Yukon Party Withdraws Support for Amendments to YESAA

Thursday, 18 May 2017 14:56

YP now in favour of repealing legislation

The Yukon Party has abandoned its long position that changes to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment contained in Bill S-6 from a few years ago to now support repealing four controversial amendments that First Nations here have launched a lawsuit over and that the federal Liberals have pledged to do away with.

In September 2014, then Premier Darrell Pasloski told a Senate Committee examining S-6 that that legislation was essential in keeping Yukon competitive in the mining sector.

But in the Yukon Legislative Assembly Wednesday, Brad Cathers (Lake Laberge) says at this point the party is moving off its support for the amendments, in favour of the repeal. “We recognized that at this point in time — and the Official Opposition agrees — that moving forward with the amendments contained in Bill C‑17 is probably the best course of action at this point in time because of the concerns by CYFN and individual First Nations with the process by which those amendments were reached and the issues that occurred with the Government of Canada’s consultation with First Nations on those amendments.”

The entire Yukon Party caucus voted in support of Liberal motion 23 “This House supports the efforts of the Government of Canada to restore confidence in Yukon’s environmental and socio-economic assessment process through amendments contained in Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, now under consideration by the Parliament of Canada.”

It should not come as a surprise that the Official Opposition is now changing its tune, after the Yukon Chamber of Mines withdrew its support. Chamber President Mike Burke said “The mining industry is on the front lines of reconciliation, as exploration and development activities occur in the traditional territory of all Yukon First Nations. It is with this in mind that the resetting of the relationship between all orders of government brings the opportunity to address challenging issues around timelines & re-assessments through a collaborative framework moving forward.”

The four controversial amendments contained in S-6 were dealing with timelines on assessments, reassessments of expanded projects, with little change in project scope, devolving federal authority to the territorial government and binding federal policy decision making.

Cathers says getting rid of the amendments still does not change the problems Yukoners experience in the flawed current YESAA legislation. “Yukoners wanting to put in a power pole off their personal property had to go to YESAB for an assessment — to the upper end of that situation where, because of the way the triggers were structured, there were some automatic executive committee triggers, such as a change of 120 days in production of a gold mine.”

“It’s important to find the right solution to ensure there is consistency and cohesion between how Yukoners applying to proceed with projects in different parts of the territory are treated so that the basic set of rules is fair to all and assesses what it needs to assess, considers the environmental concerns and public input it needs to consider, as well as input from First Nations and others, including municipal governments. It is important to ensure that we have an effective process, an efficient process, a fair process and a consistent process, because it does affect the lives of Yukon citizens each and every day.”

Bill C-17 is currently sitting in Second Reading in the House of Commons.