Election 2025 in the NWT: Kelvin Kotchilea’s interview

Kelvin Kotchilea is hoping to become the next Member of Parliament for the Northwest Territories.

Kotchilea is the New Democratic Party’s candidate for the NWT.

This marks the second time Kotchilea has sought this seat, having run in the 2021 federal election as well as in a territorial by-election earlier that year.

Kotchilea is Tłı̨chǫ from Behchokǫ̀. He has worked as a renewable resource officer and has held NWT government roles at the Management Board Secretariat and more recently the Department of Environment and Climate Change.

While Kotchilea said there’s a big list of issues the NWT is facing, items such the Mackenzie Valley Highway project, Arctic sovereignty, wellness, housing and the cost of living were listed as priorities.

He also referenced the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action.

“There’s a lot of good calls to action in that report related to the impacts and legacy of residential schools and the impacts we are facing here, specifically in the Northwest Territories, when it comes to intergenerational trauma,” said Kotchilea.

The candidate also spoke of the importance of elected officials learning to listen to constituents.

“You’re elected by the people so your responsibility is to people, and the people of the Northwest Territories will tell you what they want,” he said.

Federal Election 2025: Cabin Radio’s election hub
Register to vote: Learn more from Elections Canada

Four candidates are running to be the NWT’s next MP in the April 28 election.

Rebecca Alty is running for the Liberal Party, Kimberly Fairman for the Conservative Party and Rainbow Eyes (Angela Davidson) for the Green Party. Cabin Radio has published interviews with all four this week.

A live radio debate featuring three of the four candidates will be broadcast from 8pm on Thursday, April 10. Fairman declined an invite to take part.

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This interview was recorded on April 2, 2025. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Claire McFarlane: Why do you believe you’re the best person to represent the Northwest Territories at the federal level?

Kelvin Kotchilea: I have the attributes and qualities of leadership and I’m very approachable, sensible, and have a lot of lived experience when it comes to having success, having the lows, having the means of wealth and even upbringings of poverty.

I’m a very hard-working, educated individual that understands western society as well as my own Indigenous identity, which is Tłı̨chǫ, and I know to travel on the land, practise my culture and my heritage.

I’m from the North. I grew up in a small community in Behchokǫ̀, which is in the Tłı̨chǫ region, and I’m very excited that I am ready to take on this type of responsibility, plan for our future and represent and work with the people of the Northwest Territories, across our 33 communities in this vast landscape that we call home in the North.

What experience do you have that you think has prepared you to hold this office?

I always had experience in leadership roles at a very young age, whether it was in sports, in high school and in my profession. I was a renewable resource officer for 10 years and, as a renewable resource officer, you’re always thrown into leadership roles when it comes to forest management, wildfire decisions, as well as being involved in wildlife.

Once I got further in my education, I moved on to Education, Culture and Employment with financial capital and planning, and understood the dynamics of financial responsibilities and providing programs and services throughout the Northwest Territories at headquarters.

Then I moved on to the Management Board Secretariat, where I learned about the fiscal responsibilities the territorial government has with its $2.2 billion that it spends, whether it was through capital, infrastructure or operations and maintenance. I’m currently back with Environment and Climate Change.

With the various roles I held, it definitely gives me the experience required to understand the territory as a whole, not just the North Slave region or the Tłı̨chǫ but basically what goes on in the Beaufort Delta, the Gwich’in and the Sahtu, the Dehcho, the South Slave, the Akaitcho, the Tłı̨chǫ, the North Slave, so I definitely have a strong understanding, and I feel like that’s the type of leadership role required to represent the North.

This will be your second federal election campaign and you also ran in a territorial by-election. What have you learned during your last two campaigns?

Consistency is very important, and name recognition. I think the fact that I’m running in both the ’21 and ’25 federal election shows my seriousness and commitment to northerners.

To put my name forward was to try to see if the people around me and the communities around me believe in the fact that I am the right person to take on this portfolio.

The 2021 federal election results kind-of spoke about that. It was very unfortunate that I was unable to travel in 2021 due to all the Covid protocols that were in place.

Without even having the ability to leave the Yellowknife district, I still pulled in 4,300 votes and won in quite a few communities as well. Being 800 votes shy of beating the incumbent who had 20-plus years of political experience, or was a lifelong politician, showed that people wanted someone new, young, motivated that has fire and wants to improve the North.

I have children, and I’m going to have future grandchildren, and I want to ensure that what the Northwest Territories is going to look like 10, 15, 20 years from now is a territory I can feel proud of and confident about my children being raised in and having to live in.

Why do you believe the NDP is the best party to represent the Northwest Territories?

We had an NDP MP prior to the Liberal MP, so we kind-of went Liberal, NDP, Liberal, and we have a proven track record that we can represent the North.

The uniqueness with this NDP party now is that they give us the ability to bring a northern platform, a northern priority. We know what’s best for our territory, and it goes the same for our neighbours to the east in Nunavut and our neighbours in the west, Yukon. We’re very different in a sense. When you look at central Canada, metro Canada, GTA Canada, not all of our communities here in the Northwest Territories have road access. Some rely on air or barge to get a lot of their infrastructure or goods, which has a lot of pros and cons – more cons than pros. And for example in Norman Wells, they haven’t had a barge since 2023.

We can only speak to what we face and what Canada needs to do to improve our infrastructure, to improve our Arctic sovereignty, to improve our healthcare organization, and tackle affordability when it comes to housing and the cost of living. And they give us that ability to bring that forward, which I really do respect and I’m glad to be a NDP candidate.

It’s looking unlikely that the NDP will form the next government. What role should the NDP play over the next four years?

I guess we’re only in the second week of this election campaign and, when you look at polling, we understand it’s very volatile. So I am very optimistic, and I feel we’ll gain momentum as the election period continues.

I can only speak to my riding because I’m working hard, I’m committed, and I’m showing my communities that I’m very engaging. I’m doing my best to meet with all communities, but I know I don’t have the time to make it to all 33 communities, so I’m trying my best to hit the communities I am able to visit and share a platform that represents them and meets their agenda, their mandate, and their vision and their priorities.

Like I say, we’re in week two. We still have four more weeks, I believe, to April 28. So we’ll see what time does – and I hope time is my friend.

The last Liberal government worked with the NDP to implement things like a dental care program and pharmacare program. Is that the kind of collaboration you might like to see again, to move the NDP agenda forward?

I think for myself, especially hearing from the communities, is they have a lot of action items they would like to see brought to the table.

Some self-government organizations want a direct link in communication with Canada to be sitting at a federal table to basically represent themselves. And I totally understand and support that type of structure.

I know there’s a big push for the Mackenzie Valley Highway when I visited the Sahtu people, and it’s to tackle both Arctic sovereignty, affordability and infrastructure. And I believe it will be very beneficial to the North, and I’m very supportive of working towards accessibility to all of our communities in the Northwest Territories. We do know it comes with a lot of pros and cons, but I think in this day and age – it’s 2025 – we definitely need to have access to all of our communities. And it actually helps as well with mining and exploration.

Another big one is we still have two big groups working on their land claims and self-government agreements, the Akaitcho and the Dehcho, so as a Member of Parliament I definitely would want to push for them to have that negotiation back on the table. It’s 2025, this has been an ongoing negotiation for a good 30-plus years, so I know that’s one of the big things I’m hearing from those regions.

Those are some highlights I would push but there is more to it, and I think I want to be able to push, like I say, a northern platform, putting the northern voice, and as well as push towards thorough programs and services that will benefit all people.

You mentioned a few in your last answer, but what do you see as the biggest issues facing the North that need to be addressed at the federal level?

We have a big list. There’s not one action item to choose from. And I don’t like the idea of cherry-picking either when it comes to a laundry list of priorities that the Northwest Territories is facing.

But I think a consensus I’m hearing is that the Mackenzie Valley Highway is a big one – both economically as well as Arctic sovereignty, the high cost of living and housing. It would bring a lot of benefits, a major project like the Mackenzie Valley Highway.

I believe one of the things a lot of us can agree on, and I know a lot of communities are asking about, is funding for wellness. A lot of our communities are struggling with alcohol and drug activities that basically took off like wildfire during the Covid era. So we definitely need to start taking back our community, and I think it’s by letting communities lead their own program, but it’s the lack of commitment of funding to provide a proper service or an initiative for recovery, and basically getting our communities back to what we had 20 or 30 years ago.

The addictions crisis that’s facing many communities in the North, the cost of living, housing – those are all issues that are in some ways intertwined. How would you tackle them?

When you become a Member of Parliament, there’s a lot of standing committees you sit on as a representative and there’s a lot of networking that takes place. You’ve got to work with your party and get your party to push certain items, and sometimes that accompanies a lot of research, but we know we do have necessary research done and available already to push certain projects. It would be a responsibility to basically have a strong voice, be very repetitive and consistent. Don’t flip-flop all over the place with mandates and action plans.

A good one right now is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action. There’s a lot of good calls to action in that report related to the impacts and legacy of residential schools and the impacts we are facing here, specifically in the Northwest Territories, when it comes to intergenerational trauma with the harms that came from resident schools.

It’s a federal responsibility to ensure they right their wrongs and it’s in there, in those reports: provide funding, provide healthcare, provide housing. It’s a nice set of actions.

It’s a federal responsibility at this point that is being overlooked because we’re always facing new challenges: tariffs, foreign interference. There’s always going to be the next big thing that side-tracks from local or provincial or territorial needs that we’re selling our constituents or everyone across Canada.

How do you begin to balance some of those issues you mentioned, like reconciliation, with things like tariffs and Arctic sovereignty?

When you look at time management or project management, you always work on items that either give you a ripple or domino effect. You kind-of hit one item which hits many sub-items. We would want to focus on the things that hurt us the most.

There’s certain things we cannot control. A good example would be tariffs, or foreign interference. So the Mackenzie Valley Highway project will help offset the tariffs, in a sense that we pay more when it has to be barged or flown to our communities.

You can’t drive halfway up to the Mackenzie mountains because there’s no road access, so you basically leave zones of no ability to deploy any resource at any given point, because we just don’t have that infrastructure in place.

I think it’s a matter of choosing the right projects that tackle more than one item. Doing these community tours is the ability for me to hear from the communities and from the region, and trying to come up with priorities that can basically work on similarities across different regions. Find the commonalities, common ground, and ensure that this is what people want.

When you get elected, you don’t have a self-driven agenda. You’re elected by the people so your responsibility is to people, and the people of the Northwest Territories will tell you what they want. You just have to listen. And as a leader, you have to learn to listen. You’re not going to be the person with all the answers. So listening is very important when it comes to visiting communities and hearing their priorities.

What have you heard so far from communities you’ve visited?

I started off my campaign in the Sahtu region and what they have been facing was especially a cost of living crisis in Norman Wells.

There are individuals whose heating fuel bill was double their mortgage, if not two times more, two times and a half more than their mortgage. You know, almost five-ish dollars per litre for heating fuel in October 2024. No barge service in 2023, and when the wildfire broke out in Fort Good Hope, there’s no ability to leave the community, you only had either to get flown out or jump in your boat and go down the river or up the river. You couldn’t get out via a vehicle.

When the community of Fort Good Hope got evacuated, they just barely got everyone out by the time the wildfire actually hit their airport strip. The dire need of the Mackenzie Valley Highway.

A lot of impacts they’re facing when it comes to alcohol, drugs and criminal activities and the support needed. Housing is another big one. You know, we definitely need to revamp our activity in a sense with the federal government, with their responsibility and how they play a role in the Northwest Territories.

I actually just had a meeting today with the Tłı̨chǫ Executive Council for the Tłı̨chǫ Government, and they had their own list of priorities that were very regional-based and very specific to their communities, Behchokǫ̀, Gamètì, Wekweètì and Whatì in their Tłı̨chǫ land.

I’m always going to notice that each region, each community will always differ. And you know, it’s to try to find the common ground, the common programs, the common things I would be able to bring. And they all want direct funding. They all want direct access to speak with Ottawa with respect to their modern land claims and self-government.

I still haven’t made my way yet to the South Slave region. That’s going to be next week, from April 7-11, and then the weekend after that is when I’m hoping to head up to Inuvik in the Beaufort region.

I know you said you were optimistic, but the NDP is losing a lot of ground in national polls right now. Is your party getting its message wrong, nationally? What needs to change?

I think what’s interfering with how Canadians are feeling as a whole is the tariffs, foreign interference. And a lot of Canadians are worried and fearful, and it’s very unfortunate that that is a driving factor into these political polls.

But again, I’m very optimistic. I know political polls can always be volatile, and usually what can happen is that you just gain momentum towards the last stretch. And the most important day out of this whole election is actually April 28, the moment of truth. We can always use stats to kind-of give us a picture, but it’s only stats, which is also so important for us as candidates to understand.

Like you say, is it messaging? I feel like it’s a lot to do with the tariffs, Donald Trump, foreign interference and that it’s a behaviour thing, and no one can predict or control behaviour trends.

But again, me, on the other hand, I’m working very hard. I’m talking with as many organizations and communities that I can, and I’m showing northerners that I am the right person to be the Member of Parliament. And I’m gaining a lot of momentum and a really strong start compared to 2021, so I’m very, very happy with how things are going here in the Northwest Territories, for myself as an NDP federal candidate.