Focus on Rural Yukon and Municipalities

The Yukon Party is announcing its plans to support municipal governments and local advisory councils, as well as revitalize the services available to rural Yukoners throughout Yukon communities.

From closing rural transfer stations and shuttering highway rest stops to prolonged closures of rural health centres and ever-declining highways and roads, new legislation and regulations have most often been imposed without consulting communities.

The Yukon Party will amplify rural Yukoners’ voices and revive services within communities by:

• Launching a robust recruitment campaign to attract teachers, health care workers and trades professionals to rural Yukon and offer incentives for them to establish roots and access education and health care locally.
• Empowering public servants to live and work in rural Yukon; leveraging lessons learned from remote workers, identifying eligible territorial government positions and encouraging public servants to relocate to rural Yukon where appropriate.
• Strengthening municipal governments by working more closely on infrastructure planning and development, and modernization of the Comprehensive Municipal Grant to ensure communities are adequately resourced to deliver essential services which underpin economic and housing goals.
• Empowering Local Advisory Councils by initiating discussions to expand their responsibilities and input into decisions which affect unincorporated communities, ensuring all Yukoners have a voice through their elected representatives.
• Mandating community impact analysis within the territorial government’s legislative, regulatory and policy development processes; ensuring communities are engaged early and their needs and priorities are considered.
• Advocating for changes to the Gas Tax funding program (Canada Community Building Fund), including to the limits on stacking for increased flexibility and to enable these funds to address infrastructure deficits more effectively.
• Adjust the Community Recreation Assistance Grant to account for inflation and index it to inflation going forward.

“The Yukon Party recognizes that local governments best understand their needs and priorities. To that end, we will establish an infrastructure fund for the territory’s seven unincorporated rural municipalities, mirroring the federal Gas Tax Fund’s flexible criteria,” continued Dixon, who is also the Yukon Party candidate for Copperbelt North. “This fund would be shared equally among these communities to maintain and upgrade critical infrastructure such as water systems and roads.”

Similarly, recognizing Whitehorse’s critical role as the territory’s capital, main service hub, and primary recipient of the Yukon’s population growth, the Yukon Party will create an annual fund for critical infrastructure repair, maintenance and development to meet the city’s needs and ensure reliable services.