Kevin Quigley, Kaitlynne Lowe, Sarah Moore, and Brianna Wolfe won the 2024 Donner Prize for Seized by Uncertainty.

A book that explores how cultural, institutional, and political factors shaped Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has won the 2024 Donner Prize.

Kevin Quigley, director of the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance at Dalhousie University, has won the 2024 Donner Prize alongside his co-authors Kaitlynne Lowe, Sarah Moore, and Brianna Wolfe. They won for their book Seized By Uncertainty: The Markets, Media and Special Interests that Shaped Canada’s Response to COVID-19, published by McGill-Queens University Press.

The annual $60,000 Donner Prize, established in 1998, recognizes the best book about public policy written by a Canadian. This year, the jury read more than 80 books submitted by a record-breaking 47 publishers.

In their citation, the jury praised Seized by Uncertainty for “telling a compelling story and providing important policy direction. It offers a portrayal of policymaking and implementation in crisis mode, and delivers a clear message that institutional inertia may prevent us from learning the right lessons from the pandemic.”

Seized by Uncertainty was one of five books shortlisted for the prize this year. The other finalists – Fiscal Choices: Canada After the Pandemic by Michael M. Atkinson and Haizhen Mou, And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence by Pamela Cross, Constraining the Court: Judicial Power and Policy Implementation in the Charter Era by James B. Kelly, and Hard Lessons in Corporate Governance by Bryce C. Tingle – each receive $7,500.

The winner was announced by Gregory Belton, chair of the Donner Prize Foundation, at a gala in Toronto on May 15.