MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley discussed climate talks in Cancun and the deepening US economic mess in a recent appearance on CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange. Click here to watch the segment, which starts at the 36-minute mark.
On March 31, I appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology to discuss Free to Learn. On the whole, I found the Senators’ reception to the proposal to be very positive. My fellow panelists Michael Mendelson, Jane Preston, and Andrew Sharpe also offered interesting perspectives on the barriers to Aboriginal post-secondary education. It is heartening to hear policymakers at the federal level discussing the proposal in earnest, and I sincerely hope it continues. Below is the transcript. You can also view the video, here (it takes a few minutes to download).
On November 29, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute releasedTo Stand On Guard: A National Security Strategy for Canadians. Author Paul Chapin, a 25 year veteran of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, and MLI’s Managing Director, Brian Lee Crowley, presented the reported to Canadians at a press conference in Ottawa.
On March 15, 2010, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute released its first publication, Free to Learn: Giving Aboriginal Youth Control over their Post-Secondary Education. Brian Lee Crowley, Calvin Helin and Dave Snow present the study to members of the media at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa.
He’s had an impact too. Chris Edwards writes about Cutting Government the Canadian Way and points the compass northward as a lesson for Americans when he writes, “For more on the Canadian fiscal reforms, see The Canadian Century by Brian Lee Crowley, Jason Clemens, and Niels Veldhuis.”
On Sunday, April 10, 2011, Brian Lee Crowley will join the discussion about the current election campaign on Goldhawk Live on CPAC. The discussion will centre around the federal party’s promises over the past two weeks of the campaign, and how economically feasible their promises sound in the context of a large deficit and a healthcare crunch that most agree is headed for a crisis in funding to support our aging population.
MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley appeared on CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange yesterday discussing public debt and unfunded public pension liabilities. While Canada is not yet in the same boat as countries like Greece and Portugal, there are storm clouds on the horizon and public pension funding liabilities are one of them, as Crowley highlighted.
Brian was also asked about recent debt management suggestions that are coming out of the US. He noted, pursuing a theme from MLI’s best-selling book Canadian Century, that what is absent in the US today is a multi-partisan attack on deficits that was exhibited in Canada in the mid-1990s.
Our First Annual Macdonald-Laurier Soirée on Feb. 15 was a great success. Some 200 guests mingled, munched and listened to former Prime Ministers the Right Hon. Jean Chrétien and the Right Hon. Joe Clark, House of Commons Speaker the Hon. Peter Milliken and the shades of former PMs Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier praise and debate Canada’s political tradition.
Soirée gets a mention on the Society Page of the Ottawa Citizen. Click here to see the article.
If you couldn’t make it, here are some video images from Tuesday evening and we hope to see you next year.
January 20, 2012, Ottawa, ON – Less than 2 years old, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) has just been rated one of the top five new think tanks in the world and is the only Canadian institute on the list. This is the second year in a row MLI has made the list of the top 20 new think tanks globally, having debuted last year at Number 20 after a mere 6 months of operation.
The ranking was recently released as part of the 2011 Global Go-To Think Tanks Report conducted by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s International Relations Program.
According to MLI’s Managing Director, Brian Lee Crowley, “Being ranked one of the top five new think tanks globally drives home MLI’s central message: we are filling a hole in Canada’s democratic infrastructure created by the lack of a national think tank in the national capital working on the full range of national issues. Coming as it does on the heels of the Institute winning the big international prize for think tank publications (the Sir Antony Fisher Award) in 2011 for our first book, The Canadian Century, all of us at MLI feel more convinced than ever that the decision to launch the new Institute was the right one for Canada.”
Founded in 2010, the Institute has quickly become a source of timely and thoughtful ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and shape public policy for the better. Whether in the area of refugee policy, pension reform, fiscal discipline, healthcare transfers, or crime and justice issues, to name but a few, MLI has a proven track record of bringing the very best minds to bear on real problems, and seeing our recommendations reflected in policy changes. MLI is the only non-partisan, independent national public policy think tank based in Ottawa that focuses on the full range of issues that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Our funding comes from a wide range of private sector sources, including individuals, small businesses, corporations and charitable foundations.
The 2011 Global Go-To Think Tank Rankings is the fifth such annual report. The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s International Relations Program has relied on the indexing criteria and process developed by James G. McGann for ranking think tanks around the world. The Program’s Rankings remain the first and most comprehensive ranking of the world’s top think tanks and have been described as the insider’s guide to the global marketplace of ideas.
On May 10, 2012, we held the final History Wars debate of the season. In this debate, former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps and award-winning journalist Andrew Coyne debated the resolution: Power corrupts Canadian Prime Ministers. In case you missed this debate, it is now available on-demand courtesy of...
