Author:
BRISON CAMPAIGN per Joe Hueglin
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 20:58:48 02/21/03 Fri
Author Host/IP: d150-99-156.home.cgocable.net/24.150.99.156
The Fredericton Daily Gleaner
Tory candidate big on marketing
Progressive Conservative leader wannabe Scott Brison strides into a room looking like a true blue-blooded banker and talks up the need for federal tax reform with a vengeance.
The 35-year-old federal Tory party finance critic, who aspires to take his party's top job at the end of May, comes with credible credentials as a vice-president of investment banking for Yorkton Securities Inc. of Toronto.
But it's his first job that holds the interesting key to his personality.
In 1987, he was president of University Rentals Ltd.
That entry relates to when the then-19-year-old Brison, a commerce student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, got 30 days' credit, rounded up 180 fridges and created a business renting the units to students.
Brison said his marketing strategy was two-sided: he showed parents photos of fresh veggies and milk in a fridge, whereas he showed pictures of Moosehead beer chilling to students.
The young entrepreneur - who travelled Atlantic Canada with his marketing ploy - cut his overhead by camping out in his car.
Brison, a third-generation entrepreneur in a family that always ran its own businesses, said it's that type of business drive that he believes exists in Atlantic Canada, indeed in the country as a whole.
Make no mistake, Brison's no longer a fridge salesman. But he said he believes his type of drive to excel and create his own enterprise isn't unique and it can be nurtured through innovative Canadian tax policy.
Brison said he is smart enough to know he needs good people to help him do his homework.
The Kings-Hants MP from Nova Scotia is testing his tax theories with everyone from the dean of business at the University of Toronto to outspoken business leaders such as Nova Scotia's Peter O'Brien.
Like the party's five other leadership candidates, Brison's also working the backrooms of his own party. In New Brunswick on Thursday, he met Tory MLAs and Premier Bernard Lord.
MP John Herron is squiring his New Brunswick tour and helping him wring the right hands.
Brison has pulled together a team of campaign backers that includes an eclectic mix of young people to the likes of old guard Tories such as Senator Lowell Murray, former ranking Alliance members interested in Tory rejuvenation and former prime minister Brian Mulroney's ex-chief of staff.
In this national leadership race, Brison is avoiding Liberal and Alliance bashing.
He said his drive is to create an agenda for new ideas, debate, controversy if need be, and engagement with Canadians who are just bored with politics.
But whether it was a Pierre Trudeau vision of Canada or Brian Mulroney's drive to create a free trade deal with the United States, Brison said he likes the idea of leaders who lead and challenge and look beyond elections.
Brison said he wants to cut capital gains tax and send a message to Canadians that it's OK to celebrate success instead of pummelling initiative and ambition.
He is proposing the abandonment of regional economic development bureaucracies that have failed for 40 years. He said he'd take the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency's $447-million annual budget and 500 employees and use those funds to eliminate federal corporate taxes in the region.
It wouldn't cost Ottawa any more money and it would turn Atlantic Canadian companies into competitive contributors to the national wealth, he said.
Brison said he'd reform the employment insurance system so that Canadians have an investment component in their EI account, a tool that could create a modest capital reserve they could draw upon for educational upgrading.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
|
Feedback: 