Jack Danylchuk
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 06/06) - The Northwest Territories would be "devastated" by a change in government, Liberal incumbent Ethel Blondin-Andrew said Wednesday as she unveiled her platform in the January 23 election.

Liberal incumbent Ethel Blondin-Andrew lays out her election platform and campaign theme: experience gets results. - Jack Danylchuk/NNSL photo

Holding a brochure that details billions of dollars in spending on promises and programs, Blondin-Andrew told reporters she has considered the "consequences of major change.

"I think it would be devastating," she said.

"The North is at a critical juncture; we are so far along on so many fronts, socially, economically and politically, it would be foolhardy to make a change," Blondin-Andrew said.

"The Conservatives are not committed to the things that Northerners want to see for themselves," she said, and added a pointed reference to the vote on the Tlicho land claim.

"I was in the House when they voted against the Dogrib land claim."

Blondin-Andrew has held the Western Arctic since 1988, but was within 54 votes of losing to the NDP in June 2004. She will decide on her future after January 23.

"I have to win this campaign in order to answer," she said when asked if this was her last campaign.

"I'm not tired. I'm full of energy and good ideas," she said as the two-month campaign turned toward the final stretch.

Blondin-Andrew has been door-to-door in Yellowknife and remote communities where she said voters are focused on local concerns.

"I haven't heard anything on the ground at all" about integrity in government, an issue that Conservative and NDP federal campaigns have hammered at, Blondin-Andrew said, and there has been just one question about the firearms registry program.

"They want to deal with their issues: healing, socio-economic impacts," she said.

Blondin-Andrew said negotiators for Ottawa, the Territories and First Nations could have reached an agreement in principle on devolution if the minority Liberal government hadn't been defeated.

"We just ran out of time," she said.

"If we have another minority people have to look to themselves and ask why did we do this. I would have been satisfied to continue to work."