Tuktoyaktuk Mayor Teddy on road closures: ‘Suffering becomes like, normal.’

Housing, land transfers, blocked roads, addiction recovery aftercare.

If those issues sound familiar, it’s because they are perennial problems for NWT communities that just haven’t being satisfactorily resolved.

However, a new issue was up for discussion, during the 2026 NWT Association of Communities ministers’ session — a.k.a. the bearpit — the federal government’s push to spend money on ‘nation-building’ projects in the North.

Here are a few of the (edited) exchanges from the Saturday afternoon session at the Chateau Nova Hotel:

Tuktoyaktuk Mayor Vince Teddy: “There are two things that affect us greatly in our community. One is housing, and we’re trying to address that by having a land transfer from Marine Transportation Services and it looked good, and then it got stalled by an environmental assessment. It’s been over a year now, and housing is very short in our community. One part of our community — because of weather, climate change, storm surge — we have a no-development zone. So we can’t build houses there. We can’t build any infrastructure there.

“The second one is on the Inuvik-Tuk Highway — constant, closures, constant. It’s not your fault — weather, wind, snow, blizzards closes the road. That’s our only lifeline to the south and residents depend on it for getting food, depend on for getting medicine, depend on for bringing medical people over to the hospital for their medical matters. So, those closures create a lot of unnecessary domino effect into the community and suffering becomes like, normal.”

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jay Macdonald: “A lot of times when industrial land is being transferred, there’s a lot of more steps to the process in on the environmental side. And I’m not sitting here making an excuse. I don’t know the specifics of this exact case, but what I will do is I will commit to go back to the department, get the information that you need if there is a bump in the road, figure out what that is, and see how we can quickly resolve that.”

Minister of Infrastructure Vince McKay: “The Inuvik-Tuk Highway has obviously been a struggle. We were aware of that the weather has been very difficult, the snow impacts been very difficult, and there’s been a lot of work being done on working on upgrades to the road and raising up some of the areas that have been causing some problems. But with that, we’ve also been working well with the contractor to make sure that we’re able to work on the road when it’s needed most, when it’s snowed in, when when it closes off, and we’re able to get the equipment out there.

“I know it’s been very difficult — I’ve seen some of the pictures, and I’ve been shocked to see the snow drifts and the way the snow has been piled. It doesn’t make it easy to maintain a road like that. And I believe last year there was some special equipment that was purchased, like a snow blower, more industrial sized snow blower, to push that snow out of the way.”

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Fort Smith Mayor Dana Fergusson: “We’re very seeing a severe drug crisis that affects every age group, youth, young adults, parents and elders. We’re often sending people out for treatment. They leave their homes, their families, their support systems to try and heal, but when they return, there’s often no structured aftercare waiting for them. They are placed back in the same environments that contributed to their addiction without consistent counselling, culturally relevant programming, peer support or crisis services outside business hours.

“Recovery does not happen Monday to Friday, nine ‘til five. Crisis happens when it’s happening. Without proper aftercare, we’re setting all these people up for fail across the North. So, what concrete, funded, community-based aftercare strategy is the government implementing specifically for smaller communities and all communities across the North to ensure individuals are returning from their treatment facilities and their care and are receiving ongoing, accessible, culturally appropriate support, and if those plans are not yet in place, what is the timeline to implement them?”

Health Minister Lesa Semmler: “Within Health and Social Services, (we) a trying to service 33 communities. And every single community has a different culture, even if you’re in my region, if you’re all Inuvialuit, even from the Inuvialuit communities, they all are a little bit different.

“(With aftercare), we do know that’s where there are gaps in our system. We just recently did a jurisdictional scan just in the Northwest Territories to find where all the gaps are, trying to look at what Indigenous governments are providing. What we have done as a government, we’ve invested into two transitional housing and aftercare programs. One is open here in Yellowknife being it’s a partnership with housing and with Salvation Army and Health and Social Services. We are working with Inuvialuit Regional Corporation in Inuvik, and hope to be before the end of March, opening up a transitional housing and recovery program there.

“That’s just two and so we have 33 communities, and we know that we need a lot more. However, we do have the Mental Wellness and Recovery Program that any Indigenous community can apply to. And this fiscal year was the first time I think it was fully subscribed, because we’ve been telling Indigenous governments, as part of our partnership is the aftercare pieces once they go home,

“Cultural pieces is not for the government. Because we know government … when we try to do culture, we don’t do it very well, so we have made this money available.”

Inuvik Mayor Peter Clarkson: “The dollar value that the Department of National Defence is looking at spending is beyond what we’re doing now. And so this is time consuming, and we realize the GNWT is is also strapped for money, so we’re going to the feds for some of those asks, but certainly having support in that regard, is welcomed, and we can certainly use it.

“And associated with that, the Town of Inuvik will also make a request for a transfer of all Commissioners lands within the municipal boundaries, so that we can make this development less bureaucratic and that we can move forward with development at the pace that we’re seeing occurring already and and we think that’ll benefit the community.”

Finance Minister Caroline Wawzonek: “So obviously, the GNWT has a role — the Indigenous governments, community governments — we need to be organized because the federal government is making big plans for us, but we need to be the ones that are … driving the way that they get delivered in our communities, and understanding what it’s going to do to the community.

Secretary to the Cabinet John MacDonald: “I think it’s fair to say the Canadian Armed Forces are probably experiencing a sense of whiplash from going probably 50 years with little little cash and all of a sudden have more money than what they know what to do with — and having to spend at quite a rapid pace.

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“So we’re as a government, experiencing a significant amount of contact from various parts of DND and the Canadian Armed Forces — and to be clear, we’re very supportive of what what they’re doing. So, as a government — and what the Premier has told me — is that we don’t want to be a barrier to or a choke point in any of this development happening, but we do want to advocate for the North, including municipalities for forward operating locations or notches or whatever the project may be.

“We’re in the process of that so that there’s a dedicated person who would report to me at the executive who will be helping to coordinate and to be clear, one of the things that we’re just trying to do is get a grip on this ourselves. But as you know, as some of these capital projects start to roll, they’re going to be rolling quickly. So one of the things we want to do is make sure that we’re capturing as much of that investment in the territory, and that it’s being done in a way that meets the needs of residents here to the maximum extent possible. So more to follow on that.”