Tony Penikett - Life and Work

Life and Work

An activist with the New Democratic Party (NDP), Penikett was campaign manager in 1972 for Wally Firth, the first indigenous northern MP ever elected to the House of Commons. Penikett became a member of the New Democratic Party's federal council in 1973 and served as executive assistant to Ed Broadbent in the mid-1970s. He was president of the federal NDP from 1981 to 1985.

Born in Sussex, England, on November 14, 1945 and educated at St Albans School (Hertfordshire) in England and in Alberta and Ontario, Penikett began his Yukon working life as an asbestos mine labourer at Clinton Creek, Yukon, where he became active in his union as a shop steward and chair of the grievance committee. He was first elected to the Yukon Legislative Assembly in 1978. As leader of the Yukon New Democratic Party he went from being the sole New Democrat Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) in 1981 to leading the party to power in the 1985 territorial election, forming a minority government and becoming government leader.

Penikett fought the federal government for a better deal for the territory in Canadian confederation and for control over its natural resources. Penikett's government also negotiated and signed an umbrella agreement for First Nations land claims, negotiated the first four agreements with individual First Nations, and developed an economic development strategy for the Yukon in consultation with citizens.

Penikett's government opposed the Meech Lake Accord, believing it would make it impossible for the Yukon to ever become a province.

The NDP formed a majority government after the 1989 election, with Penikett as Premier, the first government leader in the territory to be given that title. After seven years in power, the NDP was defeated in the 1992 election by the conservative Yukon Party.

In 1994 Penikett resigned as leader of the Yukon NDP and was succeeded by Piers McDonald. Robert Sheppard of The Globe and Mail commented at the time that Penikett had dominated Yukon politics for most of his 16 years in the legislature: "In that chamber, he could be the withering educator, a monument of sound reason or electrifying passion; or a mean-spirited bully." There was an attempt later that year to draft Penikett as leader of the federal New Democratic Party, but he declined to run. In 2003, after he had moved to British Columbia, he was rumoured to be a candidate to lead the British Columbia New Democratic Party, but did not run.

In 1997 he was appointed by the B.C. Government to lead contract negotiations with the province's public sector unions. Between 1998 and 2000, Penikett and his colleague John Calvert negotiated 32 Public Sector Accords (on early retirement, pay equity and joint trusteeship of pension plans) with public sector employer organizations and unions representing 250,000 provincial public employers. This is to date the largest number of social contracts ever negotiated in Canada.

Penikett is now a senior fellow on native treaty issues and a visiting professor for the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue at Simon Fraser University. He has also worked at the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, and for West Coast Environmental Law.

Penikett is the father of actor Tahmoh Penikett, best known for his work as Karl Agathon in Battlestar Galactica and Paul Ballard in Dollhouse. His twin daughters Sarah and Stephanie Penikett have also appeared on television, in Psych and The L-Word.

Penikett is the author of Reconciliation: First Nations Treaty Making in British Columbia (Douglas & McIntyre, 2006); two television films, The Mad Trapper (BBC TV, London, 1972) and La Patrouille Perdu (ORTF, Paris, 1974); and several plays.