As part of our coverage of the federal election, Investment Executive is profiling candidates who are working or who have worked in the financial services industry.

Here we look at Liberal candidate Scott Brison:

Scott Brison, the 39-year-old Minister of Public Works and member from the Nova Scotia riding of Kings Hants, believes maintaining Canada’s competitive position in the world market is the most pressing financial issue facing the country.

“In a hyper-competitive global economy, both talent and capital are unprecedentedly mobile today, which is why the federal government and provincial governments need to maintain competitive tax, regulatory and social policies,” he says.

“Our tax system has to be competitive and our regulatory environment needs to be competitive, but we also need to have social policies that ensure that we have a healthy, educated and competitive workforce, not just now, but in the decades to come.”

The youngest member of the federal Cabinet, Brison was first elected to federal Parliament in 1997 as a member of the Progressive Conservative party. He is perhaps best known for making headlines when he crossed the floor to join the Liberals in December 2003.

With an extensive business background, including a stint as a senior vice president of Yorkton Securities Ltd., Brison says creation of national securities regulator is an important issue not only for the financial services industry but for the general public as well.

“As somebody who was in the industry, my view has been the sooner we get to a national regulator the better,” he says, speaking as an individual candidate and not as a cabinet minister. “In the past this was seen as something that was ‘inside baseball’ for the financial community … but with corporate governance and confidence in the capital markets being such a big issue for Canadians and for any investor anywhere in the world today, and in a post Sarbanes-Oxley environment, it has gone from being a Bay Street issue to being a Main Street issue.

“A national regulator can have more resources and effectively have more teeth to enforce securities rules.”

He says he hopes the provinces work together toward the goal of a national regulator. With Canada accounting for only 1.5% of global capital markets, he says having individual regulators for each province and territory only “balkanizes” Canada’s share of the market.

Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Brison attended Dalhousie University, where he received a Bachelor of Commerce (finance). In 1987, he established his first company, University Rentals Ltd., which rented primarily bar fridges and microwaves ovens on university campuses.

Four years later, he became the North American sales manager for Aquarius Coatings of New York. He was vice president of Yorkton from 2000-2003, while he sat as a private member. At Yorkton, he was active in securing financing for emerging companies, particularly in Atlantic Canada. The son of a stockbroker (who recently retired at age 81), Brison regards a background in business and finance as a boon to a career in public office.

“I think a financial industry background helps from an analytical perspective, to understand the types of policies that have the capacity to make the country a magnet for capital and talent and, alternatively, the kinds of policies that can repel both capital and talent,” he says. “So it gives you an opportunity to look at things as a potential investor would look a things.”