2006 Donald Smiley Prize

Winner: Gregory Inwood (Ryerson University)

Continentalizing Canada: The Politics and Legacy of the Macdonald Royal Commission (University of Toronto Press, 2005)

Excerpt from jury report: Continentalizing Canada provides an original, comprehensive, and authoritative account of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. The Macdonald Commission is widely recognized as one the most influential public transcripts in the history of Canadian confederation, steering federal decision makers toward both a neoliberal governing paradigm and the continental integration of the Canadian political economy. Gregory Inwood’s careful research and critical insights into the many and complex processes through which consensus is built around public policies, which initially find little support in public opinion, is a major contribution to the study of contemporary Canadian politics. Though an extensive review of academic and popular writing, archival research, discourse analysis, and elite interviews, Continentalizing Canada skillfully reconstructs the story of how free trade became the major plank of Canadian development policy in the late twentieth century in the face of widespread political opposition and ambiguous evidence. This book also represents a definitive contribution to the growing literature that situates ideas and royal commissions as critical structuring mechanisms in Canadian political life.