Yukon

The federal riding of Yukon is coterminous with the territory itself, making it one of three single-member ridings that each span an entire territory. Its roughly 482,000 square kilometres take in the Saint Elias Mountains—home to Mount Logan, Canada’s tallest peak—boreal forest along the Alaska Highway corridor, and sub-Arctic tundra in the north. Whitehorse, the territorial capital and the largest city in northern Canada, accounts for more than 70 per cent of the territory’s approximately 43,000 residents. Other communities include the former Gold Rush hub of Dawson City, Watson Lake near the British Columbia border, Haines Junction at the edge of Kluane National Park, and a network of smaller First Nations communities. Fourteen First Nations hold traditional territories across the Yukon, eleven of which have settled comprehensive land claims and self-government agreements with the federal and territorial governments.

Candidates

Brendan Hanley (Liberal) — A physician and public-health specialist, Hanley spent more than two decades practising emergency and family medicine in northern and remote communities across the Canadian territories. He holds a medical degree from the University of Alberta, a diploma in tropical medicine from the University of Liverpool, and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins. He also served overseas with Médecins Sans Frontières. From 2008 to 2021, he was Yukon’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, becoming the public face of the territory’s COVID-19 response. First elected to Parliament in 2021, he sought a second term on a platform of healthcare investment, climate adaptation, and strengthening northern economic resilience.

Ryan Leef (Conservative) — Leef grew up in the Yukon after his family moved from Ontario and studied criminology at the University of Windsor before embarking on a career in northern law enforcement. He served as an RCMP officer, a wildlife conservation officer, and deputy superintendent of operations at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre. He represented Yukon in Parliament from 2011 to 2015, having defeated long-serving Liberal MP Larry Bagnell, before losing the seat in the 2015 election. Most recently working as the City of Whitehorse’s bylaw services manager, Leef won the 2025 Conservative nomination over former territorial MLA Patrick Rouble and ran on themes of affordability, public safety, and resource development.

Katherine McCallum (NDP) — A theatre artist and educator, McCallum holds a degree from Macquarie University in Australia and trained at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York. She founded and runs Larrikin Entertainment, a Whitehorse theatre company, and teaches acting at Yukon University. She has co-founded Yukon Theatre for Young People and served on the board of the Yukon Arts Centre. New to electoral politics, she centred her campaign on affordable housing, mental-health services, and climate action.

Gabrielle Dupont (Green Party) — An eighteen-year Yukon resident, Dupont has worked for twelve years as an architectural draftsperson for mining companies, contractors, and government agencies. She lives off-grid in a cabin outside Whitehorse and focused her campaign on expanding wind and solar energy infrastructure across the territory and on addressing the housing shortage.

About the Riding

Mining, tourism, and the territorial public service have long formed the backbone of the Yukon economy. Gold, silver, copper, and zinc extraction sustain the private sector, but the June 2024 collapse of the heap-leach facility at Victoria Gold’s Eagle Gold mine—one of the most catastrophic failures in heap-leach mining history—sent millions of tonnes of cyanide-bearing ore sliding into the surrounding environment north of Mayo. The mine, once the territory’s largest private employer, was placed into receivership, and the disaster prompted urgent questions about mine-reclamation security deposits, environmental oversight, and the adequacy of federal and territorial regulation. The territorial government projected GDP declines for both 2024 and 2025 in part because of the mine’s suspension.

Cross-border trade with the United States is unusually consequential for the riding. Alaska accounts for 85 to 95 per cent of Yukon’s annual international commerce, and communities on both sides of the border are linked by the Alaska Highway. The imposition of 25 per cent U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods in early 2025 strained these ties, threatening mineral exports, tourism traffic from cruise ships docking at Skagway and Haines, and the broader economic relationship. The Yukon government responded by pulling American products from territorial liquor stores and restricting U.S. firms’ access to government procurement.

Housing affordability has become one of the territory’s most pressing domestic concerns. A 2025 living-wage report estimated that a single person in Whitehorse needs over $31 per hour to cover basic expenses, and housing supply has not kept pace with population growth. Healthcare access is similarly constrained—many Yukoners lack a family doctor, and mental-health services remain difficult to reach, particularly outside the capital. The March 2025 federal designation of a Northern Operational Support Hub in the territory’s vicinity, part of a $2.67-billion Arctic defence investment, injected sovereignty and military infrastructure into the riding’s political conversation alongside these bread-and-butter issues.