The Pelly Banks Government have not accepted the apology issued by their MLA regarding rude text messages

Friday, 7 May 2021 10:59

By Dylan MacNeil

Open letter sent by the Pelly Banks Government.

In an open letter to Yukon Party leader Currie Dixon, the government criticized the party's reprimands. Dixon told CHONFM he is not familiar with the letter.

The Pelly Banks Government of the Kaska Nation say they have not accepted the apology issued by their MLA Stacey Hassard regarding the offensive text messages he sent to a group chat earlier this week.

The government also feels that the enrollment of Hassard in education and training for workplace bullying and harassment prevention, and his removal from the shadow cabinet are “light-handed consequences.”

Yesterday afternoon, the Pelly Banks Government submitted a formal response to the Yukon Legislative Assembly titled, “Open letter to The Honourable Currie Dixon, Leader of the Yukon Party.”

The letter reads, “We are not willing to subject ourselves to your stated learning opportunity because it requires us to bear the brunt of our MLAs ‘education’.”

It also asks the question, “What kind of message are you sending Mr. Dixon, that if a white male makes such remarks, it is considered nothing more than bravado or juvenile locker-room banter?”

The response goes on to criticize the party’s actions and asks them to treat the matter with the “appropriate gravity”.

CHONFM asked Dixon for comments on the matter this morning. He said he had not heard about the formal response submitted by the Pelly Banks Government.

“I’m not familiar with the letter…with regards to the reprimands, ultimately, the MLAs have faced serious reprimands, they’ve apologized, they’ve been reprimanded and now, they’ll have the resources and ability to learn from this experience and to understand it better. And ultimately, the goal of that is to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And so, we’re you know? We’re focussed on the reaction to this, which is of course you know, apologizing and reprimanding and making sure that they learn from this experience.” Says Dixon.

Kluane MLA Wade Istchenko also sent rude messages to the group chat.

On Wednesday Yukon First Nations said they are calling for the suspension of Hassard and Iscthenko from all or part of the 35^th sitting of the Yukon Legislative Assembly.

When CHONFM asked the Yukon Party if they would suspend the two MLAs, we received a statement that partially reads “We received the statement from the Council of Yukon First Nations through the media and Yukon Party leader Currie Dixon has reached out to the Grand Chief to discuss it.”

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