2008 Donald Smiley Prize

Winner: Douglas Macdonald (University of Toronto)

Business and Environmental Politics in Canada (Broadview Press, 2007)

Excerpt from jury report: Macdonald’s book is well-written, accessible, concise, and one of the most outstanding studies of public policy in Canada to appear in recent years. Surveying the whole history of environmental politics in Canada over the last half century, it presents and tests a number of hypotheses about the role of business in the formation of policy in this area. Examining a number of case studies ranging from the controversy over acid rain to the regulation of beverage containers in Ontario, it concludes that business corporations essentially reacted, although not without success, to changes in the political agenda and that they were as much concerned with their legitimacy and “image” as with their balance sheets. Its judgements and conclusions are balanced and firmly based on the evidence, and its analysis will be appreciated not only by students of Canadian environmental politics but by anyone interested in the relationship between business and the state in industrialized liberal democracies.