Court order halts bids to build Inuvik’s new airport terminal

An NWT Supreme Court judge has paused the procurement of a contractor to build Inuvik’s new airport terminal while the Gwich’in Tribal Council seeks a judicial review.

In court filings, the tribal council says the NWT government has declined to enter into a negotiated contract – a form of direct agreement – with the council or Gwich’in businesses for the work.

The GTC, which has maintained for years that the GNWT is not assigning as much work to Gwich’in businesses as it should, says the territory’s refusal to do so is a breach of its modern treaty.

The territorial government has not filed its own representations to the court.

Last week, Justice Karin Taylor issued a consent order halting the procurement process until at least the end of March 2026 while the GTC’s application for judicial review is dealt with. If there’s no outcome by March 31, the GTC can apply for the hold on procurement to be extended.

A consent order is one in which the parties have already agreed in advance. Lawyers representing the GTC and GNWT jointly submitted the order to Justice Taylor, who issued it unchanged. The tribal council and territorial government each declined to comment when contacted by Cabin Radio.

The halt, first reported by the CBC, means the new terminal is now highly unlikely to be ready by the end of September 2028, as was anticipated in a schedule included by the territory in bidding documents for contractors.

$42 million was set aside in 2021 for work to build the terminal, three-quarters of which came from the federal government.

GNWT ‘unlawful, unreasonable’

In its application for judicial review, the GTC says the territorial government’s infrastructure minister, Vince McKay, sent a letter to the tribal council dated July 17, 2025.

The tribal council said McKay expressed an intent in that letter “to bypass negotiation with the applicant and/or qualified Gwich’in contractors for a negotiated contract with the GNWT in relation to the Inuvik (Mike Zubko) Air Terminal Building Replacement Project, and to instead proceed with a process of public tender open to all contractors.”

The GTC said the GNWT’s approach was “unlawful, unreasonable and contrary to the obligations of the GNWT pursuant to Chapter 10 of the Gwich’in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement.”

The tribal council said the territory was failing to meet its obligations to deliver economic reconciliation, neglecting its duty to consult, and not living up to its stated intent to implement the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The GTC had “actively expressed interest” in the air terminal project since 2022, the application states, and its subsidiary the Gwich’in Development Corporation had come forward in 2024 with a proposal, alongside Clark Builders, for a negotiated contract.

By August 2024, the GTC says it was raising concerns about procurement with Premier RJ Simpson, minister Caroline Wawzonek and others.

At that month’s Gwich’in Annual Assembly, a resolution was passed seeking to shut down NWT government procurement on Gwich’in land until a new economic agreement was in place.

The GTC says, however, that nothing changed in the following months, and Gwich’in firms have since made separate complaints about what they perceive to be procurement injustices.

According to the GTC’s court submission, McKay stated in his July letter: “As there are numerous parties interested in this work, the department will be advertising a competitive public tender for the project to ensure fairness and transparency.

“I hope that businesses from the region, including Gwich’in-owned businesses, will consider bidding on the project.”

A week later, the tender was published online. It had a closing date of September 12, and more than 60 contractors of varying sizes and specialisms downloaded the associated documents according to OpenNWT’s records.

An extra document sent to interested parties by the territory on September 12 stated: “An originating notice for judicial review was filed in the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, dealing with this tendering process. Given the court action the GNWT has cancelled the tender for now.

“As the matter is before the courts, the GNWT will not be commenting further at this time.”

GNWT’s view of negotiated contracts

In the past, the territorial government has defined a negotiated contract as “one where a specific firm is targeted, for a variety of reasons, to perform the contract, even though there is more than one firm that can perform the contract.”

While the GNWT did not comment for this article, McKay has expressly discussed negotiated contracts with Cabin Radio in the recent past.

In a May interview, the minister said such contracts should be used “when there isn’t the capacity in the region.”

His argument was that if there is “no ability to do a contract or do a project, we’ll negotiate a contract in order to keep the benefits in the region – and maybe for the company to get the trade resources, or the people that have the skills and the abilities to do that contract, and hire them.”

Speaking in the context of a different contract – though one where a Gwich’in firm had again expressed misgivings – McKay said: “Our goal in the GNWT is to make sure local contractors have the ability and the resources to do the contracts.

“If they don’t, and if it’s a fair-sized contract where it might attract a business from down south, it’s something we may want to negotiate in order to keep that money in the North and keep the employment in the North.”

In an interview in July, Nihtat Gwich’in President Kelly McLeod said Gwich’in firms accounted for “less than 10 percent of the procurement that the GNWT team put forward in our settlement land.”

“We’re not trying to take the whole pie, but we want to ensure that our people have their fair share of it,” said McLeod.

“The GNWT has flat-out come back and said no, they will not sign off an agreement that gives us preference. Which is wrong, because they have those commitments and obligations today.”