Vince Beiser wins Balsillie Prize for Public Policy for book on critical minerals

By Canadian Press on November 26, 2025.

TORONTO — Vince Beiser’s book on critical minerals has won the $70,000 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy.

Writers’ Trust of Canada announced “Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future” as the winner at a private dinner in Toronto on Tuesday evening.

Beiser’s book explores what jurors call an “inescapable paradox” on the way to net-zero: that to transition to a green future, we must extract critical minerals from the planet, a process that has a significant environmental footprint.

Jurors praise the book for raising “essential considerations and uncomfortable questions for policy-makers and citizens alike.”

The annual award, which upped its purse by $10,000 for its fifth year, recognizes non-fiction books that advance policy discussions on social, political, economic and cultural topics.

The runners-up, who receive $7,500 apiece, were Vass Bednar and Denise Hearn for “The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians,” Pamela Cross for “And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence” and Stephen J.A. Ward of Fredericton for “Irrational Publics and the Fate of Democracy.”

The prize is funded by the Balsillie Family Foundation as part of a $3 million commitment to support Canadian literature through Writers’ Trust.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2025.

Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press