Jury Announced for $50,000 Donner Prize

TORONTO, Dec. 2, 2014 /CNW/ -  Allan Gotlieb, Chairman of the Donner Canadian Foundation, today announced the jury for the seventeenth annual Donner Prize, the award for best public policy book by a Canadian. "It is my pleasure to see the return of three of last year's distinguished jurors, as well as to welcome Jean-Marie Dufour and Peter Harder to the jury for the 2014 Donner Prize," said Gotlieb.

An Officer of the Order of Canada, Jean-Marie Dufour is the William Dow Professor of Economics at McGill University. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations (CIRANO) and serves as Director of the Canadian Econometrics Study Group. Dr. Dufour has served as a Member of Governing Council, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (June 2013), and is a recipient of the Léon-Gérin Prize for social sciences and an Izaak-Walton-Killam Award.

Peter Harder is Senior Policy Advisor to Dentons Canada LLP. Before joining Dentons in 2007, he was a long serving Deputy Minister in the Government of Canada. In 2000, the Governor General presented Harder with the Prime Minister's Outstanding Achievement Award for public service leadership.  He is also the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden (2007) and Diamond (2012) Jubilee medals. Harder has previously served on the Donner Prize jury from 2006 to 2009.

The Honourable Anne McLellan will return as this year's jury Chair. 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.  She is former 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. 

Also returning to the jury are Peter George, Senior Advisor to the Director, the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health; and Denis Stairs, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Dalhousie University.

The winner of the 2014 Donner Prize will receive $50,000, with $7,500 awarded to the other shortlisted titles. The prize encourages and celebrates excellence in public policy writing by Canadians, on topics of great importance to Canadians. The shortlist will be announced in late March 2015, and the winner will be proclaimed at a gala dinner in Toronto on April 29, 2015.

SOURCE: Donner Canadian Foundation

please contact: Sherry Naylor, Prize Manager, Phone: [phone], E-mail: [email protected], www.donnerbookprize.com