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.
2008 Winner
Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North
Ken S. Coates, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, William R. Morrison & Greg Poelzer
(Thomas Allen Publishers )
A truly integrated volume by four of Canada’s leading Northern specialists, Arctic Front is a clarion call to all Canadians about our endangered Arctic region, challenging the country to step away from the symbols and myth making of the past and toward the urgent political, environmental and economic realities of the 21st century.
Runners – up
Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State
Tarek Fatah
( John Wiley & Sons, Canada )
A fascinating book that seeks to differentiate between the Islamic State and the state of Islam. Can a millennia of aggression be brought to a halt? Chasing a Mirage is unequivocal in its answer and its remedy to end political violence that is inimical to Islam and its state of grace and peace.
Fixing the Future: How Canada’s Usually Fractious Governments Worked Together to Rescue the Canada Pension Plan
Bruce Little
(Rotman / University of Toronto Press Publishing)
While the deficit battles have been recounted many times, the story of the reform that rescued the CPP has gone almost entirely untold. In the readable and authoritative Fixing The Future, Bruce Little explains the CPP overhaul and shows how it stands as one of Canada’s most significant public policy success stories.
The Limits of Boundaries: Why City-regions Cannot be Self-governing
Andrew Sancton
( McGill-Queen’s University Press )
With city-regions becoming increasingly important as sources of innovation and wealth in our society, does it follow that their institutions of government will become increasingly autonomous and ultimately self-governing? Andrew Sancton combines his own broad knowledge of global changes with an outline and comparison of the viewpoints of prominent social scientists to challenge accepted wisdom.
Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation
Frances Widdowson & Albert Howard
(McGill-Queen’s University Pres )
Despite the billions of dollars devoted to aboriginal causes, Native people in Canada continue to suffer all the symptoms of a marginalized existence: high rates of substance abuse, violence and poverty. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry argues that the policies proposed to address these problems are in fact contributing to their entrenchment.
2008 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.