Mackenzie Valley Winter Road ‘has been unlicensed for a decade’

The winter road connecting the Sahtu to the wider world hasn’t held the right licences for 10 years, regulators say.

The chairs of four regulatory boards took the extraordinary step of writing to the NWT’s premier at the end of October to demand an explanation and some action, saying they’d had a “lack of success” getting territorial government staff to comply.

The Mackenzie Valley Winter Road runs from Wrigley to Fort Good Hope between roughly mid-December and early April each year.

The GNWT builds the road. Regulators say construction and maintenance of the road requires a water licence, but the territory’s last licence expired in December 2015.

Since then, the boards say, the GNWT has been breaking the territory’s regulatory rules by failing to acquire new licences.

Water licences are key instruments in NWT environmental regulation. Any activity needs a licence if its planned use of water or deposit of waste exceeds a certain threshold.

Requesting a water licence starts a process that allows residents, specialists, communities, Indigenous groups and other interested parties to scrutinize what is being planned, comment, ask questions and make recommendations. Without a licence being requested, that broader conversation doesn’t happen in the same way, if at all.

In their October 31 letter, which appeared on a public registry last week, the chairs of the four regulatory boards say the GNWT decided in 2015 that it didn’t need a water licence for the winter road.

According to the boards, the GNWT reached this conclusion by splitting the road into eight sections based on which contractors would build each part. The boards say the GNWT decided those sections were each small enough that they wouldn’t meet the minimum threshold of water use for a licence to be needed, so no application was filed.

“This was a misinterpretation of how to apply the licensing criteria for water use, as the project is the entire road, not administrative sections,” the boards told the premier. (Ministers Caroline Wawzonek, Vince McKay and Jay Macdonald were copied in.)

In 2022, the GNWT appeared to restart the licensing process. By 2023, it had submitted a new water licence application for the entire length of the winter road.

But the boards say that after regulatory staff asked for more information, the GNWT went quiet again – and nothing has happened for more than two years.

Not only is the letter unusual in that regulatory boards rarely write directly to the premier seeking action, but the boards also take the significant step of questioning whether the GNWT’s inspectors are fairly enforcing the law when the territory itself might be at fault.

For the past two years, the regulators write, “there has been no subsequent action [against the GNWT] by the GNWT inspectors responsible for regulatory compliance and enforcement.”

The regulators directly ask the premier for “an explanation of why inspectors have not been more proactive in ensuring a licence is obtained (i.e. issuing orders or direction).”

They also request an update on when the GNWT will eventually submit an application that includes the extra information requested in 2023, and demand a “commitment to improved inter-agency communication and coordination.”

Approached by Cabin Radio for comment on Saturday, the territorial government requested until the end of Wednesday to provide a response but did not meet that deadline.

Industry bodies representing the likes of mining have long complained that the regulatory burden in the NWT is too great.

Ministers have occasionally agreed, at least to an extent, but the GNWT has consistently maintained that the territory’s regulatory regime is fair, balanced and exists in its current shape for good reason.

The regulators said the territory should therefore be a model of best practice.

Their expectation, they wrote, “is that government will set the standard for regulatory compliance, both as an applicant and as the party responsible for enforcement.”