Brett Gagnon

Why would you like to represent the people of New Hampshire, and why should they elect you? 

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I believe that I am a more accurate representation of the majority of our community. I am a young father of one with a full-time job. I own a home and have volunteered in my community for a few years now. I am a  frugal and logically minded engineer that can understand anyone’s point of view as long as it’s backed with fact and reason. I want to help transform our legislative landscape to fit today and tomorrow's family dynamic. I embrace innovation and a sustainable future.  

  

What is your stance on the current $7.25 minimum wage? Would you support an increase reflective of the cost of living? Please elaborate. 

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Seeing as though I was paid that nearly 20 years ago, I can’t imagine anyone could actually live on that. To own a car, pay for gas, and take your girlfriend out to dinner costs a young adult 100$ at least. That means you have to work nearly 14 hours a day, just to enjoy yourself for maybe 3 hours. That’s not a sustainable or balanced equation. Working a full month on minimum wage only garners ~$1200. The cheapest rent around maybe 600$ a month, leaving someone with 100$ a week in food and 200$ left for gas,  transportation, medical bills, and necessities. It's beyond unreasonable. Furthermore, arguing with everyone that inflation will increase because prices will need to rise in order to pay for added employee costs is absurd. The profits of a company should be more equally spread between all employees so that the increase in costs, due to higher wages, comes out of top earners' salaries. Furthermore, keeping people off welfare and away from emergency medical care saves society a major expense in the long run. Societies where the rich and the poor grow further apart, are the societies that fall in history. We are stronger together as a  collective equal community.  

  

What is your stance on the legalization of both medical and Recreational Marijuana?  

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Like any good question, you need to add some context around the situation. Specifically, answering "why".  Why are they illegal? I personally believe that illegal drugs have been forbidden in the past in order to help protect the population from incurring expenses for things like emergency response due to car accidents,  welfare due to loss of a job, uninsured medical costs at Emergency rooms, and similar. The assumption being that drugs led to mischief, mayhem, and health risks which negatively affect the community as a whole.  Furthermore, in the past, "devils’ lettuce" was thought to lead to stronger drugs (i.e. a gateway drug).  

Today, we have much more data to clarify some of the original concerns. We can review if marijuana use truly causes more car accidents or dangerous activities. Seeing as though the effects of marijuana use are similar to alcohol in a broad way, why should marijuana be illegal if alcohol is not? Having a drink on a  Friday night does not make you incoherent for work on Monday as long as it’s done in a responsible manner just like alcohol. Based on my knowledge, I don’t believe marijuana is a gateway drug, its someone’s underlying personality that makes them addictive. Having addictive personalities is the problem in society,  not the substance itself. Just like gun owners say that "guns don’t kill people, people do", marijuana doesn’t make you seek out more toxic drugs, it’s the individual’s nature or nurture that creates the personality to do that.  

I also believe that there are proper regulatory agencies and processes in place (mirrored after alcohol) which would make legalizing marijuana an easier process. Furthermore, it could be an incredible source of income.  Some states reported getting completely out of debt just from taxes of marijuana alone. 

 

If it were to be legalized, are you in support of releasing those imprisoned for minor marijuana charges and/or expunging records of those with minor marijuana charges? 

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I would be open to this idea as long as the circumstances for release and expungement were very clear. For example, the individual only had marijuana charges; there was no car accident, no other drugs involved, no other illegal action associated with the drug arrest, etc. If the arrest was simply for having some marijuana,  I could see it being overturned and the record expunged.  

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The drug pandemic has deeply affected New Hampshire communities, what do you think should be our approach to help those struggling with addiction and what will you do to help?  

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I must prelude my statements here, that I know very little about the facts and figures of this topic (other than its a major crisis affecting our communities). The following is my loose understanding and suggestions.  With that said, I would be open to hearing more factual details about what actions have worked and not worked in the communities in order to better understand what is the best direction moving forward.  

From my understanding, I believe that the crisis came from a drop-in price and an increase in the quality/potency of the drugs. This led to easier transportation and distribution fueling lower prices and more access. What we need to do is better understand how the crisis came to be. Once we understand the "why"  we can formulate the "how". Simply addressing overdoses won’t fix the problem. We must find a way to stop the source of the issue, whether that’s a shipment of the drugs (which we have been doing for years without real success), or addressing issues within society which forces people to seek out drugs for their problems.  

  

What are your thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement? What will you do to help eradicate systemic racism?

 

My father has the best short answer to this questions; if an environmental group said that "elephant lives matter" in order to save the endangered elephants, but then another group said "all animal lives matter";  you have to ask yourself, how do we save all animal lives. How do you tackle such a large scope? It’s almost impossible to save all animals from extinction. Similarly, although all human lives do certainly matter, there are some minorities that have more of a threat to their lives than others. Those groups, due to society's historical systematic racism, are the ones we need to focus on right now. A white man and a black man may appear to have the same opportunities today when applying for a job (as an example), but the truth is that the white man is statistically more likely to have a family history of education which allowed him to get a family history of quality jobs and a family history of wealth to continue the cycle. The black man statistically has a shorter resume, less advancement in education, and less financial resources. Why is that so? All things that have systemic historical pasts that can’t be quickly fixed. If the black man can’t get a quality job at the same rate as a white man, they continue to stay in a lower status within society. After years of feeling like the little guy on the totem pole, frustration, helplessness, and worthlessness start to set in. Therefore, they riot. They have nothing left to lose in their mind. They have been stepped on for years and decades and they own nothing (in a broad view). I do not condone rioting, let me be clear, but I can at least understand the reasoning behind it. It’s the same reason people block highway traffic. It’s to show the drivers sitting in traffic how it feels to be at a loss of control, to feel trapped, to feel pressure, to feel helpless.  

Saying Black Lives Matter does not mean White Lives do not. It does not mean BLM supporters dislike police. These are all marketing schemes by the political parties to divide the country when what we really need is unification. 

 

The climate crisis is one of the biggest issues concerning young voters today. Do you acknowledge that climate change is real and poses an immediate threat to the environment and our health and safety? What specific goals and measures do you support to reduce our impact on the environment?   

 

ABSOLUTELY. Thinking anything less is careless, uneducated, blind disregard for the brick wall of evident facts sitting right in front of us. Does the world heat and cool over time, yes of course, but we are doing it at a much faster rate than the world can handle? Pure extremely simple; it took millions of years of fossil fuels to be created underground. In those millions of years, there are various stages of carbon cycling that go on. Everything from the carbon in the air and atmosphere, to absorption in the forests and waters and in the ground itself. Eventually, the carbon is released again due to decomposition or burning or volcanos, but in a balanced cycle. The basic laws of physics are that "everything strives for equilibrium on this earth". When humans dig up billions of tons of oil from the ground and burn it faster than the earth would otherwise do, you can’t assume that doesn’t speed up the natural balanced cycle the earth has.  

I have grown up in a family that loves the outdoors and appreciates education. Due to this, I can consider myself an environmentalist. I certainly try to do my part when it comes to living "green". Outside of my personal goals of sustainability, I have volunteered for the Conservation Commission in my town to help protect open space. This not only helps balance tax rates, increases town value, and maintains the watershed but it also slows further pollution from new construction and destruction of our planet. I’d like to continue chasing sustainable endeavors and reviewing the best options for our future. I don’t think there is one answer to solve the problem, but instead an intricate web of options to be used carefully in each specific situation.  

Do you think New Hampshire is doing enough to protect its citizens especially students and those who have to work with the public like teachers, medical staff, wait staff, and retail workers? Would you support a mask mandate state level?  

I would like to ask teachers, medical staff, wait staff, and retail workers what they think. Having close friends who are teachers, I have a lot of concerns. This is a very hard question especially for someone who is not getting the most accurate and up-to-date information from government officials and leading experts.  I think NH is doing a pretty good job so far. I think a mask mandate would be a reasonable next step based on the current data. I would also offer the first vaccines to medical workers, teachers, and professions that require human interaction in order to keep the most critical parts of our society running.  

As someone who works in regulatory, there are always two answers to everything; the legal/technical answer and reality. Sometimes making laws doesn’t always fix the issue if people don’t believe in them,  understand them, or enforce them. Having a mask mandate for inside stores and group gatherings is a  reasonable request. Trying to stop every possible way the virus spreads would most likely be more costly than effective.  

 

What do you feel should be done to prevent the NH unemployment system from becoming overwhelmed again as we saw during the COVID-19 shutdown?

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Expanding on the above discussion; if we separate high-risk individuals from the rest of the population, we may have a chance to operate the economy at 60-70%. This doesn’t mean complete isolation but trying to build a low-risk environment in which high-risk individuals can live their lives as best as possible. This could be enough to keep money flowing in its normal cycle, keep unemployment to a sustainable level, all while protecting the highest risk individuals from overloading our healthcare system. This may be the fine balance we need to keep our governmental system afloat until we are passed the major impacts of the virus.  

 

What do you think should be done at the state and/or federal level to help the systems that were entirely overwhelmed by Covid-19? In particular, welfare systems and Medicaid & medicare systems?

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I believe this answer ties into the answer above. One day, people will write books about how Covid-19  affected every social, economic, and governmental system. There is absolutely no way a single individual can understand these causes and effects and find a solution alone. This will take a highly-skilled, educated, and trained team to analyze, review, and recommend solutions for. There is no simple solution that one single state representative could think of which will solve the problem. We are not “all-knowing, all-powerful people” we are just average Americans trying to volunteer in our state government. What we need to do, is be leaders. Be transparent about the things we don’t know and find the skills and talent needed to bring the best information to the table.