I have a good First Nation friend who has tried for many years to get a job and stop eating at the Sally Ann. His face is scarred from a childhood house fire and he seems very uncomfortable among strangers especially white folk.
The chances of his getting a job as a greeter at Walmart or in a government office were not good, but he kept trying. He had disappeared from the streets of Whitehorse and I wondered if he was still alive. Then I saw him strolling down Main Street with a big smile on his face.
“Sam! I’m working and taking my dad out to dinner this afternoon,” he exclaimed.
A year ago, he applied and got a job at the Wolverine Mine as a camp attendant. Instead of living in a tent all winter, he and his dad might find a place in town or build a cabin. He is paying income tax and spending his cash in the Yukon.
I would say this is the royalty that some members of the NDP have overlooked in their campaign to extort more money from the mining companies. In Watson Lake, Ross River, Faro, Mayo, almost everywhere you might travel in the Yukon, the hotels are full, workers fill the restaurants and big trucks rumble back and forth along the highways. For the first time in many years the communities outside Whitehorse are enjoying some prosperity. An NDP government would bring all this to an end before their mandate expired.
Peter Lesniak, while he was writing his anti-worker, anti-development editorials at the Yukon News, once said that if we didn’t want the Yukon run his way, then there is something seriously wrong with you.
What’s wrong with us is that we would like to hang onto our homes and jobs and businesses. The world economy is falling apart except for the Chinese and their resource-hungry factories. We have a chance to avoid the poverty facing the rest of the world. My problem, and it could be the same for many others, is that I like the NDP candidates better than anyone from the other parties. So here is our dilemma à would this be a good time to elect a socialist government?
We’ll roll the dice next week and see what happens.
Sam Holloway
Ross River