What does Ottawa say it’s doing to help the NWT face disasters?

Canada’s emergency preparedness minister says he’s working to improve the way the federal government helps NWT communities prevent disasters, respond when they happen and recover from them.

As Ottawa delivered an $84-million advance to the NWT government to help recovery from the 2023 wildfires, Harjit Sajjan said he expects the final federal contribution to be around $200 million for those fires alone.

NWT Premier RJ Simpson has noted that the territory is still waiting for some federal disaster assistance funding from previous years, never mind this year’s bill. Sajjan says the process can take years – a province or territory has up to five years to file a final claim, then there’s an auditing process – but he’s trying to “move as quickly as possible” to support the NWT in this case.

Sajjan also suggested more might have been possible to help Enterprise residents who were told to leave temporary GNWT-provided housing at the end of November.

People renting homes that burned in Enterprise could access accommodation paid for by the GNWT in the aftermath. They were told they had a November 30 deadline to find somewhere other than government-provided accommodation.

People who owned homes that burned were similarly given government-paid accommodation. Homeowners have until the end of January in that accommodation, and the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs now says that might be extended on a case-by-case basis.

The territory says those deadlines are “consistent with the approach taken with prior disasters in the NWT.”

Meanwhile, the municipality of Enterprise has clashed with the GNWT over how, exactly, to get temporary and permanent housing back into the community for residents.

By September, a month after a wildfire destroyed the majority of Enterprise, the municipality was proposing a system whereby trailers bought by the hamlet could provide temporary housing on lots that aren’t contaminated or in need of clean-up. Once lots are remediated and people can move back to them, those trailers could then be moved to the correct lot, essentially switching from temporary to permanent housing.

At the time, then-communities minister Shane Thompson said that plan didn’t follow disaster assistance guidelines. Thompson said he was “looking at other options.”

But Sajjan this week described a similar-sounding plan that the federal government thought was great.

“I thought the municipality brought up some very eloquent solutions in terms of not only temporary housing, but then temporary housing that can go into permanent,” the federal minister said.

“We felt that if they were to submit to the Territories, and the Territories was to approve it, we would definitely cover it.

“In fact, I even wrote a letter to the territorial government at that time to say, ‘Hey, based on what we have seen of the plan, we feel that it will be covered. So if you were to cover it now … we would be able to cover those expenses.'”

Sajjan said he sat down with new Maca minister Vince McKay this week to make sure he knew that.

The territorial government said it wouldn’t be making McKay available for interview until he had been fully briefed in January. A Maca spokesperson said the GNWT has no agreement with Enterprise for temporary or permanent housing, and disaster assistance is being determined “on a case-by-case basis with the individuals affected.”

Beyond Enterprise, we asked Sajjan how the NWT can use its disaster assistance cash, how the federal government plans to change disaster assistance funding in future, and what’s happening to better equip the territory for the next big fire season.

Read a full transcript of our interview below.

This interview was recorded on December 20, 2023. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ollie Williams: We have here an $84-million advance to the NWT. How did you reach this figure? Is this the full sum that the NWT had asked for in its initial application?

Harjit Sajjan: No, no, this is not the full sum at all. This is the advance payment.

We try to move as quickly as possible to support a province or territory at a time of disaster, and we cover up to 90 percent of the eligible expenses. Normally, the timing of this is really up to the territory to figure out what the costs are, make the submission, and then we’ll move as quickly as possible for approval. On average, for the provinces, it takes about a year for an advance payment – it’s up to the province to take the time to make sure they have looked at what the expenses are.

Sometimes, our advance will cover up to about 30 percent. In this case, we’re going up to 50 percent, just to make sure the territory has the appropriate support.

The way it’s done is the Territories looks at all the potential costs that are covered under Disaster Financial Assistance, then they’ll make the submission. In this case, we want to move very quickly because, obviously, winter is going to be setting in. We wanted to move faster. This is why we put together a departmental team to support the territory and to move faster in their submission.

Once they made their submission, we were able to quickly go back and say, ‘OK, here’s approximately 50 percent.’ As time goes on, we’ll look at the larger expenses and an audit needs to be done. But this is not the total sum. It’s actually approximately 50 percent, and we wanted to get the money out faster than in normal circumstances.

To be clear, then, we’re looking at around $200 million, probably – or a little less than that – as the overall cost to the federal government?

Or a little more.

And this $84 million is now in the territory’s bank account? This is now available as of today?

It’s available, yes.

What does this mean for the average NWT resident who has some kind of disaster assistance claim ongoing for their home or their business? Practically, what does this change?

It means the funding is there to get things done as quickly as possible.

I’ll give you a good example: after the wildfire disasters in the territory, I was visiting Enterprise. Surveyors were already on the ground identifying homes that were completely destroyed. What this means is people who own homes, that didn’t have any insurance, can get access to the funding to rebuild their life as quickly as possible, whether it’s their home or business or whatever else it might be.

Keeping that example of Enterprise, we’ve heard from multiple families who told us they lost their homes. They say they were moved into temporary accommodation by the NWT government but then were asked to leave it again, because basically the standard window offered by the territory for that sort of help ran out. Now, I know it’s hard to quantify how long is long enough to give someone shelter when their house just burned down, but what’s your view on that? Should your government and the territorial government step in and just make sure someone has somewhere to be for as long as they need it in a situation like that?

I mean, ultimately, this is up to the territory and the municipality to take a look at what is best. But in this particular case, when I visited and I talked to the mayor about this, this is one of the key concerns that he had. And I told him, ‘We will figure out a way to look at providing support.’

So in this case here, my policy team and my department have been looking at this, talking to the municipality about their plan. That way, they can say with certainty that if they were to submit to the Territories, that the money will be covered.

Very early on, back in September even, we looked at the potential ideas that they had for temporary housing. I thought the municipality brought up some very eloquent solutions in terms of not only temporary housing, but then temporary housing that can go into permanent. There were some very interesting things. We felt that if they were to submit to the Territories, and the Territories was to approve it, we would definitely cover it.

In fact, I even wrote a letter to the territorial government at that time to say, ‘Hey, based on what we have seen of the plan, we feel that it will be covered. So if you were to cover it now, once the DFA approval is done, we would be able to cover those expenses.’

In this case here, I can assure you that we’ve been not only extremely flexible, we’ve been working directly with Enterprise to help them understand what the process is, to give them a sense of calm – that we would cover.

I spoke with the new minister in charge just last night about this and reminded him of that: we would be willing to cover a lot of their expenses, and the plan that the municipality had put into place is something that we actually thought is very appropriate, and we will help cover it.

Let’s stick with that idea of flexibility. The announcement today sets out some examples of how this funding can be used – the likes of evacuation operations, restoring and replacing uninsurable homes, that kind of thing. But the NWT is seeing all kinds of consequences from these fires. One example this week is there’s an aviation fuel crisis in the Sahtu region, because the barge that brings the fuel there in summer couldn’t make it, in part because of the fires. So can the NWT government use your federal disaster money to help fix problems like that – like a fuel crisis, months later – that were caused by the fires?

I mean, it difficult for me to say right now, you know, the second and third-order effects of a disaster when it takes place. But one thing I can say is this is where we as a federal government and a territorial government can work together.

We cover up to 90 percent of the eligible expenses. What I would sometimes say is, ‘Listen, we’ll take on the type of expenses here to ease the burden.’ And then the territory can take on the others. So this is about a give-and-take here. We’re very flexible on trying to cover as much as we can, and then the territorial government can take a look at other things.

I can’t say whether this would be done or wouldn’t be done, but what we need to do is say, ‘If this is part of the bigger issue here, let’s take a look at it and work together – what can the territorial government cover and what can we do?

So looking more conceptually, then, are you telling the NWT, ‘Hey, go spend this on anyone that needs help right now, because that’s the priority.’ Or are you telling the NWT, ‘Spend this carefully, because we have an obligation to follow the rules and to be accountable’?

At the end of the day, regardless of what we do, we have to be accountable because it’s taxpayer dollars and the rules are set out. But we’re trying to be flexible enough to be responsible, to make sure Canadians are looked after.

I just gave the example of Enterprise. Normally we don’t do temporary housing but, given the circumstances that were there, we felt that we could figure out a way for them to actually fit into the eligibility criteria.

Looking at the wider issues, the DFA is there to provide support. It is not the only entity to look after the disaster. Obviously, the territory is the lead and needs to be the lead to make sure that they decide how and what needs to be fixed and what needs to be looked at.

When it comes to some of the reforms of the future DFA, we are looking at some of the things that we need to be mindful of when it comes to building resilience. But that’s a different conversation that we’re having right now. This is not just a federal response to disasters, this is a federal response to supporting a province and territory for their disaster. I personally make those visits so that I have a direct understanding of the unique challenges, so I can give direction to my department saying, ‘Here’s where we need to be a little bit more flexible.’

And probably the biggest flexibility for us, when we’re done here, is normally an advance payment – for the processes and even my home province of British Columbia – the advance payment takes sometimes a year, because it takes time to get everything together and figure out what the costs might be. But in this case, we knew that we needed to move faster because of the uniqueness of the territory, and geography of where the winter sets in, makes it very difficult to get some of the work done. We wanted to make sure that the funding was there very quickly, and hence why we got it done before Christmas.

You alluded there to your government’s work on a new version of disaster assistance funding that focuses on incentivizing things like mitigation efforts. Lots of NWT communities say they’re sitting ducks because there are all kinds of disasters looming and there’s not much money to make changes. Are you talking about a program where there is more money available before disasters to help those communities out?

Reforms to Disaster Financial Assistance are something that we’re looking at now. Rather than just repairing some of the stuff that’s damaged, what we should be taking a look at is, for example, rebuilding a road in a flood area doesn’t make any sense. A different road system could prevent disaster to infrastructure. That’s what the reforms will look at.

So that way, if a municipality says, ‘If we did this project over here, it would prevent the disaster from having a significant impact,’ we want to take a look at that. That’s one of the things we’re looking at there.

We have programs in place that look at disaster mitigation and also other programs that will help municipalities prepare for disasters, making sure that the council and folks are trained on the incident command system, on the prevention side. All those things we currently are doing but, at the end of the day, what we want to do is continually learn year by year from the disasters, and make the changes necessary very quickly, so we can mitigate some of those effects. But yes, we are looking at all those things.

Just lastly, minister, there’s no doubting there are more big and dangerous wildfire seasons ahead for the NWT. What is your government going to do to help the NWT actually fight the fires and pay for fighting the fires in future summers?

This is where we’re actually putting most of our focus.

Whether it’s wildfires or any other disaster, the way I look at it is how do we try to foresee what the potential disaster could be?

A really quick example: when I was minister of defence, I actually did one of my consultations for the defence policy in Yellowknife. If there wasn’t a major natural disaster in the North, could we respond and what would the plan be? Because of that work that was done, we were able to respond very quickly for the evacuation of Yellowknife.

That’s the mindset we’re using now. We want to look at first, how do we prevent the impacts of a disaster? And then if there are impacts, what do we do? We need to make sure that the response is appropriate and handled well. The third piece is the recovery.

When it comes to some of the prevention side of things, we’re already looking at what some of the things are that we need to do. That’s where training comes in at the municipality level. We need to make sure that we have the right resources at the right place at the right time.

I remember talking to the mayors of Hay River and Enterprise. They saw some fires that, if they were to be dealt with a little bit sooner, it could have prevented that entire impact to those towns. So what resources would have been needed? What type of training would have been needed for that response to take place? That’s what we’re looking at now: what do we need to do?

[Natural Resources Canada has signed a deal] providing equipment that the territory can purchase for dealing with wildfires. We’re also looking at how we can train more people in the right areas to respond to this, and I even spoke with some of the Indigenous communities’ leadership in the North on this issue.

And then the recovery side is what I talked about: how do we make sure that we’re flexible enough to be able to respond to the needs and the uniqueness of the North?

Some of the longer-term projects we’re looking at are on the infrastructure side. When it comes to communication, we need to make sure that the dead zones are covered. We’re looking at some interesting technology right now that will hopefully come online in the future, some of the new satellite technology that will cover a lot of those issues.

More: From space, a new system will help Canadians fight wildfires

We also want to look beyond wildfires. We need to keep looking at floods, we need to look at any other what-if types of scenario so that we can put it into our planning process and exercise it as well, making sure we have the appropriate response. That’ll give confidence to people in the North to know that systems are being put into place and also well rehearsed.

During my time as minister of defence, I put significant funding into the Rangers so that they also have the tools necessary. In fact, even at that time, I put funding into an extension of the Inuvik runway and a number of things. A lot of work is taking place as a whole of government to making sure that we have the right tools for the North.