See those Facebook posts about Scan legislation? Here’s what’s happening.

Over the past few days, variations of the same Facebook post have appeared in many NWT community groups. The message? Drug dealers beware, new laws are coming.

The posts declare that civil forfeiture laws and legislation known as Scan – safer communities and neighbourhoods – are “incoming.”

“This is a shift in how the community and authorities respond. Everyone associated with drug activity should be aware of what these laws enable,” some versions of the post state. Here’s an example.

Scan and civil forfeiture laws are indeed being brought forward by the NWT government, which has prioritized public safety and finding new ways to address the drug crisis and related crime in the territory.

However, that legislation is unlikely to become law any time soon and the territorial government faces some challenges in both passing and then implementing it.

Here’s a guide.

Give me the basics about these laws.

Premier RJ Simpson has been talking about civil forfeiture and Scan since the last election in late 2023.

The overall aim is to give the GNWT more power to disrupt criminal activity by targeting the places where drug dealers operate and making life harder for criminals.

But this won’t be straightforward. Parts of similar laws elsewhere have been ruled unconstitutional by judges, and the laws would require a new unit with wide-ranging powers while putting pressure on existing offices that already say they are under-resourced.

The laws are also going to take time. They haven’t even been drafted yet. The GNWT is still running a public comment period about its ideas until November 28.

So when might these laws actually arrive?

It’s possible, but not guaranteed, that the draft legislation could be introduced in the House in February or March 2026. Then the bills will go to a committee of MLAs for review.

The committee has 120 days for those reviews. It could finish each review more quickly, and it’s just-about possible that the bills could be passed in the summer of 2026, after which regulations may need to be drawn up and approved, meaning the laws might actually come into force in late 2026 or 2027.

Equally, the committee may need the whole 120 days and then the bills might not pass until the fall of 2026 (bearing in mind it’s also possible for MLAs to vote down the bills if they disagree with the contents). That would mean the law potentially coming into force later in 2027.

In all likelihood, these new laws are at least a couple of years away from having a material impact – possibly more, depending on how quickly the GNWT can put in place the measures (like new staff) to implement them.

What will the Civil Forfeiture Act do?

We don’t have draft legislation yet, so we’re working mostly from politicians’ statements and a short summary the GNWT posted online. Things could change between now and the final text of any law that is eventually passed.

As things stand, the Civil Forfeiture Act would allow the GNWT to seek court orders stopping property “involved in or acquired from criminal activity” from being given back to the alleged criminals, even if they aren’t convicted.

In the past, Premier Simpson has used the example of a driver being pulled over and the vehicle searched.

Under current rules, he has said, if drugs and cash were found in the vehicle but the person is ultimately not convicted – or if a court finds the search was conducted unlawfully – the person wouldn’t be given back the drugs, but they would be entitled to the cash.

That could change under civil forfeiture legislation. The law also applies to other types of property like cars and snowmobiles.

Here’s a summary of the GNWT’s proposal:

• the GNWT would have the power to start a civil (as opposed to criminal) process to hold on to cash or other property believed to be associated with crime;
• if the targeted person challenges that, it goes to civil court, which requires a lower threshold of proof – criminal cases must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt,” whereas civil cases rely on “the balance of probabilities”;
• forfeited cash could be given to victims, given to community programs and crime prevention initiatives, or used to cover GNWT costs.

What about the Scan Act?

The GNWT has described this one in powerful terms.

This law is “intended to empower NWT residents to take back their communities by reporting problem residences that are habitually used for illegal activities,” the territory has stated.

In the GNWT’s words, Scan legislation “gives citizens the tools to report the properties and gives territorial authorities the power to investigate and take action towards evicting tenants who are engaged in illegal activities.”

Here is how the GNWT says this would work:

• a new unit will be set up to investigate complaints (which you can make anonymously) about “residential properties that are regularly being used for illegal activity such as drug trafficking, prostitution, bootlegging, or gang activity”;
• if a complaint has merit, the unit takes it to the NWT’s rental office or helps a landlord do the same;
• the rental office issues an order to stop illegal activity or an eviction order;
• the unit makes sure the whole process happens as efficiently as possible and looks after any “uninvolved or at-risk occupants” affected by decisions.

What’s the problem there?

Scan exists elsewhere in Canada and is designed to deal head-on with a major frustration in the NWT: drug dealers appearing to operate with impunity from specific homes, sometimes by taking advantage of vulnerable occupants.

However, the success of the law hinges on a few factors.

Firstly, the NWT will have to account for a recent Yukon ruling where a judge found similar legislation to be partly unconstitutional.

The Yukon law allowed as little as five days’ notice for evictions of tenants suspected of illegal activity. The judge found that could cause “extraordinary psychological suffering and a risk to a person’s health” and lead to homelessness.

You might be thinking: If they’re a drug dealer, so what?

But this legislation has been examined by NWT MLAs before – in 2007 – and then abandoned because of another key concern: It could be used as a way to harass people and settle local scores.

Imagine a small NWT community where two families have fallen out and they each have the option of anonymously filing Scan complaints to the new GNWT unit. Without careful rules in place, what’s to stop people filing complaints back and forth to try to cause trouble for others they don’t like?

It’s not yet clear how the GNWT plans to account for that abuse of the system.

What does Scan do that existing laws don’t?

A drug dealer who is convicted is already at risk of losing their home. Scan is different because, like the Civil Forfeiture Act, it relies on civil courts.

Again, that brings the civil courts’ lower threshold of proof into play. The GNWT need only demonstrate that on the balance of probabilities, illegal activity is occurring. It doesn’t need to be shown beyond a reasonable doubt.

In theory, that makes securing an order easier and quicker, and allows more action against suspected criminals without actually engaging in a criminal prosecution.

But this also introduces some challenges.

The civil court in question for Scan purposes is the rental office.

According to its latest annual report, made public last month, the NWT’s rental office has one chief rental officer and one part-time rental officer. They work from a small office in downtown Yellowknife that doesn’t even have its own boardroom for hearings to be held, so the rental office books out other boardrooms around town whenever it needs them.

Around 300 to 400 new applications are filed with the office each year.

If a landlord requested an eviction order in 2024-25, about 75 percent of the time they got one. But more than half of all termination or eviction orders were conditional, meaning tenants were given a chance to meet certain criteria and thereby avoid having to leave.

The rental office is independent, so the GNWT cannot simply tell it to turn more cases into evictions. (The territory could try rewriting legislation like the Residential Tenancies Act to change the basic rules the rental office follows, but Scan does not appear to do that.)

While government ministers have more than once complained privately that they think the rental office handles some cases too gently, the success of Scan as they envisage it relies on the rental office having the capacity to handle Scan cases and handling them in a certain way.

Scan also relies on enforcement. Someone needs to make sure the rental office’s orders are carried out.

What’s next?

The introduction of the bills, presumably in 2026, will give us a clearer sense of exactly how each of these laws is expected to work.

That will also be our first chance to hear from regular MLAs as they scrutinize the language of each proposed law.