A number of all-party committees on issues like insurance and whistle blower legislation are being delayed because Liberal Leader Pat Duncan won't get onboard.

That's the suggestion Peter Jenkins, the Yukon Party government house leader, made in the legislature Tuesday.

'We have a number of examples of all-party committees where the member opposite (Duncan) has put terms and conditions around it that made the whole movement forward untenable,' Jenkins said.

'My response to the government's request for participation on all-party committees has been the same since they were elected: get the all-party committee on appointments in place before doing the work on all these new committees they want to establish,' Duncan told the legislature.

The debate comes after Elaine Taylor, the minister responsible for the Public Service Commission, told reporters Monday that the government won't move forward with its whistle blower legislation until it hears back from the Liberal party.

In other Canadian jurisdictions, whistle blower legislation enables public service employees to complain to the privacy commissioner if they feel someone in the bureaucracy is breaking the law, grossly mismanaging government resources, abusing authority or placing others at risk.

Taylor said the government is committed to the whistle blower legislation. However, it wants to strike a nonpartisan approach to developing and implementing the law by creating a select committee that allows input from the opposition parties, Taylor said.

She added that she has heard back from the NDP, but as of Monday afternoon, she had heard nothing from the Liberals.

It's important to have all parties involved in the discussion when dealing with public service employees, she said.

'I think it's really important to have a clear buy-in from each and every party in the Yukon. Without that buy-in, who knows what will happen to that piece of legislation when a different party comes to office?' asked Taylor.

During Tuesday's question period, Duncan sent over her response to the the government and publicly apologized for her tardiness.

However, she told the Star yesterday her position has been clear since December 2002, when she sent letters to the then-new Yukon Party regime stating she was fully prepared to participate in any all-party committee after the government called an all-party committee on appointments.

The committee would examine appointments to boards in areas 'important to all Yukoners,' including the Yukon Development Corp., the Yukon Workers Compensation Health and Safety Board and the Yukon Hospital Corp., Duncan said in an interview Tuesday.

Such a committee would be a mechanism to avoid the politicization of the appointments, she added.

'The leader of the third party has put terms and conditions on the way outside the standing orders,' Jenkins told reporters yesterday following question period.

'If you go to our standing orders in the Yukon for the last legislative session, it spells out how many people will sit on the committee and the make-up of the committee.'

The standing orders indicate the committee will consist of a chair, three members from the government party, a representative from the official Opposition and the third party member.

'The majority weight is to the government of the day on this, and (Duncan) wants an even balance on the make-up of this committee,' Jenkins said.

He added that request can't be accommodated because of the rules in the standing orders.

But Duncan countered Tuesday that she hasn't ever requested amendments to the committee.

'How can I ask for more chairs?' she asked during the interview. 'I only have one.'

She said Jenkins' accusation was 'unparliamentary,' and he was just looking for excuses for the lack of legislation.

Opposition Leader Todd Hardy said in an interview yesterday that Duncan isn't causing the stall.

'We haven't been contacted for this committee to meet,' he said. 'We are asking for it. We are ready, we are willing.

'It doesn't matter what we ask; they try to spin the blame to someone else.'

The government needs to call the committee before it can say that one of the other parties is stalling the process, and the government hasn't done that, Hardy said.

'Two and a half years have gone by, and it sounds like the Yukon Party is still stalling on this matter,' Eric Fairclough, the NDP MLA for Mayo-Tatchun, told the legislature Monday regarding the whistle-blower legislation.

In an interview on Tuesday morning, Fairclough said the government is now trying to find a way out of the whistle-blower legislation.

'They're saying someone won't play ball with them,' he said. 'They don't take this approach to anything else we criticize. I'm really surprised that (Taylor) took that approach to this.'

Duncan agreed, saying that placing the blame on her is just the next step in a series of excuses for not moving forward on the legislation.

'Our government tabled whistle-blower legislation in April 2002. After two years of no work by the Yukon Party, the NDP tabled legislation. The Yukon Party's response at the time was, no, we'll wait for federal legislation.

'Then they said they wanted to meet with the union. Then the Member for Klondike (Jenkins) promised all-party consultation over the summer, working with the opposition. The day before the legislature sat, he delivered the federal legislation.

'Then the minister asked in 2005 to form a select committee. The latest excuse: I won't participate,' Duncan told the legislature Tuesday.

The government is looking at different mechanisms and legislation used throughout the country, as well as a bill tabled by the NDP in March 2004, Taylor said Monday.

'We are willing to work with the members opposite in establishing whistle-blower legislation; unfortunately, the members opposite aren't,' she added.

'We can go ahead and have an all-party committee, but (Duncan's) not going to participate and she's going to be the first one to raise heck about it and call it not an all-party committee,' Jenkins told reporters.

'It's not an all-party committee if one of the parties refuses to participate. That's the essence of the difficulty.'

'This is called blame the opposition,' ' Duncan told the Star.

'We have addressed the issues that we have been tasked to address. We have a party platform that we are probably 80-odd-per-cent complete on and we're moving forward,' Jenkins said.

He added: 'When I was in opposition, if you were going to offer criticism, offer constructive criticism and offer an opportunity, and I always attempted to do that. Offer a way of improving on the given situation.'