People & Culture
Northerners are raising concerns about planned federal megaprojects in the Northwest Territories
Lois Little has conflicted feelings about all the changes coming to Yellowknife.
Having called the city home since 1975, she is well known in the community for her activism: Little has been a member of the Northwest Territories’ chapter of the Council of Canadians for over 20 years. She has raised awareness about the harmful effects of arsenic trioxide stored underground at Giant Mine, advocated against pipelines, spoken out on fracking and influenced decision-making about the creation of a hydroelectric dam in the territory.
This past year, she has been raising concerns about the security-related infrastructure announcements made by the federal government. These include the construction of the Mackenzie Valley highway, as well as the development of northern operational support hubs and forward operating locations meant to support operations by the Canadian Armed Forces, which will include airfield upgrades, new or repurposed hangars, and buildings and equipment for accommodations.
Little believes the projects ignore the climate challenges and realities facing communities on the ground, and go against the climate commitments — to protect wildlife, reduce emissions, and invest in mitigation and adaptation — the federal government has already made.
“It feels, in a way, that [the federal announcements] are a more political development than they are infrastructure development, because they’re certainly not dealing with any of the environmental or social issues at all,” she says.
“The militarization of the North really seems to be the main objective, and we all know that the military is one of the worst climate criminals on the planet.”
Little also says the process — or lack thereof — for approving these developments so far is concerning in equal measure. That’s why, alongside other members of the social justice coalition Alternatives North, she is calling for a comprehensive, community-centered consultation process as well as a complete environmental review of the proposed projects.
Calling for concrete proposals
The biggest infrastructure project Alternatives North is concerned about at this time is the Mackenzie Valley highway.
The proposed 800-kilometre all-season gravel road will connect communities across the Northwest Territories’ Sahtu region. On June 24, the federal government announced it has begun the process of designating the “project of national interest” in order to fast-track environmental reviews and federal permitting for construction.
The social justice coalition, which Little says is focused on concrete proposals for solutions, has most recently been advocating for plug-in solar legislation, engaging in pre-feasibility work around wind energy and working towards a wind energy collective, and advocating against small scale nuclear reactors. (In April, the federal government said it was assessing the reactors’ ability to “provide heat and electricity to remote and northern DND and Canadian Armed Forces facilities and operations.”)
As with all infrastructure announcements in the past year, Little says the latest federal version of the highway project has not been submitted to the Mackenzie Valley Impact Review Board for assessment.
The Government of the Northwest Territories did submit an initial proposal in 2013 for the construction of the highway between Wrigley and Norman Wells, but the federal government has proposed it be extended further to connect Inuvik and Yellowknife.
“There is no project description that has gone to any of the review boards,” Little says.
“The Carney Liberals are trashing constitutional commitments … but they cannot sidestep constitutionally protected processes. It is a mess and it’s sending mixed messages to the public.”
In August, the N.W.T government announced the expansion proposed by the federal government will be added to the existing application it has made to the Mackenzie Valley Review Board. But for Little, the focus continues to be on seeing “a clear commitment to respecting and fully participating in constitutionally protected environmental assessment processes.”
“We have to honour the laws and the commitments that have been made,” she says.
Sequence failures
Chanelle Joy Firth, a Gwich’in and Inuvialuit researcher born and raised in Inuvik, focuses her work on the intersection of Northern policy analysis and visual art, both of which she says examine the deep structural foundations of how we survive and express our relationship to the land.
Like Little, she believes the federal government’s current approach through these new infrastructure announcements is problematic, calling them “sequence failures,” where “federal capital is mobilized for high-visibility prestige projects and the capitalism of reconciliation, while the foundational systems like housing, education, clean water, and climate adaptation are left to collapse.
“The federal government is mobilizing capital for runways in a region where the literal ground is sinking. We already see this in the constant reconstruction and expense of repairing Northern highways, roads that wash out while a boat would have been just as efficient,” Firth said via email in late May.
“Military capacity and new construction further compound emissions in a region already carrying the environmental cost of southern decisions. You cannot claim Arctic sovereignty over land that is washing into the river. You cannot project military capacity from a community that already lacks the basics of survival.”
Firth also says the federal government and military are using language that is misleading the public.
“’Multi-use’ is a convenient political term that implies community benefit without committing to it,” she said.
“I have watched that language operate before in resource extraction cycles, in Inuit Post-Secondary Education Strategy commitments, and in polytechnic university funding in the N.W.T., where 19 community learning centres were closed while a prestige campus was being built. The pattern is consistent: high-visibility capital is announced, trickle-down is implied, and the foundational needs — flood mitigation, housing, mental and general health infrastructure — remain unaddressed when the political moment passes.”
For her, “the historical record in the North is unambiguous” about who such developments actually benefit.
“Every major capital influx — resource extraction booms, pipeline construction, government development projects — follows the same pattern,” Firth said.
“Contracts go to southern firms. Jobs go to transient workers given lucrative relocation packages to treat the Delta like a temporary, high-paying assignment. Local residents cannot access the K-12 education required to qualify for those same positions. They arrive, extract, and leave. Local workers are not trained into those roles in any lasting way. The wealth does not stay.”
Meanwhile, she added, local residents are further systematically denied “the ability to build equity, stuck in a deliberate architecture of scarcity that predates every current announcement.”
“The military and corporate entities benefiting from Northern exploitation do not build health centres. They do not fill the vacant teacher positions that have hollowed out Northern schools for decades. They do not find our missing family members. They do not prevent youth from falling through the cracks,” Firth said.
“The wealth is exported, and the social and environmental wreckage stays with us permanently. Show me the sobering centre. Then we can talk about what trickled down.”
Canada’s larger commitments
Dawn Tremblay, the executive director for Ecology North, a Yellowknife non-profit based on climate education and local climate action, sees a connection between the proposed federal projects and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent admission that Canada may miss its 2030 and 2035 climate targets.
Carney made the comments in the video shared on June 30, noting that global geopolitical instability and hostilities from the United States is a big reason his government is pushing for energy developments, particularly through oil and gas, instead.
For Tremblay, the statement and the federal government’s investment in pipeline projects have left her “feeling kind of embarrassed, disheartened, and sad.”
“Walking back that progress is embarrassing. I’m disheartened because the need for action is clearly understood. […] And then I’m sad for future generations, sad for our land and our environment, sad for our air quality,” she says.
According to Tremblay, there are investments in climate action being made on the territorial and municipal level that are important in responding to the realities of climate change on the ground. These include the City of Yellowknife’s climate action plan and consultations on a territorial climate action plan by the Government of Northwest Territories. But Tremblay had hoped that the new Liberal government would both be a climate champion and make investments in a sustainable way. That has since changed and it’s why her hope now is that local regulatory systems — particularly the environmental assessments of the potential projects — are “strong enough to ensure that our environment is protected and that the studies and research is done properly” beforehand.
“I think in the North, co-management is really important and we’ve worked over decades to have these systems in place that have involved public input and therefore public trust. So, if [the federal government] continues to say that these things can be overwritten by, for example, a federal minister, I think it will see a significant loss of public trust.”
Ultimately, Tremblay says it’s important that in Canada’s North, strong climate policy through all levels of government is seen as one action towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples whose homelands these are.
“The truth is that land exploitation and human exploitation has gone on long enough,” she says, adding that “Indigenous people have the right to the conservation and protection of the environment and the productive capacity of their lands or territories and resources.”
“Strong climate policy and clear emissions targets and environmental assessments are basic tools in the toolbox for balanced land use,” Tremblay says.
“The most divisive thing in all of this debate is pitting industry’s wants against the needs of Canadian citizens and the needs for water, good food, breathable air and summers that aren’t too hot to go outside.”
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