The Yukon government will extend the monthly subsidy for electrical rates beyond the end of the month, cabinet spokesman Matthew Grant said this morning.

The average resident in the Yukon receives the monthly subsidy of $26.62, based on the average consumption of 1,000 kilowatt hours.

It was scheduled to disappear at the end of this month.

Grant said Premier Darrell Pasloski and Yukon Energy Minister Brad Cathers were in meetings and not available this morning to discuss the future of what is referred to as the interim electrical rebate.

"What I can tell you is the electrical rebate will not be ending March 31 but I am not in a position to say how long it will go for,” Grant said.

The rebate was originally designed by the New Democrats in 1998 to insulate Yukoners from rate shock following that year's closure of the Faro mine.

Successive governments have maintained the subsidy in different forms ever since.

The Yukon Party announced in 2007 it would be phasing out the subsidy of what was then $37.15 for 1,000 kwh per month: 50 per cent would be cut as of July 1, 2007, and the remaining 50 per cent to be eliminated July 1, 2008.

The program, the government argued, was a disincentive to conservation and was getting too expensive with the rising Yukon population and growth in demand.

It pointed out in 1999, the first full year of the subsidy, it cost Yukoners $2 million to support the subsidy from general coffers. The annual cost had grown to $4.9 million in 2006.

The subsidy program was budgeted at $3.1 million for this fiscal year ending March 31.

While the government followed through with first 50 per cent reduction in 2007, it never cut the second 50 per cent.

In fact, in 2009, it raised the subsidy from the remaining 50 per cent of $18.60 back up to the $26.62 a month, or $319 a year.

There are also monthly subsidies for commercial and municipal customers, based on a higher rate of consumption.

For months, Pasloski and Cathers have declined repeated requests to discuss their vision for future of the program.

Pasloski has not yet announced when he'll deliver the 2013-14 fiscal year budget.

He delivered the 2012-13 budget last March 15.

The Finance minister must give the legislature at least two weeks' notice prior to having it reconvened.

In recent memory, the legislature has almost always been recovened on a Thursday.