A book about Canada’s immigration system has won the Donner Prize for public policy writing.
Borderline Chaos: How Canada Got Immigration Right, and Then Wrong was awarded the $60,000 literary prize at a gala dinner in Toronto late Thursday.
Author Tony Keller, a columnist with the Globe and Mail newspaper, was praised for outlining how Canada’s immigration system can be rebuilt, with judges calling it “compelling” and “essential” for any policy-maker grappling with immigration.
The other shortlisted titles each received $7,500.
They include Breaking Point: The New Big Shifts Putting Canada at Risk by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, and 21 Things You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-Government: A Conversation About Dismantling the Indian Act by Bob Joseph.
Also shortlisted were A New Blueprint for Government: Reshaping Power, The PMO, and the Public Service by Kevin G. Lynch and James R. Mitchell, and The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity by Tim Wu.
“Borderline Chaos is a perfect example of excellent policy writing – detailing how government took an excellent system, broke it and describing for policy-makers how it can be fixed,” said jury chair André Beaulieu in a statement.