New Brunswick election: Conservatives promise financial literacy curriculum

FREDERICTON — The leader of New Brunswick’s Progressive Conservatives is promising to make financial literacy part of the school curriculum if his party wins the Oct. 21 election

Blaine Higgs campaigned Thursday in Fredericton when he made the announcement, saying he wants students to enter adulthood with a better understanding of how money works.

“We count on our education system to set our children up for success in life, giving them the skills they need to succeed … and understanding the basics of money is so important,” Higgs said in a statement.

Higgs, who is seeking a third term in office as premier, said it’s unacceptable that a growing number of youth don’t know how to open a bank account or create a household budget. The new curriculum, he said, would also teach students about debits, credits, interest rates, inflation, mortgages, leases, loans and RRSPs, among other things.

“Regardless of which career a person chooses, what their pay is, or where they live, knowing how to effectively handle one’s finances is an essential part of life,” he said.

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Susan Holt pledged that, if elected to govern, her party would overhaul the province’s approach to mental health and addiction care by adding community outreach workers to deliver front-line support.

She said these workers would help school psychologists, which she said are in short supply. Holt said there are just six psychologists working in New Brunswick’s anglophone schools when there should be 40.

“In our school system, we are missing the school psychologists that could help address the problem before it finds itself in the emergency room across the anglophone school district,” Holt said during a campaign event in Fredericton.

The Liberal leader said access to mental health care has deteriorated since Higgs and his party were elected to govern six years ago.

“It’s something that we need to address as a crisis,” she said. “No meaningful action has been taken to address the needs of New Brunswick mental health …. It’s been treated as an afterthought, a sidebar, when it is a core part of our health.”

A Narrative Research survey of 1,400 Atlantic Canadians, released Thursday, suggested that the most important issue for New Brunswickers was health care, followed by the cost of living and housing. Among the 400 people in the province who took part in the survey, 21 per cent picked heath care as “the most important issue facing Atlantic Canadians today.”

The result was the same in P.E.I., where 36 per cent of those surveyed picked health care as the top issue. But in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, the cost of living was ranked No. 1.

Also on Thursday, Green Party Leader David Coon was in Fredericton, where he announced that a Green government would impose a 2.5 per cent cap on rent increases as part of a broader five-point plan to increase the supply of affordable housing.

“Since the government got out of the business of building housing in the 1990s, Liberal and Conservative governments have let the supply of affordable housing fall by the wayside,” Coon said in a statement.

Among other things, the Greens’ plan calls for requiring the NB Housing Corporation to provide funding for non-market housing proposed by non-profits, co-operatives, faith communities and service clubs.

Coon said he also wants to combine affordable housing with “wraparound support services” to help homeless people with complex needs. And he promises to spur development of low-rent housing by linking property taxes with rental income rather than property value.

“This will significantly reduce the property tax costs for low-rent apartments, making affordable housing a more reasonable investment,” Coon said. “Affordable housing is a fundamental human right, so a Green government will treat it that way and drive a renovation and construction boom.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press