YUKON PREMIER 'EMBARRASSED' BY EDMONTON HEROIN CONVICTION

WHITEHORSE -- Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie said he's very embarrassed after
media reports that a 1976 drug trafficking conviction in Edmonton 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 paper said
its information came from Edmonton news 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."

Fentie's admission in October 2002 about the conviction was the first time
he spoke publicly about it although he had been an MLA for six years at that
point.

Former premier Pat Duncan - whose Liberals lost out to Fentie last year -
said yesterday she's heard about this matter from a number of people over
the weekend and the fact he didn't come completely clean is her biggest
concern.

"It's not about what happened 25 years ago that bother people the most," she
said. "It's the dishonesty today."