SOCIAL DEMOCRATS IN THE YUKON
Beebe, Jim
The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 began a pattern of uneven economic development that continues nearly a century later in the Yukon, that vast, mountainous territory in the northwest corner...
...In return, the government is requiring local contracts and hiring, as well as training programs for Native Americans, women, and youth...
...Money spent on local products circulates in the local economy, creating jobs and wealth as it changes hands...
...The Yukon economy is notoriously weak...
...The discovery of an untapped resource creates fabulous wealth for a few, while luring and then abandoning thousands of workers...
...In contrast to the open hostility with which it greeted neighboring British Columbia's first social 32 democratic government in 1972, the mining industry is working cooperatively with the new Yukon government...
...Lower government spending and higher tax revenues...
...Such small-scale, renewableresource-based industries are well suited to Yukon communities, most of which have fewer than 1,000 people...
...Looking for a better future, Yukon voters last year elected the North's first social democratic government, the regional New Democratic party...
...Penikett, who campaigned against the Conservatives as a "white middle-class boys' club," heads an eight-member caucus that better reflects Yukon demographics: five rural members, four Native Americans, and two women...
...The territory exports almost everything it produces and imports almost everything it consumes...
...The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 began a pattern of uneven economic development that continues nearly a century later in the Yukon, that vast, mountainous territory in the northwest corner of Canada...
...We have more ghost towns than living communities" is how Yukon Premier Tony Penikett sums up his territory's chronic boom-and-bust economy...
...Under Penikett and the motto "Working Together," the social democrats promised immediate job creation and long-term stable economic development...
...Similarly, the government is designing its buildings for locally made wooden beams rather than imported steel beams and steelworkers...
...While the Conservative government dithered, thousands of people left the Yukon, and unemployment soared over 20 percent...
...Penikett plans to build a new economy that is more diversified, more self-sustaining, more stable, more locally controlled...
...As an experiment, the government commissioned sets of office furniture from local craft shops...
...The ore goes to Tokyo, the profits to Toronto, the taxes to Ottawa, the jobs to Alberta, and we end up with a hole in the ground...
...Together these are expected to create more than 1,000 jobs for the Yukon's 12,000 workers and to provide better facilities for the Yukon's dozen rural communities, ranging from a health center in Old Crow above the Arctic Circle to the first school gym in the mining town of Elsa...
...Solutions range from greenhousing to elk ranching...
...The new government began with classic Keynesian measures: $25 million in public works added to the current budget and $81 million for 1986-87...
...Of the $120-million annual energy bill, almost all goes outside, including $90 million for petroleum products...
...Penikett hopes that diversification can soften the cycles experienced by mining...
...Doing so would finally break the painful cycle begun by the gold rush...
...Politicians and public servants worked hard to help reopen a large lead-zinc-silver mine that had been the territory's largest private employer for more than a decade before closing in 1982...
...Solutions include wood-chip heating plants and serious conservation...
...The object, Penikett says, is for everyone who lives here to be able to make a living, rather than for a few outsiders to make a killing...
...The latest bust was caused by the 1981 worldwide recession, which doomed petroleum and mining in the Yukon...
...Over last winter, the new government gave communities $2 million in a unique job-creation project that paid not just for labor but for materials to build facilities of lasting value...
...The social democratic government does not intend to replace private with public development or megaprojects with mini ones, but to create a diversified mix that can better weather the world's economic storms...
...The cabinet includes two aboriginal people, one a woman...
...In the midst of this depression, Tory cabinet ministers ordered luxury cars for themselves, but denied school buses to rural students...
...In the long run, though, the government is committed more to the "small is beautiful" philosophy of E. F Schumacher than to Keynes...
...For instance, of the Yukon's $40-million annual food bill, less than $1 million goes for local products...
...The results...
Vol. 34 • January 1987 • No. 1
