ABOUTN 12 May, Doris Bill She stood in front of a small crowd to start her campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party Yukon. Former CBC journalist, three -year -old chief of the first nation Kwanlin Dün and residential premises surviving at the school, she made her application at a time when the yukonters were disappointed in the party. The liberals who have been in force since 2016 saw how the two prime miners left for personal reasons from the latest elections; The latter, Range Pillai, left by the account of the vacancy, now fought to fill out. “Since I entered the race, people tell me that this is rejuvenating the party,” said Bill CBC. If successful, she will become the first indigenous prime minister of Yukon – and the first born in the territory.
Two weeks later, the businessman Whitehors Mike Pemberton announced that he was also looking for a leadership. The high profile of Bill and political experience made it a clear leader, but Pemberton – active in the party for about twenty years – this is important that there is a competition. Over the past two decades in Yuon, each leader of the liberals has been recognized.
Then the unexpected happened. At the congress in June, Pemberton came out in the first place – for thirteen votes. The CBC reporter asked him if he really intended to win. “Of course,” he said.
Everything has become more strange. A few weeks after five of the eight liberal members of the Legislative Assembly announced that in the fall they were not looking for a different deadline. (Two others, the former prime ministers of Pillai and Sandy Silver, have already said that they would no longer run.) Bill said that the long-standing liberals told her that they did not vote for the party. When I began to report this story at the end of August, the liberals announced only one candidate compared to the eighteen Yukon party and the nine new Democratic Party. Yukon has twenty -one of them.
These elections, which will be held on November 3, are one of them. This may be the last within the framework of the first pastry system; Yukoners will vote in a plebiscite about whether to cross the ballot. These are also the first elections with the new boundaries of skiing, a contradictory movement that caused an argument in favor of the rural and urban representation.
It seems clear that the liberals will fall. With the fact that it will give up to enthusiasm. With our population, about 46,000 people, elections can be determined by the most subtle estimates. “A small number of voters in each ride makes a campaign, and the voter turnout is incredibly important,” says Keith Holliday, a local newspaper observer. Thus, it is amazing that the liberals attached their conditions to the former owner of a store-store with a recognition of the name.
IT – critical time for yukonThe population of the territory continues to grow, since we fought with a lack of medical care, high cost of housing, increasing the demand for electricity and an increase in real estate crimes. The new government will be responsible for the modernization of the outdated legislation on the mining industry of Yukon and the processing of the latest environmental disasters in the eagle -gold mine. This is similar to a particularly important time for voters to think: in what yuon do we want to live, and which party will bring us there?
In this climate, two candidates began to conduct a campaign. Pemberton, who called himself the “right center”, said that he wanted to increase the safety of the community and help enterprises be more profitable. “I am committed to helping people,” he said to CBC.
Bill indicated her experience at the school of residential premises and the foster family as an example of her unique perspective. During her stay as the head of her self -governing first nation in Whitehors, she often worked closely with municipal and territorial governments. “If you look at all past prime ministers, there is no one with what I have,” she said CBC.
Each of them signed hundreds of members to the Yukonnaya Liberal Party. To join, you must be a resident of Yukon and at least fourteen years old. As the Convention approached, both candidates received the right to participate in the list of voters in accordance with the rules of the party. When Bill read the list, according to her, about eighty names had no addresses, and they had numbers of phones with codes not Yukon. She presented the problem, and the committee on accounting for educational data investigated by registering missing addresses and confirming the inhabitants.
Then Pemberton won his hair. Bill was angry. She says that she received dozens of reports from the yoner, upset that their vision of the territory with the leader of the first nations was gone. The supporters also told Bill that they felt that Yukoner did not make a decision. This boils down to the belief that during his campaign Pemberton signed many recent immigrants. As an employer of the private sector, he often hired employees through the candidate of Yukon, through which foreign and outside the territory, employees can immigrate to Yukon. But, according to Pemberton, in recruiting recruiting he did not aim at people related to the nominal program of Yukon – he focused on everyone he knew.
Nevertheless, none of this violates the rules of the party. There is no minimum period of time to live in the territory in order to have the right to vote in the liberal Convention on Leaders, although you must show evidence that you live here. The lack of signatures of members who are not citizens of Canada is that they cannot vote in a general election.
This issue of identity reflects an awkward impetus in the yuon between the tributary of the new residents-as well from other parts of Canada, and with long-standing local residents. Some of the born and shot yukoners, known in colloquial speech as BNRS, are expressed by contempt for new residents, do not go and do not lose, Mentality-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DD-D-D-D-D-D-DDDDDDDDDDD-DM. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that at some moment all the settlers – with the exception of the first nations who transferred the waves of newcomers arriving to the territory and turned them off from decision -making.
Bill is not interested in determining that he makes someone a yoner, although she appreciates the opinion of “people who are long-term residents who have invested in a community who know problems and know people.” When her team contacted some members that Pemberton signed up, they said that they were voting for him because he was a good guy, or he helped them come to Yukon. This bothered her – it was not about what his values were.
Matthew Lien is a lifelong yukoner who never joined the political party until he registered to vote for Bill. He thought that its leadership could represent the “moment of the change of sea”-an integrated era for the territory. He was stunned that she lost. “This caused deep concern that the party was based on an old guard that simply would not allow such changes,” he says.
At Congress, Lien heard how the man proudly told how, when a woman tried to join the Order of the Pioneers of Yukon, the brotherly order took out this issue to the Supreme Court and won. Bill says that during her campaign, she sometimes heard comments used to the fact that some members of the party did not want a woman from among the indigenous peoples at the helm. It is difficult to understand how much this takes into account her loss.
After Pemberton won, says Bill, he asked her to run in his team. She refused. During her offer there was a lot of talk about what was “for the good of the evening.” She says she is tired of this. “Right now I am doing everything for the benefit of Doris Bill.”
LIain soon found his own Faith in the party breaks up. Two months after the Convention, he turned to liberals several times, asking for the rules of the Constitution and the party of the party. He wanted to know more about the party he joined. But he never received an answer. He sent a final letter to terminate his membership. (Recently, he announced that he was running for Yukon VDP.) For him, the absence of an answer suggested a crisis in the party. Of the seven departing Mla, he says: “It looks like really beautiful, kind -hearted mountain goats that leave the destructive mountain. I do not want to say that rats leaving a sinking ship. It's just not bad. “
But the Liberal Party Yukon disputes any assumption that it is growing, or that Pemberton’s victory of divided members, or that MLA, who decided not to run again, did it out of Pemberton. “This is mostly horseshoe,” says President Jason Channing. “There are some people angry that Doris Bill has not won, and usually this is the case when you support the candidate and they do not win.” Leadership races come down to the one who signs more people and calls them to vote, he says. It is so simple.
Horseshoe or not, it does not look good for liberals. Pemberton does not visit two debates this week, organized by the Commercial Chamber of the first nation of Yukon and the Yukon Council, the first nation (CYFN), respectively, although the VDP leaders and the Parties of Yukon will be in both. In its place, liberals send other candidates. “We strive to demonstrate the strength of our entire team – they are all leaders,” the party wrote in an email.
The absence of pimberton as a result of the debate occurred against the background of protracted consequences from the comments that he made for the leaders of the first nations during the summer. During the CyFN General Assembly in June, Pemberton said that he did not see the color, and that it does not matter if someone is red, yellow or white. “Although his intention was to emphasize inclusiveness and justice as basic values,” said Yukon's liberals in a statement to Morgea, “his choice of words in an analogy was inappropriate and wrong.”
When I talked with him a month ago, Pemberton was still trying to build candidates. “When your party loses 90 percent of the political team, and you must rebuild in a short period of time that we have, yes, it is difficult,” he admits. “But I knew it would be difficult.” A month after the election, he has five holes to fill his team.
And although he works to strengthen the party, he had to play his own chances. Pemberton will run to Whitehors West, next to his home skating in the north of Copperbelt. The choice seems to be strategic: Copperbelt North belongs to the leader of the Party of Yukon Kerry Dixon, popular MLA, while WhiteHorse West is currently a liberal place and, probably, a easier victory. Meanwhile, Bill looked through both the VDP and the Yukon party, but she decided to stay away from the fight.
Nevertheless, behind these tactical movements lies the counterfactual: what if Bill defeated? Will the liberals be “the condition looked like”? Can her leadership convince the Yuonnov to give the party another chance? In the history of Yukon, only once received the ruling party won three consistent terms, and only once in one place in third place – liberals in 2002. The party is now on the verge of both thresholds at the same time, ready to either make a story or repeat it.
