Podcast: Brian Lee Crowley On Economic Growth Potential And The ‘Covid Misery Index’
Brian Lee Crowley has little patience for governments that try to spend their way to economic prosperity. He also has no time for the view that Atlantic Canada is less prosperous because it has been mistreated by central Canada since Confederation.
Crowley is the managing director and founder of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He’s also the founder and former president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, now part of the Fraser Institute.
He joins Don Mills and David Campbell on the latest episode of the Huddle “Insights” podcast to talk about how Atlantic Canada needs to take charge of its economic destiny and stop looking to Ottawa to solve its problems through equalization payments and regional aid programs.
“Equalization has not, on balance, served the interest of Atlantic Canada,” says Crowley. “It creates perverse incentives which reward the provinces in Atlantic Canada for maintaining high taxation rates, big government spending, and the conditions I think have contributed to the persistence of underdevelopment in the region.”
Crowley also talks about the institute’s Covid Misery Index – a tool designed to assess government performance through the pandemic, measuring how the virus itself and our responses to it have harmed human wellbeing.
“What the international index shows us is that every other industrialized country that we compare ourselves to spent less than we did and many of them got better results than we did,” he says. “We spent more money than we needed to…to poor effect. Who is in favour of that?”
This is the second of two conversations on the role of “think tanks” in shaping the region’s economy. On the August 26th episode, Mills spoke with Niels Veldhuis of the Fraser Institute about his views on creating economic conditions that encourage investment in Atlantic Canada and keep our young people from moving to faster-growing, more economically successful regions.
Podcast: Niels Veldhuis On Making Atlantic Canada The Country’s Most Prosperous Region
You can listen to Mills’ and Campbell’s conversation with Crowley in the player above or on your favourite podcast platform. Search for “Huddle Insights” on platforms like Apple and Spotify, and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. You can also listen to past conversations there or here.
The “Insights” podcast combines the experiences of an economist, David Campbell, and a social scientist, Don Mills, to explore the challenges and opportunities facing Atlantic Canada, to promote data-driven decision-making among policymakers, and to encourage a wider dialogue and debate leading to greater prosperity for the region.
“Insights” is part of a Huddle podcast network that also features Home Office, hosted by Huddle editor Mark Leger.