Can the NWT police its way out of the drug crisis?

Amid plenty of debate about the NWT’s latest budget, there’s one area where most politicians seem to agree: the need to address the territory’s drug crisis.

The 2024-25 budget proposes spending millions of dollars to increase RCMP resources, alongside developing legislation, with the aim of disrupting the territory’s illicit drug supply and targeting the criminal networks involved.

Several regular MLAs applauded those plans. Some called for even more policing resources.

“We want to see the RCMP take control of the drug trade in the NWT. We want our communities to be safe. We want our children to grow up without being influenced by drugs, by fast cash and addictions,” Monfwi MLA Jane Weyallon Armstrong told the legislature.

“Right now in the NWT, the drug trade is winning and our people are losing.”

Weyallon Armstrong said she is worried about NWT communities that have no RCMP detachment, particularly Gamètì, where the local government recently barred a suspected drug dealer. The RCMP has detachments in 21 of the NWT’s 33 communities.

Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart said the budget’s policing proposals are “a worthwhile investment” and “something we can all get behind.”

“What’s been increasingly apparent is we have a drug crime problem and an organized crime problem that are intertwined and taking advantage of our most vulnerable citizens, particularly in the small communities,” Testart told the legislature.

“If we do not have a robust law enforcement response to these predators, we are not going to be able to keep communities safe.”

MLAs Danny McNeely, George Nerysoo, Sheryl Yakeleya and Denny Rodgers spoke in favour of increasing RCMP resources.

Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh MLA Richard Edjericon introduced a motion calling for a canine unit to be reinstated in Hay River to address drug-related crimes.

“We’ve got to figure out a way how we could give the tools needed to the RCMP to combat this issue. And this is just the beginning,” he said.

The motion passed with 10 regular MLAs in favour and seven cabinet members abstaining. Motions from regular members are not binding.

New legislation

The budget proposes $1.3 million to create a new Territorial Crime Reduction Unit to support RCMP investigations and enforcement related to illicit drugs.

It also includes $372,000 (and $744,000 annually in future budgets) to enhance the RCMP’s emergency response team, which focuses on resolving high-risk situations such as when a person is armed and barricaded.

The budget earmarks an additional $2.4 million to create four new RCMP officer positions in Fort Resolution, Hay River, Tuktoyaktuk and Whatì through the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program, alongside two additional general duty officers in Fort Providence.

RJ Simpson, the NWT’s premier and justice minister, said the RCMP had requested those resources. The RCMP said it could not comment until the budget is passed.

The NWT and federal governments share RCMP costs, with the territory contributing 70 percent of funding. The First Nations and Inuit Policing Program, the management of which a recent audit said had “critical shortcomings,” operates differently – the federal government pays 52 percent of that program’s policing costs.

Beyond increasing the number of officers, Simpson said he and other justice ministers across the country are lobbying the federal government for bail reform.

Simpson said his government plans to introduce Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods legislation, which would allow the territory to pursue through civil court the owners or occupants of homes where drugs are believed to be manufactured, used or sold.

He said the territory also plans to develop a Civil Forfeiture Act, which would allow it to retain the proceeds of crime without a conviction in certain cases.

Increase in drug-related crime, deaths

RCMP and several NWT communities have reported an increase in drug-related crime in recent years.

In 2022, health officials reported a record six deaths due to poisoned drugs in Hay River. They said most of those cases involved crack cocaine that people did not know was contaminated with fentanyl or carfentanil.

Before leaving his role as NWT RCMP’s chief superintendent, Syd Lecky said the territory’s illicit drug trade is now linked to “unprecedented homicides.”

Police have reported four homicides involving guns in Yellowknife since November 2023, some of which officers have linked to drugs.

Simpson told the legislature there were 318 drug-related offences in the NWT in 2019 and 468 in 2022. In the past year, he said, there was more than a 100-percent increase in the number of drug seizures and amount of drugs seized.

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada said it could not provide data on the number of NWT criminal cases involving drug-related charges, nor how many of those cases resulted in convictions, due to the way its electronic filing system is designed.

‘Drug use is a public health issue’

Not everyone is convinced that increasing police resources is an adequate solution to the territory’s drug crisis.

Many MLAs also highlighted the need for more supports to address trauma, addictions and recovery.

“Most of the social problems that we are facing in the Northwest Territories are not problems that we can police our way out of,” Frame Lake MLA Julian Morse told the legislature.

“The way out of social issues is poverty reduction, treating addictions, mental health, wellness, ensuring … that everybody has equal ability to participate in the economy. That’s what truly helps societies get over social ills. It’s not something that you can just take people and put them in jail and expect the problems are going to go away.”

Yellowknife North MLA Shauna Morgan supports giving police effective tools to combat drug trafficking, but said there’s a need for more closely integrated outreach services.

Morgan said police spend time and resources responding to “the end result of the drug trade,” such as fights in the territory’s “shockingly overcrowded” shelter system. She said that reduces their ability to root out the sources of drug trafficking.

“As long as there is strong demand for these drugs, then the police are playing whack-a-mole because as soon as they manage to catch someone who is dealing drugs in these communities – and that may take weeks and months of investigations – almost immediately, someone else will pop up to fill their place,” she told Cabin Radio.

Morgan added police are often not qualified to help with trauma and addictions, which RCMP themselves have acknowledged, requesting more support from trained healthcare professionals and social workers.

Morgan said the territory needs a stable shelter system to ensure people experiencing homelessness have a safe place to go, with better harm reduction programs, wraparound services and pathways to recovery from homelessness and addictions.

While there are some positive commitments in the territory’s latest budget, she said, there is still a lack of sustainable funding for non-profits offering those supports.

In a 2022 report, Canada’s auditor general found “concerning shortcomings” with addictions and recovery services in the NWT. In particular, the report highlighted a lack of aftercare support, gaps in coordination of services across providers, limited efforts to ensure cultural safety and insufficient evaluation of outcomes.

Dene Elder Roy Fabian of the Kátł’odeeche First Nation recently told the CBC he believes increasing police resources is a band-aid solution, calling for the territory to support a residential treatment centre.

While some Indigenous leaders have requested such a centre be reopened in recent years, successive territorial governments have rejected that idea, preferring instead to send residents for treatment in the south. Health ministers have said NWT-based treatment centres keep failing and have expressed reluctance to try again.

The NWT government spent more than $4.9 million sending residents for treatment in 2023-24 and the latest budget includes more than $3 million for facility-based addictions treatment.

‘We should not be treating this as a criminal issue’

In the legislature, Simpson said the territory can’t simply keep increasing the number of police officers in response to the drug crisis.

“Drug use is a public health issue. It’s a tough battle to fight,” the premier said.

“I always look at the United States. They spent over a trillion dollars on the war against drugs and they’re not winning either. So, ultimately, we need to work on the demand side of things because if there’s a demand, the supply will make it in.”

Nicholas Boyce – a senior policy analyst at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, which advocates for drug policies grounded in evidence and human rights – described drug-related deaths and hospitalizations as a “massive public health crisis” across Canada.

He argues the existing drug criminalization framework “is actually making everything worse.”

“We spend a lot of money on police, courts and prisons that we do not spend on hospitals, daycare, education. So there’s a resource issue,” he said.

“Then there’s a practical issue, too, when the police go interrupt the drug supply, when we schedule drugs and make them illegal. It does nothing to address the fact that people want or need to be using drugs.”

Boyce said the coalition supports harm reduction programs such as supervised consumption sites, alternatives to unregulated drugs and decriminalization.

“We should not be treating this as a criminal issue. It really is a health and social issue,” he said.

British Columbia, which is piloting the decriminalization of drug use, recently announced plans to recriminalize use of illicit drugs in public places.

The province received federal approval to remove penalties for adults possessing up to 2.5 grams of some drugs for personal use. The drugs remain illegal but, instead of being arrested, charged or having their drugs seized, people are instead offered information on available health and social supports.

The province still enforces penalties for possessing larger amounts or trafficking drugs. While use in public spaces is being recriminalized, the broader decriminalization pilot is set to continue until January 2026. Drug possession in private spaces or at overdose prevention sites will not be recriminalized, with backers of the pilot saying the application of the law in public spaces is just one aspect of a much bigger picture.

Even so, the program has received criticism from safe drug use advocates who say current limits are too low and more resources are needed. The federal Conservative Party, which opposes decriminalization, argues it has failed.

Boyce believes politicians have not given the program, which began in January 2023, adequate time to have an impact when drug prohibition has long been the norm.

“People are resistant to change,” he said.

“A lot of it is just trying to maintain the status quo. A lot of it is fear and lack of evidence and understanding.”

Over-policing concerns

The relationship between Indigenous people and RCMP has been historically fraught and the police service has not gone without criticism in the North, where more than half of residents are Indigenous.

A class action was certified in 2021 alleging RCMP discrimination against Indigenous people in the territories.

The Yellowknife Women’s Society released a report earlier this year stating that unhoused Indigenous women in the city are over-policed and underprotected. Weyallon Armstrong has previously raised concerns about “over-policing” and police “brutality” in the Tłı̨chǫ region.

Simpson acknowledged the NWT has more police per capita than anywhere else in Canada and more than twice as many as the national average.

According to data published by Statistics Canada, there were 195 police officers in the NWT in 2023, a rate of 434 per 100,000 population. The national rate is 178. The territory has roughly one officer for every 225 residents.

Simpson said one issue is that RCMP have become the “catch-all” for issues in northern communities that lack other services, such as ambulances.

He said the number of RCMP officers in the NWT has increased every year since he became a minister in 2019 – and the latest budget proposes the largest increase he has overseen.

The territory spent more than $54.7 million on policing services in 2022-23 and more than $58.3 million in 2023-24. The latest budget proposes spending more than $61 million.

‘Solutions are community-driven’

Simpson highlighted other programs in the NWT like a community policing pilot in Fort Liard, which was delayed and has now been extended to the end of March 2026.

The program has an annual budget of $303,000 to support community safety officers who respond to non-criminal concerns.

The program has not yet been evaluated and Simpson said federal funding would be needed to expand it, though he hopes that is the eventual outcome.

Simpson also pointed to a therapeutic model being tried at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre in Hay River, the territorial government’s men’s healing fund, its homelessness strategy and efforts to roll out integrated case management. There are also plans to expand detox and withdrawal management in the NWT.

Simpson said more cross-departmental solutions are needed, but acknowledged there is currently nothing in the territory’s business plan that speaks to that. Ultimately, he said, “the solutions are community-driven.”

“We can have all the government programs we want. If someone doesn’t want to seek them out, someone doesn’t want to take advantage of them, then it doesn’t really matter,” he said.

“What we need is champions. We need champions in the community. We need people to be role models.”