2009 Donald Smiley Prize

Winner: Christian Jetté

Les organismes communautaires et la transformation de l’État-providence. Trois décennies de coconstruction des politiques publiques dans le domaine de la santé et des services sociaux, (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2008)

Excerpt from jury report: This meticulously documented work, filled with much previously overlooked detail, tells the story of the relations between community health and social services organizations and the Quebec government since the early 1970s. Christian Jetté clarifies the central role played by Quebec community organizations in developing social and health policy. He makes an extremely convincing contribution to our understanding of the process by which the welfare state was formed and transformed in Quebec. His reading of the facts and events involved in the formulation of government health care and social services policy forces us to reconsider the explanations accepted until now of the nature of the Quebec state and the interface between government and Quebec civil society. This is a book that will permanently affect our views of the socio-political dynamic in contemporary Québec.

Christian Jetté is a professor at the École de service social of the Université de Montréal and co-director of LAREPPS, its social practice and policy research laboratory.