Yukon Party Leader Currie Dixon says he’s concerned about the key issues facing Yukoners today.

“Myself as leader and my colleagues have spent this summer touring the Yukon, meeting with Yukon communities and stakeholder groups, basically engaging with Yukoners,” he told the Star in an interview Monday.

“While there are a lot of serious issues facing the Yukon, it’s become clear to me that the dramatically increasing cost of living is the issue that is the top of mind for just about every single Yukoner.

“The price of gas has reached historic levels, the price of groceries has skyrocketed and it’s just putting real pressure on Yukon families that are just trying to get by.”

Unfortunately, Dixon said, “the current government has been out of touch with Yukoners and simply not taking a leadership role in addressing this problem.

“We’ve impressed on them for over a year to take some action, and at every opportunity the Liberal government has declined or just dismissed our suggestions as gimmicks or parlour tricks. For instance, we suggested ceasing collection of the fuel tax in the Yukon, and that was something that they dismissed entirely.

“But of course, a week before the legislature resumes and knowing that they would face criticism for ignoring this, they’ve panicked and started throwing a few things out there, and we’ve seen some announcements to that effect over the last week, but ultimately it is really clear to us that they don’t have a plan and that they are not taking the cost of the living crisis seriously.”

The scrapping of the territorial fuel tax, he said, would not only decrease the price of gas for individuals but would exert downward pressure on food prices.

“So much of our food comes up from the South,” Dixon said.

“So we think that kind of measure that would affect the economy Yukon-wide would be a good step.

“We also suggested that the territorial government should campaign the federal government to cease the increase to the carbon tax that’s going to occur this year and occurred last year as well.”

The official Opposition also suggested increasing the Pioneer Utility Grant (PUG) and the homeowners grant, particularly for seniors, “because we think that seniors on fixed incomes are particularly hard-hit by the inflation crisis, so we proposed a range of measures over the last year, and unfortunately none of those have been taken up by the Liberals.”

Not surprisingly, housing is another issue the Yukon Party wants to raise.

“Earlier this year, we saw a report from the auditor general which was extremely critical of the Liberal government’s handling of adequate and affordable housing,” Dixon noted.

“It found what the Auditor General called a startling lack of progress on these issues and that’s been compounded by the government’s inability to get lots out and get land developed, and so we’ve seen those sort of persistent delays in Whistle Bend and a total lack of vision for what’s beyond Whistle Bend when it comes to lots in the Yukon.”

From there, the party remains very concerned about the state of the private sector, Dixon said.

“Earlier this year, as you may recall, the Yukon Chamber of Commerce outlined a series of issues of what they called a crisis for small and medium-sized businesses in the Yukon and despite that, we’ve seen things get worse.

“We’ve seen costs for small businesses increase, we’ve seen the labour shortage deepen and the issues that we saw from individual businesses over the summer are really felt across the economy as those challenges increase.”

There were some positive economic indicators over the summer, Dixon conceded.

“There was a bit of a return of tourism but businesses weren’t able to capitalize on that because of the challenges that they face, and unfortunately, many of those come from government.

“And then finally the lack of access to health care for so many Yukoners is a huge problem,” Dixon said.

“Lack of access to family doctors is something that affects thousands of Yukoners right now and we just haven’t seen sufficient response from the government on this.”

Asked if his party favours outlawing no-cause evictions, Dixon responded, “No, certainly not ... that issue has risen as a result of the Liberal and NDP disastrous rent control policies which have seen an exodus of rental units in the territory.

“We’ve seen people selling off units, people being evicted, rents going up and with that has come these issues of evictions and so, rather than intervening even further in that market by banning no-cause evictions, we would advocate getting rid of the flawed rent-control laws the Liberal and NDP government has brought in.

“What has happened in the rental market since they imposed this rent control (in the spring of 2021) is exactly what everyone predicted: that rents would go up, people would be evicted and people would start selling off rental units, which would decrease the supply, which is the exact opposite of what we need right now.

“We would prefer that they get out of restricting the rent control altogether.”

Dixon’s party does offer some solutions for the housing crisis.

“We need to see an increase in the supply of housing, and that means more land and more land development, so we need to see government get more lots out, we need to see them get the lots out on time.

“Unfortunately, over the last year, the lots that they have been able to push out have been either delayed or there’s been problems with them as we saw from a few builders earlier this summer.”

Vision is needed, Dixon believes.

“We hear of no planning or thought going into where the next tranche of lots are going to come from, other than Whistle Bend.

“There’s obviously other players involved there. There’s First Nations, there’s municipalities but really, what we want to see, is the Yukon government take a leadership role in identifying areas for growth,” he said.

Dixon said he’s happy with the Léger poll, released last weekend, that indicates the Yukon Party is polling at 45 per cent, with the NDP at 30 per cent and the Liberals trailing with 23 per cent in terms of voting preferences, but “it doesn’t change what we need to do.

“We need to stay focused on the issues that matter to Yukoners.”

One of Dixon’s shadow critic portfolios is the 2027 Canada Winter Games. He said it’s exciting that the Yukon could be hosting the event but has some reservations.

“What concerns me the most is the financial implications of hosting the Games,” he said.

“We’ve heard some pretty spectacular numbers being thrown around. I believe it’s in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars that the Yukon would be required to cough up to host the Games.

“To date, we have seen no commitment from the federal government yet and the territorial government has been pushing the municipality, the City of Whitehorse, to come up with money as well.

“Emotionally, I think the Games are fantastic,” Dixon added.

“I think the Canada Games are a wonderful opportunity for our sport community to come together, but at the same time, we do need to be cautious with those tax dollars and there needs to be a clear plan in place for what’s the most effective and efficient way for us to host these Games.”

The event is potentially “something that we’ll be paying for either through tax increases or through debt going forward, and that concerns me because of the fiscal situation we find ourselves in right now,” Dixon said.