Brian Lee Crowley

Brian Lee Crowley, (born in Vancouver, British Columbia) is Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a national public policy think tank based in Ottawa. He was also the founding President of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), a public policy think tank based in Atlantic Canada.

Crowley is the author of three books (The Self, the Individual and the Community, Oxford University Press, 1987; The Road to Equity: Impolitic Essays, Stoddart, 1994; and Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values, Key Porter Books, 2009). He was the editor of Taking Ownership: Property Rights and Fishery Management on the Atlantic Coast, AIMS, 1996.

Crowley co-authored two projects on the Canadian health-care system both of which won the Sir Antony Fisher Award. In recognition of his health-care work, he was named to the Alberta Premier’s Advisory Council on Health (the Mazankowski Committee). The Council’s Chairman, former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Don Mazankowski, called Crowley the "intellectual architect" of the committee’s report. Crowley is a frequent media commentator on health-care policy and has spoken to national and international conferences in recent years on health-care reform in Canada. In March, 2008 he was named Senior Fellow at the Galen Institute, a free market health policy think tank in Washington, DC.

Other major institute projects where Crowley has taken a leadership role include its work on equalization, Canada-US relations, and especially Atlantica (the natural economic region that straddles the Canada-US border in the northeast corner of the continent), public school performance and accountability, EI reform, natural resources and public finances, and regional development policy.

In March 2008, Crowley returned to AIMS after a year and a half on secondment as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist with the federal Department of Finance. The most senior independent economic policy advisory position within the federal government, it carries with it the rank of an Assistant Deputy Minister. During his time in Ottawa, Crowley worked on a broad range of policy files and redesigned the pre-budget consultation process. In 2007 he was named one of the 100 most influential people in Ottawa by The Hill Times.

Crowley has headed the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council (APEC), taught politics, economics and philosophy at Dalhousie University, University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, le Collège Universitaire de Saint-Boniface, the City of London Polytechnic (UK) and the Université d'été at Aix-en-Provence (France) and been constitutional advisor to the governments of Nova Scotia (Charlottetown negotiations) and Manitoba (Meech Lake negotiations). He has been a Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, a diplomat for the EC (now the EU) Commission, an aid administrator for the UN in Africa, an advisor to the Quebec government on parliamentary and electoral reform and a Parliamentary Intern at the House of Commons in Ottawa.

Crowley is a frequent commentator on political and economic issues for the CBC, Radio-Canada and many other media, and is a former member of the Editorial Board of The Globe and Mail and of the National Political Panel on Morningside with the late Peter Gzowski on CBC Radio. His articles appear in both national newspapers and numerous regional and local newspapers, and he has had at different times regular columns in the largest circulation newspapers in Nova Scotia (the Chronicle-Herald), New Brunswick (the Times & Transcript) and Québec (La Presse, the largest circulation French language daily in North America). He holds degrees from McGill and the London School of Economics, including a doctorate in political economy from the latter.

Crowley is immediate past president of Civitas, which promotes an understanding of the principles of free and ordered society. In addition, he is a member of the "Conseil scientifique" (Research Advisory Board) of l'Institut Turgot (Paris, France); the Research Advisory Board of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Winnipeg); the Nigerian Initiative for Public Policy Analysis (Lagos, Nigeria); and the Galen Institute (Alexandria, VA).

Crowley was a long-serving trustee of Clearwater Seafoods Income Fund and a Director of CS ManPar Inc., the managing partner of Clearwater Seafoods Limited Partnership, where he sat on the Audit and Governance Committees. He stepped down from the board at the AGM in June 2009. In 2007 he received the ICD.D. designation from the Canadian Institute for Corporate Directors.

Books

• The Self, the Individual and the Community, Oxford University Press, 1987
• The Road to Equity: Impolitic Essays, Stoddart, 1994
• Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values, Key Porter Books, 2009.
• The Canadian Century: Moving Out of America's Shadow, with Jason Clemens and Neils Veldhuis, Key Porter Books, 2010.
• Taking Ownership: Property Rights and Fishery Management on the Atlantic Coast, Editor, AIMS, 1996.

External links

• The Macdonald-Laurier Institute
• Atlantic Institute for Market Studies
• Atlantica
• Parliamentary Internships website
• Finance Canada Clifford Clark Visiting Economist
• Canadian Institute for Corporate Directors
• Clearwater Seafoods Limited
• Frontier Centre for Public Policy
• l'Institut Turgot
• Civitas
• Nigerian Initiative for Public Policy Analysis