The territorial Liberal-NDP confidence and supply agreement, commonly known as CASA, has pulled through again for the governing Yukon Liberal Party, with the Yukon NDP unsurprisingly siding in favour of the supplementary budget bill on the final day of the fall sitting of the legislature.
The Yukon Party had already made clear its intentions to vote against the bill as a matter of confidence.
The government bill passed 10 to eight and received assent at the end of the day in the Yukon Legislative Assembly on Nov. 23.
Prior to the vote, the three territorial party leaders in the legislature took questions about the fall sitting from reporters.
In her 12 years as an elected representative, Yukon NDP Leader Kate White has historically voted against the government’s budget regardless of whether it was the Yukon Party or the Yukon Liberal Party in power.
That was until CASA. Since the deal’s first iteration in 2021, White and her two party counterparts have voted in favour of the Liberal’s budget, effectively shoring up the government while advancing several of the third party’s priorities in the deal.
Under CASA, White argues her party is the most effective opposition party in the country.
“We’ve achieved huge things,” she told reporters. “You would be challenged to find a stronger opposition that’s done more changes in a place than what we have done here since 2021.”
Her party has been critical of the Yukon government spending millions on a marine services platform to get mining companies access to the ocean in Skagway, Alaska.
While White won’t peg down a specific issue that would lead to her withdrawing from CASA, she has indicated that losing a few rural solid waste transfer stations likely won’t bring down the government.
“Will I make the government deeply uncomfortable? Absolutely. Will I force them to have these conversations? Absolutely. Will I force them to keep going to these communities? Absolutely,” she said.
Territorial MLAs have spent several hours throughout the sitting debating the Yukon government’s proposed closure of three waste facilities that affect a few dozen people and businesses in Silver City, Braeburn and Johnson’s Crossing. The station in Keno has already closed. In that case, the government provided bear-resistant carts for household garbage and the Hecla Mining Company has been doing door-to-door pick-up once a week.
On the second last day of the sitting and the final opposition Wednesday, which is an opportunity for opposition parties to set the agenda, the Yukon Liberal Party effectively ran out the clock during the debate, which prevented MLAs from going to a non-binding vote related to the dumpster file and a binding vote on a motion to release a review on the Yukon Hospital Corporation’s finances, among other things.
The government’s refusal to release the document — the result of a $300,000 sole-sourced contract — has raised doubts about its contents and the government’s claims of openness and transparency.
Premier Ranj Pillai and his ministers have insisted the report will be made public after the government and hospital corporation have a chance to go through it and do their due diligence. Hospital corporation board members have already seen it.
“We want to take that information, whether it’s internal findings or any kind of work by consultants, and make sure that we implement it so that it shows that we are listening and we’re doing the work that we’ve paid to get advice on,” Pillai told reporters. “We’re still doing that work, and when we’re ready, and we have that work in place, then we’ll be in a position to release documents.”
The Yukon Party has repeatedly pushed the notion that the hospital corporation remains chronically underfunded, particularly given a $2-million gap between its revenues and expenses. Leader Currie Dixon suggested that the review will be of great interest to Yukoners, particularly health-care workers and medical professionals.
“The fact that the government refuses to release it — the fact that they have it in their hands and they’ve said that they won’t release it — is telling, I think, that they don’t want to be transparent. They don’t want to be accountable,” Dixon said.
His party pressed on affordability, housing and cuts to rural Yukon. Dixon told reporters it was an effective sitting.
“Yukoners have a better understanding of some of the challenges that our territory is facing now as a result of the legislative sitting and opposition parties asking questions of the government. So, in that sense, I think it was successful,” he said. “But I remain deeply concerned about the direction of the territory. It’s hard not to find an issue that doesn’t seem to be in crisis.”
Health Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee faced a deluge of questions on what has been described as a “collapsing” health care system. Opposition parties questioned the minister on several issues over the course of the sitting, including the unplanned closures and service reductions at rural health centres across the territory, the flailing hospitalist program at the Whitehorse General Hospital and the promised walk-in clinic.
Leaked documents and posts by Dr. Rao Tadepalli on X, formerly Twitter, formed the basis of some questions from the Official Opposition.
After a physician who specializes in psychiatry and sub-specializes in addictions medicine threatened to close his clinic, the Yukon Party called for the premier to step in on the health file like he did on the riddled shelter file.
Since a local bakery announced its closure and the coroner called for an inquest into four deaths related to the Whitehorse Emergency Shelter, Pillai has admitted he should’ve intervened earlier on the shelter file. He has committed to prioritizing the issue, in part by removing benches and physical barriers outside the building, announcing a downtown safety unit like Winnipeg’s Bear Patrol Clan and holding a community conversation on downtown safety.
In an interesting turn, the Yukon government announced a $338-per-unit cash grab for landlords that received some heat from the opposition, the landlord association and the anti-poverty coalition alike.
In the final hours of the fall sitting, the Yukon Party put forward a motion to delete the landlord assistance program from the supplementary budget. The Yukon NDP opposed the motion, voting with the Liberals to hold onto the $1-million program, despite White having told reporters earlier that afternoon that she is “not super fond” of it.
During the sitting, the government passed several pieces of legislation, including changes intended to make it easier for nurses to work in the Yukon and pave the way for extended producer responsibility.
While the premier did make an appearance on CBC’s satirical news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes over the course of the fall sitting, he wasn’t kidding on the floor of the Yukon legislature when he called the opposition parties an “unholy alliance” of “conspirators” set out to “gatekeep” government speech.
But he did get some laughs from the opposition for it.
Pillai’s comments came in response to a change in the rules pushed through by opposition parties that now require opposition house leaders to approve of ministerial statements before they go ahead in the house. Ministers went from making ministerial statements basically every day to having to convince at least one of the house leaders to allow their speech to go ahead.
Pillai said ministerial statements are crucial for getting critical information out to Yukoners. Putting out press releases, posting on social media, placing advertisements in newspapers and the like isn’t enough for him.
Overall, the premier expressed optimism about the state of democracy.
“I think I feel very good about it,” he said.
The spring sitting of the legislative assembly commences the first week of March 2024.
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com