Community Challenges

Infrastructure, governance issues

What worries Yellowknifers most these days is that, for perhaps the first time in the city’s history, major resource projects are coming to an end without enough new ones in the queue to replace them. Not only are the diamond mines on their way out over the next decade, but the Norman Wells oilfield north of Yellowknife along the Mackenzie River is slated for closure in 2026 after a century of production.

In April 2025, the N.W.T. government said it would provide $11.2 million in property tax relief and other financial support to the diamond mines to offset “growing financial pressures and industry-wide uncertainty” brought on by low global diamond prices, inflation, supply chain disruptions and emerging tariff uncertainty. In addition, the government said that money derived from a carbon tax paid by the mines between 2019 and 2023 will be returned.

The diamond industry employs more than 1,000 northerners and contributes 20 per cent to the territory’s GDP. “This is about protecting our economy from sudden shock,” Caroline Wawzonek, the territory’s minister of finance and deputy premier, said in a news release. The support is intended to help bridge the gap until the next phase of mineral development is ready to come online, added Caitlin Cleveland, N.W.T. minister of industry, tourism and investment.

Indigenous communities are expected to be hard hit by the industry’s downturn. In 2023, diamond mining created 355 jobs for Indigenous people, provided $39.6 million in annual employment income for Indigenous residents and generated $104 million in annual revenues for three Indigenous development corporations, according to a report commissioned by the corporations.

Everything in the Northwest Territories flows through Yellowknife, so it’s futile to examine the city in isolation from the vast hinterland it serves. A 2024 report from Impact Economics entitled Eyes Wide Open details the importance of the resource economy to Yellowknife. Using 2019 Statistics Canada figures, the report calculates that the resource sector is responsible for 1,305 direct, indirect and induced jobs in the city. That adds up to $173 million in employment income — more than 13 per cent of all employment income earned in the city.

Yellowknife was once known as the city where the gold was paved with streets, then as Canada’s diamond capital. But the pipeline of exploration and development that leads to new resource projects is empty, said Gary Vivian, chair of Aurora Geosciences, which provides consulting and contracting services to mining companies. “If you could compare it to a toilet bowl going down, that would be it,” he said. “I couldn’t say it any better than that, to be quite honest.”

Some of the reasons are familiar. The Northwest Territories has few roads into where the resources are, making even early-stage exploration expensive. The only way to drive into the mineral-rich Slave Geological Province, a 190,000-square-kilometre area ­spanning Northwest Territories and Nunavut, is on an ice road that costs millions to build and maintain every year, the utility of which shrinks annually as climate change reduces its operating season.

A new all-season road has been proposed to connect to the area. The proposed Slave Geological Province Corridor would consist of a two-lane gravel road that would start at Tibbitt Lake, about 80 kilometres east of Yellowknife, run through Slave Geological Province and possibly connect to Grays Bay in Nunavut, where plans for an Arctic deepwater port on the Northwest Passage are under consideration. The territorial government is preparing to submit an environmental assessment application for the proposed road, according to a news report.

A road is crucial, said Karen Costello executive director of the N.W.T. and Nunavut Chamber of Mines. “Build it and they will come,” she said.

Building an all-weather access road is an investment in “enabling infrastructure” and will save money in the long run, she said. It would have cost $750 million to build a road to the diamond mines in 1992. Instead, companies have spent $25 million a year since then on the ice road. “I think your $750 million in 1992 would have been a worthwhile investment,” said Costello.

Federal government promises to build a separate all-season road through the Mackenzie Valley date back to the government of John Diefenbaker. The proposed 321-kilometre Mackenzie Valley Highway would run from Wrigley to Norman Wells and would provide year-round access to communities along the Mackenzie River.

Given the potential for critical mineral production and the need to bolster Arctic security, infrastructure spending in the territory should be seen as an opportunity, said Caitlin Cleveland. She noted that virtually all communities in Yukon are connected by roads, whereas 13 of 33 communities in the Northwest Territories lack all-season road access.

Much of the planning on the proposed Mackenzie Valley Highway has been completed and it’s now a question of funding, which Cleveland estimates at upward of $1 billion. But debates over the cost have repeatedly delayed the project. “They said it would be too expensive,” Cleveland said. “It got more expensive,” and further delays will only add to the cost, she added.

Building the roads isn’t enough. Several interview participants noted that there is also a need to allocate stable operating funding to maintain and clear the roads during the winter months.

The Northwest Territories is now almost entirely covered by self-government agreements with First Nations. Only the Dehcho region in the territory’s southwest corner remains in negotiation. Such agreements make a difference, said Paul Gruner, CEO of Tłı̨chǫ Investments, which manages a series of businesses on behalf of the Tłı̨chǫ government. “We’re having talks right up to the ministerial level, where other groups have trouble getting to that level.”

Tłı̨chǫ communities, connected by road to Yellowknife, have benefited from employment at the diamond mines and Gruner is concerned about what will happen when they close. “Navigating a changing economy, you need an anchor tenant,” he said. Still, Gruner said the Tłı̨chǫ have to be part of decisions on how the North fits into that changing economy. “They’re really taking over community services, education, housing … They’re really striving to be an independent nation.”

This is one of the factors that the Fraser Institute says make the Northwest Territories a difficult place to do business.

“The regulatory system has become quite onerous [with] the level of information that’s being required earlier in the process,” Costello said. Regulators and mining companies need to work closely with Indigenous organizations, communities and governments, but many of these groups are still building capacity to participate in the processes, “so you get a slowdown in the regulatory process,” she said.

That slowdown is affecting federal attempts to develop climate-friendly mining that follows the principles outlined in the federal government’s 2022 Critical Minerals Strategy, said Vivian. “They’re basically saying that we need this stuff, and we need it quick. There’s nothing quick that’s going to happen here because they’ve established a land-use permitting process and regulatory process that takes years. You come up with a critical minerals strategy that says we need to get this stuff to market ASAP and use it, but you set a system up that doesn’t allow that.”

Cleveland argues that involving Indigenous communities early in the process reduces uncertainty and the likelihood of unexpected roadblocks popping up. Indigenous involvement is a must: “Nothing about us without us,” she said.

Lack of low-carbon power and skilled labour

The world may be hungry for the minerals needed to generate renewable power, but those minerals must also be developed sustainably. Over and over, mining executives talked about how hard it is to interest investors in a new mine unless it’s powered by green energy. Although there is some history of hydro and solar, mines in the Northwest Territories have generally been powered by diesel. The search for lower-carbon energy options is almost as important to northern miners as the search for ore bodies.

Investors want to know how a mine will be powered, said Vivian. Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues and low carbon are probably the two major things that investors look at. “So, yeah, it’s a huge impact on development in the N.W.T.,” he said.

Gruner has noticed the same. “It’s increasingly … challenging from an ESG perspective to raise capital for a new mine that doesn’t have a carbon-neutral footprint,” he said.

Sources of green power are not thick on the ground in the Northwest Territories. The territory has major hydro developments, but recent droughts have reduced their capacity to the point where Yellowknife itself depends heavily on diesel generation. Investors want carbon-neutral power, but they want profit, too, said Francis MacDonald, chief executive officer of Li-FT Power, which is developing a lithium mine near Yellowknife. “If you say, ‘Oh, I have green power, but it doesn’t make money,’ it’s an immediate No,” he said. “Up here, power is very expensive. There’s been a drought for the last couple years. Hydro power is basically not existent right now, and so the only thing is diesel.”

The Northwest Territories Power Corp. has installed a 3.5-megawatt wind turbine at Inuvik and has wind-mapped much of the territory. “The wind regime in the N.W.T. is OK, but it’s not great,” said Alex Love, chief development officer of NT Energy, the utility’s sister company.

The realities of northern construction also work against wind. “You have to get a large crane to the site, and you might only be able to get it in on the barge once a year,” Love said. “Now you’ve got the crane there for the whole year until you can get it out by barge the next year, even though you only used it for two weeks.”

Then there’s the cost of working in the North. “The magnitude of the construction costs and the cost of infrastructure tends to dissuade most decision-makers from going down that path,” said Mark Heyck, executive director of the Arctic Energy Alliance, a non-profit agency that assists communities and businesses in seeking low-carbon solutions. Those costs are exacerbated by the small size of N.W.T. communities, which robs renewable energy developments of economies of scale.

Some progress is being made. Love said he expects the economics of renewables to tilt wind’s way as fuel gets more expensive. He believes wind and solar will play a role in reducing the use of fossil fuels. The Diavik mine has operated a 9.2-megawatt wind farm since 2012, producing about 10 per cent of the mine’s power. The Arctic Energy Alliance reports that its renewable projects cut the territory’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 1,500 tonnes in 2023-24.

However, a shortage of skilled workers is hampering progress, Heyck said. “There’s some places where you just can’t find somebody to install a wood stove even if you wanted to.” The territorial government used to offer a training course in biomass boilers, which can displace diesel generators, but that fell away during COVID. The Alliance and other partners recently revived it. “It was very well received,” Heyck said. “We’re probably going to offer that course again before the end of the fiscal year if we can scrape together a few dollars to do that and then make it a standing course. So, there’s interest in low-carbon economy jobs.”

Labour shortages are a chronic problem in Yellowknife. The barriers to growing the local workforce are apparent from a map. First, it’s small. Although almost half the entire population of the Northwest Territories are Yellowknifers, that’s still only an estimated 21,000 residents. Second, it’s remote. The northern capital is nearly 1,500 kilometres by road to Edmonton, the nearest southern city. Third, it’s subarctic. The average February high is -13 C with nine hours of daylight. That has consequences.

“A perennial challenge that Yellowknife always faces is labour shortages,” said Melissa Syer, former executive director of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. “We’re isolated up here. Getting unskilled workers can be challenging. Even young professionals — getting them up here, it’s always been challenging.”

The lack of available housing makes it all the harder to attract and retain workers, added Heyck.

Chris Paci, vice-president of research at Aurora College, which has campuses in Yellowknife, Forth Smith and Inuvik, estimated that some 1,500 students a year leave the territory to pursue higher education elsewhere. That can be difficult for some students who would have preferred to stay in their home community and for the community itself. It’s also costly for the territorial government to operate the Student Financial Assistance Program, which includes remissible and repayable loans. At the same time, it’s a challenge for Aurora College to offer the same breadth of programs as its provincial counterparts because of the small class sizes and costs to operate in the North, including having to attract faculty.

Some worry that the labour shortage may get worse. There is expected to be a gap of several years between the closure of the Diavik diamond mine and the expected launch of several critical mineral mines currently under development. Retaining skilled labour during that gap will be a challenge, acknowledged Cleveland.

One truck operator who works at the Diavik mine said he’d like to stay in the community until his daughter graduates from high school, but if the work doesn’t come fast enough, he’d likely have to transfer to a mine outside the territory.

A small population also means Yellowknife lacks the tax base it needs to repair its aging infrastructure, according to Rebecca Alty, member of Parliament for the Northwest Territories and minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations. Much of Yellowknife’s infrastructure, such as the pump house, pool and firehall, was built around the same time and is all coming due for replacement at high northern costs. “A lot of the infrastructure built in the 1960s wasn’t built to last, so now we’re kind of cleaning up yesterday’s problems,” Alty said. “So, for a population of 20,000 to be able to afford that is going to be challenging. But it’s core. We have to do it.”

Impact of climate change

Like the miners, regular Yellowknifers are also caught between two sides of the fight against climate change. ’Knifers are more aware than most Canadians of the threat greenhouse gases pose. They live in one of the fastest-warming parts of the globe. They’ve already faced climate-change-amplified fires and floods, deteriorating infrastructure and strains on their health system, while the city has yet to reach its greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Yellowknifers know changes are needed.

A drive down Franklin Avenue, the city’s main street, will attest to how melting permafrost is affecting its roads. The same subterranean shifts are affecting many of the city’s homes too. And rising temperatures are putting new demands on buildings.

During intense summer heat, Chris Paci said he has had to close the Western Arctic Research Centre in Inuvik because the heating and cooling system couldn’t bring down the indoor temperature when the outdoor thermostat soared above 30 C. “In the Arctic, we used to focus on staying warm,” he said. “Who would have thought we needed air conditioning in Inuvik? But now we need it. It’s hotter than it used to be.”

Health is also affected. In 2014, Yellowknife coughed through two and a half months of wildfire smoke. “We called it the summer of smoke,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, a doctor at Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital and an advocate for climate action. That summer saw a doubling of emergency hospital visits for asthma and a 50 per cent increase in cases of pneumonia.

Dr. Howard and her colleagues conducted 30 interviews with a cross-section of Yellowknifers. “What we found was that people felt disconnected from the land because the public health advice was to stay inside with the windows closed during smoky episodes. So, no berry-gathering, fishing was inhibited — all of the culturally important food-­gathering and some of the summer ceremonial, gathering and social interactions were really inhibited.”

These kinds of events — including Yellowknife’s complete evacuation in 2023 during even worse wildfires — leave a mark. “We were so tense all summer long,” said Paci.

Indigenous people in Yellowknife and the surrounding communities are deeply concerned about falling water levels in the Mackenzie River and its watershed that may be the result of climate change, said Melissa Hardisty, regional climate change co-ordinator for the Dene Nation. “If we can’t get our boats in the water to go upriver to go hunting … that means a declining harvest,” she said.  “I’m a harvester, I’m a hunter. I haven’t been able to harvest this fall. That’s a really significant thing on us, especially for our family.”

A declining harvest increases dependence on food that is flown into the territory and, as a result, what it costs to put food on the table.

Repeated wildfires are also changing the way animals such as caribou behave, defying age-old expectations and traditional knowledge, Hardisty said. “We’re having a hard time with harvesting. I can hardly see as much caribou as we used to, because with the forest being burned and water depletion, animals are looking for water. So, they’re probably going to migrate a different way.”

Climate change is already draining the city’s — and the territory’s — financial reserves. Alty said the city’s 2023 evacuation cost it up to $12 million. The Insurance Bureau of Canada put Yellowknife’s estimated insured losses in that fire at $30 million.

Caroline Wawzonek said that, in 2023, the territory posted one of its largest budget surpluses ever. But “that pretty much got wiped,” she said. “It got wiped out in 2023 [and] 2024, partially due to another heavy, heavy wildfire season.” Wawzonek pointed out that low water in the Mackenzie River has also cost the territory hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue from its barge service.

Struggle for self-determination

Paci believes solutions to the Northwest Territories’ challenges will come from community-­based, locally focused applied research in the North. “I would like to see Canada ­investing more in northern research capacity, in partnership with northerners. The kinds of research I’d like to see, and I think we should be doing more of, is applied research informed by the reality of being here,” he said. “If we rely on economists and engineers from the South to tell us what’s going on in the North, heaven help us.”

Behind all Yellowknife’s pressing issues lies a basic question that’s never been answered, said Shauna Morgan, MLA for Yellowknife North: How do Yellowknife and the communities around it build self-sustaining economies? She pointed out that, after decades of gold and diamonds and everything else, the Northwest Territories still gets about 80 per cent of its budget from Ottawa. “We’re importing to just do the basic work … of keeping this town going. So, we, I think, haven’t come to terms with our narrative about ourselves, or what we are or what we could be … So, I think that’s the biggest challenge facing the town.”

Morgan said roads may facilitate development but won’t necessarily contribute to self-­sufficiency. Roads in the North are expensive to maintain, she explained. She pointed out that the road linking Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, completed with much federal back-patting in 2017, is still impassable much of the winter because there aren’t the resources to keep it clear. Meanwhile, said Morgan, other communities would like roads, too.

“The people who are throwing out ideas to build a road or multiple roads in and out of every NWT community … I don’t think have a clear idea of what we’re talking about,” she said. “We would bankrupt every other aspect of [government]. We wouldn’t be able to do anything else and we would still need to get billions and billions and billions of dollars from the feds that we don’t have now to build all those roads and then I don’t know who’s going to maintain them. I don’t actually see any pathway to a full road-connected NWT. I don’t see how that’s even remotely realistic.”

Tariff uncertainty

The trade dispute between Canada and the United States has added another layer of challenges. It’s causing “anxiety” and playing havoc with budget planning across businesses, governments and communities in the North, said Karen Costello of the Chamber of Mines.

Mining companies are concerned about what impact potential tariffs and counter-tariffs could have on operating and equipment costs and disruption in their supply chains, she said. Companies are already looking for alternative places to purchase equipment that currently comes from the U.S., which is likely to increase travel time and put upward pressure on equipment costs, she said.

Higher operating expenses mean there will be less money available for discretionary spending, which often goes to breakfast and literacy programs, funding for arenas and other community needs, she said.

Costello also noted that some companies are concerned that tariffs could push up the cost of conventional Arctic-grade diesel that is imported from the U.S.

Others said tariffs could increase the costs of wind turbines and solar panels that are not produced in Canada and make the transition to clean energy even more challenging.

At the same time, Costello said she has heard from governments and industry that they are looking for opportunities and trying to leverage the trade dispute to bolster the region’s independence and resilience and highlight the need for regulatory reform. For years, mining companies have called for efficiencies in the permitting process for new mines, which can be decades long. “Now there’s an urgency to it. I look at this as a call to action,” she said.

Opportunities

Critical minerals wave

Yellowknife has always been a resource town and that’s how it’s likely to stay. Government is a major employer and tourism is holding steady, but mining — especially of the critical minerals crucial to the world’s energy transition — is where the city is looking for its biggest opportunities.

“We have the benefit of over 90 years of the territory having this great mining history,” said Costello. “We have a great labour force that’s skilled, that’s trained, that’s familiar with mining. We also have many willing Indigenous partners.”

Several critical minerals projects are currently in early mining or advanced exploration phases in the Northwest Territories, including the Nechalacho Project, which would be Canada’s first rare earth mine; the Yellowknife Lithium Project, which is being developed by Li-FT Power; the NICO Project, a cobalt, gold, bismuth and copper deposit; the Pine Point project, a zinc deposit; the Prairie Creek Project, a zinc  mine; and the Mactung Project, a major tungsten deposit that straddles the N.W.T.-Nunavut border.

The challenges of developing these mines have already been noted. But industry and government are working on solutions.

Miners are looking to liquefied natural gas (LNG) trucked in from southern Canada as a source of lower-carbon energy to power these mines and answer investors’ requirement for reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. “There is no option except LNG,” said Gary Vivian of Aurora Geosciences. Miners acknowledge LNG is not zero-carbon but consider it the best way to transition to greener mining.

“When we … talk about energy transition, we aren’t flipping a light switch,” said Robin Goad, president and chief executive officer of Fortune Minerals, the company developing the NICO Project. “It’s a process, and we can argue about how long that takes.”

The territory is also looking to hydro to reduce mining’s carbon footprint. Despite concerns that climate change is making the Mackenzie watershed’s low-water cycles worse, the government is planning a major expansion of its Taltson hydro facility. That project, expected to cost up to $3 billion, would connect 11 N.W.T. communities and over 70 per cent of the territory’s population to one hydro grid. It will also provide clean power to the Pine Point mine.

The federal government has pledged $25 million under the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund for the Taltson hydro expansion project, which includes a proposed 60-megawatt generation facility near the existing Taltson hydro facility south of Great Slave Lake and a 230-­kilovolt transmission line connecting the Taltson grid to a separate grid north of the lake.

“The best renewable energy project is Taltson,” said Jeff Hussey, chief executive of Pine Point Mining. “And we will buy as much as is available and close the gap with LNG.” Other miners say they’re open to the idea of supplementing the power supply of their proposed mines with wind and solar.

Some see alternatives to LNG such as renewable diesel, which is made from fats and oils, and could replace conventional diesel and other high emitting fuels. Refineries that make the product already exist in Canada and, although it’s more expensive than conventional diesel, renewable diesel could be easily used in existing generators. “This is actually a real solution,” said Shauna Morgan. She’d like to see pilot projects on how the fuel performs in the N.W.T. context, she added.

One study conducted for the N.W.T. government said that renewable diesel could play a role in the territory’s plans to reduce carbon emissions and reach its net-zero targets. It noted that renewable diesel can be manufactured to operate in cold weather and without making modifications to existing engines and equipment. Neste, a Finnish company, produces Arctic-grade renewable diesel that is suitable in temperatures as cold as -44 C.

Spotlight on Arctic security

Yellowknife also sees possible answers to its infrastructure needs in renewed security concerns around Canada’s Arctic. Arctic sovereignty is an old and much-discussed topic, but increased global tensions may have added enough urgency to the debate to finally result in concrete action. The federal government released a paper on Arctic security in 2024 and northerners hope it will lead to the kind of infrastructure that can serve both military and civilian purposes. Some people have suggested that the infrastructure spending might count toward Canada’s NATO defence spending targets.

Caroline Wawzonek said the territory has hosted multiple visits recently from federal cabinet ministers and military officials on the issue. Residents want politicians and military authorities to see that helping to strengthen northern communities is key to Arctic security. “And I think people see that, politicians see it, you hear them say it,” she said. “It’s a question of how, and how we find the funding to invest in these communities to reflect that understanding, and that’s not an easy prospect.”

Just ahead of the 2025 federal election campaign, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada would work with Australia to build a $6-billion early warning military radar system in Canada’s Arctic, which would allow Canada to detect and respond to air and maritime threats in the North. The Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar System had been previously announced as part of a planned modernization of the existing North American Defense Command, or NORAD. Carney said Canada would invest an additional $420 million to bolster the presence of Canada’s Armed Forces in the Arctic.

The announcement, made in Iqaluit, followed weeks of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada’s sovereignty. U.S. priorities “once closely aligned with our own, are starting to shift,” Carney said at a news conference.

The Liberal Party’s election platform pledged to prioritize projects including new hydroelectricity projects, deepwater ports, an airstrip and highways, among other things, with capabilities to serve the needs of the military and northern residents, particularly Indigenous Peoples. The proposed airstrip, it notes, could be used by fighter jets and cargo planes.

“We must take a smarter approach to building infrastructure in the North,” the plan states. “For too long, we’ve built separate infrastructure for communities and the military. To invest smartly, we need to prioritize projects that defend the Arctic just as much as they help northerners, particularly Indigenous Peoples. This work can only proceed in full partnership with Arctic and Northern Indigenous Peoples.”

An expanded military presence would bring other benefits too, added Caitlin Cleveland. Among other things, it could provide assistance with evacuations, like the one during the 2023 wildfire season. “If something goes wrong, they shouldn’t have to send a plane here from Trenton or Winnipeg,” she said.

Progress in governance, regulation

Wawzonek said the territory is also moving to ease the regulatory burden on miners. She blames some of the current complexity on the incomplete transfer of control over resources from the federal government to the territory. Interpretations of legislation and regulations, for example, come from Ottawa, not Yellowknife.

“If we could get it down to having one government, that would help a lot. There are a few things that are underway where we sit with the feds to try and to streamline some things, find areas where we can move things forward, avoid duplication. But, again, we are a lot of governments at the table now, which overall is a good thing, but that just means that it takes a little longer sometimes to bring everyone to a place where we agree on what that step forward would be. But I’m hopeful that we’ll see some change in the space.”

Meanwhile, Paul Gruner, of Tłı̨chǫ Investments, said Indigenous governments are also working to increase their capacity to deal quickly with resource proposals while protecting their own interests. “Imagine if Canada were 10 years old. Any new government will have growing pains,” he said. “We’re still building up.”

Community Strengths

A young, vibrant population

Yellowknife’s greatest strength may lie in the sentence that any visitor to the city is likely to hear from a longtime local: “I came up here for a contract and never left.”

It’s not just a marketing slogan. There is, in fact, something different about life in the North that many — the young, the adventurous, the ambitious, the determined — find nowhere else.

Heyck, a lifelong Yellowknifer and former mayor, has seen it many times. “I’ve kind of watched as people have come up from down South and everybody comes with their one- or three-year plan. Half of them last six months and the other half are here for 30 years. It’s always had that kind of youthful energy, I guess, would be the way to describe it.”

Yellowknife is youthful. The N.W.T. Bureau of Statistics reports that the largest chunk of the city’s population is between 25 and 44 years old. It’s also well educated. The same agency says 85 per cent of Yellowknifers have at least a high school education. And it’s well paid. The average personal income in the city in 2023 was $83,185.

Melissa Syer’s experience is, in many ways, typical. The former head of the city’s Chamber of Commerce was in the military when she and her husband moved here 11 years ago. “He was in oil and gas law, and it was pretty demanding, all-encompassing work. So, we moved up here with my job, and he quickly found a position with a firm up here. And Yellowknife is a good place for young professionals who want to do good work but also want work-life balance. We quickly adopted two dogs from the SPCA, and they kept us active outside, exploring in winter. And then we had a daughter in 2020, and Yellowknife is a great place to raise a family. It’s kind of a free-range parenting hub.”

Yellowknife’s geographical isolation contributes to a DIY attitude. “Residents have to really take on the initiative to organize stuff,” said Alty. “Being smaller, things are easier to organize. You know, you go to the bar and it’s the deputy minister sitting beside you. Folks know to reach out to so-and-so.”

A great example is the annual castle of the Snow King, a party palace built of ice and snow every winter on frozen Great Slave Lake. It started in 1996 when a couple of residents of the city’s Old Town neighbourhood down by the water started building snow forts for their kids. The forts got bigger and bigger every year and gradually moved onto the ice. The effort is now the centre of a month-long winter festival featuring concerts, art shows, children’s theatre and more. The forts have become a two-storey castle the size of a suburban home that involves many volunteers and takes months to build. “It’s great for tourists, but locals just love it,” Alty said.

Yellowknife is also a place that tends to attract the ambitious, said Heyck. Because not everyone’s willing to move to Yellowknife, those who are can often get much more senior work earlier in their career than they would in the South. “The opportunities you can get here in the labour market are second to none, in my opinion,” Heyck said.

Respect for the environment

When it comes to dealing with climate change, Yellowknifers have another advantage. Living in the North has already given them a healthy respect for their environment. “If I walked out my door, I would die,” said Dr. Howard. “So, we have a respect for the power of Mother Nature that I think you don’t tend to have if you’re in an urban environment with resilience in your supply chains and a sense that humanity kinda owns the Earth. We’re starting from a pretty eco-centric, respectful place.”

Morgan, the MLA who was born and raised in Barrie, Ont., sums up Yellowknife’s greatest strength this way: “I got an opportunity for a four-month contract with the government of the Northwest Territories. So, I thought I would give it a try. And I fell in love with this place. It was the community of people. I just felt more at home than I’d ever felt anywhere else. It was a lifestyle that I realized I had been wanting my whole life but didn’t know existed, being so close to wilderness and adventure on every doorstep.

“This is a place where it feels like anything is possible and you … make things happen yourself. I think a lot of people have. I found that here and that’s what makes the community.”

Community Insights

Lack of control, high cost of living

Despite Yellowknife’s strong community cohesion and do-it-yourself attitude, respondents said residents feel little sense of control over the debate on climate change and how to respond to it. They also know their cost of living is among the highest in the country and they are extremely sensitive to anything that might make that worse. Like almost everywhere, day-to-day, bread-on-the-table issues trump even the direst climate projections. They are also acutely aware of the marginal place their voice has in the national conversation and the measly three seats — one per territory — the North holds in the House of Commons.

“I don’t feel like people think they have a lot of agency,” said Dr. Howard.

Mark Heyck, of the Arctic Energy Alliance, echoed this point: “People feel overwhelmed,” he said.

Although Yellowknife and the North in general are arguably feeling global warming’s effects more than anywhere else in Canada, it’s seen as a problem that’s created elsewhere and addressed by decisions made elsewhere, explained Paul Gruner, of Tłı̨chǫ Investments.

Moreover, life in the North presents unique challenges, the high of cost of living among them. “When people are struggling to put food on the table, they’re not worried about [climate change],” Gruner said. And northerners are acutely sensitive to anything that makes these affordability challenges stiffer. Power rates, for example, are the highest in Canada and, rightly or wrongly, carbon taxes are blamed for forcing those rates higher.

Policymakers are out of touch with the realities of life in the North, said Karen Costello, of the Chamber of Mines, noting that, “when they’re making policies and decisions about how to move forward, they forget about the North. They try and do a one-size-fits-all for all of Canada. A solution that might work in a heavily populated area south of 60 might not work north of 60. We’re cold. We have to have reliable energy sources to keep our homes safe.”

Factors such as high construction costs mean switching to a low-carbon economy will be more expensive, she added. “The cost of doing the change in the North is going to be far different than the cost of the change in the South.”

That lack of control is more than just a feeling. As Wawzonek pointed out, the federal government still controls aspects of the Northwest Territories’ regulatory system. And the research agenda in the North is set by southern institutions, noted Chris Paci, of Aurora College. “Folks in the South don’t really get what you need to do here to be able to live a good life. We definitely need to stop relying on outside universities who want to come here and do research.”

More government collaboration

Several interview participants emphasized the need for governments to work together on a common plan for the North to seize its opportunities. The federal, territorial and Indigenous governments “have to stand up hand in hand saying that we want responsible development and we’re here to help you,” said geologist and mining consultant Gary Vivian. “That has never been said and it’s not obvious.”

Gruner asked: “Guys, if we’re going to do this, what’s your plan? What are we doing to build Canada?”

Said Dr. Howard: “We have to have policy that takes us all the way from the personal level to the subnational level to the national level.”

Many respondents expressed frustration with the “business case” model of development that says northern development is only justified when it pays for itself through taxes, jobs or royalties. “I’m wondering whether it’s time that we just say, ‘Screw it, build the road,’” said Vivian. “We need this for nation-building. It’s just what we do.”

Heyck pointed out that the Deh Cho bridge, which replaced the periodically unusable ferry link across the Mackenzie River, was expensive and came in well over budget. Those concerns are forgotten in the face of the bridge’s utility, he said. “Nobody talks about the cost of that anymore. We’re all just happy we can drive out and back any time of the year we want.”

Costello cited the example of the original Pine Point Mine, which enjoyed government-­financed infrastructure until its closure in 1988, asking why Canada can’t do that again by building a year-round road to the Slave Geological Province.

The hidden costs of climate inaction

Alex Love, of NT Energy, said communities that have installed renewables take pride in them. “When I see communities that we work with, a number of them want to do the right thing. And they see decarbonizing or getting off diesel, or reducing diesel, is a good thing.” Still, his company is caught between contradictory demands: “Keep the rates as low as possible, while keeping reliability up, while reducing GHG emissions.”

Morgan said, “If you really sit down and have a more in-depth conversation, everyone will acknowledge that the cost of living is increasing because our power rates go up because of low water levels. And the government has all these added costs of transporting stuff. And, of course, all the extra costs of … firefighting” because of climate change.

“But most people just see that there’s a higher cost of living now. And they just want someone to do something about that,” she said. “They don’t really care how or why it’s happening or what the root causes are. [People] wouldn’t see any contradiction in saying, ‘Yep, climate disasters are bad and they’re making our costs go up, and you should make that carbon tax go away, it’s making my costs go up.’ People need to understand how expensive and risky the status quo is.”

This is one key challenge that policymakers have in securing broad support for climate action. The immediate cost of action is apparent but the long-term cost of inaction, while less visible, is much higher.

That’s the challenge of governance, said Wawzonek: “to be able to understand where can we invest today with some guarantee that the outcome will result in a better future. And that, of course, is difficult to know. And the last few years, just when you think you’ve solved one problem, it seems that there’s a new one on the horizon.”

What’s Needed

Canada’s desire to be a major source of critical minerals is inextricably linked with territorial needs.

For decades, northerners have pointed out that southern Canada has benefited from massive public investment, starting 140 years ago with the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The provinces are linked by an extensive road network and modern airports. They get their goods to market through busy deepwater ports. Their people can choose between dozens of universities. Hospitals are nearby. And all of it financed with at least some public dollars. It’s our turn for some of that, northerners say. If that investment furthers our fight against climate change, or Canada’s national security, well and good. But, either way, the North needs it.

Here are the priorities identified by various interviewees:

• Nation-building: Many suggested it’s time Canada stopped regarding the North as a resource colony and started thinking of it as a part of the country as worthy of investment as any other. Interviewees suggested Canada should stop relying on business cases to justify projects such as roads up the Mackenzie Valley or into the Slave Geological Province. Linking people to each other and to the resources that support them is just what countries do.
• Arctic sovereignty: Rising geopolitical tensions have renewed security concerns over Canada’s Arctic. Reinforcing Arctic sovereignty by building roads and other infrastructure could serve dual military and civilian needs.
• Intergovernmental co-operation: The North, with its Indigenous governments, heavy federal presence and territorial and municipal regimes, is jurisdictionally complex. These jurisdictions aren’t always using the same playbook. For example, Ottawa wants to speed development of critical minerals at the same time as First Nations demand more control over what happens on their lands. Governments need to work together to ensure that national and local goals chime.
• More efficient regulations: Devolution, the process of transferring control of northern resources to northerners, needs to be completed. First Nations need the capacity to analyze and respond quickly to development proposals.
• Training/Research sovereignty: Northern educational institutions need to be able to identify, design and consistently offer the training programs northerners need. They also need the capacity to conduct research that responds to the needs of northerners instead of southern research priorities.
• Tax help: Many miners expressed the need for a more generous federal tax credit for mineral exploration, given the higher costs of such work in the North. The industry has lobbied hard for such a move, without success.
• A voice: Federal policy often seems designed by southerners for southerners, many said. Consumer carbon taxes, which are seen to penalize remote cold-­climate places like Yellowknife, are considered to do little there other than raise the already high cost of living.
• A vision: Despite decades of successful mining, Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories are still largely funded by Ottawa. Canada lacks a plan for a self-­supporting, sustainable North.

The Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) has developed a methodology for measuring community susceptibility to workforce disruption as global efforts to address climate change expand. Using three indicators, the methodology scores and ranks census divisions across the country. Based on their ranking, each census division is assigned to one of six groups, ranging from “not susceptible” to “most susceptible.”

The three indicators include Facility Susceptibility (emissions from large facilities relative to the size of the community), Intensity Susceptibility (proportion of employment in ­emissions-intensive sectors), and Market Susceptibility (proportion of employment in globally traded sectors expected to undergo market transformations).

The analysis is available in an interactive map, developed in collaboration with the Community Data Program of the Canadian Community Economic Development Network, on the IRPP’s website  (https://irpp.org/map-of-community-susceptibility/). A detailed description of the methodology used is also available on the website.

To complement the mapping exercise, the IRPP selected 10 communities across the country to profile through a series of interviews with people who live and work in the community. Most of the communities selected are located within the most susceptible census divisions, but others were chosen because of anticipated developments or previous experiences. The profiles are meant to cover a diversity of regions of the country and types of economic activity. These snapshots are meant to provide additional insight into the challenges and opportunities the communities face and to reflect the perspectives of residents.

Yellowknife is one of the communities selected. The community was chosen because of the phaseout of its diamond mining industry and the emergence of new critical minerals opportunities.

The Energy Mix conducted interviews with community members in Yellowknife. IRPP director of research Steve Lafleur also visited to meet with community leaders.

Below, we present a breakdown of the susceptibility analysis for the Region 6, N.W.T. census division. Yellowknife is the largest municipality in the census division. Additional information not used in the analysis such as population change, the unemployment rate and demographic characteristics of workers are derived from the 2021 census. The number of facilities comes from Statistics Canada’s Business Register from June 2020.

If you have questions about the profile or the analysis, please contact us at communitytransformations@nullirpp.org.

This Community Profile was published as part of the IRPP’s Community Transformations Project. It was authored by The Energy Mix and the IRPP. The manuscript was copy-­edited by Rosanna Tamburri with assistance from Dena Abtahi. Ricardo Chejfec was responsible for the data analysis. Proofreading was by Zofia Laubitz, editorial co-ordination was by Étienne Tremblay, production was by Chantal Létourneau, publication management was by Rosanna Tamburri and art direction was by Anne Tremblay. Photos are by Angela Gzowski Photography.

The Community Transformations Project was funded in part by The McConnell Foundation and Vancity. Research independence is one of the IRPP’s core values, and the IRPP maintains editorial control over all publications.

A French translation of this text is available under the title Yellowknife : miser sur la vague des ressources.

To cite this document: Institute for Research on Public Policy. (2025). Yellowknife: Riding the resource waves. Institute for Research on Public Policy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our sincere thanks go to the following people for their essential input, perspectives and time:

• Rebecca Alty, Member of Parliament, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Former Mayor of Yellowknife
• Caitlin Cleveland, MLA for Kam Lake, N.W.T., Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and Minister of Education, Culture and Employment
• Karen Costello, Executive Director, N.W.T. and Nunavut Chamber of Mines
• Robin Goad, President and CEO, Fortune Minerals Ltd.
• Paul Gruner, CEO, Tłı̨chǫ Investments Corp.
• Melissa Hardisty, Regional Climate Change Co-ordinator, Dene Nation
• Mark Heyck, Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
• Courtney Howard, Stanton Territorial Hospital
• Jeff Hussey, CEO, Pine Point Mining Ltd.
• Alex Love, Chief Development Officer, NT Energy
• Shauna Morgan, MLA for Yellowknife North
• Chris Paci, Vice-President of Research, Aurora College
• Melissa Syer, Former Executive Director, Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce
• Gary Vivian, Chair, Aurora Geosciences
• Caroline Wawzonek, MLA for Yellowknife South, N.W.T. Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance