For some Yukoners, climate change is a key issue this federal election campaign
Despite importance, environment, climate change not being talked about enough, some Yukon voters say
While topics like tariffs, affordability and housing have dominated conversations about the upcoming federal election, some Yukon voters say another issue should also be at the forefront — climate change and the environment.
"It seems to be something we're ignoring now," Haines Junction resident Julie Bauer said.
"I know there's other focuses but I think the environment has to be a priority, especially for our youth and for all of us…. We have to think about other things than just day-to-day stuff, we have to think about the future of our children."
Whitehorse resident Jennifer Staniforth also said it was a priority for her.
"The environment hasn't been talked about a lot and I would hope that that would be a big part of this election," Staniforth said.
"I think a clean, healthy planet is the best thing we can do for ourselves right now."
A federal government report in 2019 found that Canada, on average, was warming at double the global rate, with the North warming even faster than the rest of the country. Besides warmer days, symptoms of a changing climate have also included increased precipitation, warming and melting permafrost, higher water temperatures and more intense wildfire and flood seasons.
While climate change may seem like a standalone issue, Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle, a Whitehorse-based conservation planning biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said it's interwoven with other topics.
"My perspective is, we want an MP that can … actually see that intrinsic connection between our economy, our social welfare issues and our environment because they're all interlinked," she said.
That's a reality that Yukon First Nations have been grappling with for years now, with traditional travel routes and harvest — including for chinook salmon — along with entire communities threatened by the impacts of climate change.
"It's really emotional when we talk about our homelands and when we talk about loss and damage because everything that is alive keeps us as First Nations people in our traditional territory alive," Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation elder Lorraine Netro previously said at a global climate summit.
The Yukon's capital city also knows the impact of climate change first-hand, having seen one of its main arteries into and out of the downtown core — Robert Service Way — blocked by a major landslide off a neighbouring escarpment in 2022.
"That slide was a wake-up call and a clear sign of the impacts of climate change on our community and our infrastructure," Mayor Kirk Cameron told reporters earlier this month.
The slide, and smaller ones in the years since, have cost the city millions of dollars for clean-up and the installation of safety barriers, but an even more expensive project lies ahead — permanently rerouting the road away from the escarpment.
The federal government is pitching in more than $45 million for the project via its Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund. Cameron said that kind of federal funding was "critical" for dealing with the triple-threat of climate change, aging infrastructure and a growing population, and that he would ensure the next federal government remains aware of that.
What candidates say
CBC Yukon asked the four candidates running for the territory's lone MP seat how they planned to address climate change during a forum Tuesday. Here's how they responded, with answers edited for clarity and length.
Ryan Leef (Conservative Party)
We believe in technology, not taxes. We saw the carbon tax didn't [have] any measurable impact on dealing with the climate issue, which is really a global issue and it just ultimately broke the backs of Canadians in terms of affordability of life. So our focus is going to be on investing in technology. If we utilize some of the ethical and the clean products that we have here in the country, extracting our own resources, we can reduce the emissions that are utilized by our reliance on other global partners. Climate change is not a Yukon-caused phenomenon, although we suffer from the effects of it far more than anyone else, so we do need to be conscious about climate issues, but we also can play a much bigger role in reducing global climate emissions with our technological advances in Canadian innovation.
Katherine McCallum (NDP)
Canadians are doing their part, but we can't keep relying on working Canadians to solve this enormous problem by themselves. And the way to do that is to make sure that the big polluters are paying for the damage that they're causing and, and they shouldn't be rewarded for the damage that they're causing. So we need to be taxing big oil and gas companies and making sure that that money isn't going offshore. We need to end the consumer carbon tax and instead put the onus on the biggest polluters in subsidies to the most profitable oil and gas companies. Put money in people's pockets by making homes more efficient and reinvesting in greener and renewable energies on the home front and, and making it easier for people and more affordable people to buy a zero-emissions vehicle and make their homes more energy efficient.
Brendan Hanley (Liberal Party)
Canada has an important role to play and to continue to play as a climate leader. And I'm glad to see among Mark Carney's many, many skills, he was also the UN envoy on climate change, including climate financing. So part of his vision and our vision is harnessing the markets to leapfrog into new energy infrastructure and develop more energy self-sufficiency, which we need to do anyway in the light of the U.S. tariffs, but also to accelerate the transition towards renewable energy. We also need to keep in mind emergency preparedness in the North. We also need to hold industrial polluters to account because we need to continue to bend the curve in emissions. I would say the consumer carbon tax did have an effect about 10 to 15 per cent of emissions reductions. We need to compensate for that on the industrial side.
Gabrielle Dupont (Green Party)
Clean energy transition — this is one of my priorities for this campaign. We do know that taxing the big emitters, it's three times more efficient than taxing consumers, taxing people. And I do not believe that the carbon tax in the Yukon was the right tool. And so when we do keep taxing the big emitters, the revenue that we're getting from this, we're using [it] to fund clean energy transition. And the Yukon, we're really not that far from being 100 per cent renewable. And I'm pretty sad that we actually missed the boat on projects like the Atlin hydro expansion because of a lack of commitment from the federal government. And so as a Green MP, these are the projects that I would champion as hard as I can, to get these projects out the door. This is exactly what we need to do for our clean energy transition in the Yukon so let's fund these projects.
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With files from Gord Loverin, George Maratos and Dave White