Green Party Leader Says The Minimum Wage Should Be $15 Per Hour
David Coon, leader of the New Brunswick Green Party, took questions from business leaders in a Zoom session on Tuesday afternoon.
The conversation was wide-ranging and included discussions about health-care funding, the economy, and nuclear power.
The Green platform says if the party formed government they would push for a $15 per hour minimum wage, and implement a guaranteed livable income for New Brunswickers.
Asked if the $15 minimum wage would unfairly harm small business owners, Coon said the government could play a big role in avoiding that issue.
“If someone’s on minimum wage, and a business is in a position where it can only pay minimum wage, it’s far better for the government to step in and play a role than essentially that staff person having to subsidize the business through that low wage,” Coon said.
A hot topic on the campaign trail this year has been the possibility of bringing small modular nuclear reactor technology to New Brunswick.
Both the PCs and Liberals have made promises to attract the industry to the province, saying it would create thousands of jobs.
Coon called the proposition ‘extremely risky business,’ as the technology is expensive and still a far way from being ready for implementation in the province, in addition to being an ecological hazard.
“The amount of money that would be sucked into that technology in its development phase should be spent on supporting a shift to renewable energy now,” Coon said. “We’ve got proven technology, it’s affordable, and (we can) invest around the margins where we can add value.”
Coon was also asked about how a Green government would handle health-care investments. He believes it’s time to ‘take the politics out’ of the discussion.
He says he proposed a standing committee on health-care reform, which would have brought all parties around the table with health industry experts.
Coon says Health Minister Ted Flemming supported the idea, but Premier Blaine Higgs turned the idea down.
He believes major reforms need to come on health-care access, including mental health-care integration and improving community health-care access around the province.
On the subject of attracting health-care professionals to New Brunswick, Coon said the government needs to be in the same place as the other Maritime provinces with incentives to graduating medical students.
“We can’t be competing against our neighbouring Maritime provinces in terms of our own graduates,” Coon said. “We need to have a level playing field.”
Ben Burnett is a reporter with Country 94/97.3 The Wave, a Huddle content partner.