How NWT MLAs have voted in the 20th Assembly so far

With discussion of a potential voting bloc circulating in the NWT, how could that change the way MLAs vote in the Legislative Assembly?

MLAs Kieron Testart, Robert Hawkins and Richard Edjericon announced their proposal for an independent members’ caucus earlier this month.

Testart said he believed if a group of regular MLAs voted together, cabinet would take them more seriously. He argued that currently, regular members usually only vote together on “non-controversial or non-substantive issues” and are not required to do so.

“We spend a lot of time trying to cobble together ideas and political positions and then we go to the floor and inevitably people will have found a way to vote with the government,” he said.

Cabin Radio looked at how regular MLAs have voted in the current assembly so far, and what effect a voting bloc could have on the NWT legislature.

How have MLAs voted?

David Wasylciw is the founder of OpenNWT, a website that makes some data from the Legislative Assembly more accessible to the public, including voting records.

Wasylciw said under consensus government, regular MLAs generally tend to vote with cabinet. He said there have been cases in previous assemblies, however, where some MLAs have voted in opposition.

“People tend to vote in the interest of what helps their constituents,” he said. “That’s kind-of the benefit of our system, because people can invoke what they think is useful.”

Wasylciw said regular MLAs banding together to vote on issues they agree on is not new, but the freshly proposed caucus presents “a very different way of putting that forward.”

“When non-cabinet MLAs have a real point to make, they tend to throw their weight around,” he said.

Looking at votes in the 20th Legislative Assembly so far, when cabinet members have voted, the majority of regular MLAs have voted the same way as cabinet. In cases where cabinet ministers have abstained from voting, most regular MLAs have also voted together.

Wasylciw cautioned the current voting record is a small sample size as the 20th Assembly was only formed a little more than a year ago, adding that most bills have been related to budgets.

Some votes are recorded in Hansard simply as a pass or fail, without a formal count of exactly who voted which way.

Voting on budgets

Examining votes in the first sitting of the 20th Assembly where individual choices were recorded, there have been three instances where the vote did not go in favour of Hawkins, Edjericon and Testart.

The latest came on Wednesday, when Julian Morse and Shauna Morgan voted with cabinet to oppose a motion that would have removed $5.25 million from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment’s budget.

Hawkins had proposed a motion deleting that sum on the grounds that, according to his math, that amount roughly corresponded with what the department would provide Aurora College to spend on community learning centres that the college no longer intends to operate.

Cabinet opposed the motion with education minister Caitlin Cleveland querying the math. She argued deleting the funding would have broader negative consequences that Hawkins was overlooking.

Morgan said she opposed the motion as the money needed to be kept “in the ECE pot” to help fund quick solutions to the community learning centre shutdown. Morse said the motion should have deleted the money from a line item specific to Aurora College, not the department as a whole. He added that while he sympathized with the motion’s intent, he felt taking the money away from the department “in a general sense” wasn’t the right approach.

The final vote was 9-8. The vote was held within committee of the whole with Sheryl Yakeleya chairing and therefore not voting, while Speaker of the House Shane Thompson also did not vote.

In a second case, in November 2024, six regular MLAs voted against a bill that implemented the 2025-26 capital budget. The six included Testart, Edjericon and Hawkins plus Morse, Morgan and George Nerysoo. Even so, third reading of the bill passed with Kate Reid, Denny Rodgers, Danny McNeely, and Jane Weyallon Armstrong voting in favour alongside six cabinet members.

Regular MLAs initially said they would not support the capital budget without stronger commitments to address the territory’s healthcare and housing crises.

Following discussion with the finance minister, some MLAs said while the plan failed to include everything they wanted, they were voting in favour as it would support several needed infrastructure projects in communities.

In a recent Facebook post sharing her thoughts on the proposed voting bloc, Reid said she chose to approve the budget on behalf of her constituents once she was “comfortable with the concessions made by cabinet in negotiations.” She said her approach to decision-making and voting as an MLA will be case-by-case and based on evidence.

In a third instance, earlier this month, Edjericon, Hawkins and Testart were the only MLAs to vote against a bill authorizing additional government spending beyond what was in the 2024-25 operating budget.

While Testart had said such bills essentially address money that has already been spent, he said he was voting against that bill as he “wasn’t going to write any blank cheques to the government.” He criticized the “significant overruns” from budget estimates, particularly around healthcare, and called for fiscal restraint to be a priority.

Hawkins similarly shared concerns about the government’s financial decisions and the territory nearing its debt ceiling.

Regular MLAs mostly vote in sync

In most cases, regular MLAs in the 20th Assembly have voted in unison on motions and bills on a variety of issues.

There have been some votes, however, where a few MLAs have not followed the pack.

Last February, Reid and Morse voted with cabinet to postpone consideration of a motion on a wildfire public inquiry.

In a Facebook post at the time, Reid said while she wanted “a transparent, independent and public-input driven process,” she did not feel all 19 members of the assembly had come to a consensus on “the best container” for that process.

She said she wanted a fulsome discussion with other MLAs before debating the issue in the House “to ensure we all understand we are choosing what we feel is the best option.”

Ultimately, Reid and Morse voted with all of the regular MLAs in support of the motion for a public inquiry.

Later that same month, only Morgan voted against second reading of Testart’s private member’s bill to scrap the NWT’s carbon tax system and revert the territory to the federal backstop. Cabinet members abstained from voting.

Morgan said she did not believe the bill would address concerns NWT residents have with the tax. She noted the proposed legislation would not get rid of the carbon tax for northerners and said she worried the bill could cause financial uncertainty for the mining industry.

Morse and Rodgers also expressed concerns about the bill but supported sending it to committee for further review.

Bills have to pass three readings in the House before they can become law.

Finally, also in February 2024, the majority of regular members backed Reid’s motion, following amendments, asking NWT Premier RJ Simpson to write to the federal government calling for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Edjericon, Weyallon Armstrong and Yakeleya abstained from voting alongside cabinet.

All votes recorded in the 20th Legislative Assembly by OpenNWT have passed, whether they were brought forward by cabinet or regular members.

In most cases where regular MLAs have made motions or proposed legislation, cabinet members have abstained from voting.

In one rare case, however, a private member’s bill sponsored by Hawkins was supported by both cabinet members and regular MLAs. The bill, which increased the NWT’s student loan limit, passed third reading with 18 MLAs voting in favour. Speaker Thompson was the lone MLA that did not vote as the speaker only votes in the case of a tie.

How could a voting bloc change things?

Wasylciw said if a majority of MLAs agree to vote with cabinet on a given issue, as they currently have in many cases, then members of the voting bloc would likely continue to vote in that direction.

“It’s perhaps not the magical, useful tool that people think it is,” he said.

Wasylciw said the caucus could provide more formal opposition to cabinet, but he argued that is not necessary under consensus government.

He acknowledged that, unlike party politics, there is nothing currently requiring regular MLAs to vote together, such as the prospect of being removed from a party and losing access to its resources. But he said forcing politicians to vote together is not the point of government.

Some MLAs have said the proposed caucus would not greatly differ from a committee of regular MLAs that already exists, other than requiring members to vote as a bloc.

In a Facebook post where he disagreed with that assertion, Testart gave an example in which he said three unnamed regular MLAs, during a private committee meeting, disapproved of a proposal to roll back changes to the NWT’s extended health benefits policy. Testart said that ended discussion on the issue.

If that proposal had gone to a vote in the assembly and all seven cabinet members plus three regular MLAs voted against it, while all the other MLAs supported it, cabinet would have the 10-8 majority vote and the proposal would be defeated.

Based on information that has been made public about the proposed caucus, it’s unclear – if it existed – how that hypothetical outcome would be different.

Unanswered questions remain about if and how MLAs with dissenting opinions would be compelled to vote with the group, and who would ultimately decide how members voted on various issues. Alternatively, if the caucus only included like-minded members and excluded three MLAs who voted with cabinet, the caucus would still lose the vote in the example used.

Wasylciw pointed out that, based on the current voting record, it does not appear that a minority of regular MLAs in the 20th Assembly are consistently voting with cabinet or that cabinet proposals are passing by just a narrow margin.

‘A solution looking for a problem’

Much of the public discussion around the independent caucus proposal has centred on how individuals view consensus government and whether the NWT would benefit from party politics, or elements of party politics.

Testart has repeatedly billed the idea as a plan that will “save consensus government.”

He argues that party politics already exists in the NWT, with cabinet acting as the sole party.

Five other MLAs have publicly said they do not plan to join a voting bloc, while the premier has called for regular MLAs and cabinet to work together without partisanship.

Four former MLAs have shared mixed views on the proposal.

Wasylciw said, in his view, complaints from some regular MLAs appear to be primarily rooted in a desire to be heard.

“It’s not like it’s a huge signal that consensus is broken because an MLA is bringing up one individual issue and it doesn’t get any airtime,” he said.

During a press conference on the caucus proposal, Hawkins raised concerns about cabinet dismissing regular members’ issues. He used the example of his suggestion to Premier Simpson to formally discuss changing the name of the territory with the NWT Council of Leaders.

Simpson had responded that he would have informal conversations with some leaders on the idea. The premier said he did not, however, have “an appetite” to use government resources on the initiative, which he believed could be better spent on challenges the territory is facing.

Edjericon said during the same press conference that the needs of small communities are not being heard by government.

Wasylciw said some benefits of the NWT’s consensus system include that MLAs are able to provide input on legislation and see government press releases before they are made public. He said MLAs also have the ability to pass non-confidence motions against ministers and the premier.

Wasylciw said there are other potential ways to strengthen consensus in the NWT such as having more regular MLAs, which would make it easier for them to gain a majority of votes. He said the rules could also be changed to require two thirds of members to vote in favour of proposals for them to pass.

“Any time we can talk about strengthening democracy, I’m a huge fan of it, but it doesn’t seem to be an area where there needs to be a whole lot of government focus right now,” he said, pointing to economic challenges the territory is facing.

“It seems like a solution looking for a problem, and we’ve got enough problems that we don’t necessarily have any solutions for.”

Wasylciw added that, in his view, the independent caucus proposal fails to address larger questions about constitutional development in the North and the role of MLAs and Indigenous governments following changes in the previous legislative assembly.

The 19th Assembly formalized an intergovernmental council process and developed a new protocol that gives Indigenous governments equal decision-making power when drafting laws, policies and regulations related to lands and resources.

Ollie Williams contributed reporting.