Opposition MLAs and other critics accused the Yukon Party government Wednesday of using underhanded tactics to push through a bill that would pause work on Shäw Kwä’ą, the territory’s planned health authority.

Shouts of “Shame!” could be heard in the public gallery as Yukon Party MLAs voted to approve second reading of Bill 5.

The bill reverts the status of the health authority to interim. It gives the government the ability to “discontinue or suspend” the health authority’s work. It also shields the government from most types of legal action regarding the authority, apart from constitutional challenges.

First Nations leaders have said they strongly oppose the decision to suspend work establishing the authority. The Yukon Party government contends the authority is not the best way to fix the territory’s beleaguered health care system and worries about the logistics of moving hundreds of Yukon government workers to a new arm’s-length body.

Doris Bill, who sits on the territory’s Health Transformation Advisory Committee, said the government was trying to push the changes through the house without proper public scrutiny.

“I feel it’s kind of sneaky in a sense that they’re trying to get this by us as soon as possible and they don’t want us around when that happens,” she said.

Premier Currie Dixon was not made available for an interview Wednesday. But during debate on the bill he said MLAs would have more opportunities for debate, including at the Committee of the Whole, which began immediately after the vote to approve second reading.

“This legislature is the highest and best opportunity to have a public debate about these types of issues, and that’s why we brought it forward here to the legislative assembly,” Dixon said. “Anyone in the Yukon can come into the gallery and listen to the debate. Anyone can review it online.”

Gov’t ‘ignored’ requests to talk about changes

Bill said the Yukon Party has been unwilling to collaborate with health authority proponents.

“We did ask them to pause while we have a conversation about where this is going and they ignored that,” she said. “They ignored a number of requests that we made to them. We had several meetings with them where the [health] minister [Brad Cathers] himself sat silent and never said a word.”

The NDP tried to rally supporters of the health authority to come to assembly at the last minute. Leader Kate White said the Yukon Party government was springing the bill on the assembly without proper notice.

The bill was not on Wednesday’s projected order of business, the document laying out the daily agenda for the assembly, which is issued around two hours before MLAs convene for the day.

“Had this been on a day where it was on the order, the projected order of business in the morning, people would have come,” she said.

Debate on Bill 5 continued in Committee of the Whole Wednesday, but ended when the assembly wrapped up business for the day. It was not immediately clear when debate would resume.