Crowley named visiting senior fellow with the Galen Institute

The Galen Institute is pleased to announce that Brian Lee Crowley, Ph.D., the founding president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), is joining the institute as a visiting senior fellow. In his new role, Brian will advance the Galen Institutes work on public policy through speeches, conferences, and writing aimed chiefly at using the Canadian health care experience to shed light on the U.S. health policy debate.

AIMS is one of Canada’s leading public policy think tanks. The Galen Institute has worked closely with AIMS over the years in advancing health reform ideas. The Galen Institute is the leading think tank in the United States devoted exclusively to promoting ideas that advance individual freedom, consumer choice, and competition in the health sector. Brians work with the Galen Institute will be in addition to his full-time work with AIMS.

We are delighted to have Brian join us in advancing a positive conversation over the value of markets and innovation in health reform, said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute. His prestige as well as his knowledge and experience with the Canadian health care system will give him great credibility in helping to educate policymakers and the public about health reform initiatives being proposed in the U.S. We look forward to bringing Brians expertise into this debate.

In the nearly 15 years since its founding, AIMS has brought a distinctive and influential voice to regional and national debates in Canada over public policy in areas such as health care, fiscal and tax policy, social policy, education performance and accountability, equalization, regulatory policy, Canada-US relations, and much more.

AIMS is one of the world’s most honored think tanks. It is a four time winner of the prestigious Sir Antony Fisher Award, which recognizes excellence in public policy think tank publications and projects. No think tank in the world has won this honor more times than AIMS. In its tenth anniversary year (2004-05), AIMS also won the Templeton Freedom Prize for Institute Excellence. More than 200 think tanks world wide are eligible for the Fisher and Templeton prizes. Of the nearly 100 recognized think tanks in Canada, AIMS is one of only 5 to make the 2008 global Go-To Think Tanks list published by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. While he was still Leader of the Opposition, Canadas Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, called AIMS, “dollar for dollar the best think tank in the country.”

Crowley is a much sought-after media commentator on health-care policy and has spoken to scores of national and international conferences in recent years on health-care reform in Canada.

Among his many books and other publications, 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 most influential recent provincial health-care inquiry in Canada, the Alberta Premiers Advisory Council on Health (the Mazankowski Committee). The Councils Chairman, former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Don Mazankowski, called Crowley the “intellectual architect” of the committees report.

In March 2008 Crowley returned to AIMS after a year and a half on secondment as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist with Canadas Department of Finance in Ottawa. This is the most senior independent economic policy advisory position within the federal government and 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 various universities in Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe, 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 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 (one of Canada’s two national newspapers) and of the National Political Panel on Morningside with the late Peter Gzowski on CBC Radio. He holds degrees from McGill and the London School of Economics, including a doctorate in political economy from the latter.

Crowley is President of Civitas, a Canadian society that promotes an understanding of the principles of a free and ordered society; and is a director of the Maine Public Policy Institute. 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); and the Nigerian Institute for Public Policy (Lagos, Nigeria). He is an Adjunct Faculty Member at the Center for Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation in Washington DC.