Alice McKim has worked for almost 20 years as a teacher at Saint John High School. She said she’s running to become a Member of the Legislative Assembly because she is frustrated.
McKim said the biggest challenge is that Saint John has been neglected and in decline for 50 years. She thinks we need some innovation like small nuclear reactors to move us into some lean growth, to bring in more jobs and we should tax the super-wealthy to get us to that point.
She said New Brunswick has a lot of debt, but our debt to GDP ratio or how long would it take to pay off the debt if you put all your money into it. Ours is 40 per cent, the Canadian average.
McKim said when she sees people talk about balancing the budget, this usually means the poorest of the poor suffer because transit is cut by $800,000 or child poverty reaches 50 per cent in the Harbour riding.
“This is something that is simply not fair, that we have in Harbour riding, the lowest income area in the entire nation, right next door to the highest in Rothesay,” she said.
McKim said she is pro-business, but the industrial tax money normally serves the community it resides in but that doesn’t happen in the Harbour. She said there need to be some changes across the board because it simply isn’t fair the way it’s set up now, and she wants to see industrial tax reform.
Her mother was a nurse and McKim said when it comes to healthcare, if the government says it’ll take a while to get lesser services due to money constraints, that is a government unwilling to tax the super-rich so we could afford better.
“I’m someone who believes that anybody in need of services should be able to receive those services in a reasonably quick period of time,” she said
McKim said healthcare facilities such as Clinic 554 provide a number of services whether it’s abortion which is a charter right, or healthcare for trans and nonbinary individuals so they won’t run into doctors or hospitals that don’t understand or who will misgender them.
She said when it comes to pandemic care, we were lucky as a province but she likely would have closed schools at least five days earlier.
When it comes to education, McKim’s experience is that teachers are underfunded.
“It’s just that teachers are being asked to do too much and the resources are not being provided for us to be a truly inclusive place. We are one of the most inclusive places in the world for kids, and I think that’s fantastic but it needs to be resourced,” she said.
McKim is a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and is in favour of an inquiry into systemic racism. She views these as opportunities to stand up as human beings and say there are some things that are unacceptable in our society.
She said she won’t be toeing the party line as a Liberal either. She said she will only support those items she agrees with, and she’ll be vocal about which those are.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Alice McKim likely would have closed schools at least five days later when in fact it should have read five days earlier.
