BodyPeel access simply greed
Open letter to Energy, Mines and Resources Minister Brad Cathers:
I am writing to you from Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats about your statements about the Peel River watershed plan.
You have been elected several times to represent the opinions and desires of the Lake Laberge district. Now I ask you to honour your constitutional representation, fairly reconsider, and accept the Peel plan - something that over 80 per cent of Yukoners and First Nations have agreed to.
I personally have spent many months over several summers as a wrangler and junior guide in the Peel River watershed, and I have to say it would be hard to find a more wild and magical place on Earth. We really have some of the last frontier and true nature on planet Earth, something that would be destroyed if mostly non-Yukon mineral and mining companies and workers were allowed to come in and take it all away.
I understand that your aim is to bolster the Yukon economy. I also have worked for a mineral exploration company for two years, but it is nonsense to say that we’ll go under if we do not accept industry in the Peel. We live in a territory the size of Germany and have enough resources in a 10th of that to satisfy an economy of 35,000 people.
The pressure and anger from mostly non-Yukon industries to access the Peel is simply greed. And I thought the government’s job is to protect us Yukoners against that and not become part of it.
Truthfully, we’re all going to be dead in a few short years, so what do you want to be remembered as? The politician that went against the wishes of the majority of Yukoners and allowed one of the last truly wild
places on Earth to be destroyed for a few years of economic activity? Or the man who stood up against the pandering nonsense of modern politics and money-grabbing and took a stand and did what is right?
You are actually in a position of power to make a difference and go down in history as a man who helped preserve one of the last pieces of pristine landscape in the world. Not many people have been in a position to do this.
Please make the right decision, Mr. Cathers.
If your fear is that big industry will be mad and might not vote for you if you did this, remember that a vast majority of Yukoners, whom you represent, will support you and millions more would appreciate what you did for years to come - something that would be reversed if you continue to follow the party line.
We saw a glimpse of the man you could be when you stood up against Dennis Fentie. Now be that man again and protect the wishes and principles of true Yukoners and endorse the Peel plan and not the short-term intentions of big industries that really only care about money and do not need this.
Thorin Loeks
Lake Laberge /Body