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Candidate Spotlight: Brent Harris

Saint John, NB, Canada / Country 94
Stephanie Sirois
Aug 27, 2020 | 5:57 PM


Candidate Spotlight: Brent Harris

Brent Harris. (Image: Submitted/Kelly Lawson)

It’s all about the issues that need help from the province, and the Green Party candidate for Saint John Harbour said he got involved from there.

Brent Harris said most people would know him trying to solve housing issues in the city, from the Saint John Tool Library and as an entrepreneur.

He said he cares about the future of the city and there’s a number of issues that got him involved in politics.

“There’s a number of issues that we’ve been asking for help from the province and even our councillors pushing for to get assistance and projects like the South End community school, for the museum that got cancelled and the Fundy Quay project, just seeing all that in the last few years of Saint John,” he said.

Harris said because of how the Green party values work around decentralized government and pushing for more resilient economic recovery plans would change the game in Saint John.

He said the three big issues he sees coming out of this election are municipal reform and tax reform, both things he says could be solved with simple legislative changes. Harris said he also sees a recovery plan for the pandemic and solutions for the housing crisis as top priorities.

He said recovery plans for the pandemic are going to take government initiative and infrastructure and should include a conversation about vaccinations, which Harris said, “ought to be mandatory”.

“The science is powerful for vaccinations, it speaks for itself, and I understand there are people out there who are concerned about vaccinations for whatever reason, whether it be misinformation they find online, whether it be a story they heard from someone anecdotally, but the science is powerful and we need to do a better job at communicating that science without ridicule and without demonizing people,” he said.

Harris said when it comes to healthcare reform, there’s a number of people who have been left out of the conversation.

“But there’s a hundred different ways we can fix our revenue problem as a province that our provincial governments just have refused to do and I don’t think it has to be one of the other. We don’t have to close down ERs and create less resilient health care systems in order to achieve a balanced budget,” he said.

Harris said Clinic 554 is an important piece for the province but it does go beyond what is the current debate. He said the clinic provides important healthcare services to LGBTQ population and those who need abortion access, and, once it comes to the province, midwifery care.

“We’ve had women in this province calling for midwifery care that we see in other provinces that will reduce costs in our healthcare system, we know it, the data is solid, we know that midwifery care is an important piece that needs to come to the New Brunswick healthcare system and it’s been passed legislation for years but midwifery care will come through a lot of private clinics,” he said.

Harris said many of those clinics are decentralized, and if the province does right by Clinic 554, women won’t have to leave the province to receive this type of care, or to a specific city. He said funding Clinic 554 would be a step to making serious healthcare reform in mental health and midwifery and he doesn’t see many people talking about it.

Harris said there are a number of things we can do, culturally different things in institutions and government to do better.

“If we need to do a better job in any area of our government institutionally that it has to do with racism, then we need to know about it, and when we know about it, we need to acknowledge it, hey we messed up, we need to fix this, tell us how to fix this,” he said.

Harris said he is a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and there are a number of areas of life in the city he still needs to learn about. Harris thinks we need to find ways to invite people onto the municipal issues and move beyond the status quo people.

“I do support an inquiry into systemic racism, no one can be above systemic racism, just like no one can be above homophobia or transphobia. We need to do a better job at just having a culture of love exist between all our institutions instead of this disconnection we see. That disconnection creates isolation which creates distrust which creates all sorts of problems,” he said.

Harris said there are a few revenue streams that can change so that we see more results especially when it comes to deficit spending. He said some departments are getting paid without seeing results, companies with strong profits are getting tax exemptions and strong agricultural potential in the province which could take over supply line to create revenue and create jobs.

“We all know we’re giving tax exemptions to companies in heavy industry that doesn’t deserve it and it’s creating fragility in our revenue structure. So this deficit spending, although we need to understand what it means to be fiscally responsible, we also can’t ignore that keeping the status quo is what’s keeping that deficit necessary,” he said.

Harris said poverty is a complex issue and handling the housing crisis properly will go a long way to some winnable victories move the needle.

He said if we fix some of the housing issues, people will be more willing to put down roots and engage with their community.

“Until we find better methods of funding housing and supporting community organizations that understand where housing need to go and what housing needs to be there,” he said.

“There’s been a number of projects that have been aborted in this city simply because we couldn’t figure out how to get funding while we throw millions of dollars at developers that are getting record profits on their developments for subsidized housing. That’s something we can change.”

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