Consultations don't cut it: Peel chair

Dave Loeks had hoped this round of consultations on the Yukon's Peel watershed land use plan would be the last.

Now he doesn’t think so.

“I frankly don’t recognize what’s going on next door,” Loeks told a packed house at the Gold Rush Inn on Wednesday night, referring to the Yukon government’s Peel open house on the other side of the wall.

“It does not conform to the requirements of the Umbrella Final Agreement so I don’t think it counts,” he said.

“We’re going to have to do this again if they’re actually going to fulfill the UFA, so we’ll see each other again.”

The view of the Peel Youth Alliance.

As chair of the Peel planning commission, Loeks spent six years studying the vast region, considering the options for its future and consulting with all stakeholders and the public on numerous occasions.

The commission found there were two distinct camps - those who wanted to develop the Peel with mines and roads and those who wanted to keep the watershed just the way it is as a virtually roadless wilderness.

Since society was so divided, the commission decided to preserve the most options for the future and protect the wilderness.

Loeks criticized the government's new "concepts" for the area, saying it is misusing the term wilderness.

“You don’t have roads in wilderness and you have to be very clear on that,” he said.

In his opinion, the government's new “concepts” are outside the parametres of the UFA because they are not the product of a public process.

“They were essentially cooked up by bureaucrats talking to bureaucrats,” he said.” It was not talking to people like you.”

As for the government's open house meeting format, Loeks said it is not a reliable way to collect information.

CPAWS-Yukon and the Yukon Conservation Society, which organized the town hall gathering, say the final recommended plan produced by the commission is the only one people should support. It protects 80 per cent of the region.

“As far as we are concerned, that plan is the only plan which is legitimate under the Umbrella Final Agreement,” said CPAWS-Yukon executive director Gill Cracknell.

“It was produced by a transparent process, by an independent and arms-length body. These concepts, these tools, these managements tools, these new designations, have been brought by the government at the last moment and outside of the Umbreall Final Agreement.”

She also pointed out the Yukon government signed an agreement with the four affected First Nations to do this round of consultations together, but it has reneged on that and is going it alone.

“I wish they [government officials] would come in here and listen tonight," said Cracknell. "But since they have chosen not to let’s get on with it."

More than a dozen speakers took to the microphone during the two-hour event, sharing their ties to the Peel and the reasons they want it protected.