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The 19th Legislative Assembly of the N.W.T. was shaped by emergencies, beginning with a pandemic and ending with wildfires that delayed the current election campaign.
The territorial government’s response to these crises received criticism, from those who felt there was insufficient financial support for residents, to those who said there appeared to be a lack of emergency planning.
But how will the actions of the previous government affect who is elected for the next one?
Responding to a questionnaire sent by CBC News, candidates in the Nov. 14 territorial election addressed which issues mattered most — and only eight of them highlighted emergency preparedness or climate emergencies as a priority.
‘We need to figure out a better way’
Hay River and Kátł’odeeche First Nation were areas particularly hard hit in the past few years, with a flooding evacuation in 2022, and then two wildfires this past summer that led to evacuations lasting over a month.
For Sandra Lester, a chairman of the Hay River Seniors’ Society, it seemed as though there was no planning for how seniors would leave during all three evacuations.
“I’m hoping that’s the last disaster, but we need to figure out a better way,” she said.
Lester found herself scrambling to help the seniors from the Whispering Willows senior complex in Hay River leave during the recent evacuation and felt like the government didn’t learn from each disaster.
She also lost her own home to the wildfires in August.
“Losing my house was brutal, but what stressed me out was before I lost my house,” she said of the lack of communication during the evacuation order.
Lester said she hopes the next elected assembly does more to prepare for and prevent future disasters.
It starts with staffing
To Alain Normand, who teaches emergency management communication at York University, good emergency management starts with hiring the right people to plan for it.
He said emergency management professionals have a specific skill set that can help governments plan for various scenarios and how to communicate during emergencies.
He cited Fort McMurray, Alta., as an example of a local government learning from its mistakes and prioritizing emergency planning.
After the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo held an independent review that included lessons learned and recommendations.
Greg Bennett, a spokesperson for that municipality, said in an email to CBC News that the community implemented nearly all the recommendations. Some of those included changes to governance structures for emergency management and enhancing emergency management training and exercise requirements.
Normand said unfortunately, during his time working for governments, disaster management is often the first thing to be cut when balancing a budget. But after what the N.W.T. has recently experienced, he said the issue should be a priority to voters.
“I think that should be part of the election, people should see who’s really going to look after me, who’s going to be putting resources, money, staff,” Normand said.
But Normand says that other issues can factor into emergency management, including infrastructure.
Infrastructure as emergency management
Fort Simpson, N.W.T., a village of about 1,200, is the hub of the Dehcho region. But it’s a difficult community to access in the spring and fall. It’s accessible by ice road in the winter and ferry in the summer.
The government is looking into a bridge that would connect the community to the highway, year-round.
Sean Whelly is the mayor of Fort Simpson, a community that was evacuated in the spring of 2021 when flooding hit.
Because of the time of year and the lack of infrastructure, the community had to evacuate to an impromptu tent city up on a hill away from the island that makes up the majority of the community. Evacuees had to wake up to snow and cold temperatures during the event.
Whelly says if there had been a bridge, the evacuation wouldn’t have been as disruptive.
“It would’ve just been a land evacuation, and we all could’ve all driven to Hay River or Yellowknife,” he said.
“We wouldn’t have been all parked on top of the hill living in tents for a week or 10 days.”
Not a referendum
David Wasylciw, an N.W.T. political commentator, says disaster management has become more of an election issue in recent years.
“Nobody ever mentioned the Emergency Management Act before, like that wasn’t the thing people talked about in the last few years — and now it’s certainly an item on that list,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s the top issue, and certainly before the election people were talking about frustration driving them to run, or wanting a lot of change in the government.”
Still, the election may not effectively serve as a referendum on the previous government’s handling of recent emergencies.
Premier Caroline Cochrane isn’t running again, and neither is Julie Green, the former health minister, who was a responsible for many policies during the pandemic.
Meantime, Caroline Wawzonek, finance minister in the last government, has been acclaimed in her riding. Wawzonek was sometimes criticized for confusion around financial assistance for wildfire evacuees, and the amount of assistance provided.
One person involved in the emergency response who is facing a challenge in this election is Shane Thompson, the incumbent MLA for Nahendeh and former Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) minister. He’s running for reelection against Hillary Deneron, Josh Campbell, Les Wright, Mavis Cli-Michaud and Sharon Allen.
As MACA minister, Thompson was responsible for the emergency response across the territory, including multiple communities in his riding.
Thompson said in an answer to a questionnaire CBC News sent candidates that he supports an independent review of the territory’s emergency response this past summer. This would be a review of his own department’s handling of the numerous evacuations and emergency response.
CBC News hasn’t yet received responses from all the candidates for Nahendeh, but at least one of Thompson’s opponents — Sharon Allen — mentioned better emergency planning in her questionnaire.
With six candidates, Nahendeh has a crowded field. But Wasylciw says that isn’t out of the ordinary for a divided riding — Nahendeh stretches as far south as Fort Liard and as far north as Wrigley.
“[Thompson]’s running against quite a few candidates, but that’s kind of every election that Shane’s run,” Wasylciw said.
“We kind of have this question every four years, you know, ‘is this a referendum on the government? Is this minister or that minister under election fire because of it?’ But at the end of the day, what ends up happening is a lot of elections are local, all elections are local.”
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