WHITEHORSE – Riverdale South candidate Tracy McPhee today released the Yukon Liberals plan to improve our health care system. She emphasized the importance of delivering front line health care services in outlining the Liberals plan.

“When you need to go to the hospital, the hospital needs to have the resources to take care of you,” she said. “Yukon Liberals will create better hospital infrastructure for Yukoners by ensuring that all Yukon hospitals have enough beds, equipment, services, and qualified staff. Working together, we will have a responsive health care system.”

Hansard November 25, 2013

Mr. Silver:  In February of this year, the Auditor General of Canada had some very strong criticisms for the Yukon Party and its mismanagement of capital projects. He was referring, of course, to the overbudget and behind-schedule hospitals in Watson Lake and in Dawson City. Fast-forwarding to today the Hospital Corporation is once again embarking on a major capital project — the expansion of the Whitehorse Hospital.

The corporation recently said that the new project will cost $60 million to $65 million to complete. It was only three short years ago that Yukoners were assured that the project would cost $50 million. Why has the cost of the project gone up $10 million to $15 million before a shovel has hit the ground?

Hansard November 6, 2013

Mr. Silver: Since we began this sitting I have been asking questions about the mismanagement of the F.H. Collins Secondary School project. I’d like to move today to another capital project the Yukon Party has bungled: the overbudget and behind-schedule Dawson City hospital.

Mr. Silver: The issue of new hospitals has been in the news lately and for all the wrong reasons. The government has been roundly criticized for poor planning and poor financial management of the two new hospital projects in rural Yukon. The Auditor General of Canada’s report on the mistakes the government made is quite a read.

The centrepiece of this year’s budget is a $27-million bailout of the Yukon Hospital Corporation to clean up the financial mess that has been created. Once the hospitals are finished they will need to be staffed. When the government decided to build these facilities there was no plan in place to staff either one of them.

Will the Minister of Health and Social Services confirm that nurses from Whitehorse General Hospital have been asked to work in the new hospital in Dawson because there are not enough nurses to staff the facility?

Whitehorse:  The centrepiece of the latest Cathers/Pasloski Budget is a $27 million dollar bailout of the Yukon Hospital Corporation and it confirms fears about poor planning and fiscal mismanagement, says Liberal Leader Sandy Silver.

Whitehorse:  Interim Liberal Leader Sandy Silver says today’s Auditor General of Canada report confirms what the Liberal Caucus has been saying for years: that two rural hospitals were poorly planned and built with no idea of what the health care needs of the local communities were.

Whitehorse:  Interim Liberal Leader Sandy Silver is calling on Premier Pasloski to confirm that officials from both the Yukon Hospital Corporation (YHC) and the Yukon Energy Corporation (YEC) will appear as witnesses in the Yukon Legislative Assembly during the upcoming Spring Sitting. 

Whitehorse:  Klondike MLA Sandy Silver is urging the Government of Yukon to rethink a plan to name the new health care facility in Dawson City, the Dawson City Community Hospital.  Community consultations last fall produced Father Judge Memorial Hospital as the preferred name.

Dawson City:  Sandy Silver, Klondike MLA and Liberal Critic for Community Services, is drawing attention to what he is calling “a major gap in employment standards in the Yukon”.