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Dear Fentie, poor trees

Dear Fentie, poor trees Open letter to Al Pope: Once again the anti-mining, anti-Fentie factions of the Yukon News have compelled me to respond. In Friday's anti-Alexco, anti-government rant Crying Poor, Spending Millions, you said "(Premier Dennis) Fent

Open letter to Al Pope:

Once again the anti-mining, anti-Fentie factions of the Yukon News have compelled me to respond.

In Friday’s anti-Alexco, anti-government rant Crying Poor, Spending Millions, you said “(Premier Dennis) Fentie clearly doesn’t give a damn about the quality-of-life issues in small Yukon communities, nor does he lose sleep over environmental concerns.”

Al Pope, the quality of my life in the small Yukon community that I live in has not suffered horribly under the supposed abuses that, according to the Yukon News, the Fentie government so flagrantly heaps upon us poor suffering Yukoners.

The Klondike riding that I live and vote in has put Yukon Party MLAs in office since 1996.

If Fentie “clearly doesn’t give a damn about the quality-of-life issues in small Yukon communities,” then maybe your next article could explain to the voters of the small Yukon community that I live in why we have been electing Yukon Party members for the last 14 years.

Pope, the Fentie government is far from perfect.

Fentie and his officials have made many blunders during the last seven years, many of which could have been avoided, some of which I have serious issues with. However, I feel compelled to remind the Yukon News that the Yukon Party is not the Nazi Party by any means.

Since the Yukon Party has been in power, I have never had to worry about finding high-paying jobs without having to leave the Yukon. And many people I know, in my very wide circle of friends and acquaintances, feel the same. You said in your article: “He must eventually face a tribunal with the power to effect change. It’s called a territorial election.”

Does this mean that the Yukon News will stand up to the last seven years of anti-Yukon Party articles and run for office during the next territorial election?

How about the Yukon News run for office on an anti-mining, anti-Yukon Party platform and see how many seats you get?

Not many, would be my guess.

I’m not running for office because Fentie can do a much better job of running the territory than I ever could. As long as there is mining in the Yukon and so long as Fentie’s actions don’t harm the quality of my wonderful life that I have in the small Yukon community that I love living in, then he will still get my vote.

Despite the best efforts of the Yukon News to topple the Yukon Party, the voters returned Fentie to office with an even larger majority in 2006 than the 2002 election.

Fentie has already faced “a tribunal to effect change” before, and unless the Yukon News can convince enough voters of all the supposed wrongs in voting Yukon Party it is my opinion, and that of many others I know, that Fentie’s government will emerge the victor during the next territorial election.

So, Pope, when you say “nor does he lose sleep over environmental concerns,” does the Yukon News ever lose sleep over environmental concerns?

How many hectares of once pristine forest must be destroyed so the Yukon News can continue to publish its many articles that so often and so heavily bash the Yukon mining industry?

How much dioxin from pulp mills has to be released into the air and water to keep your printing presses rolling?

How many thousands of litres of carbon-producing diesel fuel have to be burned to haul newsprint from those environmentally devastating pulp mills to those printing presses of yours?

Surely a newspaper that has such a vast knowledge of the wrongdoings of the Yukon mining industry would know just as much about all the environmentally apocalyptic activities that the pulp and paper industry have to do in order to keep the Yukon News in print, right Pope?

How about attacking an industry your income depends upon, Pope?

I have been a Yukon News reader since 1983 and I have never seen an article explaining to its readers about all the environmental destruction that the Yukon News has been responsible for since its introduction in 1960.

Jon Wilkie

Dawson City