The Yukon’s legislative assembly fall sitting is over now, and many important matters were brought forward and more or less discussed and debated. Wait a second, were these issues really debated or just bullied through legislation?
During this legislative session Wade Istchenko introduced changes to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act that would bar cabinet documents from being released until the next territorial election.
In 1984, the conservative government at that time, proposed legislation for access to information, and in 1995 John Ostachek’s conservative government brought forward legislation for ATIPP. In this past legislative session Pasloski’s conservative government changed the rules without debate in the legislature and no public consultation.
Why does the Pasloski government need to be so secretive?
This looks to me like the tricks that the National Socialists used to gain full power over Germany in 1930. What a sad day for democracy in Yukon.
The amendments for the Oil and Gas Act got hammered through the same way. Arguments that there were public consultations in 2009 are being used as the baseline rationale for changing the act today. At that time there was no mention of
hydraulic fracturing (fracking).
Now in 2012 we have fracking on our doorstep, and since July 2012, a Chinese state company, EFL Overseas Inc. released in an announcement that it has acquired the shares from Devon Energy which owns Northern Cross.
Resources Minister Brad Cathers was sitting on this information and withholding it from the public for more then a year. He should resign his position for not being truthful to Yukoners about this takeover. To deny the NDP’s motion to ban fracking in such a way as Mr. Cathers did has nothing to do with democracy. This is the way things are handled in Central America’s banana republics.
It is not just in Yukon that democracy is trampled with boots, it is the same for the whole of Canada, a so-called developed, democratic state, or so I was told it is. Very selective argumentation and changes to the law of the land are packed into huge omnibus bills and just stuffed down out throats.
And there is more to come. In a report from our MP, Ryan Leef, he tries to brag about how wonderful the Yukon is about handling our natural resources, especially our water. Since when is water a natural resource that can be traded like other resources?
Clean potable water is a basic human right and not for sale. But our wannabe little dictators want to sell us out and give away our fresh water.
We are very fortunate to have large volumes of water that have not been destroyed by huge industrialization. But, just wait until hydraulic fracturing begins in the Yukon and needs billions of gallons of clean water that turns into polluted fluid forever.
When will Yukoners and Canadians wake up and stop these insanities?
Or should we start planting banana trees?
Werner Rhein
Mount Lorne