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OTTAWA — The Canadian Constitution Foundation is thrilled to announce that Pandemic Panic: How Canadian Government Responses to COVID-19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever by CCF Executive Director Joanna Baron and CCF Litigation Director Christine Van Geyn is shortlisted for the prestigious Donner Prize.

Pandemic Panic, which made the best-seller lists on the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Amazon.ca, presents a critical and comprehensive assessment of the impact of the pandemic on civil liberties.

“This book is a record of what happened to our rights during the pandemic, from a perspective that civil liberties matter,” said Baron. “The response of many people to the pandemic has been to forget a lot of things – strange, irrational and also oppressive things – that the government did.”

“We are so honoured to be recognized as a shortlisted book for the prestigious Donner Prize,” CCF Litigation Director and Pandemic Panic co-author Christine Van Geyn said. “We are thrilled with the positive critical reception that Pandemic Panic received and want to congratulate the authors of all the other shortlisted books.”

“Pandemic Panic is a crucial record of the civil liberties impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had in Canada, and the only one of its kind,” Van Geyn added. “We want to thank the Donner Prize for this honour, and thank all of our thousands of supporters across Canada who bought the book.”

The book was published in November by Optimum Publishing International. It features a foreword by Preston Manning.

“If we forget history, it will repeat itself and the government can violate our rights with impunity. Reading this book will help to ensure those violations do not happen again, or if governments attempt them, there will be an informed citizenry to push back,” remarked Van Geyn.

Readers will learn what went wrong during the pandemic from the nuanced perspective of constitutional experts – when government reactions were over the top, and when the courts failed to correct government overreach. The book presents a balanced perspective, which allows readers to come to their own conclusions.

The Donner Prize recognizes the best public policy thinking, writing and research by a Canadian.

The Donner Prize is meant to encourage an open exchange of ideas and to provide a springboard for authors who may not necessarily be well-known, but who can make an original and meaningful contribution to policy discourse.

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