It turns out that governments in the Yukon have a lot in common with teenagers: you have to be careful not to enable their bad choices.
Have you ever assigned your teenager the family chore of shovelling the driveway, only to find yourself outside a few days later holding a shovel while they are holed up in their room not doing their homework?
There have been a couple of examples lately of Yukoners who, after years of asking government to shovel the driveway, seem to have got tired of shovelling it themselves.
Example number one is Raven ReCentre, formerly known as Raven Recycling.
It has been widely accepted for time immemorial that government should provide water and sewer as well as garbage pick up.
But then the idea of recycling came up. This was new and, a generation ago, not considered a standard government service. So some passionate Yukoners set up Raven and did what they could.
Fast forward to 2023. Across North America, curbside recycling programs are as common as traffic lights. Policy wonks review swathes of literature about how curbside recycling programs significantly reduce landfill costs and carbon emissions from plastic. The Yukon government has issued wads of press releases saying how much it cares about the environment. The City of Whitehorse is in Year 5 of battling the climate emergency it declared.
And Whitehorse still does not have a public curbside recycling program, which means huge amounts of recyclable material goes straight to our rapidly filling landfill and not to emission-reducing recycling facilities.
If you visit Raven, you get the impression of a ship that is well run, but on a very tight budget.
It would be interesting to know how many meetings Raven has had in the last decade with territorial and municipal officials to suggest a curbside recycling program.
But why would government do anything? Raven was running its centre well and cheaply. Everyone including the politicians knows the only way Raven can do this is if their staff are paid far less than government union wages. And even this model has Raven managers putting out one financial fire after another.
So, in October 2022, Raven dropped the big one. They gave notice they would close their public recycling drop-off. First they said it quietly, then a few months later they announced it publicly. The deadline would be Dec. 31 of this year.
Either the municipal and territorial governments could shovel the driveway, or the driveway would not get shoveled.
Many people complained Raven was playing hardball.
They were. And it worked. Last week Raven put out a statement welcoming news that “city council will be reviewing and voting on a budget line item for a blue bin pick up service.”
As responsible adults, Raven softened its hardball line slightly. They promised to keep the drop-off open through February, to give the city time to pass its budget.
Example number two comes from community nurses. Anyone who has ever complained about government employees not working hard has clearly never been to a Yukon community nursing station.
For years, what human resources experts call the “employee value proposition” was the following for community nurses: in exchange working long hours in stressful life-and-death situations in isolated communities, we will give you low pay, bad housing and antiquated equipment.
Again, it would be interesting to know how many meetings the nurses had with government over the last 10 years to talk about making community nursing sustainable.
Their hardball move was simply to quit. Everyone needs nurses, and skilled Yukon nurses can get jobs anywhere from Whitehorse General to Dubai.
The result was the government being forced to announce a series of lengthy closures for community health centres across the territory. This got the issue onto social media, the traditional media and the floor of the legislature.
And thus it got the government’s attention.
At some point in the not too distant future, you can expect the territorial government to announce that everything was fine and all the stories were exaggerated, but they’ve increased the wages, renovated the housing and improved nurse working conditions.
All of this represents a revolution in lobbying techniques in the Yukon. Traditionally, groups asking government for something bent over backwards to be nice to ministers and government officials. Often, journalists would struggle to report on these situations since no one was willing to take the risk of speaking on the record.
Volunteer board members and staff feared annoying public servants and finding out in the next spring budget that their funding was frozen or even cut.
This resulted in well-meaning Yukon volunteers on NGO boards, along with underpaid and overworked skeleton staffs, delivering important community services for years.
Often they did this so well, and so cheaply, that government had zero incentive to step up with a better funded, more sustainable service. Board chairs and executive directors would meet with government, and complain about grant paperwork and budgets not keeping up with inflation. Inevitably, someone would describe the situation as a “bandaid solution.”
Little did they know that many in government like bandaid solutions. Bandaids are cheap and, usually, stop most of the bleeding.
So what does this mean for you?
If you and your important community organization find yourself in a situation that would be familiar to Raven or community nurses, you should reconsider your options.
You may need to go on strike to get government’s attention.
It’s a bold strategy and not one that should be considered lightly. But it may be your best option. And you may need to do it sooner rather than waiting for your organization’s financial situation to deteriorate further.
You should also do it respectfully and while giving government lots of time to make the right choices. Raven’s statement last week has a handy timeline going back to 2021 of how they tried to get government to act and, then, gave them 14 months notice the bomb would be dropping.
Many of your fellow volunteers will find themselves reluctant to play hardball. They are, after all, dedicated and well-meaning community activists. But, if Raven succeeds in forcing the territorial government to give millions to the city to start a curbside recycling program 2024, can you say they were wrong to switch from softball to hardball?
After all, what parent doesn’t feel a surge of pride when they park their car in a driveway shoveled by their children?
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist, author of the Aurore of the Yukon youth adventure novels and co-host of the Klondike Gold Rush History podcast. He won the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist.