What do we know about Yellowknife’s wildfire public meeting?

Yellowknife residents have a chance to speak their mind about the city’s 2023 wildfire response on Wednesday evening.

From 6:30pm till 8:30pm at the city’s multiplex gym, a “public engagement session” will be run by accounting firm KPMG, which won the contract to carry out a review of how the city handled last year’s fires and evacuation.

While most sessions like this being carried out in the NWT are for territorial government reviews, this one is taking place at the request of the City of Yellowknife.

Through a city spokesperson, KPMG declined an interview request to discuss the format of Wednesday evening’s public session in advance.

Instead, in a statement issued through the city, KPMG said the two-hour session will involve a “context-setting” introduction, including a timeline review, followed by three discussion topics: mitigation and preparedness, response, and re-entry and recovery.

The meeting will conclude with some remarks on next steps.

KPMG did not initially set out whether the meeting would take place as an open house, a town hall or in another format, nor whether multiple residents will be able to sit with KPMG staff to deliver feedback at the same time, if the session would proceed with residents addressing the entire audience one after the other, or if another mechanism will be used.

However, in a statement to a follow-up question from Cabin Radio, a city spokesperson said on Wednesday morning: “Everyone will be together in the same space. KPMG is intending to have several microphones set up and will be walking through events before, during, and after the evacuation to give people an opportunity to share their experiences and perspectives to the whole group. There will be some prompting questions to go along with the speaking opportunities.”

What will happen if people still want to speak at 8:30pm, when the session is scheduled to conclude, is also not clear.

Gauging how many people expect to attend can be hard, but similar sessions for territorial government reviews in other communities have been well-attended (and have faced criticisms of their own).

Recent sessions focused purely on wildfire management and held in much smaller communities, like Fort Smith and the Kátł’odeeche First Nation, have run longer than two hours.

“For each discussion topic, members of the public will be provided opportunities to share their experiences and answer questions in order to help KPMG better understand how members of the public experienced events before, during, and after the evacuation of the city,” KPMG stated.

An online survey is available as an alternative if you don’t get to speak on Wednesday or aren’t able to attend. (Cabin Radio will provide live coverage of Wednesday’s session via this website, though the city has sought to place some restrictions on what journalists are able to report from it.)

The survey is likely to take you about 10 to 20 minutes to complete. The survey mostly focuses on multiple-choice questions about the level of information residents received, although it rarely asks where, exactly, residents were getting that information.

Only the final two survey questions allow respondents to write out a full answer. They ask:

• what is the single most important action or activity that worked well and should be reinforced for future wildfire seasons? and
• what is the single most important activity or action that should be improved for future wildfire seasons?

Multiple residents have also pointed out that a question asking how long residents took to evacuate offers no option for people – like several Cabin Radio staff – who chose to leave before the evacuation order was issued, given how bleak the situation looked.

You have until April 12 to complete the online survey.

“The project team is targeting June 2024 for the completion and delivery” of the final report, the city stated.