Photo by Whitehorse Star
AN INVALUABLE SERVICE – An Alkan Air ambulance is seen in June 2017. The airline will continue to be the Yukon’s provider of medevac flights under the partnership arrangement announced this week.
Photo by Whitehorse Star
Alkan’s CEO Wendy Tayler
New partnership involves medevac service delivery
A newly founded partnership, the Yukon First Nations Air Leasing Limited Partnership, was announced Tuesday.
A newly founded partnership, the Yukon First Nations Air Leasing Limited Partnership, was announced Tuesday.
“This partnership is rooted in reconciliation in action, while enhancing vital health care services to Yukon communities,” the participating entities said in a statement.
They are: the Nacho Nyak Dun Development Corp., the Kluane Dana Shaw Limited Partnership, the Selkirk Development Corp., the Haa Chali Development Corp. and Alkan Air Ltd.
On June 22, the new partnership purchased two of Alkan Air’s King Air 350 aircraft. Alkan has held the Yukon’s medevac contract for over 30 years. Prices were not disclosed.
The partnership will be the provider of medevac aircraft to Alkan Air.
Alkan will continue to be the Yukon’s current provider of medevac services.
“This partnership is a demonstration of collaboration between Yukon First Nations development corporations to become active participants in the supply chain of essential services required to keep Yukon communities and residents safe,” the parties said.
“It is a reflection of the progress towards self-determination and the strength of the North.”
“This partnership provides a great opportunity to work together to build stronger relationships between Alkan Air, Yukon’s medevac provider, and our Northern communities,” said Jani Djokic, CEO of the Nacho Nyak Dun Development Corp. and chairperson of Yukon First Nations Air Leasing LP.
“With this partnership, we are increasing Yukon First Nation equity participation in the provision of this essential service, and we are excited to see this partnership continue to grow,” Djokic added.
“Having northern organizations partner together to ensure Yukoners take care of the Yukon is what we as northerners excel at.”
Wendy Tayler, Alkan’s CEO, said her company’s priority is that “Yukoners take care of Yukoners, and this new partnership is another opportunity to move towards reconciliation with Yukon First Nations while highlighting aviation as a potential career opportunity for future generations.
“Our company’s leasing partnerships, and our local flight school, are just some examples of the ways we can work together to move the Yukon forward by engaging Yukon First Nation development corporations in the provision of emergency services to Yukon communities and their own citizens.”
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Comments (12)
Up 5 Down 5
MITCH on Aug 3, 2022 at 4:32 pm
Still waiting for Woodcutter to tell us who they pay to cut their wood...That is the problem with being able to identify as whatever for fancy...
Up 24 Down 7
Dis equity is not very equitable on Aug 2, 2022 at 3:17 pm
That is quite the presumption there Woodcutter on Aug 1, 2022 at 11:47 pm:
Conservative gaggle? Your dismissive rhetoric is laughable for its discourteous assertions. I think the problem here is not racism so much as it is the way that this economic shift is occurring. The Liberals have been giving away taxpayer dollars into a seemingly endless pit to preferred racial groups - This is racism in the name of equity.
The Liberals have been doing everything in their power to obligate a singular racial grouping to reparations for harms committed by the government through policies, procedures and laws. People are reacting to the very apparent hypocrisy of the Liberal elites.
I think that most people agree that there needs to be a rebalancing of the socio-political and economic realities that have polluted the globe both psychologically and environmentally. But this was not done by the people that the Liberals are blaming - Whites, particularly white males. So, go pound salt. Any suggestion that reconciliation is something we all own is a lie. This is one hundred percent a failure in government leadership - Not yours, not mine or anyones else’. Utterances such as yours are the problem - They obscure reality.
The government should reconcile with First Peoples. However, to suggest as Laura Cabot did that reconciliation is everyone’s obligation is nothing more than moral diffusion for governmental failures. It is lawyers, Judges, MPs, MLAs, and other politicos who created the Indian Act with the express intention of killing the Indian in the child.
Average people (used to be anyway) are not the racist morons the Liberals and the wokesters make them out to be. What people are concerned about is the way that these issues are being handled by the Liberal/NDP alliance - The alliance of hate and contempt.
It is good that the FNs are getting into the economic game. What is not good is the division and the hate that the Liberals have intentionally generated with their attacks.
When one is oppressed all are oppressed. So we have become a disequitable society when the ‘intention’ (most respectful interpretation) was to create an equitable one.
Good luck at the salt mines!
Up 10 Down 20
Woodcutter on Aug 1, 2022 at 11:47 pm
The typical gaggle of consevative race baiting and ignorance shown from the typical clowns.
Bozo joe - they do pay taxes and as all forms of government negotiated transfer are a staple, however in this case the grants are in recognition of the FN sharing the land, water and resources. Suck it up snow flake, you don't have to like it.
Mathew- get use to it - the Yukon First Nations are going to buy up every key economic driver in time, besides when these conservative masters of yours are looking for a exit strategy, cause of desire to retire, they are gonna go to the FN's with a deal. Hotels, business copiers, coke-cola distribution, office buildings, airlines, energy production and limited partners ships are just a shortlist of the business and investments that are in their growing portfolio. Get use to it you don't have to like it.
My Opinion- you sound like you just discovered your toes. Do you feel frightened that the FN's are step by step getting their economic game together ?
Olav - your forgetting air north, a very sucessful partnersip with the folks in Old Crow, and your statement is belittling, however with a name like yours, your probally a foreigner.
Ah yes Junipet, i've sat several times listening to his words, i am surprised you know them.
Up 3 Down 10
bonanzajoe on Aug 1, 2022 at 8:43 pm
Juniper Jackson on Jul 30, 2022. Good article. This present generation of Indigenous people are likely lost. The FN have to save the next. But I am curious though, I would like to know just what demographics of peoples are being employed in the Osoyoos Band? And how many of the locals are doing the grunt work?
Up 23 Down 12
Nathan Living on Jul 31, 2022 at 10:31 pm
This partnership will help Alcan Air hold onto nedicac contracts for many years in the future.
Up 58 Down 12
Juniper Jackson on Jul 30, 2022 at 8:46 am
uh huh.. I am as surprised as Matthew. This is a speech from a FN leader in BC, Chief Clarence Louie. Our Bands are rich from Gov. handouts, and do not take care of their own unless they are paid handsomely to do so. But, there are other Bands and other philosophies among the FN. Other ways to sucess.
'I can't stand people who are late, he says into the microphone. Indian Time doesn't cut it. '
'My first rule for success is Show up on time.'
'My No. 2 rule for success is follow Rule No. 1.'
'If your life sucks, it's because you suck.'
'Quit your sniffling.'
'Join the real world. Go to school, or get a job.'
'Get off of welfare. Get off your butt.'
'Our ancestors worked for a living, he says. So should you.'
He is aboriginal himself. Chief Clarence Louie is seen, increasingly, as one of the most interesting and innovative native leaders in the country even though he avoids national politics.
He has come here to Fort McMurray because the aboriginal community needs, desperately, to start talking about economic development and what all this multibillion-dollar oil madness might mean, for good and for bad.
Clarence Louie is chief and CEO of the Osoyoos Band in British Columbia's South Okanagan. He is 44 years old, though he looks like he would have been an infant when he began his remarkable 20-year-run as chief.. He took a band that had been declared bankrupt and taken over by Indian Affairs and he has turned in into an inspiration.
In 2000, the band set a goal of becoming self-sufficient in five years. They're there.
The Osoyoos, 432 strong, own, among other things, a vineyard, a winery, a golf course and a tourist resort, and they are partners in the Baldy Mountain ski development. They have more businesses per capita than any other first nation in Canada.
There are not only enough jobs for everyone, there are so many jobs being created that there are now members of 13 other tribal communities working for the Osoyoos. The little band contributes $40-million a year to the area economy.
'The biggest employer,' he says, 'shouldn't be the band office.'
He also says the time has come to get over it. 'No more whining about 100-year-old failed experiments.' 'No foolishly looking to the Queen to protect rights.'
Louie says aboriginals here and along the Mackenzie Valley should not look at any sharing in development as rocking-chair money but as investment opportunity to create sustainable businesses. He wants them to move beyond entry-level jobs to real jobs they earn all the way to the boardrooms. He wants to see business manners develop: showing up on time, working extra hours. The business lunch, he says, should be drive through, and then right back at it.
'You're going to lose your language and culture faster in poverty than you will in economic development', he says to those who say he is ignoring tradition.
The first step, he says, is all about leadership. He prides himself on being a stay-home chief who looks after the potholes in his own backyard and wastes no time running around fighting 100-year-old battles.
'The biggest challenge will be how you treat your own people.'
'Blaming government? That time is over.'
Up 62 Down 12
My Opinion on Jul 30, 2022 at 12:50 am
So in the last couple of months the First Nations were gifted the wind Generation, the Yukon Energy Battery, now the Medivac. New huge subdivision west of Copper Ridge will be on FN land them collecting the property tax and lease revenue as well as a kick back of Income tax of those that live on those lands. Pay attention, get your heads out of your butts people.
Up 50 Down 9
Olav on Jul 29, 2022 at 7:53 pm
The quickest way to make a million dollars in aviation is to start with two million dollars! There has yet to be a successful native owned aviation partnership in the north. This sounds like an exit strategy for the current owners of Alkan.
I know many will point towards Air North as a successful partnership. At some point Joe will need an exit strategy, and then the company will suffer.
Management in aviation is key.
Up 55 Down 8
Heheheh on Jul 29, 2022 at 6:25 pm
Ummm hahaha . Does this venture now allow a 15 percent increase because of the BVR? Nice business move Alkan! Yet again, BVR makes businesses wealthy, costs Yukoners more and we get the same service.
Up 57 Down 7
Groucho d'North on Jul 29, 2022 at 5:36 pm
Hmm, So how will the Yukon First Nations Procurement Policy impact on the Air Ambulance contract?
Up 71 Down 12
bonanzajoe on Jul 29, 2022 at 5:19 pm
With all the business they own in the Yukon now, maybe the can start paying taxes and not rely on the Liberals millions of free tax money every year.
Up 73 Down 18
Matthew on Jul 29, 2022 at 3:33 pm
Surprise, surprise, who could have guessed it would be FN run...