Will the GNWT launch an independent wildfire inquiry?

“A loss is a big thing, but you’re looking at it from a bigger perspective. I’m not here to blame anybody.”

Chaal Cadieux walked the prime minister across the remains of his Enterprise home after last summer’s devastating wildfire season.

Now, he thinks an independent public inquiry into what happened would be a good thing.

“You want to prevent this from happening again in the future, that’s the number one, because it really affects a lot of people,” he said. “You don’t want to have a bunch of people evacuate 10 times.”

Cadieux is by no means loudly banging a drum or campaigning. He didn’t even know about a petition calling for a public inquiry, started by a Fort Smith resident months ago, when Cabin Radio called.

But to him, that request makes sense.

“Everything’s pointing towards this becoming more common, so it should be on the radar,” he said.

“The NWT has the resources a lot more than a lot of other places. It can do things and set the bar, showing people how it can be done. Be a leader.”

Will the GNWT say yes?

The NWT government has shown little sign of agreeing that a public inquiry is worth doing.

Even so, at least one minister has previously expressed skepticism that a government can have a role in scrutinizing itself.

In October, Vince McKay was a candidate campaigning to be elected in the district of Hay River South.

Sharing a Cabin Radio article about what happened when a wildfire hit Enterprise, McKay wrote on Facebook: “I will be calling on the government to do an independent, third-party review of both of the fires that caused evacuations this year. Governments investigating themselves doesn’t work.”

Now, McKay is the communities minister in the cabinet of another Hay River MLA, Premier RJ Simpson.

Cabin Radio asked Simpson’s office this week whether cabinet was generally supportive of the idea of an independent public inquiry into the NWT’s 2023 wildfire season.

In response, a spokesperson for Simpson listed the various other reviews already taking place but did not address the question or mention the word “inquiry.”

The implied answer to the question appeared to be: no, cabinet doesn’t want an independent public inquiry.

We put that interpretation to the same spokesperson, and asked them to write back if that was an incorrect inference to draw. There was no response.

Why an inquiry is different

Part of the issue is a matter of wording. McKay could argue that the existing GNWT reviews are doing exactly what he called for in that October Facebook post.

What does an independent public inquiry actually mean? An inquiry means it has to look into what happened, public means the residents have to be able to have a voice in it and learn what the outcomes are, and independent means somebody other than the territorial government should be in charge of it.

Agata Gutkowska, a spokesperson for Premier Simpson, said two GNWT departments – ECC and Maca – have committed to “conducting public after-action reviews using external and independent contractors.”

The words public and independent are in that sentence. You could argue semantics over whether a review and inquiry are the same thing, but they’re both forms of examining what happened.

So why aren’t reviews carried out by external contractors enough, if they include opportunities for the public to contribute?

“It’s still the government that gets to decide the terms of reference, even though there will be independent contractors or consultants in charge of conducting and writing these reports,” said Shauna Morgan, the MLA for Yellowknife North, who wants an independent public inquiry as well as all the reviews the GNWT says it’s already doing.

Her point is that if the government is hiring contractors to carry out reviews, that means the government is setting the terms: how much those people will be paid, what the deliverables are, and a broad overview of what should be done and how. The contractor is still answering to the same government it’s inspecting.

That’s not the same as a fully independent inquiry, which would hand all of that over to somebody else. The government’s only role in that kind of inquiry would be to take questions, explain its actions and hand over relevant documents.

“What people need to see is something independently conceived and directed by someone independent of government, given that 2023 and the various evacuations did much to break many people’s trust or faith in governments,” said Morgan.

At the time of Yellowknife’s August 2023 evacuation, Morgan had not yet been elected as an MLA and was a member of the Yellowknife Women’s Society board. The society works with vulnerable people across the city, helping to keep them sheltered and safe.

The society has documented at length what it argues were huge failings during the evacuation that left vulnerable people even more exposed to danger. Nearly two months after the evacuation began, the society said some people it worked with were still missing.

“Even speaking for myself, I was very disheartened and discouraged,” said Morgan.

“Some of my own faith in government was broken by some of the experiences and disappointments during the evacuation.

“An inquiry of broader and higher nature is ultimately needed to hold decision-makers accountable and to ensure that the same mistakes don’t get repeated over and over again.”

What’s already happening?

Morgan says she has no idea if cabinet will come around to that way of thinking.

But she says McKay isn’t the only minister who spent the election campaigning for a public inquiry to happen.

“Before cabinet was selected, there were individual members who are now ministers who seemed to be supportive of this idea. I think there’s hope we can build real consensus about this,” she said.

Privately, senior territorial officials have in the past week conceded that they know there is “a lot of public and political attention” on how the GNWT reviews 2023’s wildfires and learns from them.

Those officials insist the GNWT’s existing reviews will be transparent and extensive, even if they’re not meeting the standard Morgan sets.

Gutkowska, speaking for Simpson, said an “independent review” at the Department of Environment and Climate Change is already under way, focusing on “the decisions made to respond to wildfires in the territory, including wildfire operations and resourcing.”

That review will compare the NWT’s wildfire management to industry best practices “and consider lessons” for future fire seasons, Gutkowska said by email. Wildfire managers will also carry out standard, annual conversations with Indigenous and community leaders “to incorporate community priorities into wildfire management.”

ECC expects to release its report in late spring, she wrote.

At the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, Gutkowska said a separate review will focus on five areas. In her words, those areas are:

• risk monitoring and assessment;
• emergency preparedness activities;
• response activities (evacuations, transportation, hosting etc);
• operational and public communications; and
• the transition to recovery (re-entry planning, repatriation, damage assessments etc).

Maca is expecting to have a contractor hired by late February. When a final report will come out isn’t clear.

The department is also updating the territory-wide emergency plan, a 100-page document that sets out broadly who should do what in a crisis. An updated plan “will be complete ahead of the 2024 flood and wildfire season,” Gutkowska wrote.

Municipalities can order their own reviews, too. The City of Yellowknife, for example, has already committed to a review of its own.

Morgan says that’s all fine, but an independent public inquiry can build on those reviews.

The initial reviews can provide “lessons learned to take into the next fire season,” the MLA told Cabin Radio, “and then we could dig deeper into the gaps, or the accountability that’s not provided or that’s missing.”

“The great danger,” she said, “is not acknowledging some of the real harms that were done and the big mistakes that were made.”

Simona Rosenfield contributed reporting.