Don’t hit pause on changing a health system the Yukon can’t afford to keep
Published 5:30 am Friday, February 20, 2026
If you’ve ever ended up in an emergency room for something a family doctor or walk-in clinic should have handled, you’ve felt the real cost of keeping our health system the same. Getting care can mean long travel, missed work, and navigating systems far from home — sometimes in places where cultural safety is not guaranteed. When care isn’t consistent and close to home, small issues become crises, and people wait until they have no other choice.
That’s why the Yukon government’s decision to pause work on the new health authority should concern all Yukoners.
The authority — called Shäw Kwä’ą in Dän K’e (Southern Tutchone), meaning “all is well” — would integrate health services in the territory under one arm’s-length organization. It was designed to improve continuity of care and cut through silos created by the current split between hospitals, clinics, and the Yukon government. It was also designed to shift how decisions get made, with Yukon First Nations sharing authority on key governance decisions and cultural safety built into how the system operates. This approach reflects a core teaching in the Reconnection Vision: that health systems should be built around relationships, continuity, and shared responsibility — not fragmentation, silos, or constant crisis response.
In other words, Shäw Kwä’ą was built to answer a question that Yukoners have been asking for years: How do we stop paying more for a system that still feels hard to access, hard to navigate, and hard to trust?
Just last week, the new Yukon Party Premier and Health Minister told Yukon First Nation leaders that the government is considering repealing the Health Authority Act — the legislation that created Shäw Kwä’ą. Instead of continuing the work needed to stand up the authority, the government says it will return to a committee model to advise on health transformation.
If this debate feels familiar, it should. The Yukon has already spent years studying what isn’t working in health care and what it would take to fix it — and it has already relied on an advisory committee to carry that work forward.
The previous Yukon Liberal Party government launched an independent review of the health system that resulted in the 2020 Putting People First report. The report gathered input from “over 920 voices” and produced 76 recommendations. A central recommendation was to move toward an integrated model with clearer accountability — what Shäw Kwä’ą was created to deliver. In 2023, the Health Transformation Advisory Committee was established to help the government act on those recommendations, including shaping the Health Authority Act.
The case for structural change is measurable. The Putting People First report found that total health spending per Yukoner in 2017–2018 was $11,700 — more than 1.5 times the national average.
Despite that investment, outcomes like life expectancy were worse than the Canadian average, and access gaps are stark. The report also noted that the Yukon has more family doctors per person than most places in Canada, yet 21 per cent of Yukoners do not have a primary care physician and only 5 per cent reported being able to secure a same-day appointment.
The new government says its main objection to Shäw Kwä’ą is the financial pressure it inherited — specifically, the anticipated cost of moving employee pensions to a new plan, which it estimates at more than $70 million.
That concern deserves a serious response. But abandoning structural reform solely because transition costs are complex would leave the underlying system unchanged. The 2020 Putting People First report made it clear that tinkering with the current model will not achieve financial sustainability. Shäw Kwä’ą is meant to shift what the Yukon spends its health dollars on by reducing reliance on the system’s most expensive setting: hospitals. The report found that in 2017 the Yukon spent $2,560 per person on hospitals — 60 per cent more than the national average — and that over 27 per cent of emergency visits at Whitehorse General Hospital were for conditions that could potentially have been handled by primary care.
The report pointed to Southcentral Foundation’s Nuka model in Alaska as evidence of the fiscal and service benefits integrated models can deliver. That model resulted in a 40 per cent drop in emergency room visits and a 36 per cent reduction in hospital stays, resulting in savings that supported new community care aide programs.
That’s why another advisory committee model is not an equivalent substitute for the change Shäw Kwä’ą is bringing. Committees can offer advice, but they can’t consolidate accountability. They can’t set system-wide direction and be held to it. And they can’t create the clear lines of responsibility that stop problems from bouncing between departments, agencies and politicians.
At a time when the Yukon should be strengthening partnerships and living up to the commitments of reconciliation, this move takes us in the wrong direction. Our territory’s modern treaties were built on the vision of everyone — Yukoners and First Nation citizens alike — coming “together today for our children tomorrow.” The Reconnection Vision reminds us that the choices we make today are seeds, and health systems are no exception. What we invest in now determines the outcomes future generations will live with. Pausing structural reform in health care runs counter to that spirit of shared responsibility — and to the obligation we carry to those who come after us.
If the government is serious about improving cultural safety, addressing racism in the health care system, and strengthening access and integration, it can prove it quickly: take repeal off the table while transition issues are worked through; release the actuarial analysis and options on pensions and workforce impacts; and negotiate a clear path forward with unions and health partners. Then set clear milestones and timelines so Yukoners can see what will change, by when and how progress will be measured.
A health system that works is not an expense; it is an investment in people, trust, and long-term sustainability. This Yukon government can choose to protect familiar structures, or it can choose to build a health system worthy of its people. The decisions of today will shape trust, outcomes, and costs for generations to come.
Governance reform is how frontline care improves. The choice is not between governance and care — it is between doing the hard work of transition or walking away from the most substantial effort the Yukon has made to reduce fragmentation and rebuild trust in its health care system.
If the price of transition is $70 million, what is the price of choosing the status quo — and who pays it?, former Yukon Regional Chief (2018–2025) and former AFN National Health Portfolio Holder; Chair, National Chiefs Committee on Health (2018–2021)