Critique
Joseph R. Potvin
AS A MODEL OF PARTICIPATORY planning, Yukon 2000 has much to recommend it. The people and their government are taking a fresh and often very original look at putting their regional economy on a sustainable track by the turn of the millennium. Out of a planning exercise, sometimes, comes a plan. Now that the government is moving from one to the other, no one should expect it to be a simple task; it is a process of negotiation, compromise, and decision. And, however good the plan, it will not be without practical difficulties upon implementation.
Those participating in the Yukon 2000 process see themselves as taking a "broad view of economic development", beyond the narrow focus of single-industry or single-community task forces. In addition to intensive reviews of each sector of the economy, the government commissioned "linkage studies" to deal with matters that affect a number of sectors, and there are ample arrangements for public discussion of the findings.
The sense of broad scope results from the fact that all of the work is going on at the same time, and under the same banner. However, even at this latter stage of the planning exercise, the task is still pursued in tidy, sector-by-sector or issue-by-issue fashion. In the government's interim report, The Things That Matter, one finds a fairly unco-ordinated list of ideas about Yukoners' goals and the means to achieve them-more jobs for this, more money for that, new rules to govern one thing, and less bureaucratic regulation over another. But the essence of planning is priority, and there remain a lot of questions about the legislative, budgetary, and business objectives cited in the plan. There is still considerable pencil sharpening to do before dollars and cents are applied to economy wide pronouncements. Nowhere in the Yukon 2000 studies and reports have people, industry, or government addressed such matters as "how much?" and "when?".
Until such verifiable propositions are advanced, there exists no plan and no criteria against which achievement or failure can be measured in 10 years' time.
Before moving from hypothetical scenarios to deliberate, albeit tentative, plans of action, some tough decisions have to be made with regard to perennial conflicts. Consider the first recommendation in the report on mining-"Some of the land currently withdrawn from mining activity because of conservation or other reasons could be reassessed for mineral potential"-and the suggestion that project applications not dealt with by the end of some predetermined time period be allowed to proceed automatically. Such recommendations do not leave one with the feeling that a broad view of the economy has been employed-at least not yet.
It is perhaps significant that no environmental issues are specifically addressed in the mining sector study or in the forestry, construction, manufacturing, and tourism studies. Environment is taken up separately as a linkage matter among sectors. It might have been better to have identified "environmental protection and management" as a sector in and of itself, with its own basic needs and objectives; specific conflicts with respect to resource demand could then have been left as "linkage" matters. Alternatively, each sector study group might have identified the efforts required to improve environmental quality and protection in its particular area, in the same way that jobs and productivity were discussed. This is not to suggest that environmental matters are being side-stepped in Yukon 2000, but the fact that they have been ignored in the sectoral reports indicates that they may not have been properly incorporated into the process.
On the other hand, some matters treated in "sectoral" reports are not sectors at all, but ways of life; for example, "Subsistence" and "Commercial Use of Wildlife". Perhaps a better approach would have identified "Hunting, Trapping, and Livestock Breeding", "Fishing", and "Agriculture" as sectors. Subsistence and volunteerism-as well as commerce-constitute integral types of involvement within many sectors. They are not distinct sectors themselves.
It should be noted that subsistence activity involves more than food production; therefore, other sectors ought to have dealt with it as well. Manufacturing might have included the subsistence processing of hides and the making of household goods like equipment and clothing. Forestry might have included the subsistence gathering of wood for fuel and as inputs for artisanal manufacturing and construction. Construction might have included building and renovation carried out by families and friends on their own homes and camps. Trade and services as a sector might have dealt with the informal sharing network that is active, with varying strength, in each community.
Orthodox economists often claim that such activities are unquantifiable in economic terms. In fact, all have been routine components of the international System of National Accounts used by the United Nations Statistical Office since 1968. The basic procedure is not new to social scientists in the North, and is partially employed by Statistics Canada for agriculture and housing components in the calculation of Gross National Product. In this important respect, Yukon 2000 is not yet "state-of-the-art".
In general, there appears to persist an insufficient recognition of the fundamental role and nature of non-monetary activity in the economy. This is more than a semantic debate. The fact that those who prepared many of the sector reports have ignored informal and non-monetary activity has tangible consequences for planning and policy. Sectoral policy makers can perhaps be convinced to tack on a few alterations as a result of some separate study group's submissions on the non-wage economy. But it will be no good to treat informal, subsistence, and non-monetary activity as a separate economy to be "tacked on" to the mainstream-the formal-informal mix is the mainstream. Regional and community development is increasingly being recognized as having interdependent monetary and non-monetary components. Hence, fields like construction, forestry, manufacturing, and trade are not being dealt with coherently for policy purposes unless each of the sectoral planning groups addresses both types of activity right from the start.
Fields of production (for example, construction or hunting) constitute "sectors" that can involve different exchange relations (for example, commerce or sharing). But none of these categories themselves makes up a separate "economy". On the other hand, the people involved might very well comprise a plural society and economy. Yukon natives and non-natives both are actively engaged, though in different ways, in each sector, and both maintain monetary and non-monetary relationships. But to the extent that they, as cultural groups, have (or are perceived to have) particular interests that are not shared, many of their fundamental aims in the planning process can differ greatly, including their preferred forms of production, exchange, and consumption. In fact, this is the case (even if some confuse it by emphasizing mere racial diversity). Working independently, these two cultural groups would probably draw up quite different development plans based on the wealth of information generated in the Yukon 2000 planning process.
Yet natives and non-natives are not working independently, and the response by government to this challenge in Yukon 2000 is most prudent: its overwhelming emphasis on Yukon regionalism (analogous to nationalism) helps to take the pressure off internal differences by building social will around a common theme. But the regionalism required as the backdrop to a successful economic plan for the Yukon must recognize and encourage the autonomous organization of both native and non-native cultures.
This is one of the reasons non-monetary and subsistence activity should be thoroughly developed as an integral part of all sectors. Those who choose more of one form of involvement over another cannot merely be "tacked on". If the choice of lifestyle is kept optional and of equivalent merit, the two social groups can be integrated into a sustainable social economy in the Yukon without threats of assimilation, marginalization, or apartheid.
In sum, Yukon 2000 is a most impressive exercise in regional planning, and its optimism is refreshing. But there should also be some rethinking of the approach to ensure that the environment and the territory's heterogeneous society-that is to say, the land and the people-constitute the foundation upon which the rest is built.
Joseph Potvin is an economist with the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee in Ottawa.