As hunters in the territory gear up for the last days before the beginning of the season after a couple of errors in the data used to issue permits were found, some remain upset that returned permits will not be reissued.

That’s according to Gord Zealand, the Yukon Fish and Game Association’s executive director, who said the errors have led to frustration from some of his members.

“We’re very disappointed, very frustrated,” he told the Star last Thursday.

“And we’re especially concerned about the non-issuances of permits that are returned back” to the department, he said.

A department spokesperson explained that while there is a duty to accept these returned permits from hunters who were granted them, it is not mandatory that they be reissued to other hunters.

“We’re obligated to accept returns, not legally obligated to reissue” them, Roxanne Stasyszyn said. She is the director of communications for the department, and said that it has often tried to reissue returned permits by Aug. 1 as a practice, but it is not a formal requirement.

“That courtesy we’ve taken because we support sustainable hunting opportunities.”

Stasyszyn did acknowledge, though, that this could still be frustrating for some.

The regret expressed by officials at a July 24 technical briefing to media applies “as much to the frustration around the draw itself as to the frustration around the decision not to reissued returned permits,” Stasyszyn said.

The justification not to reissue returned permits this year, she said, lies in the possibility of other errors beyond the two that were caught.

“We’re not confident that there’s not other errors.”

That means that results from the redraw, though they were more fair than the first draw, may not be entirely free of errors.

“What we’re not confident in is running another redraw at this point, because those two errors occurred already,” Stasyszyn said.

Those errors are also reflected in the list that shows who is “next in line,” so the people the department would normally offer a permit to after it has been returned to them.

“Reissuing permits would simply spread the error further,” she explained.

“Knowing that the ranking list includes those errors, the decision has been made not to reissue,” she added.

Plus, fewer and fewer hunters are able and willing to accept these returned permits as the calendar inches closer to August.

She pointed out that after combing through the data, officials are comfortable with saying that the error affected only the 311 mentioned.

It comes after she explained earlier this month that normally, the department notifies successful applicants by the end of June, but can sometimes offer permits that have been returned or rejected for a number of reasons up until Aug.1.

A July 23 press release confirmed that will not be the case this year.

That can result in a missed opportunity, said Zealand. Some hunters may not necessarily want to begin hunting as soon as the season begins – and instead wait until a week or two into August.

“The average hunters lose that opportunity,” he said.

If a situation where seven out of 10 permits were returned to the department, he explained, those seven permits would not be awarded to seven other people under the current decision.

It’s a concern that Zealand has “very much so” heard from his membership, which consists of more than 1,000 individuals, as it’s “disappointing to those individuals that aren’t going to get an opportunity this year.”

Stasyszyn said those permits were in fact awarded to hunters, at least at one point. The fact they were returned back to the department is beyond officials’ control.

“Those opportunities were issued to someone – the department issued those permits,” she said, noting that “it was the decision of those successful permit holders to return their permits” for whatever reason.

She added that “even if we make our best effort, there’s no guarantee that the department will be able to” reissue all returned permits.

The department explained last Tuesday that with the hunting season just about a week away from that point, it was too tight of a timeline to conduct a second redraw.

Joe MacGillivray, the department’s deputy minister, said that “our commitment to our clients and our respect for their trust is also why we’re conducting an independent review.”

While Zealand said he is happy with this, he saw the damage as already being done this season after some of his membership has grown increasingly frustrated throughout July.

“People were notified one minute that they were successful and the next that they were going to have to be placed on hold,” he told the Star on July 9.

That was after the redraw was done by the Yukon Bureau of Statistics, which the department contracted the process out to for the first time this year.

“With the hunting season starting next week, we wanted to provide sufficient time for hunters to prepare and make necessary arrangements,” added MacGillivray.

That preparation can include purchasing gear, taking time off from work and making travel arrangements, or even physical training as preparation.

Meanwhile, Zealand said, he made the suggestion to extend the Aug. 1 practiced deadline a conversation with Environment Minister Pauline Frost last Monday, which a cabinet spokesperson confirmed Friday was to express the minister’s disappointment.

“The bottom line is you trust the government to try and have a system in place that ensures that opportunities are fairly handed out,” Zealand said, before sighing: “and right now, that’s not going to happen.

“The process they’ve set out makes sense in terms of how we move forward,” he said, referencing the review. “And we have to move forward.”

Adding that everything is on the table, Stasyszyn said this was possible.

“Maybe part of this review will give that space for hunters to say ‘no, even after Aug. 1, I want you to continue’” reissuing returned permits.

If a recommendation that would require a regulation change were to come out of the review, though, it may be difficult to implement in time for April 2019, which the department said last week it hopes to do.

“Regulation changes can take more than a year,” Stasyszyn explained, adding that is if the department chooses to formalize the practice by putting it into the regulation.

At this stage, it is dealing in hypotheticals – but generally speaking, she said that when it’s not a regulation change, “things can happen generally quicker.”

Zealand continued that he hopes the review will result in a “squeaky clean” system with few flaws that ensures “everyone is fairly weighted.

“Obviously, we’re not going to be able to re-create that system in the next week.”

The department said a timeline had not yet been established for the independent review.