Territorial party leaders accused the premier of vote buying after the Yukon Party tabled its 2016-17 budget in the legislature Thursday.

This is the last budget the premier will deliver before his five-year mandate runs out in October.

Official Opposition Leader Liz Hanson of the NDP called the part of the Department of Education budget a “cynical approach to buying votes in September.”

Pointing to the surplus, which is down from last year’s estimate, Liberal Leader Sandy Silver said the 2016-17 budget is “an attempt for the Yukon Party government to try to buy the hearts and minds of Yukoners with all the money that’s supposed to be in reserves for future years.”

At just $9.5 million, this year’s surplus estimate is markedly smaller compared with last year’s estimate of $23 million, though the estimated surplus for 2015-16 was recently revised to $1.2 million, significantly down from the 2014-15 surplus, which was a bit over $68 million.

Premier Darrell Pasloski told the Star Thursday he believes that had the Liberals or NDP tabled the budget, they would have run “a significant deficit.

“What we have is a modest surplus,” he said.

“The surplus is smaller because of the reduced revenues – we got less money on the transfer payment from the federal government than we were supposed to get, and our revenues are down as well, as a result of the downturn in the economy.”

Because of changes to the way the territorial transfer is calculated, the Yukon received $6.5 million less in 2016-17 federal transfer money than it had anticipated during the winter.

However, the territory still got more money from Ottawa in 2016-17 than ever before for a total of $1.07 billion in federal transfers and recoveries such as infrastructure investments.

Last year, the Yukon received $1.05 billion in health, social and territorial transfers and recoveries.

Pasloski noted in his speech to the legislature that his government is proposing a budget with a surplus, and without tax increases to Yukon residents and businesses, nor debt.

“We are a small economy and vulnerable to external forces.” he said.

“I believe that we should never put our economic future at risk, or that we have any right to ask our children – or our children’s children – to pay for the cost of our ER visits or the social services we all use today.”

Silver takes a different view.

“What we’re seeing here is money being spent more on a political basis as opposed to a five-year plan,” said Silver.

In a scrum following the premier’s budget speech, Silver said the government is taking on projects in the lead-up to an election, with little consideration for the long term.

He noted major capital projects currently underway, and the $3 million this year that will go toward construction of the new F.H. Collins Secondary School.

“When you spend all your money in that final year ... you create a false economy, you create this one year of build where what’s going to happen?” he said.

“We’re going to have a lot of companies come from down south and they’re going to come up here and try to grow roots.

“It’s great to have competitive industries, but the way in which we create that false economy in that last year, nobody’s going to be sticking around for the next year, and the next year after that.”

After health care and social services, the budget allocates more money to the Education department than any other.

This year’s Education budget is $160 million, up about three per cent from last year’s $155 million.

Included in that is $520,000 for school supplies, which amounts to about $100 per student.

The plan right now is for school councils to take responsibility for spending the money.

Hanson questioned how much impact such an initiative will have on Yukon families.

“(As if) $100 a kid is somehow going to change the territory,” she said.

“I think most Yukoners are going to see it for what it is: a cynical vote-buy that we’ve seen previous Conservative governments try.”

Hanson also mentioned “boutique tax credits,” such as the Yukon children’s fitness and arts tax credits, which she said don’t apply to many “ordinary Yukon families.”

She pointed instead to the federal Canada Child Benefit as an example of a program that will put “real money into the pockets of lower income families in the territory.”

Under the Yukon children’s fitness tax credit, families can claim up to 15 per cent of enrolment fees, up to $1,000, for any child under 16 who participates in a sports league or fitness program that’s supervised and at least eight weeks long.

Deputy Finance minister Katherine White said Thursday that 1,700 tax filers claimed the fitness tax credit in 2014.

The Yukon children art’s credit functions in much the same way as the fitness tax credit.

Families can claim up to $500 for each child under 16 years of age who is registered in an arts, cultural and/or outdoors program for at least two months.

White said 650 tax filers claimed this credit in 2014.

The numbers aren’t out for 2014 yet, but in 2013, the number of Yukoners who filed income taxes was 27,000.

Under the federal Canada Child Benefit that Hanson mentioned, families are entitled to monthly, tax-free payments of up to a total of $6,400 per year. Families earning net incomes under $30,000 a year and with young children will get the highest benefit.

Ottawa projects that about nine in 10 families will get more money out of this new tax program.

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