A directive to federal bureaucrats from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office that "Government of Canada” in official communications be replaced by "Harper Government” is reverberating in the Yukon.

While press releases available on the Canadian government's website now preface announcements with the "Harper Government”, federal opposition parties' disdain for the branding exercise coming out of Ottawa and subsequent media coverage have drifted into territorial politics.

Yesterday in the legislative assembly, Yukon Liberal Party Leader Arthur Mitchell tabled a motion urging Premier Dennis Fentie to sign the online "I am (Not Steven Harper's) Canadian” petition.

Created and posted last week on GoPetition.com by Melissa Turtureanu of Toronto, so far it has garnered more than 16,000 signatures, including Mitchell's.

"I think it's absolutely amazing what social media can do, and of course we'd be pleased if your premier would lend his support,” Turtureanu told the Star this morning. "But we'll have to see what happens.”

Fentie, who leads the conservative Yukon Party, said he has no plans to join the chorus of disapproval.

"No, I'm not going to sign it,” he said of the petition this morning before offering some personal observations of how governments are often referenced.

"The opposition and the media label the government by name; I can't count the number of times here in the Yukon that we've been referred to as ‘the Fentie government.'”

While the Yukon's premier is not looking to follow Harper's lead, he stopped short of criticizing it.

"I'm very disciplined and diligent ... so instead of saying it's ‘my government', we say ‘our government', because I'm not one of those individuals who thinks this is how you label a government, although it does happen in the media.”

And it's been done by former federal governments, according to Harper's spokesman Dimitri Soudas, who, in an e-mail to The Canadian Press this week called it "a long-standing practice that accurately reflects the government's leadership, regardless of who was the prime minister.”

Soudas pointed to examples of the 2004 budget, delivered by "Paul Martin's government” and another occasion in which the "Chretien government” touted its economic progress.

But this is the first time a federal government has attempted to make such labelling standard practice in all of its communiqués, and that's what spurred Turtureanu's petition.

"There's no justification for officially rebranding our Canadian government, whether it's the Conservatives or the Liberals,” Turtureanu said.

"It's fine if the media chooses to refer casually to the Harper government or the Chretien government, but when it comes to be used officially, then that's overstepping (the government's) bounds.”

Turtureanu said she plans to send the petition to Harper once she thinks the number of signatures has topped out, "maybe at 20,000 (signatures) but who knows? Maybe we'll get more.”

Meanwhile, Whitehorse writer Jerome Stueart has created "The Great Edit of Canada: the Rise of the ‘Harper Government'” Facebook page, urging like-minded folks to doctor federal government signs and stationary, take photos and post them to the site.

"Rallies are popular now when you have 100,000 people in the town square, but I'm not sure what kind of a dent a rally could make in the Yukon,” Stueart explained of his idea, which has attracted just nine members and as of 12:30 this afternoon, no photo entries.

"It's a public humiliation of sorts to what Harper is doing, and we're trying to get this creative idea to go viral so everybody would laugh at how silly this thing is.”

But isn't this, in a sense, helping Harper?

"We're going at absurdum by taking it to its most illogical extremes,” Stueart said.

"We're not editing in the sense of helping Harper, we're editing badly so we can show how silly it is ... instead of protesting what it might look like, were showing people what it would look like in its silliest form so we're kind of like the best friends Harper doesn't want.”

– With files from The Canadian Press.