Yukoners won’t get the day off work or school for National Aboriginal Day this June 21.

The Yukon Party government said Tuesday it will not finish consultations on the impacts of a new statutory holiday in time to bring it before the legislature during this government’s mandate.

The motion to make National Aboriginal Day a paid day off in the Yukon, starting in 2016, was brought by NDP MLA Kevin Barr and debated in December 2015.

At the time, the legislative assembly agreed to consult Yukon First Nations, unions and the business community on the impacts of making June 21 a paid holiday.

“The government committed to doing their consultation, and what they didn’t do was their consultation. They haven’t begun yet,” Barr told the Star today.

“They could have done the consultation, and that’s what’s disappointing.”

National Aboriginal Day celebrates First Nations, Inuit and Métis culture and heritage and indigenous people’s contributions to Canada.

Ottawa declared June 21 National Aboriginal day in 1996. Indigenous communities across the country, however, have been celebrating their culture on the summer solstice for generations.

About one quarter of Yukoners identify as indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and/or Inuit).

“We are disappointed in the government’s decision to not yet make this a statutory holiday in Yukon,” Kwanlin Dün First Nation Chief Doris Bill said today in a statement to the Star.

“We believe sharing our heritage – like the history of the Gold Rush is shared with the rest of the world – would move us forward in the spirit of First Nation reconciliation.”

Many Yukon First Nations governments give their employees a paid day off work on June 21.

First Nations citizens who work for the territorial government or in the private sector, however, don’t enjoy a paid holiday that day.

Currie Dixon is the minister responsible for the Public Service Commission, the department in charge of human resource policy.

He told the Star today the government has done preliminary work to begin consultation with businesses, unions and First Nations, and that it wants to begin formal consultations by the end of this month.

“We need the information,” said Dixon.

“We totally support National Aboriginal Day. We provide funding to groups who participate, and our premier participates in events and celebrations.”

However, Dixon said, “The creation of new stat holiday is not something we take lightly.

“We have to keep in mind that there is a cost to that decision and a cost that is directly borne by the business community.”

The Yukon Chamber of Commerce surveyed its members last year on the subject of a June 21 public holiday, chamber president Peter Turner said Tuesday afternoon.

“We had a significant amount of support for a statutory holiday from our members, but we also heard significant concern about the cost to the business community of adding a statutory holiday that comes at the beginning of the height of the summer season.”

The chamber sent a letter to the government asking that the Bureau of Statistics research the pros and cons of implementing a new statutory holiday, and to provide the results in terms of dollars.

What would it cost the business community to pay workers time and a half to work that day, and to pay those not at work?

By the same token, how would it benefit the Yukon’s economy to have all those people spending money on their holiday?

Turner said he has yet to see the results from his request to the statistics bureau.

Before his organization takes a position on the matter, Turner said, “we want to understand what the economic benefits of having a such a holiday would be, and what the costs to the business community would be.”

Barr said recognizing National Aboriginal Day is about more than a paid vacation.

It’s about taking stock of the legacy of residential schools, broken treaties and the loss of land, and also about celebrating the myriad ways indigenous peoples have enhanced Canadian society and culture.

“To recognize the contributions and the losses of indigenous peoples in the Yukon is part of truth and reconciliation,” he said. “It signifies that it’s important, just having the day.”

Right now, the Northwest Territories is the only jurisdiction in Canada where National Aboriginal Day is a public holiday.

The Yukon recognizes nine statutory holidays, though none is in June.

Pointing to Discovery Day, the Yukon holiday marking the discovery of gold in 1896 that triggered the Gold Rush, Barr said, “if it’s democracy, things cost money, it’s a reality.

“We can do it for discovering gold, why can’t we do it for a people?”