St. Petersburg). In 2000, the Governor General presented Harder with the Prime Minister’s Outstanding Achievement Award for public service leadership.
Anne McLellan
The Honourable Anne McLellan joined Bennett Jones LLP after a distinguished career in federal politics, where she served four terms as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Edmonton Centre from 1993-2006. During her political career McLellan was Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Minister of Health, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister of Natural Resources and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians. As Deputy Prime Minister, she chaired two Cabinet committees: the Operations Committee and the Security, Public Health and Emergencies Committee. She was appointed Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of Alberta’s Institute for United States Policy Studies in July 2006 and currently is acting director of the Institute.
Denis Stairs
Dr. Stairs is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Dalhousie University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a past-President of the Canadian Political Science Association. The founding Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, he was Dalhousie’s Vice President (Academic and Research) from 1988 to 1993. He is currently the Chair of the Board of Visitors of the Canadian Forces College, a Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute in Calgary, and a member of its Advisory Council, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.