With added housing cash, NWT’s 2025-26 budget comfortably passes

The NWT government’s 2025-26 budget was finalized on Thursday evening, coming through the House in a 15-3 vote.

The initial draft of the budget had been amended earlier in the week.

Finance minister Caroline Wawzonek added $41.6 million in housing cash following discussion with regular MLAs, alongside smaller amendments. There are further spending commitments on housing for future years.

“We have obtained a commitment from cabinet to put a significant amount of money towards housing that we hadn’t obtained previously. I see this as an achievement,” said Frame Lake’s Julian Morse on Thursday as he endorsed the budget.

“We have been working towards this since the beginning of this assembly. This wasn’t something we just came up with a few weeks ago,” said Yellowknife North’s Shauna Morgan, who voted in favour.

Range Lake’s Kieron Testart, voting against the budget, said cabinet wasn’t proposing enough action in a time of impending crisis.

“Why do we think we have time on our hands? One year has already gone by and we will soon be facing the end of the term. In that time, we’ll have either survived or been consumed by a trade war,” Testart said.

“Our streets will continue to become unsafe. Houses will be built at a snail’s pace, and our debt will continue to rise as our economy continues to decline. That’s what we’re going to get if we continue to move slow on the problems that we face as a territory.”

Describing the territory’s expenditures as “unsustainable,” Testart also called for changes to funding for public safety, childcare and healthcare, among others.

Income assistance to be revisited

Yellowknife Centre’s Robert Hawkins and Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh’s Richard Edjericon, who have together tried to launch an independent members’ caucus with Testart, joined him in opposing the budget.

Citing the toll of addictions, mental health crises and a lack of local services, Edjericon said his constituents “tell me repeatedly, every day, that the government is not working for them and I agree.”

He said the budget “kicks the can down the road” in terms of addressing the territory’s problems.

Wawzonek, by contrast, said the budget would deliver changes that “prioritize the whole of the assembly rather than being a one-off item or a particular choice for one community, or one type of program or service that maybe services one group.”

“It really is an effort as a collective to try to benefit the whole of the territory and all of our priorities,” she said.

The minister said the GNWT will now move, on the instruction of MLAs, to re-examine income assistance in the months ahead.

“It’s not working the same for everyone and for every community,” she said.

“I don’t have the outcome today because it’s complicated and it’s not easy. But the point is that by being part of this process, the government is now being pushed to go and look at it because it’s been brought forward, it’s been discussed, and we know there has to be action taken.”

Housing ‘the top issue’

Morse, who voted against the last capital budget as he felt it did not go far enough, said he was satisfied by this operational budget.

“This is the top issue. This is the issue for me that I will defeat budget after budget over until we get movement on it,” Morse said, characterizing his stance on housing during budget deliberations.

“That focus worked.”

Morse said he would turn his attention to education in future budgets, adding: “I don’t think that we have a solid enough plan for workforce development and, in particular, the role that education needs to play in economic development in this territory.”

Great Slave’s Kate Reid said the budget “proved to me that our cabinet is listening and doing what they can with the resources they have and even a bit beyond, as they’re willing to go into what I’ve been calling good debt for social investment.”

Inuvik Boot Lake’s Denny Rodgers said: “They’re our cabinet, we elected them. We put them in there to be our leadership group and we have to put some faith in what they do, while holding them accountable.” He said he would continue to push for development of the Beaufort Delta’s LNG resources and more work on childcare supports.

The Sahtu’s Danny McNeely thanked cabinet for assistance provided to the Sahtu in the past year. The Mackenzie Delta’s George Nerysoo welcomed the housing funding. Both supported the budget, though Nerysoo again raised an issue he has pursued all week: what he describes as a lack of support to address drug-related crime in small communities.

“We need to get going on a large-scale amount of repairs and renovations in public housing, to allow people to take over units and own them as their own,” said Morgan, looking to how the new housing cash might be spent.

“It’s about putting the various pieces of our mandate priorities together, focusing our resources on programs that all lead towards the same goal, and I do think that one worthy and inspiring goal could be increasing rates of homeownership in the territory.”

“I still don’t have a health cabin in Kakisa,” Dehcho MLA Sheryl Yakeleya said, setting out what she had hoped for. “People in Enterprise still can’t go home. But we are working together, and I’m working with my colleagues to ensure that things do happen in my riding.”

‘Curious what we got’

Hawkins praised the return of $100,000 that had been cut, in the draft, from a family violence shelter network’s budget. (That money has also been moved to a different department, shifting from Health and Social Services to Executive and Indigenous Affairs.)

But Hawkins said he was otherwise “curious what we got” from the budget as he opposed it.

“We got the government’s notional plan turned into an action plan to modernize, improve and replace houses,” he said. “I would have liked to have heard: ‘We’re going to have a net increase of 50 houses, 100 houses, 200 houses.'”

“We don’t always get what we want but I am pleased with the budget,” said Monfwi’s Jane Weyallon Armstrong.

“There is room for improvement, but there is a good working relationship with the cabinet and regular MLAs and Indigenous governments and organizations. I feel like the government is listening to us.”

Supporting the budget: 15 – Cabinet, Frame Lake, Great Slave, Inuvik Boot Lake, Sahtu, Mackenzie Delta, Dehcho, Monfwi, Yellowknife North.

Opposing the budget: 3 – Tu Nedhé-Wiildeh, Yellowknife Centre, Range Lake.

Abstaining: None.

Claire McFarlane contributed reporting.