Yukon agencies ask court to order finance department to butt out of budget requests

Yukon's ombudsman and its child and youth advocate are taking the territorial government to court in a bid to get finance department officials out of the budgeting process for independent offices of the Legislative Assembly.

Those offices also include the information and privacy commissioner and the public interest disclosure commissioner, as well as Elections Yukon.

In a petition filed with the Yukon Supreme Court Thursday, the ombudsman and child and youth advocate say they're seeking a writ of mandamus, essentially an order forcing the government to do something set out in law. 

"The [finance] minister's unlawful intervention raises a significant danger of real or perceived political interference, the erosion of public confidence and the compromise of independent oversight mechanisms which the officers of the Legislative Assembly are intended to provide in the Yukon," the petition states.

The dispute is fairly arcane, but it centres around the question of who precisely has the final say on budgets submitted by independent offices of the assembly. The petition asserts that the budgets approved for each office by the assembly's all-party members services board (MSB) should be approved as-is by the finance minister, before being included in the annual budget.

In a December letter to Speaker Jeremy Harper, who chairs the MSB, finance minister Sandy Silver said the territory's Financial Administration Act gives the final say to his department's management board.

Silver also wrote that the Legislative Assembly, which oversees budgets for the independent offices, has gone over-budget because of decisions made by the MSB and spending on caucus services for each political party has now been frozen as a result.

A cabinet spokesperson said the government would have no comment about the case while it's before the courts.

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