The NWT government is overhauling the way its environmental health inspections work but the changes are taking longer than planned, making some information that should be public harder to find.
Environmental health sits under the Department of Health and Social Services, or HSS. Staff are responsible for issues like drinking water quality, pest control and food safety.
Inspectors are tasked with regularly inspecting restaurants, cafés, grocery stores and food trucks throughout the NWT to make sure the food you eat there has been properly stored and prepared.
Those results are supposed to be public, but the existing website hasn’t been updated with new inspection reports since May 2024. Prior to that, months or even years would pass between batches of reports being uploaded.
Asked why no new reports had appeared for a year and a half, an HSS spokesperson told Cabin Radio the department “is developing a new, public-facing website to share inspection reports.”
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
“This work is part of an overhaul of the entire Environmental Health inspection program and involves the development of a fully online application portal, including a financial portion and inspection disclosure portal,” the spokesperson stated by email last week.
“It was originally scheduled to be launched in the summer of 2025, but development is taking longer than expected. We are working to get the site up as soon as possible but cannot provide a timeline at the moment.”
HSS says inspections are still taking place, including visits related to complaints from the public, and a policy exists that dictates the minimum frequency with which each establishment must be inspected.
What, exactly, will appear in the new online portal once it is complete is not clear.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
In the past, the results of inspection reports have helped to illuminate significant issues facing downtown Yellowknife restaurants.
For example, in 2018, reports made public on the HSS website were the only means by which the public was made aware of a cockroach problem inside Centre Square Mall cafés.
That allowed journalists to look into the issue and follow up with the mall owners.
Cockroaches were no longer identified as an issue within the same cafés in publicly available inspections from 2023 and 2024.
