The Yukon Legislative Assembly’s electrical system has been fired back up and steps are being taken to lessen the load, according to Dan Cable, the clerk of the legislative assembly.
The legislative assembly’s physical plant lost a switch in the electrical room that had started failing the previous week and eventually wouldn’t run without continually tripping, Cable said by email to the News on April 11.
An outage briefly occurred on March 26 and the chambers went dark on the afternoon of April 9 when Yukon Party energy critic Scott Kent was in the middle of questioning Yukon Energy Corporation witnesses about their energy plans after the corp.’s longer-term plans were made public. Those plans include adding two diesel plant generators near Whitehorse.
Cable said MLAs will need to put forward a new motion to bring back the witnesses in the next few weeks.
Subsequently, the Thursday sitting day on April 10 was cancelled due to the electrical system failure.
The legislature resumed the following Monday.
The territorial administration building’s power system is old — it opened in 1976 — and is in the queue for upgrades. Cable indicated the legislative building’s updates have been moved up the list and a plan is being worked on to do upgrades over the summer and into the fall, when the House doesn’t sit.
The part that needed to be fixed had to be ordered in because it wasn’t available in the Yukon’s capital, he said.
Repairs took place over the past weekend. That was followed by “extensive testing” with several contingencies in place in case the repaired panel presents other issues, per Cable.
“One way or another we will finish the sitting,” Cable said.
For example, Cable pointed out that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the standing orders enabled for the legislative business to be conducted electronically, as needed.
The chamber lost six hours of sitting time — the equivalent of one sitting day plus one-and-a-half hours — as a result of the electrical system problem, per Cable.
House leaders will reconvene to discuss the length of the sitting and how to deal with the lost time, according to the communications staffers for the territorial parties with seats in the House.
Cable said the standing orders set out that the legislature sits a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 40 days. This spring, house leaders settled on 32 days, at most, ending May 1.
Technically, the sitting can wrap any time after completing the 20th day, which passed on April 9.
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
