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Legislation before the US Congress does not merely authorise parallel imports of pharmaceuticals from the EU; it mandates them. The danger is that the US is, in effect, proposing to suck drugs out of the EU – and thus away from EU patients, in order to lower prices for US patients. This is an issue not merely of patient safety and access to medicines, but poses deep constitutional questions as an example of US legislative overreach, attempting to impose American rules on the EU.

Brian Lee Crowley is one of the foremost experts on Canadian healthcare, and is able to bring to the debate unrivalled insights and experience, given that Canada is now placed in a similar position to the EU.

This lunchtime seminar will examine the threat posed to EU patients by US action, the Canadian experience, and the likely impact on EU healthcare.

Brian Lee Crowley is the founding President of AIMS, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, in Canada. AIMS is one of the world's most honoured 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 honour more times than AIMS. In its tenth anniversary year (2004-05), AIMS also won the Templeton Freedom Prize for Institute Excellence.

Among his many books and other publications, Crowley has 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 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 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. 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 EEC 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). He is currently an adviser to the federal government.