Yukon agencies making much ado about nothing, gov't says in response to budget dispute

Yukon's finance minister says the territory's ombudsman and its child and youth advocate are overreacting with some "rhetorical excess" by claiming potential government interference in the budgeting process for their offices.

And the minister says a petition by those offices to Yukon Supreme Court is essentially asking the court to interfere where it shouldn't — and should therefore be tossed out. 

Ombudsman Jason Pedlar and child and youth advocate Annette King went to court last month in a bid to get finance department officials to butt out of the budgeting process for independent offices of the Legislative Assembly, including theirs along with the information and privacy commissioner, the public interest disclosure commissioner, and Elections Yukon.

They accuse the territory's finance department of "unlawful intervention" in setting their annual budget and they've asked the court for a writ of mandamus — essentially, an order forcing the government to do something set out in law.  

The dispute flared up in November, when Pedlar, King, and Maxwell Harvey, the chief electoral officer, all complained finance department officials vetoed budget increases for their offices. At issue is the question of who precisely has the final say on budgets submitted by independent offices of the assembly. 

The court petition asserts that the budgets approved for each office by the assembly's all-party members services board should be approved as-is by the finance minister, before being included in the annual budget.

In a response filed to court last week, Finance Minister Sandy Silver rejects their complaints, calling them "speculative and premature."

The minister argues that he has not yet tabled the annual budget — that's expected next month — and so the suggestion of political interference by his office is a "purely speculative hypothetical question," and the issue is not a "live dispute."

"The materials make frequent reference to 'political interference' as a basis for immediate court action. However, this disturbing assertion turns out to be a matter of rhetorical excess rather than of fact or evidence," the minister's response reads.

Just following the law, minister argues

It also says the finance department is simply following territorial legislation laid out in the Financial Administration Act. That act spells out the role of the government's management board in the budgeting process. 

Silver's actions to date "are fully authorized by, and in complete compliance with, the Financial Administration Act," his response reads.

The minister also suggests that the Yukon Supreme Court is essentially being asked to violate a sacrosanct principle of legislative independence. It says granting a court order in this case would violate parliamentary privilege — something the Supreme Court of Canada has clearly said courts cannot do. 

"It is impossible to identify an activity more obviously legislative in nature than the introduction of budgetary legislation in the Legislative Assembly by a minister of finance," Silver's response to the Yukon court reads.

"This application therefore asks the Supreme Court of Yukon to undertake a startling reversal of several hundred years of constitutional precedent on the relationship between courts and the legislature in a parliamentary system based on the Westminster model."

None of the claims in the petition have been tested in court. There's no date set yet for a hearing.