Yukon doesn\u2019t need Ottawa\u2019s permission to close its own gaps<\/p>\n
Published 5:00 pm Sunday, October 4, 2026<\/p>\n
Yukon doesn\u2019t need Ottawa\u2019s permission to close its own gaps<\/p>\n
This past week (of Sept 21), a security workshop in Whitehorse examined how foreign governments exploit legal, economic, and media channels to disrupt democracies, and European consuls general fielded related questions at a town hall at Yukon University. Both conversations were valuable, and got me thinking about two vulnerabilities Yukon could close on its own.<\/p>\n
The first is legislative. A research paper I wrote last year found that the *Yukon Elections Act* has no limit on political contributions, and no requirement that donors be Canadian citizens or eligible voters. There\u2019s no oversight of nomination or leadership contests. Nothing stops a bulk membership drive, foreign-funded or otherwise, from shaping who leads a party. Disclosure only kicks in above $250, there\u2019s no third-party spending law, and Elections Yukon has no dedicated trained auditors. The decision to pursue an audit would have to wind its way through Elections Yukon, YG legal counsel, department directors, and a minister (a lot of desks for what should be a routine compliance check). A candidate convicted of corrupt or illegal practices can still run for office here. Yukon has no disqualification standard, unlike Ontario, B.C., or the federal system. None of this requires a national task force to fix. It requires our own MLAs amending the Act. This isn\u2019t a foreign problem. It\u2019s a paperwork problem.<\/p>\n
The second is media literacy (made ever more important with the presence of Generative AI), and here we don\u2019t need to invent anything. CIVIX, a Canadian non-partisan civics charity, runs CTRL-F that teaches students to evaluate what they see online, not by what a site looks like, but by checking who\u2019s behind it. A Canada-wide study of more than 2,300 students found the program increased \u201clateral reading\u201d (the habit of leaving a page to verify it elsewhere) sixfold, from 11 percent to 59 percent of students, with the gains still holding six weeks later. Nearly all teachers said it changed how they teach digital literacy. It\u2019s already free, it\u2019s already Canadian. Adopting it in Yukon schools isn\u2019t a big ask; it\u2019s picking up something already sitting on the shelf. Customizing it for Yukon can come later.<\/p>\n
Small electorates make these gaps matter more here than anywhere else in Canada. In 2021, the Vuntut Gwitchin riding tied 78 votes to 78 and was decided only by a random draw \u2014 a margin that would take almost nothing to move, through a handful of improperly sourced dollars or a well-timed rumour, and one that ended up deciding whether a party held a majority in our own legislature. We don\u2019t have to wait for a federal task force, a European summit, or another commission report to close these two gaps. We can do it ourselves, starting with the Legislative Assembly\u2019s Oct. 5 sitting, and pursue media literacy this school year. Our MLAs and our school boards don\u2019t need to wait for anyone\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n
\u2014Chris O\u2019Brien, management consultant with Polar Coordinates in Whitehorse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yukon doesn\u2019t need Ottawa\u2019s permission to close its own gaps Published 5:00 pm Sunday, October 4, 2026 Yukon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-921019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}