For some Yukoners, climate change is a key issue this federal election campaign

While topics like tariffs, affordability and housing have dominated conversations about the upcoming federal election, some Yukon voters say another issue should also be at the forefront — climate change and the environment.

"It seems to be something we're ignoring now," Haines Junction resident Julie Bauer said.

"I know there's other focuses but I think the environment has to be a priority, especially for our youth and for all of us…. We have to think about other things than just day-to-day stuff, we have to think about the future of our children." 

Whitehorse resident Jennifer Staniforth also said it was a priority for her.

"The environment hasn't been talked about a lot and I would hope that that would be a big part of this election," Staniforth said.

"I think a clean, healthy planet is the best thing we can do for ourselves right now." 

A federal government report in 2019 found that Canada, on average, was warming at double the global rate, with the North warming even faster than the rest of the country. Besides warmer days, symptoms of a changing climate have also included increased precipitation, warming and melting permafrost, higher water temperatures and more intense wildfire and flood seasons.

While climate change may seem like a standalone issue, Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle, a Whitehorse-based conservation planning biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said it's interwoven with other topics. 

"My perspective is, we want an MP that can … actually see that intrinsic connection between our economy, our social welfare issues and our environment because they're all interlinked," she said. 

That's a reality that Yukon First Nations have been grappling with for years now, with traditional travel routes and harvest — including for chinook salmon — along with entire communities threatened by the impacts of climate change.

"It's really emotional when we talk about our homelands and when we talk about loss and damage because everything that is alive keeps us as First Nations people in our traditional territory alive," Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation elder Lorraine Netro previously said at a global climate summit. 

The Yukon's capital city also knows the impact of climate change first-hand, having seen one of its main arteries into and out of the downtown core — Robert Service Way — blocked by a major landslide off a neighbouring escarpment in 2022.

"That slide was a wake-up call and a clear sign of the impacts of climate change on our community and our infrastructure," Mayor Kirk Cameron told reporters earlier this month. 

The slide, and smaller ones in the years since, have cost the city millions of dollars for clean-up and the installation of safety barriers, but an even more expensive project lies ahead — permanently rerouting the road away from the escarpment.