Constitutional Development in the Yukon Territory: Perspectives on the "Epp Letter"

The 1978 Yukon Territorial election was the first to be contested by all three territorial political parties. The Yukon Territorial Progressive Conservative Party, which won the election, quickly demanded constitutional change, and received a positive response from the federal Progressive Conservative government in 1979. The Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, Jake Epp, acceded to the Yukon Government's request and issued a letter of instruction to the federally appointed Commissioner, Ione Christensen. He ordered her to divest herself of her portfolio responsibilities and not participate in executive decision making. Mrs. Christensen immediately resigned, stating that she did not want the role of a de facto Lieutenant Governor. Her resignation triggered a debate in the Yukon legislature and the media over whether the Territory was moving "too far, too fast" toward provincial status. Academics and politicians have also debated whether the changes effected by the "Epp letter" were significant and irreversible, or merely a "sop" to assuage local sentiments. The anomaly of the Yukon's constitutional status in Canada is raised as a consequence of this debate.L'élection de 1978 dans le Territoire du Yukon a été la première à faire l'objet d'une contestation par les trois partis politiques du Territoire. Le parti Progressiste-Conservateur du Yukon, qui avait remporté l'élection, ne tarda pas à réclamer un changement constitutionnel et, en 1979, reçu une réponse positive du gouvernement fédéral Progressiste-Conservateur. Jake Epp, ministre des Affaires indiennes et du Nord canadien, accéda à la demande du gouvernement du Yukon et fit parvenir au Commissaire nommé par le fédéral, Ione Christensen, une lettre de directives. Il lui ordonnait de se défaire des responsabilités rattachées à son portefeuille et de ne pas participer aux prises de décision administratives. Madame Christensen démissionna immédiatement de son poste, déclarant qu'elle ne voulait pas d'un rôle de lieutenant-gouverneur de fait. Sa démission déclencha un débat à l'assemblée législative du Yukon et dans les médias sur le fait que le Territoire allait «trop tôt et trop vite» vers un statut de province. Les universitaires et les politiciens ont aussi débattu de l'importance et de l'irréversibilité réelles des changements amenés par la fameuse «lettre Epp» ou du fait qu'elle était tout simplement un énoncé de principes visant à calmer les esprits de la région. On soulève la question de l'anomalie du statut constitutionnel du Yukon au sein du Canada qui découle de ce débat

Colonialism and Language in Canada's North : A Yukon Case Study

The relationship between the federal and territorial governments in Canada has been described as colonial because important decisions affecting the territories can be, and have been, imposed upon them by the federal government. In the 1980s, the federal government utilized its power to unilaterally impose constitutional changes which were perceived by Northerners as being contrary to their interests. This Yukon case study exemplifies that colonial relationship in the context of language rights.On a décrit la relation entre les gouvernements fédéral et territoriaux au Canada comme coloniale parce que les décisions importantes affectant les territoires peuvent être - et ont été - imposées à ces derniers par le gouvernement fédéral. Au cours des années 1980, le gouvernement fédéral a utilisé son pouvoir pour imposer de façon unilatérale des changements constitutionnels qui ont été perçus par les habitants du Grand Nord comme contraires à leurs intérêts. Cette étude de cas au Yukon illustre cette relation coloniale dans le contexte des droits linguistiques

Interactive Model-Based Compilation: A Modeller-Driven Development Approach

There is a growing tendency for using domain-specific languages, which help domain experts to stay focussed on abstract problem solutions. It is important to carefully design these languages and tools, which fundamentally perform model-to-model transformations. The quality of both usually decides the effectiveness of the subsequent development and therefore the quality of the final applications. However, as the complexity and safety requirements of modern systems grow, it becomes increasingly burdensome to create highly customized languages and difficult to provide reasonable overviews within these tools. This thesis introduces a new interactive model-based compilation methodology. Compilations for arbitrary model-to-model transformations are themselves described as models. They can be instantiated for particular inputs, e. g. a program, to create concrete compilation runs, which return the result of that compilation. The compilation instance is interactively observable. Intermediate results serve as new inputs and as documentation. They can be used to create highly customized views and facilitate understandability. This methodology guides modellers from the start of the compilation to the final result so that they can interactively refine their models. The methodology has been implemented and validated as the KIELER Compiler (KiCo) and is available as part of the KIELER open-source project. It is used to implement the current reference compiler for the SCCharts language, a statecharts dialect designed for specifying safety-critical reactive systems based on a synchronous model of computation. The interactive model-based compilation approach was key to the rapid prototyping of three different compilation strategies, as well as new language extensions, variations and closely related languages. The results are verified with benchmarks, which are again modelled using the same approach and technology. The usability of the SCCharts language and the KiCo tooling is documented with long-term surveys and real-life industrial, academic and teaching examples

Constitutional Change In The Circumpolar Periphery: A Comparative Case Study

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2005This dissertation probes the origins of intercultural conflict and regional disparity in the circumpolar North. The dissertation asserts that the national governments of Denmark, the United States and Canada have utilized policies of internal colonialism in Alaska, Greenland and the Yukon Territory, and that those policies have shaped inter-cultural relations and contributed to regional disparities in their northern jurisdictions. Michael Hecther's and Dale Johnson's definitions of internal colonialism are utilized for the purposes of this study. The dissertation uses a comparative case study approach, reviewing how national government policies evolved and were applied in Alaska, Yukon and Greenland. It treats Alaska and the Yukon as similar cases, while Greenland is examined in a separate chapter as a dissimilar case. The dissertation provides an historical analysis and comparison of national policies towards aboriginal peoples, and shows how those policies were applied differently in Alaska and the Yukon than they were in the southern United States and Canada. These policies exacerbated conflict between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal populations due to the cultural division of labor that was created. The dissertation then examines the impact of federal policies on the economic development of Alaska and the Yukon. Thirdly, the dissertation examines the history of constitutional change, and compares the struggle for Alaska statehood with efforts to achieve provincial status for the Yukon. The dissertation concludes that policies of internal colonialism have been detrimental to the social and economic well-being northern peoples, but that responses to these policies have generated creative new approaches and agreements

A Case-Study on Manual Verification of State-based Source Code Generated by KIELER SCCharts

Statecharts-like languages, such as SCCharts, are commonly used to develop stateoriented reactive and critical systems. Code is often generated by automatic code generators, which employ different strategies. This paper presents the results of a second user study on manual user verification of different source codes, which were generated using a netlist-based, a priority-based, and a state-based code generation approach compiling SCCharts models to C. The evaluation shows that manual verification can be time-consuming and is error prone if the user has no clear mapping between states and transition of the original model and the generated code. The participants performed better if the generated code followed a state pattern that preserves original model structures and names

Model Extraction of Legacy C Code in SCCharts

With increasing volumes of developed software and steadily growing complexity of these systems, software engineers struggle to manually maintain the vast amount of legacy code. Therefore, it is of interest to create a system which supports the documentation, maintenance, and reusability of software and its legacy code. The approach presented here automatically derives SCCharts models out of C code. These models can be used as visual documentation. By applying focus and context methods important parts of the model can be highlighted and may grant a better understanding of the overall software. Additionally, the models can also be used as a source to create new state-of-the-art code for various languages and platforms, such as C code or VHDL, using automatic code generators

Guidance in Model-based Compilations

The modeler should not be burdened with maintaining an overview over all potential conflicts. They should further be able to understand what is happening. Model-based compilers and modeling tools in general should guide a modeler.The KIELER Compiler constructs transformation snapshots and augmented models automatically during compilation. We demonstrate six different transient views that can help the modeler to refine their models and to solve modeling issues, such as causality problems in synchronous languages

Watch Your Compiler Work Compiler Models and Environments

We can observe many similarities between classical programming paradigms and model-driven engineering. A chain of model-to-model transformations often prescribes a particular work process, while executing such a chain generates a concrete instance of this process. Modeling the entire development process itself on a meta-model level extends the possibilities of the model-based approach to guide the developer. Besides refining tools for model creation, this kind of meta-modeling also facilitates debugging, optimization, and prototyping of new compilations. A compiler is such a process system. In this paper, we share the experiences gathered while we worked on the model-based reference compiler of the KIELER SCCharts project and ideas towards a unified view on similar prescribed processes. We exemplify our approach in two case studies

Breast cancer risk and imprinting methylation in blood

Date of Acceptance: 17/08/2015 Acknowledgements This study was supported by the Breast Cancer Campaign (2008MayPR46) and Fraserburgh Moonlight Prowl Breast Cancer Charity. PH, GH and GWH acknowledge the support of the Scottish Government. We would like to thank Val Bain and Michela Donnarumma for help with the data and sample collection.Peer reviewedPublisher PD