The Shortlist 2012

Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care Systems Needs to be Dragged Into The 21st Century

Jeffrey Simpson / Allen Lane Canada

The Canadian health care system, which costs about $200 billion a year in public and private money, cannot continue as it is—increasingly ill-adapted to an aging population, with public costs growing faster than government revenues. Chronic Condition makes a vital contribution to the public’s understanding of the cost of health care and delivery issues, examining the tenets of the Medicare system that Canadians cling to so passionately. Breaking the silence about the changes and choices that Canadians face, Simpson has written a book that deserves to be read and discussed.

Jeffrey Simpson, an officer of the Order of Canada, has been The Globe and Mail’s national affairs columnist for more than twenty-five years.

Santé: l'heure des choix

Claude Castonguay / Les Éditions du Boréal

Québec’s health care system is experiencing serious problems. No longer sustainable, it consumes nearly half the government’s budget. Calling for a paradigm shift, Santé: l’heure des choix identifies a number of the barriers that Castonguay believes prevent the creation of a truly patient-focused system, and presents a plan for comprehensive reform. Castonguay, the “father” of Québec health care, puts his decades’ long experience thinking about health care to good use in this book, with a passionate focus on solutions to make the public health care system in Québec sustainable for the long run.

Claude Castonguay served as Québec Minister of Health from 1970 to 1973 and chaired the Royal Commission on Health and Welfare from 1966 to 1970.

Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of International Food Aid

Jennifer Clapp / Cornell University Press

Food aid has become a contentious issue in recent decades, with sharp disagreements over genetically modified crops, agricultural subsidies, and ways of guaranteeing food security in the face of successive global food crises. Hunger in the Balance provides an insightful and comprehensive account of the contemporary politics of food aid, explaining the origins and outcomes of recent clashes between donor nations—and between donors and recipients. Clapp provides us with a serious analysis of important and timely global issues in which Canada and Canadians have been involved as major players for many decades.

Jennifer Clapp is Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at University of Waterloo.

Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark: The West Versus the Rest Since Confederation

Mary Janigan / Knopf Canada

The oil sands. Global warming. The National Energy Program. Though these seem like contemporary Canadian subjects, Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark reveals them to be a legacy of longstanding regional rivalries. Placing the conflicts between the interests and orientation of the three prairie provinces and the rest of the country into a broader historical political context, Janigan expands not only our understanding of the issues, but also helps to enhance Canadians’ understanding of one another. A revelatory read, it presents a unique historical perspective on the challenging public policy issues that the country is now facing, and will continue to face in the future.

Mary Janigan is a journalist who has written extensively about Canadian public policy, including politics and economics, for the Toronto Star, Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail.