NDP WORRIED BY RECORD GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND BORROWING
The Yukon Party government is spending more than $1 billion and borrowing another $167 million without clearly justifying or explaining these record expenditures in its accounting practices, says Todd Hardy, the leader of the NDP caucus.
“In all my years in territorial politics, I have never seen a government spend taxpayers’ money with so little public scrutiny and oversight,” Hardy adds. “The spending and borrowing is happening at an alarming pace and with very little attention to risk management, costs-benefits studies or needs assessment. And that concerns me both as a politician and a taxpayer.”
Even the right-leaning C.D. Howe Institute recently gave Yukon the worst grade of any jurisdiction in the country for using ‘obfuscation’ in the form of confusing and multiple accounting techniques to hide the true picture of the territory’s finances from the public.
“The premier refused to admit his government spent $23 million more in 2009-10 than it took in when the proof was right there in the budget for all to see. His response when we brought this to his attention was denial and dismissal.”
Opposition politicians did not even get a chance to debate the line-by-line expenditures of the departments of Justice, Highways and Public Works, Environment, Energy, Mines and Resources, Finance, as well as those of the Housing, Energy and Liquor corporations, during the spring sitting. The combined spending of these departments and corporations totals $447.5 million.
On the political front, the caucus argued for a public inquiry into the in-custody death of Raymond Silverfox, more public consultation on the flawed Civil Forfeiture Act, a review of the150-year-old practice of free-entry mineral staking and changes to the Municipal Act to allow for greater citizen participation through referenda.
“We did what we were elected to do, and that is to provide constructive and thoughtful criticism to the best of our abilities,” Hardy says. “I think we succeeded in holding the government accountable on a broad range of social, health, public safety and environmental issues on behalf of the people of this territory.
“Did we win every battle? Certainly not. But we stayed true to our social democratic principles and beliefs and worked hard to conduct ourselves at all times with honesty, integrity, dignity and respect for all the members and institutions of the House.”