Yukon's future: Untested Liberals with no grand promises

By the time the Yukon Liberal majority was official on Monday night, the after party was already out of food. There were only a handful of muffins left, but the hillbilly jug band was still jumping. It will take a few years to see if the celebration continues.

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The Liberal party ran a dream team that included lawyers, former and sitting city councilors, a cowboy and a First Nation chief. The 10 rookie MLAs elected now face a steep learning curve under a new premier still finding his feet. Silver was a high school math teacher thrown into the Liberal leadership role after interim leader Darius Elias abandoned ship following the 2011 territorial election, leaving Silver the sole Liberal in the House.

Silver is personable, cracks jokes, including referencing a slow start the morning after his re-election party, and has stressed a willingness to borrow ideas from all sides. Riding on the coattails of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's popularity, "#sexySandySilver" and the Yukon Liberals ran a diverse roster that included First Nations, a Filipino and eight women, though only three were elected.

Tahltan woman beats former premier

Jeanie Dendys, who wiped out sitting premier Darrell Pasloski in his riding, will likely become one of Silver's heavy hitters. A born and raised Yukoner, and member of the Tahltan First Nation, Dendys has worked for the Kwanlin Dun First Nation for the past seven years, most recently as its director of justice. With Silver in his Dawson City riding, six hours north of Whitehorse on election night, Dendys has already become the fresh face of the Liberal Party in the capital.

Another giant killer is Richard Mostyn, who beat out deputy premier Elaine Taylor, the longest serving cabinet minister in Yukon history. The Yukon Workers' Compensation Health and Safety Board bigwig and former Yukon News editor has kept his finger on the territory's political pulse, which will prove a boon for the fledgling Liberal government.

Driving a big pickup truck around town, with his campaign signs plastered on the side, Ranj Pillai brings more much-needed experience to Silver's team. The former city councilor has held senior positions with Yukon College and Northern Vision Development, has been a director on a whack of boards, and was most recently executive director with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations.

In the tiny, First Nation community of Old Crow, Pauline Frost beat Yukon Party incumbent Elias by only seven votes. The Liberals eked ahead by razor thin margins in a number of important ridings, which came as a surprise, even to party faithful.

Paving a runway, cutting business taxes

Running on a Hail Mary platform that promised familiar change — a diversified economy, First Nation reconciliation, environmental protection, and better health care and education — the Liberals managed to climb from one seat to a majority without making many promises.

The party is going to pave the quaint gravel runway in Liberal leader Sandy Silver's riding. It's going to return 100 percent of the carbon tax to Yukoners, and it's going to cut business taxes. Beyond that, the centrist platform remains hard to pin down.

Throughout the campaign, Silver has been quick to point out the Yukon's bleak economic outlook. The territory has seen steady economic decline for the past three years, according to the Conference Board of Canada. And the coming year doesn't look much better. Silver blamed the Yukon government's shoddy track record with First Nations for the nosedive, and has committed to sitting down with chiefs within his first month in office to start mending relations. It won't be easy.

Woeful land-use planning and poor First Nation relations have resulted in some major court challenges over control and regulation of land use. A fight with four First Nation governments over land-use planning in the Yukon's magnificent Peel River Watershed is now before the Supreme Court of Canada. Additional lawsuits over land and water rights have halted mineral exploration and industrial development in other parts of the Yukon, creating a climate of uncertainty.

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No 'grandiose promises'

The Liberals have promised to protect the Peel — by accepting the final report of the original Peel Watershed Planning Commission, though this is not binding — and are hoping to resolve ongoing land-use conflicts, making it easier for Yukon's mining industry to attract investors. However, resolving these lingering court challenges will take time, and investors aren't likely to start banging on the door anytime soon.

The Yukon's only operating hard-rock mine is seeing massive local layoffs and threatening to close, a Chinese majority shareholder of an oil-and-gas firm looking to drill in Yukon's Eagle Plain basin just pulled out, and exploration projects across much of the territory have halted.

At first glance, it appears the Liberals will, at least, be starting off in the black, with a $13.7 million surplus. But here too, things are shaky. The surplus was created after the Yukon government took over a troublesome wastewater treatment plant in Silver's Dawson City riding, which appears as a $25-million asset on the books. Plagued by problems, including ballooning operations and maintenance costs, the sewage plant is currently being run by the contractor, but will become an inherited headache for the Liberals in 2017.

By his own admission, Silver avoided "making grandiose promises" during his campaign, in an attempt to be all things for all people. "We will do what we said we are going to do," Silver said during Monday night's acceptance speech. But, outside a bunch of buzzwords like "inclusivity, balance, and accountability," the Liberals haven't said all that much.