When is enough enough? How many more court battles will the Pasloski government try to lose?
When will this government play to the democratic rules set in Canada’s Constitution, set in the Umbrella Final Agreement signed with Yukon’s First Nations?
When will our governing politicians and the many different government administrations work and live by their approved laws, rules and regulations and not ignore them, as they have in many cases?
When will First Nations realize that they are forced to sign beneficial agreements with industries and the government by the carrot and stick methods? After the money is gone and the shiny new pick up trucks are rusty relics in the ditch, will they realize that the basis for their life – the water, land and air – are polluted and can’t sustain them anymore?
The same is true for all other Yukoners. How sustainable is your job at that big mine, or the job to drill and frack for oil and gas, or that job building a pipeline, or driving trucks for all the above? Any time the prices for these commodities are moving downwards any time the world economy sneezes or coughs, your job is gone.
You sacrificed your family; you look again and again for a new home somewhere else, start over again. But the big boys have made their cut; they still live in their mansions in a foreign land and pay no taxes.
When will you start with a better education that is based on a sustainable environment and not on the destruction of it? When will you get your self into a sustainable trade and start building many smaller-scale enterprises based on alternative renewable energy sources? That creates many more jobs than investing in fossil fuels and nuclear. The big bulk of the tax base for every country is coming from small and medium businesses and the income taxes created by their employees.
Campground fees and fishing licenses bring more money to the coffers of government than royalties from mines, just as an example.
That new, under construction and potential catastrophe site, the liquefied natural gas generation station in Whitehorse, will maybe create one or two new jobs in the Yukon, for probably $60 to 80 million till the dust has settled.
I could build an eight megawatt biomass gasification power plant with gas storage for fast start up for between $25 to 30 million and it would create 30 to 50 full-time jobs here in the Yukon.
Wind and solar projects with the power generation capacity could be built for less but would not create as many full-time jobs than wood biomass.
How many long-term jobs for Yukoners would fracking create, other than the clean-up jobs left after the companies destroyed our environment, took the money and left?
These day’s fossil fuel projects can only be realized by ignoring and circumnavigating existing laws and regulations, to please the destroyers of the future of this planet. When is enough, enough?
Werner Rhein
Mount Lorne
