Is this the right vision for the NWT’s economy?

It’s been a big week for discussion of the Northwest Territories’ economy. It might be about 15 years overdue.

Economist Graeme Clinton, who lives in Yellowknife, started the week by telling city council an “economic cliff” is coming – and there seems to be no plan.

He was referring to the closure of the NWT’s three active diamond mines, which currently power thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The first of the three to close will do so in just over 18 months’ time.

Financially, diamond mining is the most important industry the territory has. There’s nothing on the radar that comes close to matching it for job creation and profit.

So what’s the territory going to do when the mines have gone?

The NWT has known for a long time that the mines were slowly on the way out. Clinton says he has been exasperated by what he calls the neglect of previous governments.

How about the new government? What are the latest leaders doing?

We asked industry minister Caitlin Cleveland to join us and discuss the vision she has for the territory’s economy – and how she plans to act on that vision.

Listen to our podcast for Clinton’s analysis of the problem we’re facing, the views of other experts and Indigenous business leaders, and Cleveland’s response.

Want to get the show on another podcast platform? You can find it on Spotify, Apple, Google, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music.

“I grew up here. I remember the downturn of gold mining in this region,” Cleveland told Cabin Radio.

“And then I remember the excitement, the palpable excitement in the territory when diamonds were discovered and that effort really ramped up. You heard about it everywhere. You could feel the buzz in the communities.

“I think we’re at a similar point where we’ve lived through that, we know what that felt like, and we don’t want to go back to the 1996 of Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories region.”

For years, the NWT has maintained that diversifying its economy is important.

Effort has been put into industries like fishing, tourism and agriculture. Conversation has turned to things like the knowledge economy (a new university) and a conservation economy, drawing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and private funding to pay for jobs in small communities and protection of the environment.

Clinton and Cleveland each say those efforts are worthwhile, but they won’t come close to replacing the economic might of diamonds.

“If we want to remain a resource development territory, and we want to be able to market to the world the resources that we very, very much have in our backyard, then we need to actually be purposeful in how we’re doing that,” said Cleveland.

“We need to pursue that. And that is absolutely what is happening.”

Diamond mines the size of the ones currently operating are huge ventures. They can take 10 to 20 years to get off the ground and there is nothing like them anywhere in the NWT’s pipeline of developing projects.

That means turning to an array of significantly smaller projects that might each contribute 100 or 200 jobs rather than 1,000, Cleveland said, listing the likes of Prairie Creek, Pine Point and Nico, all of which stand some chance of becoming operating mines – but not on the scale of diamond mines like Diavik or Ekati.

Asked if the vision might, therefore, be many smaller mining projects rather than a few big ones, Cleveland said: “That’s where we’re at. We are not at a point where, tomorrow, we are going to open up another billion-dollar diamond mine.”

Darrell Beaulieu is the president of Denendeh Investments, a Dene-led firm that has mining interests in the NWT. He helped to convene an economic forum for northern Indigenous leaders this week.

Beaulieu foresees what he calls a “wine glass economy.”

The wide base of the glass? That’s the diamond industry. As that drops off, you reach a narrow stem that lasts for some time – a metaphor for economic contraction.

Eventually, he says, the stem reaches the broad, wide curve of the glass itself, which represents the economy growing again once decisions taken now pay off in the future.

“It could take 10 to 17 years to start a mine. And then, hopefully, the wine glass will start to form and we’ll have better times economically,” Beaulieu said.

“The key to that, I think, is Indigenous participation, equity and Indigenous-led projects. And it’s in partnership with industry, it’s in partnership with the government. We all have to do this together.”

Some delegates at this week’s economic forum expressed pleasant surprise that, for the first time in a long time, many Indigenous organizations in the NWT were able to get around a table and collaborate on business matters.

For example, on LinkedIn, Tłı̨chǫ Investment Corporation boss Paul Gruner said leaders of the Yellowknife region’s four Indigenous development corporations met this week for the first time, promising to work together where possible.

“This is the first time that the four corporations have come together in my time in the Northwest Territories, so it was a special evening,” he wrote.

Cleveland buys into the message of collaboration and adds one of her own: hustle.

“The message to NWT residents is we have to work together as industry and all levels of government. Now is our time to come together and really hustle,” she said, asked if Beaulieu’s wine glass philosophy meant some painful “stem” years ahead.

“We have an incredible, incredible territory. We have a lot to offer. We have a lot of work to do. But hearing from Indigenous governments and hearing from industry about what works and what’s not working, and where that efficiency comes from, is going to be key,” said Cleveland.

“If we can’t sit down and have those conversations, then we can’t get to tomorrow. I’m really excited to be able to do that work together and really hustle together, because I think that’s what needs to happen right now.”