Re: Yukon News’s June 5 editorial.
I, among thousands of Yukon voters, would disagree with your assertion that the next election would be a re-run between Larry Bagnell and Ryan Leef.
We believe that they have both sold out to big donors and corporate interests. I have yet to hear a Liberal bemoaning the income disparity between the rich and poor or criticize the appointments of Liberal hacks to the Senate. The Liberals cannot discover ethics now, after all the miseries they have caused.
Lest we forget: Leef and his party are the ones who have watered down the environmental assessment regime in Canada through Bills C-38 and C-45 (the so-called omnibus bills) which were an insult to Parliament and democracy. Those bills removed the independence of the National Energy Board, did a major overhaul of the Navigable Waters Act and amended the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
All to please the industrial interests and pipeline proponents, just as the Yukon government will do whatever the mining companies ask them to do. It was the Conservatives who withdrew from the Kyoto accord, making Canada the first and only country to withdraw from such an agreement.
And lately they (the unelected Senator Dan Lang and Leef, along with Premier Darrell Pasloski) are pushing the same amendments to our own environmental assessment regime without any consultation with Yukoners, through Bill S-6.
It was Leef’s friends who closed down the Revenue Canada and the Immigration Offices in Whitehorse. They also cancelled funding to Dredge No. 4, but they found the money to open a new office for a friend of theirs and establish a Canadian Northern Development Agency at a cost of the combined closed own offices.
It was the Liberals who supported Harper on Bill C-51 and they refuse to support the NDP to abolish the Senate or cut-off its funding!
The Orange Wave will crush the Liberals and Conservatives, as it did in Alberta. People are tired of the same old!
I am very happy that someone of Melissa Atkinson’s background will carry the NDP banner and help in crushing the Liberals and Conservatives.
Stella McPherson
Whitehorse