Former energy executive Dennis McConaghy wins Donner Prize for book on pipelines

TORONTO – Former TransCanada executive Dennis McConaghy has won the Donner Prize for “Breakdown: The Pipeline Debate and the Threat to Canada’s Future.”

McConaghy, who helped oversee the commercial development of the Keystone XL pipeline, was awarded the $50,000 honour in an online presentation on Wednesday.

Founded in 1998, the annual award is given to the best public policy book by a Canadian.

Jurors praised “Breakdown,” published by Dundurn Press, for presenting “several pragmatic strategies that can be used to reduce or remove the bottleneck to move large infrastructure projects forward.”

The runners-up, who will each receive $7,500, for the 2019/2020 prize are:

– “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson (Signal/McClelland & Stewart)

– “Living with China: A Middle Power Finds Its Way” by Wendy Dobson (Rotman-UTP Publishing/University of Toronto Press)

– “The Wealth of First Nations” by Tom Flanagan (Fraser Institute)

– “The Tangled Garden: A Canadian Cultural Manifesto for the Digital Age” by Richard Stursberg with Stephen Armstrong (James Lorimer & Co.).

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2020.