The Yukon territorial parties with seats in the House dropped their partisan stripes to show they cared when a highway crash left Michael Prochazka, the deputy minister of Environment, dead and Minister Nils Clarke seriously injured on Aug. 2, 2024.
The political parties set aside their differences to denounce actions when Minister John Streicker’s home was targeted with spray-painted messages that named him and his wife in spring 2024.
They each expressed support for Yukon NDP Vuntut Gwitchin MLA Annie Blake when she announced that she was taking medical leave to seek help for substance use issues in June 2024.
“Just because we're political adversaries doesn't mean we're enemies,” Official Opposition Yukon Party Leader Currie Dixon told the News.
The parties came together at some critical moments throughout the year when they let go of their criticism. The three major territorial party leaders spoke with the newspaper for year-end interviews in December 2024.
Although the parties have each worked together on occasion to push their own agendas, back their constituents and keep the legislative assembly rolling, the NDP has a formal confidence and supply deal, or CASA, that keeps Premier Ranj Pillai and the minority Yukon Liberal Party government in power.
“I respect Ranj and Currie, and although we don't always see eye to eye, I know they care deeply about the Yukon and the people of the Yukon, and I feel the same way. And so, you know, when we can come together, and we can stand together, I think it's very powerful, and I appreciate that there is that willingness to do that,” Yukon NDP Leader Kate White said.
“We have more similarities as humans than we have divisions.”
On Nov. 20, 2024, White announced on social media that she was quitting X, formerly Twitter. She observed the platform sinking deeper into “appalling hate speech” and “weird conspiracy theories.”
“It was just all the amplifications of the differences and the divisions, and it just got to be a real nasty place to be,” she told the News.
Pillai said Yukoners “all come together to support each other” during tough times.
“It does get difficult at times inside the assembly and inside the territorial political arena, but everybody's coming every day to get the work done that can improve the lives for Yukoners,” he said.
The premier felt refreshed after coming together and finding common ground with Canada’s premiers across partisan and non-partisan affiliations at the Council of the Federation meetings the last two days, prior to speaking with the News on Dec. 16, 2024.
While Pillai expressed frustration over the chaos unfolding at the federal level in Ottawa on the day of the federal economic statement, he said the premiers have a united front in the face of a looming challenge: U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s 25-per-cent tariff threat, just weeks away from his Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration. Pillai previously expressed concern around the potential impact a tariff could have, particularly on critical minerals going from the Yukon to the U.S.
The biggest issue of the year in Yukon politics was the fallout of the cyanide-laden landslide at Victoria Gold Corporation’s Eagle Gold Mine first reported by the News on June 24, 2024.
Pillai and Streicker, the Energy, Mines and Resources minister, have stood by the Yukon government’s decision to petition the courts to order the mining company into receivership and take over management of the mine following what the receiver's report calls a “catastrophic failure” of the mine’s heap leach facility.
Dixon is mostly concerned about the economic ramifications of the mine closure, which he said represents about $1.5 billion in economic loss over the next five years.
“It's a wake-up call for how important the mining industry is to the Yukon's economy,” Dixon said.
Pillai said that “having a tender economy” means it’s important to build a spring budget that considers the investments needed to “keep a strong economy.”
Dixon looks forward to the outcome of the independent review of the mine failure so changes can be made.
White wants a public inquiry that goes further to look at additional mining flops that all have one thing in common: the Yukon government. She wrote to Canada's auditor general calling for an audit.
In 2024, White’s party put her governing partner on “notice” which Dixon believes is all bark and no bite.
Albeit frustrated, the Yukon NDP leader has indicated she has too many balls in the air to pull out of CASA and trigger an election.
White said a lot was accomplished in 2024 like medical travel and tax credits for fertility purposes and the opening of a live-in managed alcohol program. She said there were some small changes — with big impact — that took a long time.
Pillai said he understands that being in a minority government means working in a collaborative way with the NDP.
Pillai is proud his government passed the health authority law. He took pride in his government’s spending on downtown and rural safety. He commended the work around Arctic security over the year, from the Arctic security advisory council’s final report to the potential for a Canadian institute of Arctic security and a naval reserve in the Yukon.
Passing the Traffic Safety Act, completing the Dempster fibre line and opening an elementary school in Whistle Bend were also offered by Pillai as Yukon government feats in 2024.
To Dixon, the premier is “out of touch” with Yukoners and “focused on things that are more important to himself than the needs of Yukoners.”
In 2025, Dixon will get the territorial election he has been calling for, although he doesn’t know if a spring election will be sprung or if it will fall as scheduled in November.
All three major territorial party leaders said they’d lead their parties into the next territorial elections.
“We've fallen into a bit of a pattern over the last few years of the Liberal government, you know, implementing the policies of the NDP through the confidence and supply agreement and we just saw more of that in 2024,” Dixon said.
What he sees as the declining state of the health-care system, rising crime and a worsening economic scenario defined the past year in Yukon politics for Dixon.
In 2024, the auditor general’s office announced an audit of the Yukon Nominee Program and the Yukon Business Nominee Program. Dixon and White jointly wrote to Canada's auditor general’s office in October 2023 to raise concerns about the functioning of immigration programs run by the Yukon Economic Development department.
That audit was later put on hold “out of respect for any ongoing” RCMP investigations.
Before the end of the fall legislature session, Pillai confirmed that the Yukon Nominee Program is part of a police investigation related to RCMP executing a search warrant for information held at the Economic Development department offices in June 2024. Another RCMP raid of the offices took place later in December 2024. Police are continuing to investigate.
After spending two years working as a life skills coach in the correctional system prior to becoming an elected representative in 2011, White was disappointed in the angle the Yukon Party recently took on bail reform.
During the fall 2024 sitting of the legislative assembly, Brad Cathers, the Yukon Party MLA for Lake Laberge, put forward a motion that “this House urges the Government of Canada to remove credits that can be applied to sentences for time that an accused person spends in jail before trial for repeat and violent offenders.”
That was a low point of the year for White.
“If we want to talk about, you know, crime reduction and such things, we really have to talk about programming, and we have to talk about social supports in place,” she said.
Editor's note: This article has been revised to clarify Kate White's work with corrections.
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
