The prize for the Best Book in Canadian Studies (2023) has been awarded to Laura Bisaillon for Screening Out: HIV Testing and the Canadian Immigration Experience (Vancouver, UBC Press), 2022, 283 pages. 

This book brings the reader to reflect on a sensitive critique of Canada’s immigration policies and public health issues for deciding on medical (in)admissibility. Through an ethnography of different immigration experiences involving HIV screening, Professor Bisaillon presents an analysis of the governance rules that inform the reception experience and, ultimately, call into question the collective imagination that has arisen around the sociopolitical representation of Canada. The researcher left space for the people interviewed to present eloquent and moving accounts without losing sight of the sociological and political relevance of this testimony. This work displays an elegant writing style and tone, considerable intellectual refinement, and the wisdom to base the strength of its demonstration on the empathy that it manages to generate in the reader.

Honourable Mention: 

An honourable mention goes to Alison Smith. Multiple Barriers: The Multilevel Governance of Homelessness in Canada (UTP, 2022). This is an impeccably-researched and well-written book on one of the most pressing concerns of our time. Dr. Alison Smith presents varied case studies from four large cities to reveal the challenges, complexity, and opportunities of Canada’s multilevel governance relationships. Drawing on these rich case studies from across the country, Smith explains why and how different policy approaches and governance responses to homelessness have emerged in different regions. Multiple Barriers is a timely and essential piece of scholarship for understanding Canadian social policy governance and the root causes of homelessness in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

The CSN warmly thanks the committee members for this prize.