Pillar 5 - Family Wellness
Elements
We believe in a progressive, people-focused government that will strengthen families and assists all Yukoners in having meaningful and fulfilling lives. This is achieved by providing every child and family with an environment that will allow them to maximize the full extent of their abilities. We recognize that trying to develop a strong economy without succeeding in creating a healthy society based on family wellness is not the definition of "success." We will work towards and help facilitate the development of a society in which community members look out for each other.
There are four elements of Liberal Policy Development which achieve these expressed goals and objectives. They are:
1. Health
The Yukon Liberal Party believes that personal attention to maintaining a healthy lifestyle is critical to a long and rewarding life. Healthy and caring communities and their governments provide citizens with assistance in good lifestyle choices through education and prevention support, and timely and consistent access to health care and the professionals who care about and understand their patients' needs. Health contributes to quality of life and is a basic right of all Yukoners.
The expectation is that a healthy community is one where the sick receive timely and compassionate treatment, and where government works cooperatively with healthcare providers and NGOs in preventing and treating sickness.
We further believe that government is required to provide first-rate affordable publically-funded health care without the imposition of means tests, user fees, or premiums and that prevention and education are the best means to reducing health care costs.
2. Lifelong Learning
We believe that every individual should have the expectation that if they work and study hard they will succeed in their chosen field. In education we provide each new generation with the support for lifelong learning. This ensures that each individual can play the important roles that society demands, resulting in healthy homes and communities.
Our students will be provided with a toolbox of skill sets needed to ensure their success, and that they will complete their schooling, with a life long love of learning.
Further, we believe that post-secondary education and a commitment to lifelong learning will ensure that we are equipped and ready to meet the challenges of the rapidly changing societal needs of the future.
3. Lifestyle and Family Support
The Yukon Liberal Party believes in the importance of providing support to Yukon families. The human family in all of its dimensions and groupings is the basic structural cornerstone of society. To support family means the protection of the youngest and most vulnerable among us, as well as, the appreciation and honouring of our seniors and elders.
The expectation is that by supporting families in difficult circumstances we ensure that children grow up as well-rounded individuals who will contribute to society. By protecting the elderly and the frail, we ensure that the necessities required to maintain healthy and safe homes are continued throughout a Yukoner's life.
Further we understand and appreciate that lifestyles are a means of forming a sense of self. In strengthening the family, we will ensure that healthy lifestyle choices are made which help to build society and protect the most vulnerable individuals from unhealthy environments.
4. Culture and Language
The Yukon Liberal Party believes that our cultural diversity is our strength and is of great importance to Yukoners. All governments must play a significant role in the preservation, development, and interpretation of our rich cultural heritage and Yukon's linguistic tapestry. Government must show leadership because a strong society made up of diverse cultural groups, and with a strong heritage foundation, contributes to healthy resilient Yukon communities.
We recognize that language is one of the most tangible symbols of cultural identity, as language shapes how a person sees and responds to the world. Yukon has a dynamic society where both official languages along with aboriginal languages are heard commonly around the territory, contributing to our sense of a dynamic Canadian society. The preservation and enhancement of Aboriginal languages is central to a society that recognizes the importance of culture.
Further, we recognize that Yukon with the rich amalgam of cultures and languages continues to welcome newcomers from around the globe to this unique, open and diverse society.
We believe that people of all cultures, religions, ethnic background and beliefs should be free to retain their languages and culture, and have the freedom to express themselves, while at the same time being called upon to participate in our wider society.
Policies
Seniors’ Recessional Housing
The Yukon Liberal Party would develop a progressive seniors’ housing strategy that tailors assistance to need. This includes the creation of a range of recessional housing solutions for senior citizens which recognizes the unique needs of senior citizens.
Support for Women’s Centres
The Yukon Liberal Party supports local women’s centres; along with the provision of funding to ensure the existence and sustainability of these local centres.
After School Child Care – 6 to 12 Year Olds
The Yukon Liberal Party would promote and support the use of public schools by Non-Governmental Organizations and the private sector to offer ongoing after school care programs for 6 to 12 year olds which would also provide supervision, guidance and security to these children following normal school hours.
Youth Drop-in Centres
The Yukon Liberal Party strongly supports youth and the development of adequately funded youth drop-in centres.
Education Policies
The Yukon Liberal Party is committed to investing Yukon’s financial, human and capital resources in ways that will enhance learning in the Yukon.
Partners in Education
The Yukon Liberal Party believes that Government must give every student the opportunity to reach their maximum potential, and is committed to functional and progressive partnerships with:
- Parents, respecting that they are their children’s primary educators;
- School Councils/Boards, respecting an empowerment philosophy and the ability to influence educational direction in the schools and across Yukon;
- Yukon First Nations, respecting their status as governments, and the government-to-government relationship; and
- The Yukon Teachers’ Association, respecting its membership and its professional competencies.
Educational Assessments
The Yukon Liberal Party supports the concept that all Partners in Education be involved in developing a realistic assessment policy within the Yukon education system.
Cooperative Education
The Yukon Liberal Party actively supports the promotion of non-governmental, public and private sectors’ cooperation in student work experience.
Program Information Sharing Between the Partners in Education
The Yukon Liberal Party is committed to the sharing of information and strategies among school administrators, staff, students, parents and employees in the Department of Education, especially in relationship to the strategies needed to address the concerns raised by the Auditor General of Canada.
Healthy Communities
The Yukon Liberal Party recognizes that “health” is more than simply meeting medical needs. The importance of healthy communities should reflect the security of food supply, adequate shelter, positive social conditions and lifestyles, recreation, living cultures and languages. The Yukon Liberal Party would look to traditional learning styles and land-based experiential learning opportunities as tools in achieving healthy communities.
Social Assistance - Employment Transition Projects
The Yukon Liberal Party would develop meaningful employment transition programs for people who are having difficulty entering or reentering the work force.
Healthy People - Healthy Communities
The Yukon Liberal Party strongly affirms its support for the principles of the Canada Health Act: universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness, portability and public administration - as a critical foundation for innovations made to the Health Care System.
This affirmation is made recognizing the limits to current health care resources and the complexities involved in the health care reform decisions facing us. The Yukon Liberal Party reaffirms the critical role of the federal government in maintaining the five principles of the federal act in partnership with provincial and territorial governments and First Nation governments.
The Yukon Liberal Party affirms its support for reforms to the Canadian Health Care System which reflect a shift from a treatment-based system to a more balanced approach that emphasizes health promotion, disease prevention and community-based care.
The Yukon Liberal Party is committed to undertake constructive dialogue about the future of health care, including recruitment and on call issues, in partnership with health care providers.
The Yukon Liberal Party will encourage and work with individuals, groups, communities and governments to participate in the development of programs for healthy living in healthy communities. This will be done in recognition of the need to provide a structure that will support discussions about the future health care needs in Yukon, with emphasis on the well-being of the whole person, including such aspects as health promotion, disease prevention, mental health, and cultural and community and family health.
The Yukon Liberal Party would address the ongoing need to train and retain health related professionals. To this end, the Yukon Liberal Party would encourage young Yukoners entering health related fields by developing and expanding programs such as forgivable student loans and bursaries.
Whitehorse General Hospital and Healthcare Infrastructure
The Yukon Liberal Party supports the wise use of healthcare infrastructure investments to ensure the continued operation, development, and expansion of the Whitehorse General Hospital facilities for improved access to healthcare services in Yukon, and the wise use of other appropriate health care facilities to ensure their maximum value for communities needs.
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) Response
The Yukon Liberal Party would work in partnership with governments and stakeholders to develop strategies to deal with the prevention of FASD and deal with the present and future needs of those affected by FASD. In addition, it is committed to a multifaceted approach in educating Yukoners from the earliest grade levels on the effects of drinking and pregnancy.
The Yukon Liberal Party is committed to the development and implementation of strategies to provide supports early in a child’s life, for families, children and young adults. The co-ordination of services would ensure the most effective means of identification and treatment possible at the earliest age to provide for the greatest overall benefit to both the family and to the Yukon.
Autism Response
The Yukon Liberal Party is committed to identifying the prevalence of developmental disorders such as autism to allow for resources to be appropriately assigned for the greatest benefit.
Financial Assistance to People with Disabilities
The Yukon Liberal Party supports the provision of financial assistance and social services in a dignified and non-intrusive fashion, to those disabled people who are not able to regularly pursue substantially gainful occupations. This would be the case as it relates to individuals who have not had a sufficient attachment to the workforce to accumulate pension benefits.
The Yukon Liberal Party would investigate the option of a Guaranteed Annual Income as an effective vehicle to achieve consistent support for the disabled.
Yukon Alcohol and Drug Committee
The Yukon Liberal Party supports the creation of an alcohol and drug abuse committee to liaise with all segments of the community to formulate effective options for dealing with alcohol and drug problems in Yukon.
Legal Aid for Families
The Yukon Liberal Party supports the adequate funding of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and provision of adequate legal aid for family matters.