Pubdate: Tue, 25 Nov 2003
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2003 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Whitehorse Star

YUKON PREMIER NOT PROUD OF PAST

Trafficking Conviction Involved Heroin: Report

WHITEHORSE -- Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie said he's very embarrassed
after media reports that a 1976 drug trafficking conviction involved
selling heroin. "I think it's an unfortunate situation and it's not
easy to deal with," Fentie said yesterday. "I'm quite embarrassed
about my past, to be honest with you."

Fentie said during the territorial election campaign in 2002 that he
was arrested in Edmonton in 1975 for drug trafficking. The Yukon Party
leader disclosed he had spent 17 months in prison.

He was pardoned in 1996.

But Fentie wouldn't say what drug he was convicted of selling, just
that the charge was for selling narcotics.

On Friday, the Yukon News reported that the drug was heroin. The News
said its information came from Edmonton Journal stories printed at the
time of Fentie's 1975 arrest. Fentie was 24 when he was arrested along
with seven others. He was sentenced to four years before being
released after 17 months.

"I'm not proud of what happened to me in the past, but I took
responsibility for those actions and now I'm trying to put back into
society something useful and good," Fentie said yesterday.

"I want to assure people that my past does not in any way shape or
form reflect on my abilities."

In a scrum yesterday with reporters, Fentie did not use the word
heroin.

"The charge is the charge. It's the contravention of the Narcotics
Act."

Two veteran federal political strategists say he should have made the
details of the case clear from the beginning. Fentie could pay a
political price for not being up front about the whole story, said Tim
Powers, who once worked for federal Tories John Crosbie and Joe Clark,
and most recently worked for the Canadian Alliance during the 2000
federal election.

"My advice would've been you come clean," Powers said yesterday in an
interview from Ottawa.

"If you hide something that is a part of the public record somewhere
out there, come clean or you will pay the price.

"Half-truths are time bombs are waiting to go off."

Fentie did not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.
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