To the Yukon government:
If I wanted to live in Alberta, I would move back there. I moved to the Yukon for its wilderness. If I had to supplement my income by exploiting finite resources, I would choose to work in Alberta, but still live in the Yukon.
Why would you trade the Yukon’s one real resource - untouched, pure, isolated wilderness - for the economic prowess which we can encounter in all Canadian provinces and most of the rest of the world? You will destroy this resource for a short-lived economic boom that nobody needs.
Can you not see that the Yukon is set above the rest of the world by its true wilderness? That people are already flocking, and will continue to flock, to the Yukon to leave their tourist dollars there? That the tourist dollars will continue forever and will gain in amount because the rest of the world is being destroyed quite efficiently? So what if oil and gas will bring all this wealth to the Yukon. It is not going to last forever because it will run out at some point. Wilderness won’t unless someone actively destroys it through oil and gas exploitation.
Do you have a family physician? My family of five doesn’t. Do you have affordable housing? We do because we live off high-paying tourist dollars, but our guides don’t because they can’t afford housing in and around Whitehorse.
What will happen when more people flock to the Yukon to do the oil and gas exploration? Will we all have a family physician and affordable housing? I actually think that most physicians who live in the Yukon come here for the wilderness at their back door. Your main interest is to destroy that wilderness around Whitehorse and Tagish (main living and recreation place in the Yukon).
Are you creating jobs for Yukoners? Hardly. Nobody here is trained in oil and gas exploration. So people from Outside will get the real jobs and then either crowd Whitehorse with their families or leave again once the Yukon is turned upside down. Because, really, who wants to live up here in the cold North far away from the city lights? Only people who appreciate the wilderness. People who specifically came for it and now you are going to take it all away.
Thank you for letting me voice my opinion, but I do expect to see at least a referendum on this subject or a new election. Your decision is going to touch every single person and every single aspect of life in the Yukon as it stands right now. It is not right for the few of you, elected into your positions or not, to make this kind of a call, because really, if you few politicians enjoy the way Alberta is run and destroyed so much, why don’t you move there, instead of dragging the rest of us into it?
Sunje Petersen
Tagish