While there’s no fixed timeline, the feds indicated they are speeding up the opening of federal lands and properties for building homes. That could include at least a couple of potential locations on Range Road in Whitehorse.
“There’s no hiding the fact that these obviously do take time. Not everything can be built within a 12-month period,” Marc Miller, federal minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada, said.
“But clearly, the federal government will be making sure that we accelerate our portion of this proposition when it comes to the lands that are being looked at, studied, analyzed.”
Miller spoke at a press conference alongside the federal tourism minister in Whitehorse on April 24.
Yukon MP Brendan Hanley, who also attended, told reporters that 419 Range Rd. and 463 Range Rd. are being contemplated.
“There’s defence territory here, there’s post office territory, but those certainly — at first glance to me — are not on the table because they’re being actively used,” Hanley said.
Federal elected representatives met with Whitehorse Mayor Laura Cabott prior to the press conference.
The city passed a motion in 2023 asking that the federal government make some of the underutilized land it owns within the city available for housing development. In December, the mayor said she had been asking the feds for a transfer of land along Range Road for the past two years.
— With files from Jim Elliot
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com