Fredericton – On Wednesday November 18^th, the Green MLAs announced their critic roles and their priority policy areas.

David Coon, Leader of the Green Party of New Brunswick and MLA for Fredericton South will be the critic for Aboriginal Affairs; Executive Council Office; Intergovernmental Affairs; Natural Resources and Energy Development; Postsecondary Education Training and Labour; and Social Development.

Megan Mitton, MLA for Memramcook-Tantramar, will be the critic on matters of Healthy and Inclusive Communities, Climate Justice, and Education. The government departments she will be responsible for are Education and Early Childhood Development; Environment and Climate Change; Health; Service New Brunswick; Transportation and Infrastructure; Women’s Equality; Human Rights; and the Premier’s Council on Disabilities.

Kevin Arseneau, MLA for Kent North, will be the critic on matters of Developing and Strengthening Communities, Food Sovereignty and Fiscal, Economic and Social Justice. The government departments he will be responsible for are Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries; Finance and Treasury Board; Justice and Public Safety; Local Government; Official Languages; Rural & Economic Development; and Tourism, Heritage and Culture.

“Our team is ready to get to work,” said Coon. “We are going to hold the Higgs government to account, while pushing forward on important files with ideas and solutions.”

FREDERICTON - Green Party leader and MLA for Fredericton South David Coon is calling on the Higgs government to be more ambitious when it comes to providing affordable housing. The current commitment is to increase the subsidized housing supply by just 1 percent by 2022.

“There are 5,668 households on the Department of Social Development’s waiting list for subsidized housing, including an increase of 758 since July,” said Coon. “The government’s target of adding just 151 units over three years is a drop in a leaky bucket.”

In 2018, there were 28,000 New Brunswick households in need of affordable housing according to CMHC, defined by the number of households paying more than 30% of their income for housing. Yet funding for the Affordable Rental Housing Program has remained stagnant over the past three years, at less than $1 million per year.

“I was appalled to learn that the not-for-profit housing developers have been informed that the Province will no longer contribute to projects with federal government funding,” said Coon. “When the need is so great and the cost of borrowing is so low, government should be making major new investments in affordable housing now. That means budgeting far more than their obligations under the bilateral agreement they signed with Ottawa as part of the 2017 National Housing Strategy.”

FREDERICTON - Green Party leader and MLA for Fredericton South David Coon is calling on the Higgs government to establish rent controls to protect New Brunswickers against unreasonable rent increases.

“New Brunswick renters have fewer legal protections than other Canadians,” said Coon. “This is why I tabled a bill to strengthen our weak Residential Tenancies Act almost two years ago.” 

Coon’s bill spawned a concerted lobby effort by some rental property developers to convince the government and Official Opposition to vote it down. The bill did not reach second reading before the end of the spring sitting.

Since the Greens’ effort to strengthen legal safeguards for tenants, the ownership of rental properties in New Brunswick has continued to shift to out-of-province corporations.

Coon and Megan Mitton, the Green critic for Service New Brunswick and MLA for Memramcook-Tantramar, are calling on Service New Brunswick Minister Mary Wilson to introduce legislation this fall to better protect New Brunswick renters from unjustifiable cost increases.

“Housing is a human right. Large, unjustifiable increases in rent will have negative consequences such as increasing homelessness and deepening poverty,” said Mitton. “Government must establish rent controls to protect tenants and avoid these negative consequences.”

FREDERICTON – Green Party leader David Coon and his caucus are calling the New Brunswick Nurses Union’s investigation into the long-term care sector a wake-up call for political leaders in New Brunswick. 

Entitled, The Forgotten Generation: An Urgent Call for Reform in New Brunswick’s Long-Term Care Sector, the report found that 73% of nurses surveyed say resident care has declined in their nursing home over the last 5 years.

“The Nurses Union investigation has torn off the veil on what amounts to systemic neglect of seniors in care by successive governments,” said Coon. “Government after government has failed to provide even the bare minimum funding necessary for nursing homes to comply with provincial standards of care, inadequate as they are.”  

Nurses working in nursing homes reported that residents fail to receive the emotional support they need 62% of the time, missed out on regular exercise 71% of the time, and did not have timely access to toileting 31% of the time.

According to the report, in 2019, nearly half the homes were unable to meet minimum staffing requirements.   Reliance on casual staffing has risen to unacceptably high levels of more than 75%.

“The system is broken. There is no direct link between the level of funding and the health needs of nursing home residents. This means that most residents do not receive the 2.89 hours of care, as staff tend to those with the most extreme needs,” said Coon.

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This is Mental Health Week in Canada, which culminates in World Mental Health Day on Saturday October 10^th.    Green Party Leader and Fredericton South MLA David Coon is calling on the Higgs government to rapidly implement its campaign commitment to opening walk-in mental health clinics around the province and take further steps to improve our mental health care system.

“It is shocking that less than five percent of our health care budget is devoted to treating mental illness,” said Coon.  “In addition to establishing walk-in mental health clinics, sufficient funding must be provided to transform our Mental Health Mobile Crisis Teams into 24/7 first responders, and to cover the costs of psychotherapy through Medicare.”

The regional health authorities operate mental health mobile crisis teams in the province, but their hours of operation and geographic reach are limited by their funding, leaving police to respond to mental health calls, for which they have no training. Coon says that the mental health mobile crisis teams must be funded to serve as a new class of first responders so they there will be trained mental health professionals responding to mental health or “wellness” calls, around the clock, rather than police.

Medicare does not pay for psychotherapy, leaving many with mental illness untreated.

“If you need chemotherapy to treat cancer, or physiotherapy to treat an injury, Medicare pays the bill.  If you need psychotherapy to treat your mental illness, you pay the bill, and that is indefensible,” said Coon.

Coon says that walk-in clinics to reduce the insufferable wait times for mental health care, mental health first-responders, and the pubic funding of psychotherapy would go along away to improving mental health care in New Brunswick.

Once again, First Nations in New Brunswick are being forced to resort to the courts because of the refusal of successive governments to recognize and implement their rights to land and resources, despite the Supreme Court’s admonition of provincial governments to recognize and negotiate the implementation of these rights.

Yesterday, Wolastoqey chiefs announced they will be seeking the Court’s recognition of the Wolastoqey Nation’s title to their traditional territory. This follows the 2016 court filing by Elsipogtog seeking the affirmation of the Mi’kmaq Nation’s title to the Sikniktuk district in eastern New Brunswick.

“Liberal and Conservative cabinet ministers in successive governments have routinely acknowledged at public events that First Nations in New Brunswick never ceded their lands, but any attempt by First Nation leaders to negotiate the implementation of land and treaty rights has been shunned,” said David Coon, Leader of the Green Party and MLA for Fredericton-South.

 “I am calling on Premier Blaine Higgs to open negotiations around the implementation of land rights to avoid a costly and unnecessary legal battle that inevitably will end up in the Supreme Court,” said Coon. 

 

FREDERICTON – During Disabilities Awareness Week, Green Party Leader David Coon is calling on the Higgs government to implement the key recommendations of New Brunswick’s Disability Action Plan, including introducing an Accessibility Act when the Legislature resumes in November.

“While significant progress has been made in terms of raising awareness about New Brunswickers living with disabilities, government legislation and policies have not advanced very far,” said Coon. “By implementing the 43 recommendations from the Premier’s Council on Disabilities report, the Premier can show that he is serious about ensuring that people with a disability can live a dignified life.”

Coon also urged the Higgs government to provide better income support for people with a disability by establishing a Guaranteed Annual Income for people with a disability and eliminating the Household Income Policy.

"The Household Income Policy is punitive and prevents people with a disability who receive social assistance from sharing accommodations,” said Coon. “The new Minister of Social Development must move to eliminate this policy immediately.”

FREDERICTON – With the announcement that Clinic 554 will be closing its doors to the public today, Green Party Leader David Coon says that the Higgs government must act swiftly to ensure its services, including abortions and LGBTQ2+ health care, remain accessible in New Brunswick.

“With the closure of Clinic 554, abortions will be completely inaccessible in western New Brunswick, and yet another family doctor will have closed their practice in Fredericton,” said Coon. “On top of this, Clinic 554 was a leader in providing healthcare services to the LGBTQ2+ community in New Brunswick, which are now gone.  Providing continuity of these health care services must be a priority for the new Minister of Health and the Regional Health Authorities.”

In 2018 the federal government concluded that “the lack of coverage for private clinic abortions under the New Brunswick provincial health care insurance plan ran afoul of the accessibility and comprehensiveness criteria of the Canada Health Act.” However the New Brunswick government chose to ignore this finding.

"Swift action to ensure the continuity of health care services that were provided by Clinic 554 is essential," said Coon.

FREDERICTON – David Coon, Leader of the Green Party of New Brunswick, released the following statement following the swearing-in of the new provincial cabinet:

“I want to congratulate all of the government MLAs who have joined or re-joined the provincial cabinet on their appointments today.  

The decision to separate Local Government from Environment and give the Minister responsibility for Local Governance Reform has the potential to strengthen local democracy and self-determination, should that be the mandate the Premier has in mind.

This decision also returned the Department of Environment to a stand-alone department, but this must not result in a reduction in its staff and capacity to function as an effective regulatory agency, and to implement the provincial action strategies on climate, water quality, and waste reduction. 

I was dismayed to see the Premier eliminate a dedicated Minister with responsibility for Indigenous Affairs when there is so much work to be done to build a relationship that respects indigenous, treaty and land rights, while rooting out systemic racism. 

With the major challenges we face to ensure New Brunswickers have access to the health care services, I look forward to working with the new Minister of Health Dorothy Shephard with whom I have developed a strong working relationship while she was Minister of Social Development. 

I will continue as a member of the COVID Cabinet Committee, as it resumes its regular work on Thursday.  We have much work to do in order to help keep New Brunswickers safe, secure and healthy as we navigate through the pandemic.”