One good shill deserves another

Image: Jim Flaherty and Brian Lee Crowley

Any wonder that Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute wrote an opinion piece in today's Globe that supports Flaherty's proposed rip-off of Canadian pensioners in a piece entitled "We'll keep working past 65, and we'll like it"?

The is the same Brian Lee Crowley and the same Macdonald-Laurier Institute that Flaherty raised money for, using his office to do so. See: Finance Minister Jim Flaherty shill for new right wing think tank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute

I suppose it only goes to prove one good shill deserves another!

Flaherty a big fan of a new think tank

Thursday, June 18, 2009
PATRICIA BEST
Globe and Mail

Tomorrow night, the country's Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, will host a private dinner at the Albany Club in Toronto to raise support for a new, non-partisan, private sector think tank. Called the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and designed to be national in scope but based in Ottawa, it is the creation of Brian Lee Crowley, currently president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax.

Mr. Flaherty is "giving it my personal backing," he says in a letter inviting well-heeled Bay Street types to the event "and I hope that you will consider doing the same."

Having spent several years in the capital, the minister says "I can speak with some authority when I say that driving change within Ottawa is not easy. There are powerful actors in Ottawa, within the civil service, Parliament, the media and in many non-governmental organizations, that actively resist progress. ... Although I have always felt very well supported by friends and colleagues, I have clearly felt the need for independent research, support and promotion of these ideals," which he enumerates as smaller government, lower taxes and greater personal responsibility.

Mr. Flaherty continues: "That is why I strongly support Brian Crowley's project to create a national, non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa."

Yesterday, a spokesman for the minister said of the endorsement: "I doubt if he does it a lot."

Mr. Crowley told Nobody's Business yesterday that he hopes to launch in the fall and has already raised $1-million, adding: "Other Western countries have their most important and influential think tanks always in the national capital. Canada is really an anomaly and I think that's a big hole in our democratic infrastructure."

Mr. Flaherty came to know Mr. Crowley when the latter spent a year and a half attached to the Department of Finance as a visiting economist.

The minister concludes his pitch to potential backers of the new think tank by saying: "I'd like to see him return with a strong, independent and well-financed organization behind him to help transform Ottawa for the better, regardless of who is in power. This important national initiative deserves to succeed. Please join me in ensuring that it does. My office will follow up with you."