The new Confidence and Supply Agreement (CASA) between the Liberals and NDP has the leader of the Yukon Party convinced the government is more interested in holding onto power than setting its own agenda.

On Tuesday, Premier Ranj Pillai met with NDP Leader Kate White to announce the 2021 (CASA) between their two parties has been renewed into 2025. It had been set to expire yesterday.

The agreement gives the minority government support in a confidence vote in the legislature, and the NDP gets support for such policy initiatives as rent control and free transit service for Whitehorse.

“I get why Kate White would sign this agreement,” Yukon Party Leader Currie Dixon said in an interview Tuesday.

“She essentially gets to have her platform implemented despite receiving the fewest number of votes and the fewest number of seats in the legislative assembly.”

But Dixon said he was surprised that Pillai has renewed the agreement.

“He’s always tried to make the pitch that he was one of the few fiscally responsible, pro-business Liberals out there,” Dixon said.

“And now, in signing this, he’s trading away any credibility he had for two more years in power.”

Rent control, Dixon noted, was implemented as part of the original CASA signed in 2021.

The Yukon Party has said rent caps hurt landlords, and the Yukon Liberals have signalled some resistance to keeping them long-term.

Late in the legislative assembly’s fall 2022 sitting, Community Services Minister Richard Mostyn said the government would end the rent caps after January 2023. 

Rent control has not been eliminated though. As part of the new CASA, it’s been modified, but it will continue.

The new CASA’s continuation of rent control and the elimination of no-cause evictions, Dixon said, are “of significant concern” to his party.

Landlords and business owners will be adversely affected, he said. 

The Yukon Party has also been critical of other policies in the original 2021 CASA, such as the annual minimum wage hikes tied to increases in Whitehorse’s Consumer Price Index. 

Dixon said the NDP’s agreement with the government will also mean Health and Social Services Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee will remain “enshrined” in cabinet for two more years – despite a non-binding motion supported by both opposition parties in 2021 asking that she resign.

McPhee faced heavy criticism as the former Education minister for her former department’s failure to communicate with parents during a sexual abuse scandal at Hidden Valley Elementary School in 2019.

The three NDP MLAs voted unanimously in favour of the bill asking her to step down.

Dixon also criticized the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” that will be spent on payroll for three staffers the NDP gets as part of the CASA.

White said Tuesday the extra staff give her party the resources to hear from more Yukoners across the territory and to bring the challenges they face to the legislature.

Dixon said Pillai needs to seek his own mandate from Yukoners if he wants to set his own political agenda. 

“No one elected this premier,” he said.

“No one voted for this agenda. This isn’t what Yukoners asked for.

“And so all this does is enshrine the status quo for two more years, instead of giving Yukoners a choice about who they want to lead the territory or how they want it led.”

Pillai has said repeatedly, both as the sole Liberal leadership candidate and as the premier – a role he assumed less than three weeks ago – that Yukoners want stability, so he won’t call a general election.

The Liberal government has eight MLAs, the same as the Yukon Party.

Without support from the NDP guaranteed through CASA, the government would be in a precarious situation.

Unless the government calls for a general election ahead of time, the next one must be held in November 2025. The territory has moved from five-year terms of office to four-year terms.

When that election is called, the new CASA will expire.