Statement from Premier Dixon on his disappointment with the Government of Canada's announcement
Press Release + Noah Note
Premier Dixon has issued the following statement:
"The Government of Canada’s announcement Thursday was described as 'a new plan to defend and transform Canada’s Northern and Arctic Region'.
“I was surprised and disappointed to see that of the federal government’s massive $32 billion investment in defence in Canada’s North, none of that money would flow to the Yukon.
“The Yukon is home to the largest city in the North and more than a third of the total population of the North. Despite this the federal government seems to have completely overlooked the Yukon.
“I am pleased to see the significant investment in our two neighbouring territories and that the federal government is making such massive investments in both military and civilian infrastructure in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
“The Yukon has a long history of contribution to the sovereignty of our nation. Today, the Yukon is home to the only year-round road connecting southern Canada to the Arctic Ocean and marks the western entry point to the Beaufort Sea.
“A plan to defend and transform Canada’s Northern and Arctic region cannot neglect one third of the North.
“I call on the Government of Canada to recognize the Yukon’s strategic potential in this plan and to provide financial support to address our urgent energy, road and health care infrastructure needs vital to the sovereignty of our territory and of Canada.”
Noah Note: In fairness to the Premier I can understand his frustration looking at yesterdays announcement. The Yukon was left relatively unmentioned in yesterday's funding, save funding to expand Whitehorse into a proper Operational Support Hub.
Those kinds of things sadly happen. The fact is that the projects and areas of priority needed for Investment right now are located in Nunuvat and the Northwest Territories. Yukon has the interprovincial highway connection through the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway completed in 2017. Yukin has seen significant investment in Tuktoyaktuks port facilities, including the recently completed Great Wall of Tuck.
Now, I don't want this positioned as me saying that Yukon should be content. I get the frustration here. I get why they mught feel excluded from funding. They sadly have missed out because priorities have focuses on building out new infrastructure, infrastructure that itself is very much needed.
The Mackenzie Highway and Arctic Economic & Security Corridor are both vital spines that will create the basis for building out the road and teansport networks across the territories. Both of them will compliment the existing Dempster/Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highways.
So I do understand the frustration and dissapointment. I also unferstand (knowing the current gaps and needs) why the Yukon kinda lost out here. Priorities dictated the needs here, amd the priorities were not with the Yukon this time.
I agree with the gist of your comments, but Inuvik and Tuk are both in the NWT, not the Yukon.
Yukon does have a relatively small Beaufort Sea coastline, but no communities there and no obvious port locations. The coastal terrain itself is flat tundra, but any road connection to that area would logically tie into Inuvik and the Mackenzie corridor rather than routing back through Yukon’s interior to connect to the Dempster. So in practice, Yukon’s Arctic coast is more of an NWT infrastructure story than a Yukon one — which arguably explains part of why the funding landed where it did.
The only community in Yukon without all-weather road access is Old Crow. NWT and Nunavut have not had the same level of development historically — this is some catching up.
Is there no benefit to expanding the Whitehorse airport to become a proper FOL for the RCAF? Transforming Whitehorse to a NOSH (with a NAVRES division?) is a step in this direction, but given the relatively decent connectivity of Whitehorse (& distance to Yellowknife & Cold Lake) this might make sense no?
Still not a huge dual-use infrastructure project that the Premier was probably hoping for, but it seems like it'd be a slighter bigger step in the right direction than the NOSH.