This year, the Yukon government got a new premier, stretched out its confidence deal and avoided toppling over a $1-million temporary landlord assistance program.
A quiet Yukon Liberal Party leadership contest ended in January. Now-Premier Ranj Pillai was acclaimed to the party’s top spot and sworn in for premiership without contenders.
By the end of January, he had signed an extended territorial confidence and supply agreement, known as CASA, with the Yukon NDP caucus. It pledged a new walk-in clinic, a ban on evictions without cause and free transit.
Pillai took over the role partway through a mandate and without knowing what was on the horizon.
Suddenly, in February, NORAD shot down a high-altitude object over the Yukon, drawing national and international attention to what it was, where it came from and what it was capable of.
Pillai made top headlines in September because, while he was on a mission with Yukoners in India, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t brief him prior to dropping bombshell allegations tying the India government to a killing in Canada.
Pillai’s government made the news for submitting its public accounts late and hesitating to release a report on hospital finances, raising questions about what each might contain.
The territory’s $1.94-billion main budget and supplementary budget received criticism from each opposition party, but CASA pulled through for the Liberals in both spring and fall sessions. The NDP stuck with the game plan while the Yukon Party unexpectedly voted the budgets down on a matter of confidence.
It’s no secret that Yukon Party Leader Currie Dixon wants to see CASA flop and fast forward to an election.
There was almost a glitch late on the final day of the fall sitting of the legislative assembly on Nov. 23.
As the clock wound down, Dixon pitched ditching the $338-per-unit handout to landlords from the Yukon government’s supplementary budget. He told the house the Official Opposition wants to see the housing market deregulated instead of this approach.
Through its obligations under CASA, Yukon NDP Leader Kate White’s team had to make a quick decision on the floor of the legislature. White said her three-member caucus held its nose and voted to keep the money for the program in the budget during the last-minute attempt by the Yukon Party to thwart it.
“I wasn’t prepared to have CASA fall,” White told the News in a year-end interview.
Although removing the cash grab for landlords is the ideal scenario for her, she said it isn’t worth “sacrificing everything else” in the deal, which has allowed the third party to push forward some of its own priorities, including a territorial dental program and a managed alcohol program.
White argued this CASA is the most effective deal of its kind in Canada’s history.
The premier agrees with White. Pillai said the deal is stable due to a “very honest” working relationship with the Yukon NDP leader.
But based on what he’s heard, Pillai won’t back down on the landlord subsidy, which was put forward to close a gap on government-imposed rent caps.
“Part of what we’re trying to do is ensure that the environment here is favorable for investment,” Pillai told the News in an end-of-year interview.
“I took a lot of criticism from different places on that, and I feel even stronger now that I’ve sat down with the people that actually analyze real estate markets across the country.”
The way Dixon sees it, the Yukon NDP has been “bending over backwards” to find reasons to continue to support the governing party under CASA 2.0 as Yukoners have become increasingly more dissatisfied with the government.
“Recognizing that sentiment, the relationship between the NDP and the Liberals is continuing to deteriorate. I don’t know if it will actually fall apart in 2024 or not. But it’s certainly going in that direction. We’ve seen the Liberals almost blatantly disregard the confidence and supply agreement now,” he said during his interview to mark the end of 2023.
“I think sentiment is growing so strong for there to be a change that eventually, I think the NDP will have to look in the mirror and make a decision whether or not they want to continue to prop up this government.”
Dixon said he has witnessed a “growing rift” between the two “coalition partners.”
“I’m hopeful that in 2024, one of them will realize that it’s not in the best interest of Yukoners to keep working together and to simply call an election and let Yukoners decide who they want to run the government,” he said.
Pillai suggested the Yukon Party is continuously trying to pit apart the Liberals and the NDP, which he recognized is part of the Official Opposition’s job.
“We saw over and over again the Yukon Party trying their very best to negatively affect the work that we were doing with the NDP versus putting new ideas and concepts out to Yukoners that they promised to do that we haven’t seen,” he said.
Pillai touted work on big budget projects such as the Dempster fibre project, the Nisutlin Bay bridge and the Whitehorse airport as some of the biggest accomplishments of the year. Passing legislation to make it easier for nurses to come to work in the Yukon and opening the walk-in clinic in Whitehorse on Dec. 18 were other achievements he mentioned.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the government this ambitious over the last at least 20 years,” he said.
Pillai said one of the main challenges has been with respect to 405 Alexander St. He intervened in the Whitehorse Emergency Shelter file, admitting that he should have done it earlier. The Yukon government released its downtown safety action plan just before the winter holiday season.
“We’re only making progress now,” Pillai said, noting that other departments are now involved including those which he directly oversees such as the Yukon Housing Corporation, Economic Development and the Executive Council Office.
“I could have done better,” he said.
The government came under fire from the Yukon NDP for allotting $21 million for an ore dock in Skagway, Alaska, so that mining companies can get access to the ocean.
Closing a loophole on evictions without cause and the rolling closures of rural health centres were important matters for White this year. So was learning about the “underfunding” of the Yukon Hospital Corporation and the “mismanagement” of hospital funds, she said, citing the report done for the government through a $300,000 urgent sole-sourced contract.
As for the promised wellness counsellors in every school, White doesn’t believe those positions will be as effective as she had anticipated.
Her party has taken a different approach during the question period over time in the Yukon Legislative Assembly. It veered away from regularly using people’s personal experiences as the basis of its questions due to the frustration of being told by ministers to have people just call them.
“It’s ridiculous because if people trusted them and were able to reach them and were able to contact them, then they would, but they’re not, and that has been systemic over multiple governments,” she said.
The opposition parties often faced flack for lacking accuracy in their questions, particularly on health.
High inflation and cost of living, the scaling back of services to rural Yukon and the general state of the health-care system due to the sheer number of problems are top issues of the year for Dixon. For years, his party has been calling for a health human resources strategy, which the government released in December with “very little meat on the bone.”
Dixon said many of the questions that his MLAs have asked about health, such as on medical imaging and surgery wait times, have come directly from Yukoners.
“Every time we ask a question or raise a concern in the legislature, we share the information that we’ve got available to us and whether that’s an anecdote from an individual, whether it’s a study report or whether it’s information that’s been provided to us, you know, leaked documents or leaked information,” he said.
“It’s incumbent on the government to respond to those. When the government responds by saying that we just have our facts wrong, they ignore the underlying issues themselves.”
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com