DAWSON CITY - Greg Hakonson does not like being in the spotlight.

Asked to speak in public regarding such projects as the Dawson City Arts Society or the KIAC School of Visual Arts, projects that he spearheaded and believes in strongly, Hakonson almost has to be dragged to the microphone and has been known to choke up.

He describes himself as not being a confrontational sort of person, one who likes to accomplish things through dialogue.

All this is at odds with the position he has found himself in over the last two weeks. He is one of four directors of the Yukon Energy and Yukon Development corporations, along with chair Willard Phelps and two fellow directors, Paul Hunter and Martin Allen, who resigned as a group in protest over government interference in the running of the two publicly owned corporations.

Late last week, Hakonson and Phelps had a teleconference with disaffected Yukon Energy employees.

Earlier in the day, more than 20 of them had signed an open letter, published in Friday's Star, protesting Premier Dennis Fentie government's actions and the departures of the four directors.

"As Willard has indicated, the problem's been developing for quite some time," Hakonson told the Star.

"I was on the board four years and we were asking for ... a proper governance model to be established and were promised repeatedly that would happen. There was no movement from government at all - zero.

"I was at one point getting the sense that they actually wanted Yukon Energy to become another department of the government. That certainly wasn't the intent of the corporation."

That situation alone was frustrating to the point of becoming intolerable for Hakonson, but things got worse.

"We had no working relationship wth our shareholder (the government). We couldn't communicate with them at all," he said.

This seemed odd to him, given that these board members were all appointed by the Yukon Party and that Phelps himself is a former party leader and government leader.

"For some reason, it was like they didn't understand that we actually are their employees and their experts in this field, and that if they want something to happen, they should come and talk to their experts," Hakonson said.

"Then you figure out what needs to be done, and agree and go forward. But there was none of that communication."

It was some time before the board discovered that the government, mainly the premier's office, in Hakonson's opinion, was negotiating with Edmonton-based ATCO over the future ownership of the corporation. After that, things went rapidly downhill.

Hakonson said the information came to them in bits and pieces from a variety of sources, but it added up to a move by the government to sell the energy corporation.

"When we challenged them on it six months ago, that's when the relationship went absolutely ice-cold," he said.

"There was no talking. They didn't want us to come there. They wouldn't come visit us. They made promises to us. It was very confrontational, period.

"We told them that you can't sell off 50 per cent of the company's assets at 10 cents on the dollar or whatever silly number it was going to be and have us sit at the table. We won't stand for it."

Hakonson said Yukon Energy's assets are worth around $600 million and that the planned deal, as he understands it, was to sell 50 per cent of that for $50 million.

They warned the government at that time that if that was the plan, the board members would go public, Hakonson said.

The government offered many assurances that none of the assets were for sale.

Hakonson said the board had been considering an alignment with Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd. to rationalize power distribution in the territory. Currently, Yukon Energy generates most of the power and sells it to Yukon Electrical, which controls most of the distribution and sales to customers.

There is some overlap and duplication. Yukon Energy sells directly to customers in Faro, Mayo and Dawson City, while Yukon Electrical actually generates power in off-grid locations like Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek.

In business, rationalization usually involves eliminating the duplication of services and operations. Consequently, the Yukon Energy board had been discussing creating a situation where it would handle generation exclusively and leave the sales to Yukon Electrical, which is owned by ATCO. That would have involved swapping some assets, Hakonson said, but that's a far cry from selling Yukon Energy.

"We would generate and transmit and they would be our sole customer, who sold power to the citizens of Yukon," Hakonson said.

While Fentie continues to use the word "rationalization" to describe his plans, Hakonson said that's not what's been happening.

"Actually, what they were doing is selling the assets and completely getting rid of the governance model. ATCO would come back in - I say 'come back' in because we've already kicked them out once - and take over running the corporation."

Hakonson's father, Bill, had been on the Yukon Energy board when it seemed all the profits were headed to Alberta, and the board put a stop to that.

Hakonson said that earlier, the board fought hard to keep the profits and the control here, and that's a legacy he feels he has to protect.

"You have to own the assets so you can earn the revenues so that you can have future developments that are required in the Yukon."

He is quite certain that neither of the ministers who have a connection to the corporation, Brad Cathers with the Energy, Mines and Resources portfolio and Jim Kenyon, charged with actual responsibility for both the Yukon Development Corp. and Yukon Energy, actually knew what kind of discussions were taking place.

So why not stick with the board and try to force the required changes and dialogue from within rather than resigning and going public?

"We have been struggling desperately back and forth, trying - but it wasn't working," Hakonson said.

"It was an untenable situation. If you hang in there, if you stay there until they actually do pull off a deal like that, you'd be held responsible.

"And so I felt there was no option. You can't sit there and watch it happen and then say you've fulfilled your fiduciary duties.

"Besides that, my father would have either disowned me or shot me."

Hakonson said he believes a number of Yukon Energy employees would lose their jobs under the government's scenario, and that control of the company would pass to Alberta.

"They were going to set up a board so that ATCO picked the president and had two board members out of four, so it would be a three-to-two ATCO deal. All decisions would go ATCO's way."

Hakonson does not see anything for the Yukon in this kind of a deal. A better alternative would have been for the territory to buy out ATCO's Yukon holdings and take over the whole business of generation, transmission and sales, he believes.

Hakonson is further dismayed by what he terms a lack of support on this issue by Steve Nordick, the Yukon Party MLA for Klondike.

He said he has been to talk to Nordick a number of times about the potential sale, only to be told it wasn't happening. He has also talked with him about governance matters.

"I told Steve that we have got to get this governance thing sorted out, because we're not governing this organization. It's being done by the politicians. It has to be sorted out.

"And he said there was nothing wrong with it, that he didn't see what needed to be sorted out."