Scott Brison to tackle cost of campaign promises as Treasury Board president

Kings-Hants MP Scott Brison is now one of the people that must try to come up with the cash to fund all the promises the Liberal Party made in the run up to last month's election victory. 

Brison has been named president of the Treasury Board, which manages and approves all government spending, looks for efficiencies in government and handles labour relations with the public service.  

Not a task for the faint of heart. 

• Scott Brison named president of Treasury Board

"We have an ambitious agenda, and we need to pay for that," Brison said in an interview with Information Morning.  

The items on that agenda include a tax cut for middle-class families, developing a plan to increase jobs, addressing the Syrian refugee crisis and starting what the Liberals say is the biggest infrastructure plan in the country's history. 

None of those changes will be cheap and that's just a fraction of what the Liberals want to get done during their mandate. 

Nova Scotia on to-do list

Brison said the government wants to meet all the promises it made in its election platform.
  
"We want Canadians to be able to see that platform and to watch as we go through those promises and that we honour those promises," he said. "Canadians voted for change in this election and we're going to deliver." 

That includes repairing relations and rebuilding respect in the federal public service, Brison said.

Improving Nova Scotia's economic state is also near the top of Brison's to-do list. 

"We are going to be moving Nova Scotia forward, we're going to be working closely with Premier McNeil."

"We've got a remarkable opportunity to get to work right now and over the next four years, to move the needle, in terms of laying track for public policy that has the potential to turn our region around." 

Exactly how much money is available to do all that work isn't clear though. Brison says the government will get a better handle on that as members settle into their new roles.

He said the Conservative government had projected a $1.5 billion surplus for the current fiscal year, but since then growth projections have started to drop.

That could mean the government will have far less money than it thought. 

"Once we open up the hood and look under it in terms of the fiscal situation, I think we're going to find the situation is not as rosy as the previous government projected."