Yukon premier grilled over leaked document about government cuts

Yukon Premier Sandy Silver says he won't comment on a leaked document that directs government officials to cut their budgets — but he admits his government is "looking for efficiencies."

A memorandum obtained by CBC was recently sent to all of Yukon's deputy ministers, by Deputy Finance Minister Katherine White. In it, she says cabinet's management board is looking to achieve "overall savings of 1% and directing departments to submit plans to achieve ongoing operations and maintenance savings of up to 2%."

After a CBC reporter tweeted the document on Monday, opposition parties grilled the government in the Legislative Assembly and demanded details about any planned cuts.

Yukon Party MLA Scott Kent said a two per cent reduction in the education department's operations budget would represent about $3.6 million.  

"Can the minister tell us where the Liberals are intending to cut $3.6 million, from education's budget?" Kent asked.

Silver, who's also the territory's finance minister, demurred by saying he wouldn't comment on an internal government document.

"Suffice to say that we've seen this style before happen, and the results of those leaked documents didn't come to fruition," Silver said.

But he admitted a need to cut spending and "right-size this government."

"It's not news to anybody in the Yukon that the government is looking for new ways to be efficient," he said.

"We're looking now at how services are organized, we're looking at management and delivery of services, and we're looking for efficiencies to better deliver services to Yukoners."

'Same old denial'

Yukon Party leader Stacey Hassard was not satisfied, and accused the government of offering "the same old answers, same old denial."

He also said trimming two per cent from all department budgets would be a clumsy way to save money.

"They're not looking to see where cuts can be made, where is it going to be most beneficial, where is it going to have the least impact on Yukoners," Hassard said.

"There doesn't seem to be any direction, there doesn't seem to be any vision."

NDP leader Liz Hanson was also unimpressed. She said she was reminded of cuts made in the 1990s by the federal Liberal government under Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

"That went forward, and structurally undermined the effectiveness of federal transfers, including for housing, all sort of things, Indigenous programming," she said.

"So I think this is a really bad way to demonstrate your grasp of managing government." 

With files from Nancy Thomson