It’s a tough road being a teacher’s pet in the Yukon these days.

Mostly, that’s because there simply aren’t enough teachers.

The scarcity of teachers is an ongoing problem, according to Ted Hupé, the president of the Yukon Association of Education Professionals.

Hupé spoke to the Star last Wednesday about the continuing lack of teachers, which he says is likely worse than ever this school year.

While there are approximately 270 substitute teachers on file with the Department of Education, which is up from previous years, Hupé says not all of them are available on any given day.

In fact, there are often fewer than 100 ready to work a day, and that’s all around the territory.

“There is no guarantee of supply,” he said.

Hupé has talked about the problem regularly in recent years, and he reiterated many of his familiar talking points.

There are two main problems contributing to the teachers crisis, he said. First there’s a lack of adequate pay.

Second, no one wants to come to an area where they can’t find a place to live.

“It’s the Year of the T.O.C. (teacher on call),” Hupé said, as schools reopened today after a long Christmas-New Year’s break.

“It’s still a problem, and it’s really created a lot of problems in the education profession. The chickens are coming home to roost.”

Hupé said the teachers are the “epitome of casual positions.

“They can choose to work when they want, as much as they want, and where they want ... and many times, that’s a ‘no’ on all fronts.”

The teachers need better pay, benefits and improved working conditions to make the jobs enticing enough for people to want to do the work, he said.

For a typical 5 1/2-hour hour workday, TOCs are paid approximately $264, Hupé said. That’s just more than $48 an hour.

While that might not seem like a bad deal to someone working at minimum wage, it’s generally not enough to catch the eye of accredited teachers – particularly with the high cost of living here and the lack of housing options.

“The wage is not fitting the role,” Hupé said. “It’s just not enough. It’s far below what a typical first-year teacher would make.”

Anecdotally, Hupé said he know of many TOCs and other education specialists who are working two and three jobs to try to get by.

“Many have other jobs,” he said. “It’s just reality.”

The real question, he said, is whether the Yukon government is prepared to recognize the challenge – and negotiate it in the next round of bargaining.

Hupé pointed to British Columbia, among other Canadian jurisdictions, where supply teachers are paid at the same level as their permanent counterparts.

That’s definitely not the case here, and that pay disparity acts in concert with the reluctance of people to move far from their home bases for new opportunities.

There simply aren’t enough accredited teachers in the territory, and encouraging more to move here is dicey.

“Incentives always work,” Hupé said bluntly, adding there aren’t many here in the Yukon.

“They won’t move up here and take a risk. Money and housing are the big issues,” he said.

Fortunately, the shortages haven’t been compounded this school year by medical issues.

COVID-19 hasn’t been much of a factor, and there have been no major outbreaks of influenza or the RSV virus, Hupe said.

That’s in contrast to the last few years. Even 2023 posed a problem, with high rates of teacher and student vacancies, Hupé said.

Jordan Owens, a spokesperson for the territorial cabinet, told the Star, “Ongoing national labour and housing shortages and the aftermath of the pandemic continue to have impacts on the Yukon’s overall teacher recruitment efforts, including for teachers-on-call (TOCs).

“However, progress continues to be made: as of Dec. 8, 2023, there were 259 registered TOCs in the Yukon, with an additional 29 applicants pending, while on Nov. 3, 2022, there were 198 registered TOCs, with 18 applications pending,” Owens added.

“TOCs became part of the Yukon Association of Education Professionals in 2018, and their rate of pay and terms of employment are subject to negotiation through collective bargaining,” she said.

The current collective agreement will be in place until June 30, 2024.

“We look forward to productive discussions with the union that we hope will result in an outcome benefitting Yukon educators while being fair and financially responsible,” Owens said.