The Popular Perspective

 Jim Butler

A LMOST TWO YEARS AFTER IT began, Yukoners are poised to see if their government's Yukon 2000 economic development strategy will prove the proper vehicle for steering the territory's economy into the next century.

 The process kicked off in June 1986 with a conference attended by some 6v delegates in the mining town of Faro. There, in a series of workshops, business owners, labour leaders, community leaders, and Indian representatives resolved that the Yukon government must shift more of its activities to the communities, improve rural services there, and spearhead research into such things as northern farming, forestry, and placer mining.

Although most of the delegates praised the usefulness of the meeting, there were complaints that the exhaustive background discussion papers prepared by the government applied a philosophical framework to the conference, when discussions should have been completely unfettered. There were also concerns that some of the workshop leaders were too selective in their concluding reports.

 During the subsequent few months, the government created committees to co-ordinate research in four areas: renewable resources, non-renewable resources and industry, community issues, and human resources. The government also developed 16 "linkage studies"-subjects requiring more research to identify the means by which they might stimulate economic development. Examples were financial institutions, as they related to mining and forestry development; energy, such as ways to reduce the $10v million Yukoners spend annually to import petroleum; and participation in the economy by youth, seniors, Indians, and the handicapped, involving such aspects as unemployment and wage disparity among those groups.

 In September 1987, based on months of research and discussion, the government released The Things That Matter, a report listing hundreds of ideas for invigorating the economy. They included freeing up more land for mining, creating a chartered northern bank, and promoting scientific research. Other ideas included replacing make-work projects with a job creation strategy and increasing the amount of job training done by the government and Yukon College, community groups, and Indian bands.

 At the final major conference, in Dawson City last October, the 120 delegates were asked to form workshops and debate how the federal and Yukon governments, Indian bands, and the private sector should respond to those hundreds of ideas. Once again, the discussions were often lively and provocative. But some delegates expressed chagrin that the discussion framework set out by the government was too broad and philosophical, that it failed to address the ultimate responsibility for decision making and the processes, consultative or otherwise, that should be used.

 Workshop recommendations emphasized the importance of reaching a land claims settlement among the territorial and federal governments; a coherent, territory wide, land-use planning process; less government red tape; more government effort in creating labour-intensive industries; and more Yukon College courses applicable to the skills most needed in the territory.

 As a prelude to drafting the final development strategy, Government Leader Tony Penikett instructed all government departments to analyse how the recommendations fit into their current operations, and how they could be reflected in future policy making.

 Though some scepticism lingers about the ultimate use of the process, many delegates to the conferences acknowledge that Yukon 2000 is a badly needed, long awaited forum for the players in the territorial economy to talk and listen to one another. For the most part, academics who have attended some of the conferences agree.

Says Peter McDowell, a business and public administration professor at the University of Alaska: "This government appears to be sensitive, intelligent, and dynamic for economic leadership, and this should be a model for an Alaska regional development strategy. I find Yukon 200v to be a charismatic process to which I am keenly attracted."

Jacques Gerin, Associate Deputy Minister for the North in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, said the process means economic development in the Yukon "will be clearly driven by a strategy made in the Yukon, and that's extremely important. Our government is supportive of the process."

 Some business persons with loyalties to the Yukon Conservative Party in the highly politicized territory have praised the process, and are determined to trade partisanship for having their interests represented in policy development. Other business owners have reservations about the non-partisanship of the process, noting that policy directions are being set by an NDP government, but they, like their colleagues, want their interests represented in the process.

The workshops of the three conferences have served as forums for often-spirited debate. Business owners, for example, worried about training an apprentice for a year, only to have him join a competitor at a better salary. But they've been heatedly told by union representatives that sufficient wages would thwart the problem in the first place.

 There have also been clashes about equal pay for work of equal value in the private sector and the merits of affirmative action programmes. Some business people have complained that government grants for starting businesses have presented unfair competition; labour has argued that such grants help create jobs and strengthen consumer buying power.

 Some delegates have been concerned that the heavy emphasis on laypersons' participation has resulted in many ideas proposed without any consideration of their ramifications and costs; they note that some of the workshops have lacked people with the necessary expertise to point them out. But the government leader argues that in similar, larger-scale consultation processes attempted in the United States politicians and bureaucrats have tended to dominate the proceedings.

 Alan Nordling, the Conservatives' representative at the conferences, calls attention to a clause in the Yukon NDP's constitution that says the party holds "the principle of democratic socialism to be embodied in the economic planning which directs the production and distribution of goods and services toward meeting the social and individual needs of the people".

"The NDP's economic plan and direction is all laid out in their constitution", Nordling says. "I'm worried that this is as much a political campaign as it is anything else. Mr Penikett can't deny it helps."

 Penikett says it will take a few years for Yukoners to see the effects, through budgets and speeches from the throne, of the final Yukon 2000 strategy. It would be impossible to carry out all of the $3.5 billion worth of ideas in The Things That Matter, he says.

 "We are saying, here is an exercise in which, for the first time, you as a citizen or businessman or trade union leader or Indian band leader will have the chance to have a continuing voice in the kind of economy you want to see developed, and how we can do it. The most successful societies in the world are ones that share common goals and assumptions about where they want to go and how they want to get there."

 Jim Butler is a reporter for the Whitehorse Star.