Yukon New Democratic Party
| Yukon New Democratic Party | |
|---|---|
.svg)
|
|
| Party leader | Kate White |
| founding | 1978 |
| Headquarters | Whitehorse |
| Alignment | Social democracy |
| Parliament seats |
2/19 |
| Website | www.yukonndp.ca |
The Yukon New Democratic Party (NDP; French Nouveau Parti démocratique du Yukon ) is a social democratic political party in the Canadian territory of the Yukon . It is an integral part of the New Democratic Party , which operates at the federal level, and represents its regional section in the territory.
history
Like the other regional parties of the Yukon, the Yukon Progressive Conservative Party and the Yukon Liberal Party , the Yukon New Democratic Party was formally established in 1978 when the territory was granted greater autonomy than before by the federal government. That year also saw the first election to the Yukon Legislative Assembly , in which Tony Penikett won the only seat for the NDP.
After the party had increased the number of its seats in the 1982 election to six, three years later it achieved a further increase to eight seats, whereupon Tony Penikett formed a minority government as Prime Minister of Yukon. The election of 1989 brought the NDP the ninth seat in the 16-member territorial parliament, whereby Penikett now headed a government with an absolute majority. In 1992 the New Democrats were defeated by the conservative Yukon Party and went into the opposition with only six seats.
In 1996, the NDP under Piers McDonald won eleven of the 17 seats in the legislative assembly and again formed the government. In the following elections, the proportion of seats decreased continuously to three by 2006; in the end it only achieved the status of the third strongest party. 2011 saw the last success so far, with an increase to six from a total of 19 mandates, with which the NDP once again operated as the “official opposition” of the ruling Yukon Party . The election of 2016 brought another significant defeat: The now only two seats were taken by the then party chairman Elizabeth Hanson and Kate White , who was elected her successor in 2019.
Chair of the Yukon NDP
- Fred Berger (1978-1981)
- Tony Penikett (1981-1995)
- Piers McDonald (1995-2000)
- Trevor Harding (2000-2001)
- Eric Fairclough (2001-2002)
- Todd Hardy (2002-2009)
- Elizabeth Hanson (2009-2019)
- Kate White (since 2019)