5 things to watch as the Yukon Legislative Assembly returns for spring sitting

One thing is certain in Yukon politics: there will be an election this year. Beyond that, all bets are off. 

By law, the Liberals must go to the polls by early November. The assembly's spring sitting will happen, but it's not a given that the fall one will, depending on when Premier Ranj Pillai and the Liberal brain trust decide to pull the pin and launch the campaign.

So expect lots of fireworks in the legislature over the next few weeks.  

Tariffs

You may have heard that U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed crippling tariffs against Canada, launching a trade war that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and many others, consider "dumb."

Provinces and territories, including the Yukon, immediately launched a suite of retaliatory measures against the United States. 

The territories' actual leverage here is minimal, even if solidarity matters. But with worst-case scenarios projecting the tariffs causing a full-blown recession, higher prices for just about everything, and general economic chaos, the government faces both fiscal projections that could be out of date in a week, not to mention cranky voters, if the economy tanks.

The Liberals see Yukon's mining sector — especially critical minerals and gold — as a possible bulwark here. Premier Ranj Pillai points to how the placer mining industry helped the territory's economy weather COVID-19.

"We built programs quickly. We know how to do that," he said.

Election readiness

The Yukon Party started agitating for a territorial election approximately 0.5 seconds after Ranj Pillai was crowned Yukon Liberal leader. In the last few months, the Official Opposition has been furiously announcing candidate nominations and released a poll suggesting that they hold a healthy lead over their competitors. 

That Leger poll surveyed 500 Yukoners in January. It put the Yukon Party at 41 per cent, the NDP at 34 and the Liberals at 23, with 10 per undecided. The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 per cent.

But a single poll commissioned by a political party can't be considered an authoritative picture of the political landscape. Not only that, but the Conservatives are currently tanking in federal polling, largely thanks to Trump. Does that dynamic extend to the Yukon Party? They are a separate entity, even if many members are also federal Conservatives, but voters don't always make that distinction.

The NDP, which has propped up the Liberals since the last election through a confidence and supply agreement, face a similar problem. Federal NDP poll numbers are stuck in a slow reverse, which often happens when the Liberals are on the rise. 

For the Liberals, meanwhile, much depends on Thursday's budget. They face demands from the right to constrain spending and public debt and pressure from the left (and also the right) to spend more on key services. 

Hence you see the Liberals issuing a torrent of pre-budget announcements over the last few days (Budget embargo? What budget embargo?) amounting to hundreds of millions in new spending. That brings us to....

Health care

While the exact surplus or deficit won't be known until tomorrow, the Liberals have already announced two major infusions of cash for the health care system. More than $200 million for insured health services (a 30 per cent increase over last year) and $140 million for the Yukon Hospital Corporation (a 21 per cent increase).

That's important because thousands of Yukoners remain without a family doctor, surgical wait times are long and Whitehorse General Hospital is still recovering from a contamination problem that cancelled even more operations. 

Both NDP Leader Kate White and Yukon Party Leader Currie Dixon pointed to the government's seeming inability to recruit and retain doctors and other health professionals, with Dixon saying the system is in a "disaster state." Both opposition parties also called on the government to ease the administrative burden on doctors.

"Doctors go to medical school to be doctors and not to run businesses," White said.

Pillai says the upcoming budget, which is being released today, will have "significant investments" in health care — and retention of doctors is top of mind for the government.

Crime

Property crime has been a major irritant, especially in downtown Whitehorse, over the last few years. The roots of the problem are complex: racism, poverty and a lack of housing options are all factors, as are the opioid crisis and the location and management of the city's downtown emergency shelter.

"That facility has become the nexus for so much bad behaviour in the downtown core," Dixon said. "And we're starting to see that spill out into other small businesses, especially in the tourism sector that are getting impacted by the negative behaviour that is associated with that facility."

It's probably not a coincidence that hours after Dixon made those comments on CBC's Yukon Morning, the Liberals announced an extra $5.2 million for the RCMP is included in this year's budget.

The fiscal landscape

After projecting a $48-million surplus in last spring's budget, the territory swung into the red this past fall when the government released the 2023-24 actuals that showed a net deficit of nearly $43 million. The finance department said that was due to the Minto mine remediation project, plus a busy flood and fire season in 2023. 

The Yukon Liberals have tended to prefer balanced budgets, but they aren't married to them. They went into the red during the pandemic, and may use the trade war as political cover for another one. 

While the Yukon Party has slammed the Liberals for allowing the debt to rise to nearly $500 million, the territory's debt-to-GDP is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 14 per cent. By contrast, Canada's was at 106 per cent in 2024 and the United States was at 121 per cent, according to the International Monetary Fund.