Another business organization is raising concerns with what the Yukon Party calls the failure of the territorial government’s economic management.

On June 30, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB) released its first annual report card on economic policies related to internal trade and interprovincial co-operation.

The report gives the territory’s Liberal government an overall score of 3.8 out of 10 and an overall grade of F.

“Following the pandemic, the private sector needs to be at the forefront of our economic recovery, and the government needs to be taking action to create a climate where free enterprise can flourish,” Geraldine Van Bibber, the official Opposition’s economic development critic, said Tuesday.

“Instead, we see business organizations like CFIB criticizing the lack of action and giving the territorial Liberals a failing grade.”

The report card grades governments in three areas: exceptions to the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, select barriers to internal trade, and the implementation of reconciliation agreements.

This report follows a Yukon Chamber of Commerce letter to the government earlier this year that outlined how small and medium sized businesses are in crisis and that “the actions, policies, and proposals by the Government of Yukon…are crippling business at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has already eroded sales and evaporated profits for many SMEs in Yukon.”

The letter went on to provide several examples of Liberal policies, actions, proposals and consequences that had raised the cost of doing business at a time when many businesses, in the chamber’s words, “are hanging on by a thread and feel that their government is kicking them while they are down.”

The Yukon Party is calling on the Liberal government to meet with the chamber and the CFIB “to listen to the business community and start taking real action to create the conditions where the private sector can thrive.”

Asked about the Yukon Party’s concerns, cabinet communications staff sent the Star this emailed comment:

“The Government of Yukon’s grade in comparison to other jurisdictions is largely the result of the territory’s number of exceptions in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement.

“The report itself notes that making a comparison on the gross number of exceptions is not optimal or reflective of their actual impact, considering the differing scales of economies across jurisdictions in Canada,” the statement added.

“This concern was raised with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business ahead of the release of the report, noting such methodology leads to false equivalency among exceptions, even though the national economic impact of the Yukon’s exceptions is small compared to those held by other provinces.”