UBC’s Michael Byers wins $50,000 Donner Prize for book about Arctic

TORONTO – “International Law and the Arctic” by Michael Byers has won the $50,000 Donner Prize.

The award is given to the best public policy book by a Canadian.

The jury said Byers’ book, published by Cambridge University Press, “reminds us that we cannot ignore the importance of the Arctic to Canada and all its people.”

Byers — who was shortlisted for the Donner in 2009 — holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia and is also a commentator on CBC’s “The Current” and “The National.”

Four other books were vying for the Donner and will receive $7,500 apiece. They are:” Out of the Basement: Youth Cultural Production in Practice and in Policy by Miranda Campbell (McGill-Queen’s University Press); “Unjust by Design: Canada’s Administrative Justice System” by Ron Ellis (UBC Press); “The Third Rail: Confronting Our Pension Failures” by Jim Leech and Jacquie McNish (Signal) and “Shut Off: The Canadian Digital Television Transition by Gregory Taylor (McGill-Queen’s University Press).

The five-member jury sifted through 80 submissions.