$5.4 million in the red, compared to $9.4 million in the black as forecasted by outgoing government.
The Public Accounts, a government financial document, tabled by Finance Minister Sandy Silver (Klondike) Tuesday, confirm what everyone already knows, that the outgoing Yukon Party government left a deficit rather than a surplus. “The financial statements for 2016‑17 show a $5.4-million deficit for the year. This compares with a $9.4-million surplus budgeted at the outset of the financial year. The difference is $15 million and the difference has resulted in our government being in the red for the year. As I said in my budget speech — and I quote again: “Coming into office, we understood that Yukon had a surplus budget, yet there was no surplus. There was in fact a deficit.”
Silver produced a laundry list of expenditures the Yukon Party didn’t budget for. “But what they spent, and didn’t budget for, was unbudgeted salary increases for the new collective bargaining agreement with the Yukon Employees’ Union. $3.5 million for new teachers and educational assistants hired without budget dollars allocated for them. Then we’re told that this is somehow our hire, yet they were in the seats in September. There is $4 million in payments due to meet pension solvency requirements for Yukon Hospital Corporation, which is $3.5 million, and for Yukon College of $500,000.”
Yet Yukon Party Finance Critic Brad Cathers (Lake Laberge) says the Liberals came to power with four months left in the fiscal year, and that’s when the spending began. “According to documents we ATIPP’d before the passing of their 2017-18 budget, the Liberals spent $105,000 on personal luxuries ranging from furniture to iPads to smartphones. While the government is planning on going into debt and considering a territorial sales tax, they spent taxpayers’ money on new luxuries for ministers and political staff, including over $60,000 for new electronic devices alone.”
“The Premier and his colleagues chose to table the largest budget in Yukon history this year. Their own budget shows a plan to spend down our financial assets by over $80 million this fiscal year, burning through $80 million in cash this fiscal year alone.” “His decision to increase spending this fiscal year — including adding 202 new government staff positions, by his own admission in the spring — instead of restraining spending as they should have, is the Premier’s choice.”
NDP MLA Kate White (Takhini-Kopper King) says the Premier was correct about last year’s finances, but now its time to stop laying blame and to take responsibility for the future. “I hope what we just witnessed is to be the final chapter of the “It’s not our fault; it was the previous government’s fault” narrative. I’m also hopeful that we will stop hearing it from this [opposition] side.” “Don’t get me wrong — the Premier is largely right when it comes to the mismanagement and the lack of fiscal planning by the previous Yukon Party government. We have no doubt, and the Public Accounts attest that the rosy financial picture described by the previous government in the last election was more of a creative than realistic picture of Yukon’s financial situation.”
Silver says the Public Accounts confirm the need to create the Yukon Financial Advisory Panel.
(Dan Jones Whitehorse Oct. 30, 2017)
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